birthday to a leader this week.
He'll be 29 again when he comes through. And Steve's going to
be 36. Wow. Amazing. Sylvia Franklin was added to
our prayer list. She's going to take note of that. I have several people out for
different reasons. Jim Hose, the car broke down,
and Julie and Cora are headed toward Panama City pretty soon,
I think. They're in Alabama today. Remember
those folks as they travel. Let's turn in your booklets to
hymn number 10, the Southwest Booklets. I will arise and go
to Jesus. Come, ye sinners, poor and needy,
Weak and wounded, sick and sore, To love thee, dear Lord, and
bow. Come, green birch tree, come
and welcome God's free bounty for me. I'll be weary, heavy laden, Lost
and ruined by the fall. If you tarry in your bedroom,
you will never come at all. Let not consciousness make you
linger, for a fitness only brings. All the fitness he required is
to feel your need of him. Sons, we are by God's deletion,
who in Jesus Christ believe! By eternal destination, solemn
grace renowned, I will arise and go to Jesus He will embrace
me in His arms In the arms of my dear Savior, oh, there are
ten thousand charms. Well, actually two verses, one
and two. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers,
scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and
Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the
Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience
and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, Our Father in Heaven, we are
thankful that we can read such words in Scripture and take great
comfort in the knowledge that our salvation from hole to hole
is the work of the triune Godhead. You, our Father, chose us. Your
Son died in our womb and instead purchased our salvation. set us apart to hear the gospel,
to receive it, and gave us faith to believe. We are thankful that
all of our salvation is handled by you, that you left nothing
to us. And we are thankful that knowing
what we are, by nature, our carnal bent, our wickedness, and our
uncleanness, that you, in grace, chose us unto salvation. Father, we pray for those of
our company who are away from us, traveling. We ask, Lord,
you give them traveling grace and bring them back safely home.
We pray for those who are sick, those who've lost loved ones.
We pray for Wanda. We pray for Inez, if she's still
in these stages. We ask, Lord, you be with her
and be with us. might be pleased to enable us
to preach the gospel, to hear the gospel, that you give us
faith to believe, a heart to receive and love and embrace,
a mind to understand. We know we are frail in ourselves. We can't know much. What we do
know is of very little value, save what you have taught us
by your words. Lord, we pray in Christ's name,
amen. More about Jesus in number 326. ? More of Jesus would I know
? More of his face to others show ? More of his saving More of His love you died for
me. More, more of Jesus. More, more of Jesus. More of His saving fullness see. More of His love you died for
me. Spirit of God, my teacher be! Sharing the things that Christ
did me. More, more of Jesus. More, more of Jesus. More of His saving fullness see. More of His love who died for
me. For I'm Jesus in His Word! Holy communion with my Lord! Hear His voice in every land! ? Making His way for staying
mine ? ? More, more of Jesus ? ? More, more of Jesus ? ? More
of His saving fullness see ? ? More of His love who died for me ? more about Jesus His love will die for me. I pray, Father, give me approach
in the name of Jesus Christ. We would learn more of Him. Even your apostle Paul, after
some 35 years of preaching, said, this is what I want to know.
I want to know him and be found in his righteousness. We are
thankful what you taught us. Pray you teach us more. Help
us to remember that we receive these offerings, that they are
for the furtherance of the gospel here and in other places. Help
us to be thankful for this privilege that we have in praying Christ's
name. so so So, passage of Scripture, those who
are saved by the grace of God. And he says they are scattered
abroad. They are strangers, scattered all over the place, here and
there. We hear a lot today about movements
and even movements in so-called Christianity. You don't read about movements
in this place except for one place and a great movement in
Jerusalem gathered together to crucify the Lord Jesus Christ. By and large, the children of
God are scattered here and there. Sojourners in a world that's
not theirs. They're described here. in a most beautiful and glorious
way in chapter and verse 2. They are elect according to the
foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the
Spirit unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus
Christ. Grace unto you and peace be multiplied. Salvation if it is spoken of
at all in this day. It's not spoken of a great deal.
But according to what I'm hearing, it seems to be little more than
a secondary or tertiary topic in the preaching. And in this
book, the central and singular subject is Jesus Christ and Him
crucified from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. The fact that the declaration to be just and to justify sinners. That's the only way he does it.
