The Bible Baptist Church located
at 2015 Beulah Road in Madisonville, Kentucky would like to invite
you to listen to a message of the sovereign grace of God in
the Lord Jesus Christ by their pastor David Edmondson. My text this morning is found
in 1 Peter 1. If you have your Bible and can
follow along, I encourage you to do so. Beginning here in 1
Peter 1, we have three verses before us that I want us to look
at. Peter, speaking here of salvation, gives us two things that must
be divinely revealed to us in order for us to be forever reconciled
to God. And here they are. First thing,
man. The sinner cannot save himself. And secondly, salvation is of
the Lord. It always comes back to those
two things. That's the message of this book
that we call the Bible. Verse 23, Peter writes, being
born again. That's what being saved is. It's
being born again. You see, for the child of God,
there are two births. First, the believer is born physically. And secondly, the believer is
born spiritually. We must be born again. That's what the Lord told Nicodemus.
You must be born again. Every child has a parent. We're
not self-created. That which is born of the flesh
is flesh. We have earthly father and earthly
mother. And birth is the gateway by which
we enter into this natural physical life. And it's the same spiritually. We're not self-created that way
either. That which is born of the spirit
is spirit. To be born again is to be born
of God. Not everyone that is born physically
is born again spiritually. Some are born once, but some
are born twice. All of us are naturally and physically
born, but only the elect chosen of God are born again, born twice. All of us are born dead in trespasses
and sin, but only some are born again spiritually and eternally
into newness of life. Now, I want to know how sinners
can be born again. Don't you? Peter goes on to tell
us how in verse 23. He writes, being born again,
not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible. You see, because
of the fall of our corrupted father Adam, our first birth
is corruptible. Now that word corruptible means
dead, decaying, perishing. And in this physical birth, we're
not living, but we're dying. God appoints how many breaths
we'll take in our life, and with each breath that we take, we
make the number of our total breaths less. Our pulse, our
heartbeat, is a beating funeral march to the grave. Our lives
are like the hourglass, the sand is emptying down very fast. We are born of decaying, corruptible
seed, but The new birth, the second birth is quite different.
When we are born again, not of corruptible seed, we are born
of incorruptible seed, and it's alive and immortal and imperishable. What makes the spiritual birth
different? Peter tells us, by the Word of God, which liveth
and abideth forever. And the Word of God is just that.
It's the Word of God. It's God's Word to us. This is what God tells us about
life. This is what God tells us about
natural, physical life. And this is what God tells us
about eternal, spiritual life. All of us who are born of a woman
are born under the law. We've offended God's law. We
have offended God's holy justice and the wages of our offense
against God's law and his justice is dead. Every man and woman
born of a man and a woman fulfilled the desires of their flesh and
their mind and are by nature, nature. the children of wrath,
even as others, Ephesians 2, 3. By nature, by physical birth,
born under the rudiments of sin, we are children of wrath, even
as others. However, the second birth gave
us a nature too. Now will that nature also die?
No. No, it's born of incorruptible
seed. It's not like the first birth
at all, born of corruptible seed. The new nature is born incorruptible. It's not born of the seed of
man and woman. It's born of the seed of God,
who is incorruptible. You see, God has infused His
own life in us, and that's what quickens us, makes us alive.
That incorruptible Word of God produces an incorruptible life. And the child of God has a new
nature that never dies. The child of God will never see
death. Christ, who is in them, is the
immortality in the life, and whosoever liveth and believeth
in Christ shall never die. Believest thou this?" That's
what the Lord Jesus asked in John 11, 26. Now remember what
I said in the beginning. Man cannot save himself. and
salvation is of the Lord. Now, how do I know that to be
true? Peter tells us right here in our text, verse 24, for all
flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of
grass. The grass withereth and the flower
therefore falleth away. Now what does grass do? Well,
it happens in my yard every year. The grass withers and the flower
thereof falls away. Our flesh is as grass, it withers
away. Our glory is like a flower, it
falls away. So what hope then do any of us
have of being saved? This is the only hope that any
of us have, verse 25. But the word of the Lord endureth
forever. And this is the word which by
the gospel is preached unto you. Now the only hope that we have
of redemption is the preaching of the gospel of God's word.
Paul wrote in First Corinthians 121 that in the wisdom of God,
it pleased God. by what the world calls foolishness,
that being preaching, God is pleased to save them that believe.
It pleased God by the preaching of His word. It pleased the Lord
by the preaching of the gospel to save them whose flesh withers
like grass, to save them whose glory fails and falls by the
preaching of God's word, which endures forever. What endures
forever? The eternal God and His eternal
word. And the preaching of the cross
is to them that perish foolishness, but to them that are saved, it's
the power of God. 1 Corinthians 1 verse 18 and
verse 21. You see, the word of God is quick.
