In days to come, we'll have all
the volume knobs and everything back there, and it can be controlled
from there. But evidently not today. If you'd
open your Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 4. 1 Peter chapter 4. Now we're going to look at verses
7 through 11, Lord willing. And as we do, it is good for
us to remember that even though all of us can read and profit
from this letter that Peter wrote, when he wrote it, he had in mind
Jewish believers. And therefore, as we interpret
scriptures, these things that Peter wrote, we keep that in
mind because sometimes it will guide us to the right understanding.
And if we don't keep that in mind, we might be led to believe
what's wrong and confused. He says here at the beginning
of verse 7, the end of all things is near. Now, when you realize
this was written nearly 2,000 years ago, and yet everything's
still here, that would make us wonder, why
did Peter say that? Now, I've heard Many try to come
up with some way that 2,000 years can be near. I remember that in my days in Bible school, this
was my first year of Bible school, and the fellow that he was preaching,
and he still maintains that he's an expert on prophecy. That's
what his ministry is. He goes around talking about
prophecy. And while most of you are not likely familiar or very
familiar with the kind of prophetic view that I grew up under, which
is called dispensationalism, they believe that everything
that talks about the end is talking about the very end. And this
fella tried to say that when I can't remember when Jesus died
or Pentecost came or something like that, he said, God's prophetic
clock stopped. And he said the church age is
kind of a parenthesis in the middle of God's predetermined plan. And this
is based all on the idea that God's initial plan was first
that Adam not sin, but Adam messed that up. So he came up with another
plan, and that messed up, and that messed up. Finally he got
to the Jews, and he made a covenant with them, and really everything
has always been pointing to God's favored nation status towards
the Jews, and that is forever. And then they rejected the Lord
Jesus. And while they won't say it in
so many words, what they believe must include this, that kind
of caught the Lord off guard. So he had to come up with plan
B, which is that Jesus die. And therefore, by dying, he put
away the sins of everybody in the world, and the gospel now
goes out to the Gentiles, but it's coming back to the Jews
eventually. And this whole thing we call the church age is kind
of just God adjusting to the unbelief of the Jews. Now, they'll
never say it in so many words, but if you listen to them long
enough, that's what it comes up with. But this whole thing is,
how could the Lord say the kingdom of God is at hand and these things
will happen soon? And Peter says the end of all
things is soon. How can this be true? Well, God's
prophetic clock stopped. And of course, being 18, 19 years
old when I heard that, I thought, okay, that's my teacher telling
me that, it must be true. And they think by that, that
they rescue God and the other scripture writers from saying
that which is not true. And they'll even go to Peter's
statements that with the Lord a day is as a thousand years,
and they misapply that. But I ask you this, if you have
children and You say, you'll be home by 9 o'clock. And they
come in about 11 o'clock. And you say, you were supposed
to be home two hours ago. Will you understand, Dad? My coming home clock stopped
at about 8 o'clock and didn't start again until 10. So really,
it's 9. No. You wouldn't accept that and
we need not accept that here. The end of all things, the all
things that he is talking about right here is the Jewish nation
and all that pertains to the old covenant. You see, Peter
had heard the Lord said, there are some sitting here who will
not taste death till they see all these things come to pass. And he was talking about the
destruction of Jerusalem. Now Peter, this is sometime in
the 60s, AD 60s. Tradition says that he was martyred
AD 65, but one thing was sure, he could see the apostles that
were left were old. Maybe Paul had already been killed. I don't know. You know, I don't
know the order in which the apostles were martyred, but some of them
had already died. James had already, he'd been
put to death early on. It was getting thin of that group
that sat around the Lord when he said, some of you will not
taste death till all of this has happened. Well, it was getting
down to just a few of them left. And so he could say, it can't
be long. We're old. And at least one of us has got
to be alive when all of this happens. And see, so he's saying
to these Jewish brethren who were suffering at the hands of
their unbelieving Jewish brethren, these Jewish brethren of his
who had been brought up under the old covenant and who were
accustomed to the temple, I mean, that had been their life. And so he says to them, The end
of all of this is near. Now, they should have put an
end to it when Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead. They should have recognized that
Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of all of those things that had
been symbolized in the temple. Solomon himself said, when he
built his temple, he said, it's not as though God can dwell in
temples made with human hands. Why? The heaven of the heavens
