Good evening. Let's open tonight's
service with hymn number 223 from your hardback hymnal, 223.
And let's all stand together. Arise, my soul, arise, shake
off thy guilty fears. The bleeding sacrifice in my
behalf appears. ? Before the throne my surety
stands ? My name is written on his hands ? My name is written
on his hands ? He ever lives above ? For me to intercede ?
His all-redeeming love ? His precious blood to plead ? His
blood atoned for all my sin ? And sprinkles now the throne of grace
? And sprinkles now the throne of grace Five bleeding wounds
he bears, Received on Calvary. They poor effectual prayers,
They strongly plead for me. Forgive him, O forgive, they
cry, Nor let that ransom sinner die, Nor let that ransom sinner
die. The Father hears him pray, his
dear anointed one. He cannot turn away the presence
of his Son. His spirit answers to the blood
And tells me I am born of God And tells me I am born of God
My God is reconciled His pardoning voice I hear ? He owns me for
his child ? I can no longer fear ? With confidence I now draw
nigh ? And Father, Abba, Father, cry ? And Father, Abba, Father,
cry Please be seated. evening. Let's open our Bibles
to Hebrews chapter 9. I want to do something a little
different tonight. Normally in our call to worship
I like to keep our scripture reading down to just a few verses,
but tonight we're going to be looking at 1st Peter chapter
1 where the Lord speaks to us about our inheritance in Christ. And so I want you to think with
me about going to your attorney's office
and sitting down with the executor of a will and going
over those things that you'll be receiving in your inheritance. And in that light, the passage
from Hebrews 9 is going to be a little longer than what we
normally would read in our call to worship. But let's begin in
verse 12. Neither by the blood of bulls
and goats, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy
place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the
blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of heifers sprinkled
the unclean sanctified to the purifying of the flesh, that
was the Old Testament sacrificial system. How much more shall the
blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself
without spot to God, purged your conscience from dead works. Remove any hope of your works
saving you to serve the living God. And for this cause, he is
the mediator of the New Testament that by means of death for the
redemption of the transgressions that were unto the First Testament,
which they are called, or they which are called, might receive
the promise of eternal inheritance. For where a testament is, that's
a will. That's the idea here. This is
where there's a will, where there's written promises as to what's
to be received. Where a testament is, there must
also be of necessity the death of the testator. The benefits of this will cannot
be received until the testator dies. For a testament is a force after
men are dead. Otherwise, it is of no strength
at all while the testator liveth Whereupon neither the first testament
was dedicated without blood. Now he's looking back. He keeps
comparing the better testament, the new testament, to the old.
The better sacrifice to the old. For when Moses had spoken every
precept to all the people according to the law, He took the blood
of calves and goats and water and scarlet and wool and hyssop
and sprinkled both the book and all the people saying, this is
the blood of the Testament which God hath enjoined unto you. Moreover,
he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels
of the ministry and almost all things are by the law purged
with blood. And without shedding of blood,
there is no remission. It was therefore necessary that
the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with
these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices
than these. For Christ is not entered into
the holy place made with hands, which are the figures of the
true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence
of God for us. Nor yet that he should offer
himself often as the high priest entered into the holy place every
year with the blood of others. For then must he often have suffered
since the foundation of the world. But now, once in the end of the
world, hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of
himself. So he's the testator. He's the
one who died in order to make all the benefits of the Testament
available to his descendants. In verse 27, and as it is appointed unto men once to
die, but after this, the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the
sins of many. and unto them that look for him
shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we read your word and we We ask, Lord, that you would
attend the reading of your word with the power of your Holy Spirit.
