Always blessed by that last verse
of that hymn, that word, above all earthly powers, no thanks
to them abideth. And sometimes men take credit
for having preserved the word of God, but they are mistaken. Because the Lord has ordered all things to occur, and he has
preserved his word in spite of men, because it has been the
purpose of men down through the ages to destroy the word of God.
And it is the design purpose of men in the present day to
design it, in my estimation, by coming up with all sorts of
interpretations and translations of it, that every time they come
up with a new one, they change something else and weaken something
that has stood the test of time. And so because something is new,
doesn't mean that it's good. And so we need to be aware that
the word of God stands and it doesn't, you can burn all of
these books then the Word of God will still be with us, and
it cannot be destroyed. I'm thankful that the Lord has
seen fit to preserve it in a fashion that we can read it easily, and
that He alone can give us understanding of it. I often hear men say,
well, I don't read the Bible because I can't understand it.
Well, that's absolutely true. Man can't understand the thing
that's in this book apart from the Spirit of God opening his
eyes to see it. And it is the Lord alone that
gives me an understanding. You can't be taught. You can
go to all the Bible schools there are, and you'll never learn the
Word of God. You might be able to recite a
lot of things, but until the Lord is pleased to teach you
those things, they won't be of any use to you. So may the Lord
apply His Word to us. We've been looking here in the
third chapter of 1 Peter, and we've set forth that these are practical
instructions for the children of God in light of that which
the Lord has done for us. And I wanted to, we'll begin
reading here in verse eight. We looked at some of these, but
it's good and we'll read to the end of the chapter. Finally,
this is in chapter three, verse eight of 1 Peter. It says, finally,
be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love
his brethren, Be pitiful, be courteous, not rendering evil
for evil or railing for railing, but contrary wise blessing, knowing
that ye are there unto call that ye should inherit a blessing.
For he that will love life and see good days, let him refrain
his tongue from evil and his lips that they speak no guile.
Let him eschew evil or turn away from it, and do good, let him
seek peace and ensue it or pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord
are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers,
but the face of the Lord is against those that do evil. And who is
he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is
good? But if ye suffer for righteousness'
sake, happy are ye, and be not afraid of their terror, neither
be troubled. but sanctify the Lord God in
your hearts and be ready always to give an answer to every man
that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness
and fear. having a good conscience, that
whereas they speak evil of you as evildoers, they may be ashamed
that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ. For it is better if the will
of God be so that ye suffer for well-doing than for evil doing. For Christ also hath once suffered
for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God,
being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit,
by which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which
sometime were disobedient when once the longsuffering of God
waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein
few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water. The like figure,
whereunto even baptism doth also now save us, not the putting
away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience
toward God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is gone
into heaven and who is on the right hand of God, angels and
authorities and powers being made subject unto him. Now, we talked some about last
week about not rendering evil for evil, railing for railing,
as the Lord gave us the example, and to be followers of that which
is good. It is a good thing to suffer
for righteousness' sake, he said. It is a bad thing to suffer for
unrighteousness' sake. And so that we often feel like
that it is a terrible thing when men speak evil of us. And we
try to avoid that. And we're not to go out and try
to get men to speak evil of us, but we are rejoicing when they
do because the world does not love the gospel. Now the world
loves what they think is the gospel. And the world loves what
they want the gospel to be. But the gospel, as is revealed
in the word of God, is not something that the world embraces. And
so that whenever we would declare that, it's not going to be received
with open arms. We understand that. Now we don't
try to make the gospel unpalatable. But we can't make it palatable.
