people of God would have a great
rejoicing in their hearts, in your hearts, since you've heard
that song. And I know that's your favorite
song, isn't it, brother? And I love that. Robert Mary
McShane wrote that great song many years ago. Nancy and I will be leaving,
the Lord willing, about 4 p.m., going over to Charleston. And Tom and Anitra Morgan have
graciously invited us to spend the night with them tonight.
And Tom will get us to the airport there, just a very few minutes
from Charleston Airport. And we'll get there before 5
in the morning, the Lord willing, and go from there to Atlanta,
Atlanta to Los Angeles, where we'll have a long layover. I didn't want a layover at all,
and I especially didn't want one in Los Angeles. I think that
saved us about $4,000 or $5,000. It costs you if you want to bypass
Los Angeles. It's going to cost you a lot.
But anyway, we'll be there for a few hours. And then, Lord willing,
Monday night, about shortly after 8, Pacific time, we shall, Lord
willing, arrive in Honolulu. And we do covet your prayers. As we leave, I'm looking forward
to seeing the folks over there and visiting with them and preaching
to them. And they anticipate our visit. We stay with a couple over there.
And they have made provisions for us. They have an upstairs. So a few years ago, they put
in a power lift chair because Nancy can't climb stairs. So
the bedroom that we have is upstairs. And then they've rented a concentrator
for her and also a wheelchair. And she told them, she said,
my husband will push me anywhere I need to go. I said, yes, ma'am. So we look
forward to this week, this coming week. I think we'll have three
weeknight services. And then, of course, we'll meet
next Lord's Day. And we'll have the Lord's Supper.
And as you gather here, brother, Ron Traban, of course, is taking
the service tonight, as he frequently does, and I'm thankful for him. Matt will take the Wednesday
night service. And you'll be blessed by these
men. And then next Lord's Day morning,
Alan Eisen will speak. And then once again in the PM
service, Ron will speak. And then Brandon will have the
Wednesday night service that week. Then on the 24th, you'll
be privileged to hear Pastor Tim James. He's from Cherokee,
North Carolina, been down there a lot of years, faithfully pastoring
on the Cherokee Indian Reservation, and he'll be speaking the Lord
willing Sunday morning and Sunday night, March the 24th, the Lord
willing. And I'll be back that Wednesday
evening. So we do covet your prayers as
we go forth. And I know that you'll be remembering
these men who will be speaking for me in my absence. 1 Peter chapter 4 is our text. for the morning message, 1 Peter
chapter 4. And I've had one verse of scripture
on my mind and on my heart for this, the better part of this
week. And it is 1 Peter chapter 4 and
verse 18. The first epistle, it's a general
epistle. This book is called a general
epistle, which means it was a letter written in general to the pilgrims
of God, the sojourners of the Lord in other countries. So it's
not to a specific group of people, such as the book of Galatians
is to the church at Galatia and so forth. But this is to all
of the churches and all who read this epistle, this letter. And the word epistle just means
letter that Peter wrote. It's his first letter that he
wrote. And then, of course, there's
the second epistle of Peter. But I direct your attention to
verse 4, or chapter 4, excuse me, of 1 Peter and then verse
18. And if the righteous scarcely
be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? There are two contrasting types
of people that are mentioned in this verse of Scripture. One
is said to be the righteous. The other is said to be the ungodly. And actually, that takes in everybody
because we'll all fall into one of those two categories. We're
either righteous, and the word righteous means just or justified,
innocent, without any blame, accepted before God. That's the
righteous. And I would ask you, are you
righteous? And the only way to be righteous
is to be righteous in the Lord, our righteousness, who is the
Lord Jesus Christ. We have no righteousness of our
own, Isaiah 64, 6 says, for all of our righteousnesses are as
filthy rags. Therefore, we must have a righteousness,
our Lord said, that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes
and the Pharisees. We've got to have a righteousness
that is equal to the righteousness of God Himself. And I would ask you, do you know
where such a righteousness can be found? And do you know how
this righteousness was established? And do you know how this righteousness
is received? This righteousness is the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus, and it was established by His obedience
unto death, even the death of the cross of Calvary. It's there
He paid our blame, He paid our sin debt. It's there that He
justified His people. He is said to be in Jeremiah,
the Lord, our righteousness. There is no other righteousness
to be found that God will accept. The righteousness that God demands
is a righteousness equal to His own. Now, where will you find
that? How and where will you find how to be blameless and
without guilt and innocent as you are before God? and the righteousness must be
found in the Lord Jesus, the Savior of sinners. Well, then
how is that righteousness made ours? Well, first of all, by
imputation, and that's just a long word that means it is credited
to us, it is charged to our account due to the obedience of our Lord
Jesus during His life, but most especially in His death. We're
made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. And that righteousness
is received by faith. For by grace are you saved through
faith. I began the service by quoting
those verses. We're saved through the faith
that God gives us, and faith itself is not of yourselves,
It's the gift of God. So this faith with which we receive
Christ and receive this righteousness and this pardon of sin, this
gift of faith is of God's doing. He must grant you faith. You
see, we must understand salvation from the very beginning to the
end is all of God. That's why Paul says in Philippians
chapter 1, He who hath begun a good work in you will finish
it to the day of Jesus Christ. You see, if God begins a work,
He will finish the work. And actually the work was begun
in us in time, but ordained before time began that we would be made
the righteousness of God in Christ. So I begin the message by asking
you, are you righteous before God? Are you innocent? Are you
blameless? Do you stand before God without
any fault whatsoever? I promise you, according to the
word of God, those only will stand accepted before God in
the day of judgment who are without fault and blameless. You must
be righteous. A righteous God demands righteousness. God said, be ye holy for I am
holy. Well, how can I be holy when
I'm unholy in myself? And the very best I can do is
just more unholiness. You see, our problem is not only
what we do wrong, and when we speak wrong, and when we think
wrong, and when we have a wrong motive. We have numerous, too
many sins in those areas to even begin to count them. But the
reason we have all these other problems is because we are sinners
by nature. We are unrighteous from the beginning. When we entered into this world,
we came in, David says, speaking lies. We're transgressors from the
beginning. So how can I be righteous? And I say to you, that which
is true also of myself, we eat and drink iniquity like water. We have no true concept of the
depth of our sinfulness. Well, then how can I be righteous? How can you be righteous? That
question ought to weigh heavily on your mind. Because none will
stand before God and hear the Lord say, enter ye into my kingdom,
prepared for you since the foundation of the world. Nobody will enter
in except those who are blameless, innocent, without fault and righteous. Will that be you? Does that describe
you? And if you listened, and I hope
you did listen to the words of that hymn, Whenever there's special
music, listen for the words. I tell you, those of us who are
righteous before God, only in eternity will we really know
how much we owe to God for His grace and for His salvation.
Not till then. Not till then. Will we realize
how much we owe? We owed a debt we could never
commence to begin to getting started to paying. And yet our Lord came and paid
the full indebtedness of all of his people. Everybody who
is brought by the Spirit of God to trust the Lord Jesus Christ
may rest assured that when Christ died, He put your sins away from
God and away from you as far as the East is from the West.
