If you would please open your
Bibles to the book of 1 Peter chapter 1. Now the Apostle Peter is writing
here to these strangers that are scattered throughout Pontius
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. These dear people had
been dispersed. They were refugees because of
the persecution Nero and we're told in verse 2 that they were
elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification
of the Spirit unto obedience and the sprinkling of the blood
of Jesus Christ grace unto you and peace be multiplied. It's
always good to look I think to the beginning how that God chose
these people and they had been elected according to the counsel,
the ordination, and the free grace of God. These people were
God's people from old time. They were God's people from before
the foundation of the world. God had set his love and affection
upon them and it's always good to look back because we know
that he is the author and the finisher of the faith of His
people. And I think it's always good
to give glory to our God that He is the author of our faith,
the very author of it. Where would you be this morning
without the work that God carried on in your life, yea, even before
you experienced the grace of God? We believe that God in prevenient
grace that he looked over and looked after his people and that
he protected them and kept them even until the time when he would
call them by his Holy Spirit out of the world unto himself. And how many here come close
to being killed in an automobile accident or in some other accident
or were very ill and very near the grave? Maybe even in the
very vestibule of death. And God preserved you and brought
you up. Well, it was because He had already
set His love and affection upon you, and He would have you as
one of His own. He meant to save you. He meant
to save you. That's the very meaning of election. Somebody says, well, just explain
that. The question is, did God save
you by accident, or did He save you on purpose? Did He mean to
save you when He saved you? And the answer to that is, of
course. Of course God meant to do it. If He hadn't meant to
do it, He wouldn't have done it. And so election, these people
were elected according to the counsel, the ordination, and
the free grace of God. This was their history. This
was where God began with their souls. Now these people had been
begotten unto a lively hope were told in verse 3. Unto a living
hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. These were
spirit people. They were spiritual people. They
had been born again, we're told that in these verses, that they
had been begotten, that means that they had been by the Holy
Spirit of God brought into the family of God, begotten by the
seed of the Word of God, and they had the Holy Spirit. They
were God's children, they were God's dear children, and there
was an inheritance awaiting them that had been reserved for them. They were going through awful
times in the world, but there was an inheritance that was laid
up for them, which God had reserved in heaven for them. And so everything
was going to be fine. Now, beloved, we need to remember,
and if we've traveled with the Lord, to any degree in this world,
we know that those things that are temporal, as we look at the
things of this world, those things that we look at, those things
that we see here in the world, they're temporal. They're just
temporal. The things which are unseen are
eternal, and there is an inheritance waiting for the people of God.
Don't feel bad about it. If you don't have of this world's
goods, and if you're not blessed, maybe as others around you are
blessed, with the world's goods, don't feel bad about it. There's
an inheritance waiting you in glory. It's reserved there in
heaven for you. And so just be patient and wait. The meat shall inherit the earth. God shall bless His people and
they shall receive abundance of glory with the Lord Jesus
Christ in the by and by. And then we're told here in verse
5 that they're kept. by the power of God through faith
unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. They're kept.
I think that's a very key word in the life of a believer. It's
wonderful to know that you've been kept and that you are being
kept. It's a miracle that anybody is
saved. It's a miracle that anybody lives
like they're saved. It's a miracle that anybody lives
for the glory of God in this world. It's a miracle. And beloved,
it's only because we have been kept, we are being kept, and
we shall be kept until that day when the Lord is pleased to remove
us from this world and to receive us into everlasting habitation. And so we're being kept. We're
being kept. I told you before about the old
man who was about to die and his family wanted to know about
what to put on his tombstone. And so he told them, he said,
just put kept on the tombstone because that was his experience. God had kept him. Now then as we go on and we look
at this in verse 7, they had a great trial of faith. They
were being tested and tried. But this was more precious than
gold that perishes, the writer says, and though our faith be
tried with fire, oh might it be found into praise and honor
and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. And you know, my
friends, that we each one have our individual test, we have
our individual trials, and some are very unique to us, but yet
each one of us feel the impact of trials. And one of the things
about trials is that when they're from the Lord, when the Lord
has allowed them to come into our lives, they are truly problems
and difficulties that cannot be solved by human wisdom. You can't apply the logic of
the world to real trials. Real trials, we can only be delivered
from them by the wisdom and the power of God. We can only be
delivered from real trial by the hand of the Lord Himself.
