The Gospel Carefully Passed Down - April 26th, 2026

And we're gonna start with the reading of God's word. It's 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 10 to 12. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, inquiring to know what time or what kind of time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as he was predicting the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you and these things which have now been declared to you through those who proclaim the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we're so thankful for your great plan of salvation.

And Lord Jesus, we exalt and honor you at this place, and ask, Lord, that you would not only be the center of this service, but just the coming weeks, especially, that you really would make evident your reign in our hearts. And Lord, Holy Spirit, we pray, knowing that today's message is going to be about your work. I ask that you would help us to engage. This is a very important subject that we all need to hear. So I pray that you would engage our hearts, engage our minds, and even engage our bodies for those of us who are tired and need help to focus. Ultimately, we pray that your name would be honored in this place in this morning. And we ask, Lord, that you would use the words to ignite a joy in our hearts and a zeal for your gospel ministry and your truths.

We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen. Go ahead and take your seats. Well, the word gospel in the Greek is you angeleon. If you can repeat after me, that'd be great. Go you angelion. And it's a combination of the Greek word you, which means good, and the root word angelion, which means message. So the word gospel literally means either a good message or good news. So the word evangelism is the sharing of good news, right? And that comes from this word, youangelion. And I'm sure you already know this. But what is the difference between an Angelion and a Euangelion? What's the difference between the news that simply informs and news that is truly good? And I'm going to provide for us a couple of examples to help us emotionally wrap our minds around the difference.

We have a bunch of children in the adjacent room. They're participating in Sunday school. And I'm going to give you some news.

That's news, right? And that's for sure an angelion, but is that a you angelion? No doubt, I'm sure you wouldn't be unhappy receiving this favorable news, but this news, no matter how favorable, would not affect your day today going forward. In fact, most of you parents would be somewhat unmoved by this piece of news.

It is a given.

But had we just heard a big explosion outside, or had we felt a huge earthquake, we saw this ceiling cave in, you would not be apathetic toward the words, your children are safe if someone ran in here announcing that. That would be not just an Angelion, that would be you Angelion. It would be exceptionally good news. So here's another example. If your doctor, I have two doctors' appointments this week, if you went to a doctor and he were to say to you after a checkup, hey, good news. You are cancer free. How would you feel? Most of you would not be unhappy to hear this, but you would not really have an emotional reaction or respond with a joy-filled celebration upon hearing this news, right?

Tears of happiness would not fill your eyes. You wouldn't be jumping for joy or relief. Though this is not bad news, again, it isn't necessarily good news. If anything, if your doctor just shared that with you out of the blue, you may be confused about this news. Right? Even if the doctor reminded you that one out of every three of us will some point be diagnosed with cancer, in the moment, in the present, you would not really be all that excited for this news. You are cancer free is an expectation. It's an assumption and it is a given. And this too may simply be a piece of Angelion, favorable, of course, but still Angelion nonetheless. Now, had you been battling cancer for a year, have been going through all kinds of the horrific treatments to beat it, and you had previously been told that this cancer would be terminal, but now it's gone.

The words you are cancer free would not just be Angelion, then these words would be great life altering, earth-shattering, fantastic you angelion. And this is news that you would want to shout at the top of every building, post on every social medium, tell to every friend, and even to the stranger next to you, this would be good news that you will not be able to contain. No one would have to tell you to share it, and no doubt you would share it with great thanksgiving and joy. So the difference between Angelion and you Angelion is not in the contents of the information. It is not contingent on the skill or the delivery of the news bearer. The difference is found in the circumstance and condition of the one affected by the news, right?

So what does this news mean to the recipient of that news? So information that is youangelion to some may very well just be Angelion to other people. So this begs the question is the message that Jesus Christ satisfied the wrath of holy God towards your sins, has restored you to himself, has given you eternal life. Is that truly youangelion good news to you? Or is it just simply information that's a given, an expectation, or something that you perhaps even think that you are owed? Is the gospel of Jesus Christ simply a collection of religious facts? Or is it truly earth-shattering? Joy inexpressible kind of good news that you can't not share. So is eangelion good news? And this is gonna be an important question to think through as we look at 1 Peter 1, 10 to 12.

