All right, you can return in
your Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 1. Is this coming through
the speakers okay? Can you hear all right? Does
that mean okay or turn it up? Okay. All right, 1 Peter chapter 1. As I mentioned in the email I
sent out this past week, I want to do a series on this book.
I've been enjoying reading it in the mornings. And that doesn't
mean it's going to be an uninterrupted series. If I feel inclined to
preach on something else some Sunday, I'll just do it. But
we will, the Lord willing, get through these in a series of
messages. Now we have in these two verses from 1 Peter 1, the
very first two verses, we have a description of the people of
God. It's good to know who the people
of God are. Now it is true that many of the
things that are used here to describe the people of God cannot
be discerned by the natural eye. Things like election, God's foreknowledge. Who knows what that is? By that
I mean, who knows their election? It's not as though God has sent
down his book of life in which are written all the names of
his chosen people. And, you know, had it published
so that everybody can look and see if they are in there. Nonetheless,
one of the characteristics of God's people is they've been
chosen by God. And some of these other things
have application to us in various ways, but we see here some characteristics
that are always to a greater or lesser degree found in God's
people. And if we learn what they are
and keep them in mind, we'll not be so surprised about the
way our lives go in this world. Now, Peter was called the apostle
to the Jews once Paul was recognized as the apostle to the Gentiles. Now, at the very beginning, Peter
had been considered the apostle to the Gentiles. It was Peter
that God sent to Cornelius' household. Cornelius, a Gentile, a centurion
no less, an official or a high-ranking officer in the Roman army. But
the Bible says that he was a godly man, he was a God-fearing man,
and he often gave gifts to the poor. So he kind of stood out
among the Romans. Because the Romans were, for
the most part, a ruthless and violent people. He was different. And Peter had been sent to him
to preach the fullness of the gospel to him. Now some people
debate over whether or not that's when Cornelius was actually saved. After all, he believed God before
Peter ever went there. He believed God the same way
Jews had been believing God since God first began to reveal himself
to that family back in the days of Abraham. They walked in what light they
had and God kept giving them more light. And that's the same
thing with Cornelius. You know, faith is not predicated
or founded upon a complete knowledge of everything. Faith is revealed
in this, a man walks in the light that he has. Now the Lord may
be pleased to give him more light, but Cornelius was walking in
the light that he had. He was in submission to God,
to the best of his understanding of what God had to say. And that
would not have been the case did he not have a living spirit
within him that desired the things of God. All he needed was instruction. And so Peter was sent to him
and that was the first official declaration of the gospel to
the Gentiles as Gentiles. And it caused such a stir. Jews
were all upset about that. First, they were upset that Peter
went into the house of a Gentile. Can you imagine that? You know,
that ought to show us. I mean, these were the disciples
of our Lord Jesus Christ who had heard from Him, who had had
the Holy Spirit fall upon them in its fullness, and they still
had it in their mind that the Jews were to be separate from
the Gentiles. They still had it in their mind
that the Jews had some kind of superior status in the sight
of God by the mere fact of their Jewishness, and they got all
upset that Peter had gone right into the house of a Gentile and
had sat down at a table and eaten Gentile food with a Gentile man. We need to remember that our
brothers and sisters in Christ in different times and in different
places may have labored under some terrible misconceptions. Doesn't mean they didn't believe
the gospel. I sometimes hear our brethren get into fights
over some of the smallest things. They'll find some little tiny
nugget of scripture and they'll go after it like a duck on a
June bug. And I don't know if you know
what that looks like, but if you know what June bugs are,
you know, they kind of fly low and a duck finds one of them
and off they go. and they go after these little details like
a duck on a June bug and when they feel they've grabbed some
kind of knowledge they suddenly make understanding that knowledge
to be the level of knowledge you must have before you can
count yourself to be a believer. And if somebody disagrees with
them on that point they won't publish any of their articles
in their bulletin. Of course they'll publish Martin Luther.
