I thank God for the friendship
and the fellowship that we have in the truth. There isn't anything better.
I need a drink of water, evidently. My allergy pill evidently isn't
keeping up. In the Sunday school class, we
noted that Paul prayed for the Colossians for nothing more than
this, for no other reason than this, he had become aware that
they were believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. He hadn't been
there personally. There is nothing better on earth
than to be in fellowship with others of like precious faith. There are many enjoyable things
in our natural lives and I don't discount those. But what can
be better than to gather like this in the name of the Lord
Jesus, to learn about him, to sing his praises, and to seek
his face, and to do that with other people who want exactly
the same thing. All right, 1 Peter, we'll begin
reading verse 3 of chapter 1. Praise be to the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he has given
us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead. and into an inheritance that
can never perish, spoil, or fade, kept in heaven for you who through
faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation
that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you
greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had
to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so
that your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even
though refined by fire, may be proved genuine and may result
in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him,
you love him. And even though you do not see
him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible
and glorious joy for you are receiving the goal or the end
of your faith the salvation of your souls. Now, the Bible is a book of Christ. From beginning to end, its purpose
is to make Christ known to us. And specifically, it makes Christ
known to us in his capacity as our Savior. Now, you cannot separate
salvation from Christ or Christ from salvation. When we preach Christ, we are
preaching Christ as Lord, no doubt, but His Lordship, the
fact that He is the sovereign King of this universe, His Lordship
is for the specific purpose of enabling him to control all things
so as to ensure the salvation of everyone for whom he shed
his blood. So when we speak of Christ, we
are not speaking of him fully until we have declared him as
savior. And then we can't speak of salvation,
can we? We can't speak of it rightly
unless we talk about the Lord Jesus. Now, you say, well, that
makes all the sense in the world. Why would you even need to say
something like that? Well, that's because you haven't
sat in some of the worship services I sat in when I was being raised. Because salvation was in a sense,
now they never would have agreed to this phrasing, but this is
the way it ended up coming across. Salvation was a commodity that
Jesus Christ had, but it was not something that was really
an expression of himself. And while you couldn't have salvation
without making this free will decision for Jesus, you could have salvation without
Jesus. That is, I don't mean you couldn't
have salvation without Jesus doing something for you, but
they saw salvation as simply going to heaven instead of hell. Well, that's part of salvation.
I'm not going to deny the value of it. But salvation is something
far more than simply changing our destination. It's a change
of destiny. It's a change from being dead
in trespasses and sins to being alive unto God. It's a change
from being a rebel against God to being reconciled to God. It's
to go from having no interest, maybe even outright hatred of
the Lord Jesus Christ, to where being changed to where he is
the top, the most loved, the greatest desire of the heart.
Our Lord prayed there in John 17, Father, I would that those
that you have given me would be with me where I am, that they
may behold my glory. And all of God's people hear
our Lord pray that, and they say, even so, Lord, let it be. Popular way of beginning evangelism,
opening the subject of the gospel and salvation to people was something
like, if you were to die tonight, do you know where you would go? And you know what that does?
it immediately makes salvation about where you are rather than
what you are and with whom you are. It makes salvation to be just
simply spending eternity in a nicer place. But it says here, verse nine,
you are receiving the goal of your faith. the salvation of
your souls. Now, that word souls, just like
in English, Greek words don't always mean the same thing every
time. But as near as I can tell from the scriptures, man is a
unique creature made of flesh or body and spirit. He doesn't have a soul, he is
a soul. Flesh and spirit bound together
in a single individual, that's a soul. Sometimes they've even translated
it simply life. I think that's a poor way to
do it, but it grasps at least part of it. All that you are,
that's a soul. And therefore this salvation
which we have, which we are receiving, notice he says we are receiving
it, not that we shall, we are. Why? Well, part of it's already
been done, isn't it? I mean, it's already been worked
in us. We've been made alive spiritually. Our eyes have been
opened to the truth. We have heard the gospel and
not only heard it, we've understood it. We've received it. We have
experienced the forgiveness of sins. We are in the process of
receiving this salvation. And this salvation continues
to work in us. It continues to change the patterns
of our thinking. You probably don't notice it
happening, but it is. The more we hear the gospel,
the more we can become conformed to the principles that it lays
down. And the more our lives are directed
by the principles of the gospel rather than the principles of
the world. It's slow, the Bible calls it growth, but it happens. Tim James says, and he was trying
to illustrate spiritual growth this way, he says, you know,
I'm a whole lot bigger than I was when I was a little boy, but
I've never seen myself grow. If you ever can see yourself
grow, watch out, you're looking at something, you're dreaming.
