2 Peter, 1st chapter, 1st verse. 2 Peter 1. We have this verse, and it starts
out, it says, Simon Peter, a servant an apostle of Jesus Christ. He identifies himself that he
is a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is an apostle. Then he says to them that have
obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness
of God our Savior Jesus Christ. He says, grace and peace be multiplied
unto you. Isn't that something as He writes
to these people and writes to us? That He says, grace and peace
be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and Jesus
our Lord. Then He goes on, He says many
things, but we'll just stop with these two verses. And I want
to talk about, in verse number one, precious faith. Precious
faith. In the testimony of the Scriptures
that we have that of faith and we see how important that it
is in the Scriptures. Without faith there is no salvation. I think the Scripture is very
clear upon this subject. And the Bible says, he that believeth
not is condemned already. And he that believeth not the
Son shall not see life. And it says the wrath of God
abideth upon that person that believeth not. So we have the
faith and how important that it is. And also the Lord spake
and He said, if you believe not that I am He, ye shall die in
your sin. Boy, that tells us just how important
faith is in believing in Lord Jesus Christ. You know, the scripture
says, in one place, it would be better not to be born than
to die in your sins. And so we find how important
that faith is. Now, you can go to church all
your life. You can go to Sunday school and have 24 pins of perfect
attendance and all of this. You can have a head full of knowledge,
and you can live without blemish in your life, but if you live
and die without faith, it's damning. You can do all these things,
and yet without faith it's damning. Now a lot of people do not believe
that, but that's the Scriptures. And a friend of mine yesterday
was talking, And he said, a person, he was telling me, he said, he
says the Bible's a good book, but he ignores Christ, faith. He believes in his good deeds
for salvation. But you got to have faith, saving
faith. See, I wouldn't want to give
false hope. You wouldn't want to give false
hope. You wouldn't want to have false hope. The Bible says without
faith there's no pleasing God. We have this in the Bible about
Enoch. And the Bible says that Enoch
was not. And God took him and translated
him that he wouldn't see death. He said that he had this, that
he pleased God. You know that's written beside
of his name. Well, it would be good to have something written
like that, that He pleased God with it beside His name for all
eternity. And it was by divine grace that
He pleased God, and it would be by the side of divine grace
that we please God. That ought to be our very aim
in life, is to please Him. And again, you can do a lot of
things in this life. You can bestow all your goods
to feed the poor. You do all kinds of things, and
it's called wonderful works. But, if you live without faith,
you can't please Him. The Bible says without faith
it's impossible to please God. It says we must come to Him and
believe that He is. And that is what He's declared
to be from the Scriptures, when we believe that God is. That is that we believe what
Scripture says about Him. If we are without faith, we are
without salvation. So the text here says that we
have obtained. It says to them that have obtained. Now we can obtain some things
in different ways. We can obtain things by labor.
We can obtain them by merit or by purchase or by a gift. Now when it comes to faith, that
is a gift. We receive faith and hold faith
as a gift from God. It's God's gift to those that
are undeserving. It's not a natural thing. Faith
is not, when the Bible speaks of faith, the faith of the Bible,
it's not a natural thing. A natural faith is no benefit
to the soul. Now what would be a natural faith?
It would just be believing as we would like history. We believe that in history Christopher
Columbus that he sailed to America. We believe that. We believe that
Abraham Lincoln was president. George Washington was president.
We believe in, you know, these things. But that's not the kind
of belief that's talking about here. This faith is not. And
saving faith does not grow in the natural heart. It's not by
nature. It's a thing that is obtained.
