Reading
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Wonder if would be profitable and of the Lord to take up first Peter chapter one.
I just make that suggestion. A lot of trials amongst the Lord's people and difficulties, just as the Saints were having that Peter wrote too, and perhaps it would be for our instruction and encouragement.
First Peter chapter one.
Peter, an Apostle Jesus Christ to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Athenia, all act according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit under obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace unto you, and peace be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
00:05:06
To an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, that fadeth not away reserved in heaven. For you who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.
Where he greatly rejoice, though now for a season if need be, You're in heaviness through manifold temptations, that the trial of your faith being much more precious than that of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire.
Might be found under praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. Whom have you not seen ye love, And whom for now ye see Him not yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls, of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently. Who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you? Searching what or what manner of time? The Spirit of Christ.
Which was in them to testify that signify, when it testified beforehand, the sufferings of Christ.
And the glory that should follow.
On whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us, they'd administer the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, which things the angels desire to look into.
Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ, as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts and your ignorance.
But as he which has called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy. For if you call on the Father, who without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man's work.
In fear, for as much as you know that you are not redeemed with corruptible things, with silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your father's.
But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and without spa, Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who by Him to believe in God.
They raised him up from the dead and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God.
Seeing you have purified your souls, and obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure heart, fervently being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible.
By the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever.
And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached unto you.
Context of who the Apostle Peter is writing to. It's those who had believed of the Jewish nation. We know that on the day of Pentecost and subsequent to it, in the early chapters of the Acts, there were great multitudes of the Jews who believed. We know that the nation as a nation had rejected the Lord Jesus, cried for his crucifixion, had him taken outside the walls of Jerusalem and nailed to a Roman cross.
But there were multitudes that believed in the early days of Christianity of the Church.
Those to which Peter said on one occasion, repent and be baptized and save yourselves from this untoward generation. That is, they were needed to be severed from the genera, the the nation that had rejected the Lord Jesus. And then we find that through circumstances later on, they're scattered from their homes. There's an invasion and they're scattered.
And they were suffering what are referred to as fiery trials. They'd lost everything, naturally speaking. And the apostle Peter writes to them to encourage them that though they may have lost everything in a temporal or natural way, they had gained everything spiritually through and in Christ. And brethren, isn't that what's going to encourage us in the days in which we live? You know, sometimes some things are mentioned for prayer and some burdens and trials that really seem to weigh us down.
00:10:06
I think sometimes the tendency of our souls is to think we're the only ones that have ever had to face these kinds of things, and it's so difficult today and so many trials.
Well, it is difficult today, brethren. There are a lot of trials and there are a lot of things that are unique to.
Where we are in our history as the Lord's people right at the end. But brethren.
Our brethren in past ages, right back to the Old New Testament here, have been going through difficult circumstances. It's never been easy to live in the world in which we we live. There have been unique situations and trials and difficulties relevant to every generation. And our brethren back here that Peter was writing to, they were facing a lot of things, a lot of difficulties, But Peter instructs them as to what they have now that is of eternal value that they can never lose.
And that they have one who is providing for the mall through the Wilderness journey.
And a wonderful hope and future at the end. And that was really my exercise in suggesting this portion.
That, brethren, we look beyond the trials and the difficulties, not that we become indifferent or callous to them. God allows them to exercise our souls individually, as families and collectively. And we don't want to be callous or indifferent to what God allows in our lives. But by the same token, we need to realize, as Peter says, that we have a living hope and those things that our eternal value that we can enjoy and appreciate now and those things that we will enjoy and appreciate in a deeper way.
At in the end when we finally arrive at the Father's house.
Found on the setting of what Peter Wise writes the way he does, and that is.
These people, to whom he writes, had previously had all their expectations and their vision, if you will, connected with the earth.
They were Jews, and for nearly 2000 years the Jewish people had the right, if they were obedient to the word of the Lord, to expect a long life and earthly blessing.
