blessing and responsibility to
be here tonight. If you will open your Bibles
with me, the book of 1 Peter. 1 Peter. God's command to every preacher
is comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Speak ye comfortably
to Jerusalem, speak comfortably to my people. The word liquid
means speak to the heart of my people. And I can't do that. That's my responsibility, that's
my privilege, but I can't do that. I prepare and I work hard
to prepare a message. And I can speak to your head.
I can even speak to your emotions. I can't speak to your heart unless
God, the Holy Spirit, is pleased to speak through this empty,
dirty, broken vessel to your heart. Your pastor in his prayer
at the opening of the service made acknowledgement of the fact
that God knows your needs. infinitely better than I know
your needs. I can't possibly, with one word,
speak to every person here and meet your heart's needs. I can't
do that. But oh, if God will be pleased
by his word, by the power of his spirit, to speak tonight,
you will hear from him a word of comfort for your heart. You can remember four words.
You'll remember my title, my subject, and my outline. Can
you remember four words? Chosen, sanctified, redeemed,
blessed. Chosen, sanctified, redeemed,
and blessed. Look at the message in 1 Peter
1 and verse 2. You, by God's grace, have been
made strangers and pilgrims in this world, scattered like sheep
among wolves in this world of woe, are elect, according to
the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification
of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ, grace unto you and peace be multiplied. What a blessed of every heaven-born soul. With these sweet, sweet words,
God the Holy Ghost inspired the Apostle Peter to describe every
saved sinner. These are things that rejoice
the hearts of God's elect when all around us crushes our souls
like a millstone. You who believe on the Lord Jesus
are elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification
of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ. Grace unto you, and peace be
multiplied. In this one verse of Scripture,
the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Peter to declare the
work of all three persons in the Holy Trinity, God the Father,
God the Son and God the Holy Ghost in the affair of our salvation. We are said to be elect according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification
of God the Spirit, unto obedience and strengthening of the blood
of God the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. And then he assures
us of this fact. All who indeed are chosen, redeemed
and sanctified shall be blessed with multiplied blessings of
grace and peace. Grace unto you, and peace be
multiplied. Understand the doctrine of Holy
Scripture. Salvation is God's work alone. Whatever is involved in salvation, Whatever is involved in salvation,
whether you're talking about election or rediction or justification
or sanctification or perseverance and preservation, whether you're
talking about holiness and righteousness, whether you're talking about
salvation here, salvation in eternity past, or salvation in
heaven's glory to come, all that is involved in salvation is the
work of God alone. Man contributes nothing. Man
has nothing to it. The whole responsibility of the
work is the responsibility of Christ our surety, He who undertook
for us in the covenant of grace before the world began. When
He stood forth from everlasting as our surety, and the Father
trusted our souls into the hands of the Son, Jesus Christ our
mediator, our surety, God the Son, struck hands with the Father,
and became completely and entirely alone responsible for the saving
of our souls. Oh, my soul. If you can get a
hold of that, better float your boat. God Almighty does not look
to me for anything. God Almighty does not look to
me for anything. He looks to myself. and finds
all that he requires in the substitute and surety he has given. Salvation
is the work of God's grace. It involves all three persons
in the triune Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And salvation
is an effectual work, the effectual work of God's free, sovereign,
omnipotent grace. Now please understand, When we
talk about salvation, we tend to think, because we have been
taught to think everything, we tend to think about salvation
as the experience of God's grace, that place in time, that point
in time when we come to be brought to faith in Christ, when we're
born again, when we believe on the Lord Jesus. That's just a
little, little, little, little, little bitty bit of salvation.
Salvation. takes in the whole of God's work
of grace, from everlasting to everlasting. The other night
I was preaching in Gorno, and Brother Chris Wheeler asked me
about someone who's been around preaching about degrees of reward
in heaven. And I answered this way. I said,
is heaven part of salvation? Well, yeah, I believe it is.
