Good evening. Let's open tonight's
service with hymn number 18 in your Spiral Gospel Hymns hymn
book, number 18, The Bible is a Book of Christ. Let's all stand
together. God gave his holy inspired word
for only one great end, the prophets and apostles to reveal the sinner's
friend. The Bible is a book of Christ,
it only speaks of Him. On every page it shows us Christ,
it only speaks of Him. The prophecies of old record,
God's wondrous mighty deeds, Those deeds of power and of grace,
Set forth the woman's seed. The Bible is a book of Christ,
it only speaks of Him. On every page it shows us Christ,
it only speaks of Him. The prophets all reveal our Lord
as prophet, priest, and king. The types of great redemption
show Christ's blood and grace now bring. The Bible is a book
of Christ, it only speaks of Him. On every page it shows us
Christ, it only speaks of Him. Behold the Lamb, the Baptist
said, the sin-atoning One. As it was promised long before,
God's Son as man has come. The Bible is a book of Christ,
it only speaks of Him. On every page it shows us Christ,
it only speaks of Him. Our substitute obeyed the law,
then died and rose again. And in his word our Savior said,
Rejoice, I come again. The Bible is a book of Christ,
it only speaks of Him. On every page it shows us Christ,
it only speaks of Him. Please be seated. Let's open our Bibles together
to Psalm 141. Psalm 141. I know it seems like every time we go
to the Psalms, we're reminded of how David is speaking prophetically
of Christ, and we just sang that hymn, and certainly that's true
here. And as we understand these words in light of that, we see
them as our own prayers as well. Lord, I cry unto thee. Make haste unto me. Give ear
unto my voice when I cry unto thee. Let my prayer be set before
thee as incense and the lifting up of my hands as the evening
sacrifice. Set a watch, O Lord, before my
mouth. Keep the door of my lips. Incline
not my heart to any evil thing, to practice wicked works with
men that work iniquity. And let me not eat of their dainties.
Let the righteous smite me, and it shall be a kindness. And let
him reprove me, and it shall be an excellent oil, which shall
not break my head. And it seems to me that the last
part of verse five really kind of goes with verse six. For yet
my prayer also shall be to their calamities. When their judges
are overthrown in stony places, they shall hear my words, for
they are sweet. Our bones are scattered at the
grave's mouth. And when one cutteth and cleaveth,
as if one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth, but mine
eyes are unto thee, O God, the Lord. In thee is my trust. Leave not my soul destitute.
Keep me from the snares which they have laid for me and the
gins of the workers of iniquity. Let the wicked fall into their
own nets whilst that I with all escape. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for your
word. We thank you for the perfection
of it. We thank you for the power of
it. We thank you, Lord, how your Holy Spirit applies these precious
promises and precious truths to our hearts and enables us
to look in faith to thy dear son for all the hope of our salvation. or this is our prayer, that you
would put a guard over our lips. Pray that you would restrain
our steps. Pray, Lord, that you would meet
with us here this night and that you would speak to our hearts. We pray, Lord, for those parts
of our body that are afflicted Lord, that you've afflicted,
that are suffering in trials and troubles. We know, Lord,
that when you send affliction, that you also send sufficient
grace to bear those troubles and to find hope and safety and
escape in Christ. Lord, it's in the name of thy
dear son, that we come into thy holy presence. Amen. Number 168 in the hardback teminal,
168. Let's stand together. ? Lord, I hear of showers of blessing
? Thou art scattering full and free ? Showers the thirsty land
refreshing ? Let some drops now fall on me, even me ? Even me,
let thy blessing fall on me ? ? Pass me not, O tender Savior ? ? Let
me love and cling to thee ? ? I am longing for thy favor ? ? Whilst
thou art calling, O call me ? Even me, even me, let thy blessing
fall on thee. Pass me not, O mighty Spirit,
Thou canst make the blind to see. Witness, sir, of Jesus'
merit, Speak the word of power to me, even me. ? Even me, let thy blessing fall
on me ? ? Love of God so pure and changeless ? ? Blood of Christ
so rich and free ? ? Grace of God so strong and boundless ?
