Searching

Sometimes I mislay something. If it's minor, I may just wait for it to show up. If it's important, I look. If it's something like my car keys or billfold, I turn the house inside out and don't quit until I find it,

That, in a small way, is what I pictured when I read this from Peter (1 Peter 1:10-11): "Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow."

I imagined this small group of godly men, separate from society because God asked them to do such weird stuff, knowing that there is something great coming, knowing that somehow they and the people of Israel have missed it and are on the wrong track. They're searching for the truth much more earnestly than I look for lost car keys; it was a lifelong obsession for them. They knew, because the Spirit told them, that the Messiah was coming and they wanted desperately to know when and where.

And look what they discovered with all their searching (v12): "It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things."

All that looking, and what they found out was that they would never see the Messiah. Their job was to point the rest of us to Him; their great search was for our benefit, not theirs. In the end, in this great, life-consuming quest of the prophets and the fervent excitement of the apostles like Peter, what we really see is God.

The Spirit revealed to the prophets that the Messiah was on His way, and gave them the prophecies that were so helpful for the rest of us. And that same Spirit enabled the apostles to preach the gospel after the Messiah came. This story of prophets and apostles is really a story of a different search: God's pursuit of His lost sheep.

Every once in a while I run into something that shows me again that all the centuries of history have been about one thing: The salvation of the elect. It's so amazing it scares me. My soul is that thing so important to God that He'll devote great effort to get it back. I need to put a little more effort into that myself.