if you'd like to turn with me
to that chapter that we have read this evening 1 Peter and
I was reading this recently and so often you see words that are
familiar and then occasionally something you read catches your
attention and that's how for now it is with me and it were
these words in verse 17 and if you call on the Father and I
thought let's look at these words look into it if you call on the
Father and I looked into the Greek here because there are
a number of words that are translated call in the New Testament and
it's the emphasis of this is call upon the Father. It's not just calling, not just
call out as it were, but it's actually calling upon the name
of the Father is really the emphasis and that made me think about
things that we read in the Old Testament and in the context
of prayer and worship and I think that's important and you may
may occur to you. In Genesis chapter 4 and verse
26 we get the first reference in the scripture to calling upon
the name of the Lord and I think that in that context is very
very important. If we could just turn to that Genesis 4 and verse 26 here of
course we have a son to Adam and Eve Seth and we read unto
Seth to him also there was born a son and he called his name
Enos then we read this then men began to call upon the name of
the Lord that is significant because the line of Seth we come
to see in Genesis, of course, was a line of faith, a line of
true worship of God. There were many other, we know,
lines there of early days when men were not going to serve God. We know that there were many
lines of wickedness and therefore in the days of Noah, the Lord
had to destroy mankind. So strange, isn't it? But the
line of Seth were those and Noah was of that line that called
upon the name of the Lord and so we see significance in those
words, in that context this is, if you like, an acknowledging
of God and who He is and of the need to worship God as He is
and I read that in the context here, this is what Peter is saying
And if you call on the Father, it's call upon the name of the
Father. If you've come to worship him, and it's without respect,
he says, be very careful. That's what it is. There's a
warning here that we should be careful. It's a true warning. Another occasion, it's another
great occasion, is, and I've been reading it recently among
kings, is in chapter 18. And you all know that great chapter
where Elijah was faced with the prophets of Baal. and it's again
very instructive to us how he did that. Remember that he mocked
of course the priest of Baal. It's verse 24 and he says to
them you call on the name of your gods and I will call on
the name of the Lord and the God that answereth by fire let
him be God And all the people answered and said, it is well
spoken. And if you read the commentators,
they say, well, they couldn't really not accept the challenge,
could they? If you think about it, this was
the people. It wasn't the prophets. It wasn't the priests. This was
the people. But it wasn't just you call to
God. It was call upon the name of
the Lord. That's who he was going to call
upon. He was going to call upon the
name They can call upon Baal, and of course we know Baal is
a fiction, invented by Satan, that he called upon the name
of the Lord, and of course the Lord answered, answered by fire,
and in this book we know the destruction of Baal worship. And of course in the New Testament
there, just one more example here, there's the call by faith,
we see that in Acts 2 and verse 21. when Peter is speaking on
the day of Pentecost. And he says, it shall come to
pass that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall
be saved. And I think that's quite important
here. What we see in those words is
a true expression of faith. This isn't whoever makes a decision,
whoever fills up a card, whoever does this, whoever joins the
church. Calling upon the name of the Lord is really saying
who's got real faith in God and is declaring it. It's not just
a calling out, it's a calling upon the name of the Lord. It's
a recognition of God, who he is and the significance of the
name of God. It's terribly important and I
was just thinking about other things that Peter says here in
this, a couple of verses, I was verses 17 to 19 in particular
that I wanted to look at, this is verse 17, call upon the name
of the Lord, but as we lead into those verses we see here, but
as he which hath called you, so we call upon the name of the
Lord, but he has called us and he is holy and we are asked also
to be holy and you have again to look into that particular
word and the word for holiness is related to the word for separation
which is very much the same root as the word that the Greeks use
for saint and a saint of God is somebody who is separated
and we know that means separated from the world, separated to
God and for the blessing of God and it's also the same root word
for our understanding of sanctification whatever people might teach and
think about sanctification the root of it is being set aside
for the service of God and these things are closely related and
so we come and we look carefully, God is holy He's not like us. He's separated from us. He lives
in that light that cannot be approached. And we have to be
a separated people, a holy people in this world. People talk about
the Christian faith when you hear it on the media. They have
no understanding of this. They want to be like the world.
And they want the church, as you know, in the debates going
on, they want us in the matters of sexuality and marriage and
all the rest of it, they want us to be like the world. Just
like them. Why can't the church be loving
and embrace all these things? That's not what the Word of God
says, is it? The Word of God says we are to be holy. And what
is it to be holy? It's to be like God, isn't it?
