So let's read together 1 Peter
2, and we'll start from verse 1. Wherefore laying aside all
malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envies and all evil speakings,
as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may
grow thereby. If so be ye have tasted that
the Lord is gracious, to whom coming as unto a living stone,
disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious. The last couple of verses in
the previous chapter, in chapter one, say this. All flesh is as
grass. and all the glory of man as the
flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower
thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which by
the gospel is preached unto you. It is my privilege to preach
Christ to you this morning. It is my calling to do so, to
declare in your hearing the everlasting gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, to point you to the Saviour, to lead you, if I may, to the
saviour of sinners and to the sustainer of saints, and to encourage
you to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, to taste the Lord Jesus
Christ, to experience the Lord Jesus Christ in your heart and
in your soul, to know the Lord Jesus and to know his goodness
and his kindness and his love. It is my responsibility to preach
to you Christ and to ask you and to put you on the spot and
to set before you the Lord Jesus. and to inquire of you if you
desire the Lord Jesus and if you will come to him. Have you
tasted the grace of God? 1 Peter 2, verse 4 again, the verse
before us this morning, to whom coming as unto a living stone,
disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious. Have we tasted that the Lord
is gracious? Have we felt the presence of
the Lord Jesus Christ? I hope that as we begin, as it
were, or continue, if you like, in this stage of our fellowship
together, as we come together, as we study together, as we speak
together, as we fellowship together, I hope that there will be a reality
about our experience. I hope that there will be a genuineness. I hope that we will have a desire
not to have any hypocrisy in our dealings one with another
or with the Lord God. If there is one thing that the
Lord hates, it is hypocrisy. Have we tasted the grace of God? Have we felt the presence of
the Lord Jesus Christ? Have we experienced something
of His goodness and His kindness? Have we known His love? Have
we known the comfort of the divine presence in our souls? And what
it is to know the peace of God in our life's experience. God forbid that we should ever
become a people for whom the gospel is a matter of head knowledge
that doesn't touch our hearts. God forbid that that happens. God forbid that we become preoccupied
with facts at the expense of feeling. And I think Peter, as he has
written these verses for us at the beginning of chapter two
of this epistle, has probably in mind Psalm 34, verse eight,
which says, O taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is that man that trusteth
in him. There's an emphasis here on tasting. There's an emphasis here on engaging. There's an emphasis on the senses,
that we're not simply dealing with this in our head, but we're
experiencing this in our soul and in our heart, and it is touching
us, and it is coming into our life. It's personal, and it's intimate. And it's real and it's tried
and it's tested and it has been proved and found to be right
and proper and true. Peter speaks of the new birth
and he speaks of spiritual life. And all who have tasted the grace
of God have spiritual life. The two are intimately joined. You cannot taste the Lord Jesus
and not have spiritual life. And you cannot have spiritual
life and not tasted something of the Lord Jesus Christ. The
two are connected. There is a necessity here. Ye
must be born again, the Lord said to Nicodemus. You must be
born again. There has to be that implantation
of spiritual life for there to be any communion with Christ
and any responding to him. Physically, we have to be alive
in order to taste food and to taste drink, to gain nourishment
from that food and drink. And spiritually, we have to be
alive in order to taste and experience spiritual blessings. So I'm speaking
here to those who are alive, to those who are spiritual. That's what Peter is doing. He
is speaking to those who are spiritual. And so we discover that spiritual
trials and spiritual problems and spiritual hunger and spiritual
thirst is what Peter has in mind when he is speaking about coming
to the Lord Jesus Christ. This phrase, coming to Jesus