? Magnify them all in me ? Even me, even me, let thy blessing
fall on me. pass me not thy lost one bringing
bind my heart oh lord to thee while the streams of life are
springing blessing others oh bless me even me Please be seated. Let's open our Bibles to 1 Peter
1. We've been looking through the
book of Colossians on Sunday mornings and also the book of
Ruth. And it seems like on Wednesday night, I've ended up in one of those two
books. As the Lord enables us, I'd like
to use our Wednesday night services to go through 1 and 2 Peter. over the next however long so
you can read ahead if you like and We'll we'll plan that as
long as the Lord enables gives us messages from from this text
I've titled this message the penman the Providence and the
people of God Those are simple hooks that we can hang our memory
and our thoughts on. The penman, the providence, and
the people of God. And those three points are found
in the first two verses of 1 Peter 1. So let's read those two verses together.
Peter, and Apostle of Jesus Christ to the strangers scattered throughout
Pontius, 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, grace unto you. and peace be multiplied." God's penman, Peter, introduces
himself as a messenger. That's what the word apostle
means. Peter, a little stone. Scripture speaks of all believers
as being fit together in the household of God as stones, as
little building stones, and the Lord Jesus Christ being the foundation
stone of the church. And so, in that regard, Peter
represents all believers. But my encouragement here with
Peter, young, impetuous fisherman, Peter,
who often in his younger years, we're 30 years now past the crucifixion
when Peter writes these epistles. And yet my encouragement is that
if God would take a man like Peter and use him to write his word,
I mean, what higher calling is there? What greater place in
the family of God and in the work of salvation is there for
any man to hold than to actually be a penman of Scripture? And my encouragement is that
if the Lord would call a man like Peter to do that, perhaps
He would use me to declare what Peter wrote. Perhaps he would
use you to believe the things that Peter wrote. Peter is the apostle to the Jews. We remember much about his life. during the ministry of our Lord, and
how oftentimes Peter would engage his mouth before his brain, and
how we cannot forget the forsaking of the Lord that Peter was guilty
of, night of our Lord's arrest and subsequent crucifixion, and how far Peter fell in that
regard. And yet, here we have him writing
under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the infallible Word
of God. And when God used a man to write
his word, it wasn't as if this man went into some sort of a
trance, put a pen in his hand, and the Lord moved his hand as
a robot to record these words. God's using the personality of
the man. And when we read the things that
Peter writes, we can see much of his personality as we can
different with Matthew or with Paul or with John. So here's
my point, brethren, that again, God would take a man like Peter
and use him for such a high calling to actually pin for the for the
church, the inspired word of God. Perhaps there's hope that
he could use any of us. Peter never forgot his blatant
denial of the Lord Jesus Christ. More importantly, he never forgot
the mercy and forgiveness that the Lord extended to him for
that sin. When you remember the Lord said,
Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep, feed my sheep,
feed my sheep. Peter never forgot those things. He's 30 years older now, and
now the Lord has him in a place where he can draw
from the wisdom that the Lord has revealed to him and leave
for us a word from God. We know that scripture is not
by private interpretation. These weren't just Peter's thoughts. This wasn't Peter saying, well,
it seems to me. This was a man, a sinner, a man with lots of faults that
the Lord called out. And scripture calls him a holy
man, a separated man, a man that was set apart by God to the writing
of God's word. Think about other men that God
used to write his word. Think about King David, his moral
lapse and sin and fall, and what a terrible father David was.
And yet, God used him. See, I'm encouraged by that.
Are you? I'm encouraged that God would take these faulty men, And use them for such a high
calling. Think about Solomon, the son
of David, the wisest man that ever lived. And yet, he made
some of the most foolish decisions and choices in his life, particularly
towards the end of his life. Think about Moses. God had to put Moses through
80 years of the school of hard knocks. God's school of hard
knocks. 80 years, 40 years in Egypt,
40 years on the backside of the wilderness tending sheep. Now,
Moses is gonna be used of God to lead his people and to write
his word. Well, maybe there's some hope
for me. James and John, what sweet spirits
we hear from these men as they record the word of God. And yet,
they're called the sons of thunder in the scripture, and they wanted
to rain down fire on the Samaritans out of revenge for their, for
the rejection of Christ and of the disciples. Samson, and Gideon, and Lot,
and Noah, and all the problems that these men had in their lives.
