1 Peter 3. I want us to take up where we
left off this morning just for a few minutes. Peter was giving some encouragement,
some comfort, some instructions to these suffering Christians
and what they needed. They and you and I still need
today something to instruct us, Whether our sufferings are within
us or coming from some outside source, we need encouragement. We need instructions. What kind
of attitude we should maintain as Christians. There is a definite
sense in which the believer, the child of God, is no different
than anybody else. In and of ourselves, we're no
different than anyone else in the world. But there is that
definite sense in which the child of God is eternally different.
than everybody else, because God has did a work in his heart. Christ dwells in his heart by
faith. He's a new creature, and he has strength, he has grace
that the lost people don't have. He doesn't have to be brought
down and lived and be ruled over by sin and the devil like the
world is. In that sense, he is different.
He is different. Let me read a portion of our
text again. Let me read verse 15. Peter was
giving us instructions and encouragement that our attitude should be one
of compassion and have the mind of Christ and love and pity one
another and be courteous. And he goes down in verse 15
and he adds these two things to what we said this morning.
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." He gives us two things
here that will help us in our sufferings and in our afflictions
and our trials. He gives us these two means of
support for our souls, our hearts to relieve us and encourage us
especially against the terror of men. I think this verse deals
especially with that. Don't be afraid of man and their
terror. And the first one he gives here, in verse 15, he says,
but sanctify. Don't be afraid of their terrors.
Don't be troubled. But sanctify the Lord God in
your hearts. That's the first encouragement
against the terror of men. Now this word sanctify, It simply
means to make holy, or to consecrate, or to set apart. Now, the first
part of that definition we know cannot apply to God. We don't
make God holy. There's no sense in which a man
can make God holy. God is already holy. He's eternally
holy. And it doesn't matter what men
think about Him. He's holy. We don't change the
character, the nature of God. God is holy. Our views of Him
may be right. Our views of Him may be wrong.
But I tell you, it doesn't change Him. Somebody says, make Jesus
your Lord. That's impossible. He's already
that. You may acknowledge Him. You
may esteem Him. But you can't make Him anything.
You can't make Him anything. And that's what this word here
means when he says, sanctify the Lord God. That means acknowledge
Him, esteem Him, regard Him as who He is. And what is He? He's
holy. He is holy. Sanctify the Lord
God. Esteem Him as holy. And the sole
prerogative of God is holiness. I mean it belongs to Him only.
He is holy and He only. We talk about the holy angels,
but you know their holiness is different than God's holiness.
They have a created holiness. They are the holiness of a creature.
And you know God has to hold them up. He made them holy, and
they are holy, but they are holy creatures. God is the Holy Creator. Nobody holds Him up. Nobody created
Him. And He holds the angels. What
happened to the first angels that God removed His angels?
They were holy too, but they fell. You can fall and lose your
holiness if you have the holiness of a creature. Adam was holy. He was upright, but he fell.
But God's holiness is not the holiness of a creature. It's
the holiness of the eternal God. And the Revelation says this
about it in Revelation 15, verse 4, "...who shall not fear Thee,
O Lord, and glorify Thy name, for Thou only art holy." Thou
only. He's essentially holy. And by
saying that, when you say that, you've said everything. When
you say He's essentially holy, that means He's holy through
and through. He can't be anything else but
holy. And when you say He's essentially holy, all that He is is holy,
therefore, all that He does is holy. You can't be holy and commit
an unjust act. You can't be holy and be unkind
or unfair. When he says he's holy, that
means all his other attributes are holy. His love is holy. His grace is holy. His goodness
is holy. His justice is holy. His wrath
is holy. Everything about him is holy.
The chief attribute of God, I guess you could say, is holiness. His
promises are holy promises. His judgments are holy judgments.
