First Peter chapter one, Peter,
an apostle of Jesus Christ to the strangers scattered throughout
Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia. And here's where
the real meat of the word starts. Elect according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father through sanctification of the spirit unto obedience
and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace unto you
and peace be multiplied. Now, I'm going to give you the
outline here, or the title of the message, so that when we
read this together, you can see that in the text of scripture
here. So I've entitled this message,
What Has God Done? Or What Has God Wrought, is a
quotation. And we'll read that text shortly.
But what has God wrought? The word wrought is not a word
we use, but that's the way it's recorded in the King James Version.
It just means worked. What has he performed? What has
he done? What has he accomplished? What
has God done? And that's what we're going to
see here in this chapter, first chapter, second chapter of Peter,
first Peter. What has God done? What has he
done? And so you see, he has chosen
his people. He has chosen them, that's God
the Father, because his foreknowledge of them through sanctification
of the spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ. What has God done? Grace to you
and peace be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy
hath begotten us again unto a lively or living hope by the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead. To an inheritance incorruptible
and undefiled and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven
for you. who are kept by the power of
God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last
time, wherein you greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need
be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations, that the
trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that
perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto
praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.
whom having not seen you love, in whom though now you see him
not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full
of glory, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation
of your souls, of which salvation the prophets have inquired and
searched diligently who prophesied of the grace that should come
to you. searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of
Christ which was in them did signify when it testified, the
Spirit of Christ testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and
the glory that should follow. That's a summary of all of scripture,
the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.
unto whom it was revealed, these prophets, that not to themselves,
but to us they did minister the things which are now reported
to you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the
Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, which things the angels desire
to look into. Wherefore, gird up the loins
of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that
is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, which
is referring to His second coming. As obedient children, not fashioning
yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance, but
as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner
of conversation, because it is written, be ye holy, for I am
holy. And if you call on the Father,
who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's
work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear. For as much as
you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver
and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your
fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb,
without blemish and without spot. That's his perfect life and obedience. Who verily was foreordained before
the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last
times for you. who by him, by Christ, do believe
in God, that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory,
that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing you have purified
your souls and obeying the truth through the spirit unto unfeigned
love of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure
heart fervently. Being born again, not of corruptible
seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth
and abideth forever. For all flesh is his grass, and
all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth,
and the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord
endureth forever, which is what Ramel said earlier. And this
is the word which by the gospel is preached to you. In other
words, the gospel explains the entire word of God. Wherefore,
laying aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envies
and all evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk
of the word that you may grow thereby. If so be you have tasted
that the Lord is gracious. What a summary of the Christian's
life. You've tasted that the Lord is gracious. To whom? Coming, as unto a living stone,
disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious. When
you're making a wall or a building out of stone, you find the best
one, the one that's the perfect corner, and you put that in as
the foundation stone, the cornerstone. And that's what Christ was. He's
the living foundation stone. He was chosen of God, therefore
he is precious. You also, as living or lively
stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to
offer up spiritual sacrifices which are acceptable to God by
Jesus Christ. Wherefore also it is contained
in the scripture, behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone,
elect, this is speaking of Christ, precious, and he that believeth
on him shall not be confounded. You won't be confused because
you put your hope in Christ at the end of time when you stand
before God and you won't be ashamed. You won't be confused because
you trusted Christ according to what God has said and revealed
to you by his spirit through the preaching of his word. You
won't be confused by it because God will not leave you ashamed
of your hope. Verse seven, unto you therefore
which believe he is precious. But unto them which be disobedient,
the stone which the builders disallowed the same is made the
head of the corner, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense
even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient,
whereunto also they were appointed. But you, You are a chosen generation,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people. Now, we think
of peculiar as being weird. That's not what the peculiar
means here. Think of a king's treasure. Nobody has the precious
things that a king can have. You can't touch it. They're beyond
your ability. Anyone can't afford it. And if
you're a rich man, the king's gonna make sure that he has better
than you, because he's the king. And that's what God's people
are to Christ. They're of such a high value
that they're uniquely the king's treasure. Precious to Christ,
precious to God. So you are a chosen generation,
a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people that you should
show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness
into his marvelous light. Which in time past were not a
people, but now are the people of God. Which had not obtained
mercy, but now have obtained mercy. Here's the last verse.