Lord, only as you give us eyes to see will we be able to see
the truth of who Christ is and what he has accomplished for
us. Lord, what a glorious inheritance
you have provided through the sacrifice of our and your testator,
one who shed his blood in order to seal the covenant and provide
for us all the blessings of salvation. Lord, give us grace tonight and
increase our faith and enable us, Lord, to set our thoughts
on Christ and on your word. And Lord, forgive us for all
the all the vain thoughts that go through our mind, and Lord,
all the vain things that we pursue and the things that we get distracted
by in this world, and enable us, Lord, in this hour to set
our affections on things above. Oh, we ask it in Christ's name,
amen. Number two from your spiral hymn
book, Let's Stand Together. Lord, we come before thee now. At thy feet we humbly bow. O do not our suit disdain. Shall we seek thee, Lord, in
vain? Lord, on Thee our souls depend,
In compassion now descend. Fill our hearts with Thy rich
grace, Tune our lips to sing Thy praise. In thine own appointed way, Now
we seek thee, here we stay. Lord, we know not how to go Till
a blessing thou bestow. Send a message from thy word
that may joy and peace afford. Let thy spirit now impart Christ's
salvation to each heart. Please be seated. Send a blessing. We sang that, I was reminded
again of what the Lord said to Abraham in Genesis chapter 15.
I am thy shield, and I am thine exceeding great reward. All the blessings of God come
with the blesser. They come in the person of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And how oftentimes we are tempted
to want the hand of God. The Lord said, seek ye my face. Seek ye my face. I hope that
he'll enable us to do just that. We're sort of like the apostle
Paul when he, prayed for the hand of God to take away the
thorn in his flesh. And the Lord said, no, my grace
is sufficient for thee. I'll cause my face to shine upon
thee. All will be well. As we think about the inheritance that the Lord
Jesus has bought for us through the shedding of his own blood.
We know that all the promises and all the blessings of God
are yea, yes, and amen, sure in Christ. So all of those precious
promises that the Lord has made have been sealed and made sure
through the sacrifice that Christ made. And so we have our inheritance
in heavenly places. And all those things are ours.
And yet the Lord has made it clear here in this text in first
Peter chapter one, that just as the Lord had to die in order
for the Testament to be fulfilled. So you and I are going to have
to pass from this life in order to enjoy the full benefits of
our salvation. And the child of God lives his
life here with an eye toward that, toward that hope. And that's what Peter's reminding
us of. When he says in first Peter,
We looked at this last Wednesday night that we are the elect according
to the foreknowledge of God. God has, according to his own
will and sovereign purpose, elected a particular people in the covenant
of grace in eternity past because he loved them. He loved them
with an everlasting love. through the sanctification of
the Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit that entered
into that covenant promise and agreed with the Father to set
those apart. That's what the word sanctification
means. I will set apart those whom you have elected and and
I will redeem them and I will keep them. They're going to be
special. They're going to be, I'm going
to make a difference just as the Lord made a difference between
the Egyptians and the Israelites, the Lord, the Holy Spirit makes
a difference between those whom the Father has elected and given
to him to sanctify and those whom he has left to themselves. Unto obedience and sprinkling
of the blood of Jesus Christ. We know this is the obedience
of Christ. and the spurting out and the
spilling out. That's what the word, the word
sprinkle seems so controlled and so, the word really is to spew or
to spurt. The crime scene of the crucifixion
was a bloody scene, as was the Old Testament sacrifices. There
was blood everywhere. We just read that in Hebrews
chapter 9. They put blood on the altar, blood on the priest,
and blood on everything. Everything was sanctified and
set apart with blood. So I don't want to think about
that. You know, you think back with
me to Adam in the garden who tried to cover himself with fig
leaves. And Adam had never seen death
before, he'd never seen blood before. What a horrible thing
it must have been for him to watch the Lord slay that lamb,
that innocent lamb in the garden, in order to make him a coat of
skin. But it wasn't until the seeding of that blood, without
the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sins. And it
wasn't until he saw the horrors of that blood that he could have
some understanding of the difference between the coats of skin and
the fig leaves. And so it is for us. We see,
we have some understanding of how insufficient And that's words
not sufficient to even begin to explain how insufficient our
works are to cover our nakedness before God. The Lord had to slay
a lamb and the scripture speaks of the Lord Jesus in Isaiah chapter
53 as a lamb that went to a slaughter. and shed his blood this is what
that God is God is giving us some understanding of how it
is that he views our sin and what we would do by nature in
trying to cover our nakedness with fig leaves is that is is
is what our understanding is of sin is no big deal no big
deal so this This bloody sacrifice
that the scripture keeps talking about. Why is the Lord, you know,
blood is offensive. People pass out when they see
blood. Who likes to see blood? And yes, the offense of the cross
is God dealing with our sin. And how offensive our sin is
to God and what God required in the sacrifice of his son,
the bloody sacrifice of his son to put away our sin. And yet
it did. He did. Set us apart, sanctified,
put them away, covered them. When I see the blood, I'll pass
by you. Oh, the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ was sufficient to cover all the sins of all of God's
people. satisfy God's holy justice, the obedience. And the reason
why the sprinkling of his blood was sufficient to cover our sins
is because of his obedience. God required a perfect sacrifice.