His ways are holy ways. He cannot sin because He is holy. He cannot tempt anybody else
to sin because He is holy. He cannot make a mistake. He
cannot fail. He cannot be put to shame. He
can never do any wrong because He is holy. Sanctify the Lord. Look at Him. Acknowledge Him.
Set Him apart. Look at Him as the Scriptures
revealed Him. And what do you see in God? The
Lord God. Holiness. Holiness. God is active in all the affairs
of man. I mean, His finger is everywhere.
His hand is active. It's working. He's not sitting
up there in heaven thinking to Himself, I would try to do something. But I'm afraid if I try to do
something, if I try to rein and involve myself in the affairs
of man, I may do something to violate my holiness." He's not
like that. This is the mystery of this Holy
Lord God, that His hand is working everywhere. He's ruling and reigning
and guiding and overruling, and yet everything He does in the
affairs of man is in the way of holiness. Ain't that wonderful? Now, if I had anything to do
with the affairs of man, I'd mess things up, and you would
too. He'd get away from us, but not him. And here's the mystery. Everything he does is right,
and it's just, and it's holy. God reigneth over the heathen,
he sitteth upon the throne of his holiness. He not only reigns,
but he reigns from a throne of holiness. The Lord is in His holy temple.
Let all the earth keep silent before Him. Sanctify the Lord. When you read the Scriptures,
you see His character revealed there on the pages of His Word. Believe Him. Set Him apart. Acknowledge this is God and He
is holy. Some read verse 15 this way.
Sanctify Christ as Lord. Well, that's true. That's true. Christ is Lord, and Christ is
holy. Sanctify Christ the Lord. He's
holy. But I think if you read verse
15, and just include the Godhead. Just include the Trinity. Include
the Father. He's the Father. He's holy. When
we pray to Him, how do we pray? Our Father, which art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy Name. He's holy. Jesus Christ is holy. He's harmless. He's undefiled.
In every word of the Scripture, we hear it referred to the Spirit
of God as the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit. Spurgeon has this
little quote in all of his sermons, his Park Street and his Metropolitan
Tabernacle, 66 volumes. Probably 63 or 64 books. And this is what's in the front
of every one of them. To the one God of earth and the
Trinity of His sacred persons. Trinity of His holy persons. Be honor and glory, worlds without
end. Sanctify. Sanctify this triune
God. Esteem Him. Acknowledge Him. as holy. But notice verse 15. He doesn't say only sanctify,
but look at this, and I think this is the critical part of
this verse if it's going to help you and I. If it's going to comfort
us, encourage us in our sufferings, in our affliction. Sanctify the
Lord God in your hearts. See that? When we read the pages of God's
Word, there He is right on those pages. But here's what counts. Here's what will change you.
Here's what will change the way that you think. Here's what will
change the way that you talk. Here's what will change your
actions towards God and towards others and towards your sufferings.
When the character of God gets off of these pages and gets in
your heart, That's what changes us, ain't it? A lot of people
can go to verses, and they can say it says this, and it says
that, but it never gets off of those verses into these hearts.
Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. That's why we always
take time as we preach. I take time in my study. I just
don't want to prepare to preach. and turn to different Scriptures
and give them to you without first getting these things in
my heart. Because I know that trouble is
coming. Temptations are coming. Trials
are coming. And if I don't have these things
in my heart, they're not going to help me. They're not going
to help you. I was talking with somebody the
other day, and they were in trouble. I mean, they were in trouble.
And we're talking about it's easy to talk about a sovereign
God. But just let trouble come. Let heartache come. It's a little
more difficult to trust the sovereign God. Have you found that to be
so? So Peter doesn't say sanctify the Lord, but sanctify Him in
your heart. Sanctify Him in your heart. And when we do that, these feelings
of mistrust that we have of Him, of His promises, of His Word, we'll see those things for what
they are, just blatant unbelief. We may call it humility, but
it's just unbelief. You can trust Him in every situation. You can trust His Word. You can
trust His promises. You can trust His Gospel. You
can trust His covenant. You can trust Him. Why? Because
He's holy. He's holy. Setting Him apart
is holy in your heart. And then when you see what He
says, you say, I'm going to believe that. Not to believe that is
blatant unbelief because He's holy. It's right to believe God
and to mistrust Him as sin. When we sanctify Him in our hearts,
our murmurings at His providence, we'll see it's just flat-out
rebellion. That's all it is. That's all it is. You know why
it's flat-out rebellion when we murmur against His providence?
