Gooding, David: 1 - We Have Found The Messiah

It's lovely to see so many friends with us this evening, and particularly old friends that we have known now for we don't say how many years. Uh, it's lovely to see you all again with us. Thank you for coming from so far. We are in the middle, if I may explain, of a weekend study of the two epistles by Peter. Mr. Ford was with us yesterday and gave us four very helpful and most inspiring talks on the first epistle, and today we have just these two sessions, one this morning and one this evening now, uh, in which we are, uh, making a bridgehead between the two epistles. This morning, for our study, we searched out, with the help of our friends here, our student friends, uh, Peter's own experience of Christ as we have it in the Gospels, that forms the background of what he has to say to us in his epistles. So that he is in fact, as he helps us, helping us as he himself was helped and taught of God. And we saw this morning, uh, that his, uh, experience of the Lord, uh, is alluded to over many features in this, uh, uh, gospel. We traced the references to his conversion, when he came to Christ and was made a living stone. When he came to Christ, being born again, he received a new nature and a new name to describe it, when he came to Christ and was attracted by Christ's own virtue and glory. We thought too of what he tells us of the person and the work of Christ, of the sufferings and the glories, of his sinlessness, of his death for our redemption to pay the ransom money, of his resurrection, of his coming power and glory. These things too, we found he himself learned, uh, in the time of our Lord on earth. And then we studied a bit the, uh, references he makes to his faith, what produced it, and how it had to be tested and was allowed of God to be tested, the attack of Satan, and how he in turn encourages us with the certain prospect that our faith too shall be tried like gold is tried in the fire, and what resources there are for us when such trials overtake us. And we noted also, uh, that he has a lot of things to say about his attitude to suffering. Great question over which he himself made such an unfortunate mistake. And he tells us to arm ourselves, not now with a sword as he did, in order to avoid suffering, but to arm ourselves with that readiness to suffer for Christ's sake. He warns us that Christ is rejected. Another feature over which he himself in the Gospels made a, a very big mistake, and that we must expect, as the followers of Christ, similar rejection. Many other things we saw, but tonight I want now to concentrate on, uh, uh, uh, at the beginning of this talk at least, on one of these lessons, namely the lesson that concerns the salvation of the soul. We notice that as distinct from Paul, who scarcely mentions, if at all, the matter of the salvation of the soul, that is in that strict, those strict terms, Peter has frequent references to the soul, its salvation, its purification. And we traced back this morning that interest in the salvation of the soul to a vivid experience that Peter himself had in the days of our Lord's life here on earth. And perhaps we will begin our study by reading again that account given us in Matthew and chapter sixteen, A passage which describes how Peter was taught by our Lord about this matter of the salvation of the soul. Matthew chapter sixteen and verse twenty one. From that time began Jesus to show unto his disciples how that he must go unto Jerusalem and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed, and the third day be raised again. And Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall never be unto thee. But he turned and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou art a stumbling block unto me, for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whosoever would save his... Now, the next word that follows is in the Greek a word that is pronounced thuke. In English, it's sometimes translated soul, it is sometimes translated life. It is a little bit difficult to get one word in English to cover it. Uh, never mind for the moment, we'll think about what it means later. Let us notice this particular word. Whosoever will save his soul or his life, however you translate it, shall lose it. And whosoever shall lose his soul or life or whatever, for my sake shall find it. For what shall a man be profited if he shall gain the whole world and forfeit his, his life or his soul, same word again. Or what shall a man give in exchange for his? And once more the same word, his soul or his life. For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and then shall he render unto every man according to his deeds. Verily I say unto you, there be some of them that stand here which shall in no wise taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. There follows in Matthew's story the account of the Transfiguration in chapter seventeen from verse one to verse 8. And then after they have come down from the mountain, there follows the story from verse fourteen onwards of the healing of the boy that was lunatic. Now, for the benefit of those that weren't with