It doesn't spring from education. By the way, there's an article
in the paper today talking about the atheists. Atheist movement
in America how it had grown and it's all about the high intellect
and so forth and Faith doesn't spring by education in this way. It doesn't come that way and
it doesn't come by Example and things like that or instructions
or imitation of those things But it's given Faith is given
over in the book of Ephesians chapter 2 we read and it says
faith and it says not of yourselves it is the gift of God the gift
of God it also says the scripture does unto you it is given to
believe on him now that sounds like a gift doesn't it when it
says under it's given unto you to believe and if you believe
on Jesus Christ You believe to the saving of your soul, to salvation,
it is a given gift to you this morning. You should thank the
Lord that He's given you the gift of faith, that you have
faith. And what a gift that it is. Look
how rich this gift is to us and what it has with us. But most
preachers this morning will tell you that faith is natural to
man. And it only requires the will
and the exercise of it. And they talk like this, if I
just get you to believe. Now, the faith we're talking
about is not if I can get you to believe. It's something that
God gives you. It comes from Him. And they'll
say, well, if I can just get you to believe, so I'll try this
and I'll try that and I'll try this and that. But we must recognize,
and the more I think about it, how great and how true this verse
is, that every good and perfect gift comes down from above. It's
not something we send up, but it's something that comes down
to us. And that's faith. Now, this word
faith, We can look at it as a blessing of the new covenant, of that
covenant of grace. It's the fruit of electing love,
it's that. It's the grace of the Spirit,
and it's not a legal condition, but it's a free gift of God.
Those that know the plague of their heart, they know the gospel. They understand
that this is something that's come to them, faith, this saving
faith. It's not something natural. It's
not by nature. And the Bible says, with a heart,
man believeth unto righteousness. Now, at the same time, we look
at it, and there's the heart, and it's an act of man, but yet
it's God's gift. It's both. It's God's gift, but
yet there's an act of man. The Spirit doesn't believe for
us. And it's a gift of God. And the heart has to be renewed
by divine grace before it's capable of saving faith. It's the Lord's
work. He works and we receive Christ. That's faith. And it's a gift
of God. It's a sovereign gift of God.
Now, the Scripture says, Who maketh thee to differ? Who maketh
thee to differ? Or what dost thou hast that is
not been given to thee? You know, that's a good question,
isn't it? Why are you here this morning?
What made you to differ? You believed upon Christ. What
made you to differ? Others are in unbelief. They are those that care not
for Christ. They have no use for Christ.
They do not believe in Christ. But the Scripture says, who has
made thee to differ is Him. You know, we recognized this
morning that God could have just left us. He didn't have to do
anything for us, did He? He didn't have to do anything
for us. The Bible says it's not of Him that willeth, nor of Him
that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. That's something
that we always recognize is He that showeth mercy. That humbles
us that God has showed us favor. Do you remember the story of
Ruth? And there was Boaz, and Boaz is favored to Ruth, and
Ruth says, Why have I found grace in thy sight, in thy eyes? Here was Ruth. She is gleaming in his fields.
She says, Why have I found favor in thy sight? Why shouldst thou
take of knowledge of me? See, we ask the same thing. Why
me? Of all the people of the world.
Faith is God's gift. Now, let's go a little further
with this. The Bible says the gifts of God and His gift and
calling of God is without repentance. Now, when God does something,
He does it forever. It's not that he does it for
a day or two and decides after that that he's going to change
his mind. That's not the way God is. And
there are those that preach today, well, you're a child of God today
and you're a child of the devil next week. That's an error that
many believe. But the Lord says, My sheep hear
My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me, and I give unto
them eternal life. He says, I give it. And His nuns
shall pluck them out of My hands. They're in My hands. They're
in the Father's hands. So God has given you this grace
of precious faith toward His Son. He'll never take it away. Never take it away. That's His
gift. It comes. And He never takes
that away. It's a pledge of glory. So we
read and we look at it this morning and I read this week of one. He said God has two ends of the
chain in heaven. There's these two links and one
of them is everlasting, electing love, and the other link is that
of glory, and the middle link is grace. And there's those two
links that he holds. And you think of the chain there,
that those two links, and that of grace in the middle of it.
And he's got a sure hold on two of them and a sure hold on grace. No power can sever these links. No power. Then he says it's precious. That is, that faith is precious. The quality of it, the greatness
of it, the worth of it, all of this is precious. And the gift of God makes something
precious this morning. You know, if I give you something,
it might not be very precious unto you, but I hope if I give
you something that's worth something, that you would think it was precious. And if it comes from God, you
know it's precious. What He gives unto us is precious.
It's the fruit of the Spirit. We find that this is apprehended
Christ, this faith apprehends a precious Christ. over in I
Peter chapter 2, verse number 7, unto you therefore which believe
he is precious. Now, whether we know it or whether
we feel it, or whether we see it or not, Christ is precious. I mean, He doesn't change Him.