He required a lamb that was without spot and without blemish. And
so our Lord's obedience to his father, which you and I have
never been able to do, made him The perfect sacrifice that satisfied
God's righteousness and God's justice. Notice how the verse two ends. Grace unto you and peace be multiplied. Grace. Oh, we didn't do anything
to earn the inheritance. The Lord Jesus Christ paid the
full price for it. We're just recipients, inheritors,
benefactors, beneficiaries, I should say.
He's the benefactor. So it's all of grace. All of our salvation is of grace.
Not of works, lest any man should boast. It's all God's doing. That's why men won't have it,
because they won't give to Him all the glory. They want to have
some credit and some glory to themselves. But grace and peace! I love the order of that, and
Paul always puts them in that order. When he writes, he speaks
of grace before peace. We can't have peace with God
without grace, and we can't know anything about the peace of God
without grace. I love that passage over there
in Philippians chapter 4, I think it is, where he speaks of the
peace of God which passeth understanding. And I used to think that that
meant that God's peace could not be fully comprehended, and
certainly there is some truth to that because everything that
God does is incomprehensible. But that's not really what the
Lord is saying there. The peace that passes understanding,
that word passes means is better than. So what the Lord is telling,
you see, you and I are always trying to control our circumstances
and we're always trying to understand everything so that we can manage
them. And is it not our need to be in control
that that limits our faith. We sacrifice the peace of God
in order to try to get understanding for our circumstances. And the
Lord's telling us the peace of God surpasses understanding. It's better than understanding.
You're not going to understand everything God's doing, but here's
our hope. We have peace with God, and having
peace with God, through the Lord Jesus Christ, we have the peace
of God. Peace of God. It says that even
when we don't understand what's going on, all is well. God is
on His throne. He's sovereign, He's in control,
He does what's right. It's good. It's good. That's
peace. No, Paul says that the election
of the Father and the sanctification of the Spirit and the redemption
of the Son gives grace and peace. And these things are, notice
the last part of verse three, these things are multiplied.
I was thinking about the difference between multiplication and addition. You know, addition is, is much
slower in accumulating wealth than multiplication. We were
talking about that the other day. If you... And I don't remember.
I think it's over a million dollars if you take one penny and multiply
it every day for one month for 31 days. Just start out with
a penny on the first day and multiply it to two and then four
and then eight and then 16 and go on. You'll have over a million
dollars at the end of one month. Why? That's multiplication. Multiplication. And the Lord says, these things
be multiplied unto you. Oh Lord, that's what I want.
I want you to pour out your spirit, multiply your grace and your
peace. Then in verse three, and here's
where we're going to get into our inheritance, three and four
and five, This word that's translated in our English Bibles, blessed,
in verse three, is not the normal word that's translated blessed
or blessing in the New Testament. That's found many, many times. This particular word is only
found eight times, and it means to praise. It means to praise. It's the word from which we get
our word eulogy. If we go to a funeral and the
first part of that funeral service is a eulogy, what are we doing?