Because He can't do us any wrong. He don't do anybody any wrong.
He's marked out your way in His providence, and it's the right
way to be marked out. Because He's holy. If we murmur
against His providence, we're murmured against His holiness.
Is that not so? When we sanctify the Lord God
in our hearts, or dissatisfaction with His provisions,
you and I'll see is nothing but selfishness. He's provided us
with food. He's provided us with raiment,
with clothes, with a place to live. Oh, and much more than
that, has He? He's provided us with so much.
And for you and I to complain against that and not be satisfied
with His provisions, that's disselfish. He's holy. He's holy. When you and I sanctify the Lord
God in our hearts, and He alone is our fear, and He alone is
our dread, I tell you, a lot of our murmuring
and a lot of our complaining will cease. And I'll tell you
what else will cease. When we sanctify Him as our fear
and our dread, then our fear of man will cease. Then our fear
of man's terror will cease. Why fear man if you fear God? The everlasting God, fear Him,
and fear a man whose breath is in his nostrils? That doesn't
make any sense. So Peter says here, instead of
being afraid of their fear and their dread, fear God. I'll forewarn you, the Lord said,
whom you should fear. Don't fear them which kill the
body, and that's all that they can do. But fear Him, reverence
Him who has power, after He's killed the body, to cast him
to hell. Yea, fear Him. So there's the
first thing Peter says. In the time of our sufferings, in the time of our afflictions,
set Him apart in our hearts. Esteem Him, acknowledge Him for
who He is. He's holiness. The triune and
holy God. And then the second thing he
gives us here to comprehend is this. In the last portion of
verse 15, here's what he says. And be ready always to give an
answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that
is in you with meekness and fear. When a Christian faces trials
and persecutions, And he manifests this gracious attitude, this
quiet and restful and content attitude. Even in the time that
someone's mistreating him or in the time that he's afflicted
within himself, somebody's going to ask him this question. Why
are you so calm? Why aren't you complaining? That
person mistreated you. Why don't you get even with him?
Why don't you talk about people that's mistreated you? How can
you stay so calm and peaceful and quiet during these trials
and afflictions? Well, here's the answer. I have
a hope beyond these trials. I have a hope beyond these tears
and this heaviness. I have a hope in the future.
What's the reason of this hope? That's what Peter said. What's
the reason of this hope? And notice how he says it here.
He doesn't just say, give an answer for the reason of the
hope, but He said, give an answer for the reason of the hope that
is in you. In you. Why does He say that?
Because that makes a distinction between the hope that is in you
and the object of our hope. When you see hope in the Scripture,
sometimes it's the grace of hope that's within you, sometimes
it's what we hope for. What do you and I hope for? You
know the most of the things. Well, everything that we hope
for is in the future, ain't it? It's in the future. We have hope
in the future. It may be this afternoon. But
if we've got a good hope, I'll say, well, I'm going home this
evening and I'm going to be sort of happy. Why? I've got a good hope. I've got
a good hope. You say, well, I thought that
hope had to do with the other world. It has to do with anything
that's in the future. Next week, I've got a good hope
of next week. What do you hope for? I hope
for this. The Lord's never going to leave me. He's never going
to forsake me. He's going to go with me always.