And we need to understand that, and immediately when we discover
that we've fallen into these trials that are so real, that
we would begin to pray and cry out to God, Lord, You deliver
us, because we shall not be delivered until we have learned the lesson
from that trial that God has meant for us to learn. We will
not be delivered until that time. But He will deliver us and He
will not apply one stroke more than what is needful and necessary
to bring to pass the desired end in our lives. These trials
are to the end that God would be praised, honored, and glory
would be brought to Him at the appearing of Jesus Christ. We're going to be victorious.
The Bible says that we're more than conquerors through him that
loved us. More than conquerors through
him that loved us. And so these people were more
than conquerors through the Lord Jesus Christ. Now verse 8 and
9 are my text this morning. Whom having not seen. You think about that a little
bit. He's been talking about the appearing of Jesus Christ
in the last part of verse 7. Whom having not seen. Ye love in whom though now ye
see him not. The word hymn there has been
supplied by the translators. You could read it, Though now
ye see not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable
and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, even the
salvation of your souls. And so I want to talk a little
bit about this. I hope that the Lord would be
pleased to bless us this morning and to fill our hearts with His
Spirit along to have a New Testament service. The Bible says that
the Kingdom of God is not what we eat, the Kingdom of God is
not what we drink or whether we drink something or whether
we don't, but the Kingdom of God is righteousness and joy
and peace in the Holy Ghost. That's what it is. And so I pray
that we might have a New Testament service. that the Holy Spirit
of God would come down upon us and fill us. You see, God has
been known to fill people like you and I. Fill us with the Holy
Spirit. You say, are we worthy? The answer
is a resounding no. We're not worthy that God would
come into our midst. But my friend, we did not come
here this morning without asking Him to be here and without asking
Him to come into our midst. I hope you have. We need the
Spirit of God to lead us, to guide us, and to bless us and
to encourage our souls and to enlighten our hearts in the things
of the Word. Now let us begin then, we're
going to talk about whom having not seen. I want to talk a little
bit about seeing is not believing, but believing is seeing. And
I believe this is a great text of Scripture to address you from. There are those who are lost,
who I would suppose are convinced that a touch of the hem of the
Savior's garment would heal their spiritual diseases, but their
problem is, how do I touch the Lord Jesus Christ? If the touching
of the hem of his garment, virtue would come out of him and to
me, and I would be gloriously saved and brought into a right
relationship with God. How am I to touch the Lord Jesus
Christ? They believe the medicine will
cure. But the question is, how do we take it? How do we take
this medicine? By what means shall they be brought
into contact with Jesus Christ? How will He become the Savior
of their souls? Now the aim of the gospel ministry
should be to remove such difficulties as these out of the way. So we
will try this morning God helping us to lift these barriers out
of the king's highway that honest souls may be brought to believe
and to see. Now beloved it is common to meet
with persons who say I wish that I had heard the Lord Jesus, yes,
actually heard Him speak. If I could have listened to the
Lord Jesus Christ, to His matchless eloquence of which it is written,
never a man spake like this man, I would have truly been convinced,
I would have been humbled, and I would have melted, and I would
have been led to repentance and inspired with Holy Faith. Oh, if I could just have heard
Him say these words, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are
heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. I would have jumped up
out of my seat and cried, Master, I come. Here I am, a heavy laden
sinner. Give me rest. Now I think if
I could have heard or had the privilege to lean my head upon
his bosom with John of old, as a matter of course, I think I
would have been saved. I really think I would have been
saved. I've heard these things said. Oh, if I could have heard,
have touched, have seen, these words would have been gates through
which I would have come to Christ. just hearing, touching, or seeing,
surely I would have come to the Lord Jesus, if only I could exercise
my senses upon His blessed person. Well, at the first, these may
seem to be plausible statements, and seems that there must be
some truth in these statements, but believe me, There is no truth
in these statements. There isn't anything to what
we have said. There isn't anything to that,
and we're going to show you that there's not. My friend, you have
the Gospels, and you have the Epistles, and these are living
Gospels. This is a living Gospel. These
are living Epistles, and you have the abiding presence of
the Holy Spirit in the world, and if you believe not, Neither
would you have believed if you had been among the company who
saw Jesus Christ, if you had touched his person, and if you
had listened to his voice. You still would be in a state
of unbelief. It is a mistake to think that
contact with Jesus through the senses, human senses, would produce
saving faith. I say it's a mistake. It is a
plain fact that out of the mass of people who did see Jesus,
who did hear him speak, few, very few believed on him. Now the crowd which gathered
around the crucifixion, which seems to me, to be the most moving
scene in the history of the world, that's ever been in the world,
they were not bettered by what they saw. They were not bettered
by what they saw. You say those people that were
standing around the cross that witnessed the Lord Jesus Christ
being lifted up between heaven and earth, and this cross being
set in the socket of the earth, they weren't bettered by that?