We're offering some praise to the deceased. We're eulogizing
that person. So the Lord's telling us here,
praise. Praise be to God, the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. which according to his abundant
mercy, sufficient, not just sufficient, but abundant, more than what
is required, all that we need, we have reason to praise our
God. He hath begotten us, birthed
us again unto a lively hope, This is not a dead doctrinal
thing. This is a lively hope that we
have in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. As God, by His
sanctifying Spirit, causes the Word of God to be alive and sharper
than any two-edged sword, and divides asunder the thoughts
and the intents of our hearts, and reveals to us the person
of Christ. It's a lively hope. That's why we walk by faith because
the Spirit of God is always dealing with us and always pointing us
to Christ and always bringing life back. We have the remnants
of death in our flesh that we carry around with us. Yet we
have a lively hope in Christ. begotten, birthed. This is the
new birth, birth into the kingdom of God, just as the Lord Jesus
Christ was brought to life after his death and securing the Testament. So it is the spirit of God births
us. He brings us out of the grave
of our dead works and our sin. and makes us alive in Christ
in the new birth. It's the resurrection of the
Lord Jesus Christ that we look back to to find the hope of our
life. According to his abundant mercy
hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead. So it was the, the Lord Jesus
is called the first born among many brethren. He's called the
begotten of the father. This is a reference to his resurrection. And this is our hope. He died
in order for the benefits of the Testament, the will, the
promises of God, to be secured and made, made alive for us. And then he's raised from the
dead just in order to show how God not only raises us spiritually
in the new birth, but he raises us physically in the resurrection,
in Christ, in Christ. And these aren't just, these
aren't just dead doctrines, are they? You remember when, you
remember when Martha said, Lord, I know that my brother will rise
again in John chapter 11 at the death of Lazarus. And the Lord
said, Martha, I am the resurrection. I am the resurrection and the
life. He that believeth in me should never die, never die. Here we are, look at verse four,
to an inheritance, to an inheritance. Now we have an inheritance in
Christ, in the heavens right now. All the blessings of God,
all the promises of God, yay and amen, sure and steadfast,
we have a hope. Because of the death and the
resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, this testament has been
sealed and ratified completely. This inheritance is incorruptible. Incorruptible. Not liable to
decay or decline. that's what the word corruption
means everything we know in this world is corrupted everything I mean everything's
decaying you look at your car look at your house look at look
at your body you know it's everything is everything is going from order
to disorder everything is dying and What will life be without
death? I don't know. It's incomprehensible. I mean, death is all around us.
And yet what the Lord's telling us here is the inheritance that's
laid up for us in heaven. There's no death there. There's
no semblance of death. There's no sign of death. Even
on a microscopic level, our life here on this earth has to involve
death. Death is part of life. One cell
dies and another takes its place. Life without death? That's what
the Lord is saying. Incorruptible. How can it be? Well, where did death come from?
Where did death come from? The wages of sin is death. In the day in which you eat of
the fruit of the knowledge, the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil, you shall surely die. Die. All of this death, all of
this corruption, all of this decay, all of this decline that
is on every level of life in which we live in this world is
the result of sin. And in heaven there is no sin.
There's no sin. So, the scripture tells us that
your inheritance is incorruptible. It cannot decay, it cannot decline,
it cannot... Turn with me to Revelation 21. We're looking at the inheritance
that the Lord Jesus Christ, by the shedding of His blood, bought
for us. This is who we are in Christ. This is what we have in Christ.