And He buried them in the depths of the deepest sea. And God says
to you, your sins and your iniquities will I remember no more. That's what God said. If I had said that to you, you'd
say, well, that doesn't carry any kind of weight, Jim, that's
just your words. No, that's the word of God. My dear believing brother or
sister, I say to you, God Almighty, your Heavenly Father, who purposed
your salvation in eternity past, who gave you as a gift to the
Lord Jesus Christ, who paid your sin debt, and the Spirit of God,
who inspired holy men of God to write the Scriptures, and
who worked in your heart, A work of grace to give you faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ. God says to you, God, this is
God's word. I'll never remember your sins
against you. Oh, that's good news. Good news
indeed. So the first group is righteous. if the righteous scarcely be
saved. And I'll get to the meaning of
that. So there's the righteous. And then there's the ungodly. And really, the ungodly is kind
of the opposite, because here Peter's drawing a contrast. You see, I fear that I'm speaking
to some people in this congregation, to some who are watching, though
I don't know anybody's heart. But in a congregation of this
size, I would never presume to think that everybody in here
stands righteous before God. In fact, there's only one person
in here I'm confident of that is righteous before God, and
that's me. That's because I can't see your
heart. I'm not your judge. I'm not your priest. I'm not your intercessor. I'm
not the one who can absolve you of your sins. But I'll tell you
who does absolve people of their sins, the one who's got hands
and a nail scarred, Christ our Lord. Are you righteous? I am. By the witness of the Spirit,
I am. Because Christ is my only hope.
He's my only plea. And like I wrote in the song,
my only hope and my only plea is when Christ died, He died
for me. That's my hope. I tell you what, when I get to
glory, and should the Lord say to me, why should I let you?
Why shall I let you into my holy kingdom? What right do you have
to be here? I'm going to say, Lord, I don't
have any rights at all. But your son who's seated at
your own right hand, having been exalted because of his faithfulness
to do the work of redemption, he's my righteousness. I'm here
on his coattails. Lord, I'm here and he's my only
hope. The blood of Christ, that's all,
the blood, the blood. And God said, when I see the
blood, that's what he said. When I see the blood, I'll pass
over you. Lord, see the blood and pass
over me. Righteous. But that other group,
ungodly. Oh, that's just the opposite.
It means irreverence toward God. You see, those who do not believe
on, who do not look to the Lord Jesus Christ for their righteousness,
for their salvation, they are irreverently treating the Son
of God because He is the only righteousness that God will accept. And if you look within, if you're
looking to anything you've done, if your testimony, I had a conversation
with somebody the other day about this. If your testimony of your
salvation, if it begins with I, that's not good. Because you see, when it comes
to I, When it comes to me, when it comes to what I do, that amounts
to works and that's no good. And the ungodly are those who
do not come to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is not their all and
their salvation does not begin and end with Him. They're unrighteous. And when you face God, it says
in Revelation chapter 22, he that is righteous, let him be
righteous still. But he that is filthy, that is
he that is ungodly, let him be filthy, let him be ungodly still. I don't think, well I know for
a fact, most people don't think about meeting God and the standard
that God demands. So I believed on Jesus, that's
good enough. There's more to this business
of salvation than your belief. Don't misunderstand me, faith
is necessary. Without faith, nobody can please
God. But your faith must be in the
right person. and for the right reason. The righteous, you see, are accepted
by God. The ungodly are not. And I don't
care what you do, I don't care what you say. You can say, I
read my Bible every day, I pray every day. If you're not righteous
in Jesus Christ, then you are ungodly. It's as simple as that. Now let me show you something
else to contrast as far as the results or the outcome. What
about the righteous? He says, if the righteous scarcely
be saved, the righteous are saved. The righteous are delivered from
death, from hell, from judgment. The righteous are saved. They
have been rescued. You see, this word saved means
to be rescued. I used to be a lifeguard. The
camp where Nancy and I met, I was a lifeguard. I pulled many a
person out of that Cherry Stone Lake. I was a lifeguard. You know why I was a lifeguard? To rescue or save anybody who
appeared to be drowning. And when I pulled them out, coughing
up water or whatever, and doing their best to drown me along
with themselves. Of course, I'd been trained how
to rescue them. but they owe their deliverance
not to themselves because they're kicking and screaming and fighting
and trying to put me under and all of that kind of stuff. I
rescued them. They knew it and I knew it. Let
me tell you something. We're going down, we're drowning
in the wrath and judgment of God. We're going under. It's eternal death. And the sad thing is we're not
saying, save me, save me. We're just content to go on under. But our Lord Jesus is the master
lifeguard. He's the Savior. And He rescues
those who are perishing. We're saved. And I know there
are several tents to salvation. We were saved before the world
began. We were saved when Christ died
for us. We were saved when the Spirit
of God gifted us with life and faith. And Paul says, now is
our salvation nearer than when we first believed. Someday we
will be, if I could say it this way, we'll be plum saved. We'll be completely saved. My
body is not saved. It's growing older. And soon,
if the Lord doesn't come back, then this body, this earthly
tabernacle is going to have to be committed to the ground. But in the resurrection day,
of course, my soul will go back to God when He saves me or when
He calls me. My body will go back to the ground,
but there'll be a resurrection day. When my body that's gonna
be buried, it's got to decay. I'm like Job. Job said, the worms
destroy my body. I shall see God in my flesh. This body is gonna rise again.