That was set forth. Who is that perfect representation
of God set before us? Isn't it Jesus? We have to, as
you were, try to live like Him and not like the world. The world
would love the church to conform. Oh, if we embraced all the things
they're doing, oh, they would love us. They would give us time
on the media, but they want to attack us, we know. Because we
are going one way, We're going God's way, the way of holiness,
and the world we know is going the devil's way. It's going the
opposite direction. We cannot play fast and loose in the world.
If that was never clear in our country's history, it is incredibly
clear to us now, and it is going to be difficult for us. But we
have to be holy. because God is holy. If we're
going to call upon his name and we read that he judges all of
our works too, we have to be extremely careful so we're not
like those in the world. We need to be reminded of this
and he's no respect of persons, we read in verse 17, who judges
according to every man's work. He sees how we are He sees whether
we're living the life of faith. We cannot deceive God. There
are people who pretend to be believers, pretend to be living
the life of faith. You may have met some, but they
are found out, and they're caught out. Rather, and often they're
very proud, rather we're told in verse 17 here, we've got to
pass our time of sojourning here, not only in seeking to live like
as God would have us, to be holy people, which is not easy for
us, is it? It's a challenge for us. We live
our sojourn here, our time here, in fear. That should be a mark
of the people of God. We are in fear. That right fear
or reverence of God, that's kind of gone from our society. I'm
not saying we ever had it in large amounts, but I can think
back quite a long time now to my younger days and there was
more respect perhaps and perhaps genuine fear for the things of
God and for the place of religion in the land you know when King
Joseph called the nation to prayer because of Dunkirk and other
things in the war the churches were filled People felt there
was a need to go and pray, there was a respect, they could see
there was remarkable deliverances with this nation, undeserved,
remarkable that we survived the war and perhaps people felt that
there was the hand of God. But we don't have that now. You
and I, we should be living as those who walk in the fear of
God. It should mark Christians out.
We should have a genuine reverence, not a superstitious sort of religious
spirit that we put about us that we work up and pretend we're
holy. We can't do that in reality. We have to walk in the fear of
God because of our redemption. and I love in verse 18 you know
we were redeemed not redeemed with corruptible
things our religion and faith isn't a worldly faith you know
we look around us what is what is religion and it hasn't changed
from from what Peter says here has it to our day now he says
silver and gold you go into I won't mention other denominations and
they some of them have their silver and gold I've been into
St Peter's If you want to see silver and gold, you go and be
as a tourist, visit St Peter's in Rome. Yet the Apostle Peter
said, silver and gold have I none. That's rather where I would rather
be. But I have faith in Christ, that's
my silver, that's my gold. and we are delivered from vain
conversation. I like that expression vain conversation. If you look at some of the modern
versions they give actually sometimes they do give quite interesting
translations of this and I think in this particular case it's
worth perhaps just looking at what they say. They say it's futile ways or aimless conduct
or foolish behavior and I think all of those are quite acceptable
ways of looking at this we don't use conversation as to the way
we live and conduct ourselves but that's it's not speaking
so it's just how we are as people the way we live and present ourselves
but we weren't redeemed with corrupt or things our religion
isn't isn't a worldly religion And this is necessary to be said
to the Jews, the dispersed Jews that Peter is writing to. They'd
be an Asia Minor, because they were still looking to their religion,
to their scrolls, and of course they looked to Jerusalem. They
may not have been as much silver and gold, but they had their
worship, they had a temple, they had their priests, they had their
offerings, and they depended on this. This is what they relied
on. I mean, I'm sure you, as I've
said recently, everybody has their own religion. I'm sure
when you talk to people, they might not agree with you, but
they believe something. They hold on to something. or
whatever it is, sometimes it's not very much. I've worked with
Jewish people and their hope, really, is that they're Jewish. it's no more than that and they
just think because they're Jewish that God will be merciful to
them as long as they are of the faith and they still have that
sense of their identity as separate from everybody else that is their
hope that's their silver and their gold but my experience
has been everybody in the end because we are all spiritual
that's how God made us I think I was saying that on Sunday,
because we all have a religion, really, everybody does. They
may say we're not religious or atheistic, but they have some
kind of hope, something that they're building their lives
upon. But it's not good enough, and
it won't do them any good at all. There's not a foundation,
silver and gold, your vain traditions. No. What is it we stand on? What is it that distinguishes
us? What is it that enables us? and we facilitated to come and
call upon the name of God it can only be this verse 19 the
precious blood of Christ without that we couldn't approach God
people seek to call upon God we're told in our day it's multi-faith
aren't we? all the religions they all take
you to God it's God hearing them there's only one way we can approach
God he won't accept any other way whatever people tell you
only through the precious blood of Christ and again here for
Jews he is that lamb without blemish and without spot And
there's these lovely pictures of Christ, aren't there, in Revelation.