can't contain him, much less this house that I've built. Solomon
realized that that temple, while it was designed as a focal point
of worship, God really didn't dwell in there. He revealed himself
in there, but he didn't dwell in there. He's everywhere. And he realized that with or
without a temple, God can be worshiped. He realized that that
priest class, the sons of Levi and then of the high priest who
were the sons of Aaron, they weren't really able to represent
individuals. in the presence of God and by
their intercessory work put away their sins such that God will
not remember their sins anymore. He knew that all of it was symbolic
of one who would come and fulfill everything. Now Jesus Christ
came and he said, I did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill
it. Now people in our day will say,
see, we're still under the law. Jesus didn't come to destroy
it. You still got to obey the 10 commandments. That's still
our rule of life. That's how we ought to live. That's not
what the Lord meant at all. When he said law, he meant that
entire covenant that God wrote up or had Moses write up there
on Mount Sinai. He said, I didn't come to destroy
it. I came to fulfill it. Now, In
fulfilling it, he didn't destroy it, but he set it aside. Because the law, that whole list
of commands, civil laws, religious laws, what they call
the Levitical laws, which are the laws about how the temple
worship was to be carried out, all of that was a contract. It was a covenant, but it's what
you call a contractual covenant because it depended on both sides
fulfilling responsibilities. God said in that covenant, the
man who does these things will live by them. Well, that's a
contract. That's like, if you build me
a house, I will give you so many dollars. That's a contract, isn't
it? The Lord says, if you do this, you will have life. Now, if someone were to not do
what was commanded and still expect to obtain life, that would
be to destroy the law. Or if someone had done those
and then God did not reward them with life, that would have been
to destroy the law. Or if Christ had simply come
and said, look, we're done with that. Just forget about all of
that. And he had not died, that would have destroyed the law.
What did the Lord mean? He said, I didn't come to destroy
it. I came to fulfill it. Just like a person who enters
into a contract, he fulfills his side of the contract. and therefore obtains the reward
of the contract. And Jesus Christ came, and it
says in the book of Galatians, chapter 4, verse 4, he was born
of a woman, born under the law. Now imagine that. The lawgiver
subjected himself to the law that he gave. But why did he
do this? so that he could bring eternal
life to lawbreakers without destroying the law in the process. He came
and he fulfilled the law by obeying all of it. He fulfilled the law
in all of its prophecies by fulfilling the prophecies. And he fulfilled
the law by being the reality that stood behind all the shadows,
types, and pictures of the law. Every high priest until our Lord
Jesus Christ was nothing but a shadow of the real high priest,
the Lord Jesus Christ. All those lambs and bulls and
doves and everything sacrificed on the altars were only shadows
of Him who is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the
world. When He came and when He died, Gate poured out His
soul unto death. That fulfilled all of the pictures
of his sacrifice that were contained in that old covenant. So once
he had died, and then God gave testimony to the success of his
death by raising him from the dead, anybody that knew that
should have said, all right, old covenant's done. Don't need the temple anymore.
Don't need Aaron's high priestly line. Don't even need Levi's,
the priests who did all the stuff in the temple. We can, if we
want, tear that temple down or ignore it or just leave it up
as a museum. Now anyone can go in and out
and they won't defile it because it's no longer a holy place.
It's just a stack of stones. That's all it is. But they didn't
do that. They did not recognize the Lord
Jesus for who He was. They rejected Him as Messiah,
rejected Him as King. They crucified Him. And our Lord
said on the cross, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're
doing. And they didn't. They didn't realize the great
wrath that they were bringing down on their heads. They could
not see that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God. Isaiah
put it this way, there was no majesty in him that when we would
see him, we would desire him. They had expectations of Messiah. They were wrong, but they had
expectations and Jesus didn't meet those expectations. They
had expectations of Messiah who would come in as a military savior,
who would come and deliver them from the domination of Rome.
For they still did not understand that they, as a political nation,
were nothing more than an illustration of God's true Israel, the church
of the Lord Jesus. So they thought that Messiah,
all those promises of Messiah, were about a military commander
who would come rescue them from their political enemies and would
establish his throne in Jerusalem and rule there forever and make
Israel forever to be the nation of nations in the whole world. That's what they believed. You
know, the Lord didn't do that, did He? The Lord came and He
had absolutely no interest in the throne of Jerusalem, none
whatsoever. He had no aspirations to it.
