Go with me, if you would, back
to 1 Peter chapter 2. 1 Peter chapter 2. When I was in my twenties, I
was working for a particular company. And one of my co-workers
made this statement, asked this question. We were all standing
around in a group, there was a group of us, and you know how
it goes, you've been in a group of people and everybody's kind
of waiting on everything to get started. Conversation is taking
place and different people are chiming in a little bit and Somebody
will say something and it turns the conversation Maybe a little
more serious and somebody else will say something. Well, that's
what happened the conversation turned serious and One of my
co-workers made this statement word for word Sometimes I wonder What are we
here for? What are we here for? What is the purpose of man? What is the purpose of man? What is life all about? If a person lives long enough,
he or she will ask that question at some point they will get to
a stage in life where they ask that question why are we here
what is the purpose in all this what is the purpose in life a
man or a woman will continue to ask that question until the
truth is revealed to them A man will continue seeking the answer
to that question until it's finally revealed to him. Why are we here? What is the purpose of man? Here's the answer. The glory of Christ, the worship of Christ, and the
witness of Christ. That's why we're here. The glory
of Christ, the worship of Christ, and the witness of Christ. I
believe that needs a sylla. I like to put that in my notes.
Just take a minute and just dwell on that. The glory of Christ,
the worship of Christ, the witness of Christ, Why has God put us on this earth? Why are we still here? Why has
God not taken us yet? If we belong to Him, what are
we here to do? What is the purpose? The glory
of Christ, the worship of Christ, the witness of Christ. All three
of those things take place in this statement right here. Three
words. This is our text tonight. It's
only three words. verse 4 says in 1st Peter 2 verse 4 it says
to whom coming to whom coming the glory of Christ the worship
of Christ the witness of Christ to whom coming to whom coming
when God gives life to a sinner It is evidenced by this, to whom
coming. That's how it's evidenced. It's
evidenced by who gets all of our glory, who gets all of our
worship, and who gets all of our witness, to whom coming. Now I wish that I could adequately
describe The deadness of man. I wish I could. I mean, I can't
even enter into it myself. It's not that I have it and I
can't describe it to anybody else. I wish we could for once
enter into the deadness of man. The hardness of man's heart. It is hard as a stone because
it's dead. This heart of flesh is so dead.
So dead. There is no movement in it. And we know this is true. All
we have to do is just take one second and look inside for one
second. We know this is so. There is no movement in man's
fleshly heart for the glory of Christ, the worship of Christ,
or the witness of Christ. Not naturally, it's not there.
All it can do is be dead. It just feel dead. That's all it can do. How can we get some understanding
of that deadness even though we'll never into the fullness
of it? How can we see some understanding
of it? It's in this. This heart glories
in being dead. It wants it. It thrives on it. It worships being dead. It witnesses being dead. It loves being dead. It craves being dead. It serves
death. It's just naturally prone to
death. It will not serve and crave and
love and witness Christ. It just will not do it. There
are some things that are essential to life. Human life. Physical life. Here are the top three. There
are many things that are essential to life. Here are the top three.
Air, water, food. Air, water, and food. You can
say to a dead man, breathe. Come on, breathe. Just breathe. He won't do it. He will not do
it. You can say, drink. Just swallow,
just drink. He won't do it. Come on, eat. Just eat. He will not do it. In that, He
evidences the fact that He's dead. That is His evidence that
He's dead. The same thing is true for a
man or a woman who is spiritually dead. Instead of breathe, we
can say, believe. Come on, just believe. Come on, come on, listen, just
believe. He won't do it. Drink the water of life freely. It's free. It's free. It's so good and it's
so wonderful. And it's so life-giving. It's
so eternal. He that drinks this water will
never thirst again. This will be the last drink of
water you ever need to take. Just drink the water of life.
He won't do it. Feed on Christ. Just feed on Christ. Just taste
His graciousness. Swallow it down into your soul
and delight in its fullness. We'll not do it. But if God ever
gives life, if God ever gives life, all of the evidences of
death will go away. All of them, all the evidences. Now, are you saying that bad
people will become good people? Those who do bad works, they'll
start doing good works. If God ever gives life, those
that do bad works will start doing good works. That is not
what I'm saying. That may take place. And I hope
that does take place. But a person who stops doing
bad things and starts doing good things, Humanly speaking, in
the flesh, that is not an evidence of going from death to life. Humanly speaking, in the flesh,
that is not a sign of a person going from death to life. Earthly speaking, people that
do bad things, they're just as physically, humanly alive as
anybody else. They just do bad things. The
evidences of death are the things that evidence, there's only one
place for you, the grave. Evidences of death. When God
gives spiritual life, all the spiritual evidences of death
go away. When God gives spiritual life,
all the evidences of spiritual death go away and this takes
place to whom coming to whom coming now i want us to see three
things about this number one where we come when god grants
life and life exists in a center and that center responds number
one where we come verse four says To whom? To whom? When God gives life, sinners
come to a person. We are coming to a person. We
are coming to a person. We are not coming to the doctrines
of grace. There was a man that I knew,
I used to know, and that's all he ever wanted to talk about,
was when he came, he had this time nailed down when he came
to the doctrines of grace. I understand what he meant by
that, but that man no longer sits under any place that I know
of that has anything to do with the truth. He just always talked
about when he came to the doctrines of grace. We are not coming to
the doctrines of grace. We are not coming to Calvinism. Do we believe the doctrines of
grace? Absolutely. Those five points that John Calvin
saw in the scriptures. Do we agree with John Calvin? Absolutely. But John Calvin wasn't
coming to Calvinism. That is so important to know.