I mean, you can't make the truth of God to be palatable to the
natural man. I remember when I was a kid that
I didn't like vegetables in the main. Now, there were some things
that I liked, okay, but they were not palatable to me. And
it didn't make any difference how often somebody said, come
on, eat this, this is good. It was not good to me. And thankfully,
our tastes do mature and as we get older, some things that we
thought tasted bad actually tasted pretty good, but we just had
it in our mind that they didn't. But nonetheless, you can't make
somebody like something if they don't like it. And we're not
sent to try to make people like it. We're not sent to try to
present it in such a way that men will like it. But we're sent
to declare the truth of God and to stand on those things that
we believe the Lord has shown us and has taught us and has
impressed upon our hearts and to walk in those things, whether
it's satisfying to the world or not. And if the world should
persecute us for it, then we are happy that it be so. Having
a good conscience. Now he says here, sanctify the
Lord God in your hearts and be ready always to give an answer
to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is
in you with meekness and fear. Now it would seem that there
must be some evidence in us that we have a hope if somebody would
ask us, what's the reason of your hope? You know, because
if we are in the habit of walking in the hope that we have, expressing
the hope that we have, then there is likelihood that some would
say, what do you mean by that? Now, one thing that you will
notice in the scriptures is that the Lord Jesus, nor any of his
disciples ever tried to persuade men to believe what they were
saying. They never asked men to believe
what they were saying. They presented the truth and
men asked them, oh, what shall we do? Remember on the day of
Pentecost, Peter stood up and he preached Jesus Christ and
him crucified. And when he got through, the
Spirit of God moved upon the hearts of the people there and
they said to him, what do we do? Remember the Philippian jailer
who was, Paul and Silas were singing in the prison and the
earthquake came and he figured they'd all gone and he heard
that they were still there and he rushed in and he said, sirs,
what must I do to be saved? He asked them. And so it is that
when the Spirit of God is working in the people of God, I believe
there is from time to time an inquiry. What is this all about? What's going on with you? Something's
different about you. What is the reason of the hope
that's within you? Be ready, he said, but sanctify
the Lord God in your hearts. That is Be, give yourself over
to the Lord. Now, on the one hand, we can't
do that, can we? But we know what that means. That means that we surrender
ourself to the Lord. We can't let God do anything. We can't prevent God from doing
anything. But by the grace of God, he gives
his people a heart to surrender to him. And so we do gladly and
willingly. And he says, sanctify the Lord
God in your heart. That is, be walking with the
Lord. Seeking the Lord. Let those things
be a part and parcel of your life. Having a good conversation. I mean, having a good conscience
that whereas they speak evil of you as evildoers, they may
be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ. It is the work of God. Remember,
I gave you the example last week about the man over in Romania
who, as his neighbor, tried to persecute him with sending his
cow in to eat his garden. and the man would simply clean
the cow up and take him back to the man and never accusing
the man of anything done. He did good and ultimately his
neighbor's heart was broken because he saw the work of the Lord in
the man. and so that they may be ashamed
that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ. For it
is better if the will of God be so that ye suffer for well-doing
than for evil doing. You know, I mean, anybody could
get mad and go down there and sue the man or get in a fight
with him or anything else. You know, that's just the way
of the flesh. But it's better if the will of
God be so that ye suffer for well-doing than for evil. For
Christ hath also suffered for sins, the just for the unjust,
that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh,
but quickened by the Spirit. And so it is, this is the gospel. You can't ever preach the gospel
if you don't preach that Jesus Christ was crucified for sinners.
That is the gospel. There's no other gospel. And
that is the hope of God's people, that Jesus Christ has paid the
price for our sin. Now if he simply made it possible
that we'd be saved, then we would be in trouble. But he didn't
just make it possible, but he actually secured our salvation. The salvation of his people,
those for whom he died. There's not gonna be anybody
who is going to perish for whom Christ shed his precious blood. That's just the way that it is.
He was crucified in the flesh that he might bring us to God.
He had a purpose in mind. and he accomplished that purpose.
And that's the glory of that which Christ did. Now it's impossible
to preach Jesus Christ and him crucified without preaching the
triumph that Jesus Christ accomplished. He hath obtained eternal redemption. He didn't just generically die. Now I know that's a very common
message today, is that Christ just died for everybody and it's
all up to you and if you'll just let him, he'll apply that to
your account. No, he applied it to the account
of his people. The scripture says, from before
the foundation of the world, but in time he came and he died
at the hands of wicked men, was crucified, and he paid the price
for our sin. And then it says, he was put
to death in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit. He was raised
from the dead. Now that is the hope of God's
people, is that Jesus Christ had been raised from the dead
because in his resurrection, we see have the hope of our own
resurrection. And we're not expecting that
this world is our final destination. But our life is hid in Christ. And he is that same spirit. What spirit was that? His spirit.
Now you know, we can't quite comprehend how that, here he
is, man and God, the very God who made the universe, how he
could die. And I don't propose to be able
to stand up here and tell you how it could be so. And yet God
was never dead. Now, there's a lot of people
got a lot of good explanations for it, but all of them have
holes in their theory and don't stand up to the scrutiny of scripture.
But this is a true thing, that he was quickened by the Spirit.