And I find some encouragement that God would use men like this. Perhaps He'd be pleased to speak
to me, or even maybe through me. Peter, an apostle, an apostle,
a messenger of Jesus Christ. It was the Lord Jesus Christ
that called him out. He was an ambassador for Christ, pleading with men to be reconciled
to God. And that's what we do. We declare
the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are but ambassadors.
And we're doing this together. Say, well, I'm not an ambassador
for Christ. If you're a child of God, you are. You are. And if you're here right now,
participating in the declaration of the gospel, this is what we're
doing. We are declaring the message
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice that he writes this epistle
to the strangers. That's what we are in this world.
We're strangers, we're foreigners,
we're just passing through. We have a whole different view
of all things than the world has. and that these believers are
scattered. I started to title this message
Scattered Yet Gathered because the believers are scattered throughout
these regions, Pontus and Galatia and Cappadocia and Asia and Bithynia.
And yet clearly they're gathered together in local assemblies in the Lord's providence. He
sent a persecution against the Jews. Saul of Tarsus was a part
of that. After the crucifixion of Christ,
the Jews turned on the believers. They were afraid of this sect
within Judaism that was a threat to their form of religion. And so they attacked the believers. And this wasn't just a, you know,
shunning or a slandering like you and I might experience as
strangers in this world when we stand for Christ. These believers had to flee Israel
for their lives. They had all their property taken
from them and they were scattered. This
was This was the Lord's providence. This was the Lord's purpose.
It was like stamping out a fire and everywhere one of these believing
Jews went, the spark would start a new fire. And so we have the
gospel being expanded through persecution. I see in this, those difficult
times of providence that the Lord sends into your life and
into my life. And He always has a purpose. That purpose ultimately is His
glory. Everything that He does is for
His glory. And everything He does is for
our good. These difficult trials, Paul
calls them necessities. David said before I was afflicted,
I had gone astray, but now Now, Lord, you have drawn me. So these
afflictions the Lord uses to draw us to Christ, these afflictions
the Lord uses to get us to see the vanity of this world and
to and to not be so tied to these things of this world. So these
are all good things. These are good things. We know,
we know. that all things work together
for good for them that love God and those that are called according
to his purpose. Peter is the is the apostle to the Jews. Paul
is the apostle to the Gentiles. Peter's writing to these Jews
that have been scattered. They've been forced out. They've
been threatened with their life. They've had all their property
taken from them. They've been displaced. And And the Lord had His glory and
their good purposed in His providence in bringing about this persecution. And though they were scattered,
they were gathered. They were gathered in local assemblies. What a blessing it is to be gathered together in the
body of Christ. Our union with the Lord Jesus
Christ doesn't just make our differences insignificant, our
other differences, whatever they might be. Our union with the
Lord Jesus Christ makes whatever other differences that we have
irrelevant. Irrelevant. They don't matter.
It's the only thing that matters is to be part of the body of
Christ. And so these Jews, as they're being scattered out into
the world, are finding their way one to the other as they
come together in these different parts of the world to worship
together and to encourage one another and to love one another
and to be a blessing to one another. All of these things are happening
as a result of what God sent. in His good providence, as difficult
as that persecution would have been. Scripture tells us in Acts chapter
9 that the Apostle Paul, Saul of Tarsus, was breathing out
threatenings. He had letters from the high
priest. He was going out into these different cities and arresting
Jews who believed on Christ and bringing them back and having
them put to death. I mean, this is nothing like the troubles
that we might know something about as a result of being believers. What a blessing it is that the
Lord has, in whatever trials He sends our way, given us a
need not only for Him, but for one another. God's people need one another.
They need the encouragement from one another. There is no temptation taken you, but
such as is common to man. And God is faithful. He will
not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able,
but will provide with the temptation the way of escape. Who is the Lord Jesus Christ?
And we encourage one another to that end, don't we? We say
to one another in the midst of our scattered trials and troubles,
let's gather together. Let's look to Christ together. Let's believe on God together. Let's encourage one another.
It's a rare thing to find a gospel church. A rare thing. They are few and far between.