or come to Jesus, it has an almost universal usage in churches today. Doesn't matter where you go,
doesn't matter where the people have any profession of Christianity,
there will be someone who will say, come to Jesus. And of course,
the idea behind their invitation is a form of what we sometimes
call easy-believism. As if men can just come to Jesus,
as if women can just come to Jesus. And it's an easy thing
to do. It's just a matter of the will,
a matter of choice, a matter of saying, well, it's an obvious
thing to do. It's a smart decision. It's what
the wise man will do. It's what the smart people will
do. It's the way to hedge your bets. It's a way to put a bit
of insurance in your pocket. It's a way to prepare for the
good things and God will give you fulfillment and God will
give you peace and God will give you goodness and happiness. And then you'll be assured of
a place in heaven. So come to Jesus. And the call,
the offer to come to Jesus goes out almost universally and invariably
indiscriminately. Everyone can come to Jesus. And such is the level of dishonesty
in such churches that preach that message. Such is the deception
that is declared by the preachers who bring that message. That upon this subject of the
new birth, and upon this subject of spiritual life, There are
countless people who wrongly believe that their coming to
Jesus has earned grace for them. And that is the heresy of freewillism. They believe that because they've
come, they're spiritual people and that they have eternal life
assured to them. And furthermore, there are many
preachers who teach that it is the unregenerate who are to be
invited to come to Christ for new life. And that despite the fact that
the Lord Jesus Christ says in John chapter five, verse 40,
ye will not come to me that ye might have life. The natural
man, the unregenerate will not come to Christ, has no desire
after Christ, has no longing for these things. They do not
come to Christ. And what these false preachers
are doing is that they are taking the children's bread and they're
feeding it to dogs. They're casting perils before
swine. Solemn. But you see, this has
had the effect that the true people of God have a reluctance
to think about coming to Jesus. And yet it is the spiritual newborn
people who are invited to come to Jesus. They have taken away
this language. They have taken away these words. They have taken away our familiarity
with them to such an extent that we hear these messages preached
about, come to Jesus, come to the Lord, and we think to ourselves,
oh, that's just easy believism, that's just free willism. But
this is our birthright. This is our inheritance. And
it is my role, it is my responsibility this morning to say to the Lord's
people, regain these truths. These are your truths. These
are your blessings. These are for us to come to Jesus
frequently, often. easily come to him, have a familiarity
with him. As we experience the trials in
our life, as we encounter day by day the problems, where do
we find the answer to those problems but in coming to Jesus? The mothers of Salem brought
their children to Jesus. The Grecians came to the disciples
and said, sirs, we would see Jesus. Nicodemus came and he
said to Jesus, who art thou? These are people that testify
in the scriptures of having a desire after the things of Christ, a
longing after the peace that he can give. And it is these
that Peter is speaking about, and it is people like us that
Peter is speaking about when he says that we come to Christ. We come to Christ with a familiarity,
with a frequency. To whom coming? It speaks of
coming often. It speaks of repetition. Do we come to Christ? Do we come
to Him day by day? Do we come to Him moment by moment? Are we constantly coming to the
Lord Jesus Christ? For this is what Peter is speaking
about. Tasting, enjoying, experiencing. living day by day with Him, having
a closeness of walk with Him, an experience in which we taste
Him. What does Jesus taste like? What
is it to taste Him? What is it to have that familiarity
with Him? Here are a few things that I
want to just mention briefly by way of directing our thoughts
to what Peter is saying. He says to us in verse four,
to whom coming, coming to Jesus, coming to the Lord Jesus Christ,
coming to the one who is gracious as unto a living stone. Now, it's interesting that there
is a church, which I'm sure you know about. The Roman Catholic
Church claims that Peter was the first Pope and that the Church
of Jesus Christ is built on the apostolic authority of Peter. Well, Peter is very clear here.