And now Peter is writing to a people and he's they've lost everything. They're not going to have an earthly blessing.
It's not presented to them, but he says you do have a living hope.
That's better than an earthly blessing. Earthly blessings end in death eventually.
But Peter presents because of the resurrection of the one they followed, the Lord Jesus Christ. You have a living hope. And further, Peter always looks at salvation as at the end of that journey.
We so often and rightly and properly according to different scriptures, say we are presently saved when we put our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we are from judgment. But Peter looks at it as a salvation that comes at the end of a, I'm going to say a very dangerous journey and.
So the picture in the Old Testament is the children of Israel who have had to leave the world, Egypt, and they're on their way to their promised land and they have to go through a wilderness. And, uh, you stop. And you think how many of them made it literally made it a very small number of the men who were responsible at the time they left the land of Egypt, only two out of hundreds of thousands of them.
Successfully went to the end of the journey, and brethren, I think.
If we don't recognize the world as a wilderness, we will constantly not get what God is saying to us in this chapter. We're not gonna really listen. We're not gonna pay attention. We're not gonna be able to apply it to ourselves unless we have recognized that we too are in a wilderness and our goal, our expectation.
Is to take that journey to its safe conclusion to the father's house that Jim mentioned in what he said in the first.
00:15:12
Why he addresses them as strangers. They were strangers perhaps for two reasons. One, they had been driven from their home, home and their homeland, and they were strangers in that sense, in a natural sense, just as I am in that sense, a stranger in the United States of America because I'm a Canadian by citizen, by birth, and by citizenship. But they were strangers in another sense. And you get it later on in the second chapter.
Where he says, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, that ye abstained from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.
And so, as you say, Peter is the wilderness book. In Paul's ministry, we're already seeing seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus and so on. In Peter, it's Christ in you, the hope of glory. We're passing through this wilderness with the hope before us. We're still here in this wilderness world. And we need to recognize, as Dawn said, that we are strangers and pilgrims. If I can put it very simply, a stranger is one who doesn't belong.
And a Pilgrim is one who's just passing through. We find the expression again in connection with those who are listed.
Near the beginning of the 11Th chapter of Hebrews, it says that they didn't receive the promises, but saw them afar off.
And confess that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. And it's interesting there that it is in the same order that you get it in Peter. Not pilgrims and strangers, but strangers and pilgrims. Because we need to 1St realize that we are a stranger, that we don't belong. And then we will realize we're just passing through. If I can put it this way, when I enter the United States or any other foreign country.
The first question they ask me is my citizenship and when I tell them I'm a Canadian.
The very next question they usually ask is, how long are you going to be in this country? Because they recognize that as a stranger, I'm just passing through. And so we need to recognize that we like these ones Peter was writing to. We are indeed strangers here. And brethren, we're only here for a little time. There's a wonderful future, as Don said, at the end of the wilderness journey.
Chose to take the Children of Israel out of Egypt.
To the promised land of Canaan. They didn't dream it up themselves. It wasn't their idea.
He had something better for them than they had in Egypt, where they were actually in servitude.
To the world, to Pharaoh, who really in that sense is a picture of Satan.
They didn't fully realize their servitude, but the Lord did, and so He chose to take them. And as we have in this second verse, elect according to the foreknowledge of God. God in a past eternity made some choices concerning us.
And having made those choices, he separated us to himself by the Spirit.
For himself, and he purposes to.
Bring us to a given place and conclusion. In order to do it, it was necessary for us to come under the shelter of the blood of the Lord Jesus that would fit us to be partakers of what He purposed for us. I say that because He gets into trial and tribulation, which Jim said was something on his heart. We all passed through it.
But, brethren, the trials are in the ways of God.
With purpose.
With purpose when the children of Israel got out into the wilderness and they lacked food.
