Everybody out this morning, remember
those who requested prayer. Added to the prayers, Donna Sue
Wolfe, family of M&A Arkansas, Allison Dyer, Ines Wolfe, and
Josh Chambers. Remember these folks in your
prayers, seek the Lord's help for them. Kathy Robinson's got
the, she ain't gonna bless her heart, pretty bad case of them. And she's getting ready for an
operation that would put radioactive particles in some tumors in her
liver. So that's going to be going on
here pretty soon. So remember her in your prayers.
Seek the Lord. No difference on D-parks than
the others. So call each other's name out
to the Lord. One of the sweetest ways to,
if you're upset or anything like that with your brother, is to
pray for him. He can seem to just take all
that away. Yes? What's her name? Donna. Donna
Janes. What's going on? She's got cancer
of some kind. It's pretty bad. Oh, I hate that. That's Donna Janes. Remember her? That's Malcolm's
brother, Ronald's wife. OK. All right. Remember her in
your prayers also. I was saying, though, said about
the Lord, said about Job, the Lord turned to his captivity
when he prayed for his friends. And then you got to realize his
friends were those friends that were physicians of no value and
forgers of lies. So remember to pray for each
other and seek the Lord's help. And if you're upset with somebody,
if you pray for them, you find out you're not really that upset
with them. It's kind of hard to do, talk to the Lord about them,
but do that if you will. Hymn number 45 is what we'll be at
our worship service this morning. Hymn number 45. so ? Ye servants of God, your master
proclaim ? And publish abroad his wonderful name ? The name
all victorious of Jesus extol ? His kingdom, his glorious,
he rules over all ruleth on high, almighty to save,
and still he is nigh, his presence we have, the great congregation
? Ascribing salvation to Jesus
our King ? ? Salvation to God who sits on the throne ? ? Let
all cry aloud and honor the Son of God ? ? The praises of Jesus
the angels proclaim ? ? Fall down on their faces and worship
the lamb ? ? Then let us adore and give him his rights ? and wisdom and might, all honor
and blessing with angels above, and thanks never ceasing and
infinite love. After scripture reading and prayer,
we'll sing hymn number 258. If you have your Bibles, turn
with me to 1 Peter 1. I want to read one verse of Scripture. The thought of my message is
God's wondrous work. 1 Peter 1. We will read the first
two verses. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
This letter, this epistle, is to the strangers scattered throughout
Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. Elect according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification
of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ, grace unto you and peace be multiplied. Let
us pray. Our Father, we are thankful that we can read
such things in your word and be confident that you who have
begun a good work in us will perform it to the day of Jesus
Christ. We praise you that your mercy and your grace is eternal. We thank you that you have counted
your people among those whom you show grace and mercy. We
are thankful that you have chosen us in Christ before the world
began, given us all spiritual gifts, predestinated to us to
the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto yourself, all to the good pleasure of your
own will for the praise of the glory of your grace, wherein
you've accepted us in the beloved. We know in and of ourselves there's
nothing acceptable about us. We dwell in a body of flesh,
and our flesh is always against the spirit, contrary to it, so
they can't do what we would. We know that your grace is sufficient,
indeed effectual, the salvation of men's souls without any contribution
or help from them. We thank you for free grace. We pray for those who are sick
and going through trials, tribulations, and troubles in this world, and
ask for your help for them. Comfort them, strengthen them,
and it be according to your good pleasure, heal them, if it will
glorify your name. Help us this day to worship you
in spirit and in truth. Enable me, Father, declare the
gospel of Jesus Christ clearly and plainly to say right things
concerning you. Don't leave me here by myself.