Martin Luther, who believed that even though the blood and the
wine didn't change into the body of Christ, the body and blood
of the Lord was somehow mystically and spiritually intermingled
in it. So that was nonsense. Yeah, it
was. Didn't make him a lost man for
believing that. So, Cornelius, this Gentile,
Peter went to him. preach the gospel. And because
he was already a believer, he believed it. And the Spirit of
God came upon him and upon his household. But Peter, once Paul
was on the scene, Peter's attention was turned to the Jews. So it
helps us when we read this book to keep in mind that it was written
to Jewish believers. It has a Jewish flavor to it. He had in mind probably people
he knew personally, scattered here and there. They were Jews,
his kindred, his nation, but they were believers. And so as we go through this
book, we'll keep that in mind because it'll give us a little
understanding of the background or the backdrop from which Peter
makes his comments. But even when an apostle wrote
to a specific group of people, that did not mean that what was
written was not for everyone. That is, every one of God's people.
Paul wrote a book to the church at Rome. Does that mean that
the church in Rock Valley can't read it? Does it have no application
to us? He wrote to the churches in Galatia. And Peter, in writing to the
Jews as Jews, was writing to them as that nation which had
in times past held a special place in God's providential work
of bringing the Savior into the world. Now, that relationship
with Israel was over. It says that the law, and that's
the covenant that God made with natural Israel, the natural descendants
of Jacob, whose other name was Israel, and God entered into
covenant with the descendants of that man Jacob he entered
into covenant with them on Mount Sinai he did not give a law to
be impressed upon the whole world but he set forth some civil laws
some social laws and some religious laws for them to follow and Paul
tells us that all of this was done to bring us to Christ, not meaning
to bring us, actually to bring the Jews to Christ, not meaning
as when we think of an individual being brought to Christ in faith,
it means that it preserved the Jewish nation until the seed
to whom all the promises have been made should come. He protected
the Jewish nation by His law, by the covenant He made with
them until such time as Messiah should come. God promised that
promised Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth
would be blessed. Now understand that doesn't mean
that the Jewish nation is a blessing to all other nations. That's
not the seed he's talking about. Paul says very plainly in Galatians
that he made promises to Abraham concerning his seed. Seed meaning
one, not seeds meaning many. And the one seed to whom the
promises were made is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. And
therefore God held that nation together and preserved it and
put up with all of their rebellion, all of their idolatry, all of
their great wickedness. Why? To preserve that line until
the promised one should come to whom all the promises had
been made. And once that time came, Israel
as possessing a favored nation status with God, it was over. The Old Covenant had been fulfilled.
And like any contract, once it's fulfilled, it ceases to carry
any force. Therefore, He speaks to them
as Jews using some statements from the Old Testament scriptures,
speaking to them in language they understand, but he then,
what some people call spiritualized it. He changed it from merely
being promises concerning real estate over there on the eastern
shore of the Mediterranean. He made it clear to them these
promises were not made according to the seed of Abraham in the
flesh. They were made to the seed of
Abraham in the spirit, even that seed Christ and all who are in
him. Now, how do we know that he was
talking specifically to Jews? Well, he says this, God's elect,
strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia,
and so forth. Well, the Gentiles had never
been scattered to those places. They'd always been in those places.
But persecution had come onto the Jewish believers in Jerusalem,
and they had left. I mean, remember, it was not
the Romans who first persecuted Christians, it was the Jewish
leaders that did so. They hated Christ, therefore
they hated the followers of Christ, and no sooner did Christ leave
this world and the apostles start preaching the gospel that the
same ones who arranged the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ set
their sights on believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, and it
got so bad that the only choice they had was to go somewhere
else. And Peter lists some of the places that they went. They
just left their homeland and went to a place where they could
worship in relative peace and safety. However, we realize that Paul
did not limit the contents of this book only to those believers
that went to Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia. It
went to Jews scattered anywhere, and as we'll see, it's to us,
who are not Jews in the flesh, but we are Jews according to
the Spirit. The scriptures teach us that
old covenant Israel is gone, and it ain't never coming back.
Now, I have no problem with the idea that God may have chosen
to save many from the natural lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. And you know something? As the
sovereign God, He's free to do so. Can't He save whoever He
wants for whatever reason He wants to or for no reason at
all? But there are many who believe
that there is firm proof in the Bible that a time is coming when
God's going to restore the nation of Israel to its once favored
status and establish them over in Israel and they're going to
build a temple and they're going to build a palace and Jesus is
going to descend from heaven and sit on a throne in Jerusalem.