Dearly beloved. That means dearly loved ones.
I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims abstain from fleshly
lusts which war against the soul. All right, we're going to stop
right there. As I said, I've entitled this message, What Has
God Wrought? What Has God Done? and to help
you understand where that title comes from, not only from this
text of scripture, but I also want to take you to the background
for that title. Let's look, first of all, at
the book of Numbers. The book of Numbers is, in the
Old Testament, it goes something like Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and
turn to chapter 23. Numbers chapter 23. What has God wrought? He says in Numbers chapter 23,
and the context here is that a wicked king named Balak hired
a wicked prophet named Balaam to curse God's people. And Balak
hired Balaam to curse in the name of the Lord because he knew
that whoever Balaam cursed was cursed and whoever Balaam blessed
was blessed because he was given that strange ability. And yet, Balaam was a wicked
man. God told him, don't you go with Balak. And Balaam then
told Balak, well, let me go see what the Lord wants me to do,
even though he had already spoken. So the context here is that Balak
is rubbing his hands together. knowing that he's going to pay
Balaam a huge reward to curse this people, because if he doesn't,
then Israel is going to wipe them up. He's going to take out
all the Moabites, all the people that Balak ruled over. But Balaam
gets there, and God, you know the story, where Balaam starts
to go down his journey to fulfill his request from Balak, and he's
riding on his donkey, and his donkey won't go any further.
And Balaam gets out his whatever, his stick, and he beats his donkey. The donkey will not move. Finally,
the donkey tells him, you know, I've served you all these years.
I've never disobeyed you. Why are you beating me? And then
God opened Balaam's eyes to see an angel in the way with his
sword drawn. And Balaam realized that the
Lord had opened the mouth of this donkey. to tell him what
was in the past so he wouldn't be destroyed. And this is really
just a picture of every preacher. We who bring the word of God
in ourselves, we're nothing. Not worthy to even be compared
to a donkey. But we just tell those, and in
this case, this false prophet, the truth. And so God then gave
Balaam the words to say. And that's what we're gonna read
here in Numbers 23. What has God wrought? Listen. Number is 2318. And Balaam took
up his parable and said, this is God speaking through this
false prophet. Rise up, Balak, and hear. Hearken to me, thou
son of Zippor. God is not a man that he should
lie. Men are known by this, not God. God does not lie. God is not
a man that he should lie, neither the son of man that he should
repent. He doesn't change. Hath he said,
and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall
he not make it good? You hear that power in this word. God has spoken. He will do it. He's not gonna turn from it.
And then he goes on, verse 20. Behold, I have received commandment
to bless, and he hath blessed, and I cannot reverse it. So not
only did God say, I'm not going to repent, but Balaam says, I
have received a commandment, and he could not resist that
commandment, he blessed them. Notice, here's the blessing,
verse 21. He hath not beheld iniquity in
Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel. This is the holy God
of glory, who cannot lie. And he says, when I look upon
my people, I do not see iniquity or perverseness in them. The Lord his God, speaking of
Israel, the Lord his God is with him, and the shout of a king
is among them. Notice. The prophecy God gave
to Balaam to speak to Balak and to us through the scripture here
recorded by the Holy Spirit of God in scripture was God does
not see iniquity or perverseness in his people and he has given
commandment to bless them. And then he goes on that God
is with him and that the shout of a king is among them. The
shout of the king in victory and triumph which is we know
Christ. Verse 22, God brought them out of Egypt. He has, as
it were, the strength of a unicorn. Now, I don't know what a unicorn
was referring to. I think of a rhinoceros. They've
got this one thing that sticks out of their face, and they're
huge. And there's no animal, I think,
that could stop them. Verse 23, surely there is no
enchantment against Jacob. Neither is there any divination
against Israel. According to this time, it shall
be said of Jacob and of Israel, what hath God wrought? Concerning
God's people, this is what's going to be said. What has God
done? What has he accomplished? What
has he worked? Now look at Genesis chapter one.