I believe it is. Then it's all together by grace,
you don't earn it. And the notion of degrees of
reward is nothing on this earth but a leftover piece of paper,
see, just a Protestant form of purgatory. The teaching is totally
void from Scripture foundation. The teaching is totally contrary
to everything taught in Scripture. Salvation is this big, big, big
word that encompasses all the work of God for the saving of
our souls from everlasting to everlasting. These days, Men
talk about salvation like this. I made my decision for Jesus.
I came to the Lord. I decided to start living for
the Lord. I gave my heart to the Lord.
I got saved. I started serving the Lord. The
emphasis in modern religion is always on I. I did, I felt, I
saved. When you read the scriptures,
the emphasis is otherwise. When was the last time you heard
anyone say, the Lord saved me? God saved me. That's the language
of scripture. The language of scripture is
very plain. Salvation, when discussed in the terms of scripture, always
puts the emphasis on God, his son, and what he has done for
us. God, who is rich in mercy, for
his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead and
sick, hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace, ye are
saved. When it pleased God, Paul said,
who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace
to reveal his Son in me. That's how God saves sinners.
It is God's work, and God has the praise. Not unto us. Not
unto us, O Lord. Unto thy name be glory and truth
and praise, because salvation is your work alone. These soul-comforting
truths of Holy Scripture are matters of divine certainty.
This is what I want to discuss this evening. I hope God will
write these things on your heart. All who are chosen by God the
Father in eternity were redeemed by God the Son, the Lord Jesus
Christ at Calvary. And every sinner chosen of God
was redeemed by God. Every sinner chosen of God and
redeemed by the blood of his darling Son shall be sanctified,
completely sanctified, by God the Holy Spirit, by the regenerative
operations of his grace in us. And those who are chosen, redeemed,
and sanctified have been, are, and shall be blessed, blessed
with multiplied grace and peace, So long as we live in this world,
these things are ours. Sweet waters for our souls. Oh, what sweet waters for our
souls. There's not an if, or a maybe, or a condition of any
kind put here to muddy the waters. Everything is altogether by God's
grace. Read the text with me one more
time, and we'll look at it line by line and word by word. Elect,
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification
of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ, grace unto you, and peace be multiplied. All right, first point is chosen. Elect, according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father, all who enjoy the blessings, gifts, and benefits
of God's grace in Christ Jesus. Every sinner who believes on
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, every sinner who trusts the Lord
Jesus Christ, is elect by God the Father, having been chosen
in eternal election under everlasting salvation by God's free grace. is how God's people are described
in the book of God. In fact, they're described by
two words we'll have in our text this evening, more often by these
two things than by any other. God's people are described in
the word of God as elect and as saints. Throughout the book,
they're described as elect and saints, chosen and sanctified. That's how you who are God's
are described by God. A people chosen of God and a
people separated and made holy by God's free grace. We're described
here as the elect. The election of grace is the
election of God's people unto salvation from everlasting. Now,
this contrary to popular religious opinion, this word elect, election,
Chosen. These are not words that are
cuss words. These are good words. These are
good things to talk about. I recall when I was in school
in Springfield, Missouri. My first year there, I went to
school at Baptist Bible College in 1968. And just before I went
out there, in the spring of the preceding term, they went through
school and purged the school of what they called hypercalvinism.
Everybody was kicked out of school. Everybody was kicked out of school
who professed to believe what we commonly refer to as the gospel,
that which is the gospel. All who believed in election
and predestination and limited atonement were politely asked
never to return. And I went to school right there
my first term, totally ignorant of these things. And the first
week I was on campus, I got called in. They were going to kick me
out of school for being what they called a hyper-Calvinist. And I was
shocked to discover there were folks who claimed to be Christians
who didn't believe these things. I was shocked to discover, and
they said, you will not be allowed to use those words on this campus. And just a few weeks, they asked
me to read scripture and have a devotional in the men's dormitory.
And I never did have a good sense, but I always had a lot of brass.