John Calvin never came to Calvinism. Never. Neither do any of God's
people. We come to the person of the
Lord Jesus Christ. We come to Christ. Wretched sinners
come to the one that they were chosen to be in. God chose to
put his people into Christ. And he calls them and they come
to the place they were chosen to be. They come to Christ. The One that gave His life for
them. I will never be able to describe
the deadness of man. I'll never be able to describe
the glory that Christ gave His life for dead man. Never be able to enter into that. Not in this life. Gave His life. Gave His blood. Called them to Himself. Drew
all of those dead sinners to Himself. All those rock-hard,
stone, loving death, craving death. Drew them all to Himself. Washed them, cleansed them. He's
going to keep them all the way to the end. We are not coming
to salvation. We're coming to the Savior. We're
not coming to salvation. We're coming to the Savior. We're
not coming to a place called heaven. We're coming to a person
called heaven. We come to Him. We come to Him.
The God-man. Christ Himself. To whom? Coming. I've heard people say this and
you've heard people say this. I've got to get back in church. Got to get back in church. I
want to tell everybody, don't do that. Don't do that. If that's all that happens, we're
going to just bring greater damnation on ourselves. If all we do is
get back in church, we're going to make ourselves
to be two-fold more the children of hell than what we were before. Isn't
that what our Lord said? We are not coming to church. God's people who side with John
Calvin, they're not coming to the doctrines of grace. They're
not coming to Calvinism. They're not coming to salvation.
They're not coming to church. God's people do not come to church.
God's people are the church. And the church comes to Christ. Huge difference. To whom coming? To whom coming? We are not coming
to a change. We're not coming to a support
group. We're not coming to an influence. We're not coming to
a better way. We're coming to the only way. We're coming to the man, Christ
Jesus our Lord. To whom? Paul said, I know whom,
not what. I know whom, not what. That'd be so beneficial for some
to get a hold of. I know whom. I know whom. I have
believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which
I've committed unto Him against that day. Our Lord Himself said,
Come unto Me. Come unto Me. He did not say,
Come to John Calvin. Or He did not say, Come to the
Puritans. Men and women love to get those
old Puritan books Start digging deep in those things. He did
not say, come to the reformers. He did not say, come to the martyrs. He did not say, come to the apostles.
He said, come to me. I will give you rest. I will
give you rest. To whom? Coming. All right, now
this is the second thing I want us to see about God giving life. and removing the evidence of
spiritual death. Number two, verse four. To whom? Coming. To whom coming? That means we're
in the process. In the moment, right now. To
whom coming? Not to whom we came. to whom coming. When God gives
life, when He truly gives life and He removes the evidence of
death, sinners start coming to Christ. They start coming to
Christ. They don't say, I came to Christ. They say, I'm coming to Him right
now. I'm coming to Him right now. I need Thee every hour. Most gracious Lord. No tender
voice like Thine can peace afford. I need Thee. Oh, I need Thee. I don't need a date. I don't
need an experience. I don't want to hold on to those
things. You know, people have January the 5th, 1988. That was
the date. The experience was I had a car
wreck. I thought I was gonna die. While
I was sitting there waiting on them to cut me out, I came to
Christ. Great! What about today? What about today? Yesterday's over. God's people
say, I need to come to Him right now. I need to come to Him right
now. My life depends on a continual
coming. It depends on a continual coming. A moment ago, we mentioned air,
water, food. A man who is alive does not say,
and let's see if we can read between the spiritual lines here.
A man who is alive does not say, I remember a time about 20 years
ago, I took a breath of air. A man who is alive does not say
that. I just strongly felt a need,
I felt like I needed to do that, and I opened my mouth and I inhaled,
and right then and there, January the 5th, 1988, I took a breath
of air. A man who says that is a dead
man. A man who says that is a dead man.
