Turn back to 1 Peter. I titled this message, Glorifying God in All Things. Glorifying God. Glorifying our
Father. Glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ
in all things. Peter says in verse 11 that God
in all things, whether it be in our trials, in our blessings,
in our increases, in our decreases, God would be glorified. The purpose, and I think I realize
this more as I grow older, the very purpose of my existence
is to glorify God. He's the one who made it. He
hath made us. We are the sheep of his pasture.
It says over in Psalm 100, we did not make ourselves. I did
not make myself a human. I didn't do that. God did that.
I did not make myself a believer. God did that. We are a work of
God. And a believer is a special work
of God. And his special work is to give
him the praise and glory that's due under his name. Glorifying
God in all things. That's pretty comprehensive,
isn't it? All things. I thought of this
verse as Mike was singing in Isaiah 43. 21, let me read to you, I've already
got it. This people have I formed, made, created for myself. They shall show forth my praise. That's why He made us. This people,
this people here at Hurricane Road Grace Church have I formed
for myself. They shall show forth my praise. And that's the title tonight,
Glorifying God in All Things. In our minds, in our hearts,
because that's where it starts. If I do not glorify God, if I
do not glorify the Lord Jesus Christ first in my heart, I assure
you, I will not do it in my life. I will not do it out here in
my everyday living. Not if I do not first glorify
Him in my heart. Now Peter says, for as much then
as Christ, and listen to this first verse, for as much then
as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves
likewise with the same mind, for to be like Him, to have the
mind of Christ in suffering. You know, his suffering glorified
his father because it was obedience. It was obedience to God's law.
It was obedience to his father. He said, arm yourselves likewise
with the same mind. Paul said over to the Philippians,
let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who
thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but made himself
of no reputation. He was found in the form and
fashion as a servant. You became obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross. Arm yourself likewise with the
same mind, for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from
sin." Well, first of all, to really get something out of this,
we need to really recognize who suffered. Who suffered? Well, it says here, Christ. Christ. And that is speaking of the incarnate
God. You know, it's mind-boggling. To me, it's mind-boggling at
times when I sit down and I meditate on this and I think about who
Jesus Christ is. He is the God of creation. He is God in all that that encompasses. He is God and He's the One. God, the Creator, God who is
holy. God who is our Savior. God is
the one who came into this world and suffered. Suffered. The Holy One of Israel suffered. No one has ever suffered as He
suffered. It says over in Isaiah 52, His
visage was so marred more than any man. Unrecognizable. Unrecognizable. He suffered.
But his soul suffering, I believe, was far worse than that fleshly
suffering. When he was made to be sin and
he met head on God's wrath, God's unmitigated wrath, when he met
it head on, His soul suffered at the hands
of justice. His soul was made an offering
for sin. The reason we are here tonight,
the reason you and I are able to be here tonight, sit quietly
in this place, the Word of God open, is because Christ suffered. He suffered. The just one suffered
for the unjust. And it says he suffered in the
flesh. What that means is this. In his human nature, he suffered. He suffered. He felt every pain. I mean, to the nth degree, he
felt it. He suffered in that human nature
that he assumed. His sufferings were real. They
were real. Just because he's God does not
mean that he felt less pain than you and I would feel. No, he
felt more of it. He felt more of it. No doubt
he felt more of it. They were real. And his sufferings
were substitutionary. When you look at Calvary, when
you look at the one whose visage was so marred more than any man,
when you see that, And you see him hanging on the tree. You
see the way he was treated. And you hear him cry, My God,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Over in Psalm 22, he gives
the reason. Because thou art holy. And that suffering, that pain,
that forsaking, that hell that he took was substitutionary. It's exactly what I deserved.
It's exactly what I deserve. It's what I deserve. He took
every ounce of God's wrath that I ought to take, that ought to
land on me. He took it. He took it. And He took it in the flesh in
His human nature. He felt every bit of it. We have
a high priest. We have a high priest who can
be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Why? Because
He suffered. He suffered our infirmities.
He took our sicknesses and our sorrows. He bore them, it says,
over in Isaiah 53. Just read that chapter again
of the sufferings of the Messiah, the sufferings of Christ. And
then He suffered in the flesh, and He suffered for us. He suffered
for us. He didn't just suffer. He didn't just suffer and then
hope somebody would accept him. He suffered for us. He knew everyone
for whom he was suffering for. He knew every last one of them. He suffered for us. And
how this ought to constrain us, how this ought to But Paul said,
the love of Christ constrains me. When Paul fought upon his
sufferings and upon the death of Christ for him and what he
was by nature and what he did to the church, he couldn't get
over it. He could not get over it. Oh, that I might know Him. Are
you satisfied with your knowledge of Christ? Paul wasn't. Paul said, oh, that I might come
to know Him To know Him better. To know Him more intimately.