No, my friend, they were not bettered by that. As the multitude
gazed upon Him, instead of tears, instead of repentance, instead
of begging God to forgive them and to have mercy upon them,
there was laughter. And instead of real faith, there
was blasphemy. Blasphemy. There they are, gathered
all sorts, the highest and the lowest, the intelligent and the
uneducated, and all of them alike, spit the venom of their hatred
upon the crucified Lord Jesus Christ. They cried, if he be
the Son of God, Let Him come down. If He be God's Son truly,
then let Him deliver Himself. Others, He's tried to deliver. Why don't He deliver Himself?
My point is, my friend this morning is seeing is not believing, but
disbelieving and hatred is what it is. Now they, had beheld his
miracles, that is, these people who had crucified him. They had
seen, you know, dead Lazarus come forth out of the grave.
They had seen the lepers cleansed, the blind given sight. They had
feasted upon the bread and feces which he had created for them,
and yet they believed not. Yet they believed not. What makes
you think that you would have believed if you'd been there?
If you'd have been there to witness all of that, what makes you believe
that you yourself would believe? There's nothing better in your
heart than in the hearts of other men. We all know that according
to the Word of God, we're all blind as bats and we're as dead
as fence posts, spiritually speaking, and until God, by the illuminating
and the power of the Holy Spirit resurrecting our spiritually
dead hearts into life, there is no faith and there is no belief
in what God has promised through the gospel. Now the probabilities
are that if you'd have been there and done that, you would have
remained what you are now, an unbeliever, a lost sinner. An unbeliever, I say, and a lost
sinner. lost sinner. It should never
be forgotten that those who did believe in Jesus Christ in his
own day had to get out of, and I want you to get this point,
they had to get out and off and beyond the sphere of human senses
in order to believe. Now listen to me, let me show
you what I mean by this. Let me ask you, would the sight
of the deep poverty of the man of sorrows leads you to believe
in his Godhead? Look upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
Foxes have holes, we're told. Birds of the air have nests.
The Son of Man has not a place to lay His head. He has on a
garment woven from the top to the bottom. The Lord Jesus Christ
is poor. The Lord Jesus Christ has come
into this world to become poor. But aside of his poverty, would
that brought you to believe that he's God? That he's the eternal
God? No place to lay his head. No,
he made the world. There was nothing created that
was not created by him. And yet, The Lord Jesus Christ
was poor. Would an association with Him
in His rejection and dishonor lead you to believe in His heavenly
glory? Oh, look at Him as He's rejected
of men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. If you had seen Him
betrayed and if you had seen Him dragged through the streets
to His doom, would that shameful scene have been an assistance
to your faith? Would you have said, there goes
the Lord of glory? No, you wouldn't. Left to your
sinful blindness, you would have said what others said. They would
have stuck out their tongue and spit upon Him, spit their venom
out upon this one who was the Lord of Glory, you understand,
who was God over all, God, blessed God, and yet men were not able
with their human senses to detect it. No, no, faith would have
had to triumph over all that the eyes could see. Remember
this. Their faith would have had to
triumph over all that the eye could beheld. Would it not have
been needful to use the soul's eyes rather than the poor optics
of the body to see the Son of God in the Son of Man? I'd say
it would have. We would have had to have eyes
in our souls if we'd have been there. God would have had to
come with his illuminating grace to enable us to see that this
is the one that He had sent. This is the bread of life. This
is the light of heaven. This is the glory of God. Now then, He was the Messiah. How was the Messiahship, the
Godhead, the glory and the power of Christ, to be seen by the
natural eye? What was saw was hostile to faith,
and it was contradictory to it. Did not the prophet Isaiah tell
us that when we shall see him, there is no beauty in him that
we should desire him? That he is a root out of dry
ground, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief? After all this, if
And he did believe it was on another ground altogether than
sight. That's the point I'm making here
this morning. Listen to the Lord Jesus Christ. He said in Matthew 16, verses
13 through 17, He said to Peter, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjonas,
for flesh and blood has had nothing to do with your understanding
of who I am. This has all been revealed unto
you by my Father which art in heaven. Now Jesus, has not Peter
been with you all your days of ministry? Did he not witness
what others witnessed? And yet, you say to him, when
he testified, I think gloriously, that he was the Christ? Was it
that, why did you say, Jesus, that the Father revealed it? You mean Peter couldn't pick
this up on his own? Absolutely not. He was not able
to pick it up. Jesus said, it's the Father.