We see Him in the first chapter, that glorious, indescribable
vision of the Son of God, all His glory and brightness. And yet we also see Him as the
Lamb that had been slain. And both of those things are
true. And then we see Him as King of Kings, Lord of Lords,
in chapter 19, on that horse with the sharp two-edged sword,
out of His men, coming to rule and to judge. And he's all of
these things. But most of all it's his blood
shed for us and without that we would have no hope. We're
not saved by these corruptible things, aimless conduct, foolish
behavior. Now, we would say, oh, we're
in the Church of Christ, we listen to these things. But there are
dangers in the church. We must never think that in a
church people can be absolutely clear on the things I'm trying
to say. because we all know and I know people who and they rely
on the form rather than the true substance of the Christian. They
rely on we've been coming to this church since we were children
and we come to all the services and we come to the Bible study
and we read our Bible every day and so on. It's not enough. It's not good enough and sadly
we know that even amongst strict Baptists We have those who have
testified to Christ. We have the lovely sight of people
being baptised recently. and we have those who come to
the table and then we have those who just attend and it's not
enough to attend are we for Christ? are we not? we have to be those
who are separated we have to be the saints we have to be identified
we have to depend we have to rely upon the Lord Jesus Christ
and by the grace of God by faith which only He can grant we call
upon the name of the Lord. That's what we should do when
you pray at home and I pray at home. That's what we do when
we come to worship. This is what we are doing. We're
calling upon the name of the Lord. This is not vanity. This
is true religion, and we try and avoid that. Salvation is
not of the will of man. There are people who still think
it is. They still think that we've got to manipulate people,
we've got to persuade people, we've got to get them to do things,
fill up things, say things, say this prayer and you're a Christian,
I've been to those meetings. It's not enough. That's not calling
upon the name of the Lord, is it? That's something else. No, we see here, Galatians 1
verse 4, He gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver
us from the present evil world. And what's the basis for all
of that? According to the will of God our Father. God's will
to save. And if God is going to save,
He will save. And He has purchased a people
for Himself in all righteousness in Christ. And He will save.
And it is God's will. The thing about sovereign grace,
those doctrines that we believe, is that we believe that this
is the work of God. Yes, of course it's the responsibility
of the church to set forth the gospel, but the salvation, that's
God's work. Jesus came to seek and to save
that which is lost. And when people say, oh, we don't
like your doctrines, we don't like this sovereignty of God,
we don't like the idea of election, well, that's what Jesus said.
He said, again, no one can come to him and accept the Father
draw him. And when he said that, as you know from John chapter
6, people ceased to walk with him anymore. And he asked Peter,
he said, will you go away? And what did Peter say? He said,
well, you've got the words of life, where else can we go? I
trust that's how we feel. The Lord Jesus Christ has the
words of life. We depend, this is the basis
for our faith, on the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's all part of an eternal
plan. If you watch the Horizon programs
on television, they present a cosmos, a universe, or the climate of
the Earth as if we live in chaos. Everything around us, it all
happens by chance. all of existence came about by
some sort of explosion and we don't quite know and then it
all magically came together but it was we're still really living
in a random chaotic universe and and so they go on and they
talk about how this world is out of control and the weather
systems are out of control and the oceans are out of control
everything's out of control apparently that's but we reread our word
of god verse 20 here, we say no, the work of Christ who verily
was foreordained before the foundation of the world but was manifest
in these last times for you. Now in the Word of God there
are certainties you will not find in the world and these certainties
are all pulled together and bound up in the person and work of
Christ. When we read that God upholds
all things by His right arm, by His power This is exercised in and through
Christ. And Christ had the power, we
know, over creation. He could calm the storm or whatever. He had that tremendous power. People will not accept supernatural
power, but you cannot explain existence at all. It's absolutely
illogical, philosophically, without understanding that there is supernatural
power. You cannot explain. They're trying, aren't they?
All sorts of ways to try and explain the universe as it is,
we won't go into it, but you can't actually. It's beyond the
explanations because it witnesses the power of God. You see, there
is a purpose. God has a purpose, you know,
under heaven for all things. God's great purpose is that he
will have a people to himself in all righteousness and he has
purchased them by the precious blood of Christ that is the plan
that is the will of God and Christ came which was foreordained before
the foundation of the world the remarkable thing is that he had
a people chosen as an eternal plan of salvation that was established
before the foundation of the world And that flies in the face
of so much of what is taught as evangelicalism. Now, I'm not
going to speak against people who proclaim the gospel. We mustn't.