May your spirit take the things of Christ and show them unto
you, the children of God. Help us all, we pray, in Christ's
name. Amen. Hymn number 258. This is Winnie's
favorite hymn. ? A wonderful Savior is Jesus my
Lord ? A wonderful Savior to me ? He hideth my soul in the
depth of the rock ? Where rivers of pleasure I see He hideth my
soul in the cleft of the rock that shadows a dry, thirsty land. He hideth my life in the depths
of his love and covers me there with his hand. He offers me that with His hand. A wonderful Savior is Jesus my
Lord. He taketh my burden away. He holdeth me up and I shall
not be moved. He hideth my soul in the glen
of the rock that shadows a dry, thirsty land. He hideth my life in the depths
of his love. And covers me there with His
hand. With numberless blessings each
morning. I sing in my rapture, O glory
to God, for such a Redeemer as mine. He hideth my soul in the
cleft of the rock that shadows a dry, thirsty land. He hideth my life in the depths
of His love, and covers me there with His hand, and covers me
there He hideth my soul in the cleft
of the rock That shadows a dry, thirsting land. ? In my life, in the depths of
His love ? And covers me there with His hand ? And covers me
there with His hand Now stand as Steve to receive the offering,
please. Let us pray. Father, again we
approach in the name of Jesus Christ, that wonderful name,
that name to which every knee shall bow and every tongue confess
that he's Lord to the glory of the Father. To him shall men
come. All that you've given him shall
come to him and he will not catch the man. He is that perfect gift
from above, from the Father of lights in whom there is no variable,
there's no shadow of turning. We know that what we have, we
have freely been given by your grace. Let us return what you've
given us to you for the furtherance of your kingdom, for the preaching
of the gospel here and in other places, for you to receive all
the glory. We pray in Christ's name, amen. the the I want to draw your attention
back to 1 Peter 1 and verse 2, which speaks of what the Lord
has done in His mighty work of salvation for His people. He says, They are elect, according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification
of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Christ And then he says, grace be unto you and peace be multiplied. On May 24th, 1844, Samuel Finley Brees Morse sent
a message over a telegraph line newly constructed between Baltimore,
Maryland and the old Supreme Court chamber in the Capitol
building in Washington, D.C. It was the first message of its
kind. He felt such exhilaration at the advent of this new technology
called the Morse Code that the message he sent was a quote from
Numbers 2323. The message was just four dots
and dashes and read, what God hath wrought. What God hath wrought. The subject is the salvation
of what God has wrought in this text. The language of the Bible,
the Holy Scripture, when salvation is discussed, and it is discussed
from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22, it is always about what God
has done for His people. Paul said it to Timothy this
way, God has saved us and called us with a holy calling. not according
to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which
was given to us before the world began. Now, we didn't exist before
the world began, but we had a gift waiting on us when we were born
into this world and lived the life that we live until God crossed
our paths with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And what we found
out is that God had done things for us from before the foundation
of the world. Consider for a moment this beautiful
description that Simon Peter gives of the salvation of every
believer, every child of God. If you are a believer, this is
how that miracle of grace took place. This is how it happened,
if you're a believer today. Elect according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience
and sprinkling of the blood of Christ, grace unto you and peace
be multiplied. Here salvation is declared from
stem to stern as the work of the triune Godhead. The believer
is said to be elect according to the knowledge or the foreknowledge
of God the Father, and is done through the sanctification
of the Spirit, God the Spirit, unto the obedience and the speaking
of God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostle then assures
us that all the attendant graces that this salvation brings are
included in the salvation itself that is wrought by the thrice-holy
God, where he says, Grace unto you and peace be multiplied. Salvation is God's work alone.
Salvation is an effectual work of God's free, sovereign, omnipotent,
unstoppable grace. Salvation includes all the multiplied
blessings of grace and peace in Jesus Christ. It's all included. You don't work up any of it.