So I chose to read Ephesians chapter one. And when I got to
predestinate and chosen, and I got to the word elect, I simply
bleeped it. And I said, believe in Christ
Jesus. And the president's grandson
was in the dormitory. He said, what are you doing?
I said, I'm censoring the word of God. We're not allowed to
read here on this Bible college campus. This book is full of
the word election. It's full of it. This is not
some secret thing that's discussed in a corner, something that we
reserve You remember a fellow by the
name of Ananias, who was sent to a man, Saul of Tarsus, who
had just been born again by God's Spirit. I mean, this man was
fresh out of the womb of grace. He had just been born again,
and Ananias didn't go to seminary anyway. He didn't have anybody
teach him, you're not supposed to talk about eviction to newborn
Christians. The very first thing The Lord
told Ananias to say, the call is your chosen. Your chosen vessel
unto thee. This is how the scriptures speak.
Blessed is the man whom thou choosest and causes to approach
unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts, that we may be
satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple. Our Lord Jesus said to his disciples,
ye have not chosen me, but I've chosen you. I've ordained you.
He said, Father, I pray not for the world, but for them which
thou hast given me, for thine they were. I pray for them. In
Acts 13, 48, we're told that when the Gentiles heard the gospel,
as many as were ordained to eternal life, they leave. You can turn
into the book of Deuteronomy. I want you to look at it. And
in Deuteronomy chapter seven, you'll see a marvelous illustration
of the election of grace. The Jews, as you know, in the
Old Testament, were but a representation, a type, a picture of God's true
Israel, His Church, His elect. The Apostle Paul speaks of our
being blessed with God-loved spiritual blessings in heavenly
places in Christ before the world began. Now listen to how it's
described in Deuteronomy 7. Look at verse 1. When the Lord
thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou willest
to possess it. the children of Israel going
in to possess the land that God promised them beyond the Jordan
River. He says, and have cast out many nations before thee. Now watch what he says. You're
going in to possess this land and God's going to cast out seven
nations from the land. The Hittites, the Girgashites,
the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites,
the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou.
And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee, thou
shalt smite them and utterly destroy them. Thou shalt make
no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them. Now you can,
folks who talk about God's grace being common grace, that's a
hard nut to chew. He said, show them no mercy.
Don't be gracious to them. I'm going to sacrifice these
seven nations I'm going to sacrifice the world for you. I'm going
to sacrifice the world for you. Read on. Cast them out, make
no covenant with them, show them no mercy. Verse three. Neither
shalt thou make marriages with them. Thy daughter shalt thou
not give to his son, nor his son shalt thou take unto thy
daughter. His daughter take unto thy son.
For they will turn away thy son from following thee. Not they
might, they will. That they may serve other gods.
So will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy
thee suddenly. But thus shall you deal with
them. You shall destroy their altars,
and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and
burn their vivid images with fire. Why? Why? Why? Look at verse six. For thou
art an holy people unto the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God hath
chosen thee, look at this, to be a special people unto himself. I used to apologize. Folks, so
you, you talk about elections as though you're special. And
I said, oh no, no, no. And I read this chapter. Yeah,
I'm special. God said so. Special to him. You're a special people unto
me. Special people unto the Lord. Above all people that are from
the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love
upon you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than
any people. For you were the fewest of all
people, but because the Lord loved you. Elect according to
the foreknowledge of God the Father. With that word, the Spirit
of God inspired Peter to describe our election in a way that's
slightly different than the way it's commonly described in Scripture.