That's not what he's speaking out there. He's always been precious,
and he always will be precious. He's precious, and faith doesn't
add to his preciousness. He's precious, isn't he? And
faith doesn't add to it, but faith apprehends the preciousness
of Christ, that He's the treasure. He's the pearl of great price.
The Scripture says, when he found this, he sold all he had to get
the pearl, didn't he? He's the pearl of great price.
So the question is this morning, in looking at that verse, is
what do we think of Christ? What do we think of the Lord
Jesus Christ? Do we have a place for Him in
our lives? Do we look to Him? Does He have
a place in our hearts? If we do, heaven's for us. If you've got a spark of love,
a spark of love to the Lord Jesus Christ, I can tell you He has
a great love for you. He has an everlasting love for
you if you've got a love for Him. Precious. Oh, He's precious this morning
when we say, Our Savior. When we say, Our Shepherd. When
we say, He's our Shepherd today, we see the preciousness of this
sacrifice. the propitiation of Christ. We see Him, our Savior, we see
Him as a substitute. We see Him this morning that
He's taken upon Himself manhood, that He is in union with two
natures and He stood in our room, in our stead, our very place. He endured the wrath of God as
He stood for those that are given unto Him. Through His suffering, the Bible
says, He brings many sons to glory. So it's precious this
morning when we say Savior, because when we say Savior, it means
that we've been delivered from our sins. We've been delivered. He's precious this morning because
we've been made accepted in the Beloved. Isn't that precious
this morning? He's our precious Savior. We're
accepted in Him. He's delivered us from the curse.
He's delivered us from punishment. He's delivered us from guilt,
the power of sin. He's delivered us. Now, He does
all of this. Let me give you another word
that Peter writes in the first chapter of Peter, in verse 19.
It says, but with the precious blood of Christ. Peter writes
and says it's for precious blood. Now how does he do all this?
It's by his precious blood. We call him Savior. And it says,
you, for as much as you know that you were not redeemed with
corruptible things of silver and gold from the vain conversation
received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious
blood of Christ as a lamb without blemish and without spot, who
verily was foreordained before the foundation was manifested
in these last times for you. We preached last week on being
made nigh by the blood of Christ. So here's precious faith. And
that precious faith sees the preciousness of His blood, exteems
His blood highly. It trusts Him, a precious Christ. It trusts a precious blood. That
was an important blood that was shed. It's where our hope is. Our hope is Christ. Our hope
is His sacrifice. That's our plea today. Look upon
the face of thy anointed. Look upon Christ. It's our peace. We have peace
through the blood of Christ, don't we? That's our peace. And when we say through the blood,
it's through His death, His suffering. That's our peace. We understand
God is not angry with us because of Christ. That this has satisfied Him. Christ has made satisfaction.
We know that the Scripture says, when I see the blood, I'll pass
over you. It's not when I see the tears.
It's not when I see reformation. It's not when I see all of these
other things and the so-called goodness of man. It's not that.
There's just one thing that screens us from the very wrath of God.
And that is when I see the blood. That's the only thing. The Bible
says we're washed in the blood, made white as snow in the blood.
Precious thief, precious blood. This precious faith also holds
precious promises. Peter speaks of the promises
of God and he calls them precious promises. And faith relies upon
these promises, these precious promises, abundant promises of
God. It takes them to God in prayer. David says, remember the words
to thy servant and the promises. We see God's promises and it
inspires that of faith. We look to Him and there's faith.