I was talking to some men last
week in Africa, in Malawi, Africa. Two men that are preaching the
gospel. And we spent over an hour on
the phone together, FaceTime together. And I came away so
encouraged. And they were, and they live
in a, they are subsistence living. They're extremely poor. And they're looking at America
thinking, you know, we need your help. We need your encouragement.
And when I hung up, I thought, no, we need you. We need you,
we need your faith, we need your encouragement, we need your example. But they were saying that in
the whole region of Africa where they lived, they didn't know
anybody else that believed what they believed, preached what
they preached. Here it is. The penman is none other than
Peter. And if Peter could be used as
a penman of God, then maybe God would be pleased to bless and
use us. In the providence of God, they
were made to be strangers and scattered throughout all the
world, and these trials and troubles sent their way. Yet they gathered together in
these local assemblies. And I suppose the greatest blessing
of the local assembly is the reminder that we have that one
day, One day, sooner than we think, we'll be gathered together
for all eternity without this body of sin, without this flesh,
without the hindrances of this life and this world. We look
through a glass darkly now, but then face to face, we have the
hope of knowing that what John saw when John was given that
vision in the book of Revelation and he heard this heavenly choir
singing and he said it was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of
thousands raising their voices together and praising God and
worshiping the Lamb and saying to the Lamb, worthy is the Lamb
to receive glory and honor and power. This little sample of that that
we have now is but a foretaste of the glory divine that we have
waiting us. There's the gathering together
of the saints when we're all gathered together in glory in
a new body. New Jerusalem coming down from
heaven. All the elect of God redeemed
in Christ and sanctified by the Spirit of God, made perfect and
in perfect harmony, where exists nothing but righteousness, no
sin, no sorrow, no longer looking through a glass
darkly, all to be conformed to the image
of Christ in our experience. We have it now in faith. We have
it now in our union with Christ. We're conformed to the image
of Christ right now, before God. That's our only hope of salvation.
But to have that experience, and we get a little bit of that
now. God in his good providence scattered
his people throughout these regions gathered them together in local
assemblies, made them able to worship together
in hopes of that day of worship that will last for all eternity.
That's glorious. That's glorious. That's, Whatever
the Lord brings into our lives is to get us to look to that
end. The people of God are described
in verse 2. Let's look at that quickly. The first thing that the Lord
tells us about the people of God, as we saw in verse 1, that
we're strangers in this world. This world is not our home. We have a whole different set
of values than this world could ever possibly have. We're in
Christ, we're new creatures. Old things are passed away. We
see things differently. We believe differently. We have
a different God than the world has. In that regard, we're strangers. But in verse 2, the Lord tells
us something else about his people, and that is that they've been
elected according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. Now foreknowledge, the word knowledge
here, if you think with me all the way back to when Adam knew
his wife Eve and she conceived, this is intimate relationship.
That's what the word knowledge means. And so the scripture says
that God elected us according to his foreknowledge. So election
was at the beginning of our salvation. Love was the beginning of our
salvation. The first cause of our salvation is God placing
His love on His people. I have loved you with an everlasting
love and out of that love that I have for you, I have chosen
you, I have elected you. Now we're trying to explain these
things in order of time, but we know that these things happened
in eternity and One didn't happen before the
other, they happen simultaneously, and well, there is no time in
eternity. But here's our encouragement.
The Father elected a people. Our hope and our comfort is that God chose us. If the
Lord waited for us to choose Him, we would never be saved.
Election is not a closed door to heaven. Election is the only
open door that there is to heaven. It's the only open door. If it
wasn't for election, there would be no way for anyone to be saved.
