Be still, my soul, the Lord is
on thy side. There patiently the cross of
grief for pain Leave to thy God to order and provide. In every change, ye faithful
will remain. Be still, my soul, thy best,
thy heavenly friend. Through thorny ways, leads to
a joyful end. Be still, my soul, thy God doth
undertake to guide the few. as he has the past. Thy hope, thy confidence, let
nothing shake. All thou mayst fear, Thus shall
be bright at last Be still, my soul The waves and winds still
know His voice who ruled Them while He dwelt below Be still,
my soul, the hour is pacing on, when we shall be forever with
the Lord. When disappointment, grief and
fear are gone, Sorrow forgot, love's purest joys restored. Be still, my soul, When change
and tears are past, all safe and blessed, red wings shall
meet at last. Turn back to 1 Peter, chapter
1. I titled this message, Encouraging
Words from the Word of God. Peter is writing this to those
who have been scattered through persecution. He's writing to
them, first of all, to encourage them to give them much courage
in the face of all the trouble and the heartaches that they're
going through. And he starts out. identifying himself as an apostle,
one who has seen the Lord, one who is a witness of what he is
writing about, what he's talking about. He said, I'm a witness.
An apostle had to be one that was a witness, that had seen
the Lord and received his gospel from the Lord. And he writes
this to the strangers. The word means sojourner. That's what we are. All believers are sojourners.
We are pilgrims. And he's reminding them and us,
this is not home. This is not home. Home is where
we are going. We are headed home. I found this in my readings and
I thought it was good. I may put this in a bulletin
next week. This was the third point, and I forgot to write
the man's name down. It's years ago, years ago, he
wrote this. Christians are but passing visitors. The colonists will be called
to the mother city. Native-born Australians think
of coming to England as going home, though they have never
touched our shores. The outlying posts which have
been held for the king amidst swarms of alien enemies will
be relieved, and the garrisons welcomed to their true country.
We too often speak and think of the transcendency of this
present and the coming of death with sadness, or at best with
resignation. But if we rightly understood
that our deepest affinities connect us with that other order into
which death introduces us, and that repose from weary effort,
congenial companionship instead of isolation, and all the sweet
satisfaction and freedom of home are death's gifts to the Christian
son. We should think of our departure
hence with hope. Were the happiness of the next
world as closely apprehended, and this is good, were the happiness
of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities
of this, it were a martyrdom to live. It becomes us to be
glad when they say unto us, let us go into the house of the Lord. Two men may embark in one ship,
the one full of good cheer as the ropes are loosened and the
first turn of the screw begins to move her from the pier. The
other sad because he leaves all that is familiar and dear. The
one is going home from exile. The other is being born into
banishment into a strange land, whose speech he does not know,
whose king he does not serve. Which shall I be when death comes?
I thought that was a good assessment of the Christians is going home. We're strangers. We are sojourners. That's what we are. We're pilgrims.
Would to God that we could realize this more and more as each day
passes by. And so this is written to pilgrims.
And he says to them, who are strangers, who've been scattered
abroad by affliction, the first thing he calls them is elect.
They don't feel like it and it doesn't look like it. But you
are. Peterson, you are God's elect.