He did not come to overthrow Rome, though what he did eventually
did overthrow Rome. He came to fulfill that law. But having fulfilled it, the
Jews would not accept that fulfillment, which earned them judgment from
God. But what did the Lord say? Father,
forgive them, they do not know what they are doing. And therefore,
that generation who with a high hand and rebellious hearts rejected the Lord Jesus, they
are not the generation that paid for that rejection. There were
a few of them left because our Lord said, some of you standing
here, will not die. You will not taste death until
all these things come to pass. But our Lord's prayer to forgive
those who were in the business of crucifying Him at that time,
and in particular the religious leaders of that day, they never
experienced the temporal judgment that was due unto them for their
rejection. About one generation later, 37 years later, God sent the Roman
army, and they tore down Jerusalem, and they tore down the temple,
and they slew so many Jews, killed everybody they could get a sword
to, and scattered the Jews throughout the world. And that's what Peter's
talking about. He's saying, brethren, The end
of everything that we have known, the end of the religion in which
we were brought up, and the society in which we were brought up,
and the nation in which we were brought up, the end of it is
very near. They would still have an ancestry,
but it would mean nothing anymore. Now, you know, whenever you come
to an end of anything, it requires change, doesn't it? When you go on vacation, a day
or two before it's over, you start to realize the end of our
vacation's near. And what do you do? Your mind
starts to shift, doesn't it? You start to think towards home. If you've got a bunch of kids,
you might say, kids, bring me all your dirty clothes. I want
to get them washed before we get home. You start making preparations
for the new order of things, which is heading home, getting
back to the way things used to be. Of course, this is kind of
the opposite. This is, the way things used
to be, it ain't never going to be that way again. So he says to them, in preparation
for what is coming, he said, the end of all things is near.
Everything you knew, everything that was part and parcel of your
normal way of life, God is about to bring it to an end. And as
near as I can tell from reading the scriptures, God's never bringing
it back. Now if God wants to do a work
of revival among those natural descendants of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob, I'm all for it. But there's a couple of things
I know for sure if God does that. They won't give one whit about
the land of Israel. They will not build a temple.
They will not reinstitute the sacrifices. Why? Because anyone
Anyone who comes to Christ realizes once the reality is there, you
forget about the shadows, right? So don't ever expect any kind
of resurrection of the Old Covenant. The end of that has come and
gone for us. For Peter, he said, the end of
all things is near. So what does he tell them to
do? Therefore, be clear-minded and self-controlled. clear-minded
and self-controlled. Right now our society runs primarily
on feelings. Now you can kind of expect that
out of teenagers, children and teenagers. During the teenage
years you hope that somewhere they learn that feelings have
their place, but you don't make decisions based on feelings.
Feelings may get your attention, But you gotta make decisions
based on cold, hard facts. And they may be cold, hard facts
that don't align with how you feel. That's called maturity, to think
instead of feel. Right now we got so much craziness
going on in our country primarily because people aren't thinking,
they're just feeling. And so they go around expressing
their feelings. He says to them, be clear-minded. Get the clutter out of your mind.
Get the clutter of the religion you were raised in out of your
mind. Don't let that direct your thoughts anymore. They already
should have been doing that. The gospel, I'm sure, was already
doing that somewhat, you know, because the gospel begins a work
in us and it keeps doing it so long as we're alive and it goes
through our mind, finding those things that are contrary to the
gospel and begins working to change our patterns of thinking. That's why Paul says, I beseech
you by the mercies of God, that you present your body as a living
sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God. And do not be conformed
to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of what? Your
mind. And that's what the gospel does.
It renews our minds. It begins us on a process of
thinking differently than we did before. And so he's saying
to them, the end of all things is near. It's time to be clear-minded.
You need now to get real serious about not finding any comfort
or rest in these things that were from your past, because
God is about to destroy them once for all. Be self-controlled. Now, self-control is what arises
from thinking instead of feeling. Now, I think we can get a kind
of an example of that from the COVID thing going on. Now, part
of the problem is we don't know what to think about it because
we're getting so much contradictory information. But for the most part, people
are reacting to it. out of panic, not thinking. People are reacting to their
feelings about it. And there's nothing wrong with
the feelings, but when you got the feelings, you're gonna say,
okay, this feels very dangerous. Now let me look at the facts.
