Thank you so much. Would you
open your Bibles with me? First Peter, Chapter 3. Book of First Peter, Chapter
3. I do desire in this life In fact,
on this very day, I desire to worship the Lord in spirit and
in truth. I desire to enter into his presence,
and I know you do as well. I'm here because this is important
to me, and I believe you're here because it's important to you
to just honor God and bless him who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. I know our praise
and our worship is feeble, and certainly it's all tainted with
sin. And yet we come together today
with this great desire to enter into his presence in worship
and in praise. And then I want to draw near
to God in prayer. I don't think very many people
understand prayer. It isn't about changing God.
It's not about changing His will. It's got something to do with
our will being conformed to His will. And I do desire to enter
into His presence with prayer And then, one of these days,
I'm going to die. And I want to enter into His
presence then. I want to draw near to the Lord
in glory. A psalmist said in Psalm 73,
25, it's good for me to draw near to God. And I know this, there's only
one person who can bring me to God to worship. There's only one person who can
bring me to God in prayer because there's one God and one mediator
between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. And there's only
one person who can bring me unto God when I die. That's the Lord Jesus Christ. There's no wonder that we make
so much of the Savior. He's the only one who can bring
us unto God. Now here's the title of the message,
Bringing Sinners to God. 1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 18. 1 Peter 3, 18, for Christ also hath once suffered for sins,
the just for the unjust, that he might, or in order that, he would bring us to God, being
put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit." It's
important for us to remember that Peter is writing to a people
who suffered greatly for the cause of Christ. Of course, many
of them knew something about sickness and illness and so the
physical sufferings that go along with disease and the infirmities
of the flesh, but many of them suffered because they were believers
in the Lord Jesus Christ and they were persecuted. They knew
something about the hatred of the world, the mistreatment of
the world. Many of them were arrested, many
of them were beaten. Simon Peter himself had already
at this point been arrested and then released from prison by
the power of God, but he knew something about suffering for
the cause of Christ Jesus. And so Peter writes, and he's
motivating the people of God in this first letter that he
writes people who are scattered everywhere as a result of the
persecution that arose. He writes to them to encourage
them, don't quit, don't get discouraged. The gospel of God's grace is
a good news message of God satisfied by the substitutionary sacrifice
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't get discouraged. Don't
get down in the dumps. Don't feel like that the world
is beating up on you and you can't take it anymore, but rather
suffer things for the cause of Christ willingly and patiently,
and that includes persecution as well as sickness. Because
we know that no persecution can come to these saints, no imprisonment
could come, no death could come, and for all of us, no sickness
or illness or disease can come except our God brings it to us. Therefore, we ask God for patience. And Peter writes to motivate
these people to keep on looking to Christ, even if you have to
suffer. And He gives this greatest reason
of all. He gives several reasons why
we should continue, why they should continue looking to Christ.
But He gives reason, one great reason for all of us to keep
looking to Christ and trusting Him in the midst of the troubles
of life. Verse 18, for or because. Here's the reason. Here's the
chief reason for patience, Here's the chief reason for encouragement. Here's the chief reason to keep
on believing, keep on trusting, keep on fighting the good fight. It's because Christ also hath
once suffered for sins. The just for the unjust. that he might bring us to God,
bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened
by the Spirit. Peter speaks of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the only one who has the grace and has the authority
and has the power to bring us to God. And he uses this as the
great motivating force to the people of God to continue in
faithfulness, to continue in good works, continue in believing
the Lord, in being faithful to the gospel, remembering this
always, our Savior also suffered. You're not the first one to suffer. and you won't be the last one
to suffer. But nobody has suffered like
our Lord Jesus Christ did because he suffered not only the agonies
that men could throw at him, but he suffered the very wrath
of God in his body and in his soul for his people in order
to save us from our sins. So this is the apostle's great
argument. Don't quit. Don't get discouraged. Continue looking to the Lord
Jesus because he's the only one who can bring us to God. I have
two points I want to leave with you this morning. Number one,
no sinner, no sinner can bring himself to God by himself. You don't have any part in bringing
yourself unto God. If Christ Jesus, if He suffered
in order to bring us to God, then it stands to reason we can't
bring ourselves to God. Doesn't that stand to reason?