It's a slow thing, but we are receiving salvation, and at the
end, the end of our lives, or the end of all time, however
you want to put it, it shall be completed. And we shall be
able to say no longer that we are receiving the goal of our
faith, the salvation of our souls, we'll say we have in full received
the goal and end of our faith, the salvation of our persons,
body and spirit. Now this is a much higher goal and much greater blessing than
the world knows anything about. The natural man does not receive
the things of the Spirit of God, says the Scripture, and this
is one of those things he can't receive. If you said, you know, if you'll
repent of sins, Christ will forgive you of your sins. If you'll trust
Him, you'll be forgiven, and you'll be with Him forever. They
go, what's the big deal about that? You've got to make them believe.
You've got to present some kind of heaven to them. You've got
to distort the word and describe heaven in terms of fleshly blessings. I think it's interesting that
so many so-called gospel preachers describe heaven in terms of things
that our Lord Jesus Christ said not to chase after. You know, they take that imagery
from the book of Revelation and they think it's heaven, the pearly
gates and all that. But that's actually a picture
of the church. Because if you'll notice, it says, I saw the heavenly
Jerusalem, holy city coming down out of heaven. So it's not heaven
he's talking about. He's talking about the church
of the Lord Jesus. Well, they had to describe it in terms that
we could understand, but people looked and said, boy, I can't
wait to get to heaven and walk on those golden streets. That
really means something to you? What, are you gonna hack up some
of the pavement and take it home? Oh, and I'm gonna get my mansion
just over the hilltop. Is that what you're looking for? If that's what you're looking
for, you are gonna be so terribly disappointed. Because number
one, you ain't going to get any of it. And you're going to miss
what real heaven is about. You're going to miss what true
salvation is about. These religious hucksters on
television who are telling people that God wants you to be healthy
and wealthy, and if you just had faith enough, he would pour
out finances on you, and give you better jobs, and you'd get
rich. Of course, somehow or another, having faith enough involves
writing them a check. They're sure getting richer.
I told a Sunday school class about a show that's on Netflix
called American Gospel. And if you got Netflix, give
that a watch. But those, the preachers of the prosperity
gospel, they make everything about now. They make salvation
to be about what we have here. But notice what the scriptures
say here in this passage. It talks about our inheritance
in verse four, and it says, kept in heaven for you. Now, in another place in his
book here, Peter talks about Paul. And he said, our beloved
brother Paul, who has written many things in his letters, which
are hard to understand. And I can understand Peter thinking
that. Now, I don't have difficulty with Paul, but that's because
Paul was sent to people like me, Gentiles. Peter was a Jew. Of course, Paul was, but he was
raised among Gentiles and he knew their way of thinking. He
knew how they handled material and that logical you know, progressing from one
point to another, and that's the way he expressed it. But
that's not the way Jews, generally speaking, talked. And so you
take someone like Peter, and he would read Paul's letters,
and they were a little confusing to him. But as much as he might
have found Paul's letters confusing sometimes, when we begin reading
here in verse three, it's like he took Ephesians chapter one,
and kind of put his own spin on it. Remember how in Ephesians
chapter one, I begin, I think, begin at verse three. Paul says,
praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places
in Christ. And Peter says, praise be to the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he's given
us new birth into a living hope to the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead into an inheritance that can never perish,
spoil, or fade, kept in heaven for you. Heavenly blessings. from the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ. That's what we're looking for.
That doesn't mean God doesn't give us blessings. I always want
to make sure that I give credit to God for all that he does.