They said to God, why'd you bring us out here to kill us for? Why didn't you leave us in Egypt? A lot of times when we lack something, we pray, Lord, give it to me, I need it. And in some cases, what we need is what we had in Egypt, and we'd like to have it back. And so the hearts of the children of Israel, because they were not many of them looking forward, but only thinking about what?
00:20:18
They had in Egypt wanted to go back when they ran into trial and difficulty and suffering. And so the Lord had to work with them to recognize that Egypt wasn't going to be their destiny. And sometimes the trials of the way test us as to whether or not we're going toward Canaan or we're heading or wish we could head back to Egypt.
But they had been separated from it and they could not go back.
They had crossed the Red Sea. They could not in that way go back.
Properly into the land that they had left. And the Lord loves you and I too much to let us really go back and be happy there. We can try.
But as some have said.
The man of the world, to a measure, can find pleasure in this world because he only has one nature, a sinful nature that this world is set up to try to.
Keep him in peace.
We have the nature of Canaan, and consequently we cannot go back to the world and ever have true, lasting peace in it. We're spoiled for it, and if we try, we can be the most miserable people on earth. And yet our joy can be the happiest of people on earth if we, with Peter, take the journey in true spirit.
Very gracious to the people.
Uh, right after the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus to bring many together there in Jerusalem. And I am thinking of Acts 2 where he all, uh, mentioned them, he says.
Parisians in verse 9 Parisians and meats and illuminates and as well as a methamphetamine in Judea and Cappadocia, and Pontus, in Asia, Frege and Pamphilia and Egypt, and then the parts of Libya about Kiran and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, creeds and Arabians.
We do hear them speak in our tongues of wonderful works of God, though He had gathered at a certain time all these people to gather in Jerusalem and.
When the Holy Spirit came down, they came out of where they were and that secluded place and preached to all the crowds that were there of those many nations, the wonderful things of the Lord Jesus Christ. I think that's how it also got to us eventually.
The nation of Israel in the Old Testament was an elect people, weren't they? They had been chosen by God when Abraham answered the call of God by faith. God told Abraham that they would spring from him a great nation. And that nation was a chosen nation, and they were given the oracles of God and a hedge built about them and the privileges of being God's people in the Old Testament.
But here were those, as we said earlier, who had disassociated from the guilty nation, that very nation who had rejected the Lord Jesus. And now as individuals, they are elect. And isn't it tremendous, brethren, to think that we're elect, that none of us were an afterthought with God? They might have wondered, as we've already alluded to, what's happened here. They had been promised, if they were faithful in the Old Testament, they would be established in the land and God would keep their enemies at Bay. And.
00:25:01
It would be great blessing for them. Now all that was gone. They'd lost that. But he says no, you're elect according to the foreknowledge of God, not as an afterthought, not because the nation had failed as a nation.
No, this had all been in the counsels of God from a past eternity.
There are two things that are uncharacteristic of God, if I can put it that way.
And that is that there are no surprises with God, and there are no afterthoughts with God.
You know, we get a lot of surprises. Sometimes things happen and we're surprised. God is never surprised. Have you ever been surprised by some circumstance in your life? God wasn't surprised. He had that all planned for you and with a purpose and a purpose of blessing and so on. And there's no after thought with God either. And you and I were never an after thought with God. These believers, these Jewish believers, they were never an afterthought with God.
They were elect according to the foreknowledge of God. And what a comfort it must have been for them to realize, if I can say it reverently and carefully, they weren't connected with Plan B. Sometimes we have to implement Plan B when Plan A fails. God, I say, never has to do that. Well, what a tremendous truth to get a hold of in our souls. We're elect according to the foreknowledge of God.
He chose this before the foundations of the world.
There is nothing in existence as to this present creation. When God chose you and me, you say, how could he know you? There was no people in existence. That's where that word foreknowledge comes in.
God knows everything. He inhabits eternity. To him there is no past, present or future. He is the eternal 1 And so he knew that you would be sitting in this room before the foundation of the world. He chose us. And in Romans 8 it not only says he chose us according to his foreknowledge, but he predestinated us. It's interesting, those two.