And if you can find the facts, would you send me an email? Because
I'd sure like to know what they are. But in any danger, how do you
take possession of yourself and of your mind and operate with
self-control instead of running wild? You get the facts, as much
of them as you can, and you make a sound decision on what to do. So that's what he's telling them,
saying the end of all things is near, accept that. Accept
that. Get that clutter out of your
mind that's always had this kind of nostalgic look back to the
past. Yeah, you knew it was that Christ
fulfilled that and all, but you always found a little something
in the fact that the temple was still there and in Jerusalem,
the capital of your native country, still there. He said, all right,
it's time. You need to get rid of that. Because if you don't,
Once it's torn down, you're gonna be bowled over, so prepare yourselves. Everything you knew and loved
naturally, God is about to destroy it. The end of all things is
near. Therefore, be clear-minded and
self-controlled, and I like this, so you can pray. We rarely pray in a panic, do
we? Now panic is, it wouldn't have
been part of the original creation, because there was nothing to
be panicked about. But it's a defense mechanism that we have had ever
since sin entered the world. And when a danger appears, or
we perceive there is a danger, Part of our brain called the
amygdala will send out hormones, I guess it is. And it, it, it
puts us in what they call the flight or fight mood. It means you're either going
to fight the danger or you're going to run from it. Someone
said there's actually in many animals, a third freeze. You'll
see some animals do that. And those animals generally end
up being prey. When they get panic, they just hunker down.
We run from the danger or we confront it. It's another state
of mind. It's not a thinking state of
mind. It's a reacting, feeling state
of mind. Sometimes it's to our benefit
because there isn't time to think about it. If a lion is coming
after you, it's not the time to get out your algebra book
and say, okay, the lion's going 33 miles an hour and I'm 100
yards away. and try to figure it out. It's time to run. I suggest
you not try the fight option unless you have a big gun. Run. But when there's time to think,
take time to think. And once you get your mind in
order, then you can pray. Because you'll know what to pray. You'll know what to pray. And when it comes right down
to it, for you and I, whose trust is in the Lord, is not prayer
always the right answer in the face of danger, in the face of
upset? Because you see, when we pray,
we're doing more than simply making our requests known to
God. True prayer involves a heart
of submission. We pray for what we think is
good. We make our desires known to
God. But just as our Lord gave us
an example in the Garden of Gethsemane, once we've made our desire and
request known, we say, nevertheless, not my will, but your will be
done. Do you know what peace flows
from that attitude? We read that our Lord was distressed
in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was wrestling within his soul,
and the stress was so great, it says he sweat as it were great
drops of blood, and I read there is, that's a medical condition,
hematidrosis, and what happens is the capillaries in your pores
from the stress, they'll break. and begin to bleed in your pores
and it mixes with your sweat and you bleed red sweat, it looks
like blood. But, after our Lord wrestled
through this, and what Peter's calling us to, it involves wrestling,
it involves struggling, because you are struggling against natural
ways of thinking. But when our Lord was done with
the struggle, he said, nevertheless, not your will, but mine be done. He got up, full of strength, no longer sweating,
as it were, great drops of blood. He went back out to his disciples.
And he says, my betrayer is near. And Judas came and betrayed him.
And they wanted to arrest him. And Peter, thinking, in panic
drew his sword and tried to split the head of the servant of the
high priest instead he missed or the guy ducked and all that
Peter got he shaved off his ear and the Lord reached down picked
that ear up off the ground stuck it back on the side of the guy's
head and it reattached itself and healed and he said Peter
put your sword away Right now, if I wanted to, I
could ask my father and he'd send legions of angels and deliver
me from this. But what he had prayed, he had
submitted, and he was at peace. And I'm sure seeing that Peter
had, quote, assaulted one of the officers of the temple, That
made him, they're gonna arrest him too and the other disciples.