He said, flesh and blood did not reveal this to you. Had nothing
to do with the understanding of the senses of a natural man. It had all to do with the revelation
of the Spirit of God in the heart. Isaiah said again, who hath believed
our report? He asks the question, who hath
believed our report? And he answers his own question,
those to whom the arm of the Lord is revealed. Now, beloved,
listen. If you have faith, it is the
work of the Spirit of God. It is the work of the Spirit
of God. If you have faith. Do you have saving faith? Salvation
is by faith. Do you have faith? Do you have
any faith in you? In the Son of God? In the Lord
Jesus? Are you trusting in the Lord Jesus and He shed blood?
The Bible says, He that believeth is not condemned. He that believeth
not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name
of the only begotten Son of God. He that believeth and is baptized
shall be saved. He that believeth not shall be
damned. Do you believe? Are you able to believe? If so,
it's by the Divine Spirit. It's by the Holy Spirit. Well,
if not by seeing, by hearing, by touching, how can we make
contact with Christ? How have these people here that
Peter is writing to, how did they make contact with Christ?
He plainly says two times, whom having not seen ye love, though
now ye see not. They had not seen, but yet they
had believed. Whom having not seen, he says
ye love. Well the first point of contact
One of the elect of God, after being visited by the quickening
spirit of our God in the heart and soul, the most apparent and
visible contact is love. Love in the soul of the child
of God for the Savior, for the Redeemer, for his representative,
Christ Jesus, whom having not seen ye love. Now beloved, listen. Peter twice says of these people,
as we mentioned, that they had not seen. He describes them as
loving and believing him whom they had not seen. They were
enlightened, they were illuminated, they were regenerate, born again
people. And Jesus says, if God were your
Father, He said, you would love me. That's what he told the Pharisees. He said, if you've been taught
of God, you've been taught to me by the Father. If the Father
had revealed me to you, if you would have understood and knew
who I was by the Father's teaching, then you would have come to me
and you would love me. You would truly love the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now if you're here this morning
and you wonder whether you love Christ or not, the question is,
have you been taught by the Father to Him? Have you ever come to
Christ? Have you ever been enabled to
come savingly to the Lord Jesus Christ? Well, whom having not
seen, we love. Now if any man love not our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul said, let him be anathema maranatha. If a man gets involved in religion,
and involved in the church. And he doesn't love the Lord
Jesus Christ. Paul says that man needs to be
separated in the day when the Lord comes and will most surely
be separated in the day when the Lord comes and will be as
the chaff. He will be as the tares. He will
be sent to hell because he has no love toward the Lord Jesus
Christ. Those who are the chosen of God,
illuminated and regenerate of God, they love Him. Though they
haven't seen Him. They love Him. There's something
happened in their soul. Don't you see this? And they
love the Lord Jesus Christ. The love of God, Paul said again,
is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. Immediately
when God deals with a man's soul, and brings him out of sins death,
and puts him in Christ, That individual, my friend, he has
the love of God shed abroad in his heart, and he loves Jesus. Now we did not see him become
poor that we might be rich. Did you see him do that? No,
you did not. You were not there. You did not
see him become poor. He is the Lord of all, yet he
became poor. We know he did. Don't we know
that? We know He did. Somebody said,
well, how do you know He did? I know because of the indwelling
voice of the Spirit of God in my heart. I know because God
has planted love in my bosom and soul for the Lord Jesus Christ. And I know the testimony of the
Word of God is that He, my representative, He became poor. He was rich when
He came into this world. But he became poor. Now we did
not see him, blessed man, blessed God, condescending to be man
for us. I didn't see that happen. But
the Lord Jesus most surely became man for us. He became man. He was one of us. And He became
man for us. And it was through His representation
that we have been brought into right relationship with God.
You know we were in the first Adam? He was our representative
in the Garden of Eden. And we fell in Adam. And the
Bible describes our Lord Jesus as being the second Adam, the
Lord from heaven. And He would come down here and
represented us. And thanks be unto God, my association
with and acceptance with God is through my representative,
the Lord Jesus Christ. I can't approach Him any other
way. He's the only mediator between God and man. And we approach
God through the Lord Jesus Christ. Now we need not a physical eye. My soul needs not to see Him.