elect your God. God chose you. God picked you. He made you his own. You know,
it's good. It's comforting to me to know
that I am his by his choice. That's far more comforting to
me than to think that I'm his by my choice. I'm his by his
choice. And this election of all of God's
children is according to foreknowledge. He foreknew me. He foreknew you. Before the creation of the world,
before God created anything, He foreknew you. It says over
in Romans 8, those whom He foreknew, He predestinated that they should
be conformed to the image of his son. You see, predestination
has to do with you being made like Jesus Christ. Not that you
just be in heaven. Predestination has to do with
you being like a person. God's going to populate heaven
with a people just like his son. So God's choice of me is according
to God's foreknowledge of me. He foreknew me. He foreknew me. But now listen, election itself
is not salvation. It doesn't stop there. He chose me because he foreknew
me and he sent the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, to sanctify,
set his people apart, make them holy in the Lord Jesus Christ
through the new birth, regeneration. You are created in righteousness
and true holiness. You see, the Holy Spirit must
work in you. He must work in you. He must make you a new creation. You know that in Christ, every
believer is an absolute new creation. He's chose you, He foreknew you,
He has sanctified you, He has given you a new birth. And because
of this, listen, the evidence of this is your obedience. Your obedience
to the faith. When He said, come unto me, all
ye that labor and heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. Guess
what? You came. When He said, Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved, you believed. When He said to be baptized,
you were baptized. Why? Because you're obedient. This is not to rebels. He's not
writing here to rebels, He's writing to children. He's writing
to God's children, the evidence of your election. the evidence
of God's foreknowledge of you, the evidence of your sanctification
is this, your obedience to the faith. You believe God. You have come here this morning
and you come here Sunday after Sunday, Thursday after Thursday.
Why do you keep coming? Obedience. Forsake not the assembling
of thyself together. You want to be here. Do you want
to be here? God's given you a new heart and
it's a heart of obedience, not a heart of rebellion. It's a
heart of obedience. You were once rebels. There was
a time you didn't want to be here. And now you want to be
here. You desire. I was glad when they
said to me, let us go into the house of the Lord. You was glad. And then listen. He says here, elect according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification
of the Spirit and to obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ. Nothing apart from the blood,
no forgiveness, no cleansing. Without the shedding of blood,
there's no remission of sins. Through the sprinkling, the Holy
Spirit sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you,
Your sins have been atoned for. We have a right into God's presence
through the blood. Look over in Hebrews chapter
9. In Hebrews chapter 9, look in verse 19, Hebrews 9,
19. when Moses had spoken every precept
to all the people according to the law, he took the blood. After he read the law to them,
he took the blood of calves and of goats which represented the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ with water and scarlet wool and
hyssop and sprinkled both the book and all the people Every
one of God's children, every one of them, are sprinkled with
the blood of the Lamb of God, saying, This is the blood of
the testament which God hath enjoined to you. Moreover, he
sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels
of the ministry. And almost all things are by
the law purged with blood. And without shedding of blood,
there's no remission. Without the shedding of that
blood and without the sprinkling of that blood by the Holy Spirit
on you, there's no forgiveness and no cleansing. It was therefore necessary that
the patterns of things in the heavens, these things like the
tabernacle and the people at that time that represented the
church and And those that were actually the church, they were
also saved, but not all of them were, but some were. But all
the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with
these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices.
What's the heavenly things themselves? You. You. You are purified with a better
sacrifice. You are cleansed with better
blood, the blood of the Son of God. You are purified by the
sacrifice of Jesus Christ and His blood. For Christ is not entered into
the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the
true, but into heaven itself. now to appear in the presence
of God for us. He's there now for us. If God
before us, what you said, Doug, back there, if God before us,
Jesus Christ is in the presence of God for us, representing us,
our high priest, our sacrifice. We have a living sacrifice. That's
why we have a living hope, as we'll see here in a minute. Nor
yet that he should offer himself often as a high priest, entereth
into the holy place every year with the blood of others. For
them must he oft have suffered since the foundation of the world.
But now once in the end of the world, we're in the end of the
world, it could happen any day. hath he appeared to put away
sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men
once to die and after this judgment, so Christ was once offered to
bear the sins of many. And to them that look for him,
shall he appear the second time without sin and to salvation.
But every one of those who look for
him, they've been redeemed by the blood and sprinkled with
the blood. Sprinkled with the blood of Christ.