And listen, and to know the power of His resurrection. To know
the power of His resurrected life in me. To know it. To be consumed with Christ. To be obsessed with Christ. The One who suffered for me in
the flesh. Now arm yourselves. Arm yourselves. Likewise, with the same mind.
The same mind that he had towards suffering. It was the will of
God. He did it to please his father. It was his father's will. And
he submitted to it. Now you arm yourself likewise
with the same mind and attitude. We suffer within by struggling
with that old sinful nature. We struggle with it. And it's
an inward suffering. It's an inward struggle. And
we're going to continue that until we go home. We're not going
to just throw up our hands and quit and say, I'm tired of this.
I'm tired of this fight. We're not going to go AWOL. No, we're going to struggle with
it. We're going to be determined as he was determined. You know,
in Isaiah, it says he set his face like a flint toward Jerusalem. He knew why he was going to Jerusalem.
He's going there to suffer. And we know that because of our
union to him, that we too are going to suffer. And therefore,
we shouldn't be surprised when we do. Shouldn't be surprised. And we suffer without by having
to live in this present evil world. He did. He did. Then it said, for he that hath
suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin. Has ceased from obeying
sin? Has ceased from being a servant
of sin? Has ceased from having anything to do with sin? Listen,
Christ suffered for sin. He satisfied God's justice. He
did that. Therefore, sin has no more claims
on Him now. It's gone. He put it away. Now
arm yourselves with the same mind. We suffered in Him. When he suffered, we suffered.
Now, he says, arm yourself with the same mind. You're not the
servants of sin no more than he was a servant of sin. You
arm yourself. Arm, you know, you think about
arm, you put on an armor. Or you think about picking up
a weapon. The weapon here is his mind, his spiritual mind.
You arm yourselves. Sin has no claim on us now because
it has no claim on him. That's why Paul said, reckon
yourselves to be dead unto sin. Because in Christ you are. Law
has no claim on you. Sin has no power over you. God's
not going to allow that. Sin shall not have dominion over
you, the scripture says. You're not under the law, you're
under grace. He's not going to allow that. We still have sin
in us, but it's not our master. It's not our master. We've been
freed from sin. We've been freed from its damning
power. We have been freed from its reigning power, whom the
Son sets free. He's free indeed, for he that
has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin. It has no more claims on us.
No more. That he no longer should live
the rest of his time to the lust of men, but to the will of God. Matthew Henry said this. I just
copied this down. Let me read it to you. True conversion
makes a marvelous change in the heart and life of everyone who
partakes of it. It brings a man off from all
his old fashionable and delightful lusts and from the common ways
and vices of the world to the will of God. It alters the mind,
the judgment, the affections, the way, and the conversation
of everyone who has ever experienced it. That's why I thought that
was a good statement. That's better than I could put
it. I read to you over in Matthew chapter 5, he that hungers and
thirsts after righteousness shall be filled. That hunger and thirst
is real. It's very real. There is a real
hunger. And you know what hunger is.
You and I get hungry. We know what thirst is. Well,
there is a real spiritual hunger and thirst After righteousness,
after His righteousness. And to be righteous before God.
Now you know what? Those are signs of life. Hunger
and thirst are signs of life. If I'm hungry, I'm living. If
I'm thirsty, I'm living. And if I hunger and I thirst
after the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, I have been
made spiritually alive. Those are signs of spiritual
life. That He no longer should live the rest of His time in
the flesh. We're not going to do that to the lust of men, but
to the will of God. Our desire is to the will of
God. Christ said, My meat is to do
the will of Him that sent me. And He did that perfectly. We
don't do anything perfectly. I'll tell you what, that's in
us. That desire To know and to do the will of God is in everyone
whom God saves, or signs of life. For the time past may suffice
us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles. When we walked,
and this is the way we walked, if we didn't do it outwardly,
I assure you we did it inwardly. Let me read this again. For the time past of our life
may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles when
we walked in lasciviousness, lust, excess of wine, revelings,
banqueting, and abominable idolatry. Every one of us, at one time
or another, has lived in this. Like I said, if not outwardly,
we have inwardly. And he says here, the time past
in our lives was sufficient to fulfill these lustful things. We walked in these things, we
spent our times in them, if not actually, we did mentally. And
that word walk denotes a way of life. He said this was your
life. This was the way you lived. spoke of the inward change, now
he's going to speak of the outward change. That's why I said we
glorify God in our hearts and in our minds. And it comes out
of your life. And that's what he's dealing
with here. He spoke of that inward change,
now he's going to deal with the outward change. The tree's known, the
Scripture says, by its fruit. Wherein? They think it's strange
now. You see, you used to do these
things. You used to run with these people to this excess of
riot and mischievousness and drinking. He said you used to
do these things. But one day God sent the gospel.
