The Witness of Our Salvation
1 Peter 1:10-12 · Andrew Molloy · Jun 14, 2026
1 Peter, No. 06
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/71026182533987

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

First Peter 1, 10 through 12 is where we're at today. The witness of our salvation is what someone titled it. And it should be actually, I think, witnesses of our salvation, because there are two that we'll find. The prophets, and then the second witness would be the angels, is what we'll find out today.

So let me read from verse 3, because 3 through 5 is this great salvation passage, which is very germane to what we're studying this morning. So in verse 3, 1 Peter, chapter 1, Paul begins this section, Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled, and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith or the documas of your faith, being more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in the praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. And then here's our passage, two verses for today, 10 through 12.

As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, But you, in these things which have now been announced to you through those who preach the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit, sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

And this, we began this week getting up that illustration, which I wasn't able to get up last week. It was blocked out. So this is the illustration showing God's purpose and trials. And I kind of added to what was done in years past in Holly Hill's illustrations.

And I added verse 7 of 1 Peter chapter 1. And that is the verse 7, which is, Christ is revealed in revelation of Jesus Christ, is how that verse reads. There's no definite article. So, in all your Bibles, you'll see, in the revelation of Jesus Christ, well, the the is supplied, so it's in revelation of Jesus Christ.

So it's a now present thing. He's revealing himself to us now. And so I'm trying to illustrate how the believer has a greater and greater ability and appreciation of Jesus Christ, and he's better able to expand his praise, honor, and glory to the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's on the left there. You can see the the new birth at the bottom and you start out with a little knowledge of the revelation of Jesus Christ through his word and yet you praise and honor and glory him and as you grow in Christ that gets bigger and wider as you go up and then finally at that top you're you're able to really have a deep appreciation of what He did at the cross for you. And as you grow from the new birth at the bottom, you'll see that middle blue line, that's your spiritual growth. And you grow, you get to know Him from glory to glory.

That's 2 Corinthians 3.18. and you get this widening sense of him, right? And then I just added that to all this we have trials, various trials, and so you start down, this is the right hand, illustration, done in 2001 by my dad. So you start small, and he puts you through these trials, and you learn hope and patience, and your faith is approved, dokimas, and you go through life with trials. And as you go through trials, you see more of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's the purpose in trials. So, I wanted to add that slide. just because I wasn't able to do that last week. So we go on. First Peter so far. Peter's writing to Jewish Christians under trial in northern Galatia, and we saw that in the last couple weeks. But how do they cope and hold up under these trials?

Well, what Peter's trying to do is focus their confidence and build their confidence like a coach. on their living hope, which is permanent and secured in heaven, and is based on the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, His saving work for their souls, and they'll have that in the future when we're raptured, or we die and we're face-to-face with Him, and we receive new bodies, and that's part of the inheritance, and that's yet future, and that's true, but it's also active here in the present. So what Peter is describing in 3 through 5 is the breadth and height and scope of this Christ-saving work to them.

By having hope, and hope is a moored, intelligent confidence in this work of Christ, or stated differently, hope, you can give this definition, it's an absolute certainty in their now and future salvation and inheritance, and they can depend on that to weather these tribulations. So their faith, and that's certainty too, their faith and reliance on the absolute reality of things of God is what faith is. So, the things of God are reality, and if you put trust and reliance and certainty in those things, that's faith. Kind of that definition of faith in Hebrews 11. And that faith is, God takes it through testing, through trial, and this leads to greater exaltation and rejoicing in God. as Christ is more and more revealed.

And they have exuberant joy in these verses, 7 through 9 of 1 Peter, chapter 1, in the person of Christ, despite the fact that they've never seen Him face-to-face. And we have a special blessing for never seeing Him face-to-face, yet rejoicing in Him and believing in Him.

So, the third-party witnesses to this joy and depth and breadth of this magnificent salvation are, A, the Old Testament prophets, with whom the Christians he's writing to are familiar, because they're Jewish Christians, so they know Ezekiel and Isaiah and Daniel very well.

And then, the second set of witnesses are the angelic realm, which is far more mysterious. Yet the weight of their perspective is very powerful. So 10, verse 10, as to the salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries. Going on to 11, we have seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and glories to follow. So we'll look at this salvation by grace alone and bringing the Gentiles into it. The prophets were being inspired to write about these things.

So salvation in the Old Testament was Jews for the physical descendants of Abraham by the mosaic animal sacrificial system, Leviticus 1-7, chapters 1-7. And so by doing that system and obeying God, said that they were believing God, and believing God is how they were saved. But they had that ritual that they needed to keep up with to kind of prove out their faith.