And it's to you, it's to you that Peter says, grace and peace
be multiplied. Not silver and gold. He's speaking
to a people that lost everything. They've been scattered. They've
lost their homes. They've lost their income, their
jobs. They've lost it all. They've
been scattered. They're on the run. They've been scattered to
these other nations. There's a lot of these Jews that
believed at Pentecost that believed the gospel and they've had been
scattered because of persecution. They've been ran out of town. But here's what Peter says, I
pray to be multiplied to you is grace under pressure. Grace
under trials, grace under heartaches, grace under the stress you're
under right now, because here's what'll happen if grace be multiplied
to you, so will peace. That peace will grow. I tell you, if God multiplies
his grace to you, the hardest, the most severe trial will come
up on you and peace will take over your heart. It'll reign
in your heart. I pray grace and peace be multiplied
to you. Because that's what you need.
I need to grow in grace and in knowledge of Christ. And as I
do that, peace will be multiplied. Can you put a price on peace
of heart? Oh, my soul. Can't put a price on that. Where
there's great peace, there's great contentment. Great contentment. You can let the world just go
on by. And you don't want it. Grace and peace be multiplied
to you. And he says here, and blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. All blessings
and all praise and all honor goes to him because it's all
of him. Salvation is of the Lord. It's
of the Lord. He thought upon me. David said
his thoughts to me cannot be reckoned up in order. His thoughts
were upon me before creation. Me, as if I was the only one
existing. Loved me like he loved his son,
Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy,
his super abounding mercy, hath begotten us again. He's
given us a lively hope. He's begotten us to a, you know
what, that word lively there is a living, a living hope. A living hope is far better than
a dead wish. We have a living hope. A real
living hope. And the foundation of this hope
is a resurrected Christ. Our hope is not that I've come
to Christ. My hope, my hope is in the resurrected
Christ because it says He was delivered for our offenses in
Romans 4 and raised again for our justification. There's my
hope. I am justified Through the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ, I'm justified through the blood of
the Lord Jesus Christ. And he is the foundation of my
hope. And it's a living hope. You know,
my hope, my hope is seated at God's right hand. My hope is
seated at God's right hand. My hope is seated there interceding
for me. That's where my hope is. It's
in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not in ancestry. They said
we'd be Abraham seed. A whole lot of Abraham's seed
is in hell. Christ said, you're of your father
the devil. That's what he told him, those Pharisees. But we have a real living hope,
and the foundation of that hope is the Lord Jesus Christ, the
resurrected Christ, who's risen from the dead, We
have a living hope, and this hope is to an inheritance. To an inheritance. What's that inheritance? Sonship. Now are we the sons of God? It
does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when he shall
appear, we'll be like him. Sons of God. I do know that much of it. I
don't know all of it. I haven't been there. We have an inheritance. Get this,
you have to get this in your mind to whom Peter's writing. They lost everything. They lost
everything. They lost their homes. As I said,
they lost their homes, their income. They ran out of town. They were strangers. They're
dwelling out there among people they don't know. They're strangers
to the people that they're having to live among. They got to get
a new job. We've lost it all. No, you haven't.
No, you haven't. Peter says, you've got an inheritance
that you can't lose. You have an inheritance, and
it's in heaven. I'm going to my inheritance.
Every believer, sooner or later, is going to their inheritance.
You see that? To an inheritance. And it's incorruptible. It's incorruptible. Everything
you will inherit here is corruptible. You know, a lot of people inherit
large sums of money. That's just corruptible. Peter
says on over here, Let me find a verse. In verse 18, for as
much as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible
things as silver and gold. He calls silver and gold corruptible
things. They are corruptible. You ever
pull a dollar out of your pocket or a $10 or $20 and look at it
and wonder, what has this bought? What has this 20,000, has it
bought somebody's life? Can you imagine all the evil
that that money could have bought? The drugs and the, I mean, you
just name it, and a dollar has bought it, and that dollar might
be in your pocket. And Peter said, no, you were
not redeemed with corruptible things and silver and gold, because
that's bought a lot of things. That's bought a lot of evil things.