And any gospel that denies God's sovereign right And purpose in
electing a people according to His own will and purpose is a
gospel that makes man the author of his own salvation. Here's our hope, elected by God
the Father. According to His own sovereign
will and purpose, He chose a particular people. He didn't look down through
the quarters of time and choose them according to something that
He saw in their lives. He did it for no other reason
than for His own glory and purpose in grace. That the praise of the glory
of His grace might be known in Christ. in electing his people. The church of the Lord Jesus
Christ is never grown by one single member, not the eternal
church. The eternal church is set in
heaven, you know, local assemblies, people come and go. From one generation to another
generation, the influence of the gospel and the church may
be stronger or weaker in one region of the world. It may differ
from one place to the other. But the eternal church, the elect
church of God, is exactly the same size now it's ever been
and exactly the same size now as it ever will be. What hope we have. No, we're
not going to change that. There's my hope. You say, well,
preacher, how do I know that I'm elected? Do you believe the
gospel? Do you believe on Christ? Do you believe that Jesus Christ
is the Son of God? Are you resting all the hopes
of your mortal soul on Him? You can't not believe. God has made you to be a believer. Faith is the substance of things
hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. We hope for
our election. We can't see our election. That's
something done eternally in heaven. But what is the evidence of that?
It's faith. I do believe on Christ. I do
believe that He is the sovereign, successful Savior of sinners.
And all the hope of my salvation is is in Him, in Him. I must be found in Him. So here we have, in verse two,
God describes His people in their salvation from the perspective
of the election of the Father, the sanctification of the Spirit,
and the redemption of God the Son. The triune Godhead. Salvation is of the Lord. God
elected a people. God the Father elected a people. God the Holy Spirit sanctified
them, set them apart. God the Son accomplished their
redemption. There's the people of God. the
children of God, saved by God. Is there any way that something
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit purposed to do in
making sure that everything necessary for the salvation of their people
was fulfilled? Is there any way that could fail?
No. No, that's why we're so encouraged
because our hope is in God. God's not looking to me to make
any contribution to my salvation. He did it all. He did it in election. He did it in sanctification.
He did it in redemption. He'll do it in glorification. And so he tells us that these
strangers that had been scattered by God's providence as difficult
as that providence was. And we can only imagine. 70 AD, the Romans came in and destroyed
the city of Jerusalem. Slaughtered hundreds of thousands
of Jews. Many of these Jews were scattered
from there. Peter would have written just
a few years before that. So the problems are already brewing
in Jerusalem. These are real people in real
time suffering dramatically, like you and I probably have
never really had to suffer. And yet God sent it. God sent
it. When Paul writes the book of
Hebrews, I believe it was Paul who wrote Hebrews. Perhaps I'm
wrong, but scripture doesn't say. But he reminds us at the
end of Hebrews, remember, remember the spoiling of your goods. The
book of Hebrews was written to Jews also, the Jewish converts. And he says, remember the spoiling
of your goods, how they took everything from you when you
became a believer. And yet, here's your encouragement,
here's your hope. God the Father, according to
His foreknowledge, He loved you before anything. Before we knew Him, before redemption
was accomplished, before anything, He loved you. And, What manner
of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called
the sons of God. Out of love He elected you. Is there any possible way that God
would choose something? We vote for people and they don't
get elected, right? Is it possible that God would
elect someone and they wouldn't be put in office, in place? No, no. Not only do we have the encouragement
of knowing that God the Father elected a particular people,
but notice the second part of this verse. Through sanctification
of the Spirit. Through sanctification of the
Spirit. Now, I looked up this word through,
it's a little preposition in the original language. It means
a fixed position, a fixed position. And so when the father chose
a people, he gave those people to the Holy Spirit who set them
apart. That's what the word sanctified
means. So now the Spirit of God has this church. This eternal church, the family
of God, chosen by the Father. And now the Holy Spirit is bearing
the responsibility to keep them separate from the rest of the
world. And to do something to make them
to differ from the rest of the world. To do something for them
that He wouldn't do for anyone else in the world. Here's the Holy Spirit has has
God's elect church now in his hands, setting them apart, sanctifying
them, and purposing to regenerate them
at a fixed time, a fixed time. He makes God's elect willing
in the day of his power. The Spirit of God is omnipotent,
just like God the Father and God the Son. He's omnipotent.
And when the Spirit of God says, breathe, you breathe. When the
Spirit of God says, live, you live. When the Spirit of God
says, believe, you believe. Aren't you glad it's that way?
This is what God does for His people. He sanctifies them. through,
or by, or in, or with. That's prepositions translated
with these other words as well. In a fixed position, he sets
them apart, makes them to differ. This is the, he's He's gonna
make them look to Christ. He's gonna make them believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ. He's gonna baptize them in the
spirit of God. He's gonna cause every single
one that God chose at a particular point set in time to find themselves to be believers.