God, who cannot lie. God, who said these things. And
faith fathers these precious promises. Confident they'll not
fail. You know, there are those, and
we go through life, and there's a lot of difficulties in life. There's a lot of problems in
life. And a lot of times, there's adversity to life. There's circumstances
that is adverse. But yet, faith looks to these
promises that He's made. I'll be with you. I'll not leave
you. Look at all these promises that
He's made unto us. So faith looks to these and has
confidence. This precious faith does. This precious faith deals with
precious things. Precious Christ. Precious blood. A precious redemption upon Calvary's
cross. And it's a passport to glory,
precious faith is. It's the root of all graces,
faith is. And it's a substance of hope. It's all of these things. And
he also says here that we have obtained a like precious faith. This faith that the Bible speaks
of, now listen to me here, this faith that the Bible speaks of
is the same faith that Abraham had that Peter had. It's the
same faith that Paul had that Peter had. It's the same faith
that Job had that Peter had. It's the same thing, the prophets,
Isaiah and Jeremiah and all the prophets, it's the same faith. It's the same faith that Abel
had. We're talking about the same
faith now that they had, aren't we? All the way through. And as time goes on, it's still
the same faith. It's a oneness of faith. It is
a uniqueness of faith. It's just one faith that saves
a sinner. Just one faith. And it's common
to all of the regenerate. It's common to all that are born
again. It's common to all that truly
believe this one faith. It's called the faith of God's
elect. It's the same all the way through
the Bible, from the New Testament, Old Testament, and as I said
a while ago, time goes on. The Bible says there's just one
Lord. There's not many lords. There's just one Christ. The
Bible says there's just one faith. Now we talk about today, people
say, well, there's this faith and that faith, but there's just
one saving faith. There's just one, the Scripture
says. But yet there's degrees of faith. There's just one faith. You talk about Abraham, that
was great faith, wasn't it? You look at Abraham, and what
God said unto him, and told him his seed, about his seed, and
here he was an old man, and that was great faith that he had.
And there's different degrees of
faith. There is an increase, the Bible speaks of an increase
in our faith and we pray to God to increase our faith. There
is a growth of faith and we look at it, the Bible says there is
little faith. It speaks of the faith of a seed of a mustard,
a grain of mustard seed, and that was something really small,
a mustard seed, but yet the Bible says that that mustard seed,
that mustard plant, the birds could grow, and when it grew,
they could lodge in it. There's strong faith, but there
it is. There's just one faith. whether
it's weak, strong, whether it's whatever it is, as long as it's
true faith. You know, it's faith. We look
at it, and Peter said, The Lord, to whom shall we go? That all
this multitude was following the Lord Jesus Christ, and he
spoke to them, and they all left. And he turned to his disciples,
and he said to them, Will you also go away? Now here's faith,
Peter says, and he is speaking. Peter says, to whom shall we
go? He says, thou has the words of eternal life. Now that was
great faith, wasn't it? You look at it. Peter says, there's
nowhere else to go. He says, thou has the words of
eternal life. There's nothing anywhere else.
You see, the faith of that leopard as he came, And leprosy was a
terrible disease, and I don't have time to go into all of how
terrible that leprosy was. But yet, there was no hope for
the leopard. And he came to the Lord Jesus
Christ, and he says, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me
clean. Now look at that faith there. He says, Lord, if thou wilt.
He knew the Lord could do it. Didn't he? But he says, if thou
wilt, you've got the power. You've healed many diseases.
Leprosy was incurable. They had no cure for leprosy. And he said, if thou wilt, thou
can makest me clean. Now, I've thought about that.
Now, you think about the situation of the leopard. And you know
the leopard, he had to, if anybody come within so many feet of him,
he had to holler unclean, unclean. And they wouldn't get around
the leopard. And when they died, they wouldn't get close to them.
You know what they'd do? They'd throw a rope around them and
drag them down to the garbage dump down in Jerusalem. You know,
they didn't get close enough to know whether he was dead or
not. They looked like he was dead. You know what it said? It said that you'd hear screams
coming out of it. See, it stayed on fire constantly. And you'd hear screams coming
out of it at night. And during the day. See, that
was a picture of hell itself. But I thought about it. What
do you think about that leopard? And here's his faith. If thou
wilt, thou canst make me whole. The Lord says, I will be thou
whole. I will. Oh, this morning, saving
faith. Clinging to Christ. Cleave to
the Lord. That's what saving faith does.
It depends upon Him. It relies upon Him. It leans
upon Him. It rests upon Him. Somebody has wrote this and I
copied it down and never used it before, but, another life,
another death, the life of Christ, the death of Christ, I stake
my whole eternity on. That's faith. Upon a life I did
not live, upon a death I did not die, the life of Christ,
the death of Christ, I stayed my whole eternity. That's faith. Faith. Then it goes on, the Scripture
does, and it says that them that have obtained like precious faith,
like faith, precious faith, with us through the righteousness
of God and our Savior Jesus Christ. What is it speaking of? It's
speaking of His active and passive obedience. That, in other words,
is His doings and His death. through the righteousness. That
is His obedient life and His sacrificial death. By His life,
He obeyed all the precepts of the law. Now that's something
this morning. When you think about it, all
the precepts of the law. Say, you can't even get by the
first of the commandments. But Christ obeyed all the precepts,
everything of the law. Then by His death, He satisfied
all the penalties of the law. The law says you break me and
there's a curse. It says you break me and there's
punishment. The Bible says the wages of sin
is death. And Christ, by His death, satisfied
all the penalties of the law. So we build all of our hopes.