Words in first Peter one it's election which is choosing he chose persons, but when it's predestination it's to a position when he shows you he had a position in mind and so the position or the pre we are predestinated to be conformed to the image of his son in verse 29 of Romans 8 it tells us.
So wonderful things to get a hold of in our souls we are enjoying now, but they were in the thoughts of God before there was ever any universe in existence.
Here in verse two it speaks of the sprinkling.
Of the blood.
We know on the night of the Passover.
Let the Lord pass through the land.
And every household where the blood was not applied to the door closed in the lentil there was judgment fell.
And the first born was put to death.
Every single household in the land deserve judgment.
There wasn't an exception to that.
But God, by the blood, spared from that righteous judgment through the substitute of the Lamb. And so it is with every one of us in this room. We all deserve judgment, but by the work of atonement, every one of us who knows the Lord Jesus has been spared by it.
In the 18th verse of the chapter we have that blood spoken of as the blood of redemption.
We were slaves in Egypt.
And we were slaves to sin.
And the Lord Jesus paid the necessary price to deliver us from that slavery and to set us free.
And in liberty before himself. But in this verse it says unto obedience, and sprinkling of the blood.
00:30:02
It isn't in this verse the protection from the righteous judgment of God. It's not the redemption that the tremendous price that's been paid to set us free.
But it's like in the Old Testament, all the service, all the vessels that were to be used in the service of God had the blood sprinkled on them. The priests and their garments were sprinkled before they began their service, if you will. And so it is that thought here, brethren, God in the past eternity made a choice concerning us.
And the Spirit has set us apart to the fulfillment of that purpose of God.
And in order for it to be carried out properly with God, there's two things mentioned. There's obedience. We've been called unto obedience. We are to walk today, tomorrow, until the Lord comes in that place of obedience. And secondly, think of the tremendous purpose of God, so great that you and I have been sprinkled, as it were.
By the blood.
As belonging to him, it's his right. It's his claim over us.
And if you say, what claim does God have to me, think of the blood.
Think of the blood.
That's God's claim with respect to your life and mine.
And the respect that we have to be submissive to His claim on us to go through this journey in obedience and unto Himself.
A lot. It's, uh, it's interesting to contrast it like you say, Don and Exodus 24. There's, uh, three verses I'd like to read that kind of contrast with this scripture.
It's when the law was implemented in.
It says in verse six of Exodus 24 Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book of the covenant and read it in the audience of all the people. And they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do and be obedient.
Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood.
Of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words.
There was obedience to a perfect law which they never were able to keep. But here in this verse it's but through sanctification of the Spirit we are.
Elect unto the obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. So the obedience is not the obedience of the law here, it's the obedience of Jesus Christ.
So we obey, we have that nature, that very nature now, that loves to be obedient.
And that's the obedience we have been sanctified unto, so that as the Lord Jesus was obedient unto death. Now that's the life that you and I possessed. And so you have the question of obedience like you say further down in the chapter and verse 14, it says as obedient children.
And verse UH-22 seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth.
So the question of obedience, that's what we that's the nature we have. It's the nature that loves to obey God, not because of the legal code, but because we are followers of the Lord Jesus. We have been bought with his precious blood.
00:35:01
Speaks of being called out, doesn't it and called out by the Spirit of God. Every one of us had to experience that that at a specific time God called us by the Spirit and he separated us from that what we were in first of all the evil in the world, but then also.
Maybe many of us.
Have been in some institution where they were sprinkled, let's say with water and.
And told that they were saved, but they were not called out of the world. And told that they had to be saved by the blood of Jesus.
And that's what happened to me too. It was many years later that I was, I did understand by the preaching that it was the blood of Jesus that was applied to me and to all of us, which saved us.
Hey, brethren.
We say, blessed be God.
We say, blessed be God.
Peter encouraged his brethren to see the greatness of God and what he purposed for them and was going to carry them through to the end.