One day you heard the gospel. One day God commanded life. One
day you were born again. And now wherein they think it
strange that you run not with them to the same excess of riot
anymore. What happened here? I told you
this before, but I had a friend who said, I wish you hadn't got
saved. That was what he told me. But he and I couldn't run
together no more. We just could not run together
anymore. This was when I was, back in my early 20s, 20 years old,
I believe it was, 19 or 20. But that's what he said. We couldn't
run together anymore. They think it's strange. You
know why? Because they haven't experienced
what you've experienced. You have experienced what they
experienced, but they haven't experienced that change, that
new birth, iced in you, that new man. They've not experienced
that. And they think you're strange now. What happened? What came over him? And then
they start, he says, you're speaking evil of you. Calling you a goody
two-shoe now. That's what they say. Think you're
just too good for us now, don't you? Think you're too good to
go run around with me now? No. No, last thing you think
is you're too good. Too rotten. That's why you need the grace
of God. They think it's strange. They cannot understand why you
do not want to go to the same places anymore. They just can't understand. And
they speak evil of you. You're too good for us. And because
of this change, they speak evil of you. Matthew Henry said this, I had
to write this one down too. Those that are once really converted
will not return to their former course of life. Though ever so
much tempted by the frowns or flatteries of others to do so,
neither persuasion nor reproach will prevail with them To be
or to do as they were wont to do. That doesn't mean we don't
sin. It doesn't mean we don't fall.
It doesn't mean that at all. But you're not going to go back
and pick up those old cronies and that be your life. It's just
not going to happen. Not if you're His. Not if you're
His. Not if you're His. And then it says, Who shall give
account Let me go back and read verse 4, wherein they think it
strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot,
speaking evil of you, who shall give account, they shall give
account, to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.
All are going to give account before Christ when He judges
the quick and the dead. All are going to do that. Now,
the believer has no part in that judgment. He's already been judged.
Look at Calvary, there's our judgment. We were judged in him.
Our judgment passed upon him. Our judgment is over. Now it's
in or in. Our judgment's gone. Man, when
you look at Calvary, what God did to his son, and you realize
that judgment that would have fallen on me is now gone. But
now those who think it's strange that you won't run with them
anymore, they are going to be brought into judgment. Nobody's
going to miss it. Nobody's going to slip out or
be forgotten. Not one person. No. For for this
cause was the gospel priest also to them that are dead, that they
might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according
to God in the Spirit. Now that is a complicated verse. It was a complicated verse, so
I wrote down, or copied down here, two different men. Spurgeon,
listen. Our departed brethren, he's speaking
here of Abraham, Moses, David, those men in the Old Testament
that heard the gospel and believed God. Our departed brethren heard
the gospel to this end, that though condemned to die by their
cruel persecutors, they might win the immortal crown and glorify
God as his witness. as his witnesses. Then Henry
wrote this in his commentary. This is the reason the gospel
of Christ was preached to those who are now dead, such as Noah
and Abraham, Moses, David, and all those Old Testament believers,
that though they were still men in the flesh, subject to like
passions, chastened of God, hated and misunderstood by natural
men, they lived then. They lived in the flesh and they
lived in the Spirit. They were born again. They were
born of God. And now they live eternally with
God. Now they live eternally with
God by His grace. And the same gospel of Christ
quickened then that now makes us alive in the Spirit. And someday
we too will be with Him. I think that's the best. I read
several things today on that. And that's the best, I think,
on that verse. The end. Everything has an end.
Every trial has an end. Everything has an end. And when
we read these things like this, we ought to read these with great
interest. But the end of all things is
at hand. Well, now, if it was at hand
then, how much closer is it now? How much closer is the end now
than when this was written? How much closer is it? For me
now, I'm 54 years old, turn 54. Well, 54 of those years are gone.