Through Christ and Him crucified. The preaching of Christ and Him
crucified has been relegated to the Bible meeting or is employed
in a closing service when it's pressed upon men to make some
decision for Jesus Christ. And when religion speaks of salvation,
the thrust of the words are concerned more with man than with the glory
of God. But God said when he told Moses
what his glory was, it's all about salvation. I will proclaim
the name of the Lord before y'all. May my goodness pass before y'all. Have mercy on whom I will have
mercy. And I will have compassion or grace upon them. I will be
gracious unto whom I will be gracious. The descriptions given of the
Savior in this day I'm more befitting to the New
Age self-help guru than as the sovereign savior of lost, ruined,
and hopeless men. The words of men mouth reveal
the thoughts of their heart. The God they declare to men has
not one attribute that is conducive to worship, awe, reverence, praise,
or thanksgiving. Their sad and puny deity, bless
his heart, is hamstrung by the will of his creatures. He's been reduced to a solicitous
beggar at the door of men. He's filled with unrequited desires
residing in a dilemma of wanting and waiting on the assistance
of the creature to give him value. and credibility and enable him
to make desires to come to pass. If men do get around to preaching
about salvation, and it's not that often anymore, if they do get around to that,
what comes across as what they believe are words that turn salvation
into a thing that they had control of, or a thing they assisted
God in, or a thing that they did for God, or to God, or in
collusion with God? Do they speak of grace? Grace alone as the means employed
by God to save sinners? Do they laud and praise the substitutionary
accomplishment of the Lord Jesus Christ? Do they even say old
worn axioms like Nor they spew self-promoting
rhetoric such as, I made a decision for Jesus. I came to the Lord. I decided to start living for
the Lord. I got saved. I gave my heart
to Jesus. I invited Jesus into my heart. I gave Jesus my life. I made
Jesus the Lord of my life. They are stricken with the uppercase
I in that situation. It's a disease for which there
is no sound. No saint, no inspired saint in
the Word of God and no saint in the history of humanity use
such non-honoring, non-God honoring terminology. The language of
the Bible, the Holy Scripture, when salvation is discussed,
it's always about God. Always. Look at the blessed description
that Simon Peter gives of this salvation of every believer,
and this applies to you this morning if you're a child of
God. This is how the child describes you. Elect according to the foreknowledge
of God. Through sanctification of the
Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ,
grace unto you, and peace be multiplied." That's how God describes
those whom he has freely saved. The apostle then assures us that
all the attendant graces of salvation are included in the salvation
wrought by God the Father. Salvation is God's work alone.
Salvation is the work of God's grace upon all three persons
of the thriving Godhead. Salvation is the effectual work
of God's free, sovereign, omnipotent, unstoppable grace in Jesus Christ. Salvation includes all the multiplied
blessings of grace and the peace that is only found in Jesus Christ. Every sinner who is chosen by
God's grace in eternity, was redeemed by the effectual blood
of Jesus Christ on Calvary, and is sanctified by the regenerating
operations of the Holy Spirit, and is blessed with grace and
peace as long as they live on this planet and throughout eternity. Notice, if you will, in this
description, the glaring absence any if, or but, or condition,
or codependency, or any such foul pollutant induced in this
pure fountain of free grace. Elect according to the foreknowledge
of God, the Father, through sanctification of spirit, things talked about. Chosen,
sanctified, redeemed, and blessed. That's the description given
of the child of God. First of all, he said he's chosen,
said he's elect according to the foreknowledge of God the
Father. Every sinner who is the beneficiary of the blessings
of grace is so blessed because he was selected, picked out,
elected, severed in eternity by God Almighty according to
the good pleasure of His own will for the glory of His own
grace. If you look at the Gospel of
John, this is a prominent theme, spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Lord said He prayed for those that God had given Him, but He
would not pray for the world. In Acts 13, verse 48, after the
preaching of the Gospel, the Jews rejected the preacher of
the Gospel and the preaching of the Gospel. He turned to the
Gentiles, and they rejoiced to hear the Word of God. as we're
ordained to eternal life. Believe. You're familiar with
Ephesians 1, 3 through 14, which is all the work of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the salvation of God's people.
For God has not appointed us to wrath, but to attain salvation
by the Lord Jesus Christ. We're bound to give thanks, Paul
said, for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord. We're bound to do
it. We owe that to the Lord. where
he has chosen you unto salvation through sanctification of the
spirit and belief in the truth. Whereunto he has called you by
our gospel to the obtaining of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In our text, Peter describes election in a particular way.
He said, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.
According to the foreknowledge of God the Father. This is one
of those passages that produce kind of a glee among false believers
and I'll factor in the genetic makeup of the mind of the free
willer. They read it, they say, aha, there you have it, election
is based on God's foreknowledge of our accepting him. That's
what they say. He chose us because he looked
down through history and saw that we would choose him. Such
blasphemous religious prattle turns the glory of God into shame
of a common thief, taking credit for something that man did. And
such blasphemy would make God's choice contingent upon man's
choice and would fly in the face of divine revelation and elect
according to the following foreknowledge of God does not mean that. This
passage teaches us that election is a matter of God's pure, free,
sovereign, eternal grace in Jesus Christ. In the Bible, God's foreknowledge
is not ever foreknowledge of things. That's omniscience, a whole different
thing. God's foreknowledge, every time
it's spoken in the Word of God, has to do Make no mistake here. Do not
confuse God's foreknowledge with His omniscience. Omniscience
is a divine attribute. It is what God knows and He knows
everything. Foreknowledge is a sovereign
act. It is what God does. Forelove would be another interpretation
of the word. In the Bible, God's foreknowledge
is declared in four ways. First, God's foreknowledge is
His act and decree of foreordination or predestination. The words
can be interchanged, though they are different words in the Greek.