So grace is not at the core of the system, but it's in there. It's hidden, because all salvation is by grace. Merriman says that the root word of Gentiles, where that occurs in the Old Testament, is hidden. So we think of nations, Gentiles being the other nations. Well, he says that the root of it is goyim, and you probably know that word goyim. These are outside of the covenant. But the prophets were seeing that they would ultimately be saved in the Old Testament Scriptures. But how remained a mystery, because they were not part of this blessed economy that God had going for the Jews.

So the Holy Spirit reveals to Peter that the prophets saw the sufferings of Christ, they saw that, and his millennial glorious kingdom reign, they saw that as well. But they couldn't square the circle of how Messiah would come to be both rejected and suffer and die, but turn around and be worshipped as king forever, in one lifetime, one man, and that didn't make sense to them.

So what verse 11 says up there, where it says, seeking to know the person, what person or what time the Spirit of Christ was indicating, as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow, that time is Kronos. And that's a specific time, what the clock hands read, what Kronos would this great salvation be accomplished? If they couldn't answer that, what Kairos, Kairos, K-A-I-R-O-S, what will be the season of time, what will be the quality the times be when this will come about, that the Gentiles would come into salvation and be saved by grace, and that the Messiah would both suffer, die, and reign.

And they wanted to know. So therefore, and what I'm doing is I'm kind of doing these broad brush strokes, brush strokes, not like swimming breast strokes, but brush strokes into the verses 10 and 11, instead of going, you know, word by word and things. So we're getting this over, it's an overall picture look at this, because it's kind of vast. It's a big, a little two verses, three verses. So they made careful searches and inquiries into this conundrum, is what I'm calling it. They had a conundrum.

And if you think about Jewish history much later, the Jewish scribes and priests and things came up with the Talmud, and they said, oh, well, here's how we solve this issue. There are two messiahs. There's one messiah, who's the son of Joseph from the tribe of Ephraim, and there's another messiah, Ben David, son of David, from the tribe of Judah, and he's going to be the one who reigns the Messiah who's the son of Joseph, he's going to be one who suffers. But that's... false information and they uh... that you know it's a kind of a false doctrine is what they came up with in the Talmud uh... so the prophets were surprised by their own writings like they would write the Holy Spirit would have them write these things down and then they'd go to bed wake up and read what they had written inspired by the Holy Spirit by the Spirit of Christ and they'd be astonished at what what it was saying, kind of in real time, about this Messiah.

And so they really wanted to know. That's the force of the words, they made careful searches and inquiries into this. They painstakingly tried to piece together suffering and glorification together in one coherent system, which they couldn't. And these careful searches and inquiries are defined as detailed investigation, scrutinization, trying to draw out the answer. And in those Greek words for searches and inquiries, I think the word searches has the prefix ek, so to pull out from, we know ek is out from. They were trying to pull out information from their writings and other writings to figure this out. And not only that, in the Greek, the word inquiries, I believe, has a meaning of anxiety about it, so anxious. They were anxious about figuring this out. You know, they were biting their nails about this issue, and they were very interested in doing it.

So Macaulay and Merriman say that phrase, what manner and what person, what time, the Spirit of Christ was was speaking to them, that is a perfect tense verb. So what manner and what time was continually indicating this coming salvation? I'm sorry, continuously indicating. It was a past action, but ongoing and never stops so they were always bothered by this the prophets were and many of them were because they all have the prophecy of the messiah in their writings most of them so here's What I did a lot this week is illustrations, and I just pulled from Merriman this whole scene. This looks kind of busy, but we'll go through it. It's pretty simple.

So there on your left, you have the Prophet, who's looking into the future, the timeline, into eternity. And you can see from his eyes, he sees two things, the suffering of the Messiah, and then in the gold line, he sees the glory of that same Messiah.

And the suffering of the Messiah is a minor theme Behrman has because you see under the cross there the one two three four Old Testament scripture verses about the suffering of Christ one is Isaiah 53 of course Psalm 22 is a very Very clear one about that and then they he's that prophet sees the glory of the Messiah that in the day of the Lord in his triumphant kingdom And of course you have the icon of the crown there to illustrate that. And then below that you see all the, and I won't go through those, but you have tons of script. There are so many scripture references to prophecy in the Old Testament, you just can't, it's inexhaustible really. So you have stuff from Psalms, Isaiah, Daniel, Joel, Zephaniah, Zechariah, etc. etc. is what Merriman says.