There's a throne of grace that I can come to and obtain mercy
and find grace to help. And He will help us. That's our
hope. And when we get old and our hair
falls out or it turns gray, He said, right down to your old
age, when you've got all those old gray hairs, I'll be with
you, and I'll strengthen you, and I'll never forsake you. What
is that? That's a hope. That's a hope. Don't you have
a good hope for tomorrow, for next week, and for old age? We
have a good hope. But that's not the hope that
Peter's talking about here. It's not the hope of the future.
Neither is it that resurrection. When the bodies are asleep in
the ground, and the Lord Jesus Christ descends from heaven with
a shout, and speaks, and we come forth from the grave, made new
in His likeness. That's a good hope. But that's
the object of our hope. That's what we're expecting in
the future. To be like Him, to be with Him for all eternity. That's the object of our hope. We shouldn't fear what man should
do to us. We shouldn't be discouraged. We shouldn't live disappointed
or defeated because we've got hope beyond this life and beyond
our sorrow. Now, somebody is going to ask
you this question. Peter said, here, this question
is going to arise. Somebody is going to ask you,
what's the reason that you have such a hope? What is within you that you have
such a hope for tomorrow, and next week, and next year, and
hope in a life that's to come? Why do you have such a hope within
you? You know, brothers and sisters, most people don't have this hope.
Do you have a hope for the future? Are you looking forward to next
week, and old age, and death, and life eternal? Do you have
a good hope? Why do you have that within you?
What's in you that gives you that hope when most people around
you don't have it? That's what Peter's saying. Somebody's
going to ask you why you're taking your troubles so easy, why you're
so quiet and restful, and when you say, well, I've got a hope
for the future. I've got a good hope for tomorrow and the world
to come. Why do you have such a hope?
Why do you have a hope in you? Well, Peter says here, the answer
that you give must not be given out of pride or bragging, but
it must be given out of meekness, humility, self-abasement, and
reverence towards God, and respect towards the One that asked you
the question. Now remember that because that's so important.
When you tell them the reason that you've got a hope within
you, It's not going to be done out
of an attitude of pride or bragging or arrogance, but an attitude
of humility and meekness and reverence. Now let me give you
four things right quick regarding a good hope. First of all, turn
with me to 2 Thessalonians. Look in 2 Thessalonians. Four things about a good hope. Look in 2 Thessalonians. Look
in chapter 2. Here's the first thing about
a good hope. Give me a reason why you have
a hope that's within you. Now this ain't going to be some
deep theological discourse, because Peter was writing to slaves,
probably writing to some young children that had been converted,
that had been saved. And there's no sense of asking
a young believer to give some deep theological discourse of
the reason and the hope that's within him. This is something
we should know experientially. Tell me, tell me, what reason
do you have to hope when most people are not hoping? Well,
here's the first thing, it's this. I have a good hope within
me, number one, because God gave it to me. God gave me a good
hope. Now look here at it in verse
16. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 16. Now our Lord Jesus
Christ Himself and God even our Father which hath loved us and
hath given us everlasting comfort and good hope. He's given us
a good hope. Through grace. If you got a good
hope, what did you get? God gave it to you. It's a gift
of God. That's where you got it. That's
where we got it. God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son. That's a gift of God. And Christ
loved us and gave Himself for us. That's a gift, a precious
gift. Life eternal. Where did we get
that? It's a gift of God. The wages
of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. And here
Paul says, this hope, if it be a good hope, God gave it to you. It's a gift of God. Every man
lives without a hope. He's born without hope and he
lives without hope. And I tell you, he'll die without
hope if God doesn't give it to him. Is that the reason? Can you give
that as a reason? Shouldn't that not be the first
reason? God gave it to me. But He doesn't stop there. Look
how He says this, God who hath loved us and given us everlasting
consolation and good hope, and look what He adds, through grace. In other words, He gave it to
us. It's a gift of God. But it's
not any kind of obligation that He was under to give it to them. It's not some payment for work
rendered to Him. He said, through grace. We can't
earn it. We can't merit it. We don't deserve
it. He gave us hope out of His free,
unmerited favor. Let me ask you this question.