If the only one who can present us to a holy God, One who is
holy and righteous and pure in all of his ways, if the only
one who can present us filthy, contaminated, sinful people to
God, if the only one who can bring us to God is Christ Jesus,
and he had to suffer and die in order to do that, it stands
to common reason that we can't bring ourselves to God. That passage, Ron, read to us
from Psalm 14, the Lord looked down from heaven, like he did
in Genesis chapter six. The Lord looked down and he saw
every imagination of man's heart was only evil continually. That's what he said, continually. The Lord has assessed the condition
of all mankind, everybody born of Adam. He has assessed the
situation and the condition of all men and women and boys and
girls and babies, and He says they're all gone astray. They're
all together become filthy and the word filthy there that Ron
read to us in Psalm 14 is literally stinking, putrid, rotten. The Bible doesn't flatter us.
We haven't gathered together this morning in order for us
to be flattered. We must take our rightful position
as worms on the dunghill. We're all a bunch of nobodies
before God who is infinitely pure. We're sinful. He's holy. We're wicked. He's righteous.
I can't bring myself to God. I cannot commend myself to God. What have you ever done that
you think would commend you to God? And he would say, yes, on
the basis of who you are or what you've done, I will allow you
into my presence. There's nothing. You have nothing
to offer. You can't bring yourself to God. If you, by keeping the Ten Commandments,
if you, by church membership, if you, by doing good deeds,
can bring yourself to God, why on earth did Christ come down
here and live and die upon the cursed cross of Calvary? If we can do something to merit
God's salvation, what was the reason that the Son of God came
down here and suffered the damnation of hell in his own heart for
three hours on the cross? If we can bring ourselves to
God. Nobody, nobody can do anything
to attract God's attention. that God would say, well, now
there's one of those sinners down there. Seems better than
the rest. No. We've all turned aside. We've all gone astray. We've
turned everyone, Isaiah 53, six, we've turned everyone to his
own way. And our way is the wrong way.
There's one way to God, one way to salvation, one way to glory,
one way to heaven. Christ is the way. That's what
the scripture says. In Job 15, it says man drinks
iniquity like water. Like water. Drinking water to us comes natural. And you may or may not like water. My wife is not, she doesn't much
like the taste of water and she got that honestly from her mother.
But sometimes, you just gotta have it. And nothing else satisfies. Give me a glass of water. Ever
since she was, got this lung disease and little heart issues,
can't have any caffeine. Drinks a little decaf, but mainly
she lives off water. Pretty good, isn't it, now? You see, it comes natural for
us to drink water. You go out and work. You're going
to work in your garden here before too long. Don't work on your
blueberry bushes over here, brother. And some of the rest of you got
your garden. You're going to work, and you're
going to maybe have a jar of water out there, a jug of water. You say, I got to have a water
break. Because you get thirsty for it, you've gotta have water. And as natural as us drinking
water is, that's how natural it is to sin. We drink iniquity like water. Like water. Therefore, who in their right
mind would ever entertain the thought, I can bring myself,
I can lift myself up to God. That's pretty foolish, isn't
it? That's really foolish. Me a sinner who drinks iniquity
like water, Job 15, 16, by the way. Me a sinner who is impure,
and rotten to the core, one who stinks before God, I'm spoiled,
you see, in sin." You know what it means to have food spoiled
in your refrigerator? You have a leftover and you put
it in there and somehow or another it gets pushed to the back of
the fridge. And then you'll be looking in
there about, oh, a week or two later or whatever it is. Well,
I forgot about that. Let me pull that out and you
go, whew, boy, that's ripe. You say, that stinks to high
heaven. That's you in the nostrils of
God, and that's me. That pretty clear to you? We've
all together become stinky. and God will not permit into
His holy presence anybody who stinks. We must be washed in the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ, robed in the garments of righteousness,
and sprayed with the very perfume of His holiness before He will
receive us. You can't bring yourself to God And you can't bring anybody else
to God either. There's a verse I want you to
look at. Proverbs chapter 11. Look at Proverbs 11. You know, Psalm 49 says, nobody can
by any means redeem his brother. Proverbs 11. You can't save your