Here he tells us we're elect according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father, babbling free willers, will-worshipping Armenians. Jump on that text and spin it
at you with a star and say, there you see, God chose us as he looked
out in the spaces of time, with a long telescope of ambitions,
and saw that we would choose him, and so he chose us. And
there you see, that's how God chooses people. Well, that would
be all right, except it's blasphemy. It's blasphemy. For it robs God
of the glory of this thing, and makes God's choice to be dependent
upon and determined by our choice. makes God's work to be dependent
upon and determined by our work. It gives man all the glory, man
all the credit, and man all the praise. That's the reasons described
by the Apostle Paul as will worship. This is not what foreknowledge
means at all. In the scriptures, foreknowledge is never a foreknowledge
of things. That's important. You'll never
find in this book God foreknew something. It is always a foreknowledge
of people. Foreknowledge is not God's attribute
of omniscience. Foreknowledge is an act of God,
not an attribute of God. We're elect according to the
foreknowledge of God the Father. And this is what the word means.
The root of the word is the word knowledge and that word has various
shades of meaning and they're all given in the scriptures.
First foreknowledge means foreordination. according to the foreordination
of God the Father. Now you don't have to guess about
that. Look at verse 20. Down here in 1 Peter chapter
1 and verse 20. The very same word that's translated
foreknowledge in verse 2. We find it in verse 20 again.
The very same word. Speaking of the Lord Jesus who
barely was foreordained before the foundation of the world.
That's the same word. The very same word. Foreknowledge,
then, speaks of God's eternal purpose and decree of predestination. Were it not for God's eternal
choice of a people unto election, there would be no salvation for
anyone. Salvation begins with God's will. Salvation starts with God's will. Were it not for election, there
would be no such thing as salvation. Were it not for election, no
sinner could enter into glory. Were it not for God choosing
you, you could not be saved. Salvation is by God's choice.
Second, this word, foreknowledge, speaks of God's everlasting love
for His elect. The Lord appeared of old unto
me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love.
Therefore, with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. everlasting
love, all who can even imagine it. And yet that thought of everlasting
love extends indescribably beyond time scope. Listen to what our
Savior said, I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made
perfect in one, that the world may know that thou hast sent
me, and that the world may know something else. that the world
may know that thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me." I'm a man greatly loved by folks. There never was a man more adored
and loved by a woman than I am. I'm adored and loved by my family,
adored and loved by our congregation, Adored and loved by many people
around the world, and I'm so thankful for it. But never can
I begin to describe what I can't even imagine as it is here stated
in this book. The Lord Jesus declares, Alan,
that God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost love you as He loves His
Son. Now, for the same reason, to
the same degree. For you see, God's elect are
one with Christ. Really and truly one with Christ. Not as though we were one. We
are one with Christ. We have an intimate, unbroken,
everlasting, immutable union with God's Son, so that the Father
loves us even as He loves never any variation in that love. He loved us before we were created
in our father Adam. And when we sinned in our father
Adam, his love never changed. And when we came forth from the
womb, speaking lies, his love never changed. And when we ran
with our fist in God's face, rushing magnet to hell with all
our might, his love never changed. And at the appointed time of
love, He sends His Son by His Spirit and makes us new creatures
in Christ Jesus, because we are elect according to the everlasting
love of God the Father. This word, elect, our foreordination,
our foreknowledge, rather, means foreordination. It means everlasting
love. It also speaks of approval. Approval. You don't need to turn there.
Listen to the scriptures. knoweth the way of the righteous,
but the way of the ungodly shall perish." Is that at the end an
indication that God doesn't know the way that the ungodly take?
Well, of course he does. He's going to judge every man
according to his works. And every man standing before
him in his old person shall be forever damned because the Lord
knows his way and everything about his way. But when the scripture
says, the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, it's saying
much more than God is aware of it. God approves of the way of
the righteous. He approves of Christ the way,
and he approves of us in the way. We are forever accepted
in the beloved. Approved of by God. Approved of by God. God Almighty
beholds us in His Son from everlasting. And He says, I approve of you. Approved by God, for we are forever
accepted in the beloved. And then fourthly, this word,
full knowledge, suggests infallible security. The foundation of God
stands assured. Having this seal, The Lord knoweth
them that are his. The Lord knoweth them that are
his. Sheldon and I have only one child,
and so I tell folks regularly I don't qualify for giving parental
advice. I only had one child, he was
a girl, so I don't know what on earth he was raised to handle.