All of it's included in the doctrine and the teaching and the manifestation
of grace. Every sinner, every sinner, who
was chosen by God's grace in eternity, was redeemed by the
effectual blood of Jesus Christ, and is sanctified by the regenerating
operations of God the Holy Ghost, and blessed with grace and peace
as long as they live on this earth multiplied daily. This is the estate of every child
of God. And notice well the glaring absence
of any if here, any but, or any condition, or codependency, or
any such foul pollutant introduced into this pure fountain of free
grace. There is no if. There is no but. And you were
not involved. If you're a child of God, you
were simply not involved. This is all the work of the Father,
of the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I want us to consider four words
today as we look at this passage of Scripture. CHOSEN, SANCTIFIED,
REDEEMED, and BLESSED. That's your estate if you're
a child of God. First of all, Scripture says
that you were ELECT by God the Father. by God the Father. Every sinner who is the beneficiary
of the blessings of grace is so blessed because he was selected,
picked out, elected in eternity by God Almighty. This is the
declaration of Scripture. The Scripture is abundantly replete
with this word. Over 144 times in the New Testament
along, the word elect is used. The sweet doctrine of electing
grace, and it is a sweet doctrine. David said it's blessed. Blessed
is the man whom thou choosest. and cause us to approach unto
thee in Psalm 65. John 6, you know the words of
our Lord. I've quoted them so many times
from this pulpit, and you've read them so many times in the
scripture. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and
him that cometh to me I will know I cast out. All that are
given to believe, believe, John 6, 65. Over and over again, the
Lord said in John 15, 6, you have 16. You have not chosen
me. but I have chosen you and ordained that you shall bear
fruit and your fruit shall remain. The Lord said this about those
whom he chose and the world. He said, I pray not for the world. I pray for them that thou hast
given me. I pray not for the world. They are thine, he said. Acts 13, 48, after hearing the
message preached by Paul the Apostle about the forgiveness
that only comes in Jesus Christ and not by the law. It says that
many Gentiles were glad to hear the Word of God and it says as
many as were ordained to eternal life believed. How many believed? As many as were ordained to eternal
life believed. Ephesians chapter 1 which I just
quoted while ago. 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse
9, Paul said, I know your election of grace. He says, God did not
appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through the
Lord Jesus Christ. You're familiar with 2 Thessalonians
2, 13 and 14. It goes along with this verse
here, in this passage of scripture, where it says, Brethren, we are
bound to give thanks always to God for you, beloved of the Lord,
because God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation. He didn't
say that just out of the blue. He said that in opposition to
what he said in the first 12 verses of that chapter, where he describes
the sons of perdition and those who set themselves up in the
church as if they were God, saying they had the power of salvation.
He said, well, nobody does that. Everybody who don't believe grace
does that. because they believe that salvation is ultimately
conditioned upon their will or their decision or their choice.
That makes them the Savior. Might as well just say it like
it is. It also makes them unbelievers, because that's not what the Bible
says. Chosen us into salvation through sanctification of the
Spirit and belief in the truth, whereunto He called you by our
gospel to the attaining of the Lord Jesus Christ. In our text, Peter describes
election in a particular way. He says it's according to the
foreknowledge of God the Father. This is one of those passages
that produce what I like to call the ah-ha-ha factor in the genetic
makeup of the mind of the free will believer. When they read
it, they say, ah-ha, there you have it. Election is based on
God's foreknowledge of our accepting Him. That's not what this says.
He chose us, they say, because he looked down through history
and saw that we would choose him. Such blasphemous religious
prattle turns the glory of God into shame of a common thief
taking credit for something that man did. Such thinking has the
omniscient God who knows all things learning something down
through history and then reacting to it favorably for himself even
though he didn't do it. This passage teaches us that
election is a matter of God's pure, free, sovereign, eternal
grace in Christ. In the Bible, God's foreknowledge
is not foreknowledge of things. Omniscience is foreknowledge
of everything. But foreknowledge is never the
foreknowledge of things or happening. It's always attached to people. whom he did foreknow. He also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of his son. And he's talking to those
scattered about in Pontus, and Galatia, and Bithynia, and Asia.