brother. You can't bring your brother
to Christ. Somebody you love, a natural relative. You say,
I want him to be saved. Let me tell you something. We
all agree on that, but we can't bring him to God. Because we
can't bring ourselves. That's an impossibility. Look at Proverbs 11, verse 30. The fruit of the righteous is
a tree of life. Proverbs 11, 30. And he that
winneth souls is wise. Who is the tree of life? Well,
Christ is. And we're his fruit. In the book of Proverbs, he is
set forth, he is personified And this is important to understand
the book of Proverbs. He is wisdom. He is wisdom. Remember 1 Corinthians 1, who
of God, Christ of God is made unto us. What's the very first
one in that series of four? Wisdom. Wisdom and righteousness
and sanctification and redemption that according as it is written,
he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. He is wisdom, and
he that winneth souls is wise. Tell you a little story. When
I was in college, 1969 to 73, and then I was excommunicated
because I believed sovereign grace. That's where Ralph Barnard
used to teach. several years before that. But
anyway, every week, you had a little mailbox at the college I went
to. Everybody had a mailbox. And
every week on Friday, you'd get a little slip of paper, and you'd
pull it out. It said, how many people did you witness to this
week? How many tracks did you pass out? How many souls did
you win? I got called in to the dean of
men's office because he said, you're always putting down zero
for winning souls to Jesus. What's the matter with you? And
I said, I can't win souls to Jesus. Well, he said, that's
what we're teaching you here in this Bible college. I said,
nobody can win souls to Jesus. Souls are won to the Lord Jesus
by the Lord Jesus himself, because he that winneth souls is wise. I said, we're fools. The scripture
says he's wise. He that winneth souls is wise. You can't win anybody. Let me
tell you something, if you win somebody over to your point of
view doctrinally, somebody else can win them over to their point
of view as well if they're better at arguing. If they present their
arguments more logically and you didn't use enough scripture. We can't win souls. So I decided to look up that
word winneth. It's amazing what you can learn
when you look up a word and see what it means in the original.
Number one, and these are all Bible words taken from the original
word, Hebrew word winneth, or a form of that. Number one, take
as to take or seize by force. Remember the Savior said, no
man can come to me except the Father who hath sent me. What's
the next two words? Draw him. Draw him. That means to seize upon, to
take hold of. Like if you draw a sword. The sword doesn't draw itself.
You put your hand in the handle and you pull it out. That's what the Lord has to do
to us. He has to take us. He that when in souls is wise.
The only one who can take a sinner, who can lift a sinner up, who
can seize, seize a sinner and bring him to God is Christ Jesus. I tell you another way this is
translated. Fetch. As in Mephibosheth was
fetched by David. Mephibosheth, Jonathan's son,
Remember, David said, has anybody left to the house of King Saul?
I want to show him mercy. They said, well, you know, Jonathan
had a son, Mephibosheth, but when the nurse got the word of
Saul and Jonathan being killed in battle, she dropped him, and
he's lame. He's lame on both feet. David said, I want to show
him mercy. Well, King? He can't come to you. He's lame. And the word is, go fetch him. Go fetch him. Bring him to me. He can't come. That's us, you
see. We can't come to the king. The
Son of God says, come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy
laden, I'll give you rest. But Lord, I can't come. You can
come if I bring you, if I fetch you. If I lay my almighty hands
on you and bring you to myself, then you'll come. And that's
the only way anybody'll ever come, is if the Lord fetches
us. Tell you another meaning of this
word, winneth, to marry. I know this is not about you
and me being wise and winning souls, because we don't marry
them. We don't marry them. But our Lord does. You see, he
was given a people in free and sovereign grace before the world
ever began. and we were united to him in
the purpose of God, and when the Spirit of God creates life
within us and we come willingly to the Lord Jesus Christ, then
our marriage with him is experienced and it is manifest. We're one
with Christ Jesus. And winneth also means, and it's
translated as to buy. to buy, to purchase. Where did the Lord Jesus Christ
get his bride? He got his bride by gift from
the Father, and by price, he paid the debt that we owed. He that winneth souls. That's
not you. I encourage you to tell people
about Christ Jesus. Don't misunderstand me here.
