Good evening. Let's open this
evening by standing together and singing hymn 176 in the hardback
hymnal. 176. I'm sorry, this is wrong. Let's
do it this way. Wow. There we go. That's what I'm talking about. That's what
I'm talking about. Let's do it this way. Wow. There we go. That's what
I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about.
That's what I'm talking about. Let's do it this way. Wow. There we go. That's what I'm talking about. That's
what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking
about. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. That's
what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking
about. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking
about. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about Lord, to Thee As now didst break
the vault beside the sea Through clouds and rain I see Thee My spirit waits for
Thee As Thou didst bless the bread
by Galilee, Then shall all bondage cease, all fetters fall, And I shall find my peace, my
hope in all. Thou art the bread of life, whole
to me. Thy holy word, the truth, thou canst say with me. Give me to Thee and live with
Thee above Teach me to love Thy truth for Thou art love O send
my spirit forth now unto Thee that He may touch my eyes and
faithfully see. Show me a truth concealed within
Thy Word, and in Thy Word reveal, I see, the Lord. Thank you, Adam. That is always
our hope, isn't it, that the Lord will send his spirit and
reveal to our hearts the Christ that's revealed in his word.
Let's open God's word together to the Song of Solomon, chapter
four, Song of Solomon, chapter four. and we'll begin with the last
verse of chapter 4, 16. Here's our prayer. Awake, O north wind, and come. Thou south, blow upon my garden,
that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into
his garden and eat his pleasant fruits. I am come into my garden,
my sister, my spouse, I have gathered my myrrh with my spice.
I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey. I have drunk my wine
with my milk. Eat, oh friends, drink, yea,
drink abundantly, oh beloved. I sleep, but my heart waketh. It is the voice of my beloved
that knocketh, saying, open to me, my sister, my love, my dove,
my undefiled. where my head is filled with
dew and my locks with the drop of the night. What a beautiful picture of our
Lord meeting with his people, his wife, his bride, his sister,
his beloved in his garden where the spices of his grace are enjoyed. I want us to pray together. Robert is going into rehab tomorrow,
an in-house rehab. He's been in the hospital since
last Monday, and he's still very, very weak. So he'll be transferred
to rehab in Deltona, right, Deltona? And also, Laura Grace's fiance,
Ryan, his father, Steve, has been diagnosed with pancreatic
cancer and he's been in the hospital. He was home today and just heard
that they took him back to the hospital today. So he's in a
very difficult place physically and spiritually. So his name
is Steve, if you think to pray for him. He's part of our family
now. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly
Father, what great hope we have in these precious words of life
that you've given us, knowing that this is your garden. This is where you plant the seeds
of truth in the hearts of your people that you have prepared
This is where the fruit of righteousness is grown and eaten and enjoyed. Lord, the spices of your grace. Lord, we come dull to these things. Lord, we ask that you would send
your north wind and your south wind, that you would that you
would prepare our hearts for a word from the Lord that you
would give us ears to hear, that we would be able to see the glory
of Christ and rest the hope of our immortal souls and the hope
of our salvation in his glorious person and in his accomplished
work of redemption. We pray for Robert and thank
you for him and Deanna and ask Lord for your hand of strength
to continue to be on him and. Lord, we pray for Steve and. For Ryan and for the family and
ask Lord that. That you would be merciful and
Lord that you would be pleased to. To show them their need for
the. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. Let's stand again and we'll sing
268 from the hardback. 268. Our firm foundation, ye saints
of the Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent Word.