Suppose we were here this afternoon and we had no hope except this world. What would we talk about? What do we think about? What would we encourage each other in?
In one form or another, I suppose it would be basically what the scriptures tell us man does. Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die, in other words.
Let's get as much as we can out of life. We never know when it's gonna end. It may be tomorrow we die. Let's try to find some happiness and joy in it. And that's the end of it. As far as what life's all about. He says the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again unto a living hope.
Why do we associate our hope with living as a living hope? Because our Lord Jesus Christ was in this world ahead of us.
He lived here. He died here.
But he's not in a tomb.
He is raised from the dead.
And so that same power that raised our Lord Jesus from the dead is the power of our hope. It's a living hope. It's a hope that doesn't matter what happens in this world today, tomorrow, or the next day, it isn't going to change that hope.
There's absolutely nothing that can happen in this world.
With all that man can do that can rob us of anything that God has promised to us. And so we we are, we say, blessed be God, the one who has brought us into this living hope, given us the assurance of it by the raising of the one that has gone ahead of us, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Savior and the one that went through the path of the wilderness of faith ahead.
And where did it end for him? It's in the glory. Where is it going to end for us, no matter what?
In the glory.
A position that they had been brought into had nothing to do with themselves. It was the work of the Godhead in Trinity. And so we have the Spirit brought before us. We have God the Father brought before us, and we have the Lord Jesus Christ. We have grace and we have peace and we have mercy. And it's again in contrast to what you have in connection with the inheritance in the Old Testament, because he's about to take up the the inheritance that they now had in Christianity.
The inheritance in the Old Testament and the maintenance of it depended on their faithfulness.
If they were faithful, God established them in the land. As we said, He kept their enemies suppressed and at Bay.
00:40:05
They had fruit at harvest time, there was a balance of rain and sunshine and so on.
But it depended on their faithfulness to a great degree. It was read to us how that they had said.
All that the Lord our God has said that will we do, and we know they utterly failed.
And now it had come down to where, as we said, they've been scattered from their homes here as believers in the early days of Christianity.
And they might have wondered, well, everything's failed, everything's gone wrong. Well, they had failed as a nation, the Jewish nation.
But thank God something was brought in that didn't depend on their faithfulness.
Now, our faithfulness and practical sanctification and so on is certainly an important line of things that runs through the Word of God, but that's not what we have here. We have God's faithfulness in bringing them into this position.
Maintaining them, bringing them through so that at the end they were going to safely make the other side, so to speak.
As John said, there were very few, just two that we read of who made it across the wilderness and through the Jordan and into the good of their inheritance. But every believer is going to make it in the end.
Because we have not a dead hope, but a living hope. You know, in the Old Testament everything really spoke of death, didn't it? Everything was stamped and marked by death. But we have a living hope. And a living hope is really what sets Christianity apart in contrast from what you have in the Old Testament as well as the other so-called great religions that are practiced in the world today.
Everything other than Christianity really ends in death. That's that's where their hope ends really in a sense, and everything is stamped with death. But brethren, we have a living hope. Why? Because we have a living Savior. Over His tomb is written. He is not here, He is risen. Come see the place where the Lord lay and our assurance that we are going to come into the full reality.
Of our hope and reach the Father's house, the other shore, glory, heaven, whatever you want to call it.
Our assurance of that is the fact that God has raised him from the dead.
And seated him at his own right hand. The resurrection, the ascension and glorification of Christ are God's, Amen. They're God's confirmation to the work of Calvary and that he is satisfied. And so we have one who's risen from the dead, as he said here. And on that basis we have a living hope and every assurance of what comes at the end of the journey.
Christianity really begins with Christ and resurrection, doesn't it? And the life that you and I now possess in Christ is a life in resurrection. It's a life that is beyond death.