My soul's gonna come back with Christ and my body and soul be
joined together and my body will then be incorruptible and immortal. And then it can be said, James
Ferguson Byrd, he's really saved now. He's totally saved. Delivered from every aspect of
sin. I woke up early this morning,
got a lot of things on my mind, of course, and I got to thinking
about what it's going to be like to
see the Lord. David said, I shall be satisfied
when I awaken thy likeness. That's talking about resurrection.
I was thinking about how glorious it's going to be to see Christ
face to face. And when I do, when he raises
this body, and I see my Lord, all that I will be then, I totally
owe to him. And I will say, thou hast saved
me. Thou hast saved me. I was growing
up as a little boy. I was a bit mischievous, and
you wouldn't think that of me, I'm sure, but I was, to a degree. My daddy, a time or two, said,
you'll never amount to nothing, I'll tell you that. Well, he
wasn't far from wrong. And in myself, I didn't amount
to anything. I'll tell you what, one of these
days, standing before Christ, perfect. And that's you too. Can you imagine
what it would be like to just be perfect? And I was thinking
this morning, I was praying, and I got distracted in my mind. Has that ever happened to you?
I'm praying, and all of a sudden I'm thinking about something
else. That probably doesn't happen to y'all, does it? You must not
be human then. And then the thought occurred
to me, won't it be wonderful when you'll be able to pray to
the Lord, talk to the Lord, and no outside thought will come
pushing in, pushing its way in, and pushing out the spiritual
thoughts that you're having then. Won't that be wonderful? No more
struggles. That's when we'll really be saved. But this other group, it says,
where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? And that word, you do will to
study that word appear because it has the idea of light is going
to shine to expose, expose what's there. And that's not gonna be pleasant. The word appear has the idea
of reveal. It'd be a revelation day. I think about people who've been
religious for years and maybe in a lot of preachers that I've
heard them preach, and they don't preach the gospel. And I think,
you know, when they die, that's gonna be an eye-opening time
for them. When their testimony began with,
I, I, I, I did this for Jesus. It's like those people in Matthew
chapter seven. Lord, didn't we do this for you?
Didn't we do that for you? Didn't we do something else for
you? They're at the judgment and say, we're in the wrong group.
How'd we wind up in the wrong group? We should be over there
with the righteous because we prophesied in thy name. We preached
in thy name. We did miracles in thy name.
We cast out devils in thy name. We did all these things for you.
There's been a mix up. There's been a blunder. We've
been put with the wrong group. And the Lord said, I'm going
to say to them, depart from me. I never knew you. I never knew
you. Man, I don't want to be in that
group. Do you? Come on now. I don't want to
be in that group. And I'm not going to be in that
group. They're just going to make an
appearance. and the revealing light of the glory of God will
show what they really are. They're not Christ's. They're
not righteous. They are, in fact, ungodly and
sinners. They're just going to make an
appearance, and then they're gone. That's all. Now, you're in one of the two
groups, and so am I. And notice what it says here
about the righteous. If the righteous scarcely be
saved. Let me just make a couple of
comments. When it says scarcely, it doesn't mean just barely saved. As if the righteous are just
saved by the skin of their teeth. Oh no, no. We're saved according
to God's eternal purpose. and God's purpose can never fail.