How about you? No, no, no. My soul has eyes.
All believer's souls have eyes. They see. They see more than
people who see. They see more because their souls
have eyes. Now, listen to me a little bit.
By no, my soul needs not to see Him. Believing, I love Him. I
love Him because I believe. We were not at Calvary physically. However, the eye of faith sees
one. Oh, does it not see one hanging
there on the tree? Does it not see one hanging there
in agony and blood? Lord, our souls see. Calvary, and she's what happened
there. And with the Spirit's eye, we've seen it all. We've
seen it all. He was crucified. I believe that.
My soul says, yay! He was crucified for you. And
I believe that. And I rejoice in that. So the
contemplation of His intense agony for us, who were His enemies,
constrains us to love Him. Does it not? We must love Him
if we've been enabled by the Spirit of God to see Him coming
down and see the great agony that He endured for His enemies. We were His enemies by nature. We are fastened to that cross
forever, crucified with Him because we see Him by faith dying there
and we know that was our death. The nails which fasten us is
not the nails that fasten Him, but the nails which fasten us
to that cross is the mighty love that He bore to us, that He was
pleased to shed abroad in our heart, enabling us to return
it unto Him. We love Him because He first
loved us. So we never saw Him dead, never
saw the Lord Jesus dead. Yet our soul's glory in His death. His death was our death to sin.
And when we were yet without strength, Christ died. Yes, He did. He died for the
ungodly. His death, my friend. No salvation
apart from Him dying in our room instead in place. We cannot say
that too much. Because the old carnal man, you
see, many are gospel-hardened and many are gospel-ignorant.
And we must say it over and over again. He gave Himself for us. He died for the believing sinner. He died for those who would be
brought to Him by the operation of the Spirit of God in their
soul. We never saw Him dead, yet our
soul's glory in His death. Did not Paul say that He gloried
in the cross. That was His chief glory, the
cross of our Lord Jesus, whom having not seen. No, no, no,
no, no. You missed it if you have to
see it. You see it by faith. You see
it because of the work of God and by the Spirit in your heart. Now, did we see Him rise from
the dead? No, we didn't. No, we didn't.
But we have no salvation unless we believe He did rise from the
dead. He rose from the dead. I know He did. Well you say,
how do you know? The witness of the Spirit and
the resurrection life in my soul tells me that He arose and that
He's seated at the right hand of God just like Paul said in
Ephesians. He arose! He arose! Triumphant over the
grave, He arose! And the Spirit of God in the
new life in the believer makes him to know that Jesus Christ
has risen from the dead. All He has. You know the Bible
talks about walking in newness of life? Well, hallelujah! There
wouldn't be any newness of life if the Lord Jesus had not come
out of the grave and is now ascended to glory at the right hand of
the Father. Newness of life! My friend, we had no life before
we were enabled to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And that
life was given unto us. Now then, I know, and you know,
who have believed on Him, that you could not, if you saw Him,
trust Him more, really, than you do right now. You couldn't. You couldn't. You say, Preacher,
you're taking a lot for granted. No, I'm just taking what the
Word of God says for granted. And that is that believers, true
believers, they love Him even though they haven't seen Him.
And I say you couldn't love Him more if you had. If you had shook
hands with Him. If you had sat down and had a
conversation with Him, you couldn't love Him more than you do. See,
God fixed that when He regenerated your soul. He fixed it. so that
you would be in love with his son, so that you would love him
so much that you would follow him, that you would obey him,
and that you would imitate him in the world. God fixed that
up when he saved you. He put that love in your heart. This love and faith makes the
Savior real to our hearts. His death, His righteousness,
His resurrection is the sole foundation of our hope. Our acceptance
into the Beloved is a fact that is indisputable to us. And the way of the cross, my
friend, leads home. And the way to the cross is by
the love and faith of the Lord Jesus Christ, which has been
imparted to us in holy salvation. Well, the second thing, and we'll
hurry here, I spent more time on that than I will on these
other things, but I want you to bear with me just a little
bit. You're going to have all afternoon to do whatever you
think you need to do. A lot of things you think you
need to do, you don't need to do, but you don't need to be
told that, do you? Well, anyway, the second thing,
when a soul has touched Him by love and faith, what follows?