Our default setting is to take it for granted. With every good thing that we've been given, we take it for granted. Would you acknowledge that? That's just our condition. We can't escape it. So our default setting is for the gospel to become gradually with passing year, nothing more than religious information over time. And we need to remember and we need to fight to remember the pricelessness of our salvation and the preciousness of this gospel. Amen.

So this section of the epistle is about the beauty of the gospel and the preciousness of salvation. So this gospel message had been carefully written, diligently preserved, and then passed on to all who would believe for a few thousand years. So there was great care and deliberation of the drafting of this formal message of salvation. And it's like a priceless life-altering inheritance, like a will delivered and passed down, signed by every witness needed, precious information. So it's like a priceless piece of eternity altering news that's being written, delivered, and then received. And I'm gonna like, I'm gonna have us think through our sermon with that kind of a structure in mind. So for this morning, we're gonna be first looking at the message, the gospel message that have been carefully packaged and passed down.

Second, we're gonna be looking through the passage at the senders, the couriers, if you will. You guys know what a courier is, right? The deliverer. And then the apostle Peter makes mention of four groups of messengers. There are four agents of prophecy mentioned in these three verses. And so then after that, we're gonna be looking at how the message applies to all its recipients, to all who would hear, believe, and then inherit. The message, the senders, and the recipients. And that's how we're gonna be looking at this. So the message, pretty obvious, it's the good news of salvation. The wording is right there in the beginning. The message is the gospel of salvation. And what is that? Sinful man can be restored to holy God for whom he had been created.

Amen. A lot of presentations of the gospel begins with Jesus loves you. You've heard that, right? Now, that is not incorrect, but the gospel of salvation was written down long before the arrival of the Son of God to the earth. The gospel actually begins with a holy God who hates sin. He is at the very center, and the message of salvation begins with an understanding that you and I have been created by God and for God to love God and to serve this holy God. So that's our purpose, but what is sin? It's a rebellion against that purpose. Sin removes God from the center, and sin places self at the center. And Western Christianity actually drifting away from the gospel. Western Christianity almost pleads with man to give God a chance.

That God will make your life better. That God wants to please you. But that is not the gospel. Correct. The gospel begins with a holy, holy, holy God, and then the problem of man's rebellion and sin. And then we see the U Angelion presented to man early on in his history. And we can see this message, the proto-uangelium, all the way in the beginning of the book of Genesis. So it's given pretty much immediately after the fall.

Interesting, right? In the form of judgment. So it's there in the yellow. The sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. The proto-evangelium is first mentioned in the scriptures that Christ would suffer and that there will be glories to follow in Genesis chapter 3. And I'm going to read verse 15 for you. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall crush your head, is literally the meaning. You shall bruise him on the heel. And that's a that's a burning pain, right? So the Messiah, fully God, but born of a woman, would be bruised, but through that bruising, God would preserve man, God would restore man, and that's the first promise. And then it unfolds.

And we see that in the gospel, or God chose, he elected a family through a man of faith, through whom he would make a nation to bring about the means of making good on that promise. And what's that man's name? Abraham, right? So in Genesis 12, God unconditionally chooses and blesses Abraham. There's nothing in Abraham that he deserves salvation. God just simply makes a choice and gives him a blessing. Chapter 12, verse 2 to 3. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and so you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. Abraham believes this promise.

And this blessing is called the U Angelion, not just for Abraham, but for all the nations in the world. So the blessing of Abraham is actually the gospel to the whole world. And that's what Paul says in Galatians 3. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, proclaim the U Angelion beforehand to Abraham, saying, All the nations will be blessed in you. So then those who are of the faith are blessed with Abraham the believer. And then what does God do to Abraham? He makes his life a living sermon. Right? God would make a gospel presentation through Abraham. God told Abraham to take his one and only begotten son, not Ishmael, the son born of human effort, but to take Isaac, the son born through divine promise, to slay him as a sacrifice and an offering pleasing to God in obedience.