What is it that makes us esteem this hope? What is it that makes
you think so highly of it? I'll tell you one thing. When
you see all the people living around you that don't have it,
and dying without it, and you know that you're no different
than they are. God didn't owe you anything other
than judgment, just what He owed them. Who makes you to differ? God
has made you to differ. How has He made you to differ?
Why has He made you to differ? He's given to you what He withholds
from most people. And what is that? Hope. Hope. Grace and hope. I tell you, if
the Lord wanted to, could He not give hope to everybody? If
He could give it to you, couldn't He give it to everybody? Why
doesn't He? This hope comes to us out of
distinguishing grace, discriminating grace. It's not what He owes
you. It's not some obligation that
He's paid you for. No, it's grace. Free, sovereign
grace. Is God obligated to you? Is God
indebted to you? Did He give you a good hope to
repay you for something that He owed you? No. No. You have a good hope
because God gave it to you out of the goodness and the love
and the mercy and the love of His heart. Look here at what
He says back in verse 13. 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. Look here in verse 13. We are bound to give thanks to
God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord. For God hath from
the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the
Spirit and belief of the truth." God hath from the beginning chosen
you to salvation. You got any complaints about
that? Does anybody here have any complaints about that? Is
there anybody here that says that's not fair? that we won't
talk about fairness. If we talk about fairness, nobody's
going to be saved. Nobody's going to have any hope.
You say, well, it's not fair because He owes me a chance.
So it's not grace, then, is it? You know grace is in the heart
of God and it's free. And He's not obligated to give
it. And we're amazed when He does,
aren't we? Let's bring this down to a personal level. You know
you talk to people and they say, well, that's not fair. That's
not fair. It's grace. And they say grace
is not fair. God owes everybody a chance.
Well, just wait a minute. Quit talking about everybody
and talk about me. Let's talk about you. What does
God owe you? Let's forget about your neighbor.
Forget about everybody else. What does God owe you? What does
he owe you? There's the way to stop this
boasting, this pride. Peter said, when you give a reason
of the hope that's within you, make sure it's not out of self-righteousness.
Make sure it's not out of arrogance and pride. Make sure it's out
of meekness and reverence. And here is meekness and reverence.
He owes me nothing but judgment and payment for my sin. But He
gave me hope. Why? The cause is found in Him. I am a miserable sinner, and
to think that the eternal God would be indebted to me is the
height of pride. To think that the eternal God
would look down through time and see something in me that
attracted Him is the height of arrogance, not humility and meekness. The reason you have hope, God
gave it to you. It is out of the grace and the
love of His heart and nothing else. Nothing else. Now, can
we start there? Everybody is dying with hope.
Aren't they? Go down to the mortuary. You
talk to those guys that are there when the funerals are preached. And they listen to the preachers
while they get up over the dead. And they preach their funeral,
and they take them out and put them in the ground. And you talk
to those guys that listen to those preachers, and you just
ask them, is anybody dying without any hope? Not according to these
preachers, he said. Everybody has a hope. You read the obituaries. Old
so-and-so went to be with the Lord. I knew old so-and-so. If the Lord didn't do something
for them in their dying hours, they're not with the Lord. But to hear people tell it, everybody's
got a hope. What's the reason for our hope? Number one, God gave it. God
gave it. Not something we come into this
world with. God gave it out of grace. I mean free grace. Free grace. Sovereign grace.