Why would He do that? What a step down! He already
sits on a throne at the right hand of His Father. What's He
want with a throne in Jerusalem? He said, well, he's got to reign
over all the earth. He already does. Jesus Christ rules the
entire earth right now. You say, well, then how come
more people aren't believing him? Because that's not the direction
that his rule is taking. But that doesn't mean he doesn't
rule them. The king's hand. Excuse me, king's heart is in
the hand of the Lord. And he, like the rudder of a
ship, he turns it wherever he wants. You say these crazy politicians,
they're going to destroy everything. Well, from a natural viewpoint,
they might. But I know this, whatever they do, they're going
to be doing exactly what Jesus Christ, the King of all. King
of Kings and Lord of Lords. Exactly what he says is to be
done. So now, who are these people
that Peter speaks of? How do we define God's people? He says, Peter an apostle of
Jesus Christ to God's elect. Election is one of those doctrines,
at least where I come from, You mention election, it's like pulling
a pin on a grenade. You better throw that thing,
because it's going to blow up. They'll say things, well, I don't
believe in predestination. And you say, well, you know,
it's mentioned in the Bible. The word predestination is there.
How can you tell me you don't believe in predestination when
it says we're predestined to be conformed to the image of
his son, predestined to the adoption of children? I mean, the word's right there.
You gotta do something with it. Yeah, but I don't believe in
that election. Well, wait a minute, it calls us the elect. Paul says we were chosen in him
before the foundation of the world. He says in one of the
Thessalonian epistles, he chose you unto salvation. There it is, God's elect, God's
chosen. Now, why do we make much of the
doctrine of God's election? Well, we make much of it because
the Bible does. But there's a reason that the Bible makes much of
it. Because God's election or choice of a people to save is
the only method by which His grace remains grace. Now grace means without any qualifications
on our part. But if our salvation is up to
our choice, that means at least in some measure our salvation
is dependent on what we do. Now everyone chosen by God will
in turn choose to follow God. There's nobody gonna go into
heaven kicking and screaming and say, I don't wanna go there,
I don't wanna go there. But that's because God changes their hearts. The old hymn writer said, "'Tis
not that I did choose thee, for Lord, that could not be. This
heart would still refuse thee, hadst thou not chosen me." The Lord said, or Joshua said,
choose you this day whom you will follow. And evangelists
go out with that. Well fine, choose you this day
who you'll follow. I'm gonna tell you who you're
gonna choose to follow. You're gonna choose to follow yourself
until Jesus Christ comes to you through the preaching of the
gospel and overrides your choice and reveals to you God's eternal
choice. All that the Father gives to
me, says the Lord Jesus, will come to me. Who are these that were given
to Christ? Christ clears it up. They belong
to you, and you gave them to me. Well, how did they belong
to God? Doesn't everybody belong to God?
Well, in the absolute sense, yes. As their creator, as God
over all, blessed forever, But they were His in a special covenant
relationship of grace and mercy and goodness. They were His because
He chose them. They are elect. This business of our salvation
does not rest upon our choice. God's salvation causes us to
make the right choice. Now I say this to our humbling. We always need humbling, don't
we? Pride is written so deeply within our natural selves that
we've got to be reminded over and over and over again that
this business of our salvation didn't come from us. We couldn't earn it. We couldn't
qualify for it. Quite frankly, we didn't even
want it. When preachers say things like,
well, God wants to save everybody, but you know, he's done all he
can. Now it's up to you. Well, then we may as well pack
up and go home. Eat, drink, and be merry, for
tomorrow you die. No, God would not leave his crowning
achievement up to the sinful will of rebellious man. But before
he ever said, let there be light, he said, here is my people and
here is their savior. He was the lamb slain from the
foundation of the world. Well, why would he have been
slain from the foundation of the world if there was not a
chosen people before the foundation of the world? Somebody wants, I've heard this.