And this is what we look to in the fullness of its experience
in Christ. And John gives a description
of this incorruptible inheritance. Look at verse 4 of Revelation
21. And God shall wipe away all tears
from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow,
nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain. For the former
things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne
said, Behold, I make all things new, and He said it to me right,
for these words are true and faithful." Oh, brethren, we have
an incorruptible inheritance to look forward to. Incorruptible. No more sin. No more decay. Oh, is this not the longing of
your soul? Is this not the plague? of your life here, your sin,
the constancy of it, it just never goes away. It's always
there. We're carrying about this, Paul
said, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I've
got death on my back. Carrying around a dead corpse. Lord says you have an inheritance. And that inheritance has been
sealed by the blood of Christ. And been proven. To be yay and
amen by his resurrection. You've been raised by the power
of God. In the new birth. And you shall
be raised again just as he was to an inheritance. That is without
sin. without decay, without death,
incorruptible. That's why Paul said in 1 Corinthians
chapter 15, this corruptible flesh must be made incorruptible. This mortal must be made immortal. The new resurrected body in Christ
is a perfect body without sin and without death. Notice what else he tells us
about our inheritance. Verse four, to an inheritance
incorruptible and undefiled. Now the word defile means to stain or to pollute
or to contaminate. It comes from a word that refers
to taking a piece of fabric and dyeing it a completely different
color. And if corruption is the result
of sin, then defilement is sin itself. Here's our hope. The believer has two great hopes
when it comes to their inheritance. To see Christ as He is. and to
be made like him. To be rid of sin, to be undefiled,
uncorrupted in any way. The first mention of this word defile in the New Testament is found
in John chapter 18 at the arrest of our Lord when they took him
to Pilate. The scripture says that the Pharisees
would not go into the judgment seat. You know, our Lord was
crucified at Passover because he was the Passover lamb. And
all those Passover ceremonies in the Old Testament and that
Passover that took place in Egypt all pointed to what he's now
doing on this night He's laying down his life for sheep and and
the scripture says that the Pharisees would not go into Pilate's judgment
seat lest they should become defiled and not be able to celebrate
the Passover and You see the hypocrisy of that? Do you see
how they were worried about defiling
themselves by being around a Gentile so that they could not eat the
Passover meal while at the same time they're putting to death
the Passover lamb? Well, what is our hope? We can practice hypocrisy. Can we not? Can we not pretend
to be one thing while in fact we're acting some? Here's the
truth. God made him sin. who knew no sin. Now I've heard men say, men who
report or men who say they believe the gospel, I've heard them say,
no, you can't say that Jesus Christ was made sin because you
defile the sacrifice. Well, I don't understand all
that happened spiritually. When Christ bore our sins in
his body, it's a mystery that we cannot comprehend. But he
was defiled. That's the reason he was forsaken
of his father. And God made his soul an offering
for sin. And it was the Lord Jesus Christ
who said, he said, I will be sorry through for my sin. He owned our sin as his own. He felt the full defilement of
sin. That's why he was set forsaken
of his father. And our hope is that in our inheritance,
right now, we are undefiled in our union with Christ. And in
our experience, one day soon, we'll know what it means to be
completely without sin. Incorruptible, undefiled. No memory of sin, no experience
with sin, nothing of the defilement or of any... He bore it. Cursed is everyone
that hangeth upon the tree. The Lord Jesus Christ bore the
full curse of God's wrath for the sins of his people. And that
wasn't just a, you know, those men who say, well, you can't
say that Christ was made sin, otherwise you defile the sacrifice.
are the same men that say righteousness is just an imputed legal transfer. They make the whole thing nothing
more than just a legal matter. It's not a lively hope. It's
not something that can be experienced. It's just something that is thought
through and calculated intellectually. This is a lively hope. experienced
sin and defilement and the curse of God. And we experience our
hope and peace and grace in Him. And the hope of our inheritance
will be fully experienced when we are undefiled. Undefiled and incorruptible. For by one offering, he hath
perfected forever them that are sanctified. Remember in verse
two, the sanctification of the spirit happens before the redemptive
obedience and shedding of blood of Christ. So when the scripture
says in Hebrews chapter 10, for by one offering, He hath perfected
forever them that are sanctified. They were sanctified by the Holy
Spirit when God gave them to the Spirit of God, when the Father
gave them to the Holy Spirit to set them apart. And Christ
perfected them through the shedding of His blood once and for all.
