Turn with me now if you would
to 1 Peter chapter 2. 1 Peter chapter 2. I love how the scripture tells
us the way it is. Don't you love that about the
Word of God? It just flat lays it out there. Really, that's what the scripture
does. It goes straight to the root, the heart of the matter. The scripture does not leave
anything up to private interpretation. Nothing. Nothing. It tells all of mankind who and
what God is. all of mankind. It tells all
of mankind who and what He is. This word plainly declares that
God is God. And it plainly declares that
man is sin. All men and women. It doesn't
pull any punches, does it? It just lays it out there. It says to all men and women,
this is what you are. This is what you've done. None
of it's good. None good. No, not one. And it
says, this is what you still do. The apostle Paul, God's apostle
said, I am the chief of sinners still. It says to men and women,
this is what the scripture says to men and women, I know everything
about you. We just read a moment ago, David
said, you know, you see my thoughts. Wherever I go, whatever I'm doing,
you're watching me. The dark can't hide me. The dark's
just like the daylight. I know everything about you.
That's what the scripture says. After God quickens a sinner to
life. All right. God, through his word,
has a people and he will quicken them to life. And after God reveals
Christ to the sinner, not religion, but Christ. After he reveals
God manifest in the flesh, that's who Christ is. After he reveals Christ to be
the Savior of his elect people. That's who he came to save and
that's who he saved. After he reveals why Christ came,
it was to pay the debt that his people couldn't pay. They had
a debt before God. They were sinners before God
and they could not pay their debt. So Christ came to pay it
in full And that's what he did. After God calls a sinner to himself,
his frankness, the scripture is so frank and so to the point,
his frankness to his own and concerning his own doesn't change.
It stays that way. He still tells it like it is.
He still says to His people, I know everything about you.
Christ died for them, has quickened them, given them life. He still
says to them, I know everything about you. I know the secrets
of your heart. I know what's going on in there. Tonight here in 1 Peter chapter
2, he is going to tell us what it is. Alright, he's going to
tell what is going on inside the hearts of his people, his
quickened people that he has come to. Just like when that
woman at the well, don't you love that story? That woman at
the well, the Lord came to her and she thought she was gonna
do him a favor. You know, would you like for
me to draw you some water? He said, you don't know who you're
talking to. You don't know what you're asking. If you knew who
this was you were talking to, you would ask of me. And then
he proceeded to tell her everything about her. And none of it was
good. And finally, he revealed himself
to her and she went running into the city, crying to everybody,
come see a man. And this is what she told him.
She said, he knows everything about me. When she went running
in, that's what she said. And that's what all of God's
people find out. You know, before God reveals himself, Man thinks
he can put up a front for God. He thinks that he can shine everything
up on the outside and look good for God. But once God reveals
to a sinner, I know everything about you. I see straight through
it. That woman realized that and
told everybody. He knows everything about you.
He just told it to me just like it was. Well, according to the
truth of God, this is how it is with you. All right, God is
gonna tell His people, this is how it is with you and how it
is with me, all right? He's just gonna tell it like
it is. Concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, 1 Peter 2, verse 7 says,
unto you therefore which believe, He is precious. The scripture says, let me just
tell you how it is with you. All right, I'm gonna tell you
what's in your heart. This is what you feel. If God
has put faith in you and caused you to believe everything that
he has to say about Christ, in all of his glory, and all of
his majesty and all of his honor for who he is and what he has
done for sinners. Not the way man perceives him
to be in all of his weakness and all of his helplessness and
all of his pleading, begging man to let him do things. Once
God reveals Christ in all of his glory, the God man, and everything
that he accomplished to put away the sin of his people. If God
has put that faith in Christ that says, I believe he is all
my hope. I believe he is my salvation. Then the scripture says, I'll
just go ahead and tell you how you feel about him. Unto you therefore which believe,
he is precious. He is so precious. He is so precious. Is that not so? He is so precious. The title of this message and
what I want us to dwell on for just a few minutes is, What Makes
Christ So Precious? That sounds like a nice thing
to dwell on, doesn't it? What is it? What it is? The scripture's gonna tell us.
what it is that makes Christ so precious to us. He is so precious to his people. He is so precious. When things
are going good, God has a people and they continue life on this
earth, looking to him, following him. And when things are going good
in this life, what we think is good, usually what we see to
be good is not necessarily what God sees to be good. But in those
times that we believe are good times, He is precious. And when things are going bad, what we think is bad, Usually
what we see to be bad is not what God sees to be bad. But
in those times that we believe are bad times, he is so precious. He's precious. In the day seasons,
he's precious. In the night seasons, he's precious. As the creator of heaven and
earth and all things, That's who He is. The Sovereign Almighty
God. That's who Jesus Christ is. As
He is in all creation, He's precious. And as a newborn baby lying in
a manger, He's precious. As the man who walked this earth,
He's precious. When you think about Him, When
you think about him from eternity, think about him as he was in
eternity. God, who spoke all of this into existence, in time
made humbled himself, grew in stature and in favor with
God and man. Everything He did as He walked
this earth. I adore reading the Gospels,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. I love just the visual, the stories
of Him walking on this earth. Everything about Him is precious.