And what I learned this week is, you see, can you guys see that, the small writing, pretty well? I don't know if you can. Maybe it's too small. But Zephaniah has a, it's quoted as chapter 1, verse 14, ff. And I was like, what does FF mean? I couldn't figure that out. Because I know that a verse can be verse 3A, verse 3B, verse 3C, and that makes sense, verse 3D, and that's just the last part of the verse. But FF means on and on. So go from verse 14 and just keep reading. So FF is just et cetera is what that means.

So that's kind of cool. So you'll see that Merriman says, the Old Testament prophets, through God's Spirit, predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories to follow, but the precise timing of these eschatological events was not revealed to them. So let me go on from this illustration. And that you can go through, and it's very helpful. He did a really good job.

To this one that I came up with from J. Vernon McGee, because I was listening to him, and here's how he described it. So there's the same prophet, a little bigger this time, and he's looking into the future, and he sees two uh... mountain peaks a smaller mountain peak which is christ's first advent and his suffering and the death the death of christ the prophets predicted his virgin birth his kingly lineage his birthplace even his humble beginnings uh... and of course his death and resurrection so that's the smaller mountain peak in the foreground then in the background They saw the millennial rain, a bigger mountain piece, a bigger mountain peak. So they saw that as well.

But what they did not see is a second advent. And I was like, yeah, and that's true. So nowhere in the Old Testament do you see Christ coming in the clouds on a white horse, as you see in Revelation. So they didn't see that second advent. And you can see that the Church Age is in the space, the valley between the two mountain peaks. And that's how he described it.

J. Vern McGee, he was at his house in Pasadena, and he was looking to the San Bernardino Mountains, whatever is there. I'm not sure what mountain range, but he would see Mount Wilson, he said. And then in the background, he would see a bigger mountain that he was familiar with. The distance between those two mountains, they looked right together where he was seeing them, but the distance between them was like 50 miles, because he had been there, he said, in 1940. So that's how he came up with this illustration, which I kind of illustrated by my excellent PowerPoint skills here. Because I think it's a visual help. It's very good.

So on to verse 12, it was revealed to them, the prophets, that they were not serving themselves, but you in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preach the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. That's verse 12.

So after so much investigating, And I'm kind of throwing out a guess here. The Holy Spirit spoke to them and had to reassure them that this constant, continuous indicating of a Messiah coming to affect salvation by grace was for a time and a people yet into the future, yet way into the future.

So finally they were able to relax a little bit and put their minds at ease. And that's just me sort of taking a guess as to that phrase. It looked like a special revelation to them. Doesn't it? Would you say that The Holy Spirit had to kind of give them that information that this was not for their lifetime, but for something well into the future. I think that's the case. I think the Holy Spirit came and just put their minds at rest. And they probably had some, finally got a good night of sleep back then, those prophets, trying to figure out this thing.

So the second witness to the salvation is the witness of the angelic realm and their observing of the salvation. I'm just going to do a little bit of a study here in Angels, the angelic realm, from Lewis Barry Chafer. And Angels, and this is review, but we don't really cover this so much because Angels aren't too often mentioned. They're mentioned, I think, 158 times in the New Testament, only 108 times in the Old Testament. But yet, Paul doesn't take a section and explain it all. It's little bits and pieces everywhere.

So there are created spiritual beings, we know, whose job is to be messengers of God. They occupy an exalted estate above the present sphere of fallen man. There are numerous classifications of angels, numerous realms and estates, and numerous functions that angels do. But mainly, they're ministering spirits to render service to those who shall be heirs of salvation.

It says that explicitly in Hebrews 1.14, and I think that's interesting because heirs of salvation, well, that's us. That's what Peter is telling us in verses 3 through 5, that we have an inheritance. We're the heirs, so they're rendering service to us. But they are also spectators and witnesses of things here on earth. And you see the scripture references there. I'll read them quickly for the people who are listening without the slides, which are available on the Holly Hills website. hollyhillsbiblechurch.org under messages, but if you don't see it, I'll give them really quick.

There's Psalm 103.20, Luke 12.8 and 9, Luke 15.10, it has angels observe, or witnesses to things, 1 Corinthians 11.10, 1 Peter 3.16, 1 Peter 1.12, and Revelation 14.10.