It sure didn't buy your soul, because that's precious. And
the price of it is precious. But to an inheritance that's
incorruptible and undefiled, it can't be defiled, can't be
corrupted. And that, listen, it fades not
away. It fades not away. It's undefiled, it's holy, it's
of God. It stays not away. It doesn't
get old with time. You know, it's not going to have
holes in it when you get it. My grandmother wanted to give
me a coat of my grandfather's. It was an old jacket he wore. And it was kind of be raveled
out, you know, on the sleeves and stuff like that. No, yours
is undefiled. It fades not away. And it's reserved. Listen, it's
waiting for you. This is why we are to set our
hearts on things above because everything above is waiting for
us. I go and prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare
a place for you, I'll come again, receive you to myself. Where
I am there, you may be also. And that's where our inheritance
is reserved. It's reserved and it's in heaven. It can't be corrupted,
it's in heaven. And it's for you, it's personal
and it's permanent. You're not gonna lose it. Listen, this inheritance that
Peter's telling them about, cause they lost everything. He said,
no, you got an inheritance. You know, I don't think it'd
be a bad thing if everybody, if every believer, if every believer
lost everything at least one time. I don't think that'd be
a bad thing, do you? If you lost absolutely everything
one time, you'd realize that the things of this life is fading
away. And they're transient, just like
that. But listen, you have an inheritance. It's undefiled, reserved in heaven
for you. It's kept for you in heaven.
And listen, in verse nine, and you're kept for it. You are kept
by the power of God through faith for it. And what we see in verse
nine is preservation. You are kept for this inheritance. And we see perseverance. We are
kept by faith. He keeps us believing. Who keeps
you believing? Do we keep ourselves believing? The spirit of God that's in you
keeps you believing. He keeps revealing Christ in
you. He keeps revealing truth to you. He keeps feeding you
the bread of life. He keeps feeding you or watering
you with the water of life. The inheritance is kept for you,
and you are kept for it by the power of God. And there's no
power greater than God's. And the end result of this is
salvation. You are kept by the power of
God through faith unto salvation. Oh, to be saved. Do you want
to be saved? Do you wanna, do you really desire, crave to be
saved? Saved from your sins, saved by
the grace of God, saved to be in His presence, saved. Whoa, what a beautiful word,
saved. And you're saved, ready to be revealed in the last time.
Wherein you greatly rejoice. You have a joy the world knows
nothing of. You have a joy in the midst of
sorrow. You do. There's an abiding joy. It's
not this hilarious knee-slapping joy. It's a real abiding spiritual
joy that all things are working together for your good, that
all is well with your soul. You have a real joy that you
can't even put into words. wherein you greatly rejoice,
though now for a season, he's gonna recognize you're not all,
you know, there's not this happy all the time. You're under heavy
trials. God's trying you. You didn't
just happen to come into a difficult situation. God's brought it to
you at this particular time, wherein you greatly rejoice.
Though now for a season, these trials that you're going through,
and they went through, I mean, they were going through some
hardships. I can't imagine being ran out of my home and away from
my occupation and my family and we're scattered. He says it's just for a season.
Seasons are short, aren't they? And he's telling us here that
all trials have their end. They have their purpose. God
designed them. He designed the severity of it
and the purpose of it. And they are to conform us to
the image of the Lord Jesus Christ and to prepare us to leave here,
to prepare us for glory. We're just strangers. We have
a permanent home in glory. For a season, if need be. I tell
you what, I've learned that every word in the word of God is full. It's full of meaning. It's full
of spiritual nourishment. If need be, you are in heaviness
through many, many trials. Manifold tempted, many trials.
They just seem like a train. There were a lot more trains
at home than there are here. There are not many trains here.
But back home, there's a train track everywhere you go. And
sometimes you get stuck at the train track. And it's just like,
phew, phew. It's like, it's trains. How long
is this train? Boxcar after boxcar after boxcar. And that's the way trials seem
to come sometimes. It's like trial after trial after... Remember
Joe? One servant came and told him
bad news, and another one came and told him bad news, and another
one came... It's like, when is this train gonna end? Where's
the caboose at? If you notice on the trains nowadays,
they took the caboose off. We don't have a caboose on them.