Sealed the covenant. Made it sure. This is our inheritance. This is who we are now by faith,
and this is who we will be by experience. Yes, we look through
a glass darkly now, but then face to face. Yes, we know in
part now, but then we'll know even as we are known. This is
what Peter's talking about. Peter's. The Lord is speaking
and reminding us to set our affections on things above. We're Christ-seated
at the right hand of God. I don't know of things of this
earth. Is this not the only thing that really matters at the end? And notice what else he tells
us in verse four, this inheritance where we're looking at what God
has recorded in his word about our inheritance. And he says
it, it fadeth not away. It fadeth not away. This word
fadeth means to bring to an end. To bring to an end. And that's what
all men are brought to their end. Turn back with me to James
chapter one, just a couple of pages back to your left. James
chapter one, look at verse 11. For the sun is no sooner
risen with a burning heat, but it withers the grass and the
flower thereof falleth. and the grace of the fashion
of it perisheth, so shall the rich man fade away, fade away
in his ways." Oh, all the, all the riches of this world just
fading away. All the wealth of man's own self-righteousness
fading away, come to an end. We have an inheritance that is
incorruptible, undefiled, and fadeth not away. I love the way
the Lord says this because he's not just telling us this is eternal
life that will never end. He's saying to us that it's not
going to fade. It's not going to fade. It's going to It's going to remain as brilliant
and glorious for all eternity. Everything in this world loses
its luster, doesn't it? Scripture says, I think in Ecclesiastes,
the eye is never satisfied in seeing, nor is the ear satisfied
in hearing. We get bored with our experiences
and we have to have something new and fresh and different.
Why? Because everything in this life
fades away, just like everything in this life dies. And this inheritance
that we have is without sin, incorruptible, undefiled, and
there's nothing fading about it. I don't know what that means. I'm sure that eye has not seen,
nor has ear heard, nor has it entered into the imagination
of man, the things that he's prepared for us. But here's our
hope, here's our promise. The sun rises in the morning,
and then towards the evening, it fades away and it sets. And
one day, one day, the sun will rise, never to set again. Never to set, it'll never fade.
Nothing in glory is fading. It's all glorious. Turn with
me to Revelation 22. Revelation 22. In Revelation 21, verse 23, the
scripture says, and the city had no need of the sun, neither
of the moon to shine in it for the glory of God did lighten
it and the lamb is the light thereof. So the glory of heaven
is the lamb of God. It is the Lord Jesus Christ.
There's nothing fading about him. Nothing. Now look at chapter 22 and verse
one. And he showed me a pure river
of the water of life, clear as crystal proceeding out of the
throne of God and of the lamb in the midst of the street of
it. And on either side of the river was there the tree of life. And we're on one side of the
river. Now we're going to cross the Jordan to the other side.
The tree of life's on both sides. We're enjoying our inheritance
now through faith as we look to Christ. But in that day, there'll
be no more faith. There won't be a need for faith.
Our faith will be our experience. It'll be our experience. Why do you hope for something
that you already see, you already have? In this tree of life, bears 12
manner of fruits and yielded their fruit every month. And
the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. This
tree of life is Christ. And he provides meat by his body
and blood every month. And there shall be no more curse,
but the throne of God and of the lamb shall be it. And his
servants shall serve him and they shall see his face and his
name shall be in their foreheads. That means that they'll be thinking
about him all the time, all the time. And there shall be no night
there. And they need no candle, neither
the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, and they shall reign
forever and ever." That's what Peter's saying. We have an inheritance
incorruptible, undefiled, that fadeth not away. The brightness
of the glory of heaven. We get little glimpses of it
now. Little beams of light that come
into our soul in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. then the
fullness of His glory will never fade. Even what we see now fades
away, doesn't it? I had a brother tell me one time,
he said, Preacher, I'm so encouraged right now, and I'm so thankful
for that, for the worship time, and for the message, and for
God's Word, and I figure it'll last as long as somebody cuts
me off out on the highway driving home today. You know, that's
going to fade away. It just fades away, doesn't it?
