Goering, Jeremy: Something Precious-01

Is that okay? Thank you. Okay. Um, I was asked last night how long I normally take to prepare a message, and that was kind of a thinking question for me. Um, how long do I like to prepare a message? Uh, an average message for me takes about a week to get ready, but an average message for me also, if it's gonna come from anything other than me, usually takes some considerable time before that thinking on it. And this has been something that I've been, this verse we're going to go over today, this actually two verses in particular, are something I've been thinking on for about two years now. Something that I just can't quite get enough of, and I don't think I've come anywhere close to grasping it yet. I really don't. But I want to share with you some of the things I've seen so far. Um, let's go ahead and open in prayer. Father in heaven, we're here to open your word. We're here to learn the vast, the great truths you have for us. I just thank you. We do thank you that you have done so much for us. You've loved us, you've set us free. We're forever grateful. Um, the Psalm's been running through my head. My heart overflows with a good theme, and I address my verse to the king. My tongue is the pen of a ready writer, thou art fairer than the sons of men. We just ask this morning that you would speak through me. We ask that your message would come through clearly. I ask, Father, that the hearts of your people, your church, your saints would be lifted up towards you this morning. I ask this in your name. Amen. Okay. That is your first clue. This is a question anyone under sixth grade, sixth grade or younger can answer, um, the opening question. And I would like everybody to turn to First Peter chapter one. and verse eighteen. And the opening question, which I expect a girl is going to get rather than a guy, is going to be, what is the one word title of my message? One word, not two. First Peter, chapter one, verses eighteen through twenty-one. Knowing that you are not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. Based on those verses, I want to see hands. Who thinks they know what the one word title of my message is today? And your clue. Anybody? Nobody bold enough? What was the answer? Not quite. That's not the title. And you're not under sixth grade either. Look in verse nineteen. It says, but with precious blood as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. What's my one word title? I see lots of adult hands. Danny? Precious. Precious. All right. That's the first thing. We're gonna speak today about something precious. I've given an illustration of something that the world calls precious just by default, just by title. They say it's a precious moment, and they've got little figurines, they've got little pictures, and these are things which people think are precious. They see these pictures, and they make them think of something precious. Today we're going to look at something precious. But before I go too far, I want to make a little disclaimer. I often appear, I've been told many times, as very confident, as very sure I know where I'm going. Um, I don't feel that right now. I haven't felt that for the last month. Wow, I'm echoing. As I've been, um... Is that better? Is it two mics, or? Don't do that. Okay. I haven't felt that for the last month as I've been preparing to speak to you. The one word I felt has been inadequate. Um, I don't have a lot of confidence up here. And the reason why, to give you a simple word definition, is because I feel young. I feel young. I'm speaking to a large body of believers who are older than me, and most of you, almost all of you, are older in the Lord than me. And how many things can I speak on? I can't speak on love. It'd be nice to tell you what I've learned of love, but can't be much, can it? Young single guy up here, I've never experienced marriage, never had any kids. I don't really can't speak on love. I can speak on wisdom, but anybody older than me would laugh at me, say, what do you know of wisdom? Even though Proverbs says it was written so that the youths may get wise before their time, still couldn't really speak on wisdom. Can't speak on suffering for the Lord much, because anybody in my audience, almost everybody in my audience, will have known more of it than I have. Can't speak on discipleship, because I'm still really trying to learn what that's all about. There's not much I feel I can speak on. And so it gives me a lot of confidence, a lot of hope this morning. The first word, or if you're reading an NIV or a King James, the first phrase of our text. NAS says knowing. King James says, for as much as you know that. NIV says, for you know that. This morning I'm going to talk about something that as believers we already all know. And I want you to keep this in mind. It's something you know. It's a reminder. It is a Thanksgiving message. I'm going to raise your hearts, hopefully, to give thanks to the Lord. But it's something we already know. And if you don't know this yet, if you aren't yet a child of God, then I can speak with confidence to you because I have experienced you something you haven't yet. But let's get into it then. Okay, we're talking about something precious based on these verses. I'm going to read verses eighteen and nineteen again. Knowing that you are not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your feudal way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. What is precious? A simple definition would be that to which great value is assigned. Webster's gives a second possibility and says it's something that's highly esteemed or loved, or something that's dear. So it can be precious because it's dear to us, or precious because it has a monetary value. The Bible uses something close to this. In the Old Testament, the Bible uses this word to mean something costly, and the chief examples of this are something like precious stones used in the temple, precious stones used in the tabernacle, or precious metals. Chiefly, gold is used. Um, also used to describe something that is either really desirable, therefore