us this morning, uh, shall we now turn to Peter, his first epistle, and just read again the verses where Peter himself talks of this matter? First Peter, chapter one verse eight. Whom having not seen ye love, on whom, though now you see him not yet believing, you rejoice with greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your soul. Your souls. Verse twenty two of that chapter, seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth, unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from the heart fervently. Chapter two and verse eleven: Beloved, I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. And verse twenty five of that chapter. For ye were going astray like sheep, but are now returned unto the shepherd and bishop of your souls. Then in chapter four, verse nineteen, wherefore let them also that suffer according to the will of God commit their souls in well-doing unto a faithful creator. As I said this morning, if you think that, well, the subject of the soul is must be a very frequent one in the New Testament, well, take your Bible and search through the epistles of Paul and find out how many times Paul talks of the salvation of the soul. And when you found it out, you will come to the conclusion, maybe, that, uh, this particular idea, this phraseology, is not really Pauline. It is something that Peter was given to talk to us about. This matter of the salvation of the soul. Wouldn't it be sensible to begin by thinking what the soul is? What is the soul? Of course, we're used to it in common parlance, aren't we? We call upon the unconverted man to remember that he has a soul to be saved. And we all know what we mean, and we shan't make anybody an offender for a word, shall we? We know exactly what we mean. But if we think of the passage of Matthew where Peter was taught this lesson, we shall remember that our Lord spoke like this, that if you would save your soul, you must lose it. That's not how we normally, uh, use the term, is it? But he that loveth his, uh, soul shall lose it, said our Lord. Now, how is it that it comes to have these seemingly different and contradictory meanings? Well, it is a very broad term, is this word soul. You'll find it variously used in the Bible. Sometimes it's merely used as a synonym for a person. There were eight souls saved in the ark. That doesn't mean that Shem and Noah, uh, were rather thin and transparent, and if you'd gone into the ark, you would only have seen a disembodied spirit or something. It's merely, uh, the term used, uh, uh, part for whole. Eight persons in the ark, Eight souls, if you like. Sometimes it's used to describe physical life. King Herod, for instance, of whom we read in Matthew chapter two, after the wise men had departed, he, uh, sought to put Christ to death. He sought, says Matthew, the young child's, ha, it is the Greek word tsuke. And obviously, eh, it wasn't, uh, his spiritual side of his existence that Herod was interested in. He wasn't normally interested in those things at all. It was the child's physical life he was concerned with, and he was out to destroy it. Passages like that, then, this Greek word, uh, indicates a man's physical life. On the other hand, it can be used sometimes of the very opposite. In a letter to one of his, uh, Christian friends and converts, maybe, Saint John said this: I wish above all things that thou mayest be in health and prosper, even as thy soul prospers. Now you think what that means. There, John is talking, first of all, about his physical health. I wish above all things that thou mayest be in health, that is physical health. Even as your... I know, this word soul doesn't mean your physical life then anymore. In this context, it means what we may call his spiritual well-being. In other words, it is a word of very, very broad meaning, and one has to consider in each context, how is it being used here? If I might get round the difficulty by talking about our soul life tonight, you will understand I'm merely using a convenient phrase, uh, to try and get some of the fullness of the meaning of the word across. And when in this passage our Lord talks about loving our souls or our lives, if we love them and try to keep them, we shall lose them. He's not merely talking of physical life, is he? That is involved. He's talking of our lives and all that goes up to make them warm, colorful, meaningful life. Not merely our biological existence, but our hope, and our love, and our joy, and our career, and our reputation, and all that makes life life in depth. And of course, our physical life involved, and the time element in our life involved. Now it is for the custom of some preachers to criticize Peter very severely for putting his foot into things and always saying the wrong thing, making the wrong suggestions, and having to be corrected by the Lord. We shouldn't criticize him. It was simply that he had the honesty to think out what he thought, to say out what he thought, whereas very often we keep it to ourselves for fear of letting other people see that we're wrong. But Peter, on this particular occasion, did make a very serious mistake, so serious that