Tell people what God's done for you. But know this, you can't
win them. You can't win them. You can't
buy them. You can't marry them. You can't seize hold of them.
But there is one who is almighty to save. He's able to save, Paul
says, to the uttermost all that come unto God by him. He's the one who paid our debt.
You remember the story of Hosea and Gomer? God told Hosea to marry a heathen
woman, Gomer. He did. Things went OK for a
little while, and then Gomer went back to the typical livelihood
of the women from which she was from. She went back to being
a prostitute, a harlot, Good looking woman. And she went
back, she resorted back to the ways of her mother and her grandmothers. And men used her. And every morning, she'd open
the door and there'd be groceries on the step. And she said, my
lovers have been good to me. She didn't know, her lovers weren't
giving her anything. That was Hosea, looking after
her all alone. And then as the years went by,
her beauty, her beautiful, smooth skin got wrinkly. And youth was overtaken by age. And her lovers dropped her like
a hot potato. And Hosea didn't leave her any
groceries for a while. And so she ran up a big tab at
the grocery store and elsewhere. And she ran up bills that she
couldn't pay. And then the law came after her. And the law said, now, you've
got to pay. She said, I'm broke. Well, you're going to have to
go on the auction block. And so they put her on the auction
block, stripped of her clothing. Who wants to bid on this poor
woman here? You're going to have to pay her
debt if you want her. Nobody bid her. And somebody
made their way through the crowd. And, well, it's the preacher.
It's Hosea. He said, how much you want for
her? And they told her. Auctioneer said, it's going to
cost you this, that, and something else. Hosea said, I'll pay. And he had a robe around him.
And he went up to her, and he put that robe around her. hugged
her and kissed her on the cheek and said, you're mine. You're
mine. I married you. You fell into awful wickedness
and sin. And you ran up a debt you couldn't
pay. But I have paid your debt. You're
mine. Christ, you see, He's been feeding
us groceries and giving us mercies every day of our lives. So I
work for that. You breathe in his air. Your heart's beating because
he keeps it beating. The food you eat, he provides
for you. Whatever strength you've got,
he gave you strength to make a living. and to now be in retirement
perhaps. Never was you, it's always been
him. It's always been a greater than
Hosea taking care of you. And I'll tell you what, when
divine justice took you captive and said you're in debt to a
holy God and you're not gonna be released till you pay every
farthing, Christ Jesus said, I'll pay. I'll pay. What's it gonna cost me? Suffering
unto death. That's what it's gonna cost.
And he paid our debt. And I'll tell you what, in conversion,
it's as though he comes to us and embraces us, wraps his garment
of righteousness around us and kisses you on the cheek and me
on the cheek and says, you're mine. I married you in eternity
past, and now I have paid your sin debt. You owe nothing to
the justice of God. You made the righteousness of
God in Christ. I'm telling you, you can't bring
yourself to God, and you can't bring anybody else. You can't
win anybody else. You can't win yourself over.
He's got to do it. Here's the second point. Christ
only must bring us to God. Who's Christ? He's the only begotten
Son of God. He's the eternal God. He's the
man Christ Jesus. He's the one who came down here
and he robed himself, he robed his flesh around his divinity. Still as much God as if He wasn't
man and as much man as if He wasn't God. He came down here. Why did He
come down here? To satisfy God and bring us to
God. Bring us to God. Now let me tell
you something. He alone must bring us unto God, but it's going
to cost Him. Suffering unto death. That's
what it's gonna cost. He is the almighty God. There's
no question about that. But he, even Christ, the son
of God, creator, preserver, governor of the nations, even Christ could
not bring us to God apart from suffering unto death. Because that's what the law of
God demanded. Well, how did he suffer? Well,
you know, really, he suffered all through his life. All through
his life. He comes down here to this earth.