it's precious, or something that is just simply rare. So we're talking about something that is precious. Under this, wisdom is often called precious. Here, we are told, number one, we've been purchased with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. I want to give you three observations this morning about something precious, the blood of Christ. The first one is, we see, first of all, that it is something that is incomparably precious. Basically, the idea is don't even try it. We can, we're starting to make the comparison to the most valuable thing we can picture on Earth, just so we can blow it away. That's our jumping off point. He says, we have not, knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers. Just says, okay, I'm going to pick the most precious thing I can think of on Earth, and I'm going to blow it out of the water. Now stop even comparing. I just wanted you to have a jumping off point. Get to the highest point you can, and we're going to move upward from there. Here on Earth, we pave our roads with a pretty worthless material. It's nasty, it's dirty, we call it asphalt. In heaven, they pave their roads with this pretty common material, it's called gold. That's our first point I want you to think about. I want you to think of asphalt compared with something gold. Which is precious? Nothing. Neither. I realize that's actually bronze, but it's close enough. My mom was laughing at me. Um. The comparison is, one of them is a gold dipped, actually bronze, shoe, and the other one is asphalt, what that shoe walks on, and they're both here on the earth, and they don't get much higher than that. Either one of them all of a sudden looks very precious. Um, there's a few things I want to point out. Why are they not precious? The first reason is they're not on the same level because it's a def- it's a difference between perishable and eternal, perishable and imperishable, something that's eternal and something that is doomed. Verse eighteen says, you were not redeemed with something perishable. Keep this in mind, we were not redeemed with anything perishable. Turn back to verse seven of the same chapter. Gives us another quick look at gold. Says, the proof of your faith, being much more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though it's tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Note that gold, even when it's refined, even when it's made the best it can, it's still not precious in the same sense. The be- if we take the best thing we've got, and we make it the best we've got, and we can make it the best we can, we don't have anything precious yet in the same, in the same thing. And the reason why is gold may be precious here, and men may call gold precious. It's a precious metal, but the thing is, it's only gonna last as long as the world it's on. And we were redeemed of something that's going to last so much longer. And thankfully, so are we. We're going to last so much longer. So we couldn't be redeemed. My eternal salvation could not have been bought with a price that's going to cease to exist when this world does. One more point, look at verse twenty About how precious, how eternal this is. Speaking of Christ, it says, for he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you. Not only is Christ and Christ's blood precious because it's going to be around for eternity, it existed for eternity past. Something that did not, was not created like I was. Something that's going to last forever was what was spilled for me. One more point about preciousness as being incomparably precious in the blood of Christ. Look at verse nineteen. It says, we were redeemed with precious blood as of a lamb, unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. We talked of gold being refined to make it more precious. Well, here we're bought with something eternal. So everything on this earth that burns, this one thing is worth so much more than that, and yet we've got this one thing that's unblemished and spotless. The Jews understood that. They understood how important it was to have something unblemished and spotless. Before the Passover lamb was sacrificed, they would take this lamb into their family. It would become one of their family. For seven days, they would look at it. They would make sure that there was no defect, there was no possibility of it being defective. And if they discovered a defect, it couldn't be sacrificed. It could no longer be considered precious. It couldn't get the job done. They understood what, how important it was to be unblemished and spotless. We were bought with something precious. The second observation, point number two, is that which buys me is therefore precious to me. Look at chapter two, verses seven through ten. Actually, start in verse six. It says, for this is contained in scripture, behold, I lay in Zion a choice stone, a precious stone, and he who believes in him shall not be disappointed. This precious value, then, is for you who believe, but for those who disbelieve, the stone which the builders rejected, this became the very cornerstone, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. For they stumble because they are disobedient to the world- word, and to this doom they were also appointed. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. For once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. That's what, that which buys me is precious to me. The first reason why is because of what it has bought me out of. I am now, it says in verse eight, they stumble because they are disobedient to the word, and to this doom they were appointed. But you are a chosen race, a holy nation, people of God's own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, now you are the people of God. You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. The pitiable state I was called out of, the pitiable state I was bought out of, makes the price that bought me out precious to me. I had not received any mercy. I was in darkness. I was not, you weren't a people. I was a no one. I didn't belong. I was bought out. And that's wh- and that which bought me to this point, bought me out of that, is therefore precious to me. Second reason that which buys me is precious to me is because it's something I couldn't do. Look at verse eighteen. Let's notice what I had to contribute to this. It says, knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers. All I had to contribute to this was inherited futility. I have an object for this. It's not the object I wanted. I'll have to explain it because it's not as clear as I wanted it to be. My family will get this really quickly. Um, I've only used one of those little handheld blenders for one thing in my life, and that's to make weight gainer mil- milkshakes. I was going to get a big tub of the stuff, but I can't stand it. Um, all through high school, I would drink these things, one, two a day, two thousand calories each, trying to gain weight. That was a case of inherited futility. My dad said he tried to gain weight in high school too, never worked for him either. So, inherited futility is all I have to contribute. The best thing I can contribute is works to my salvation. Well, that's filthy rags. Okay, then I can contribute gold. That's not even precious, it's gonna burn. All I have to contribute is inherited futility. And number three, why is that which precious, which buys me precious to me? The main reason why is because it bought me. That's why it's precious to me. I have a hard time putting a value on me. I remember in high school I was forced to read a book, one of the books I was forced to read, many of them, and I do remember one character in one book, I can't even remember the book, but I remember him saying at one point in time, and the s- as the story was progressing, I actually think it was a Melville book, but anyway, um, saying, he says, I remember when I was younger and I was, um, I think he was in jail or something like that, and he said, I was sentenced to death, and someone came forward and paid the price to set me free. And he was kind of dejected about that because he said it was something like eighteen dollars. And he said, my life is worth eighteen dollars to anybody who wants to take it. Because the price had been set on his life. That's what it was worth from then on in his mind. That which buys me is going to be precious to me. What was the price set on my life? It was the blood of Gri- Christ. We often sing, this is my blood poured out for you. Christ said, take this and drink it in remembrance of me. This is the price of my life. It's precious to me. I can't put any value on it. I really can't. I can't say I was worth that. I really can't say that. But I sure don't want to say, take it back, it's too much. I don't want to say I'm not worth it, because I want to believe I am. That was my price, blood. It's precious to me now. That blood is precious to me, because it was the price that bought me. The third point, the third observation, this is the one that really gets me. This is the one that, when I noticed it, broke my heart. And that is that this is not just precious to me. It was precious before it was a payment for me. It says, knowing that you are not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. It doesn't say, as I was at first taken, as I've taken it so far, I was bought with blood. That I was bought with blood, and now I think that blood is precious because it was the price that was paid for me. I would think that if there was a price, whatever it was that was paid for me, and I heard of it, I would say that amount is precious to me. That's what my life is worth. But that's not what the passage says. It says, this was precious, and I poured it out for you. That's what the passage is saying. Um, Christ was precious to God. I don't have an illustration of this. I've got an illustration of something pretty worthless. It's a coffee mug. It's my favorite coffee mug. um, I sat and I thought and I thought of a thing I could put up that was precious to me in the fact, in the way that it was irreplaceable. I wanted just one object I could put up here that would be irreplaceable, and I could not do it. Everything I thought of, I'd say, no, well, the person who gave that to me could get another one or make it, or in this way I could work and I could earn that. There's not one object I could put up there. I like this coffee mug. I got it with some friends last spring break in Denver. We had a fun day. A lot of good memories are associated with that coffee mug. It's not precious. I can get a new one so easily. That's something worthless. I can't think of anything, anything that I can't replace on this earth. And yet, think of what we've talked about. The price that was paid for me was precious before it was paid. I've often thought, actually, no, let's, let's go back. Look at verses twenty and twenty one. Verse twenty says, for he was foreknown before the foundation of the world. Let's back up to nineteen. But with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. First thing, verse twenty says, for he was foreknown before the foundation of the world. Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world. God knew him before he created anything we see. God knew him intimately before he created me. There was love. God loved within himself. God the Father, Christ, the Holy Spirit. There was fellowship, there was companionship, greater friendship than we'll ever know. True fellowship. They're all of the same essence. They understand each other. And yet that relationship was sacrificed for me. You see Christ saying, Father, if it's possible, take this cup from me. Father, the one I fellowship with, the one I love, and then crying out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That relationship, the most valuable relationship, was sacrificed for me. The closest relationship, true love, was given up for me. I've often thought, no, I haven't often. I've caught myself before thinking this through and thinking it doesn't sound like much. I've got God in eternity past, existed forever back there, and he comes along and he creates the world and he exists as this world plays out in time, and there comes a point in time when God