We're saved because of the full redemption that Christ Jesus
paid for us upon the cross of Calvary. We're saved because
the Spirit of God has quickened us and we live under God by the
grace of the Holy Spirit. We have been given faith and
our confidence is in the Savior himself and not in anything we've
ever done. When it says scarcely, it means
this. We shall be saved with difficulty. Saved with difficulty. And the
difficulty was not with God, because there's nothing too hard
for God, but there were some things that had to fall into
line before God could save us. And the first thing is justice
had to be honored. Justice had to be honored. Most people in religion, I've
been in religion about all my life, most people in religion
don't know anything about the demands of justice that had to
be satisfied in order for God to save a sinner. They don't
know. They don't know how God can be
just and justify the ungodly, do you? I asked a person that
not too long ago. I said, how can God be just and
justify the ungodly? And she said, I'm not sure I
understand you, she said. I said, well, that's coming right
out of the Bible. I said, well, how is a sinner saved? She said,
we believe on Jesus. I said, now wait a minute, that
is not the foundation for faith. The foundation for faith is not
faith. The foundation of faith is what
Christ Jesus, who He is and what He did and why He did it and
where He is now. There's the foundation for faith. Our salvation, it didn't cost
us anything. It's free to us. I'll tell you
what, there's a debt that had to be paid. God's not gonna save anybody
at the expense of his justice. I don't care who you are. God's
gonna remain holy and righteous and just in all his ways. And the only way he could save
anybody was to satisfy his justice, which is only satisfied with
death for sin. Can you remember that? Death
for sin. That's what justice demands. In the Old Testament, do you
remember where it says that the Lord delighteth not or the Lord
isn't satisfied with the death of the wicked? Why isn't God delighted with
the death of the wicked? There's a reason. Why isn't he
satisfied with the death of the wicked? Because the death of
the wicked never satisfies his justice. The only death that satisfied
justice was the death of the Son of God. And that's the only
way God could be merciful to you and me and save our souls,
was because Christ satisfied justice. Now, that had to be
taken care of. And I'll tell you one other difficulty. in this salvation of the righteous,
that there's a difficulty about us. Because we're dead in trespasses
and sins. And we won't, Christ said that
you will not come to me that you might have life. John 5,
40. We got a big problem. Say all
you gotta do is come to the Lord Jesus. And the Savior said you
will not come to me. Now there is a problem. We gotta
come to him, but we can't come to him. We don't have the will,
we don't have the desire, we don't have the ability. The Savior
said, no man can come to me except the Father which has sent me,
draw him. And I'll raise him up at the
last day. Gotta be that drawing grace. And that word is like
a magnet. He's gotta be a magnet that draws
us. So the Spirit of God has to do
the work. in us and then Christ is formed
in us. Are you righteous or are you
ungodly? I'm just trying to be honest
with you. I can't convince anybody of anything. Because if I can convince you
that what I'm preaching is right, some other preacher can come
along and he can tell his message better than I can tell my message
probably. And he can convince you of what
he believes. I tell you who's got to convince
you, God's got to convince you. And you take the things that
I've said this morning. If you never hear me speak another
word, you've heard the truth of God right now. I don't know
where you came from, don't know where you're going after the
service is over. Some of you don't even know who
you are. Most of you I do, but some I don't know, and I don't
know who's watching. But I'll tell you this, God's
gonna hold you accountable for what you heard this morning.
Now, you better do some evaluating now. Am I righteous, or am I
among the ungodly and the sinners? Oh, make God reveal the truth
to your heart. The only hope, the only plea
is Christ Jesus, the Christ of Calvary. Well, let's sing a closing
song. Get your psalm books and let's
sing 187. I thought we'd sing this since
we're gonna be separated from you for a while. Bless me the
time, 187. 187. Just sing them all, Joe. Just
sing them all. Let's stand together. Rest we of silent minds, our
hearts in Christian love. The fellowship of kindred minds
is right to that above. before our fathers' thrones,
before our fathers' thrones.