But that one child, that one child has always looked to her
daddy with great confidence. and peace. When she was a little
girl, she used to think I owned the moon and ruled the world.
And she thought I could quit anything that came along. And
if something happened, caused her trouble, you know all it
took for her to be comfortable? All it took for her to be peaceful
about it? I'd say, uh, honey, daddy knows. That means daddy
gonna take care of it. You don't have to fret about
it. This, this is handled. I know. Understand this. The
Lord God knows you. He knows that there is. He knows
you. Nothing's going to harm you.
Nothing's going to hurt you. Nothing's going to work contrary
to your good. Nothing's going to do you any
damage, not in time, not in eternity. The Lord knows them that are
His, and He kept us secure even in their fall in the garden,
and kept us secure through the ages of time, and kept us secure
in the days of our rebellion, and it keeps us secure now. The
Lord knows them that are His. We are elect according to the
everlasting foreordination of God the Father, according to
the everlasting immutable love of God for us, according to the
acceptance, the approval of God of our souls in His Son, and
according to the absolute security of God holding us in his hands. "'Tis not that I did choose thee,
for, Lord, that could not be. This heart would still refuse
thee, hadst thou not chosen me. My heart owns none before thee,
for thy rich grace I thirst. This knowing, if I love thee,
thou must have loved me first.'" Elections, sweet as it is, blessed,
delightful as it is, is not the first thing to be known and it
is not the first thing experienced by God's people. We are elect
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, watch this
now, through sanctification of the Spirit. Sanctification is
commonly thought by people to be something that believers do
for themselves with the help of God the Spirit. Most people
talk about sanctification as a work of progressive holiness
so that we, God saves us, he gives us faith in Christ, declares
us justified, and now we stretch our spiritual muscles and we
read our Bible and we pray and we go to church and we give and
we do good works and after a while we just get holier and holier
and holier until we're ripe for heaven and God takes us to glory. You know that's not so. You know
that's not so. Looking at Brother Billy May,
you're about Billy isn't it? Nearly 80 years old aren't you?
And you're not one bit better than you were the day you came
into this world. And you know it's so. Heart just as full of
corruption, just as full of pride, just as full of lust, just as
full of It's just as full of evil thoughts
as it was in your two-day jail. And it only gets worse. Only,
above the doubt, I don't know, the folks were locked there.
Me too. Me too. That's what we are. That's not
the kind of sanctification this book talks about. That's not
what it is. Oh, no. When God saves a sinner,
He doesn't come and send the sinner to the hospital to be
healed. He takes the sinner and slays it and makes him a new
creature in Christ. and puts a new nature in it.
But that nature is constantly at war with the flesh. So the
flesh and spirit constantly struggle with one another. This sanctification
is the gift of God the Holy Spirit to us in free regeneration. Sanctification in Scripture is
never spoken of, not one time in this book, as something we
do. It's never spoken of as something that depends on us in any way.
I said, but what about those Old Testament pictures where
the priests were required to sanctify themselves and people
coming to serve God were required to sanctify themselves, wash
themselves, make them pure. That's right, they were. They
certainly were. I'll tell you something else they were required
to do. They were required to make atonement for themselves.
Is that right? They were required to make atonement
for themselves. Well, no man can do that. You're right. And
no man can sanctify himself. But in the ceremonial pictures
of the law, you had pictures given of atonement by Christ
Jesus performed by men. And in the ceremonial pictures
of the law, you have pictures given of sanctification, purity,
holiness, accomplished by God alone. The picture in the cleansing
that men performed in the Old Testament ceremony. The root
meaning of this word sanctify is to set apart. Now, I don't
want to make less of it than it is. It's a huge, huge, blessed,
blessed subject that deserves much attention. But the root
of the word means to set apart. And we were set apart for God. Set apart for holy purposes from
everlasting. In the Old Testament, the vessels
of the tabernacle were sanctified. They were set apart for holy
purposes. The priests were sanctified,
set apart for holy service. The Lord Jesus in Christ, Christ
himself was sanctified, set apart as our mediator, our substitute. And all God's elect in Christ
Jesus were sanctified by God the Father before the world began.