We build everything upon this, the doings and dying of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Everything's upon Him. His doings,
His dying, And here it is. And this is it. This is it scripturally. This is it saving faith. This
precious faith. This is it. He lived for me and
He died for me. That's salvation. He lived for
me. He died for me. Now I'm going to go a little
further this morning. Now, in looking at all of this, we believe that He lived for
us. We believe that He died for us. We believe that we have an
interest in Christ. But believing and faith does
not give us an interest in Him. But it's evidence that we have
an interest in Him. Now, go over that carefully this
morning. When you believe, when you trust
the Lord Jesus Christ, that's evidence that you have an interest
in Him. That is, that He loved us. That He gave Himself for us. If He had not died for us and
not lived for us, Not thought of us. He wouldn't give us faith. But through His merit, through
His blood, through His righteousness, and through His prayers, we are
brought to possess this saving faith, this precious faith. So
what it does, it shows our interest in Him, and His interest in us. But it's not because of our interest,
it shows us that we had a part of the cross. You see what I'm
saying? It shows us we're part of His
dying. We're part of His life. I've talked before about the
Indian. With Him, we died with Him. We're buried with Him. We're
resurrected with Him. We're seated in the heavens with
Him. See, it's all joined together. You see it? It's all joined together. Maybe I put it like this. Because
He lived and died for us, we're given faith. See it? We're given faith because He
lived and died for us. Faith comes to us. Because He
lived and died for us, salvation comes to us. Salvation comes. It comes from eternity. It comes
through Christ. And it comes to us by His Spirit. Do you see it? It's all linked together. We look at it. Simon Peter says,
"...to them that have obtained light, precious faith with us
through the righteousness of God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Now, let me just say just a couple
words. I said this is the same faith
that Abel, Abraham, David, Job, the prophets of the Old Testament, others, the New Testament, the
disciples, Paul. And he writes here and he says
to them that I've attained the like precious faith with us. Now here's the question. Here's the important question.
Is He writing to us? Is He writing to me? He wrote
this and He's writing to those that have obtained it. Have we
obtained it? Do we have this faith? It may
be small, it might be strong, but do we have this faith? This
light, precious faith that puts everything on Christ? that we see him as a precious
Christ that we see his blood as a precious blood that we see
his promises as a precious promises that we see his redemption as
a precious redemption oh I go back to where I started
There's no salvation without this faith. And it's sure not
a product of nature. I heard old Rock Barnard preaching
one time on a tape and he was talking about the baby that was
born in Bethlehem. He said, you're putting everything
upon that baby. Putting everything upon him.
Now that's That's something beyond nature, isn't it? If you put
everything... That's like when they helped him there in the
temple. And they said, Today, we've seen
thy salvation, O Lord. We've seen it. Today. When they
helped Christ. Others looked at him. They said,
Well, he's just another baby boy. He grew up. Well, that's just another man.
But John the Baptist says, Behold the Lamb of God. He'll take away
the sin of the world, didn't he? That dying thief on the cross
says, looked at him and says, Remember me when thou comest
into thy kingdom, didn't he? And he says, Today thou shalt
be with me in paradise. I was saving faith. Another thief. Oh, he didn't see who he was. Abel, I was saving faith. Cain didn't have it. Abel had
it, didn't he? Obtained like precious faith. May we pray, Father, take the
message, use it this morning for the benefit of our souls
and our hearts. We're thankful for Christ, the
Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. We're thankful
for Him who gives eternal life. We're thankful of faith. Precious
faith, how rich it is to your children. In Christ's name we
pray, Amen. What we are doing now, I guess
we've got to do a recording. And this is one that you go in
and burn a plate on the internet. And we're sending these over
to Kentucky.