He is precious. His suffering, you think about,
we can't enter into it, but just dwell on Him in the garden of
Gethsemane. That suffering, that agony, what
He was doing for us, it's precious. His death, you think about Him
on the cross as He hung there, and His own people were railing
on Him and spitting on Him and mocking Him. That was His own
people. Not long after that in Acts,
Thousands of them were saved. As he hung there looking at them,
he said, Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. Everything he said while he hung
there, his glory and saving one right before he bowed his head
and gave up the ghost, everything about it was precious. The moment
he walked out of his own grave, that moment was precious. Can you imagine the holiness
of that moment? Can you imagine the angels? Like
when the Queen of Sheba went to see Solomon and when she saw
him ascend up to the throne, there was no more spirit left
in her. Can you imagine the angels standing there watching him walk
out of the tomb? His ascension was precious. As he raised up, he was blessing
them, praying for them. As he is right now, he is high
and lifted up, seated on his throne, in sovereign control
of everything. As he is right now, he's precious. Verse seven says, unto you therefore
which believe. Unto you which believe. He is precious and he is. He is. We all love it, I know
we do, those of us who believe. We all love it when the Lord
lets us leave everything but Him and enter into Him for just
a moment. It's precious. Now, the scripture
has told us who believe what we feel about Christ. It just
told us, this is what you feel about Him. For the next few minutes,
the scripture is gonna tell us why we feel that way. All right,
let's see what it is about Christ that makes him so precious to
us. Much of it is right here in Peter. The Lord used Peter to tell most
of it. Look with me if you would at
2 Peter 1. 2 Peter 1, what makes Christ precious
to those of us who believe? Well, the first thing for us
is the ability itself to believe. All right, verse 1, 2 Peter 1,
verse 1 says, Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To them that have obtained like precious faith with us through
the righteousness of God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. To them that have obtained like
precious faith with us. Faith makes Christ precious to
us. Without faith, it is impossible
for Christ to be precious to us. Man by nature, the natural
man, does not think Christ is precious. That's not the natural
nature of a man. It takes God-given faith to see
Him to be that. Faith is precious in and of itself
because It's Christ's gift to us. It comes directly from Him
to us. Man also naturally thinks that
it's something he conjures up from within himself, but that's
not so. It's a direct gift from our Lord
to us, and He only gives it to His people. Only His people possess
faith. The world can have faith in the
world. It can do that. Faith, and it
can believe in and believe on the world, but only God's people
have the ability to believe in and believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ. The saving faith, that by grace
are you saved through faith, that saving faith that Christ
gives, that's not something that a man can produce. We can't create
it, we can't increase it, Every grain of faith that we end up
must be given to us personally by Christ Himself. That's what
makes the faith precious. It's a personal gift from Him.
I have certain things, I know that everybody does, usually
they're not expensive, but I have certain things that were given
to me that are very precious to me because of who gave it
to me. Um, brother Scott Richardson,
some of you. knew him, but you've heard of
him, a dear preacher of the gospel for so long. My father is now
the pastor where he was, you know, for all those years. But
toward the end of his life, Brother Scott came up to my dad one time,
reached into his pocket, and he pulled out a pocket knife.
And he said, I want you to have my pocket knife. He said, this is just something
for you to remember me by. And my dad said, Scott, I love
you. I don't need a pocket knife to
remember you by." And he said, well, I want you to have it anyway.
So he gave it to him and dad carries it. And he said, every
time he pulls out that pocket knife, he thinks of Scott. Well,
that's how it is with faith. It's precious because of who
gave it to us. It's precious because of what
it produces in us. It causes us to think on Him. It's something He gave to us
to remember Him by, and know Him by, and trust Him by. It's
what causes us to believe Christ, and not just believe in Him. Most people believe in Him. God's
people believe on Him. That means that it causes us
to cast our all on Him. And we see Him to be the only
hope that we have before God. He's the only hope we have. Our
hope is not in doing better. It's not in that. It's not in
being what we feel God requires for us to be. It's not in those
things. It's in Christ. It's in His blood, it's in His
life, everything He did for us. And that faith that causes us
to see that makes Him precious to us. His faith is precious
and it causes Him to be precious to all of His people. All right,
here's the next thing that makes Christ precious. Right here in
2 Peter 1 verse 4 says, whereby are given unto us Through this
faith, there are given unto us exceeding great and precious
promises. Through this precious faith,
we perceive and we believe all of these precious promises that
Christ has given to us in his word. The promises in his word
Make Him to be precious to us. The promises, all of these promises. We're standing on the promises.