What more can ye say than to Him, Jesus has fled, fear not I am
with thee. not dismayed. For I am thy God,
I will still give thee aid. I'll strengthen thee, help thee,
and cause thee to stand. Upheld by my gracious Son in God's in hand. When through the deep... The rivers of hope shall not
thee overflow For I will be willing thy troubles to less And sanctify
to thee my deepest distress When through fiery trials my
pathway shall lie Grace, all-sufficient, shall
be thy supply. The frame shall not hurt thee,
I wholly decide. Thy draughts to consume, and
thy gold to refine. I will not, I will not deserve
to invoke That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake All right, let's open our Bibles
together to 1 Peter, 1 Peter chapter 2. These words have been
so encouraging to me. to think about and prepare to
preach on. And I'm very hopeful that they
will be also to you. They're comforting words of hope
and encouragement for believers who struggle with sin and with
this world and their flesh and all the troubles that we have. I've titled the message wherefore.
Wherefore you see that in verse one. And of course the Lord is
referring back. To what he has told us about
our life in Christ. Our life in Christ, which he
calls being born again in verse 23. Is. is a work of grace done in the
heart by the Spirit of God, being, continually being, born again,
not of corruptible seed, not of the will of man, nor of the
will of the flesh, not of him that willeth, nor of him that
runneth. We're not born into the family of God by anything
that we do. We're not, this new birth is
not, have any part of the flesh involved
in it. It's a miraculous work of grace
that God does for us and to us and in us. And so when the Lord gives us these
encouragements in the first four verses of chapter two, he's referring
back to who we are in Christ. by God's grace, by his spirit,
by his purpose and will were birthed into the family of God. And the next verse in chapter
one reinforces that when the Lord reminds us that all flesh
is this grass. Our new birth didn't come by
the will of the flesh. It didn't come by the works of
the flesh. It didn't come, the flesh is,
is flesh and it profiteth nothing. It is the spirit that giveth
life. And so these words in chapter four, in chapter two, wherefore,
take us back to this glorious truth of what God has done by
his grace, through his word, by his spirit in birthing us
into the family of God in spite of the fact that we have nothing
but flesh, through the preaching of the gospel. The word of the
Lord endureth forever and this is the word which by the gospel
is preached unto you. And so we're reminded that the
word of God, as we saw Sunday, the Lord Jesus Christ being that
meat that cannot be eaten raw, it must be It must be consumed
in light of the fire that fell on him at Calvary's cross. And any attempt that we make
to understand anything in the Bible or to apply any truths
of the Bible apart from the cross, apart from justice being satisfied
by the fiery wrath of God's justice is to eat that meat raw. And the Lord forbids
it. It's of no profit to us. It's
of no value. And yet, isn't that what man-made
religion is really all about? Scott and I were talking about
this before the service, about, you know, how much time we spent
trying to understand different parts of God's word, devoid of
the cross. And so wherefore? Wherefore,
laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envies
and all evil speakings, now, we could look at verse one, chapter
two, two different ways. We could consider these sinful
impulses and behaviors as needing to be rebuked. We could look
at verse one as an admonishment or as a warning. Put these things
aside. But I don't think that's the
context here. These words to the believer are
words of encouragement. There's nothing that a believer
wants to lay aside more than malice and guile and hypocrisies
and envies and evil speakings. These are the things that the
believer sees in their heart and in their lives and they hate
them. And the Lord's saying, in light of who you are, go and
lay those things aside. You know, a simple illustration
I thought of would be a man coming home from work. He's worked hard
all day. He's dirty. He's sweaty. And there's no need for his wife
to meet him at the door and say, you're not coming to the dinner
table like that until you clean yourself up. There's nothing
he wants to do more than to get those dirty clothes off and to
get showered and to get cleaned up. And so his wife would meet
him and say, honey, you've worked hard and I'm so thankful that
you've done that. And go ahead and put those things
aside and get cleaned up and dinner will be ready when you're
finished. There's nothing he wants to do.
He doesn't need to be rebuked to take off those dirty clothes.
Nothing he wants to do more than to take them off. And that's
how I understand verse 1 of chapter 2. Wherefore, in light of this
new birth, in light of who you are in Christ, you don't need
to be rebuked about your malice and about your envying and about
your hypocrisies. You know those things are there.
They're filthy, dirty clothes that you can't wait to take off
and get rid of. So go ahead and take it away.