There's no need to speculate here, since Scripture is the
interpreter of Scripture in the same context. The very same Greek
word here translated foreknowledge in verse 2 is translated foreordained
in verse 20 of this same chapter. God's foreknowledge of His elect
is His everlasting love of His elect. That's what Jeremiah said
in Jeremiah 31.3. Thou hast loved me with an everlasting
love. Therefore thou hast drawn me
unto you. Divine tautology is divine approval. Divine approval. Psalm 1.6 says,
For God knoweth the way of the righteous, but the way of the
ungodly shall perish. Ephesians 1.6, To the praise
of the glory of his grace In the Beloved, foreknowledge
fourthly, God's foreknowledge of us is
our absolute safety and security. If He foreknew you, He will always
know you because He's always known you. He said to some people in Matthew
chapter 7, who said they knew Him, they said, we know Haven't
we prophesied in your name? Haven't we been preachers? Haven't
we cast out devils? Stopped people from drinking,
smoking weed, and stuff like that? Adulterous living, we've
stopped people from doing that. Haven't we cast out devils in
thy name? Haven't we done great wonders in thy name? Built great
edifices, schools, hospitals. Haven't we done all that in thy
name? And he said, depart from me, ye that work iniquity in
my name. I never knew you. Now, if he
foreknew them, he could not say, I never knew you. Not if he foreknew
them. He didn't foreknow them. For
to know, for God to foreknow you is to be your Savior. Nevertheless, the foundation
of God's standard assurance is to have this seal. The Lord knoweth
them that are His. and let every one that lay with
the name of Christ depart from iniquity, be elect, love the
electing foreknowledge of God. Secondly, it says there, sanctify
through sanctification of the Spirit. Sanctification is commonly
and falsely thought to be something the believer does for himself. better and better. If you've
been a child of God for any length of time, you know that's not
the truth. You know you don't get better and better. You get
weaker and weaker and frailer and failer and dirtier and dirtier
and sicker and sicker and more of a murmur and a complainer
every day of your life. Our heart gets darker. A person is not incrementally,
he does not incrementally become more and more holy until at last
he's just too good for earth and must be swept away into glory
on the wings of personal merit. The only problem with that way
of thinking is that it just ain't so. I had a fellow out on the
back porch one time ask me, do you believe in progressive death
sanctification? I said, no. He says, well, I said, it don't
exist. It don't exist. He hasn't come back. He hasn't
come back. Concerning Salvation, it is a state of being, a state
of being. The root word for sanctify is
to set apart a person or a thing for God, for God, for a holy
purpose, for holy use. The vessels in the tabernacle
were sanctified and they were just pots and spoons. but because
they were set apart. They were sanctified. The priesthood,
the Levitical priesthood sanctified them. They weren't holy. Read
about them. But they were holy because God
had set them apart for His particular use. All God's elect are sanctified
by God the Father in the eternal covenant of grace and set apart
from all the rest of the world to be His peculiar treasure.
is purchased people. That's what it says in Jude 1.1.
In precisely the same sense, we were sanctified, that means
we were severed from the rest of mankind to be God's peculiar,
purchased, holy people by the sin-expiating blood death of
our Lord Jesus Christ. Titus 2.14 says, who gave himself
for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify
unto us a peculiar people, a purchased people, zealous unto good works. Hebrews 10 says, Then said I,
Lo, I come in the body with a book to do thy will, O God. He taketh
away the first and may establish the second, by the which will,
by the same will that brought Jesus Christ into this world,
by the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once for all. Verse 14 of chapter 10 of Hebrews
4, By one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified,
set apart. Here the Holy Spirit tells us
that we are chosen to salvation through sanctification of the
Spirit. This simply means if you are
one of God's elect ones one day, someday, during your life here
on this earth, God the Holy Spirit will come to you through the
preaching of the Gospel in His omnipotent power and irresistible
growth to sanctify you. To sanctify you. to set you apart
from the world, to set you apart unto himself, to set you apart
unto Christ. Likewise, it means if you're
a child of God, a believer, one who has experienced the blessed
operation of grace called the near birth, you've been set apart
from the world by the grace and power of God, the Holy Spirit,
for Jesus Christ. You're not your own. You're bought. With a promise, therefore, glorify
God in your body and your spirit, which is Christ sanctified. How
is it we are sanctified? Someone is made to be that to
us. Of God are you in Jesus Christ. Of God is made unto us wisdom, before God, you wretched bunch
of sinners, us wretched bunch of sinners, are holy, sanctified,
because Christ is our sanctification, just as He is our righteousness,
just as He is our redemption, just as He is our wisdom. Thirdly,
it says you're redeemed. Elect according to the four Peter was sent to a Gentile house
and was often called the Apostle of the Gentiles, but actually
Paul the Apostle was the Apostle of the Gentiles. Peter was a
Jew. And when you read Peter, he writes
a lot in the language that tends to emanate Jewish thinking, just
the way a Jewish person is raised to think. And this is one of
those examples. This refers to Christ as our
representative and the redemption he accomplished as our substitute
by the sprinkling of his blood. In that, Peter takes us back
to the Passover, where the blood was put on the doorpost and the
mantels, and Christ saved his people when he saw the blood.