He feeds us, doesn't he? And I'm sure glad he does. He
gives us a measure of health. He gives us a measure of happiness
and measure of sorrow. He gives us all these things.
He cares for us. This life that we live right
now, our normal day-to-day life, the only reason we have a cause
to smile is because of God's gracious blessings given to us
in Christ Jesus. But these blessings we receive
here on earth are nothing to be compared with that inheritance
that's waiting for us in heaven. Now this salvation comes to us
because of God's great mercy. Mercy means pity. In legal terms, it means to withhold
due punishment, but the word has broader meaning than that.
It evokes the feeling you would have if you came upon some, let's
say some animal in great pain, been wounded, something like
that. Now you may not be able to do
anything about it. If you see a dog get hit and
it doesn't get killed right away, it's a poor thing. That's mercy. And God looked on us as a dying dog on the side of
the road. We'd gotten ourselves hit, and
we were going to die. There wasn't any way. I saw a dog. This was when I
was living in Virginia, so I was five, six, or seven years old.
Neighbors across the street had this dog. It was white and a
light brown color. I don't know what kind of dog
it was, but just a medium-sized dog. And it chased after the
mailman, and its back leg got caught under the back wheel and
it just nearly tore it off. That dog went howling off, walking
on three legs, dragging the other one. It just breaks your heart
to see something like that. That's how God saw us. Mercy is what Ezekiel describes by the mouth of the Lord. And he said, the Lord says to
Israel, you were cast out to your own loathing when you were
born. You weren't wanted. Nobody cared for you. No, I pitied
you. One of the greatest evils of
our day in our nation, I think. You know, in terms of there's
just the normal or the outward manifestations of sin we see,
it's this abortion thing. And you've heard me talk about
it, and I'm not going to make it the theme of this church,
but I just stand baffled that such a thing goes on. Well, what
they're talking about in the book of Ezekiel was the old-fashioned
abortion. They didn't have a way to terminate
a pregnancy. But if they didn't want a child, especially these
nomadic tribes, and especially if it was a girl,
because what's a girl going to do for you? They wanted sons
that would grow up and be able to work and help. And sometimes a woman would go
into labor and give birth and it'd be a girl. And the father
would say, we don't have time to mess with that. I don't have
the energy to feed a mouth that's never going to be able to help
me out. And they would just throw him to the side. And that's what the Lord was
talking about. And he said, no, I pitied you. Imagine this, a
tribe walking along, and that happens. And every one of the
tribe goes by. They don't care. That little
baby, squalling, screaming, hungry. Maybe cold, nobody cares. Then the Lord said, but then
I passed by and I saw you there wiggling around in your blood
and in your filth and I said to you, live. That's mercy. That's what the
Bible means when it talks about the mercy of God. Oh, give thanks
unto the Lord for he is good and his mercy endures forever. He still pities us. We may not be in the condition
in which he found us, but we're still a mess, aren't we? When we sin, it's our natural
thought to go to judgment. We think, oh no, God's gonna
get me for this. God's gonna lower the boom on
me for this. Well, he may discipline you for your good, but one thing,
know this, child of God, know this on the basis of scripture. When your heart is broken over
sin, When you, by your transgressions, have brought yourself into such
a sorry state, God your Father looks on you with mercy and with
pity. He doesn't say, now look what
you've done. He doesn't say, I've told you don't
do that. He doesn't say, you've done that 50 times before. Now
you're doing it again. Do you think I'm going to keep
forgiving you for this? He says, oh my, look what you've
done to yourself here. Let me fix that. He is the good Samaritan that
comes by. And he pours in the oil on our wounds and cleans us, gives
us a taste of wine to revive us a bit, and begins the process
of healing us from the damage we brought on ourselves. His great mercy. Paul put it this way, God, who
is rich in mercy. Aren't you glad he's rich in
mercy? I don't think somebody who is,
you know, impoverished in mercy could handle a fellow like me.