And you know the story, right? When Isaac asks his father, where's the lamb for the sacrifice? What does Abraham say? He unknowingly probably proclaims the gospel to his own son Isaac. Here it is. God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering. My son, and then two of them walk on together. God will provide for himself the Lamb. And later in this same chapter, God reaffirms that initial gospel promise. So the youangelion is found all over the page of the Genesis. In your seat, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you've listened to my voice. God will provide for himself, the lamb for the burnt offering. Through that lamb, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.

And basically, the rest of the Old Testament, the entirety of the law and the prophets, is a giant baton pass of this youangelion. You guys understand this, right? Prophet after prophet after prophet just continues the baton pass of the promised Lamb of God who will take away the sins of the world. That's the message. God will take away the sins of the world by putting an innocent lamb to death to atone for all man's sins. And in so doing, God restore man to his original purpose, to love God, to serve God, to glorify God. And this lamb would reconcile sinful men to holy God. And this is what all the prophets saw. Micah saw that this lamb called the Messiah of God would be born where? Chapter 5, verse 2, in a little town of Bethlehem.

Daniel beheld the vision of the rise and fall of all of these empires to set up the coming of the Son of Man, who would then topple all the empires. Malachi foresaw the spirit of Elijah coming in the person of John the Baptist to usher in the arrival of the day of the Lord. Zachariah is given a vision of the Messiah coming into Jerusalem riding on a donkey. Jonah would become a sign that the Messiah would be slain and then buried, and then on the third day would rise again, to be vomited out from the heart of the earth. So Jonah proclaimed through his own life the resurrection of the dead. Through Hosea, the nation saw that God will once again restore the harlot Israel to himself in the end times through this Messiah.

1948, Israel, after two thousand years somehow became a country again, because God showed his love to this country. Isaiah the prophet saw very clearly the hope not only now for this nation of Israel, but for all mankind. Isaiah chapter 6 describes God as a holy, holy, holy God. But then he would invite everybody to the banqueting table. You guys have heard this, right? Isaiah 55. They are free to eat food. They are free to drink milk without cost, free of charge, all by grace, because a virgin would conceive Isaiah chapter 7 and give birth to this Messiah. He saw Isaiah that the Messiah would suffer horribly, that he would suffer wrongly, that he would be pierced through for man's transgressions, that he would be crushed for man's iniquities, that he would see the chastening of sinful man's sins for the sake of his shalom and his wholeness coming through the suffering of the Messiah.

Now we just suffered, or we just uh reflected on that in Easter, right? Isaiah 53, 6 to 8. All of us, like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, but Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. He was oppressed, he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, like a sheep that is silent before its shears, he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, that for the transgression of my people striking was due to him. So the gospel was proclaimed and preserved by all these prophets. So what's the message?

God will restore fallen man to himself by crushing his own son. And the more absurd truth of that is that God wouldn't just spare man from his wrath, he wouldn't just pardon him from the position of slavery, but he would elevate the man to be a co-heir with his son. That's absurd. That's mind-boggling. Makes no sense, totally unjust, it's totally unfair. But this unfair and unjust treatment of the lamb is Yuangeli unto man. So the message of the gospel can be summed up by two verses in 2 Corinthians, chapter 5. All men will be judged on the basis of their deeds. 2 Corinthians 5.10. Do you see this? All men are doomed. But here's the good news those who believe would be judged on the basis of Christ's deeds and substitution.

2 Corinthians 5.21. He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. So then the arrival of Jesus happens, the day of the Lord's favor had come, the prophecies of scripture are fulfilled. So the Old Testament is about all the prophets carefully preserving the gospel until the arrival of the promised son. Okay, if you're falling asleep, I encourage you to stand up because you're gonna, this is important stuff for your salvation. Luke 4, 17 to 21, the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him, Jesus. He opened the scroll, found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim the release of the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed to proclaim the fair favorable year of the Lord. And then he closed the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue were upon him, and Jesus began to say to them today.