You know what our Lord said? And I love the power that came
from his peace in this matter. He said, take me, leave these
others to go. And you know what? They did exactly
what he said. Now can you imagine anybody else
pulling that off? You don't tell soldiers what
to do. They get their orders from up
the military command. These were the chief priests
of the temple, so they would have been getting them from the
high priest or the other leaders within the temple. But our Lord
just said, I'm the one you're looking for. You take me. You
let these go. OK. Oh, what power our Lord had
even at that time. The power that arises from a
heart at peace and in full submission to the will of God. Of course,
there was also a lesson being taught in that. The Lord said,
you can't have me and them. And that's true. If he is to be taken and crucified,
everybody for whom he's crucified has to be let go. There's a gospel
picture in that. At any rate, so that you can
pray. He's saying dangerous times are
coming. It's hard enough to be a Christian
right now, he said. It's going to be hard to be a
Jew here shortly. And you're Jewish Christians.
That's going to be even worse for you. Now, above all, well, before
I leave there, let me apply this to us, because we've been just
talking about the Jews of the first century who had believed,
and Peter was talking to them. As Scott says, does this have
no voice for us? Yes, it does. There are many
things which God brings to an end. They have their day. They
accomplish their purpose and then God brings them to an end. Someday, God will bring to an
end the United States of America. or it will so change, it might
still have the name, but it will not be the nation that you and
I grew up in with the liberties that we so much enjoy, the freedom
to worship as we would like to. I have no clue when that will
happen, but I'll tell you this, the Jews had no idea it was about
to happen to them. I don't know what God will do
with this nation. I know that a whole lot of people
are in a panic about what's going on. You've got the political
parties, both of them going after one another like the other is
evil incarnate. It's a big power struggle, but
you have a lot of people that are very afraid. of what's going
to happen after this coming election. And that's on both sides of the
political divide in our country. But I also know I've heard people
in places of power saying things like freedom of religion is only
for inside the church. what you do privately, wanting
to say we're not allowed to go out in public. And these are
people in power. You may think the time will not
come within our lifetimes when we will suffer persecution because
we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and we take our
faith outside this door. It could happen. Our Lord could
bring everything that you and I are accustomed to, he could
bring it to an end in a day. I'm not saying he will, because
I'm no prophet, and he hasn't told me anything about his schedules.
I just know it can happen. I remember Ronald Reagan once
said, freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It doesn't take a generation. It could be, now here's another
thing that happens to believers, the end of their church comes
upon them. They had a church in which they rejoiced and in
which the Lord blessed them for a long time, but for whatever
reason the Lord is done with that particular manifestation
of his grace and he allows either to wither out or something comes
up and breaks it up or whatever, it happens. Now for those whose
hope is in the church, that bowls them over. It's the end of something, and
what they did, they find out that they had some of their hope
founded upon the church of which they were members. And it brings great trouble to
them. And then, brethren, there's this
for every one of us. The end of us is near, as far
as this life is concerned. We have little ones in this church. And I can say of them, as much
as I could say of the oldest member of this congregation,
the end is near. And I know if you're young, you
think that sounds ridiculous. Because if your whole life consists
of 10 years, that seems like a whole long time. Wait till you're 60. Or 70. And it seems like your
life has lasted, or is no longer than you thought it was when
you were 10. Now, I don't want to sound like
an old fogey, even if I am one. But I want to tell you this,
to the young people. And young people here, that refers
to anyone here, because you aren't dead yet. But specifically, I
have in mind those who have not yet reached adulthood. You will
be amazed how fast you become me. Do you know I still feel
like I'm about 25? I don't mean health-wise. In
my mind. I'm still that guy who just recently
got married to Bonnie. I'm not lying to you. Sometimes
I have walked down the street and I look into one of those
pictures windows and I see a reflection of myself. And I mean, who is
that guy? I've been here for more than
33 years. And it seems to me like yesterday
that they pulled up that house in Inwood. with those two horse
trailers full of our stuff, and we unpacked them. I still remember
the year we spent meeting over top of the community, or in the community
building there, over top of where the library used to be. I enjoyed those days, but it
doesn't seem like that was long ago. It won't be long. The end for all of us is truly
near. Therefore, what should we do?