These bodies we have still are connected with the first creation, and so it may be that death will touch him. But the life we have in Christ is a life that can never die. So the moment that death may touch these bodies, we are translated right into the presence of the Lord Jesus. Death can only serve us to translate us there. Our life is a life that cannot die. That's life and resurrection in other.
People that were raised from the dead, both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, as far as we know, uh, died again. But the life we have now is a life that can never die. Absolutely never.
So it's connected with a living hope.
Enjoy it.
Common to almost all the epistles, and is also common. We so often read right over it, I guess because we read it always. But the end of verse 2. Grace unto you, and peace be multiplied.
Grace brings before us the love of God in action, expressing what's in His heart toward us and all that He does.
And we have in that piece that comes from God, a piece that he can give.
That we can't provide for ourselves and that God can maintain for us that we don't lose it.
00:45:04
But we, in spite of, if I could put it that way, all the grace of God toward us, all the goodness of God toward us, all his peace on our behalf, we still need. What's in verse three is abundant mercy, brethren, we just can't do without it.
Mercy occupies itself with.
Unworthy recipients of grace, it sees them in their need.
And having shown grace, sometimes God has to then turn around and recognize we're not receiving it from himself as he gives it, perhaps not appreciating it, but he doesn't say, oh, that's an unworthy object of my attention. What's the use working with that person? They don't appreciate it. They, they offer something that's worthless to me and exchange for my love and so on and so forth.
And God reaches in great mercy.
And says you need that too. Good. I'm good for it. I'll do it for you. And we are the objects of the mercy of God. And it's only because of that that will ever get to the end safely. But we will get to the end safely because God in his grace and mercy will never let loose of us.
Hold on to the truth of the bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus, don't we? When the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, he remained on earth long enough to give complete and ample testimony to his own.
That he had not just risen in spirit, but that he had bodily risen from the dead. On one occasion he said to his own, Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bone, as ye see me have. And I say, we need to tenaciously hold on to this truth, because in first Corinthians chapter 15 we read, If Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain, and ye are still in your sins.
And what hope would we have for our loved ones who've gone before, What hope would we have for ourselves if it wasn't based on the resurrection of the Lord Jesus? It's Christ the first fruits afterwards, they that are Christ at his coming. And there's a verse in First Corinthians 15 that we sometimes misquote, and I'm going to misquote it the way we often quote it, and then I will quote it properly to show that the difference.
Sometimes we quote it like this, if in this life only we have hope.
We are of all men most miserable. That is not what the verse says. We've left out part of it, and a very blessed part of it. It says if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we have our If in this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. Even if it was hope in Christ, but only for this life, we would be a sad people, wouldn't we? But brethren, we have hope not only in Christ for this life. That's true.
But we have hope in Christ for the next life as well. And if it all ended here, and Paul takes up the subject at great length in Corinthians and other places, if it was only hope for here, why would you give up present advantage? Why would you give up things down here? How could these Saints go on who had lost everything naturally, materially speaking, if they didn't have a hope beyond, if they didn't have something beyond the earthly inheritance and earthly possession, why there'd be no use going on?
It all you could do was just throw up your hands. Why did Paul give up so much of this world because he not only had hope in Christ, but he had it for the next life As for this life, but he had it for the next life and brothers, we need to keep this in view. We have a living hope and he's going to go on now to explain connected with that hope is not a corruptible inheritance. They lost that but he says you have an incorruptible.
Inheritance and not an earthly inheritance. They lost that as a nation.
But he says you have an inheritance that is heavenly, and it's an inheritance that can never be exhausted and you can never lose.
00:50:10
I think it's interesting to note, uh, contrast along that line, Brother Jim, in Revelation chapter 2, connection with the addresses to the churches, Smyrna, uh, is persecuted there. And it says in verse nine, I know thy works, Revelation 2:00 and 9:00, I know thy works and tribulation of poverty, but this uh, uh, parentheses, but thou art rich.