Turn over just a few pages to Jude, the first verse of the
book of Jude, right next to the book of Revelation. Look what
the scripture says. We like to systematize things,
and I encourage preachers, especially young preachers, study systematic
theology. Not because we interpret the
scriptures in a systematic manner, but because we think logically,
we must learn to understand things in a logical framework. But,
don't ever attempt to fit what God says in this book into your
system. Don't ever try to put God in
your box. You can't fit him in there. If you can get it in your
box, what you've got is a little bit of God. Jude speaks here
of things a little different than we've seen or spoken of
elsewhere in Scripture. Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ and
brother of James, now watch this, to them that are sanctified by
God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ and God. We would commonly think what
Jude means is that we were preserved in Christ and called by God and
sanctified. No, what Jude means is that we
were sanctified by God the Father and preserved in Jesus Christ
and called in just that order. We were sanctified by God the
Father in His everlasting decree of election, set apart by Him
and made holy by Him and justified by Him and called by Him and
glorified by Him. Holy Scripture. We were sanctified
by God the Father, sanctified and preserved in Christ unto
the day of our calling, preserved for Jesus Christ and at God's
appointed time called by His grace. In exactly the same sense,
we were sanctified, set apart from the world to be God's peculiar
holy people by the senatonic blood of His dear Son. By one
offering, he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. Here
the Holy Spirit tells us that we were chosen to salvation through
sanctification of the Spirit. And this is what that means.
If you're one of those chosen ones, the time will come when
God will get you. God will get you. We don't try
to psychologically manipulate people in their profession of
faith. We don't have altar calls and all that silly nonsense that
tricks people into a religious deception. We don't try to scare
folks. When I first came to Danville,
And all the churches, all of them that weren't just absolute
liberal, got together and they had a movie that showed out at
the school, at the county high school. They wanted me to participate,
and I said, no, I don't want anything to do with it. And of
course, I immediately was well known for that, thought it wouldn't
have anything to do with folks. But they called it the burning
hell. You may have heard of it. Just scared the hell out of folks.
That's all it did, just scared the hell out of them. But it
don't work. It don't work, you can't scare the hell out of folks,
they're still liberal. It's still there. And kids make professions
of faith. Just got all excited, scared,
terrified, because they think about going to hell. And so they
make a profession of faith. And nothing real about it. Nothing. That's fake. That's destructive
to men's souls. Not good for them. We don't participate
in that stuff. But what do you do to get saved?
Nothing. Approach the gospel. And wait for God to work. Alex,
are you listening to me? Listen to me. If you're God's,
He's going to get you. And you can't escape it. And
I pray He'll head you about and sweetly force you into the arms
of the Savior. If you're God's, He will. If
you're God's, He will. And we will wait for God to do
His work at His appointed time. And He always does it in what's
called the time of love. Precisely His time. Brother Michael
Kelly is here with us, but has given life and faith in Christ
recently. Why now? Why now? Why this late? Looks like he'd
have called him in at six rather than sixty. Why this late? Because
this is the appointed time of God's grace. God makes no mistakes. He hedges us about with His goodness
in eternal love and preserves us in Christ Jesus until the
day that He calls us by His grace in the sanctified, regenerating
work of God the Holy Spirit. The text means more than that.