Genesis chapter one. And look at the very last verse
of chapter one. And God saw everything that he
had made, and behold, it was very good. What has God wrought? God saw everything that he had
made, and behold, it was very good. Amazing grace, isn't it? And now turn with me to the book
of Ephesians. Actually, before you get to Ephesians,
stop at 1 Corinthians 3. 1 Corinthians chapter 3. What has God done? What has He worked? What is His
work? Because when we know that, we're
going to be amazed at God's great power, His holiness, that He
would do what He did. 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse
9. Paul, the apostle, writes to
the Corinthians, they were bickering amongst themselves, they were
proud against one another, and they were boasting that, I'm
of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Christ, and he's correcting
this division among them. He says, we, we apostles, we
preachers, we are laborers together with God. Notice these words. You are God's husbandry. We think of a landowner who has
crops like a vineyard. The one who owns that and takes
care of it is the landowner. He's the husbandman. You are
God's husbandry, his vineyard, if you will. You are God's building. Now, this obviously is God's
work, right? What has God wrought? Notice,
according to the grace of God which is given to me as a wise
master builder, the Apostle Paul is saying, I have laid the foundation
and another buildeth thereon, but let every man take heed how
he buildeth thereupon. For other foundation can no man
lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. There you have
it. We are the work of God. That's what God is saying. We
are his building. He is the husbandman. We are
the vineyard. Christ is the vine. We're the
branches. All these things are telling us, what has God wrought? What has he done? Now go to Ephesians
chapter 2. So when we read 1 Peter and the
whole New Testament, all of scripture, what we're doing is we're reading
an account of God's work, and we're reading God's view of His
work, and His assessment of His own work, like in creation. He
did it all, and then He looked at all that He did, and then
He tells us that it was very good. And that's what the Bible
is. It's telling us about the work
of God. In Ephesians chapter 2, we're
going to read from verse 1. You hath he quickened. He's given
you life from the dead who were dead in trespasses and sins wherein
in time past you walked. According to the course of this
world, according to the prince of the power of the air, you
lived as the children of Satan's kingdom. You lived by the dictates
of the devil, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
that now works in the children of disobedience. among whom also
we all had our conversation, our lifestyle, in times past,
in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and
of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as
others. But God who is rich in mercy
for His great love wherewith He loved us even when we were
dead in sins. God loved us before we knew Him,
before we did anything, before anything was done to us. When
we were dead in sins, He has quickened us together with Christ. This is very important. Our life
is because we were raised with Christ. In his resurrection,
we were raised. For by grace, you are saved. By grace, meaning not of your
works. God's doing. What has God brought? Verse six,
and he hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly
places in Christ Jesus. It's all in Christ, that in the
ages to come, he might show what he has wrought, the exceeding
riches of his grace and his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
Everything is God's kindness, unmerited favor given to us through
Christ. For by grace you are, are you
saved, for by grace are you saved through faith, because faith
ascribes everything to Christ. Faith denies any merit of its
own. Faith denies everything about itself. In fact, faith
causes us to confess our sin and our unworthiness before God
and cry to him for mercy that we might find that in Christ
alone. So by grace you are saved through faith, God given, that
is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. just in case you
were concerned about the fact that as a poor sinner you can't
produce what God requires. No, this is God's gift. Or in
case, as a proud sinner, you were thinking that you brought
something to your salvation and that's why God saved you. No,
that's a denial of that too. It's by grace, by faith, given
by God to direct you to Christ to find everything in Him. Verse
9. not of works, in case you didn't get it, not of works,
lest any man should boast. Salvation guarantees that no
one has any ground for boasting. Anytime you find something in
your salvation that gives you cause or ground for considering
yourself to be improving or to be better than others or to have
any confidence in yourself, you know that that's a lie. You know
it's a lie. You look back in your life and
I've done this on my own foolish, wicked thinking. Well, I can
see how God used that in my life because of, wait a minute, not
because of what I did. No, in spite of what I am. Not
of works, lest any man should boast. Notice how carefully this
is stated. We are his workmanship created
in Christ Jesus on two good works which God hath before ordained
that we should walk in them. What are we? We are the workmanship