It takes someone who has such an abundance of mercy that it
cannot be exhausted. Believe me, if God's mercy could
be exhausted, I would have done it by now. As a father pities his child,
so does the Lord pity those who fear him. And he does not look upon us
with the angry aspect of an offended judge, He looks upon us, his
people, with the eye of a father who sees his child hurt and picks him up, cleans him
up, bandages him up, gives him some instruction. and sets him on his way. In his
great mercy, he's given us new birth. I hear people say, and this has
become one of the popular phrases, supposedly what you're supposed
to pray. You need God in your life. You need to ask God to
come into your life. I don't need God to come into
my life. I need my Lord Jesus to give me life. I don't have
life. I've got a walking, excuse me,
I've got a walking death. The movie came out 20 or so years
ago called Dead Man Walking. And it's from a phrase apparently
that's supposed to describe a condemned man as he's being taken from
his cell to the execution chamber. Dead man walking. Brethren, apart
from Christ, that's all we are. We're dead men walking. We don't
need God. We don't need Christ to improve
our lives. We don't need Him to come into
our lives. We don't need Him to make us
more successful. We need Him to come and give
us life. This is the record which God
has given concerning His Son. that life is in the Son, and
that he that has the Son has life. He that does not have the
Son will not see life. New birth. Our first birth was
in Adam, and therefore in Adam all die, and that's what we're
doing. We came into this world And it looked like we were living.
And I guess in a sense we were alive, but the moment we're conceived,
we begin a process which ultimately will end in our death. So our
entire existence, our entire natural existence is a process
of dying. Our first birth was a bad birth. And the only way to fix that
is to get another birth. And therefore he's given us a
new birth. A new birth that imparts to us
a life we did not have. And it's a new birth under a
new head. As I said, our natural birth,
we're born in Adam. He is our head, right? And the
way the scriptures deal with things, whatever Adam did is
applied to us. It's imputed to us. And also
because Adam is our head, we have his nature. And we walk
the way he walked as we conduct our lives the way he conducted
his life. But here's a new birth from God. It's a new birth that
doesn't involve your natural parents. It's a new birth worked
sovereignly by Him. as he directly, miraculously,
and sovereignly gives life to the dead heart. And it's a life under the headship of Christ. And because Christ is now our head, the head of our race, everything he did is imputed
to us as though we did it. That's why I've said before, Bible says that in the end, the
books will be open and everyone will be judged out of the books.
And I don't mean to be proud. You'll understand what I mean.
I'm not boasting about me. I'm boasting about my savior
here, but when they opened the book to the page with my name,
it's going to say he did always those things. It pleased the
Father. Can you imagine that? I can hardly believe it because
I know what I do. I know who I am in myself and
how that could ever be written of me. I know how it was done,
why God went to all that effort. why he sent his son into this
world, his only begotten son, who did always those things which
pleased his father, and then took my sin and laid them on
him and made me the recipient of all the blessings that Christ
should have gotten because of his obedience. And he put on
my record the record of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible says He did no sin.
And on the page in the book, under the name of any of the
elect of God, are the words, He did no sin. Do you believe
that? I tell you, if there's one sin
in that list, you're gone. If any charge can be brought
against you in the presence of God and made to stick, you're
dead. In him is no sin. See, these are biblical statements
made about the Lord Jesus Christ. But by this new birth, he is
our head and everything he did is credited to us as though we
did it. And that is the heavenly record
about us, despite what we see and know about ourselves. And
let's face it, it's true about all our brothers and sisters,
despite what we see and know about them. Oh, we can get upset
with one another, can't we? You know, so and so did. I know
what he didn't do in the eyes of God, he didn't sin. Oh, he's full of wickedness,
not in the sight of God, in him is no sin. Great mercy, new birth and a
living hope. This is the hope of the living
and a hope that results in life. A lot of people have a dead hope. You can ask people, if you die
right now, do you know where you go? Oh, yeah, I go right
to heaven. Oh, you would? Yeah. Why is that? Well, I was
raised in the church, and I go to church every Sunday. You know,
when I was about 12 years old, they had an altar call, and I
went down there, and I prayed through. And I got salvation, and I got
baptized. I got filled with the Holy Ghost,
you know. Most of the people talk like that. They got to be
filled with the Holy Ghost, too. They got to put that one in there.