Well, we need to be clear-minded. I say to everyone here, and the
clear-mindedness that we need most of all in realization that
our lives are drawing to their close is, what am I doing in
my life? What are my affections set on? Am I living my life for this
life? Then it's gonna be real hard
for you the closer you get to that end. Because the older we get, the
more acutely we feel. The end of all things pertaining
to me is near. I'm not, well, let me apply it
this way. To you youngsters, you who are
still living in your parents' home, you need to think about
this. And I remember it hitting me
like a ton of bricks in church one time. I was, I couldn't be
older than the third grade because I know what church we were attending
at the time. And as was my custom, my mind was wandering. And I
also tended to sleep a lot in church. I'd find myself a seat
at the end of the pew so I could get in the corner, you know,
and you didn't even have to hold yourself up. But I started to
nod off, and right in the middle, you know, that moment between
being awake and being asleep, you know, right there, it just
hit my mind like a ton of bricks. Someday you're gonna die. I actually
think I was about seven years old. Believe me, I didn't sleep the
rest of that message. I didn't pay attention either, but I didn't
sleep. That woke me up. And you young people, I don't
want you to live in fear. But you need to know what the
truth is. Your life has a limit on it. And at the end of this life,
you go on to another one that never ends. And it is a life of eternal happiness,
joy in the presence of the Lord, or an eternity of punishment
from that same God. One or the other. It's the only
two options. And while it's completely natural
that your mind be taken up with the things of this life, I mean,
I'm kind of envious of young kids. Boy, you've got more energy
than any of us older folks do. And life looks exciting. Everything's
ahead. You want to grow up. You want
to be able to be free to do this and free to do that. And it looks
like VISTAs, I'm not going to use the word VISTAs. You don't
know what that means. Opportunities are opening up to you. Well, they are, but they are
opportunities that only last for a little while. There's something much more important
than what you will grow up to be, something much more important
than whatever career you want to pursue. Something much more
important than whether you ever find someone to love who will
love you back. Much more important than any
of that. You need to clear your mind as
much as you can from those things, at least enough to consider this,
someday you You, every one of you young ones
here, hear me. I say this out of love. Like
I say, I'm not just trying to terrify you. I just want to tell you
the truth. Someday you're going to stand before God. You're going
to stand before the one who made you and whose word is unalterable,
that is unchangeable. How will it be for you when that
happens? And I say, with all the seriousness
that love can produce, it won't be that long. If you live to
be 100, on your 100th birthday, you'll say, where did all the
time go? Solomon wrote, remember your
creator in the days of your youth. before and he starts giving these
illustrations of what it's like to be old. He said one of them
was before the grinders cease. Now thankfully we have good dentistry
in our day and we can if we'll pay attention most of us we can
keep our teeth all our lives. That wasn't the way it was back
then. People got up to their to what was considered old age
in that day and generally half if not all of their teeth were
gone. But it went on to talk about the weakness and the pain,
the inability to enjoy things. It says, desire departs. He says,
remember your creator before then. And I say to you, young
folks, remember your creator. Keep him here in the front of
your mind. You have one. You have a creator. Despite what
they tell you in school, you have someone who made you. You
didn't just show up by accident. And the Bible says that everyone
will give an account to him, and that includes you. What account
will you be able to give him? Even now, as you think of your
few years you've been on the earth, Do you think that you
could stand before God and convince him that you're good enough to
have his blessing? The truth is, no. There'll be
nothing you could say. Your only hope is the same hope
that all of us older people have who have trusted in him. That
Jesus Christ came into the world and did for us what we could
never do for ourselves. that the righteousness that God
requires, but we could never do, He did it for us. And the death that we dare not
die, and that doesn't just mean the death of this body, it's
talking about the death of the soul, where the soul is under
God's fierce anger and punishment. He bore that in His body on the
tree, on the cross. He bore that. so that all that
believe in him would never have to bear that. Now, you young people probably
don't know me that well. Maybe many of the older people
don't know me that well, but they know what it's like to be
a human being. And I can tell you this, and I tell that in
all honesty, if I had to convince God to bless me with eternal
life because of the way I've acted, I would join the devil in an
everlasting hell of divine wrath. You say, but you're a preacher,
aren't you good? No, I'm not good. Let me just
say it that way. Let me make it clear. I'm not
good. You do bad things? Oh, yes. Yes, I do. Aren't you supposed to do good
things? You're a preacher. I'm supposed to, but I don't. I have
never yet done anything that would earn the smallest blessing
from God. And the end of me is near. So how do we clear our minds?