I'm a believer. How'd that happen? The Holy Spirit sanctified you.
That's how it happened. The Holy Spirit did it. I love thinking about the way
in which the Spirit of God makes God's elect differ from the rest
of the world. Believers, we look back at our
lives and we think, we see, perhaps you can see, I can see, some
very near-death experiences before God called me and you know that
there was no way you could have died. Why? Why? Because I've been sanctified
by the Holy Spirit. I've been set apart by the Spirit
of God. My death can't happen until the Spirit of God makes
me to be a believer. Child of God, you look back at
your religious experiences, Fred, you and I were talking about
this before, Tricia, before the service, how the Lord, you know,
some of our young people thank the Lord, what a blessing it
is to grow up under the gospel and to not have to feed on the
husk that the swine do eat in false man-made religion. But
that being said, A lot of God's people, the Lord took through
religion before he brought them to Christ. Child of God, why
could you not find satisfaction in that false religion? Why couldn't
you find comfort there? Why couldn't you find hope? Your
other friends did. Other members of your family,
they're just completely happy there. Why were you never satisfied? Why were you always looking for
something else? Because you were sanctified,
set apart by the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God was doing a
work of grace in you before you knew Christ. It's called grace
before grace. It's prevenient grace. It's the
work of the Spirit of God. This is the sanctification of
the Spirit. All of God's elect, chosen by
the Father according to his foreknowledge, the ones who are scattered throughout
the world, the ones who have gathered together in local assemblies,
the ones who are strangers, they are sanctified. And they're going to remain set
apart. for all eternity. God set his people apart in the
covenant of grace before Adam was ever made. Why did my path cross the gospel? Why was I born into a family
where I grew up hearing about Christ and hearing the gospel? Why? Why? I mean, billions of people
in the world never heard the gospel. Why did I hear it? Because you were sanctified by
the Spirit of God in the covenant of grace before time ever began. You see, the Father elected a
particular people, gave, if we could use this analogy, gave
them in a sense to the Spirit of God saying, here, you keep
them. You keep them. Why is it that one day I found
myself believing the gospel? And why is it that I'm still
here? Why is that I'm continuing to believe the gospel? Why haven't
I forsaken the gospel? Why haven't you? Because of the
sanctification of the spirit. The spirit of God is not going
to fail in what the father gave him to do. Keep my light. Keep them. Thirdly, thirdly, This salvation
can't fail. We're chosen by God the Father,
elected according to His foreknowledge, sanctified by the Holy Spirit,
and redeemed through the obedience and bloodshedding of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now, there's probably no penman of
Scripture that deals with our responsibility to be obedient
to God more than Peter. You have a few minutes in the
next few days, read both the first and second letters of Peter. They're very short, they're very
easy to read. And you'll find that after the
first chapter of 1 Peter, Peter uses the rest of the chapter
to remind believers their life in Christ as a result
of what the Lord has done. And the same thing in 2 Peter.
It's almost as if Peter is constantly remembering his own failures
and trying to be an encouragement to the church. So, Peter doesn't shun reminding us and admonishing
us and encouraging us to follow Christ in obedience. He doesn't shun that. But the
word here does not refer to our obedience in verse 2 of 1 Peter
2. And it almost seems that it does,
but it doesn't. It's talking about the obedience
of Christ. He's not talking about our obedience. The Spirit of
God did not sanctify us unto our obedience by the shed blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He sanctified us and set us apart
unto the obedience and sacrifice of Christ. It's so important. What God's
saying to you and me is that you're... Yes! Child of God,
you want to follow Christ. You want to be obedient to Him.
And your disobedience is... The Lord's going to chastise
you, and you're going to have... I hope He does. I hope He does. But your salvation has nothing
to do with your obedience. Nothing. Has everything to do
with His obedience. You see, God requires perfect
obedience. With all of our hearts, and all
of our mind, and all of our soul, all of the time, perfect obedience
in motive, in thought, in deed, in word, in everything we do.