This also takes us to the Day of Atonement, when the high priest
went in to represent the people of God, and he sprinkled blood
on the mercy seat and all around through the tabernacle. Both
of those things were pictures of the Lord's great work of redemption.
This is Peter's train of thought here. The obedience and the sprinkling
of the blood mentioned in our text refers to the obedience
of faith unto which we were brought to trust the Lord. who's obedient even to the death
of the cross, we're brought to trust in what? We're brought
to trust in the blood of Jesus Christ, in the finished work
of Jesus Christ. You read Hebrews chapter 9, verses
11 through 14, when God the Holy Spirit sanctifies His elect,
giving us faith in Christ. As soon as a sinner looks to
Christ, the blood of Christ sprinkled on his heart declares to him
that he's been redeemed, forgiven, justified, and made holy before
God. His conscience is purged. Why am I saved? I am saved because
Jesus Christ died for me. That's the only reason. My conscience
is clear because I have a perfect sacrifice that quietens my conscience
and shuts it up. It can't accuse me because of
the blood of Jesus Christ. There's no grounds upon which
it can't accuse me. Conscience works in the realm
of sin and the law. The Holy Spirit will not convict
your conscience. Your conscience will convict
you of your sin. Your conscience will tell you
to do something about your sin. And then when you've done something
about your sin and obeyed your conscience, your conscience will
say, that's not enough. You need to do more. Because it works under the realm
of the law. This is the testimony of the
child of God. I have been redeemed. I've been
bought. I've been paid for. because of
the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. His obedience to
God as the perfect sacrifice. Fourthly, it says we're blessed.
Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification
of the Spirit and through the obedience of the sprinkling of
the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace unto you and peace be multiplied. Only children of God who walk
this planet have true peace. A peace that passes knowledge.
What we know and what we see and the circumstances we have
does not give us peace. We can't find peace anywhere
in this universe. We can't find it in the stars.
We can't find it in the dust of the earth. We can't find it
in other people. We can only have peace if we know that we've
been reconciled to God by the blood of the cross. And that's
peace. That's peace that passes what
we know, passes what we understand. It's a peace that's only realized
and appreciated by God-given faith. Peter says, Grace unto
you and peace be multiplied. This is not Peter's hope or desire
for God's saints. He wrote this under divine inspiration.
This is an assured, perfect promise of every chosen, sanctified,
and redeemed sinner. It's an absolute promise of grace.
It's part of all spiritual blessings given to the believer. Elect
according to the foreknowledge of God, the Father, through sanctification
of spirit, to obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Christ. Grace
be unto you, and peace be multiplied. This is God's promise to you.
You heard the story of the old woman. He was visited by the
preacher and he wanted to read the scripture before he opened
up the scripture. And down on every page in several verses
you'd see two words, two letters, T.P. T.P. He didn't know what that meant.
He said, what's that T.P. there for? She said, those are
the promises of God. The T means tried and the P means
proved. Tried and proved. Now listen. All the promises of God are yea
and they are amen in Jesus Christ. You see a promise in this scripture,
it's yours, take it, receive it, believe it, it's yours, count
on it, trust it, it's a promise from God. Grace shall be given
to you and multiplied to you whenever, wherever, and for as
long as you need it, as long as you live in the body of this
flesh, saving grace, preserving grace, protecting grace, sufficient
grace, and in the end you will have dying grace. Peace shall
also be given you and multiplied to you because God the Father
chose you, God the Spirit sanctified you, and God the Son redeemed
you by His cross established peace for you. It gives me peace. It's hard
for me to believe that. I believe it because God has
given me faith to believe it. And when I can't believe it,
then I have been forgiven. Oh, what peace washes over my
soul. The peace of divine providence.
Knowing that all peace in life and peace in death,
peace at the judgment seat, and everlasting peace. You can take this home with you
today and go to sleep with it tonight on your pillow. Grace
and peace once given shall only multiply. It shall never diminish. It shall never end. For you are
chosen is to understand frame processing.
All right.