our Lord had to rebuke him in the solemn words, get thee behind me, Satan. What was wrong with Peter, and what was the mistake he was making? It sprang from a wrong attitude of mind, said the Lord. Your mistake, Peter, springs from this, yet you don't mind the things of God, you mind the things of men. To put it in modern, modern parlance, your outlook, Peter, is simply the outlook of an ordinary man. It isn't how God looks at things. Well, how was Peter looking at things? It came about this way. Our Lord had just taken his disciples aside, and he was beginning to teach them how that he must go to Jerusalem, and at Jerusalem he would be rejected by the scribes and the Pharisees. He would be crucified, buried, and the third day he would rise again. Now, hearing those words, Peter was filled with dismay and was sure that the Lord had made a mistake somewhere. Go to Jerusalem and be rejected? Oh, come, he said, no, no, no, no, don't be so pessimistic as all that. No, surely not. You mustn't get ideas like that into your head. That's a little bit wrongheaded. You're not going to be rejected now. Now, you see, if Mr. Wilson were to start off the campaign this election thinking he was going to be, uh, defeated, where would he get? Hm. And you mustn't take that attitude to life, said Peter to Christ. You're going to win! You're not going to be rejected. It is true we haven't too many following us just now, and Caiaphas is a little bit awkward, and Annas is temperamental, but we're going to win, Lord. You mustn't take that defeatist attitude that you're going to be rejected. He didn't mean no. And you're going to be killed, and oh no. And as Peter looked at it, it was not really a matter of adopting a good positive psychological approach to the preaching of the gospel. It was also that Peter had invested a lot of money in Christ, hadn't he? And more than money. Peter, by the standards of the peasantry up in Galilee, I suppose had quite a decent living. Until Christ came along and said, come after me, Peter, and I will make you fisher of men. And Peter had followed Jesus, convinced in his heart that he was the Christ. And Peter had invested practically everything he had in Christ. A man doesn't very likely unless he's a fool, throw over a home, a secure job, and uh... a place in his local, uh, village or town of esteem, a sense of fulfillment and success. Peter had invested all these things in Christ. And Peter was looking forward to the payoff, of course he was. That was a sensible thing to do anyway, wasn't it? The time when Jesus should no longer be an obscure man from Galilee, but should have ascended the throne of his father David. And can't you see it now, when at last Caiaphas gets converted and steps down from the chairmanship of the Sanhedrin, and Christ is there. And of course, when Christ gets there, he won't forget people like Peter that stood by him when he was, uh, largely unknown and unpopular. And if Christ is the supreme king, Peter will be second in command. What, say what? Minister of Interior, at least, I should think. And what was Christ saying? He was going to be rejected and be killed. It couldn't be. Mustn't be. The thought was too horrible to contemplate, for if Jesus was rejected, Peter lost every brass farthing he'd invested. And he'd lost a life because he was getting a little bit thin on top, and his best years were now behind him. He'd lost all that effort in preaching, all that emotion he'd put into the thing, all his hopes, all his loves, gone down the drain, if Jesus was rejected. And Peter, sensible man, wasn't for suffering and loss. The view was understandable, and I suspect we felt it ourselves sometimes. The tragedy of that way of thinking was that in his natural reaction to try and avoid suffering and, uh, defeat, Peter was all unknowing, running his head right into a hornet's nest of loss, a hornet's nest of loss and suffering. For the simple reason he was looking at it from man's point of view. He had the outlook of a mere man, and he wasn't looking at it from the way God would look at it. For you see, says our Lord, he that loves his life, his soul life, like you're doing just now, Peter, and you're afraid to lose it. Well, you try to keep it then, but then in fact you will lose it. Whereas Peter, if you were prepared to follow me in my suffering and rejection, and as men counted, to lose your life, you would in fact keep it. That's a bit complicated, isn't it, Bob? It seems to get everything reversed in the wrong way round. How would you understand it? Well, to help them understand it, a few days later, our Lord took them up the mountain. The demonstration is perhaps always easier than a theological argument. So here they go puffing up that mountain, Peter, James, and John, and they've been up there a moment, when one nudges the other, just have a look there. But that, if I'm mistaken, not is Moses. Look there, there must be larger. I don't know how they told them, shape of beard or something, I don't know. Look at them. And then they were speaking with Christ. They were with Christ. And suddenly Peter begins to think. Well, now this