It's amazing the things people will say to try to undermine
the doctrine of God's sovereign election. I heard this one said,
well here's what I believe about election. God cast a vote for
you and the devil cast a vote for you and now you cast the
deciding vote. There's so many things wrong
with that. Do you believe that God's vote and the devil's vote
carry the same weight? And if the deciding vote then
is up to us, well, the decision's already been made, hadn't it?
Our representative made this decision in the Garden of Eden.
He shook his fist in the face of God and said, get out of my
garden. He said, I'm going to do what
I want to do. I'm going to be like you. I'm going to make free
will decisions like you. And I'm going to establish my
own destiny and make my own way. And we were all in Adam when
he did that. And we all rebelled in Adam when
he did. That was our free will choice. And since then, every
human being coming into this world comes into this world bound
by sin. blindness, bound by the devil,
and they cannot see nor understand, nor can they ever work up within
themselves the desire to believe the gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ. God chose. So these are those,
God's people are those who have been chosen, and then they're
called strangers in the world. Now, we are strangers in this
world. Yeah, we live here in this area. We know people around here. We
got family. We're not strangers in that way.
But believe me, we're strange. We're not from here anymore.
When I first came here, my West Virginia hillbilly accent was
a whole lot heavier than it is right now. And if I talked to
anybody, they could quite easily say, you're not from around here,
are you? You're a stranger. And I am. And it was obvious. The way I lived, the things that I value were
a little different than around here. It's taken a long time
to be completely Dutchified. And I don't know that it's complete
yet, but I'm getting there. I mow my grass a whole lot more
than I used to. Strangers. You know something?
When God saves a man, when God saves a woman, they become a
stranger in this world. They start talking with a different
accent. People might not pick up on it at first, but you give
them time, they will. Now, they'll hear you saying
a whole lot of the same words you said before, because nearly
everybody in this area was raised in some version of the Christian
religion. Now, you say Jesus and grace
and baptized and all that. You mean different things. But
here's what they're going to notice. Here's what makes God's
people strange in this world. They're thoroughly obsessed with
Jesus Christ. Everything they said has the
accent of Christ about it. I remember hearing sermons as
a kid, you know, and they'd go back in the Old Testament and
they'd talk about Jews. Or they'd like to go over there,
and I can't remember which chapter it is now in Genesis, but I think
it's chapter six, and it talks about giants in the land. And
so they'd go over there and they'd talk about giants and discuss,
well, were these giants the result of relations between angels and
human women? And there's a lot of people that
believe that, even though it's an utter impossibility. But that's what they preach about.
Then I had this privilege. After going, raising a church
like that, going to two Bible schools like that, when I graduated,
I ended up over there at 13th Street Baptist Church in Ashland,
Kentucky. And I found a man, it didn't matter where he turned
in this Bible, he preached Christ. God, who at various times and
in various ways has spoken to the fathers through the prophets,
hath in these last days spoken to us in son. Now, most translations will say
he spoke to us in the son, but the word the is not there. He
spoke to us in son, as though son was the language he spoke
in. No wonder people can't hear him. I preached a message on tongues
back in a church in Owensboro. And, you know, I made the comment
that the preaching, or the speaking in an unknown tongue that you've
never, one you've never learned in the natural way, well that's
not a gift that's operative in our day. We have no need of it.
God's gifts always serve a purpose. We don't have to do miracles
to prove the message that we have. We got scriptures to do
that for us. But when I got done preaching
and then made that remark about that we don't preach in an unknown
tongue, old man congregation, A.O. Morgan, He had a little
edge to him, you know. He liked to poke people a little
bit, but he came up to me and said, every time you preach the
gospel, you preach in an unknown tone. And that's true. It's what I learned, but didn't
learn it in a natural way. It's a miracle that I know it.
And when I speak it, those who do not know God don't really
know what I'm saying. And you know, Paul, when speaking
about tongues, he gave this rule, don't speak in tongues unless
there's an interpreter present. Well, we speak in tongues or
one tongue, the unknown language of son, but thanks be to God,
we do have an interpreter president present. The Holy spirit of God
understands that language. And he understands our language.