It's almost as if the Lord's given us permission to lay those
dirty clothes aside in light of what we are. Reminds me of
blind Bartimaeus when the Lord was passing by his way and Bartimaeus,
you remember, was crying Jesus, our son of David, have mercy
upon me. And he continued to cry and the
people around him rebuked him, told him to quit. But then he
got word, be of good cheer, Bartimaeus, the Lord calleth thee. And let's
turn to that passage because I want you to see this. I want
you to see this one thing, Mark chapter 10. Mark chapter 10. This is how
I understand verse one, laying aside. This word laying aside
means to take off that dirty garment. Just let it go, throw
it down. You've been working hard. Sweating
and toiling, trying to earn your salvation. You've been trying
to establish your own righteousness and it's nothing more than a
holy, filthy, dirty overcoat. Throw it aside. Look at verse,
Mark chapter 10. And verse 49, and Jesus stood
still. That's what we need for the Lord
to do, isn't it? Just to stand still. And commanded him to be
called. And they called the blind man,
saying to him, be of good comfort, arise, he calleth thee. And he, that is Bartimaeus, casting
away his garment, rose. and came to Jesus." Oh, he was happy to throw that
thing away. He didn't have to be told, you
can't come to the Lord like that. He just cast it off. He dropped it right there on
the curb. And Jesus answered and said unto him, what wilt
thou that I should do unto thee? And the blind man said unto him,
O Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said unto
him, go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately
he received his sight and followed Jesus in the way. Following the
Lord Jesus Christ was his way. Now, The Lord said, go thy way,
go thy way. And he followed Jesus in the
way. But he just, you know, as soon as he heard that the master
called him, he couldn't think of anything that he wanted to
do any more than to cast off that filthy garment. Thought about Levi, also called
Matthew, sitting at the table of the money changers, the customs,
the tax collectors, what he was. And the Lord looked at him and
said, follow me, and immediately got up. He didn't have to be
rebuked. Don't you know that Matthew's
conscience had been bothering him for quite some time. Tax
collectors were notorious for being cheats and taking more
than they, and they were taking advantage of their own countrymen
for the benefit of the Romans. And Matthew now is being said,
follow me. And he didn't have to be told,
you got to quit all that. No, he just got up and followed
the Lord. Wherefore, laying aside all malice
and hypocrisies and envies and evil speakings. Oh, there's nothing
that the believer wants to lay aside any more than those things,
but he has to be reminded of who he is in Christ. Peter. James and John, the Lord
saw them there cleaning their nets with their father on the
shoreline of the Sea of Galilee. And he said, follow me, I'm going
to make you fishers of men. And they left their nets. They
left them. They didn't have to be rebuked or told you need to
quit trusting those nets. And no, no. They were brought. And notice the verb tense in
verse one. Wherefore, he didn't say lay
aside. He said laying aside. Laying
aside. This is a constant, a constant
thing, isn't it? The Lord has to continually bring
us to himself. And as he does, as he reveals
himself to us and reminds us again and again and again, lay
those things aside. Laying aside. Active tense. Isaiah chapter 64, verse five
says, we have sinned And in those is continuance and we shall be
saved. Child of God, we are constantly
needing to lay these things aside, aren't we? We are constantly
being reminded of how malice and guile and hypocrisies and
envies and evil speakings are part of that old man David put
it like this, he said, my sin is ever before me. It's ever
before me. Paul talked about that body of
death that he carried about with him, never left him. It seems like as believers, as
soon as we are able to rejoice in Christ, that The old man rears
his ugly head and robs from us that joy and brings back all
of these filthy garments. And so the Lord says, wherefore,
wherefore child of God, laying aside, laying aside. You're going to be continuing
to lay these things aside. No sooner are we made humble
and thankful The old man raises his ugly head and shows us our
pride and hypocrisies and our ingratitude and discontent. We've got both these natures
going on at the same time. No sooner do we feel the relief
of sin being forgiven that we feel the desire and lust of sin. It's just a constant thing, isn't
it? In these we have sinned and in
these is continuance and we shall be saved. We shall be saved. Wherefore, wherefore, in light
of the fact that you've been birthed by the Spirit of God,
in light of the fact that you've been given ears to hear the gospel,
in light of the fact that you've been born of incorruptible seed,
Wherefore, wherefore, lain, lain, lain aside. Seems like as soon as we're able
to get a little bit of an experience of the peace of God that passes
understanding, we become disquieted and anxious and fearful. Isn't that? We're just a constant conflict,
aren't we? Wherefore, laying aside. We go out, we're like that man
I was talking about. He's been working hard. We work
hard and we get sweaty and dirty. And every time we come in, every
time we come before the Lord, we're in need of having our feet
washed. Laying these things aside, we're
in a spiritual battle and warfare that's never going to go away.