He talks about the Lord Jesus Christ as being the living stone,
not himself. So we can put that false notion
to bed. Peter is speaking here about
a symbolic picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ himself
is that rock, is that living stone upon whom the church is
built. And it is a long used metaphor,
it is a picture that has a long tradition in scripture to recognise
the Lord as a rock. In Deuteronomy chapter 32, verse
4 for example, we're told there and it's Moses who's speaking,
he is the rock. His work is perfect, for all
his ways are judgment. A God of truth and without iniquity,
just and right is he. Who? The Rock. What a strange
picture to apply to God. And yet it speaks of foundation
and strength and durability, hence the suitableness of the
metaphor. He is called the rock that formed
us. He is called the rock of our
salvation. And the Holy Ghost explicitly
tells us that there was a rock that travelled. Can you believe
it? A rock that travelled with the
children of Israel through its wilderness journey. We were talking
about that just the other day. 40 years it took to make a journey
that was just a few weeks long. But through that wilderness journey,
a rock followed the children of Israel. And in 1 Corinthians
10, verse 4, the Holy Spirit identifies that rock. They drank
of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. The church in the Old Testament
drew its nourishment, drew its refreshment, drew its water of
life from the living rock that followed them. And so today,
those who come to the Lord Jesus Christ spiritually, come to him
for nourishment, come to him for refreshment, come to him
for help, day by day, moment by moment. It's your resource. For 40 years, he was there in
the desert with the children of Israel, sustaining them as
they stooped. to pick up water from that rock
from whence the life-giving water flowed. It's a picture. And so
we see this living stone that is the Lord Jesus Christ being
presented to us again by Peter with the encouragement that we
should come to him. He goes on and he says that we
come to this living stone who is disallowed indeed of men. Disallowed of men. There's an
emphasis here. He is disallowed indeed of men. And that shows us that the natural
reaction of the natural man, because of his sin, because of
his separation, is to have nothing to do with this living stone. It was the experience of Christ
in his own day by the Pharisees and the Jews. They said, away
with this man. We will not have this man to
reign over us. They hated him. They opposed
him. They would have nothing to do
with him. They don't come to Jesus. They don't come to the
Lord Jesus. They don't find any refreshment
in him or any sustenance in him. This life-giving power is not
what they desire. They are not founded upon that
rock. They have never found that rock
of ages to be cleft for them. And so the Lord is rejected still
of men. And all who deny his complete
sufficiency for all the demands of a holy God are rejecting Christ
by making another way, another way of approach and another way
of acceptance with God. Eliza Hewitt was a hymn writer
from Philadelphia. She wrote these words, you're
familiar with them, I'm sure. My faith has found a resting
place, not in device or creed. I trust the Ever-Living One.
His wounds for me shall plead. I need no other argument. I need
no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died
and that he died for me. And that's the gospel. That's
grace, that's the grace of God towards sinners. And here in
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the splitting open of that
rock, in the flowing out of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ,
as he was cleft for us, we discover that there is life to be had
from the living rock. There will be those who will
reject him indeed, And there will be those who find in Him
daily cleansing from sin, daily food for our souls, daily refreshing
for our hearts. And Peter is encouraging us to
come. to whom coming as unto a living
stone. Friends, there is sufficiency
in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ for every need that you
have. It's all there, it's all bound
up together in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ for every need
that you have. And there are those who come
There are those who will not come, the Lord Jesus Christ said
it, ye will not come to me for life. But there are those who
do come. All that the Father giveth me
shall come to me, and him that cometh I will in no wise cast
out. If we come to Jesus, he will
not cast us out. If you bring your burden to him,
He will not send you away empty. He will not send you away without
the help that you need. You can come to Him. You can
come to Him freely. You can come to Him easily. You
can come to Him anytime. You can come to the Lord Jesus
Christ and He will supply your need. Why? Well, Peter says, because he's
chosen of God, because he is the ordained way. You can be
as imaginative as you like about how you want to come to God.
God has stated the one way that is acceptable to him through
the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you want your prayers answered?