That word means alive and it's powerful and it's sharper than
any two-edged sword. It can penetrate into the thoughts
and the intents of the heart. Hebrews 4.12. Now, what is a
two-edged sword? Pretty simple, it's a sword that
has two edges. It has two cutting sides, two
cutting edges. And that's exactly what we see
here in our text. We see that God's word is two-edged. First, it reveals the inability
of man. No man can come to Christ that
he might have life. Man doesn't have the ability
to come. And secondly, it reveals God's sovereignty and salvation. All flesh is grass. Grass withers. Man's glory fades like a flower. Man cannot save himself. But
God and His Word abide us forever. God alone can save sinners. And
that's the problem with preaching today. So-called preachers tell
us what men should do for God instead of what God must do for
them. One day the apostles asked our Lord, Who then can be saved? And our Lord said, with men it's
impossible, but with God, all things are possible. Men and
women go about to establish their own righteousness. Why do men
and women do that? Because they're ignorant of God's
righteousness and they will not submit unto the righteousness
of God. And that's the problem. Men by
nature will not submit. They will not bow to what God's
word says. Jesus Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness. Who is Christ the end of the
law for? To everyone that believes. Believes
what? That the Word of God abides forever. Now, if you're gonna do something
for God, it must be perfect in order for Him to accept it. And
we cannot provide that which is perfect. Therefore, salvation
belongeth unto the Lord. His blessing is upon His people,
Psalm 3a. But the salvation of the righteous
is of the Lord. How are they righteous? He, Christ,
is their strength in the time of trouble, Psalm 37, 39. You
know, preachers today plead with men to do something for God,
but the prophets of old pleaded with God to do something for
them. They pleaded with God to show mercy. Do men think that
they're doing something for God when they supposedly let God
have His way and give Jesus their heart and make Jesus their Lord?
How can you let God have His way when God can already do whatsoever
He wills? How are you going to give to
Christ something when everything already belongs to Him? How are
you going to make Jesus Lord when God made him Lord before
the foundation of the world? How is one going to do any of
these things when they are dead in trespasses and sin? In 1 Timothy
chapter 1, Paul wrote, I obtained mercy. You see, the mercy of
God is something that has become common today. Preachers have
obligated God to be merciful. They claim that God is obligated
to be merciful to sinners. Is that what the Word of God
teaches? No. God shows mercy on whom He will. God has compassion on whom He
will. God is obligated to nothing or
no one because grace is unmerited. Mercy is undeserved compassion. God's not obligated to forgive
sinners. It's at His discretion that He
does so. In verse 13, Paul said, I was
a blasphemer, one who spoke irreverently about God. He called Christ an
imposter and a deceiver. Paul said, I was a persecutor,
not just content to speak evil things of Christ, but he acted
out his evil intent to those he persecuted. He threatened,
he slaughtered, he destroyed those who called on the name
of Christ. Paul said, I was injurious, not just using words, but force
and balance with the words that he used. He made havoc of the
church. He pulled men and women out of
their homes and threw them into prison while he even held the
coats of those who stoned Stephen. Paul continued, I obtained mercy. In spite of being a blasphemer,
a persecutor, in spite of doing injury to others, he obtained
mercy. He didn't say I earned mercy
because mercy cannot be earned. He didn't say I deserve mercy.
Mercy and grace are undeserved. He didn't say, I merited mercy. Mercy is unmerited. He said,
I obtained mercy. I received mercy. I acquired
mercy. Mercy was given to me. Mercy
was a gift to me. Mercy was purchased for me by
another. I obtained mercy. And the sinner obtains mercy
for one reason only, by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's
not only abundant, it exceeds abundance. And the grace of our
Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love, which is
in Christ Jesus. God is able to do exceeding abundantly
above all we could think or ask. But that's not all. This abundance
of grace is accompanied with the faith and the love of God,
which is in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying. It
can be trusted. It can be believed. It's worthy
of being accepted, worthy of all acceptation. What is it?
That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, Paul said,
of whom I am chief. And that's how every believer
sees themselves as a sinner. And that is who Christ came to
save. You have been listening to a
message by David Edmondson, the pastor of Bible Baptist Church
in Madisonville, Kentucky. If you would like a copy of this
message or to hear other messages of God's free, sovereign grace
in Christ, you can write to our mailing address at P.O. Box 652
Madisonville, Kentucky 42431. or log on to our website at FreeGraceRadio.com. If you would like to come and
worship with us, we meet at 2015 Beulah Road, Madisonville, Kentucky,
and our service times are Sunday morning Bible study at 10 o'clock
a.m., worship services begin at 11 o'clock a.m., Wednesday
evening services at 7 o'clock p.m., Please tune in again next
Sunday morning at 10 o'clock AM for another message of God's
free and sovereign grace in the Lord Jesus Christ.