I read an article by, I forgot who it was now, but just
read it today, and I sent it to Tricia. I want to put it in
our bulletin. Joe Terrell wrote it, and he was defining the old
man as a neighbor. Who would want to have a neighbor
like that, a contentious, hypocritical, prideful neighbor? And then he said in this article,
he said, you know, That's not really it. We live in a duplex.
And this guy lives in the unit right next to us. And the walls
are thin. And as soon as our new man begins
to have some comfort and peace, he cranks up the volume of the
music on the other side. And as soon as we get the grass
cut and it looks good, he goes out there and throws trash on
it. And we're going to live in this duplex until that old man,
that neighbor next to us, until he's dead. And then, only then,
will we know the fullness of our salvation. But here in this
world, we're going to be, We're kind of stuck in this duplex
with that neighbor that's hard to live with. Laying aside, Bartimaeus, be of comfort. He calleth thee. And he dropped
that old, filthy robe right there. Oh, how oftentimes we pick it
back up, don't we? Child of God, keep laying it
aside. Notice verse two, wherefore, that's the message,
wherefore, in light of those last three verses of chapter
one, wherefore, as newborn babes, you know, babies, learn very
soon, you all know this, especially those of you that have little
ones, it doesn't take them long to learn that they can get their
way if they cry. You know, we come from the womb
speaking lies and children figure that out pretty quick. But this
says a newborn babe, a newborn babe hadn't learned that yet.
You go into the hospital where a mother has given birth to a
baby, The most callous man can have nothing but compassion for
that infant that's lying there on the mother's breast. And all
the infant wants to do is two things, suckle the mother's breast
and sleep. That's all it wants to do. It
hasn't learned to be manipulative yet. And that's what the Lord,
as newborn babes, this is a brand new baby, a quiet, delicate,
weak, dependent baby who just wants to drink of the milk, the
life-sustaining milk of its mother's breast. And as soon as it gets
full, what's it do? It goes to sleep. It rests. And then it wakes up, wants to
eat again. And then as soon as he gets full,
it rests. Yeah, that's what the Lord's
likening our spiritual life to as newborn babes. Turn with me to Isaiah chapter
66, verse nine, Isaiah 66. Verse 9, shall I bring to the
birth and not cause to bring forth? Shall I conceive and not give
full birth, saith the Lord? I shall cause to bring forth
and shut. Notice the womb is in italics. He's saying, I'm the one that
has purposed your new birth when I chose you in the covenant of
grace. And shall I have purposed that
and not bring it forth? No, I'm going to bring forth
you as a newborn babe. I'm gonna bring forth that life. Rejoice ye with Jerusalem and
be glad with her, all ye that love her. You can't love Christ
without loving his church, his body, his gospel, his word. Rejoice for joy with her, all
ye that mourn for her, that ye may suck and be satisfied with
the breast of her consolations, that ye may milk out and be delighted
with the abundance of her glory. What is the abundance of her
glory? That word abundance is most often translated brightness. Rejoice in the brightness of
her glory. What is the brightness of our
glory? The Lord Jesus Christ. He's the light of the world.