And I know the blasphemy of them would say they are Jews, and are not, but are the of the synagogue of Satan. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer. Behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried, and ye shall have tribulation 10 days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. But I was thinking of that. But thou art rich in the midst of all that. And contrast that which is said of Laodicea.
In the third chapter.
Verse 15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would thou Wert cold or hot.
Umm, so then because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spew the out of my mouth, because thou sayest I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing and knowest not.
That thou art wretched and miserable, and poor, and blind and naked, I counsel thee to buy a me gold tried in the fire that thou mayst be rich and white raiment that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear. And anoint thine eyes with I salve that thou mayest see.
So in the ways of God, the estimation of what is poverty and what is riches is often different. What than what the natural man or what we might think?
As an incorruptible, at least not presently. Perhaps the Millennium might be looked at differently, but in present things, there's no such thing as an incorruptible inheritance. There's absolutely nothing that a person can pass on to somebody else in the world today.
Uh, that is called an inheritance. That is not potentially corruptible.
It's also defiable. Anything that man passes on from one generation to the next is always subject to defilement. And as it says it, it's not an inexhaustible thing. It fades, it wears out. Its value is often lost sight of from one generation to the next. And so it is too, that man often writes his will, and he's going to pass it on to this one or that one or the next one. And.
Umm, sometimes that person doesn't even live long enough to get it.
They don't even outlast the person that planned to give it to them.
And so the contrast is placed here for us. God says to us, he says, I have a different kind of inheritance for you. It's an inheritance that will satisfy your heart for eternity.
It can't be corrupted, it can't be defiled. It will never lose its value and fade away. I've reserved it for you. Nobody's going to come along and take it from you. And so we are kept.
For that inheritance by the power of God. And God uses the means of faith to connect us with it and keep us in it to the end. So we have something that we could never ever expect or look forward to in this present life or this world, and it's far better.
Tense that we pass on to our children.
All right, just the other day, a story of a mother.
Went to be with the Lord and left behind five children and they all gave testimony to her mother what she did for them.
It was not earthly goods.
They all spoke about the things that her mother taught, taught, taught them about God, about the Lord Jesus Christ, about a life living in Christ and for Christ and that's all five of them gave that testimony. Now if children that we rear, they could give a testimony.
00:55:26
From us that way in which we have brought them up for the Lord Jesus Christ, for in eternal inheritance and what it really is to have an internal inheritance, then we can say we have served the Lord, we have brought children to him for an internal inheritance.
Heritance that is received in a natural way can be squandered. Sometimes it's squandered. And yet, as careful as someone may be with their inheritance, every time you go down to the bank and draw on that inheritance, the inheritance itself becomes less. But we have an inheritance that can never be squandered in that way, and it never becomes less because we have the unsearchable riches of Christ.
And it's that which we are going to enjoy for all eternity. We can enjoy it now.
But we're going to enjoy it for all eternity. But not only that, as Dawn said, maybe the person doesn't, uh, well, let me back up a moment. Suppose someone offer or tells you they're going to leave you an inheritance. And so you expect that inheritance. But maybe the person in their last years of life, maybe they needed assisted care living or something like that. And when the time comes that they pass away, maybe the inheritance was used up. There was nothing left to pass on, it was gone.
But we have an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, that fadeth not away. Not only that, but as Dawn said, maybe someone tells you they're going to leave you an inheritance, but you predeceased the person. You weren't kept for the inheritance. And so by the time that the person passes away and the inheritance is passed on, it has to go to somebody else. It's divided between others, perhaps, but brethren, we can't lose.
It's reserved for us and we're preserved for the inheritance. We have something that we can't lose. Now, brethren, are we enjoying what is rightfully ours in Christ this afternoon as we're going to enjoy it in a deeper and fuller and more and an unhindered way in a coming scene of glory? He we ought to. We can't use it up, brethren, we can't. We can't. It won't become less, but we need to go down and we need to draw on the bank again and again and again.