Well, if you look at the text, You see what follows. Whom having
not seen ye love in whom though now ye see him not yet believing,
ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. You rejoice with joy unspeakable
and full of glory. Now the results of trusting and
loving Christ is joy of a most remarkable kind. It is far above
all common joy. It is spoken of as joy unspeakable. Take note of that. All earth-born
joys can be told to the full. Now, just reflect on that a little
bit. We don't want to run to that,
run from that, and run through it. I said that all earth-born joys
can be told to the full. But Spirit, Holy Spirit-born
joys, and the Bible talks a lot about that. I quoted out of the
book of Romans chapter 14 a few minutes ago, and some good verses
in Romans 15. I won't have you turn there.
9 through 13 talks about how that we have as Gentiles the
same joy as the Lord's people. having been brought into the
relationship with the Lord. But Spirit-born joys. Now, hear
me out. We can tell out earthly joys. Tell them out to the full. And
many, many times people have told them and told them and retold
them, and added a little bit and all of that, but they can
still all be told out, regardless how much exaggeration you put
on them. But listen to this. Spirit-born joys cannot be told
because there's not yet been a language given to describe
them. I suppose, and there's a writer
that I got this from, he said, I suppose that is the language
that's reserved for heaven. Where spiritual minds talk to
spiritual minds without being confined to the poor poverty
stricken words of earth. so necessary to us while yet
in the body. The joy of the believer is unspeakable. There is no telling of it out
in this world. There isn't anyone who has the
vocabulary to tell it out. Earthly joy is often exaggerated,
as we said, and the joys of the believer is often seen on the
countenance. Isaiah 55 and 12 says, For you
shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace, and the
mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing,
and all the trees in the field shall clap their hands. That's
such a glorious sight. Pray that the Lord might give
you that experience. And someday you'll walk outside,
and you'll just see the glory of God, and the great joy bells
of the Lord will come upon you. The mountains and the hills breaking
forth into song, and all the trees in the field clapping their
hands. Pray God to fulfill that verse. You must experience it
sometime in your life. Hallelujah. It's wonderful to
experience it. If you're a child of God, I believe
you will. Many worldly joys are full of shame. The joys of the
world are too selfish to be boasted of. We will tell the devils in
hell and all unbelievers that we're not ashamed to glory in
the cross. We will dare tell it to the worst
as well as the best. Though often cast down in this
world, the world is no friend of grace to help us on to God.
We have joy that they do not have. We have joy the world does
not have. I don't care what else the world
has. There isn't any of them that can back me in a corner
and say, we got something you haven't got. No, sir, my friend,
I got something they haven't got. You say, well, you're penny
poor. May be penny poor, but I've still
got something they haven't got. We've got what the world cannot,
cannot experience except the sovereign grace and the sovereign
mercy. We have joy unspeakable and full
of glory. Well, why is the joy of the Christian
so unspeakable and full of glory? Well, first of all, it is so
because it's altogether divine. It's altogether of God. To God
be the glory. To God be the glory. Joy unspeakable
and full of glory to God. The glory belongs to God. Now, those of you that believe
in sovereign grace and sovereign mercy, and know that God did
indeed determine your salvation before you were born, and that
He in time, at the time of His choosing, brought you out, you
know that Armenian free will religion cannot cannot glory
in the Lord, such as those who believe in pure, sovereign grace. They just don't do it. They're
not able to do it. And they actually don't have
a foundation to do it. You've got to have a foundation.
You say, well, I've been around some people that have been very
happy. Well, they might be very happy. But I'm going to tell
you this, that if those people got that foundation under them,
then my soul, it'd be heaven to be around them, wouldn't it?
Well, this is because it's all together. It's God's own joy.
God's own joy. Think He's going to give you
a man's joy? No, He's going to give you His own joy. It is Christ's
own joy. It's unspeakable. And that's
because it's Christ's, because it's God's, so it's unspeakable. And it's full of glory to God
who gave it to us. Now, brother, sister, I never
knew the meaning. And we know the word joy is a
little word. But I never knew the meaning
of joy until I knew Christ. Until the Lord Jesus Christ was
revealed in my heart. Until He came into my soul. I
never knew the meaning of joy. There wasn't that much around
me to get all that happy about. No, no. There wasn't that much
in this world. Raised on a farm that a rabbit
had to carry his dinner to get across. There wasn't that much.