He's the light that's come into this world. Men love darkness
rather than light because their deeds are evil. It won't come
to the light. But hear the Lord saying, rejoice
in the brightness of her glory. Milk out. Oh, drink until you're
full. As newborn babes, this word desire
is the word crave after. What a work of grace the Lord
has put into our hearts. To cause us. To crave after Christ
and to crave after his word. To want the consolation, the
comfort. That God gives to his newborn
babes. Born of the spirit. I love the description that John,
the Apostle John, gives of himself in John chapter 21. He says that
he was the disciple whom Jesus loved and we find him at the
Last Supper leaning on Jesus' breast. What an affectionate
picture of love that John had for Christ and Christ for John
and here Here's to every believer, wherefore,
wherefore, in light of what I've done for you, go ahead and lay
those things aside again and again and again. And as soon
as you think you've got them all taken off, you're gonna get
dirty again. And just keep laying them aside. And as newborn babes, desire,
Desire, thirst after, thirsting after righteousness. Hungering
and thirsting after Christ. Desiring to grow in grace and
in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Desiring to rest
more surely in him. If that's gonna happen, it'll
happen by his word. The word is the effectual cause
that the Lord uses to make this happen in the hearts of his children. To walk more closely to him,
to see more of his glory. This is the desire that he puts
into our hearts and it's set in It's set in contrast to the
hypocrisies and the evil speakings and the vanity and the envies
and the guile and malice that is in that old man. To love him and to know him.
And more importantly, to know more of his love for us. To trust him more confidently,
to believe in him more fully. Desire the sincere milk of the
word that you may grow thereby. Reminded of what those Greeks
said, we have it on the wall back there, sir, we would see
Jesus. Would you just take us to him
and introduce us to him We just want to know him. If we're to know him, it'll be
by the revelation that he's given us of himself in his word. Amen. Look at verse three. If so be that you have tasted that the Lord
is gracious. And these prepositions in the
English that we translate sometimes, this verse could also be understood
that since you have tasted, not if so be, but it's not a rebuke. It's more, since you've tasted
that the Lord is gracious, keep coming back for more. of that kindness and that gentleness. A mother, a nursing mother of
a newborn babe is only gonna treat her child with the tenderness
of love and kindness and gentleness. And so the Lord say, that's what
he's liking in this whole thing too. Here's how he's gonna treat
us. And as oftentimes as the word grace is used in the Bible,
and usually when we think of grace, we're thinking of unmerited
or demerited favor. We think of a gift. We know that
we're saved by grace through faith and that not of ourselves,
it is a gift of God. Apart from God's sovereign grace,
there is no grace. And apart from that, there's
no salvation. And that word is the word charis
in the Greek language. That's not the word used here.
This word's only used a few times in the Bible. This is not the
word for grace. As important as grace is in our
salvation, Let me show you a couple of places where this word is
translated differently, and we'll get a better understanding of
what the Lord's saying. You remember in Matthew chapter
11, when the Lord said, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
come unto me and take my yoke upon you. For my yoke is easy,
easy. That's the word that's translated
in our text, gracious. I'm not hard. I'm not I don't
beat my sheep, I don't I don't threaten my children. I treat
them with with tender kindness and and compassion and love like
a like a mother would to a newborn baby. So you've tasted that the
Lord is easy on you. He's not hard. He's not a harsh
master. He's a loving heavenly father
and he's a loving savior and a loving Lord who is compassionate
toward the envying and strife and guile that we struggle with
in our old man. He was tried in all ways that
we are and yet he was without sin, but he knew He knew guile
and hypocrisy and envy and strife when he bore our sins in his
body upon Calvary's cross. He knew them in a way that we
can't know them. And when he says laying them
aside, it's because he put them away. He's already put them away. And he is as painful and shameful
as they are to us. We've never felt the pain or
shame of that sin like he felt when he bore them on Calvary's
cross and suffered the full wrath of God's justice to put them
away by the sacrifice of himself. And so he's saying here, since
you've tasted that the Lord is easy, My yoke is easy, my burden
is light. Why? Because the weight of it
has already been borne. When we come and get in the yoke
with the Lord Jesus Christ, it's not a hard yoke. It's not a burdensome
yoke. It's an easy yoke. It's a gracious
yoke. Another place where this word
is used is when the Lord speaks of the gospel as the old wine. And he says, no man having drank
old wine, desireth the new for the old wine is better, is better. And that word better is the same
word translated gracious here and so it's translated easy and
it's translated better. And when we look through the
book of Hebrews we find that word better is the theme of the
whole book of Hebrews. We have a better covenant and
a a better sacrifice and a better assurance. And all these things
are more sure and better because of Christ. And seeing as a newborn
baby, you've tasted these things. Continue to crave after more
because it's better. And it's easy. In Luke chapter 35, when the
Lord said, love your enemies, do good unto them, do good and
lend, hoping for nothing again, for your reward shall be great,
and you shall be children of the highest, for he is kind."