I've been going to church ever since. That's a dead hope. That's
a dead hope in a dead heart, and it results in death, everlasting
death. But we have a new and living
hope, a new birth. A living hope through the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now, that's why it's a living
hope. It's given on the basis of the
ever-living Lord Jesus Christ. Now, an interesting thing about
our Lord, when He was born into this world, He was born under
the law. Born of a woman, born under the
law. Now he lived under the law and
he performed the law, and he always did the things which God's
law required. But when our sins were laid on
him, he suffered under the law and died under the law. Now Paul
says, he that is dead is justified from sin. Most translators use
the word, translations use the word, freed from sin. But the
word there, everywhere else, is translated justified. Why? Because death is the price
of sin. Once you've died, the price has
been paid. Jesus Christ died. He is justified from all the
sins that he bore. And he's free from them. And
when he came back, he came back not as a man under the law, a
man under the old way. It says he died under sin once,
but now he lives under God. He is free, absolutely, completely
free. And his resurrection, he's called
the firstfruits from the dead. Now the firstfruits in the old
covenant economy, they were to be given to the Lord. And why? Because they were tokens of a
full harvest. Our Lord raised from the dead
and everyone in him will be raised from the dead. And we get an inheritance that
can never perish, spoil, or fade. Bonnie and I updated our wills.
We were looking at them and, well, some of the stuff we had
in our will didn't even apply anymore because there were instructions
in our will as to what to do with our children. You know,
who should raise them? Well, I don't think that's an
issue anymore. But we updated our wills. You
know something? When the time comes for them
To execute the will, there might not be anything there. Good chance
there won't be much. And they gotta divide it three
ways, so it's gonna be a third of nearly nothing. Here's an inheritance. It can't
perish. It can't spoil. It can't even
fade. And it's kept in heaven for every
one of God's people. Who are they? Verse five, through
faith they are shielded by God's power. Shielded from what? Anything that would separate
them from the love of God, which is in Christ. Anything that would
come between them and the full possession of that inheritance
kept in heaven for them. Now, when it says who through
faith are shielded by God's power, It doesn't mean that our faith
somehow or another turns on God's power like we flip on a switch
and that makes the lights come on because we've directed the
power to go to the lights. We can't direct the power of
God. What does faith do? Well, God's power is a shield
and faith runs and gets behind it. Our faith didn't make God do
anything. You think of that. Our faith
didn't make God do anything. Our faith made us do something.
Run to Christ. God said to Abraham, I am your
shield and exceeding great reward. And we, by faith, run behind
him. The name of the Lord is a strong
tower. The righteous run to it and are
safe. That's what he's talking about
here. And it's a salvation that's ready to be revealed at the last
time. People keep talking about, well, you know, the signs are
showing that Jesus Christ is going to come. It's getting close, I can tell.
I can see, you know, this nation and this, you know, and they
get all these signs and things. Paul, or Peter says right here,
it's everything's already done. It's already ready. God can come
back anytime now. He can wind this up anytime he
wants to, because everything necessary or everything that
must be fulfilled before our salvation is revealed, it has
already been fulfilled in Peter's day. Now, why hadn't he come
back now? Well, we're told that when it
says that God is patient toward us, not willing that any should
perish. Who's the us? The elect of God. You look in the context there,
that's who he's talking about. And God is patient until every
one of his chosen are born into this world, hear the gospel,
and believe it. And as much as His righteous
nature may call out for the destruction of this world because of its
sin and its rebellion, in His mercy, He's longsuffering to
the whole world for the sake of His elect, waiting till the
last one of them shall come into this world, and He shall send
them a preacher, and they'll hear the gospel, and they will
be saved, and boom, the Lord will come, and this salvation
will be revealed in all its fullness. And all the saints of God will
be joined together around His throne and all the others will
see it and wonder at what they see and they will be filled with
regret that it was told to them but
they wouldn't believe it. It's ready to be revealed. Well, he goes on to say that
despite the fact that we believe in all these wonderful things
about it, he says in verse six, in this you greatly rejoice,
and we do, do not we rejoice in our salvation? Do we not rejoice
in our savior? Is our heart not strengthened