There wasn't that much to make me so joyous. But when the Lord
saved me, when Christ came into my life, then my friend, I've
had joy unspeakable. Now this joy unspeakable is not
dependent upon circumstances. Isn't that great? That's glorious. We have all kinds of problems
and setbacks in this life, but this joy unspeakable is there
in the soul and it's not dependent upon circumstances. We have had
setbacks as we said, griefs, and like those to whom Peter
is writing here, but this joy unspeakable, full of glory, is
unaffected by all this, good or bad, praise God. Praise God. Well lastly, let me mention something
else here and we'll be finished. The Apostle mentions another
blessing received by loving and trusting Christ. He says receiving
the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls, receiving
the end of your faith. Oh, I like this. My soul, this
is wonderful. Receiving the end of your faith.
Even the salvation of your soul. Every man who trusts and loves
the Lord Jesus Christ by divine grace is, is saved. Is saved. The common idea that's
bandied about by the religious world is that perhaps we shall
get saved when we die. The Word of God knows nothing
of such a salvation, neither do I. I'm not going to talk to
you about any kind of salvation. True salvation saves when? Do you know how to spell now? N-O-W. True salvation saves now. That's when it saves. Receiving
the end of your faith, even the salvation of your soul. The Word
of God, as we said, knows nothing about this salvation where a
man can be in Christ today and out tomorrow. A man may be out
of Christ today and in Christ tomorrow, but he can never be
in Christ today and out of Christ tomorrow. He never can. Salvation,
my friend, Paul says in Ephesians 2, 5, By grace are ye saved. What does that mean to you? He
told those Ephesians that had been dead in sin, He said, By
grace ye are saved. Not maybe you're going to get
saved sometime or other down the road. Not that you're savable
now. But ye are saved. Now when salvation
is once done, it's done forever. If you're saved, you're saved.
You will never, never will be lost. Salvation is received into
the heart, the very end of our faith. We already got it. Well,
what do we save from, somebody said? Well, you save from the
guilt of sin. We could feel that, couldn't
we? Yes, we could. I wasn't very old when the Lord
saved me, but I could feel the guilt of sin. Feel it. Heavy, heavy weight of guilt. When it was there, and bless
God, when it's gone, you can feel that too, can't you? When
it's gone. Hallelujah, it's gone. It's gone. The weight, the guilt of sin,
gone. The removal of guilt is no fiction,
and it's nothing wrong with your brain if you believe that your
guilt is gone. It's nothing wrong with you.
No, no, no. You're spiritually correct, and
you're spiritually an understanding person if you feel your guilt
He has gone through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus. Has
it happened to you? If not, then no wonder you know
nothing about it. Let me read this poem. The moment
a sinner believes and trusts in his crucified God, his pardon
at once he receives, redemption in full through Christ's blood.
Here's pardon for transgressions past, it matters not how black
they're cast, and oh my soul with wonder view, for sins to
come, here's pardon too. There was an unsaved man that
talked with a gospel preacher about how to be saved. And he
was deeply convicted about his sin, and when he asked the preacher
what he could do to be saved, the preacher said, you're too
late. Too late? What do you mean, too
late? You mean I'm too late to be saved?
No, the preacher said, you're just too late to do anything
yourself. You can't do anything yourself. Christ has already
done it all. And the poet, some of you remember
this, sin or nothing do, either great nor small, Jesus did it,
did it all, long, long ago. It's been done. And so we have
already received the end of our faith, even the salvation of
your soul. You say, I don't think you Baptists
ought to be running around here talking about being saved. Well,
I think that the Word of God warns us saying that we are saved
if we're trusting in the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ
and if there has been a work of grace take place in our hearts. Have you been translated out
of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son?
Have you been translated? If that's taken place, then hallelujah. You can say, well, having not
seen, but I believe and I love the Lord Jesus Christ and I've
received the end of my faith, even the salvation of the soul,
and I believe I'm saved. I believe I'm saved. Well, Father,
we thank you for your word. Ask your Lord to bless what has
been said today to the glory of your name, And I pray that
someone here, oh, that faith might come down from heaven into
their soul. And they say, well, I see what
that preacher's been talking about this morning. Never laid
an eye on Christ, but my soul's seen Him, and I do rejoice in
the sight thereof. Oh, may great things happen,
our Father, and may You do Your work, the work which only You
can do, and that is bring these sinners unto full faith in your
Son, the Lord Jesus, in whose name we ask it. Amen.