It's just, you know, we get a break from time... You know, the Lord
brings us out of it, gives us a breather and then brings us
back into it. He's conforming us to the image of Christ. He's
weaning us from this world. He's preparing us to leave. That's
what he's doing. If need be, you're in heaviness
through manifold temptation, that the trial of your faith
be much more precious than gold, which is tried with fire. Gold
that perishes, he said. That gold is tried with fire,
it perishes, but your faith won't perish, it grows under fire.
Your faith will never grow without trials. Trials is a fertilized
faith. It is spiritual fertilized. Now how in the world is it more
precious than gold that perishes? Well, the first one is this.
is that your faith, being tried by fire, being tried by God,
might be found to be real. I wanna know, I wanna know before
I come up to that hour to die, that my faith is genuine. You know, one of the first things
we, we're like children, we want the trial to be over with as
soon as it starts. Don't we? It's like, as soon as the discipline
starts, we're like, okay, I won't do it again, stop. It's like,
you know, you and I try to stop it, but Paul prayed that we will
endure, that it will have its effect. You know, as we grow
older, we ought to learn to ask for grace to endure the trial,
that we may have spiritual benefit out of it. instead of trying
to get it to stop as soon as it starts. He said, Lord, teach
me the lesson. Teach me the lesson. Though it be tried with fire,
it might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing
of Jesus Christ. You won't hear him say, depart
from me. I never knew you. But the trial of your faith will
prove that your faith is genuine. It's real. It's real. whom having not seen you love. Here's the evidence of your faith.
I've never seen Jesus Christ, but I'm telling you what, he's
as real as I am standing here. Jesus Christ is as real to me
and he's as real to you who believe as you are to yourself. I believe,
I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. I believe he's
the Messiah. I believe he died on Calvary's
cross. He rose from the grave. He's seated at God's right hand,
that he's God in the flesh. And I believe, I believe that
he's all my hope. He's all my righteousness. And
I have a hope and expectation that when I die, that I'll see
him and I'll be there. And I'll receive that inheritance
as a son of God. And you will too. You who believe. Whom having not seen your love,
in whom though now you see him not, you don't see him, yet you
believe him. You believe him with all your
heart. Lord, I believe. Help thou mine
unbelief. I believe. Help me to believe. Help me. You rejoice with joy unspeakable
and full of glory. You can't put it into words.
You know, this joy unspeakable is a deep, it's a deep abiding
joy in the Lord because He's that real to you. His salvation
is that real to you. And you're going to be with Him
as that real to you. And it gives you this deep abiding
joy. receiving the end of your faith. What is the end of your faith?
What's the goal of it? That God has given you faith.
What's the goal of it? The salvation of your soul. That you will be saved and be
with the Lord when it's all over. It's going to be all over with
every one of us in a little while. I mean, even with the youngest
ones in here, You know, the scriptures talks about our time on this
earth as 70 years, three school years and 10. I'm four years
away from that now. I'm like, ooh, I'm getting at
the dying age. That's what me and another preacher was talking
about once. We was talking about it not too long ago. We said,
we're getting at the dying age. We may die before then, but there's
something about that. But what is 70 years? What's
90 years? I tell you, it's like a dream.
It's like a tale that's been told once you get there. I just
turned 66, and it's like, how did this happen? I mean, it's
just like, you know, one thing about old
age, it sneaks upon you, like a cat, you know, it just jumps
right upon you. And you're like, man, how did this happen? How'd
this happen? But when we lay down as believers,
we lay down to sleep, not die. We're not going to die. He that
believes in me shall never die. When we lay down to sleep, it's
going to be like waking up in the morning and we're going to
be there and not here. Not dead, but alive. Alive forevermore. Abundant life. He said, I give
you abundant life. That's what we want, the life
of God. That's abundant life, the life
of God. All right.