They had lost their earthly inheritance, so to speak, what they had been promised naturally as the Jews. But they had something where moth and rust would never corrupt, and thieves would never breakthrough and steal, and that's treasure in heaven.
It does seem like the world we live in, brother, and the Lord is allowing.
The banks to fail and people's retirement funds have vanished and everything. I, I, I really think the Lord is trying to get our attention to be occupied with those things that are above those things that are imperishable. That's what we're called to, not to earthly things. And sometimes we have our hopes too much placed in those.
Retirement funds and and I think the Lord is showing us that we need to live in view of what's we have in Christ. He's promised to take care of us. I don't mean that we shouldn't be.
Wise in the way we handle the funds that the Lord has put into our hands. But we cannot place our trust in that. And sometimes, unconsciously, we are looking to trust in that.
No, God wants us just like these believers to enjoy what is imperishable, that inheritance that is reserved for us and we kept by the power of God for it to enjoy it. It's interesting, the question of the inheritance as you take it through Scripture, perhaps a little bit different in the epistles of Paul, but perhaps in a wider.
01:00:06
Uh, spirit, uh, wider sphere in, uh, Ephesians chapter one, you have the inheritance and it's every created thing that the Lord Jesus is going to take when he comes back in power and glory and we are going to be coheirs with him in that day. So it's the whole sphere of created things.
In Ephesians chapter one, heavenly and earthly, it's all our inheritance.
Tremendous. It really frees us from.
Materialism and wanting to get more and more. Why are you going to struggle so hard to get more and more if you're going to inherit all things in just a few short years? It doesn't make any sense. Let's be satisfied with what the Lord has given us and live to serve Him, because the inheritance is sure.
Here it's more the spiritual side of things, isn't it, Said the unsearchable riches of Christ, those things that we have that we can't see because those are the things that are eternal, aren't they? And so, as you say, in Paul's ministry, it's a little bit different. It's created things. But again, I believe there's a contrast here. The Jews were used to seeing. They were used to that which was physical. Their inheritance, and rightly so, was physical. It was the land and the good of the land and so on.
And they will yet, in a coming day, be blessed in that way. They are going to be established in their inheritance to a degree that they've never been before. But now, he tells these ones who'd lost things naturally and physically, you've got something that you can't see. It's reserved in heaven for you, but it's very real nonetheless. Have you and I ever seen with the physical eye any of our spiritual blessings? Not one of them.
We haven't seen one of our spiritual blessings with the natural eye, but they are very real to the eye of faith and in the power of the Spirit of God. We can grasp onto those things and enjoy them in our souls. Now as that we're, as I say, we're going to enjoy them in a far greater way. And so if all things as far as creation are ours and all we have, all the spiritual blessings like Bob said, what else do we want, brethren, why are we building?
For things down here, why are we putting such hopes again? Not that we want to be frivolous with our.
Some material things that's required in stewards that a man be found faithful. But brethren, why do we put such hope and confidence and energy into the things that are reserved under fire when we have such a wonderful inheritance and future and hope ahead? If we can just get a grasp of all these precious things in our souls, it will make a vast difference in our perspective as to natural and.
Temporal things in the here and now. I think Bob was speaking in the meeting of the some of the advertising slogans they use. And I know they're just using them like Burger King to promote products. Have it your way. But they often, they often reflect the spirit of the age. And one that has impressed me is Air Canada's frequent flyer program is called Aeroplan. And their slogan is live for the moment, not the spirit of the age.
Live for the moment. Get things down here, accumulate things down here. Just live for the here and now.
Peter's telling us, live in view of the future, live in view of the end of the journey. You have a living hope. You have an inheritance reserved in heaven for you. Now what's going to encourage your feet one step after another through the fiery trials of the wilderness journey? It's to have the end in view. Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Nsnoise.
We also say #234 verses 1:00 and 5:00.
01:10:02
Matthew 19.
Verse 27.
Then, answered Peter.
Then answered Peter, and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and follow thee.
What shall we have therefore?