Unearned, unowed grace. Now that's a good hope. That's
a good hope. It humbles the flesh. It humiliates
human nature. But that's the only way you can
have a good hope. It begins with God, the gift of God. And I tell you this much about
this good hope. If God has ever given it to you,
if God has ever given it to you, someday it will be fully realized. If God has given you a good hope,
He'll never take it back. He's not an Indian giver. The
gifts and callings of God are without repentance. He'll never
say, I'm sorry I gave you that. I want it back. First two things about a hope,
God gave it to us. And it's by His grace. Turn back
over to 1 Peter 1 and verse 3. Now this is something you know. I am not telling you a thing
that you shouldn't be telling someone else to ask you why you
have hope in your soul when so many don't have it. Look here in verse 3, 1 Peter
1 and verse 3. Some of the old forefathers used
to We used to talk about hope rising in the soul. When does
hope rise in the soul? When does it have its rise in
the soul? When does it begin in the soul? You know, if God
gives it to you, and He gives it by His grace, then pretty
soon you're going to know it. It rises in the soul. It manifests
in the soul. You begin to live by hope. Well,
here's where it has its rise in the soul. Look in verse 3.
1 Peter 1 verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy
hath begotten us again unto a living hope, a lively hope, by the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead. A sinner is without hope. He
lives without hope until he is born again. And when a sinner
is born again, hope is born within him. Hope takes its rise within
him. You must be born again. Why is
that? You don't have any hope until
you're born again. He hath begotten us again unto a lively hope. Everybody who is born again has
a good hope because this hope is implanted in his heart in
that new birth. All of the graces of the Spirit
are planted in the heart at the new birth. That's why the Lord
Jesus said, you must be born again. Folks, you're eating too
much. Some of you are eating too much. Bless your hearts.
You've got to lighten up on your dinner. All of you are going to go to
sleep on me. If you go to sleep, I'll go to sleep too now. Stay
with me, okay? A dead sinner has a dead hope. But the sinner who is born again
has a living hope. And it happens as soon as he's
born again. He don't live six months or a
year and then begin to hope. This is in his heart as soon
as he's born again. That thief on the cross is the
best example. I tell you, we use him so much.
But he's the best example of so many things. Here He was upon
the cross, and sometime within that three hours, I don't know
exactly when He was, but sometime within those three hours, here's
a man that was dead in trespasses and sin. And the Lord revealed
Himself to that man, gave him light, gave him life, gave him
a new birth there upon that cross. And what else did He give? In
that new birth, immediately come hope. He never was baptized. He didn't
get off the cross and start paying tithes. He never went to a single
worship service. But when He was born again upon
that cross, you say, Bruce, are you sure He's born again? You
can't go to heaven without being born again. That's how sure we
are. No unsaved person is going to
heaven, except a man be born again. I don't care if it's Adam.
Or if it's the last man that ever lived. Except you be born
again. You cannot see or enter the Kingdom
of Heaven. It's the same way in the Old
Testament as it is now. Everybody who goes to Heaven
has to be born again. And that thief was born again.
And without doing anything else but being born again, he went
to Heaven. He lived the last few minutes
of his life in hope. You say, Bruce, how do you know
that? We know that for this reason. The Lord Jesus said today, shall
you be with me in paradise. That's hope. And He had it as
soon as He was born again. It's implanted there. You can't
have a good hope, brothers and sisters, if you're lost. Lost
people don't have a good hope. I don't care what else they are.
I don't care who they are. I don't care what they do. Lost
people don't have a good hope. Dead people have a dead hope.
It's only live people who have a living hope. You must be saved. That's just as plain as we can
make it, ain't it? You've got to be saved. The Lord has to
save you. If you ain't saved by His grace,
if He doesn't come and intervene and save us, we'll die without
hope. Now that's as plain as we can
make it, ain't it? If I asked you this morning,
this afternoon, why do you have a good hope? You can just simply
say, the Lord has saved me. He's given me eternal life. He's
given me a new heart. He's given me a new spirit. I
ain't what I used to be. I ain't what I'm going to be.
And I ain't what I wish I was. But thank God I'm not what I
was. I was dead in trespasses and sin. And the Lord saved me.