Where is he gonna be born? In a manger? In a cow stall? Manure around? In a feed trough
where the oxen fed? He suffered right from the get-go. And Herod hunted him, and so
Joseph and Mary whisked him out of town, out of Bethlehem, and
went into Egypt. Oh, how he suffered. Suffered. He grew up in a land and in a
city of no good reputation. Can any good thing come out of
Nazareth, they said? That's where he grew up. As soon as he was baptized, he
was led of the Spirit, driven of the Spirit, literally, into
the wilderness to fast for 40 days, to suffer the humiliation
of being tempted by the evil one. Here's the God of all glory. And he must, in order to save
us, he must show that he can triumph over Satan. And he suffered. And Satan did all within his
power to cause him to fall. But he couldn't find any sin
in him. Because in him was no sin. He suffered. In fact, Hebrews
2.18 says, for in that he himself suffered being tempted. I can't even imagine what it
was like for the God-man to stand there and withstand all the temptations
of the evil one. He is the holiest of all, squared
off against the most evil of all. And our Lord could have
swept him into hell just merely by the will of his own mind. But he stood there and took it,
suffered that humiliation. He told his disciples, I must
go into Jerusalem and suffer many things. He went into the garden of Gethsemane,
and oh, how he suffered in his soul. The agony that nobody can
understand. If it be thy will, let this cup
pass from me. And he sweat, as it were, great
drops of blood. That's suffering. None of us
know anything about suffering like that. He suffered from his disciples
because they all fled away from him. They all forsook him. You say, it hurts, preacher,
when friends, friends just leave you and forsake you. The Savior
knows more about that than you do. Because you see, it wasn't only
his disciples who forsook him. God forsook him. That's something
you'll never experience, child of God. God the Father forsook him. What was the reason that the
Father forsook him? Because He bared the sins of
many. He bore our sins in His own body
on the tree. Or as it says over here in our
text, the just, the just one, the righteous one, died for the
unjust, the just for the unjust to bring us to God. He suffered the humiliation of
Calvary, crucified naked. What shame! What shit? He suffered that humiliating,
that soul anguishing death of the cross and there he hung a
spectacle to everybody, a naked savior. And that thief you preached about
a few weeks ago. His faith was a miracle of God,
because he believed that that naked man he is nailed beside
of to a cross, he believed is the Son of God, is the Lord who's
going to come into his kingdom. Remember me when you come into
your kingdom. He suffered from a friend who
betrayed him. He suffered from another disciple
who denied him one time, two times, three times. But mainly he suffered at the
hands of the Father. He bore the anger of God against
all the sins which his people had committed and would commit.
There was a cup of wrath. Condensed in that cup was all
the hell. You can't comprehend this and
I can't either, but I'll try to tell it to you. Condensed
in that cup of wrath, a symbol of course, was all of the hell,
all of the torment, all of the soul anguish that all of his
people would have suffered forever and ever and ever. It was all
condensed into the cup of wrath that he
had to drink. He suffered. He suffered. What's it take to bring you and
me to a holy God? He had to drink that cup of wrath
right down to its last bitter dregs. And after he had suffered
all the hell that we would have suffered forever, he said, it's
finished. I drank it all. I drank it all. Brethren and sisters, this is
what it took to bring us to God. Perish the thought forever that
you can bring yourself to God or that you could bring somebody
else to God. That's impossible. The Savior suffered all the humiliation,
all the anguish of the cross. to bring us to God. Peter frequently
mentions in his first letter how Christ suffered. I'll leave
you with this. He says here in verse 18 of 1
Peter 3, turn back there. He says this, Christ also hath
once suffered for sin. He's not going to suffer anymore.
He suffered from the cradle under the time of His resurrection.
But He's never going to suffer again. His suffering days are over.
He triumphed over all of our enemies. And you think of this, it says,
being put to death. He was put to death. Who put
Him to death? Well, men did. But mainly God did. God executed
his son. God put him to death. Well, what's he doing today?
Well, you know, after he suffered and bled and died, the issue
was settled with God, and then he arose again, and he ascended
back to glory. And he's doing many things now.