If people proclaim Christ, I'm very happy. There are many who
come to chapels like this, including myself, who were converted and
brought to a knowledge of Christ through the agency of people
who weren't walking in sovereign grace. So we don't condemn the
preaching of the gospel. All we need to do is understand
the truth. and we read that as we often
go back to Ephesians and in chapter 1 verse 3 Blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who have blessed us with
all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ according as
he have chosen us in him before the foundation of the world and
that we should be holy and without blame before him in love having
predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to
himself according to the good pleasure of his will." And this
was, we see, he was chosen remarkably, how could that be? Before the
foundation of the world. That's difficult for us to grasp,
but that is the love of God. Why is it, if we're Christians,
is it because we love God and we decided we were going to follow
Him Or was it that he first loved us? That's really the order of
things. God first loved us and it was
the will of God and the will of the Trinity that Christ should
come. He was foreordained, you see, before the foundation of
the world, but was manifest in these last times, says Peter,
for you, for you to come to faith in Him. That's the greatness
of the Gospel. It should be a very humbling
thing for us, shouldn't it? And it's one of those things
that should lead us to want to call upon the Lord. It's all
of God. It's God who saves us, if we're
Christians. It's God who will keep us. If
we think that we're going to keep ourselves in the Christian
world, that's not right thinking. We have to depend on Him. We
have to own our weakness. We have to go back to Him. Now
Christ, of course, is set forth and declared and is revealed
to the human heart and that's by God. Faith is a gift of God. Faith, you'll be told by some,
is something we've got to work up and exercise ourselves and
somehow when we exercise it, God accepts us and makes our
spirits alive. But that's putting again the
truth back to front. Rather, God comes and grants
us faith. He gives us faith. God the Holy
Spirit moves upon us. We were lost and dead in our
trespasses and sins but God comes and we are translated from the
kingdom of darkness into that kingdom of light. Then we cry
out to God, then we call upon the name of God, because there's
life in us. Then we repent. You go to the
evangelical tent meetings, they tell you to repent first, but
you can't. You can't repent until the Spirit of God moves in your
heart and stirs you to repentance. And all these things are revealed
by the grace of God. And that's what a church like
this stands for. We want to honour God. We want
to own that God is sovereign. We want to worship Him. We want
to say religion is all of God. And we call this sovereign grace.
God is sovereign in all the matters of coming to faith and living
the Christian life. And it does mark us out. Some people don't
like it. But by the grace of God, if so, God is working with
us. We do feel, don't we? Remarkably,
we feel drawn to him. Why should a human heart, which
is so evil really, be drawn to God, to want to come to him,
to worship him? Because it's the grace of God
that light shed abroad in our hearts. I trust we do feel that,
why we feel we want to pray. And thus we must call upon the
name of the Lord, but we do it with godly fear. You can go to
some places and some of the prayers are terribly arrogant, the way
they address God, We should come very carefully. Even in our Thursday
nights, we come carefully to God. And God will hear us. God wants to hear our prayers.
Let me just make one final reference. Jeremiah 29, verses 11 to 13. That's the wonderful thing, that
God longs to hear our prayers. We know that He is going to work
His perfect will, longs and desires that we pray verses 11 to 13
for I know the thoughts that I think towards you saith the
Lord thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you an expected
end then shall ye call upon me and you shall go and pray unto
me and I will hearken unto you and you shall seek me and find
me when you search for me with all your heart." Aren't they
lovely words? And isn't that, this is what I'm trying to say,
we call upon the name of the Lord, and what does the Lord
say? I will hear you. I will hearken unto you. I'm
not going to go, he says, come seek me. Seek me and you will
find me. When you search for me with all
your heart, that's what we have to do, don't we? Day by day.
Sometimes we don't, in the flesh, don't feel like that, do we?
We're distracted, we're busy. But God says, seek me. Sounds simple. Seek me. That's
what God says. Call upon my name. And find me. Oh, we want to find God, don't
we? Isn't that what you want to do? Isn't that what I want
to do? I don't want religion. I want to find God. But we search Him with all our
heart. Is that what we do? Oh, it's
a challenge to us. But He hears us. And in all this,
there's a great confidence, isn't there? Because it's all bound
up in that precious blood, that righteousness of Christ. And
just one final word, I think, in all I try to set before you,
in all these things before God, there's always an urgency. The
Christian faith is always urgent. It's always important. It's always
the top priority. It doesn't come second to everything
else. These are the things of God.
They come first in our lives. That, I trust, will mark us out
from those around us. But rather, we love these words. If you call on the Father, who
without respect of persons judges according to every man's worth
past the time of your sojourning here in fear for as much as you
know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver
and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your
fathers but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb
without blemish and without spot who barely was foreordained before
the foundation of the world that was manifest in these last times
for you." I love that. For you. His particular redemption. You find it all through the scriptures.
These are the doctrines that we love. These are the doctrines
we set forth. We thank God for his word and
we're going to