And he says, you were elect according to the fact God knew you before
the foundation of the world. It's a sovereign act. In the
Bible, God's foreknowledge is declared in four different ways.
First of all, God's foreknowledge is His act and decree of foreordination
or predestination. There's no need to speculate
here since Scripture is the interpreter of Scripture in the same context.
The very same Greek word which is translated foreknowledge in
verse 2 is translated foreordained in verse 20. Very same word,
verse 20. It says, Who verily was foreordained.
Same word. foreknowledge, foreordained.
So the first meaning of foreknowledge is foreordination or predestination. God's foreknowledge also of His
elect, secondly, is about His everlasting love. I have loved
Thee, He said in Jeremiah 31, 3, with an everlasting love,
therefore have I drawn Thee. I have loved Thee with an everlasting
love. And when you talk about the love
of God, In Scripture, almost every instant, it's in the past
tense. He has loved us and washed us
in His blood. He has loved us and gave Himself
for us. If God loves you, it's because
He's always loved you. And if He's always loved you,
He will always love you. and we will talk about how He
has loved us. How do I know? When I was dead
in trespasses and sin, wherewith the great love, wherewith He
loved us when we were dead in trespasses and sins. He raised
us together with Jesus Christ, by grace we are saved. This is
the love of God. This is the foreknowledge of
God, the prognosco, the knowing beforehand. Also, divine foreknowledge
is divine approval. It's divine approval. Psalm 1-6
says, For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous, but the
way of the ungodly shall perish. Ephesians 1-6, To the praise
of the glory of grace wherein he's made us accepted in the
beloved. The fourth use of foreknowledge
in scripture is the foreknowledge of us as our absolute safety
and security. The Lord said in 2 Timothy 2-19,
Nevertheless, The foundation of the Lord standeth sure, was
his foundation. Having this seal, what is the
seal of the sure foundation of the Lord? The Lord knoweth, ginosko,
them that are his, and that every one that nameth the name of Jesus
Christ depart from iniquity, the elect love, the electing
foreknowledge of God. Those who don't love it are those
who are not chosen, before the foundation of the Word. Secondly,
it says the word sanctified. It says they are elect according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification
of the Spirit. Sanctification is commonly and
falsely thought to be something the believer does. It's not. He doesn't do it for himself.
He doesn't do it while aided and abetted with the Holy Spirit.
He doesn't do it at all. Most think that sanctification
is a work of progressive holiness by which a person incrementally
becomes more and more holy until at last he's just too good for
earth and must be swept away to glory on the wings of personal
merit. That's not true. Sanctification and holiness are
the same concept, the same word. The root meaning of the word
sanctified is to set apart. That's the first meaning of that
word. It means to set apart. When it says to sanctify God,
that means to set Him apart. He's out there and we're down
here. When the Lord sanctified something, that means it's for
His use. You remember Belshazzar when
he took the elements of the that were in the temple and decided
to have a feast with them. These were elements that God
had sanctified. Now where they were spoons and
forks and knives and cups and things like that, they were just
those things that were commonly used in the temple. They weren't
special things in and of themselves. They were just made by men and
formed in fashion and God said, but these are mine. and for my
use only. And when Belshazzar took those
elements and used them, the finger wrote on the wall, mene, mene,
tico, eupharsin. You've been weighed in the balance
and found wanting. Today your kingdom is going to
leave you. You're going to leave your kingdom.
You're not going to have this. You're not going to be king anymore. Why?