Now he's quickened, that is, made alive. Him who was dead
was made alive by the Spirit of life. Who is the Spirit of
life? Jesus Christ. The scripture says
this is the record. This is that testimony. This is that which is written
down from eternity that Life is in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ
has life, he is life, and he gives life. And there is no life
apart from him. The life is in Jesus Christ. And it is that life that he laid down and took again. Now again, these things are mysteries
beyond our comprehension, but the scripture says it's so. He
was quickened by the Spirit, and by the same Spirit preached,
he says, to the spirits in prison. Now, some have gone off the deep
end on this passage of scripture and made it into like some kind
of a fairy tale type thing and saying that what this is saying
is that the Lord Jesus Christ, when he died, he went down to
hell and he preached to all the people in hell. Well, you know,
that's kind of, well, what would be the point in that and what
would he be doing? The Lord Jesus Christ not preaching
to men in hell. He's not giving them a chance. He's not telling them what they
missed or some kind of ridiculous stuff such as that. But what
this is talking about is the same spirit that raised Jesus
Christ from the dead is the same spirit that in the days of Noah
when he was building the ark and people were saying, you are
a fool for doing this. That same spirit went and preached
to those people that were in darkness, they were in prison,
they were in bondage, they were those who were dead in trespasses
and sins, but the gospel is preached to all men in this world, and
it was preached to those men in that time. And so Noah, the
scripture says, which sometime were disobedient when once the
long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah. Now it took,
I forget now exactly how many years, it's estimated I think
about 120 years that it took NOAA to build the ark. Now we
just recently went up there to, and some guy has, or some group
of people, have built a replica of what they think the ark looked
like, and maybe it is, I don't know if it is or not. It's at
least dimensionally What the ark, what the scripture, the
scripture doesn't give us a lot of detail about the ark, but
it does tell us some things. It tells how big it was, tells
that it had three stories, three floors in it, and that it had
a door in it, and that it had a window in it. We do know that. But beyond that,
it's called speculation of these things. Such an undertaking,
if the boat is as big as what they have said it is, that's
quite, it's an amazing thing that a man and his sons could
have built that. Now I don't know if they hired
other people to help them or not. I don't know how all that
went down. But in that period of time, Noah
declared the truth of God. Now, as we can see, not many
people believe. Now, some people may have died.
It doesn't mean that everybody that lived during that period
of time died and was killed in the flood. Some of them died
before the flood came. In fact, Methuselah, who was
Noah's grandfather, lived to be 969 years old. I think that
Joseph knows that. Methuselah lived to be 969 years
old, and if you calculate by the genealogies and the lives
of these people, Methuselah died in the year of the flood. Now,
I don't know if he died in the flood, or if he died before the
flood came, but he died in the same year that the flood came
upon the earth. But the Lord declared the truth
of God by the same spirit. You see, it's the same spirit
that has ministered to the Old Testament saints that ministers
to us in the present time. Now, we have a much clearer revelation
of the truth of God. But the Spirit of God has testified
of the glory of God and the Redeemer's work from the beginning. And we see that in the fact that
there were sacrifices. Abel made a sacrifice unto the
Lord that was pleasing unto the Lord because it was a blood sacrifice
and he was pleased with that sacrifice. And so the Spirit
of God, which sometime went and preached to those which sometime
were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited
in the days of Noah, while the ark was a-preparing, wherein
few that were eight sold, were saved by water. There wasn't many out of the
whole population of the earth, was there? But the Lord saved. the world, did he not? See, men
think that when the scripture says that the Lord Jesus Christ
died for the world, that he loved the world, they think that that
means that every individual is included. Well, it wasn't in
that day, was it? But the Lord saved the world
because he saved eight souls out of it, and the animals, and
he started it over again. And so it is that while the ark
was preparing wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by
water, the light figure, wherein to baptism doth also now save
us. Now if you stopped right there
and didn't read anything else, you could come to the conclusion
that you could be saved by being baptized in water. Couldn't you? I mean, that's what it says.
wherein baptism doth also now save us. But then he goes on
to explain what he's saying. He's not saying that the water
is that which saves us. What he says is not the putting
away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience
toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Baptism doth
also now save us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so there
is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism. And that baptism, which
we are taught in the scripture that if we believe, we should
be baptized. I mean, that's what he says to
do, be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Why? In order to manifest that salvation. in order to give an answer of
a good conscience toward God. That is, we believe the things
God has said, and we are testifying that this is our conscience.
This is that thing that's in our mind and in our heart, and
we believe it. And therefore, we magnify his
name by doing that which he taught us to do, which he gave us the
example of. He was baptized in water by John. who was sent for that purpose.