of God. Now, turn back to 1 Peter. What
has God wrought? When we read this text of scripture
in 1 Peter, what we're reading here then is the work of God. His people, everyone whom the
Lord has saved, is described in these words. And so it says,
I'm going to take you back to the end of what we read in verse
9 of chapter 2, 1 Peter 2, verse 9. Notice these words, you are,
you see that? But you are, and then in verse
10, which in time past you were not a people but now are, or
are now the people of God. So he's talking to the people
of God and what they are. And it's all God's work. So that
when we read 1 Peter or any book of the Bible, we're reading about
the work of God and we're reading a description of what God sees
when he looks at his own work, and that work is the building
of God, it's the husbandry of God, it's God's creation, it's
his people in Christ, you see? And it's all by Jesus Christ. No wonder then that 1 Peter 1
opens up this way in verse 2, elect. That's the first work
of God. God chose, according to Ephesians
1, 4, he chose us in Christ. That's the beginning, the spring
of all that he did. And then he says that his choice
of us was according to his foreknowledge. Not our knowledge, but his knowledge
that came before of what he would do. Because known unto God are
all his works from the foundation of the world. Whatever God does
in time, he determined to do before time. This is very important. Remember we read that even in
Numbers chapter 23, verse 19. God is not a man that he should
lie, neither the son of man that he should repent. Has he spoken
and shall he not do it? God does everything based on
what he determined to do before time. And then you can go to
the end of time and you can find out what he meant to do at the
beginning, can't you? So that when he gets to the end
and he says, you are greatly loved, Of the Father, well, that's
true all the way from the beginning. There wasn't a time when God
suddenly started loving us, when we got better, when we fell under
the preaching of the gospel and we believed, then God started
loving us. No, all those are incorrect assumptions,
incorrect beliefs, they're false. So when he says in chapter two,
1 Peter chapter two, he says, dearly beloved, he's speaking
about those who were foreknown in love. before the foundation
of the world. And then back to verse 2 of chapter
1, he says, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the
Father through sanctification of the Spirit. Now, if I could
conclude everything that we spoke of last time about the Spirit,
I would say this, that what the Spirit of God is teaching in
the Bible about Christ, therefore, has the weight of God himself. and the unfailing certainty of
all that God is in his nature, so that it cannot fail and it
is holy. And we can take full assurance
of the fact that what God has said concerning Christ is everything. that we can depend on. We have
no reason to doubt it. So we're sanctified by God the
Spirit, which means that when we hear the Word of God, He gives
us life from the dead. As we read in Ephesians 2, He
creates us in Christ. And then He says, this is the
part we're going to look at briefly here, unto obedience and sprinkling
of the blood of Jesus Christ. Before I get into this, I want
to say just a couple of points here about the word of God here. Because what we've been reading
so far, how would you know this? How would you know that this
is true? How do you know anything is true? The assumption that the world
makes is that they know how to determine what's true and what's
false, don't they? And they have all sorts of ways
of doing that. In our modern world, maybe this has been true
from the beginning too, they take the most plain and evident
facts and they deny them. And they say, because if you
deny our denial of those plain facts, then you must be some
kind of an immoral person. Because by accepting these things
that are false, then we're actually more embracing of wickedness
and whatever. They basically take moral high
ground to themselves by denying the plain facts, like 2 plus
2 can't be 4, because that would make you some kind of, I don't
know, a pervert or something like that. The world is incredibly
distorted and deceived. Now that's the right, that's
going far to the extreme. But they have a much more sinister
and subtle way of trying to determine what's right and what's true.
And people grow up being taught this. So that in school, you
learn to believe things based on what the world tells you and
you suddenly find yourself thinking like that. That's the way you
were born, to think that way. So what are some of these ways
that God, I mean that the world teaches us to determine right
from wrong? truth from error. Well, the most
common one is that you know what's true and what's false because
you can observe it. You can observe it. Now, let's
put that to the test here. What does it say in scripture
about knowing the things of God? Can we know the things of God
by observation? The kingdom of God doesn't come
by observation, Jesus said. And in 1 Corinthians 2, verse
14, he says, no man knows, the natural man cannot understand
the things of God, they're spiritually discerned. Jesus told Nicodemus,
unless you're born of God, you cannot see. Right. So we know
from scripture that this test of what's true and false by what
I observe cannot be true. Because we observe with what?