So the promises contained in the gospel were fulfilled in Christ. So first that's the message. Second, we have the messengers, the senders. And there are four groups of messengers or senders mentioned here. And I want to read verse 12 for you. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you now have been declared to you through those who proclaim the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit, sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. So there are four divine agents of prophecy, and that's a big deal. This is the most important delivered package in all of human history. And it took four divine agents of prophecy, but you can think of it as one author, three couriers.

How many authors? One. Three groups of couriers. There were the Old Testament covenant prophets mentioned in verse 10. And then in verse 12, we read that there are new covenant apostles, and then the angels, all carrying and preserving the message in a giant baton pass. So three couriers the prophets, the apostles who proclaim the gospel, and then the angels. One author, God the Holy Spirit. Three careers, one author, God the Holy Spirit, the author of the scriptures. So the scriptures is called the word, the sword of who? The Spirit. Ephesians 6 17. So, yes, man wrote and transcribed. And that's why a lot of atheists say, see, this is just a human piece of work. So we can't. But what we understand is that all scripture was authored and dictated by God the Holy Spirit.

Every word was theopnustos. It was breathed out by the Holy Spirit. 2 Timothy 3 16. Man was simply the human agent chosen for the task to write and to audibly speak. And in writing down and speaking the words of God, these human agents were possessed by God, if you will. You guys heard of demon possession, right? This is Holy Spirit possession, taking control of the man. And so these men were moved, moved, basically, they're puppeted by the Holy Spirit. And that's what we see in 2 Peter 1 20 to 21. No prophecy of scripture. Comes by one's own interpretation. No prophecy was ever made by the will of man. But men being moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. So we see here that God the Holy Spirit was the author, and the Old Testament prophets were simply the first mouthpieces used to proclaim the gospel of the Lamb of God.

How did they handle the word? With careful searches and inquiries. So the prophets not only wrote carefully, they spoke carefully, but they're so fascinated by what they're writing, they carefully inquired, because they too were amazed by what they were seeing and what they were hearing. If you look at the lives of the prophets, they're constantly dumbfounded. And the prophets kept speaking until the arrival of the Messiah, the Son of God. Hebrews 1, 1 to 2, God, having spoken long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways in these last days, spoke to us in his son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he also made the worlds. So as was spoken in Isaiah and Malachi's prophecy, the ministry of Elijah was on John the Baptist as Messiah's forerunner.

John the Baptist was the last Old Testament, old covenant prophet who ushered in the time of the Messiah. I guess tracking. With the arrival of Jesus, after his death and resurrection, then that baton of the message was passed to the apostles commissioned by Jesus. So the prophets spoke of the coming Lamb. The Holy Spirit used the apostles to preach and proclaim about the risen Lamb. So the apostles preached about Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit. What book of the Bible is about just that? The book of Acts. And the book of Acts is actually short for the Acts of the Holy Spirit.

So these disciples wrote down the gospel and the ramifications of the gospel for all of the people who would make up the church, the bride of Christ. Eternal life now is obtained through belief only in his name, not law keeping by belief. The Old Testament prophets wrote about the coming Messiah. The new covenant apostles spoke about the Messiah, who has now done away with the problem of the old by ushering in the new.

True or false.

Did you know all of these apostles gave their lives for the message and the truth of the resurrection? They sacrificed their life for this gospel. The apostle Peter was crucified upside down after he watched his wife and his kids executed. As they were being passed him, he kept saying, Remember the Lord, remember the Lord. He watched them be crucified, and then he said, I am not worthy of being crucified, crucified by my Lord. So they hung him up upside down. That was the apostle Peter. Andrew, his brother was crucified on an X-shaped cross. Philip was also crucified. James was slashed to death by a sword by Herod. Bartholomew was skinned alive. Doubting Thomas and Matthew, the former tax collector, were both run through with many spears.

Simon the former zealot was sawn in half. And Matthias, for whom my son is named after, the replacement apostle, he was a beheaded. This is all history.

Even the one who died of natural causes, the apostle John, who was exiled to the island of Patmos. So these early apostles got that baton. They took great care of this gospel message, even to the point of death.

Some of you may know him as a Christian. Others of you know him from Watergate. Chuck Olson, one of the Watergate seven, he was indicted and imprisoned for his role in the Watergate scandal. He met Jesus just shortly before his imprisonment. And this is what he said.