So they live, see, and they experience personally the glory of God and Christ. And this is important because we'll get into sort of the opposite of that in a little bit here. All the time, 24-7, they live, see, and experience the glory of God in Christ. Yet, the verse says, very end of 12 there, which we are at, that phrase, things into which angels long to look, that longing is epithumeo, and epithumeo is a desire, they desire to look into these things, and it's even a heated desire, and you can translate epithumeo as a lust, a good lust, they have a good lust to look into this great, gracious salvation, and the inner workings of it, because they just uh... and and that is a it's described in first peter one three three five of course and i'd just i'm taking a guess here but i think it's eternally fascinating to them as to how this works out because angels are very as we know in the old testament there they're very associated with the bringing of the law of moses they're very uh... you know the cherubs are in the the tabernacle and They're very connected to that system, the mosaic system, but this grace system, this just fascinates them, I think.

So, more on angels. Apparently, there are myriads, and they occupy every sphere of God's creation, from the earth up to the first heaven, through the second, up to the third heaven. They were present at creation. Angels were present at the giving of the law, of course. The birth of Christ, His temptation, they were there. They ministered to Christ in the wilderness. In the garden, they were there.

Christ chose not to deploy them, it says in Matthew 26, 53, he tells Peter, hey, don't you know I have, and I forget the number, I have a legion, or twelve legions of angels I can call, but, so, just, because that's after Peter had cut off the ear of that Roman soldier.

Angels were present at Christ's resurrection, his ascension, and yet future, his second coming. So, Dr. Cook, as Chafer quotes, he says, how constant their attendance to the incarnate Savior during His mysterious life among men. And that His mysterious life was mysterious to the angels. And a lot of this information was new to the angelic realm, is what Cook says. knew to them was Christ's two-fold nature, Christ's redeeming work, and the fact that Christ was obeying his own law as if he were a creature, and in the attitude of a servant, because they knew, the angels knew personally and face-to-face that he was governor of the universe.

And that's their first-hand experience. And if you think about it, I was thinking about this a lot, and just imagine that. So they knew the truth, but yet when he's on earth, he was in all sorts of trouble by men. He submitted himself to be tempted. He suffered the scorn and reproach of sinful men. The angels witnessed those men striking him in the face.

We've seen that in Mark and John. at when Christ is on trial they saw him dying between two thieves and just think of that because think that that they're angels glorify God 24-7 as the governor of the universe of the creator of the universe and now they're seeing him suffer so much.

It's just, as I say, it was new to them in their knowledge and understanding. And that's Cook. And I thought that was really powerful, to kind of bring out this little phrase at the end of verse 12. So here, I worked on this illustration. which I'll go over quickly, but you could study that more if you get the slides on email. And I take this from Schaeffer's Systematic Theology, and I just tried to put it into an illustration.

So here you have God's creation, heaven, and the throne room of God being at the top. And then on the left-hand side, is the universe, you know, the billions of galaxies and billions, that space, there's billions of light years, I think there's 34 billion light years is what they telescope as saw the distance of the farthest galaxy or something. So there's galaxies, stars, solar systems, nebula in there. And the third heaven at the top, second heaven in the midsection there, first heaven down below, and then Earth. Earth is man's sphere.

But in between is the realm of angels. So starting at the top, you have thrones, angelic thrones, and that's defined as those who sit upon them. you have dominions, those who rule, principalities, those who govern, is the definition of principalities, and then powers, those who exercise supremacy, and then authorities, those invested with imperial responsibility, and I tried to illustrate that these angels belonging to these classifications have dwelling places, and that's represented by the sort of pipe-hand, kind of cylindrical things here I have. And are those dwelling places the many mansions in the father's house? of John chapter fourteen verse two, in my father's house there are many mansions, if it weren't so I would have told you. So some of those dwelling places would be these dwelling places for the angels.

You also have the elect angels, just one mention of them in First Timothy 5.21, up there at the top right. And then of course the highest angels, Lucifer at the top, He's the Son of the Morning. Then you have the Archangel Michael, who is likened to God, and I put those above the thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, and authorities. And Gabriel, because they're mentioned by name, and of course Lucifer's at the top there.

So there's the angelic sphere, and a lot of these things, I have question marks all over the place. Possible ordering of power, so thrones might have more power than dominions, dominions might have more power than principalities, that's because Luce buried Schaeffer. you know, he didn't say anything definitively, that's just how scripture sort of describes it.

So you're sort of guessing, but you can see that at the top there, under the heading, angels, their positions, orders, and eternal destinies, especially, are fixed, right? So when a third of them fell, that's fixed forever. They're forever With with Satan as demons, but there's holy angels and their Their destination is fixed whereas man down at the bottom our eternal destiny Is who whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved? in I think that's Joel 232 or or whoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ will have eternal life in John 3 16 our eternal destiny is can change, and it's not fixed. And it becomes fixed after we become saved.