Well, we have eyes, we have noses, we have hands. And so we reach
out and we try to feel things in the world. Look, I just saw
something. And as you grow older, you learn
that your eyes play tricks on you, that the things you thought
were true you may not have correctly remembered, then there's all
sorts of confusing details that teach you that your senses are
just not very reliable. They're not reliable. So our senses can't be a good
measure. And think about it if our senses
were the way that we proved truth from error. What would that mean?
Let's say that you could determine if God is God and his word is
true by what you sense. What does that mean in terms
of the importance of senses compared to God's word and to God himself?
It means that our senses then would establish the truth. Our
senses would establish the validity of God being God. and that would
make our senses more important or more valid than God himself. But we know from scripture that
every man is a liar. Let God be true, but every man
a liar, Romans 3. So we know that this is a deception
of Satan. When Eve saw senses, that the
tree was good for food, and when she perceived that it was able
to make one wise, her own thinking, and so what did she do? She reached
out and she ate what God told her not to eat. So we cannot
determine the truth by our senses, or our senses would be greater
than God, and our senses we know are faulty. We can see that because
we judge other people. No, that's not right. No, that's
not right. No, you're wrong. How do you know? Because I'm
right. So we make ourselves little fiefdoms of knowledge, and we
judge others. It proves that we also are faulty.
As Romans 2 says, the things you judge others in, that's what
you're guilty of. So our senses can't be there. So let me get
to the chase. What is the one way? What is
the very proof? How can we know that this is
God's word? How can we know that there is
a God? If we take the other approach, which is, well, not by our senses,
but by our intellect, we would say, well, there has to be a
God, because all things couldn't have just created themselves,
and we begin to reason. And we go through this reasoning
process, and suddenly we find ourselves basing the validity
of God's word on our own ability to think it through. And there's
this poor man over there who can't think as clearly as we
do, and we feel sorry for him. We say, man, I have to write
him off. And all the time we're thinking
that the word of God, the very truth of God is established by
our own intellect. Now, what would the conclusion
be if that were the case? It means that God could be no
bigger than our intellect, first of all. It means that God's truth
is only true because we determined it to be true by our own intellect.
So we elevate our logic or our intellect above the foundation,
which is God himself and his word. So let me say it clearly. What is the only proof that anything
is true, that it's the truth itself? What is it? Well, the
Bible says, thy word is truth, John 17, verse 17. Now I say
all of this in order to drive us into this point that I could
say is in Psalm 138, verse 2, that God has magnified his word
above his name. The proof of anything is God
having spoken. and never think that you can
find something more truthful than God's own word. If we doubt,
if you tell me, for example, oh, there's a hole over there
in the ground, and don't get near it or you'll fall into the
hole, if I believe you, then I'll avoid that hole. But you
might be lying, so I might just go ahead and venture over there,
and whether it's there or not depends on your truth. If we believe God, we're going
to believe what he says about the way things are. And we can't
prove it. In fact, the proof is that God
said it. That's the proof. And if we try
to go any lower than that in terms of a foundation, then we
prove ourselves to be false. What we're saying is that I'm
going to determine if God is telling the truth or not, if
he can be trusted or not based on all these ways that I have
grown up thinking about things. Maybe it's by observation, maybe
it's by intellect and reason, maybe it's by experimentation.
I was an engineer for 30 years and we made measurements. And
everyone said, well, you can't deny that's a measurement result.
But then you got to say, well, who created the measuring machine?