He's our intercessor. He's the governor of all the
nations. But mainly, right now, he's sending
forth the gospel of his grace. And by his effectual grace and
power, he's bringing people to God, bringing people to himself. You come to Christ for salvation
and say, yes, Jim, I have. Thank God. Well, I tell you,
He's brought you. You didn't bring yourself. He brought you.
He didn't have to stop by your house. He ain't going to stop
by your neighbor's house. He didn't have to reveal the
gospel to a few folks. many years ago who would pull
out and then start another work, and here's the result of it here. He didn't have to do that, but
he did. Why'd he do that? Why'd he reveal the gospel to
folks like us? To bring us to God. Bring us
to God. And I tell you, he's able to
bring us right now. Maybe he'll bring somebody right
now to God. Wouldn't that be something? That'd
be a miracle of grace. To bring this to God. Oh Lord,
by your free and sovereign grace, seize, seize upon somebody here. Seize upon somebody out there. Fetch another sinner to David's
son and David's Lord. He suffered. being put to death in the flesh,
he suffered to bring us to God. And I'll tell you, if he's brought
you to God, believe in the Lord, trusting in himself, this Lord's
Supper we gonna partake of is for you. It's for you. You have no worthiness in yourself,
I know, neither do I, but he's our worthiness. He's our fitness. He's our righteousness. He's
our holiness. He's our redemption. And He's
our wisdom. He made us wise into salvation.
So the men are going to serve you. They'll serve first the
bread, wait until everyone is served, and then I'll pray, and
then we'll eat it. And the bread speaks of His body. all of the agonies he bore in
that body to bring us to God. So, Aum. you Our Lord, the night before he
was crucified, met with his disciples. They observed the Passover meal,
and as they were eating, he specifically took some bread. And he said,
this is my body. It was a picture of his body,
a symbol of his body. broken for sinners. And then
they ate the bread after he had given thanks. Let's give thanks
for the body of our Lord. Thank you, Father, for the Son
of God who loved us and gave himself for us. That one who
suffered at the hands of men and, Father, suffered at your
hands. It pleased the Lord to bruise
him. You bruised him. You battered
him. You punished him for our sins.
And in that body you had prepared for him, he endured not merely,
not only the wrath of men, but the wrath of God. How we thank
you for our Savior, that one who is bone of our bone and flesh
of our flesh, and yet God over all blessed forever. We honor
him, we worship him, we thank you, Father, for him. That one
who sits at your right hand right now, we bless you for him. For Christ's sake we pray, amen. He gave him the bread and said,
take eat, this is my body. And he took the cup, and the
wine pictures his blood, of course. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh Ooh, ooh,
ooh, ooh and and you He took the cup and he said,
this is the blood in the New Testament. It's a picture of
the sacrifice of Christ and the blood washed us from our sins. That passage I read to begin
with, purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and
I shall be whiter than snow. Wash me in the blood. of the
Lamb of God. Let's give thanks to the Lord
for the sacrifice of Christ. Father, we come to you again
with great appreciation and gratitude for the gift of the Son of God,
who by his suffering, that one who was just, who gave himself
for the unjust, In order to bring us to you, that one who was put
to death in the flesh but raised again by the spirit. Lord, we
come to you through him and we're so thankful for his bloody sacrifice. And we never grow weary of singing
and hearing that what can wash away my sin, nothing but the
blood of Jesus. Oh, precious crimson fountain
that washes sinners whiter than snow. Enable us by grace to,
as the hymn writer said, plunge in into that flood that flowed
from Calvary. We'll lose all our guilty stains. Thank you that through the blood
of Christ we're justified and sanctified by you. The Savior, by his Spirit, brings
us the almighty grace to you, and we're grateful. So receive
our thanksgiving, receive our worship, receive our persons
through the blood of Christ, in whose name I pray, amen. Savior gave him the wine and
said, drink ye all of it. And scripture says when they
finished, they sang a hymn and then went out to the Mount of
Olives. We're not going to a mountain, but we're going to the back to
fellowship with one another, and I hope that you'll stay.
Let's get our songbooks turned to 187.