Watergate proved it to me. How?

Everyone was beaten, tortured, stoned, and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled twelve of the most powerful men in the world. And they couldn't keep alive for three weeks. You're telling me twelve apostles could keep a lie for 40 years. Absolutely impossible. So the apostles, the proclaimers of the gospel to the early church, then carried that baton of this precious promise. The Holy Spirit recorded and preserved the gospel through the prophets, then to the apostles. And what's interesting, lastly, we have angels. Now, how many guys believe in angels? Well, you better, because the scripture is very clear about who they are. But if someone around you says, Oh, I saw an angel today, you'd be like, what's her name?

No, no, no. Right? We don't talk like this about angels. Now, in 1 Peter 1, the angels look like dumbfounded and amazing, amazed spectators, right? They're like, what's going on? But the sinless angels in 1 Peter 1, they just look long to look into this mysterious, unfathomable gospel that holy God would reconcile vile, rebellious, sinful man to himself. Huh. But the rest of the Bible teaches us that the angels are not passive onlookers, they are a big deal. They are so big a deal that Saint Augustine devoted over a hundred pages of his book of the city of God to just angels. And we're gonna look briefly at the role angels play in the salvation of man. You have been touched by angels, believe it or not.

Or you better believe it. That's in the scriptures. All right. Now, Hebrews 1 14 says angels are ministering spirits sent to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation. This is their purpose to help you get saved, to help the elect stay saved, to usher in salvation all the way until eternity. That's the purpose of the angels, created beings. In addition to that, what we see in scripture is that angels performed God ordained miracles. So in Matthew 28, verse 2, an angel caused an earthquake, not just a little little tremor, but literally a violent earthquake strong enough to roll several hundred pounds of tomb-blocking stone away from the tomb.

One angel did that. In Acts chapter 12, verse 7. An angel enters Peter's prison cell, brilliant light, just mesmerizes everybody, and the word literally is his shackles disintegrate.

Angels are also very powerful. One single angel in 2 Kings 19, 35, killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers. Remember, the Assyrians were trained men, trained from the time of childhood for cruelty. Interestingly, one angel binds Satan for a thousand years, Revelation 21 to 2. That's a buff angel. Thou shalt not, right? So they're so powerful, you don't trifle with them, Jude 8. But these sinless, powerful beings always refuse worship because naturally, when we see a divine being like that, we want to fall down. They say, no. Sinless beings know that only God belongs at the center. Unlike man, man always wants to be at the center. Sinless angels understand that no one is to be worshipped aside from God.

And what's interesting is they have emotion. Luke 15 10 tells us that when there is one sinner who repents from his sins, finds Jesus, the multitude of angels, they rejoice. Interesting, huh? And what's more absurd in the scripture is that is in 1 Corinthians 13 in glory, it is almost hinted at that we will speak the tongue of angels. 1 Corinthians 6 3 actually tells us that we're going to be over them. We're going to judge them. And that's a mind-boggling thought. Now, the angels were a big deal to the New Testament saints. If you read carefully through the New Testament, take off your paradigm and just read the plain text. Angels are all over the New Testament. Okay? Try it. Read it. Alright.

And you ever wonder why in the very often quoted Romans chapter 8, angels are mentioned. No angel can separate the saint from the love of God. And we're not talking about demons and fallen angels. The angels, why are they there in this? What does that mean? At the scene of the greatest injustice in all of human history, at the arrest, trial, crucifixion of Jesus. What does Peter do? He tries to fight off the soldiers and he hacks off an ear, and Jesus rebukes Peter for trying to get in the way of God's will by taking out his sword to protect him. In that moment, Jesus makes mention of 12 legions of angels ready to launch an all-out destructive and righteous judgment at the horrifying treatment of the Son of God.