And I know I don't have 54 more left. I hope. That would put me up to 108.
That wouldn't be too good, would it? Not in this life. Not in
this life. But the end of all things is
at hand. Be ye therefore sober. Watch unto prayer. Everything
has an end and it's near. It's near. The end of our lives
are near. I went to a funeral last week.
My aunt passed away. She's 71 years old. And I believe this probably happens
with about everyone who dies when it comes up time to die.
You realize how fast it went by. You realize, man, that was
fast. My dad said to me once, he was
talking about raising the seven kids, the seven of us at home. And he said, it just seemed like
a dream. And it wasn't a dream when it was going on. Probably a nightmare, not a dream. But he said it just seemed like
a dream. Job said that life is but a what?
A vapor. Puff of smoke. Puff of smoke. Fifteen years from now. It would be amazing how many
of us will be gone. Fifteen, twenty years from now.
From this congregation. And that's no time. That's no
time at all. The end of all things is near. The end of our lives is near.
And listen, the end of the world is near. Now, this is not a joke. This
is not some far outfetched thing. This is not science fiction. This is real. There's an end
to this world. And he says here, it's near.
It says that Christ came in the end of the world. It's near. Therefore, be sober, he says.
Be sober-minded. Live like it's near. Act like
it's near. Meditate upon, you know, meditating
upon this thing of death, dying. For a believer, that's not sad. That's not morbid. It's going to be with the Lord.
To be with the redeemed. He said, be sober minded. And
I think he's saying this, live like it. Live like it. That doesn't
mean quit everything and sit down and wait on it. That just
means everything you do, you do it in the light of this. It's
near. And watch unto prayer, seeking
the Lord's grace to endure till he comes. Scripture says, he
that endures till the end shall be saved. Watch unto prayer. Seek the Lord for the grace to
be sober minded. To really face this with reality. And above all things, above all
things, above everything else, because if you don't have this,
everything else fails. Have fervent charity. Love. Fervent. You know what fervent
is? Fervent charity among yourselves. Charity shall cover a multitude
of sins. There's nothing that will stop
backbiting. Nothing that will stop gossip
like love. Nothing will do it like love
will do it. While you wait, show fervent love to one another. Because love covers a multitude
of sins. Look at the sins that our Lord covered. You know, He could reveal a lot
of things about us. You know, He could expose us
to what we really are by nature. He could expose our thoughts.
He could expose our past. Aren't you glad He doesn't do
that? Aren't you glad He doesn't? Covers. His love covers a multitude. It covered all our sins. And
he says, you do the same thing. You do the same. And you use
hospitality one to another without grudging. Be friendly on purpose. Be friendly
on purpose. Open your house on purpose. These
are marks of grace. And do it, he says, do it with
a joyful attitude. Not grudgingly. Not grudgingly. And as every man hath received
the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good
stewards of the many-sided manifold grace of God." What we do have,
God's given to us. What do you have that you haven't
received? What talent do you have that you did not receive? What abilities do you have that
you did not receive? Whether it be mental, physical,
singing, whatever it is. God gave it.
God gave it to us. And freely you have received,
freely give. God has made us stewards. That's putting it in another
light, isn't it? He has made us stewards of all
that He's given to us by His grace. We are stewards of this
place. We've been made stewards of the
ministry here, the gospel that he's given us, stewards of the
grace of God, he says. And I say, let us use these gifts
and talents wisely and generously in helping one another. If any
man speak, and I'll close with this verse, if any man speak,
let him speak as the oracles of God. If any man minister,
let him do it as of the ability which God gives, that God in
all things, all things may be glorified through Jesus Christ,
to whom be praise, dominion forever and ever. Amen. If God has called
any to preach, He said, let him do it according to the scriptures
and according to the ability that God has given. Whatever talent or gift God has
given to you, Do it according to the ability He's given and
give Him the praise for it. Give Him the honor for it, depending
upon Him for the ability to do so. As I say in my prayer, I'm not
sufficient for these things. If you could look inside of me
and see my insufficiencies, you're probably saying, What are we
doing listening to him? If you could see those things. God is my sufficiency. God is
my ability. He's my ability. And He's the
one who's to receive all the glory for all the abilities that
we have. And our business, our business,
as we go through this life, as we pass through this way on our
journey home, what time we have left, is to glorify our Father, is
to glorify God who has given us all things to ascribe unto
Him the glory that is due unto His name. Okay, Mike.