And who created the measurement reference? And who looked at
the measurement results? And suddenly we're back to the
same old problem. The only proof of anything is that God has spoken. And this is essential to be the
case because what God has said in his word cannot be proven
by observation. How in the world would you know
that you're accepted by God? by what God said on the basis
solely of what He provided and received from His Son, unless
He said it. And you have nothing else but
the naked Word of God, and you're resting all the most significant
things that could possibly be in your case, your whole eternity
on what? Just the bare Word of God. And
yet you want to think, well, I'm going to prove creation,
or I'm going to prove that God is God, or I'm going to prove
all these things by some other way? No. Let's settle it in our
mind. If God has spoken, that's the
proof. And I say all that in a lengthy
way in order to bolster our confidence in what God has said here in
1 Peter chapter 2. Elect according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father. Through sanctification of the
Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ,
grace unto you and peace be multiplied." If God didn't say these things,
we would not know them. But because God has said them,
they are the truth, and it is the proof that they are the truth
because God has spoken and it has been written. Aren't you
glad that God didn't just speak, but he had it written in the
Bible? Here we have the very truth of
God, the mind of God, his word written. What can we elevate
above that in terms of a treasure? The word of God written. Now,
I wanna get to this part here because we have to have this
established in order to enjoy the proof, the truth of what
is said next, which is unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ. Now, we once, once all of us,
thought that, at least I know I personally did, that by obeying
rules that God set down, we could be acceptable. to God. You grew up this way with your
mom and dad. Do this. Don't do that. Up. I
told you to do that. Why didn't you do that? No allowance
for you this week. Oh, I see you broke my rules.
Okay, well I'm going to have to put you in the corner or deprive
you of food or something. So we grew up in this, and other
people, they think we're good and nice, and they're our friends.
And if we're mean to them, then they're not gonna be our friends.
So we think that's the way God is. God has a standard, we have
to meet it. The rules have to be met, and
so we live by these rules. And we expect that God is going
to accept us based on how well we keep the rules. Isn't that
the way we think naturally? And we thought that by keeping
God's rules and obeying His commandments, we could somehow be enough blameless
and somehow acceptable enough that God could accept us and
obey enough in order for God to consider us as righteous,
so that even in our conscience, we somehow knew, though we were
unable to truly do all that God has said, because he has a pure
standard and he can't look on evil, that somehow in his mercy
God would lower the standard enough so that when we stand
before him in judgment, he's going to somehow let us go. Now
that's the way that religion thinks. And this is so prevalent
that when we read scripture, We're prone to think that way
until we take it back to the foundation. And what is that
foundation? Paul said, no other foundation
can be laid than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. God has
spoken. What has he said? Look at my
son. This is my work. And this is
the way I create my people. And it's very good. And so we
take God's word. So we have this notion that God
will somehow accept us by our rule keeping. And even when we
know that we can't keep the rules, what do we do? Well, we take
some comfort in thinking, well, I meant to do right. So God's
going to look at my intentions. And you'll say, well, he really
wanted to do right. He just couldn't do it because
he was weak. And that's good enough. I told you many times
about the man who came to my door and asked me, I asked him,
how are you going to stand before Christ? What are you going to
say? How are you going to give an account? He said, after he thought about
it a minute, I really appreciated his honesty. He said, well, I
guess he's going to consider what I've done, my good works
will be better than my bad works. This is exactly what he thought.