Because these were God's things. He set them apart for himself. Set them apart for himself. The
vessels, those vessels of the tabernacle, the priesthood, all
these things were sanctified by the Lord. Now the priests
were sanctified. The Lord Jesus Christ was Himself
sanctified. He said, I sanctify myself by
Thy Word. All God's elect were sanctified
by God the Father in the eternal covenant of grace. They were
set apart by election, set apart from all the rest of the world
as His peculiar people. He chosen us as His peculiar
people, zealous unto good works. In precisely the same sense,
believers are sanctified. What does that mean? They are
severed from the rest of mankind. Our Lord said to His people,
Ye are not of this world. You are in it, but you are not
of it. God's people are not of this
world. Now, we have a tendency, because
we are fleshy human beings, to lay hold and put great confidence
in the things of the world, but trust me, you are going to let
them go. One preacher said, Don't make God break your fingers to
let them go, just let them go. Realize that this world is going
to pass away and so are you, and everything you own is going
to end up in somebody else's hands. Debbie and I went recently
to fill out a will. We finally got around to that
and we had to fill out a health will and a dying will and a living
will, all kinds of wills. About five of them all together
when we finally ended up doing it. To make sure that whatever
we have is left to our children. Well, if we leave it to our children
and if we came back, they wouldn't give it back to us. Everything you've got. is going
to ultimately be in the hands of somebody else. You're going
to leave this world just like you come in. You're going to
leave this world buck naked, without a diamond, without a
penny. You can't take anything with you that's of this world. The only thing you can take with
you is from that other world, the spiritual realm. Life, peace,
love, mercy, grace. Those things you can take with
you. But that's all. And nobody knows you're going
to take them with you except you and God. Believers are sanctified from
this world, set apart from this world. Titus 2.14 says, Who gave
himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and
purify himself from peculiar people, zealous unto good works.
Hebrews 10.9 and 10, Then said he, Lo, I come in the volume
of the book to do thy will, O God, and take it away, the first that
you may establish the second. And then in verse 10 it says,
By the witch will we are sanctified. What will? The same will that
brought Christ to this earth. to do thy will, O God." What's
the will? Sanctify His people. For by one offering, Scripture
says, He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified, those
who are set apart by God's grace. Here the Holy Spirit tells us
that we are chosen to salvation through sanctification of the
Spirit. That simply means this, if you
are one of these elected ones, one day during your life on earth,
God the Holy Spirit will come to you in his omnipotent power
and irresistibly, by God's grace, sanctify you, set you apart from
the world, set you apart unto himself to set you apart unto
Christ. That's what that means. Likewise,
it means if you're a child of God, a believer, who has experienced
that blessed operation of grace called the new birth, you have
been set apart from the world by the grace of God and by the
power of the Holy Ghost. You are not your own, the Lord
says. You're bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your
body and in your spirit, which are God's. Elect, sanctify, redeem. That's what it says. Sanctification
of the Spirit unto the obedience of the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
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. When preaching the gospel, we
do not proclaim to sinners that there is a possibility of redemption. But the redemption has been accomplished
and secured by the blood of Jesus Christ. The price has been paid. The debt has been solved for
somebody. This is not an option out here. This is not something you had
anything to do with. The blood of Jesus Christ, the death of
Jesus Christ was not offered to mankind. It was offered to
God Almighty to satisfy His justice, for justice required death, and
He offered and gave that death to God for His people. Now, in
that death, He died for us, or died in our room and place. We
owed God that debt. We're the ones that sinned against
God. We're the ones that hated Him. And that debt we owed Him
was death, the soul that sinneth it shall die. Christ paid that
debt. Now when a debt is paid, it's
paid. It's paid. Can't be recalled,
can't be charged again if it's paid. Justice cannot twice demand
payment at my bleeding, surety's hand and then again at mine.
And this is the error and the blasphemy of most of religion
today. They have Jesus Christ paying
a debt and then people having to pay it and go to hell at the
end of time. That's unjust. If the debt is paid, the debt
is paid, and for whoever the debt is paid, they don't owe
it, and it will never be called as their debt. We tell people
that redemption has been accomplished by Jesus Christ and secured by
His blood. He was made a curse for us. He
was made a curse for us. He entered in once in the holy
place with His own blood, having obtained eternal redemption for
us. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.