Now remember, we're looking at this word gracious in verse three. It is not the word grace. It's
translated easy, it's translated better, and it's translated kind. And in that passage where the
Lord tells us to do good and to lend, that we might be like
our heavenly father, he goes on to say, for he is kind to
the unthankful. Aren't you glad that our God
is kind to the unthankful? How unthankful we can be. How
presumptuous we can be, how ungrateful we can be. How, you know, if
the Lord never did another thing for us, how much we have to be
grateful for, and yet we can get out of sorts real easy, can't
we? Dissatisfied with things real
quick, but he is kind to the unthankful. In Romans chapter
two, verse four, this word gracious is translated goodness. when
the Lord says, it is the goodness of God that leadeth to repentance. It is the goodness of God that
leads to repentance. So if you've tasted of this heavenly
gift, you've tasted of the kindness and the easiness and the betterment
and the goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Ephesians chapter
four, verse 32, When the Lord says, be ye kind one to another,
forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath
forgiven you. The word kind there is the word
translated here, gracious. And so if we've tasted that the
Lord is easy on us, he's better, than anything else. He's kind
and good. We'll keep coming back for more
of that, won't we? And that's what we do. That's
why we keep coming back, because it's not been anything but good. All right, look at this next
verse. I love the way the Lord has reminded us again here in this
verse of the same thing he said in verse 2 when he said laying,
I-N-G, and now he says to whom coming. How often do I do this? We keep doing it. But to whom
coming? This is not a one-time event.
Let the men of religion talk about their salvation in a past
tense experience that they had and hang the hopes of their salvation
on some emotional experience that they have. We can't find
any comfort in that. That's yesterday's manna. We've
got to come back again today for more manna. To whom coming? Wherefore? Wherefore, in light
of what I've done for you, to whom coming as unto a living
stone. Why is it that we keep coming?
Well, because our sin is continual. Our thirst is continual. Our
need is continual. Our desire is continual. David put it like this in the
Psalms. He said, turn us again, oh God, and cause thy face to
shine upon us and we shall be saved. or turn us again, and
again, and again, and again. Aren't you glad? This is our
experience, isn't it? This is our struggle. And the
Lord's speaking words of encouragement. Lay those things aside. This
is who you are. As newborn babes, desire the
sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby. To whom
coming? Keep coming. Keep coming. As for me, David said in Psalm
17, as for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness and
I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness. Child of God,
we're not satisfied. We're satisfied with Christ.