So we live a life in pursuit of this goal to be accepted by
God. And we know that we're not in
ourselves, but we fall back on the safety net that somehow God will
look at something deeper than I can see, and my intentions
will be found to be good. All of that is utterly false. And until God's word speaks to
us into our darkness, we can't see it. And we can't be convinced
of it until God in his almighty power convinces us that we're
sinners and have no hope unless God does something, unless he
works. What has God wrought? So in the final analysis, we
come to what we studied in Galatians 2, that by the works of the law,
by what we do, our efforts and our work, our intentions, anything
we do to try to keep the rules in order to be accepted by God
is utterly a failure. It cannot work. And it is coming
to this realization that requires the electing work of God the
Father to choose us in Christ so that His work And His very
blood shed for our sins is what God considers, and that's all
that God considers. And in considering Him, God is
well pleased. He is satisfied. A full propitiation,
a full payment has been made. A full liberty of redemption
has been granted because Christ fulfilled all of God's righteousness
in His obedience unto death. for sinners like us, and it was
done out of love. And God looks upon him, and there's
no fudging of the books, no compromise of justice, but the full display
of God's righteousness and his holiness in what Christ has done. And the mercy of God, like the
waters breaking through the dam, are let go, and all of God's
grace in overflowing abundance is lavished upon the one who
was utterly sinful, because God put him in Christ before the
foundation of the world, and God received from Christ all
for him. Now, that's what God is saying
here in verse 2. What has God wrought? elect according
to the foreknowledge, this is the work of God the Father. He
knew before, in the counsels of his own immutable will, he
saw people in Christ, he chose them in Christ, he loved them
in Christ, and he made them accepted in the beloved, the Lord Jesus
Christ. He chose them to be holy and
without blame before him in love, Ephesians 1.4. And the Lord Jesus
Christ, by His own shed blood, reconciled them to God. They
were enemies in their minds and by their own works, and He brought
them near. He removed the barrier their
sins presented, the fence of their sins against God. He removed
it by shedding His blood in their place. and he made them blameless
and holy before God by his own precious blood. In Colossians
chapter 1 and verse 22, he says it this way, in the body of his
flesh through death to present you holy and unblameable and
unreprovable in his sight. That's what Christ did when he
shed his blood. In Hebrews chapter 10, we studied
the book of Hebrews, but in Hebrews 10.10, it says, by the witch
will, the will of the Father, we are sanctified, made holy,
in other words, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once
for all. Once for all. God accomplished
this work once. And it's an eternal work, has
everlasting results and consequences, because it's all done in Christ.
And then in Hebrews chapter 13, verse 12, he says, Jesus also
that he might sanctify the people, make them holy with his own blood,
suffered without the gate. And then in verse 20 of Hebrews
13, Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our
Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood
of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good
work to do His will. So here we see that it was all
through the blood of Christ, through His obedience, because
He was a perfect man. He could offer himself for the
sins of sinners and it would be a perfect sacrifice. He could
bear their sins and he could fulfill God's, satisfy God's
justice in his sufferings and take away their sins and also
fulfill their righteousness in his obedience. This is what it's
speaking about here. We are sanctified by the Spirit,
given birth, given life, eyes to see, faith in Christ, and
what was it that accomplished this? It was the obedience of
Christ and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, and
our eyes are made open to it. The life of Christ in us makes
us understand that the life and death of Christ for us is all
of our justification before God, all of our acceptance, the cause
of all of our blessing, the foundational cause, the righteous cause, the
righteous and holy basis of it, what Christ did. It's all Him. This is what God has done. And
what I want to do in the next sermon here is to go through
these verses that we've read. And we're going to see the work
of God through this. But notice, God the Father, God
the Son, and God the Holy Spirit all doing this work to save these
people. Never think that what we do contributes
one thing. This is the radical. life-giving
revelation of the Spirit of God to us that all has been done
by Christ for us, and He causes us to live upon Him. We no longer
come to God based on our rule-keeping. We come to God based on Christ's
shed blood in that obedience of His that made known God's
own righteousness. What has God wrought? Look at
Christ. What has He created? Look at
His people, created in Christ Jesus when they were dead in
sins, and stand back. and don't think for a moment
about what you're going to do to make it work. But you stand
there as a poor sinner saved by God's grace, looking upon
Christ, your whole obedience, the cause of all your blessings,
and you praise the God of glory, because it was done for the praise
of the glory of His grace. Let's pray. Father, thank you
for your great grace towards us in the Lord Jesus Christ.
You've given to us everything in Christ. He's the foundation.
He's the cornerstone. He's the one who indwells us.
He's the one who brings all these things to our remembrance and
causes us to see that our salvation is in Him and give God praise
and glory and worship the Father through Him. All is by your Spirit,
Lord, the Spirit of our Lord Jesus, the Spirit of God, the
Holy Spirit. teaching us that Christ is all.
What a blessing to know that God himself in his own mind and
his holiness is revealing to us as sinners his great thoughts,
his great work, and his glory in our salvation. And here we
thank you, Lord, and pray that you would give us the grace to
see wonderful things out of your word. In Jesus' name we pray,
amen.