Tell them the warfare is over. Their debt has been paid. I have
given DOUBLE for their sin. The obedience and the sprinkling
of the blood of Christ refers to HIS obedience. We are to bring
everything according to 2 Corinthians chapter 10, everything to HIS
obedience, not OUR obedience. We don't look to our obedience.
Even when we obey, we don't look to our obedience. When we obey,
we look to HIS obedience. We bring everything that is against
God in us, every high thought and imagination. We bring it
to the obedience of Christ. We don't say, Lord, I confess
it, therefore I'm forgiven. We say, Lord, he died in my room
instead. Lord, he's the one that obeyed. I bring it to his obedience.
If I do a good thing or if I do a bad thing, I bring it to his
obedience because that's my salvation. Elect according to the foreknowledge
of God through sanctification of the spirit and to the sprinkling
of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. This takes us back to the Passover
and to the sprinkling of the blood on the doorpost of the
house. And also to the sprinkling of the blood on the mercy seat
on the Day of Atonement. Both of those things were pictures
of our Lord's great redemption. The people put the blood on the
doorpost and then they went inside. They didn't see the blood. They
didn't know what was happening on the outside. But in that great
transaction, God was saving them. because of the blood. People
didn't go into the Holy of Holies. Only one man went there one time
a year and he went there representing the people of God. He had their
names on his breastplate and on the ouches on his shoulders.
He had the names of the twelve tribes on his breastplate. That's
who he represented. So when he went in as their representative,
they was in there in the representative. But he was the only one who went
in there and he sprinkled blood on that mercy seat. because that's
where mercy comes from, through the blood of Jesus Christ. It's
the only place it comes from. God has chosen us, sanctified
us, and redeemed us in Jesus Christ. And Christ is that sanctification,
by the way. Then we're blessed. Blessed. unto you, and peace be multiplied. This is not Peter's hope or desire
for God's saints. He wrote this under divine inspiration. This is an assured, perfect promise
to every chosen, sanctified, redeemed sinner. It's an absolute
promise of grace. It's part of all spiritual blessings
given to us in Jesus Christ. elect according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience
and sprinkling of the blood of Christ. Grace unto you and peace
be magnified." That is the promise of God. Grace unto you and peace
be multiplied. Grace shall be given to you and
multiplied to you whenever, wherever, and for as long as you need it.
And you will always need it. As long as you live in this body
of flesh, Grace will be multiplied to you in peace. Preserving grace, saving grace, protecting grace,
sufficient grace, and in the end, when it's time for you to
go to glory, you'll have dying grace. Peace also is given and
multiplied to you because God the Father chose you, God the
Spirit sanctified you, and God the Son redeemed you, and by
His cross established peace for you. In a world gone mad, children
of God have peace. I've thought about this a lot
lately. I think about it when you watch the news. I've almost
stopped watching it altogether. I watch business news occasionally.
I've just about stopped watching the news because it's toxic.
And you know everybody's lying. Because all men are liars. God's
the only one that's true. World gone mad. And I thought,
you know, twice a week where I can go and be with people
of like mind and persuasion and like precious faith and be as
happy as if I had good sense and be at peace in this world.
There's nothing like that. You know what the gift this is?
for you to be able to come to a place with your brothers and
sisters in Christ and for a couple hours a week. Peace, peace, wonderful
peace come down from the Father above, the Old Testament says.
The peace that attends divine forgiveness. The peace of divine providence
knowing that as crazy as things are they're all working for God's
glory and for your good The peace of Him being with us and in us. Peace in life. Peace in death. Peace at the judgment seat. Be
multiplied unto you. Everlasting peace. Bought by
the Prince of Peace through the blood of His cross. Take this
home with you today and go to sleep with it tonight as you
lay your weary head down on your pillow. grace and peace once
given shall only multiply. It will never divide, never diminish,
and never end. This is your resume, beloved,
chosen, sanctified, redeemed, and blessed. Father, bless us
to understand you have prayed in Christ's name. Amen.