takes on flesh. For thirty three years, he walks around as a man. At the end of thirty three years, he dies knowing that he's going to be resurrected in three days. Not much of a death. So he just dies, and then he's resurrected and lives for eternity future. If I've got eternity on both sides, that's not much to give up, is it? Let me give you an illustration to show you how I realize this is wrong. This is nothing more than a picture. Picture's not very precious to me, but it's a picture of some people I love, a picture of some friends of mine. And I've learned some things about love, and I've learned some things about pain love can cause, and I've learned some things about the joys love can cause, and I've learned that I do not have it in me to walk up to any one of these people that I love, or any person I love, and say, um, I think it's best if our relationship be severed and I kill you. So, it's, it's just, it's just ludicrous, isn't it? So that I can make new friends who your blood is going to purchase. But don't worry, because I promise you, because the way we're doing this, you're going to be resurrected in three days. C. S. Lewis talks about this in The Chronicles of Narnia, and he makes the point, which I'm not sure I agree with, because he talks about Aslan. He said, said Aslan said it wasn't much to die because the White Witch didn't know there was a deeper magic that once someone was fat who died who didn't deserve it, then the table would be split in two and that person would come back to life. I knew that was coming. That's not how it was within the Godhead. The ones who loved each other intimately, infinitely, looked at each other, and the relationship was severed. They made the decision, we will sever our love relationship. And one said, I will place sin on you, and I will kill you. And the other one said, I will die. And why? For me. That's why. I don't think I could put any relationship I have on earth through that and call it a relationship. Knowing that the person's going to be resurrected, the person would still look at me and say, you hurt me, you rejected me, you chose someone else over me. And yet we see, knowing that you are not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life, inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last time, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. And you know what? We see Christ. We see in God's mind, the Godhead not bounded by time. We see him slain before the foundation of the world. We turn to Revelation, and we see two pictures of Christ. You see in Revelation five six, Christ is pictured as a lamb standing as if slain forever, for eternity, Christ bears marks of being slain. He bears these marks of this is what I poured out for you. This is what I gave up for you. I gave up what was precious. I gave up a relationship for a time. I gave up love. I gave up my blood. I gave up my life. It's precious. It's precious to me because it's not perishable. There's no comparison. It's precious to me because I had nothing to contribute. All I had was futility to contribute, and it's what bought me. It's the price that was paid for me. This is my blood poured out for you. And last of all, it's precious to me because it was precious. It was already had infinite value long before it was given up for me. What's our response? What's the application of this? There's three. The first is, if this precious gift was paid for you, it's a gift. It's held out. God is saying, here's what I've paid. You've heard now the price that was paid. You have nothing to contribute. You can go throw gold on the pile, you can go throw works on the pile, it's all gonna burn. You can accept God's gift. That's salvation. That's Christianity. That's becoming a Christian, to accept what God has done for you. Second application. This is the one that's to me. Do I love the church as Christ loved the church? The thing is, is something that is bought with a precious price, therefore becomes with purchaser precious. That which I had to give up all, all of me to purchase, that which I give up all I have to obtain, all of a sudden becomes precious to me, even if it wasn't before, because it represents all I gave up. And the church is precious to Christ because he gave up his own precious blood. So, do I love the church as Christ loved the church? And the last is right in the chapter, verse seventeen. The reason for writing this, Peter says, and if you address as Father, the one who impartially judges according to each man's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay upon earth, knowing that you are not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. Conduct yourselves in fear, knowing that a precious price was paid for you. Live your lives out of reverent fear, not of being judged, but of not living up to the price. I can live my life in fear of that. When that kind of price is paid for me, the thought of not majoring up is heartbreaking. Let's go ahead and pray. Father in heaven, Lord Jesus Christ, what can we say when we realize what you've paid for us? Your blood poured out is what bought me, so it bought all of us. We ask, Father, that at this time of year when our nation decides to try and be thankful for things, that we would be thankful for a gift which things couldn't have bought. You would make us truly thankful for a precious gift. Thank you for all you gave up for us. Help us to understand it so much more, because we don't right now. And I know it'll be eternity, and I still won't quite grasp everything that was given to purchase me. I just ask, Father, that you will be with us as we leave here. Help us to love your church as you love it. Help us, Father, to conduct ourselves in fear during the time of our stay upon earth, knowing the price that was paid for us. And I pray, Father, that if there's anyone here who hasn't accepted your gift of salvation, which is bought at such a great price, they would just simply accept that they can't earn what they can't buy. I just thank you for your word, Father. I thank you for this time to look at it. In Christ Jesus' name we pray. Amen.