And John said, I don't deserve to baptize you. He says, I'm
not worthy to baptize you. He says, you ought to baptize
me. He said, suffer it to be so, because it's the way that
God has ordained it to be. And so it is that it has been
ordained of God that the people of God who believe in Jesus Christ
are to be baptized in water according to his command. Why? Not to wash
away their sin, but to testify that they believe their sin has
been taken away by the blood of Jesus Christ. And that this
baptism, going in the water and coming up, is a testimony to
the resurrection of Christ. That as one goes in and is buried,
and they come forth from the water, that testifies of Christ's
resurrection. Now that's why it is baptism. See, when you read the word baptism
in the scripture here, the word baptizo simply means to immerse. Now, it was not real popular
among some of the translators of the scriptures in the days
of King James, and when they came to that word baptizo, they
just left it as the Greek word. they transliterated it because
they didn't want to say what it was. Had they translated it,
it would have been immersion, which they did. They believed
that baptism was sprinkling. And some people believe it's
pouring. But it cannot be a picture of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ unless a person is put in the water and brought up out
of the water. And that is why we believe so
strongly that baptism is what it says it is. It is immersion. And so it is. Now, some people
go off the deep end and make baptism the most important thing
you can ever do. It doesn't mean anything if it's
not the answer of good conscience toward God. You know, a man can
go into the baptismal waters and be baptized a hundred times
and not one sin will ever be taken away. But if he believes
that Jesus Christ has cleansed him from all sin, and that the
blood of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation,
and that's his testimony, then indeed, as he is baptized, he
manifests that that be true. And that is the like figure wherein
to even baptism doth also now save us. by the resurrection
of Jesus Christ who has gone into heaven and is on the right
hand of God. Angels and authorities and powers
being made subject unto him. I want you to look at the picture
of that. Now what does it mean when it
says that Jesus Christ went to the right hand of God? It does
not mean that there's three thrones in heaven. And God the Father
is sitting on one, God the Son is sitting on one at the right
hand, and then the Spirit is sitting on the littler throne
over here. See, that idea is a poor idea. That's a wrong idea. We have one God. And Jesus Christ
is the true and the living God. He has come into the world and
he is now seated at the right hand of God, meaning that is
the power of God. He is the power of God. He is
the manifestation of the power of God. You could never have
known God. apart from him coming in the
person of Jesus Christ. He has revealed himself in Christ. And so he is at the right hand
of God. Angels and authorities and powers
being made subject to him. There's no power on earth that
is not under the power. of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's
no power in the universe that is not his. It belongs to him. He is the authority. He said,
I am the first and the last. He says, I'm the alpha and the
omega, the beginning and the end. Beside me there is no God. He's not ashamed. See, he's not
ashamed to be equal with God because he is equal with God
because he is God. I mean, he's not trying to be
equal with God. He's not done something that
made himself equal with God. He was not ashamed to call himself
God. And he testified of such when
he walked among men. And what did they try to do?
They tried to kill him. They said, he's blaspheming.
He's blaspheming. No, he was not blaspheming. He was declaring the truth to
them and they hated him for it. All power is given unto him. Without him was not anything
made that was made. He's that one whom we worship.
And if a man would worship the true and living God, he must
fall down and worship Jesus Christ. You can't this idea that we're
all, all the different faiths, as they call them in the world,
are all worshiping the same God. No, we're not all worshiping
the same God. Because if a man does not confess
that Jesus Christ is the true and the living God, he's not
worshiping God. Now he's worshiping who he thinks
God is, and he may be as sincere or more sincere than I am, I
don't know. but it doesn't make any difference
about that. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I am the way, the truth,
and the life. No man comes to the Father but
by me. And so it is that we rejoice
in him and we rejoice that he has come as a babe in a manger. And, of course, today, you know,
this time of the year is a time when people, you know, use his
birth as a reason to have celebrations of all sort. And I've had different
viewpoints over the years with that and about that. But understand that there is
nothing in the scripture that ever tells us to remember the
birth of Jesus Christ. Now I'm glad that he came. I'm
even glad that there is, even if it's just a kind of a surface thing, I'm
even glad that I hear and am reminded that Jesus Christ was
born in Bethlehem. I even like to sing about the
fact that he was born. But I know this, that it's not
his birth that we're called to remember. but it's his death. Because it was necessary, the
reason that he was born was because it was necessary that he die.
It was necessary that he be born in order that he might die. Now
that, some might say, well that's a somber way to look at it, but
that's the way that it is. Remember that when the wise men
brought the gifts, they brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And the gold, showed that he
was the king. The frankincense showed that
he was God. And the myrrh was a bitter perfume
that showed that he would die for sinners. And I don't know
how much understanding of that they had, but at least the Lord
gave them the desire to bring those gifts to the Lord. And so we remember Him, we're
thankful that he was born. And the wonder of his incarnation
that the God of heaven and earth would come into the world and
show himself to men as a babe in a manger. That's beyond our
comprehension. But he didn't stay a baby. And
we don't worship Him as a baby. We worship Him as the King of
kings and the Lord of lords. And we know that He did these
things for our sake and came to manifest His love for His
people. And we rejoice in it. May the
Lord give us a mind to do so.