We're holding to the promises. It's why we're here. It has been that way for every
generation of believers since believers began. The Lord told
Adam and Eve, they sinned against Him. They fell. They lost. And the Lord told them, I'm going
to bring victory back to you. And I'm going to bring redemption
back to you through the woman seed. And that's Christ. And
he told their son Abel, he said, if you bring the blood of the
lamb as your sacrifice, I'll have respect to your offering.
If that's what you offer, I'll have respect to your offering.
All through the Old Testament, all of those prophets, they said,
I know that my Redeemer's coming. And that's what we say. I know
He's coming back. I know He is. By faith. While our Lord was here, He said,
I'm going to prepare a place for you and I will come again
and receive you to myself. I'm coming back to get you. And
concerning all of God's people, it can be said, these all died
in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen
them afar off and were persuaded of them and embraced them and
confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Oh,
the promises of Christ. That's what makes him so precious
to us, these glorious promises. Look with me at 1 Peter chapter
1. 1 Peter 1 verse 18 says, 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, to you that believe his blood is
precious. That's just the fact of the matter.
To us who believe his blood is precious, priceless, infinite
value. Our life is in his blood. God, the father said, when I
see his blood, I'll pass over you. The fact that he would give it
at all, that's precious. The fact that he would give it
to us knowing what we were before him makes him precious to us,
that he would give it to us in spite of us. We're all sinners
saved by grace. We received blood that we were
not owed and did not deserve. The fact that it cost Him everything
to give it to us, it cost His life for ours, that makes His
blood precious to us, and it makes Him precious to us. Look
with me again at chapter two, this time verse two. It says,
as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that you may
grow thereby, If so be you have tasted that the Lord is gracious,
to whom coming as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men,
but chosen of God and precious. You also as lively stones are
built up a spiritual house, and holy priesthood to offer up spiritual
sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ, wherefore also
it is contained in the scripture, behold, I lay in Zion a chief
cornerstone, elect, precious, and he that believeth on him
shall not be confounded." His strength. His foundation, the
fact that He is our rock, that makes Him precious to us, and
it does. Just the thought of that makes
Him precious to me. His strength. The Lord has put us on Him, and
He's a rock. He'll stand forever. The scripture that Peter is quoting
right there is Isaiah 28. Don't turn over there, but it
says, behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried
stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure
foundation. What does he mean a tried stone?
He means our rock was smitten. Our rock was broken. There is
a cliff in that rock. There's a place to hide in it. There's a place of safety in
it. Security. It means if any man is standing
on Christ, he's standing on the sure foundation of God. That
makes him precious. His faith that he gives to us
makes him precious to us. His promises that He's promised
us in this word makes Him precious to us. His blood that He abundantly
gave to cover our sin and to pay our debt makes Him precious
to us. His sure place of safety, we
have a sure place of safety. He has provided us that place
in Himself, the protection through His brokenness that makes Him
precious to us. And here's one more thing from
the Scripture that truly makes Him precious. We read it a minute
ago in Psalm 139. Go with me over there. Psalm 139 verse 17 says, How precious also are thy thoughts
unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they
are more in number than the sand. When I awake, I'm still with
Thee. Knowing that He thinks on us. This is the God of heaven we're
talking about. And just knowing, and this is
real. He does. Knowing that He thinks on us. That's precious. That is just
precious. The fact that He would individually
Not just collectively. You would think he doesn't have
time for that, but thank God he doesn't deal in time. There's
no time with him. With him, we individually have
all the time in the world. And he individually thinks on
every single one of his people. He knows us by name. He formed
us in the belly. He knows everything about us.
But that's just precious. Knowing that the number of thoughts
that He has had toward us is uncountable. That's just precious. He said
in verse 17, how great is the sum of them? These thoughts that
he's had toward us. How great is the sum of them? Verse 18, he said, if I should
count them, they are more in number than the sand. He didn't
say the sand of the seashore. He said the sand. How many grains of sand are there
on planet Earth? The seashore, the seafloor, and
the entire mainland. How many grains of sand are there
on planet Earth? David said, if I could count
them, your thoughts toward me would still be greater in number
than the sand. What are His thoughts toward
us? You know the answer, but turn over there and read it.
Jeremiah 29. Jeremiah 29, verse 11 says, For I know the thoughts that
I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace and not
of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall you 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 shall search for me with all your heart, and I
will be found of you, saith the Lord. And I will turn away your
captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations and
from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the Lord. and I will bring you again into
the place where I caused you to be carried away captive."
That's just precious. We are going to spend eternity
enjoying every little thing that makes Christ precious to us. That's how we're going to spend
eternity, every little detail about Him, about everything around
Him that makes Him precious to us. We're going to spend eternity
enjoying that. The Word of God has declared
it like it is. And this is not a question, this
is a statement. We wholeheartedly agree. God's people do. They just do. To us, therefore,
which believe, Christ is precious. And thank God He is. Thank God
He has made Him to be so with us. He didn't do it for everybody,
but He's done it with us. Thank God. All right, let's all
stand together.