as the only hope of our salvation. But we're not satisfied with
ourselves. And we're not satisfied with how much of him we know
and we have. And David said, I'm not gonna
be satisfied in this life. This neighbor in the duplex is
gonna be there until I leave this world. But when I see him
in his likeness, then I'll be satisfied when I'm made like
him. Full satisfaction for my salvation. Like the honeybee, we're constantly
going back and forth from the flower to the beehive, aren't
we? Taking that pollen and making honey. And there's two things
that will stop a bee from going, from making that continual, perpetual
journey from the flower in God's garden to the honey of his word
and feeding on that. One is pesticides and the other
is cold weather. When winter comes, the bees hunker
down in the hive and how cold our hearts can get and how toxic
we can become with sin. And yet we have the spirit of
God to warm our hearts and to remind us what Christ has done
in putting away our sin. and cause us to keep making that
journey back and forth between the flower and the honey. I wanna close with this one observation. To whom coming as unto a living
stone, a living stone. It struck me in preparation for
this message how odd that language is. If the Holy Spirit had not
called the Lord Jesus Christ a living stone, it would be a complete contradiction.
When you think about the world, what is more inanimate? What lacks life more than a stone? You know, I was thinking about,
we've got granite, chips of granite in our driveway that we drive
on every day. And I almost picked one up and
stuck it in my pocket to bring it tonight. Because we're, you
know, we're enamored with old things and with antiques and,
you know, we place value on things that have, you know, that have
some age to them. I can go right out there in my
driveway and pick up one of those pieces of rock. And I suspect
that that thing probably dates back to the time when the earth
was void and without form. And, you know, it's just the
rocks are that old, aren't they? And there's nothing living about
a rock. It's a contradiction to things
in nature to call a rock alive. And yet, isn't that the way the
gospel is? The gospel is a contradiction to the natural man. It's just as contradictory to
him as telling him that a rock is alive. You tell the natural man that
he has no ability to choose God. His will is not free to decide
when he will be saved. And that's a contradiction to
him. He immediately concludes, I make choices every day. Thousands
of choices. I've got a free will. So the Lord has identified himself
as a living stone. showing us what a mystery this
gospel is and how contradictory it is to the thinking of the
natural man. You tell a natural man that God
doesn't love everybody. Oh, no, no, no, no, can't be. I know God, it cannot be. That's a contradiction to the
natural man. that God loves righteousness
and hates iniquity, that Jacob I loved and Esau I hated, and
that he prays only for the world and not, or he prays for them
whose father has given him out of the world and not for the
world. His love is very particular. They can't comprehend that. That's
a living stone. That doesn't make sense. Or that
Christ didn't die for everybody. Oh no, God wants everybody to
be saved. Christ, You see, the gospel is a contradiction. And
this living stone would be a contradiction to us apart from the Spirit of
God teaching us that this stone does represent something. Well, it's the rock of ages.
It's the stone that goes all the way back before time. And the stone on which the whole
church of the Lord Jesus Christ is built, upon this rock I will
build my church. Thou art the Christ, the son
of the living God, always has been. He's that cornerstone.
He's the rock that the builders rejected, that God has made to
be the head of the corner. And in him is life. There's no life outside of him. that men are walking corpses,
spiritually dead, unable to know God and unable to enjoy God apart
from the life that comes from the Lord Jesus Christ. He must
give us life. So, child of God, wherefore,
wherefore? in light of the fact that you
were born not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, in
light of the fact that your flesh is grass, and as the flower of
the grass fadeth, so are we fading. But the word of God endureth
forever, and this is the word which by the gospel is preached
unto you. Wherefore, wherefore, that malice and guile and hypocrisy
and envy that is so quick to raise its ugly head, that neighbor
you've got in that duplex in which you live, lay him aside. He's been laid aside. He was
laid aside at Calvary's Cross. Keep laying him aside. He's going
to keep being there. He's going to keep bothering
you. But I've conquered him. And crave
after like that newborn babe. the sincere milk of the word
that you may grow thereby and keep coming, keep coming unto
that living stone, the Lord Jesus Christ, who himself is sure,
steadfast. He's the rock on which we build
everything. And he is our life. He's our life. Our Heavenly Father, thank you
for your word. Lord, forgive us for our unbelief and remind
us often by your spirit of these precious, encouraging words of
life. Oh, we ask it in Christ's name.
Amen. Adam 326, let's stand together
326.