If you're a child of God, a believer, one who's experienced that blessed
operation of grace called the new birth, You've been set apart
from the world by the grace and power of God, the Holy Spirit,
for Christ alone. You're not your own. Hear me, children of God, men
and women, young and old, hear me. You're not your own. You don't have anything that
belongs to you. Not your family. Not your wife, not your husband,
not your son, not your daughter, not your parents, not your money,
not your job, nothing! You're not your own! You're bought
with a price. So glorify God in your body and
in your spirit, which are God's. But why does Paul put sanctification
here before redemption? Because, or Peter, rather, put
sanctification before redemption. I'll tell you why. Because here,
Peter is speaking to us about the order in which we experience
God's grace, not the order in which God performs His works
of grace. People talk about the order of salvation. Well, obviously,
election precedes rediction, and rediction precedes calling,
sanctification, and so on. But in experience, that's not
the case. You cannot know your election,
and you cannot know your rediction until you have experienced God's
sanctifying grace in Christ Jesus the Lord by the power of His
Spirit. And so now Peter speaks of redemption. We're elect according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification
of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ. He's talking here about redemption.
Redemption done. And when we preach the gospel,
the pastor spoke a little while ago of preaching Jesus Christ
crucified. We do not come to give good advice
to folks. We do not come to tell people
what they ought to do. We don't come to tell people
of the possibilities of what God might do. We come to proclaim
redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ the Lord. Redemption accomplished
by the Son of God. Christ hath redeemed us from
the curse of the law. With his own blood he entered
in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption
for us. The obedience spoken of here
in 1 Peter 1-2 is twofold. Really, I think it's wrong to
interpret Peter's words any other way. We can't understand the
text until we understand that it's talking about these two
things, redemption accomplished and redemption applied. Redemption
accomplished by the obedience of Jesus Christ as our representative. His obedience unto death. When
our Savior cried, it is finished, the work was finished. Clearly,
Peter is making an allusion to the Old Testament ceremony of
the Passover. Look down in verse 18. He's referring to the sprinkling
of the blood on the doorpost of the house and the sprinkling
of the blood on the mercy seat. Verse 18. For as much as you
know that you will not be redeemed with corruptible things as silver
and gold from your vain conversation. That's a pretty good description
of your life, isn't it? Your vain conversation. Naturally,
got your business and a lot of stuff to do, things depending
on you. Your vain, meaningless, empty,
worthless life. That's where we leave you from.
Your vain, meaningless, empty, worthless life. That's where
you were when God called you by His grace. Your vain conversation. We don't. Received by tradition
from your fathers. but you've been redeemed with
the precious blood of Christ, as of a man without blemish and
without spot, who barely was foreordained before the foundation
of the world, but has made manifest in these last times for you,
to by him believe in God that raised him from the dead and
gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God. This
book, The Word of God, everywhere it speaks about redemption, There's
not a single exception, not a single exception. Everywhere in this
book where the redicted work of Christ is spoken of, where
it's spoken of, where it's illustrated, where it's prophesied, where
it's explained, every single place in the book speaks of it
as being for a particular people. Nowhere in this book is there
a hint, not even a hint, of a possibility that Christ maybe somehow died
for folks who, after all, are lost. No. Everywhere in the Word
of God where redemption is spoken of, it's for God's elect. And
everywhere it's spoken of, it's spoken of, it's pictured, it's
presented as an effectual, accomplished redemption. So that when Christ
died at Calvary, by His obedience unto death, You and I, who are
God's, were redeemed, justified, sanctified in Him, by His blood,
having made us perfect forever by the sacrifice of Himself.