We clear our minds of all hope in anything we have done. We
clear our minds of thinking that, well, I go to church. Certainly
God will bless me for that. No, he won't. But I obey my mom
and dad most of the time. Not good enough. I've never killed anybody. Have
you ever hated anybody? Lord Jesus says that's killing
them in your heart. Well, I've never stolen anything.
Have you ever wanted to? In God's scheme of things, that's
the same as if you did it. Now we're glad you didn't, but
that doesn't work with God. So what the clutter we've got
to clear out is all of this hope and sense of peace that we might
have about eternity because we haven't been as bad as some other
people we know of. God does not tell us to be the
best we can or better than our neighbor. He says, you be as
good as me. And there's none of us can do
that. And instead of feeling, think. Think this in your hearts, and
I know I've said I'm talking to the children, but I'm talking
to you children all the way up to age 100. Seriously, think. Clear the clutter and think. Have I been good enough for God? No. Is there any hope? for someone
who's not been good enough for God. Oh, yes, there is. Peter calls it a living hope.
I believe as Paul called it a good hope. And what is that hope?
It is the Lord Jesus Christ. You say, well, I'm not very old. I'm probably not old enough to
trust Christ. If you are old enough to understand
that you are a sinner in the sight of God and that you need
a Savior, then you're old enough to trust Christ. That doesn't
mean you will, I'm just saying age isn't the problem. Say, well, maybe I'm too old.
I've lived too long a life of sin. No, you haven't. How long
a life of sin did the thief on the cross live? I don't know
how old he was but evidently his whole life he'd been living
a life of rebellion against God and in the last few hours he
called upon the name of the Lord and he found salvation and he
entered heaven as though he had lived for God all of his life
perfectly. The end of all things is near.
The end of you is near. Live your life. And I don't mean this just in
the psychological, inspirational way that people put it these
days. Live your life as though this is the last day of it. And
that you know of a certainty that in a few short hours, you
would stand before God. Think that way. And when you think that way,
think honestly. And to think honestly means to
think what God has said. And what has he said? All have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Period. So none of us escapes that, do
we? None of us can say, well, I didn't
sin. No, you're in that. All have sinned. Think honestly. that you cannot
live a life that will earn you eternal blessings. And then think
honestly that there is someone who did live that kind of life. It's the Lord Jesus. And think
honestly of this, that he died, not to set us an example, he
died as the substitute of his people. You young people know
what a substitute teacher is, don't you? Real teacher doesn't
show up, so you get this substitute. You might not treat the substitute
teacher with the same respect you treat the other, but you
know something? They come with the same authority as the regular
teacher, don't they? It's just as though the regular
teacher was there. When Jesus Christ died as our substitute,
died as the substitute of God's people, He was not viewed as
Jesus Christ, he was viewed as them. When Jesus Christ died
on the cross, and picturing this the best we can, and God looked
down from heaven, he didn't see Jesus, he saw me. He saw every one of the people
in this congregation who is a believer. He saw Paul, he saw John, he
saw Abel, he saw Noah. He saw all these people for whom
Christ was pouring out his soul unto death. He saw them. He saw
their sins. And he poured out his righteous
anger upon the substitute. Christ became us and bore our
sins so that we wouldn't. That's what it is to think honestly.
and clearly. And when you clear your mind
of religious clutter and think clearly, then you can pray. You can pray like Peter did,
and I guess he went through this process real fast when he was
walking on the water and started to sink. Lord, save me. And I say to each one here, no
matter what age you are, If you honestly believe you need
the salvation of the Lord, ask him for it. He will give it. Did you hear me on that? If you
believe you need that salvation, a problem is, is finding somebody
who believes they need it. They may think they need a little
help. They're not quite getting it done, but little help and
they'll be over, that'll get them over the top. No. You're in the bottom of a pit
and it's filling with water and you've got no way out. And if you believe that nothing
less than the bloody sacrifice of God's perfect son could save
a wretch like you, I've got good news for you. If you really believe
that, it did save a wretch like you. And all you need do is say, God,
save me. Forgive my sins for Jesus' sake. He said, turn unto me all you
ends of the earth and be saved, because I'm God and there is
no other. The end is near, no matter what
age you are. Start thinking like you know
that to be true. and begin thinking about eternity
and not about this world. Well, may God add his blessing.