And he speaks the glorious truth so that we can understand. Strangers in the world, we got
a different accent. We got a different message. We're
pursuing different things than the world pursues. They look
on us and they count us strange. They say, you're not from around
here, are you? And I'm talking here now on a
spiritual level. You're not from around here. You're not one of
us. You don't do things like we do it. No, we don't. Strangers in the world. Because
there's strangers in the world, there have been times when it's
become very difficult for God's people to live in this world.
And here's something I'm noticing as more and more years go by,
the less at home I feel here in this world. You notice that? You know, when
you're young, you know, you think that finding satisfaction or
at least some contentment, you know, that's within your grasp.
You can go out and get a job and you can start making money
and you can start making good investments and you can build
a house and get yourself a spouse and have some kids, you know,
and all this is going to be so fulfilling. Well, I haven't a
word to say against any of those. They have their place. But the
older I get, the less satisfaction I can find in anything in this
world. Of course, we're not here this
past weekend. Mary and her family come, and so we all took off
for the Black Hills. That was fun over there. Saw
some things over there you can't see from here. Went and saw Mount
Rushmore and Crazy Horse and a few other things and did some
other stuff. But it wasn't home. I only wanted to be there so
long. Before long, you wake up and you suddenly realize we've
run out of things to do here. I want to go home. Because I'm a stranger, a stranger
in Keystone, South Dakota. And so we packed up Saturday
afternoon, started back, stopped and saw Missy DeBoer and her
family. And then got up Sunday morning
after I listened to brother Eric preach, we fired up our rental
van and we drove back and we came home where we're not strangers. strangers in the world, scattered
throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. God's people
are scattered. He doesn't bunch them all up
in one place. It says around the throne, there
were those who said, worthy art thou for thou has redeemed us
by thy blood out of every kindred, tongue, tribe, and nation. and
made us a kingdom and priests unto our God now you know you tend to think
only about the area in which you live and sometimes you might
just think that this is all there is and in the United States we
so much connect our country with our religion with Christianity. We sometimes think that Christianity
started right here in the United States, you know. One thing that
was encouraging to me on the couple of international trips
I've taken, the one to India and the one to Africa, well God's
got people scattered all over the place. He's got them in places
where they're not supposed to be according to the laws of men. It's almost as though men say,
Christ isn't coming in here, and it's almost a challenge to
Christ, say, watch. I'm coming in. Some of my people
are in there, and I'm coming to get them. We're scattered. We have to have a conference
in our bunch of churches. We have to have a conference.
in order to get any kind of respectable sized group together. There's
only one or two churches in our circle of churches that would
even be counted of any significance whatsoever by the world of religion. Look at us here. There's about
30 of us. We're scattered. There's a little tiny group up
there in Montana. Small group there in Jackson, Missouri, where
Nathan goes. A little bit down there in south
of Nashville. These are just little groups
in the United States, and you go over in other countries, some
of them it's even smaller groups. Two or three people getting together.
God's people are scattered. But while they are scattered
throughout the world, they are joined as one body in Christ
Jesus. We're scattered throughout the
world, but we are one body. We worship this morning as we
gather. Physically like this some via
the internet and our brothers and sisters and other places
they're gathering in their locations Even though physically speaking
were scattered Spiritually, we are joined together around one
throne Worshipping one God looking to one Savior bowing to one Lord It says that we were chosen according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father. They used to like to
twist that around to say, yes, you see, this business of God's
election, His election's based on our choices, because you see,
God looked down through history and foresaw those who would believe,
and He chose them. That's not what this word means
at all. You know, God doesn't just foresee
things, He ordains things. God doesn't have to look down
through history to find out what's gonna happen. He already knows,
because he's the one that determined what's gonna happen. And the knowledge he's speaking
of here is not simply the knowledge of facts. You remember our Lord
saying that they would come when many would say to him, Lord,
Lord, have we not done this, that, and the other? And he'll
say, depart from me. You workers of iniquity, I never
knew you. Does that mean God didn't know
about, I mean, when they showed up, was it a surprise to him? Did he say, I didn't realize
you existed. I didn't know you were gonna
be here today. What a surprise. He knew everything about them.