God requires perfect obedience. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
only one that did that. He was obedient to the Father,
Philippians chapter three, unto death, yea, even the death of
the cross. He obeyed God right up to the
time that he laid down his life for his sheep and shed his precious
blood. So the Lord, before he begins
to encourage us In the believer's life, he's saying that our salvation
is determined by the obedience and sacrifice of Christ. The doing and dying of the Lord
Jesus Christ. The obedience and bloodshedding
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The redemption that was accomplished
by the Lord Jesus Christ. It was the Lord Jesus Christ,
who in Gethsemane, sweat great drops of blood and pleaded with
the Father, if there be any way this cup can pass from me. Father,
let it be nevertheless not my will, but thy will be done. Thy
will be done. And at the same time, he went
back and found the disciples sleeping. Could you not pray
with me for one hour? Can you? And the Lord said, spirit's willing. Your spirit is willing to be
perfectly obedient, but your flesh is weak. Your flesh is weak. And so I'm
saying to you that your salvation is not determined by your obedience.
It's the obedience of Christ. We come before God looking in
faith to the Lord Jesus Christ. Our faith is not our obedience.
Our faith is not our contribution to our salvation. It's just the
opposite. Faith is resting all of its hope
on another. Faith is not some sort of character
trait. that makes us bigger and better
people. Lest you become as a little child,
you should not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Suffer the little
children to come unto Me. When a small child is afraid
and hides behind its mother's skirt, or gets up in the arms
of its father and buries its face in the neck of the father,
is that to the glory of the child? or to the glory of the parent
that's protecting and providing for that child. And we understand
when a small child acts that way, that's natural. But what
if an older child acted that way? What if an adult acted? What if you acted that way when
you were afraid, got behind your mother's skirt? Would that not
be the most shameful thing for you? And yet, is that not exactly
what faith is? You see, faith is not to our
glory. It is to our shame. It is to
His glory. That's what faith is. Faith is
to our shame. It's to our humiliation. It's
to our dependence. Faith is all to His glory. So we're not coming before God
with anything. We're coming before God looking
in faith to Christ for everything. Notice, we have to deal with
the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Now you remember
Peter's writing to Jews and the Jews knew what the sprinkling
of the blood was. You go back to the Old Testament,
and the priest was to take the blood, was to sprinkle it upon
the altar, was to sprinkle it upon Aaron, and sprinkle it upon
the mercy seat. The sprinkling of the blood was
part of Old Testament sacrificial worship. And it was constant. And it was a bloody religion.
I mean, there were sacrifices made every day, and these weren't,
These weren't, you know, even, I was thinking even in a slaughterhouse
today, there's a certain control that's used to maintain the spilling
out of blood and to keep things, you know, that's not the way
the Old Testament sacrifices were. They were violent. They
were violent. They were slitting of throats
and the spurting. This word sprinkling means to
spurt. It means to spill out. The sprinkling
of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ was not a controlled environment. It was a violent sacrifice. Scripture says that He was no
man. There was no beauty in Him that
we should desire Him. We hid, as it were, our faces
from Him. It was savage. It was violent. It was inhumane. It was a slaughterhouse. The sprinkling of the blood in
the Old Testament. What is God saying to me and
you? Your redemption, your redemption
came at an awful price. It wasn't just the, you know,
the calm, somehow putting to death, no,
it was a violent death. Never has there been a more cruel
form of death and crucifixion. And what's the Lord, what is
the Lord saying to me and you about that? Does He just want
us to be offended by that? No. He's telling us something
about how it is He sees our sin. This is what's required for the
putting away of your sin. So here we are, brethren. Poor
old Peter. And yet, he's being used to actually
write the inerrant, inspired, infallible Word of God. God could
use a man like that. You see, God gets all the glory.
from using a man like that and a man like you and a man like
me. In God's providence, he scattered
his children all over the world. He gathers them together in local
assemblies where they're able to worship together. He's elected
them according to his foreknowledge. He sanctified them by his spirit
and he's redeemed them through the obedience and the sprinkling
of the blood. of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's who we are. Our Heavenly Father, thank you
for your word. Bless it to the hearts of your
people. We ask it in Christ's name, amen. 23, let's stand together, number
23. So,