when we think on what he did for us? Though now for a little while
you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. Trials are part and parcel of
this life, even for believers. There's no amount of obedience,
no amount of prayer that's going to keep you from trial. And while
it's hard to think this way, what we ought to say is, and
that's good. David said, it's good for me
that I've been afflicted. Good for me. We don't like trials. We don't ask for them. but we
know the value of them. God's people suffer all kinds
of trials, every kind of trial that an unbeliever can suffer,
a believer might suffer it too. Some people have said they believe
God, but then God brings something into their life that they don't
like, and they get all upset, and they quote, leave God. Well, they didn't leave him,
they never were with him. But they leave God because they thought
God was under some kind of obligation or had made some kind of promise
that their life was going to be easy. But it said, you had
to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so
that your faith, verse 7, of greater worth than gold, which
perishes even though refined by fire, may be proved genuine
and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is
revealed. You know, there are people in
our day, and it's always been true, I don't know why even we
say in our day, it's always gone on. There are people who have
faith. They have a kind of faith. It's
a faith based on a false premise, but they believe it anyway. They
believe they are Christians, and they believe that they are
following God faithfully. And they believe that because
God's following them faithfully, that's why their lives go better
than their neighbor's lives go. And their faith is never tried.
Why? Well, God didn't give them the
faith, so no need trying to prove it. He just leaves them be. And the day will come when they
will stand before God, and they will be among those, and the
Lord said, this many shall say unto me in that day. And that
word many is scary. Many shall say unto me in that
day, did we not do this, that, and the other? And he never denies
that they did those things. He just said, depart from me,
I never knew you. But there are a blessed band
of people who shall in that day stand before God having weathered
many different kinds of trials. Some severe. They've gone through
times when they despaired of life. They've gone through times
when they were ready to give up. There were times when they were
tempted to unbelief. And to simply say, if this is
what it means to be a Christian, I don't want anything of it.
This isn't what I was expecting. If this is what God does to his
people, I don't want anything to do with him. And they shall have, by the grace
of God, shielded by the power of God, gone through these great
and severe trials, and they shall have died in faith,
and their faith shall have been proven. It's easy to say I believe when
everything's going good. I noticed this. It was easier
to say I believe when I was young than it is now that I'm older.
I could have just said old, but really, why? Well, you know,
when you say I believe at 20, you're not expecting to have,
you know, to cash in your chips anytime soon. You don't figure that you're
going to die anytime soon. and it be proven whether or not
you really do believe. But once you pass a certain age,
and I mean this has gone through my mind, hey, is this really true? Have I really believed? Am I
ready to leave? Well, The faith of every child
of God is tested with trial. This faith is more precious than
gold, even though it has been refined
by fire. But this faith is put in the fire so that it may be
refined like they do gold. Purify the dross. You know, there's
so much dross in our faith, so much of the flesh still clings
to it. And the fire of trial begins
to purge that out. Someone told a story, and I don't
know if it's true, but it sure makes a good illustration, that
a fellow was watching a silversmith, and he had some silver ore. And he had it in the pot, you
know, and a lot of heat under it to make it melt. And, of course,
when it melts, the dross begins to separate from the silver,
and they brush it off. But he keeps working on it because
more of the dross keeps coming. And the guy's standing there,
and he's asking the silversmith questions about how it's done,
and he says, well, how can you tell when the silver is properly
refined? And the silversmith says, when
I can see my face in the reflection. And God will test and try and
refine us until we reflect his image. We don't invite trial, we don't
like it when it's happening, but we recognize that it's good
for us. And it'll cause our faith to
result in praise, glory, and honor. Though we've never seen
him, we love him, don't we? Is there anybody you love more
than the Lord Jesus Christ? How can you love someone you've
never seen? It's a miracle. And we don't see him now, but
we believe him. And every time the Holy Spirit enables us to
see him by faith, oh, what an inexpressible joy fills our hearts. For we see that we are receiving
the goal of our faith, even the salvation of our souls. Well, the Lord be honored with
that.