You want your petitions brought to the throne of grace? You want
to draw upon the resources of the all-sufficiency of God? You want to be able to say that
He is my Jehovah Jireh, the provider of the needs of my soul? Then
there is but one way of approach. There is but one door of access. One key. whereby the blessings
of grace from God will be tasted and experienced. And that is
the Lord Jesus Christ alone. Why? Because he was chosen of
God. Because he, the Saviour, is God's
means and God's method, both for our salvation and for our
spiritual growth and development and experience. He is the one
who was chosen to represent us in the eternal purposes of God's
covenant of peace. He is the one chosen to redeem
us by the shedding of his precious blood. He is the one that would
deliver us. We read together from Isaiah
42. He was the one chosen by God
to deliver his people, to liberate his people, to fulfil every obligation
that was required of that people. The Lord Jesus Christ was appointed
to the task and anointed for the task and he was equipped
and he was upheld and he was sustained in his humanity and
he was enabled to fulfil and to satisfy all the requirements
of a holy God. So Isaiah says, Behold my servant
whom I uphold, mine elect in whom my soul delighteth. I have put my spirit upon him.
He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He was chosen
of God. And there is no one better to
come to. There is no one else able There
is no one else worthy to turn to in time of need, to satisfy
that emptiness, to comfort and to feed and to refresh the hungry
soul. Paul says in Philippians chapter
four, verse 19, My God shall supply all your need according
to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. He is the one who is chosen
of God. And finally, we come to the Lord
Jesus Christ because Peter declares He's precious. He's precious. He is worthy of coming to. He is the precious facilitator
of our salvation. He's done it. He's done it. He's
made it ours. He's brought it to us. He has
the store of blessedness at his disposal, and he calls his people
to enjoy these things. He calls his people to come to
that bank of resource, that plentitude of blessedness, and to draw it
and to enjoy it, to taste and see that it is good. And he calls
us to come and experience it. He is precious. Christ is precious. Are you able to say that? Do
you know that he's precious? He's not just a word to you.
Tell me he's not just a word to you. Tell me you know him. Tell me you've tasted him. Tell
me he's precious to your soul. He's precious to the father.
Oh, he is precious to his father. The son is precious to his father. He says so frequently, this is
my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And he's precious to
the spirit. The Lord Jesus Christ said that
when he went back to heaven, back to his father after his
ascension, that he would send the comforter. And the comforter,
what would the comforter speak about? He would speak about the
Son. He would speak about all that
the Son had accomplished and all that the Son had done. And
he is precious to saints. He's precious to the saints. He's precious to the church.
Precious is a word that Peter uses often. He uses it frequently
in these two epistles that he has written. He speaks of precious
faith. And he speaks of precious blood. And he speaks of precious promises. But mostly, Peter speaks of the
preciousness of Christ. The preciousness of Christ. And it's worth us copying Peter
and speaking often of the preciousness of Christ that we have discovered
in our own life as we have tasted and dwelt and come to him. And to you, therefore, which
believes as Peter, he is precious. A precious saviour who died,
A precious friend who loves us. Often it's something that is
rare that determines its value. If something is precious, usually
it's because it's rare. And in a sense, that's true about
Christ because he is the only way of salvation. He is the unique
way of salvation. There is no other way. He is the saviour, but it's more
than that. Because the preciousness that
we find in Christ is the preciousness of a close bond. There are millions and millions
of children in the world. but there's only one or two that
are precious to us. It's not about rarity. It's about
that union that we have with him. It's about that bond that
has been forged. It's about that interest that
we have in him. And so Christ is precious to
us. He loved us and he gave himself
for us. Timothy, sorry, Titus 2 verse
14 says, he gave himself for us that he might redeem us from
all iniquity and purify unto himself a peculiar people. We look to the incarnation and
we see the precious son of God who came into the world. We look
to the cross and we see the precious lamb of God who gave his life
for the salvation of his people. We look to the tomb and we see
the precious victor who defeated death and hell and the failures
of our flesh and brought new life to his people. And we look
to the future and we find that these great and precious promises
of God of His presence and our presence with Him in heaven and
the glory that will follow and the eternal things that will
completely overwhelm our minds and our hearts and our souls
and draw us eternally into that closeness of bond with Him as
we commune with Him and worship Him and engage with Him for all
the eons to come. They speak of His preciousness
to us. He is precious. He is worthy that we should come
to Him, that we should bow before Him, that we should seek of Him
His goodness and His kindness and His grace and His help and
His company. Come to Jesus. you will not return
from his presence empty. Amen.