So I have this, that angels are stooping down to comprehend Ephesians 3 and 3 through 11, and that the workings of the mystery of the church, because that was new to them. So they are stooping down to look into these things. So there you go, there's the angelic realms, and it just brings force to that phrase that they're really looking into this salvation system that Peter lays out in verses three through five.

So this chart is much like the first chart that Merriman did, but I put it as a supplement because you can go through that on your own time. It's much the same, but you can see that the church age was not visible to the prophets, and so that's just a supplement. A lot of the same, but you can look at that yourself on your own time. I just thought I'd put it in there as a supplement. But of all the angels, folks, My favorite one is this one.

And if you know him, that's Clarence Oddbody. And what's his order? Does anyone know his angelic order? Second class. Yes, he's an angel second class. And I looked and looked in my Bible and I did not find any angels second class. So Andrew? I don't know if it's true. Yeah. So the role you've described today for the angelic realm is a passive one.

Are they active? Oh yeah, yeah, they're actively ministering. And they're active in following the orders of God. Yeah, very active. But what jobs they have, and what realms they live in, and their order, you know, whether they're thrones or dominions or powers, I think are fixed, right? Passive, because they were created and they are placed into those orders, I think, right?

Does that make sense? But right now they're active, of course, in the world. Is that where you're getting at, Bob? I'm not sure what I'm getting at. Very active, because you said demons are active, and so angels are very active, and it's all behind the scenes. We don't know what they're doing, but we do know that they were present at all times in Christ's life.

I remember Elijah and his servant, the servant kid, and there was that army coming to the door, and he thought they were going to die. And Elijah said, he said, Oh Lord, open his eyes. And then he saw the hole. Just he saw a bunch of angels on chariots.

So they're always there. And I think they were there. Yeah, it sounds like they were there in the garden with Christ when he was being arrested, and they could have been deployed. But Christ did not deploy them, but they were at the ready, you know? And when he was born, God said, angels, you can show yourselves to mankind, and you can appear in the sky, and that's what the shepherds saw, and glory to God on the highest, and they were allowed to show themselves, and to show what they were always doing, you know, from their creation.

They've always been doing that. Yeah, and they have different jobs. There's angels, there's more. There's the angels that control the four winds, and the angel of death, that's an angel with a specific job. Yeah, so it's very active, but their creation was fixed, and where God placed them into the order of things, I think, was fixed. if that makes sense. Yeah, I think it's interesting, Andrew, that they're very active beings serving the Lord, and yet we do see this picture here that they're also observing. They're observing the work of the Lord Jesus and learning. Yeah. You know, it's amazing.

Yeah, Kenneth Weiss said, has a little, a little, short little section called the University, God's University for Angels. And that is the earth, and especially the Ephesians where, in Ephesians 3, the mystery of the, the gospel that God was going to take Jews and Gentiles and place them into one body by grace. And then he was going to take that body as that would become his bride, and I think will be elevated above the angels as his bride, and yet future.

And that just, I think that just blows their mind. Think about it. Someone said that they're looking down, they're looking at man. And he's kind of slow, and he does dumb things. As we see in the study of Mark in the Tuesday men's Bible study, like the disciples, they can never figure out things, even though Christ is telling them. And the angels are seeing that man is, hey, look at these clods of dirt. And they're just, they just can't figure this stuff out. And they mistreat Christ so much when he was on earth, and they don't listen to him.

And they don't believe Him, and I think they just can't, they can't believe that, and they're so interested in to what, you know, what our mind, how our minds work, you know. Because they see the real thing, they see the, they see the glory of God, the real things, the real spiritual things, the things of God. They see that with their own eyes, and we don't, you know. It's also interesting that it describes in Ezekiel that the angel, that one of the four creatures has eyes, and the wheel, and it's all eyes, so they see all different directions, and it's really amazing.

But yeah, I just found that this little section, I just sort of expanded it into this little study of angels. That was real cool. Thank you. Yeah, so now when you come across angels in the Bible, we'll have a better kind of bead on how great and glorious that created order is. It's above us, and it's really cool, though. But yeah, I would recommend everyone, if you want to know more of the details, go into Chafer's Systematic Theology and give that a read. I'll close up here.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your wonderful created order of us. You created mankind. and that we are able to know you and to understand you through your word, and you've saved us through the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then above us, there's this mysterious realm of angels that you have ministering to us and doing your bidding in the heavens and here on earth. And we thank you for your creation, and we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Andrew.