All the glimpses of glory just fade. Then that day, this inheritance
is incorruptible, undefiled, and fadeth not away. Reserved. Look at, look at the rest of
verse four. Reserved. This word means kept. carefully guarded, taken care
of, watched over. It's reserved. And the Lord said
in Matthew chapter six, he said, lay up for yourself treasures
in heaven. Christ is our treasure. Where your treasure is, he said,
there your heart will be. So when we look in faith to Christ
and give glory to Christ and long for Christ and set our affections
on Christ, then we are laying up treasures in heaven. And he
says three things. He says, rust does not corrupt.
What is that a picture of? Everything in this world is being
corrupted by the rust of sin and world. The oxidation of the world can't
touch it. and where moth doesn't eat it.
I looked up. I thought that there was some
fabrics that moth didn't eat, but in my research, a very limited
reading on it, I found out that moths eat every kind of fabric,
everything. Natural fibers, man-made fibers,
they'll eat everything. And they said there's only one
way to keep moths from eating They'll only do it in a dark
place. They'll only do it in your closet. Hang your clothes,
you want to get all the moths and their eggs and everything
else off your clothes, hang them in the sun. The moths will not
touch your clothes if they're hanging in the sun. And I thought,
wow, how glorious is that? Moth does not, there's no moths
and there's no, there's no, eating away of the canker of sin. Why? Because of the brightness
of the sun and the glory of God and the incorruptible undefiled
state of sinless perfection that we have in heaven. We lay up
for our treasures in heaven where there's no rust, there's no moth,
and there's no thief. Who's the thieves that rob us
of our hope? The accuser of the brethren and
the world and our own sin and flesh. These are thieves constantly
robbing us. Robbing us every day of our joy
and our peace and our hope and our happiness in Christ. We're
being robbed. We live in a city of thieves. We look at some of the violence
taking place in these big cities in America today. That's where
we live. I mean, spiritually speaking,
it's all that way. But this inheritance that's been
laid up for us, has been bought by the testator in the shedding
of his blood, has been secured by the sanctifying of the Spirit.
in the new birth and by the resurrection of Christ, being the firstborn
of many brethren, assures us of an inheritance that's undefiled,
incorruptible, fadeth not away and is reserved, reserved in
heaven for you. And in the margin of my Bible,
I understand that this pronoun, you, can actually be
translated us, been reserved for us. Our Heavenly Father, thank You
for Your Word. Thank You for the glorious hope
of salvation that You have given us in Christ. Lord, forgive us. Forgive us for our worldliness
and our sin and our unbelief. Thank you for setting our affections
once again on things above. Lord, remind us of these things
often. By the sanctifying work of your
Spirit in our hearts, we ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Number 27 in our spiral hymn,
? Free from the law's great curse
? ? In Jesus we are free ? ? For Christ became a curse for us
? ? And died upon the tree ? ? The rituals of the law ? ? And all
the law's commands ? Have been fulfilled in Christ the Lord
? Established by his hands ? No covenant with the law ? Can now
with us exist Complete in Christ we stand by grace, both free
and ever blessed. No more the dread of wrath, no
more constrained by fear. We worship and we serve our God
with gratitude and cheer. In Jesus we are free. ? In Jesus we are free ? Free
from all sin and from all guilt ? We live in liberty ? We'll
join the happy song ? With all the blood bought from and sing
the praises of the lamb whose grace makes us his own.