Remember, they have emotion. Can you imagine what the angels are thinking? What is this thing that's happening right now? What is this puny man doing to the Son of God? They're ready to pounce. A legion is 6,000 angels. Jesus says there are 12,000 or 12 legions of angels ready to pounce and unleash all righteous fury on man, but they're held back because of the love of God for his saints. The mighty angels, holy angels, could not get in the way of stopping this cosmic injustice because of the love of God. Because of God's promise to restore and reconcile man back to himself. So the gospel is so fascinating and so profound a thing that these powerful angels are looking at it with astonishment and wonder.

But we treat it just like information. We need to fight to remember the preciousness of our salvation and the beauty of the gospel. Amen.

And this was a message handed down to the recipients of the Christians of Asia Minor. So lastly, the faithful service of the prophets and then the apostles and even the angels. And they heard the gospel and they believed it. And in 1 Peter 1, we find that they're all suffering because of it.

Jeez. I thought this was good news. Why are we suffering? And remember the context in which the apostle was writing, in this period of time, the Christians, they were known as the followers of the way. The word Christian is a term of mockery. You guys know that, right? If I called you a little Hitlerite, that would not be feeling good. Right? If I called you a you mini Biden, oh you little Kamala, or you little trump, somebody would be offended. You little Christ was meant to be an insult. They actually called themselves a followers of the way, and they were a misunderstood group. And they were persecuted often. They're often viewed as troublemakers. Many viewed Christians as unpatriotic traitors to Rome.

Some viewed them as insurrectionists, some viewed them as primitive and backwards. What? You only believe in one God? You don't believe in science? That was the Christians. And so Christians became very easy scapegoats for society's woes. And the persecution was growing. In 8064, July 18th, there was a thing called the Great Fire of Rome. And of the 14 districts of Rome, 10 of them burned down. I mean, you know the Palisades fire. 10 of the 14 Roman districts burned down. Six days, period. They didn't have firefighters. It just all just burned. So Nero, taking advantage of the already negative Roman citizens' view of the Christians, he actually announced that the Christians started the fire.

They were responsible. And guess what happens to the sentiment toward Christians? The rise of hatred became very strong. And as a result, many Christians, and especially the leaders were captured and arrested. This is all in your history books, by the way. Okay. The Christians were thrown to lions for sport. They were hoisted, even little children, hoisted on stakes, lit on fire to light the streets of Rome like a lamp. Especially around Nero's home. Burning Christians were the street lights. And the apostle Peter was writing to remind them of the inheritance that was waiting them. He wrote them to remind them of this great salvation, that they were protected by the power of God. Not necessarily their bodies or their circumstances, but their salvation was secure.

Being a believer does not mean circumstantial ease. Amen. See, that's why a lot of people leave the church because of the empty promises. Believe in God, and he will change everything. That's not what the Bible actually says. Circumstantially.

To have their basis covered, they don't want to make it bad news, so they change it into neutral news. That seems a little bit like what the Bible says. The gospel of Jesus Christ is judgment for Satan, salvation for the saints. The message of the cross is foolishness for those who have great hopes in this world. 1 Corinthians 1.18. You guys know that verse, right? The beneficiaries of good news. Now we're called to be salt and light to the dying world. And next week we're going to be looking at the ramifications of this precious salvation and what that means for you and me. But today I'm going to end with this. The gospel of God is central to the fabric of human existence. It was carefully passed down to you and me on the sacrifices and the services of the men who have God before us.

So here is that all important question. Is the gospel really good news? Because it should change your countenance if it was. Amen. As we grow in understanding of the holiness of God and in awareness of the greatness of our depravity, I pray that this good news just continues to grow more ewed. I pray that this good news becomes gooder and gooder and gooder until it becomes the goodest of news in our hearts and minds. Amen. So the Lamb of God was slain to reconcile man to God, to give man eternal and abundant life. You are disease free.

So no longer is there any wrath that you're going to face. You're done with wrath. Hallelujah. And I want to close with the reading of 1 Peter 1, 10 to 12 one more time.

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, inquiring to know what time or what kind of time the Spirit of Christ within them, remember, spirit possessed, was indicating as he was predicting the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed to these prophets that they were not serving themselves by you in these things which now have been declared to you through the apostles who proclaim the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which these mighty angels and flaming fire long to look.