I've got hope. And you notice what Peter links
that to. And a good hope is always linked to this. He has given
us a good hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. There is no hope apart from a
new birth, and there is no new birth apart from the cross, apart
from the crucified and buried and risen Savior. None of us
could be saved if Christ had not died. Thus we bore our sins. None of us could be saved if
Christ hadn't raised from the dead and ascended to the right
hand of God. He sent back the Spirit, and
now He's given us new hearts and a new Spirit. And as soon
as He does, we have a living hope, a good hope, a good hope. So there's three good reasons
about good hope, and you can relate to all those, can't you?
You can relate to all three of those things. You remember a
time when you were lost. You were without hope and without
God and without Jesus Christ in this world. But He saved you. He saved you. He gave you a new
heart. And now you say, I've got hope because of it. One more
place. Look over in Hebrews chapter
6. Now back to your left. Hebrews chapter 6. Hope has its
rise in the soul. There's the new birth. And here's something else about
it. We have the comfort of this hope and the assurance of this hope
when we begin to realize that we're in a place of refuge.
We're in a place of refuge. Look here what the writer of
Hebrews says in chapter 6 and look in verse 18. He said, two immutable things,
it's impossible for God to lie. We might have a strong comfort,
strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon
the hope set before us. We have fled for refuge. Feel the anxiety in that. Feel
the seriousness in that. You remember about this city
of refuge. That's what the writers referred
to. All of us remember about that. We read about it. If you
had slain someone, and you did it accidentally, you did it ignorantly,
and when the family said, we're going to kill you, When all the
brothers got together and said, you killed our brother, we're
going to kill you. Boy, you had to take off to the city of refuge
before they got to you. They usually were in a day's
journey of wherever you lived in Israel. And you'd take off
and you'd flee to that city of refuge. Often look behind you. How close are they? Are they
gaining on you? I don't know if they're going
to make it. Oh, they're running so fast. Oh, there's one, he's
going to shoot arrows at me. And they're trying to cut a shortcut
and cut you off. And you're just fearful, you're
anxiety, and you run into the city of refuge. And finally,
you walk through the doors of that city. And they said, you're
safe now. You're safe now. And boy, there
you stand looking back out through the gate. There's your enemies
on the outside. They can't come through that
gate. It's not because they could not. They're afraid to. It's
not because the walls are so high and strong, it's because
God appointed it so. You get to that city of refuge,
and He said, all you avengers of blood, when you get to that
gate, you better not go any further. That man's found Him a place
of refuge, and there He's going to be judged, and He's going
to live there to the death of the high priest. And when we
flee to Christ, as the writer says here, we've got a great
comfort. Why? Because just as that man
found a refuge in that city, we found a refuge in Christ.
And we look out of Him, back where we came from, and there's
all of our enemies. There's sin, and there's the
wrath of God, and there's the devil and death. But they can't
touch us. Why? Because we're so strong? No, because God said, leave Him
alone. He's found a place of refuge. He's safe. He's safe. And when you find yourself in
Christ, don't you realize then how the
comfort of this hope? Because you're in Christ. And
then you go to the Word of God and He says things like this.
David said, Lord, remember the Word unto your servant. upon which you've caused me to
hope." This is my comfort in my affliction. Your Word has
quickened me. When you go to read God's Word,
doesn't that comfort your hope? Doesn't encourage your hope?
My soul fainted for your salvation, but I hope in your Word. You're
my hiding place and my shield. I hope in your Word. Where did
David get that? Where did he ever read that the
Lord was his hiding place and his shield? Well, he read it
in the Word. And he said, that's what I'm
hoping in. That comforts my hope. I wait for the Lord, my soul
doeth wait, and in His Word do I hope. Let Israel hope in the
Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with the Lord is
plenteous redemption. And listen to this last Scripture. happy, blessed, is he that has
the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord. He is God. Brothers and sisters,
if we've got such a hope as that, why would we be afraid of anybody? Respect people, yes. Regard people,
yes. But afraid of people's terrors? Afraid of what man can do to
us? We've got a good hope. We've
got a good hope.