He knew things about them they didn't know about themselves. but he had never entered into
any kind of intimate, loving, gracious relationship. You see,
knowing someone in this way requires contact. There are many today
who know a lot about Abraham Lincoln. There's no one alive
today that knows Abraham Lincoln. Why? Because he's not here. But
there are a people whom God has known from the foundation of
the world. David said in this psalm, you have known me. Before you and I knew him, he
knew us. Before you and I, as it were,
opened our hearts toward him, he had already opened his heart
toward us and had pulled us in, at least within his own experience,
if we can use those words, and said I, I have loved you, I've
redeemed you, you're mine. He loved, the Bible says we love
him because he first loved us. How could he love us if he didn't
know us in a personal way? Now before I came up here the
first time in December of 1986, I knew about this church. Having spent the years that I
have here, I can say, I know you. Everybody on judgment day, everybody
will be divided into two classes. Those God has never known and
those whom God has always known. And his election was according
to that knowledge he had of them, that intimate, personal knowledge
they had of them before he even brought them into existence within
the framework of space and time. He knew me before I existed. Here is the Father's work. He
chose us because he knew us beforehand. And God's people have been sanctified
by the Spirit of God. God sanctified, set apart a people
by choosing them. The Spirit of God sets them apart
by calling them. How do you know if you're one
of these people? You certainly cannot know whether or not God
chose you way back yonder in eternity. You can't go there
to find that out. Let me ask you, has the Spirit
ever called you to Christ? Has there ever been a time when
He opened your eyes to understand the gospel in a way you hadn't
understood it before? And caused you from your heart
to actually call upon the name of the Lord for His salvation?
Has that ever happened to you? Has He ever set you apart? Cut
you off from the rest of the world which is being left to
itself to go on to destruction? That's what's meant by the sanctifying
work of the Spirit. Just like they call sick ones
out of the herd, of course they're trying to get rid of them, but
in a positive way, God comes to this world by His Spirit and
He calls His people out of the herd of humanity and brings them
over here into another group, another bunch. They are God's
chosen, they are God's called. And then lastly, and we'll close
with this, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his
blood. Now, when it says obedience to Jesus Christ, it's not talking
about that Jesus left us a bunch of commands and we're obeying
them all. If that's true, then this applies to no one, right? Because there's not a command
that God has given that we don't break. Obedience to Christ, the
word indicates, here it could actually, in a sense, mean faith. I believe it's the word that
normally translated here. We get our word acoustics from
it. And we think of it in terms of
obedience in the same way when we tell our children to do something
and then they don't. We say, did you hear me? Weren't
you listening? And what we mean by that is,
why didn't you obey? And what has Christ called on
us to do? To come to Him, to trust Him, to believe Him, and
to entrust our souls to His care. And that's what is obedience
to Jesus Christ. And sprinkling by His blood, That's something the Jews would
understand. When the old covenant was put
in place, everything in that temple, all the articles, the
altars, the furniture, the silver and gold plates and all that
kind of stuff was purified by blood. Because even though these
things represented God and represented the holy and things, they were
earthly things and no earthly thing is going to represent God
unless it is at least ritually cleansed. And they did it by
the sprinkling of blood. Even the priest had blood put
on his ear and on his thumb, I think and on his toe. What? Purification. And if you're one of God's people,
consider this for a minute. You've been sprinkled by the
blood and that has made you pure from sin in the sight of God. You say, oh, how can I pray to
him when I've done such sin? Because when you pray to him,
your sin is gone. Why would he ever listen to such
a wicked person as me? because the blood of Christ has
sprinkled you and has made you clean in the sight of God. They are elect. They're strangers. They're scattered. They've been
known for eternity. They've been called, and they
have obeyed the gospel by trusting Christ. And their hearts and
their consciences have been sprinkled with the blood of Christ. And
they are free from sin. I don't know about you, I want
to be one of those people. I want that description to apply to
me. And if you've heard his gospel and trusted his son, this you
can know. Everything Peter said about God's
people is true of you. just as true a view as it was
to the very people he spoke to and wrote to in this book. All
right, Eric, I'll leave our closing here.