A man who is alive says, I have to have a vital union with air
right now. Right now. I am breathing. I'm breathing. That's what a
man who is alive says. I'm breathing. I cannot live
on yesterday's air. I'm so thankful for yesterday's
air, but that's not enough. It's not enough to go on. That's
not enough for me to... Well, I'll just chew on that
for a little while and then I'll come back later on and get me
another breath of air. I cannot live on yesterday's air. And I cannot wait until tomorrow. I cannot go on something that
happened in the past and I can't put it off. I cannot put it off. I have something
extremely important right now. I'll take care of this now and
put that off until later. No, no, we're talking about air.
We're talking about Christ. I have to have it right now.
I have to have it right now. True faith, God-given faith,
faith that is alive is believing faith. Not believed. Well, I believed it. You told it to me. I sat there
and listened. And you said believe and I believed
it. What's the problem? I believed
it. God's messengers never say. Believed
on the Lord Jesus Christ. And thou shalt be saved. The message is believe. Live
right now. God's people are believers. Believers. Living faith does
not looked. It is always looking. Always looking unto the Lord
Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Always looking.
Always looking. True living repentance. our lord
came preaching and this was his message this is what god preached
repent the kingdom of heaven is at hand he said you go and
preach the message of repentance true living repentance that god
grants that repentance of true life that God in His goodness
leads His people to, that repentance keeps on repenting. It just keeps
on repenting. Everybody here knows I love music.
I listen to the music before I listen to the words. I love
that song. What does it say? No idea. I
just love music. Chord progressions and rhythm
and stuff like that. I love that for that reason.
I cannot help it I wish I didn't but I can't help it. I love the
song victory in Jesus It has the most horrible words in it.
Some of them are good But as a kid man, I loved that song
But this is what it says Then I repented of my sins and won
the victory. That's not how it happened. That's
not how it happened. I didn't do anything. I was led
to repentance. Did the Lord lead me to repentance?
Yes, He did. But He gets the glory for it.
His glory, His worship, His witness. That repentance was not a one-time
thing of the past. I repented of my sins. No. Living repentance is a continual
turning from self to Christ. I'll never be finished. If God
has given me a living repentance, I'll never stop turning from
self to Christ. It is a continual sorrow over
sin. That changed mind over who God
is and what man is and what Christ has done, that stays continually
in the mind. It's constantly being brought
up again. It's living. It's living. Repentance that
does not keep on repenting is dead. It's no repentance at all. Solomon said in Ecclesiastes
3 verse 14, I know that whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever. Whatever, if God does it, if
God does it, it'll be forever. When God gives faith, it keeps
on believing. It just keeps on believing. When
God gives love, it keeps on loving. When God gives eyes, they keep
on looking. Isn't that good news? If it was left up to my cold,
hard, dead flesh, none of these things could be so. But when
God moves, when God gives ears, they keep on hearing. Oh Lord,
am I ever going to get tired of the Gospel? I mean, I can see how that would
be possible in my dead flesh. Lord, please don't let me get
tired of hearing about the blood of Jesus Christ. When God gives
ears, they keep on hearing. When God puts a song right here,
it keeps on singing. When God creates a heart of need,
it keeps on needing. It keeps on crying. If God ever gives a sinner true
life, He'll keep on. He'll keep on. To whom? Coming. Now here's the last thing I want
us to see about this. When God gives life and removes
the evidence of death, His people, Number one, they come to a person.
They come directly to the Lord Jesus Christ. They bypass everything. That's a wonderful experience.
The Lord starts stripping all those things away, all those
hindrances, and they see Christ and they come directly to Christ.
Number two, they come in a vital, living way. And number three,
God's people will never stop coming until they get there. They will never stop coming until
they get to Him. If God has brought life to us,
we will keep coming to Christ. We will keep coming to whom until
we arrive in His presence. That's the good news. Tonight's
message is not an encouragement, and y'all keep on coming. I'm
just stating a fact. If God has done a work of grace
in us, we will keep coming until we are standing in His presence.
We will come all the way to the end. He will keep us coming to
Him. No man can come except the Father
which hath sent Him draw us. But He'll draw us. He'll draw
us all the way. He'll keep us coming to Him.
until the moment we are physically standing in his presence if god
has caused us to taste that the lord is gracious that's what
it says in verse three It's what we looked at last time we were
here. If He has caused us to truly taste that the Lord is
gracious, then we will keep coming to Him. We will come to Him until
we see Him face to face and tell the story saved by grace. Can't you wait to tell your story?
Everybody in glory has a story. Every single one. What's your story? Oh, my story
is I was saved by grace. I was saved by grace. He saw
me. And He loved me. And He died
for me. He paid my price. He called me. He drew me to Himself. He said,
Come. And I came. I came. To whom? Coming. Lord, keep us. Keep us, keep
us Lord, O keep us cleaving to Thyself and still believing till
the hour of our receiving promised joys with Thee. Let's sing that. Let's all stand together. Hymn number 51.