But then, the grace of God, as is presented in this book, is
always special, sovereign, saving grace. And the text here speaks
of redemption applied as well. So the obedience and sprinkling
of the blood mentioned here in our text also refers to the obedience
of faith. That obedience of faith in which
we experience the blessed sprinkling of the blood of Christ. Turn
over a few pages back to your left to Hebrews chapter 9. You'll
see it clearly set before you. Hebrews chapter 9. Christ becoming High Priest,
verse 11. Of good things to come. by a
greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is
to say, not of this building, neither by the blood of goats
and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy
place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the
blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling
the unclean, sanctify to the purifying of the flesh, how much
more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit
offered himself without spot to God, Purge your conscience
from dead works to serve the living God. When God begins to deal with
His chosen, in what we call the conviction of the Spirit, God makes you to know your guilt,
and you try to do better. You start to clean up your life,
and you start to read your Bible, and you start to go to church,
and you try to to do things to make yourself acceptable with
God, and your conscience keeps screaming, not enough, not enough,
not enough, not enough. And you do more, and your conscience
keeps screaming louder, not enough. Your conscience keeps screaming,
guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. Until at last, God reveals
His Son in you. And when God gives you eyes to
behold Christ crucified, In your room instead, your conscience
speaks from within and says, enough. Enough. God sprinkles the blood
of Christ on your conscience and causes the eye of faith to
look on him on whom God himself looks. God sacrificed his darling
son. God gave his darling son, God
punished his darling son, made him to be sick, and poured on
him all the fury and terror of his holy wrath and justice. Until
at last God said, enough! No more. No more. I require no more. That's enough. That's enough. And God gives you eyes to look
on his son. And God sprinkles your conscience
by His Spirit with the preaching of the Word upon your own guilty
conscience, and your conscience stops screaming and says, enough. That's enough! God cannot require
more. God has given all that God requires,
and now God's given His Son to me. I love the picture that John
Bunyan draws in Pilgrim's Progress. Pilgrim he went to. First one
place and another looking for relief. And finally the evangelist
told him to go to Mount Calvary. And he went to Calvary with that
heavy load on his back. And he looked up and saw the
Lamb of God slain upon the curse tree. And he said, as I saw Christ
crucified, the burden fell off of my back. God Almighty has put away my
sin by the sacrifice of his own darling son. And now I walk at
peace with God. I'm either lying to you or I'm
telling you the truth. You decide. I'm not afraid of God anymore.
I'm not afraid of God anymore. I was afraid of God all my life. Terrified at the thought of God. Terrified at the thought of death. Terrified at the thought of eternity. Terrified at the thought of judgment.
No more. No more. That's enough. Christ crucified. That's enough. Christ crucified. That's enough. Christ crucified,
that's enough for God to look on me and smile with approval
forever. That's called redemption. The obedience and sprinkling
of the blood of Jesus Christ. Now let's do one more thing.
One more thing. God's elect are chosen, sanctified,
redeemed, and blessed. according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience
and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace unto you, O yes, and peace
be multiplied. This is the assured promise of
God to every chosen, redeemed, sanctified sinner. It is a promise
of absolute grace. You who are God's, to you God
gives grace and peace multiplied. Grace shall be given to you,
pardoning grace and preserving grace, protecting grace, sufficient
grace, whatever grace you need. As your days demand, so shall
God's grace be to you and peace. Peace shall be given to you,
and multiplied to you, because God the Father chose you. God
the Spirit sanctified you. God the Son redeemed you. All
the blessedness of peace, knowing of divine pardon. All the blessed
peace, with the assurance of divine providence. The peace
of God's presence. The peace of life, and peace
in life. Peace in life and peace in death,
and peace at last at the judgment seat. Peace forever. But be sure you get this and
carry it home with you. Grace and peace, once given, grace and peace, once given,
shall only multiply, never divide, Never diminish, only multiply. One of the men in the church
over at Gorno has, in God's providence, completely, almost completely
lost the use of one of his eyes, has continual headaches, just
constant pain. Constant pain. Last year, year
and a half, And I said to him, the last three times I've seen
him, I said to him, just not before last again, I said, Ed,
don't forget, this is not something God did to you. This is something
God did for you. For you. What God does, he does
for you, who are left. and redeemed by His grace. Grace
and peace multiplied every day, every day. God multiplies to
us His grace, and God multiplies to us His peace. He heaps upon
us His grace and His peace, because He chose us from eternity. He
redeemed us by the blood of His darling son, and He has sent May God make this grace and peace
yours in Christ Jesus.