is interesting. For down the bottom of the mountain, the, uh, scribes and Pharisees, there had been that incident just a little, a few days ago, hadn't there? When our Lord had been talking to the scribes and Pharisees, and the Pharisees had been, uh, uh, very put out. And they had said to our Lord, why do you contradict the teaching of the fathers? And our Lord had said, thank you, gentlemen, and why do you break the commandment of God with your silly tradition, your futile tradition, your utterly useless tradition? Why do you put your tradition in place of the commandment of God? And the Pharisees hadn't liked it. In fact, Peter and company had come along and said, Lord, you know, you upset the Pharisees today, Lord. I mean, do you think this is a, a, a sort of a wise thing to do? They didn't like that bit of the sermon. Peter had begun to get a little uneasy that the Pharisees didn't think over much of Christ. And after all, they were the graveiers, weren't they? And these scribes from Jerusalem, they were the true interpretation of Moses. This young man from Galilee didn't know what he was talking about. He'd never studied in the academy, had he? He'd never been in any of the famous, uh, rabbinical groups, so what did he know about the Old Testament? They were the men that knew about the Old Testament, said the scribes. They knew, and Jesus was wrong. They knew what Moses taught. They knew what Elijah was all about. They studied it for years, and how could this Galilean peasant Jesus know? But that, if I mistake not, says Peter to himself, standing right there beside of Christ, that, if I mistake not, is Moses. How is it he's not down in the rabbinical school? And wrong with him, Elijah. Wow. Wow. And Mo- and Peter was about to make some practical suggestions for the continuation of the conference. When there came a voice from heaven saying... Ah, now listen to this voice. Down the mountain, the voices were saying to Peter, Peter, don't you listen to him? He's wrong, you know. But the voice out here was saying, oh, Peter, you listen to him, Peter, for this is my son, my chosen, my beloved. He's right, Peter, Peter, we are getting a little bit tired of this Jesus, you know, we can't stick him forever. If he goes on saying this in front of the crowds, we shall have s- to take steps to stop his preaching, you see. And if you listen to him. Peter became aware in his thinking now for the first time that there were two worlds. At least there was another dimension to this present one. That it was possible to look at life in two ways, in two dimensions. You could look at it just like an ordinary man looks at it, seeing just what you can see with your physical eyes. Or you could look at it with an enlightened vision and see an extra dimension in life. That extra dimension that makes Moses and Elijah present with us now in nineteen seventy. That extra dimension that makes heaven not a place a long way off, but a place here. That extra dimension that enables us standing here with two feet on solid earth in time space dimension, to count with eternity as a present reality. And all the difference between the outlooks of men that take one position and the other. Down here, they had little time for Christ, and he was but a homeless stranger, a stunt preacher, they would have said from get away. Up here, his face shone like the sun. And what the physical sun is to our universe, everything revolves around it. Our little planetary system, I mean. It is the center of our motion and activity. It's the source of light and heat, and the maintainer of light, life. It gives us light to see, to do things with. And what that physical sun is to our physical planetary system, so is Jesus Christ in this world, where the heavenly voice is heard to speak. Now it begins to become clear, doesn't it, what Christ meant by those strange words, that if you try to keep your life, you'll lose it. You see, there are these two dimensions. There are, so to speak, to put it crudely, two worlds. If you live for this world, for Caiaphas and his opinion, for Annas and his standards. Well, you won't follow Christ, and you won't sacrifice for him, and you'll keep your life, and you stand a chance of being a success, but you'll lose it in that world. But if you decide to follow Christ and you invest your life in him, you stand at a great danger to lose your life in this world. I don't just mean physically. You might have to put up with lower standards in your drawing room. And smaller ambitions in your business. And a good deal less applause from the world. And you might have to invest your time in Bible study when you could be, like a nice evening like this. I say, what a lot of fools we are, aren't we? Sitting here, little evening like this, goodness me. Losing your life, you are! And you've only got sixty years, seventy, what, who? You won't get sunny days like this every day, every month of the year, not in England you won't. And here you are spending it indoors, but dear me, you're throwing it away! As some men think. Then you see, if there is this other world and you're investing this night in Christ, you may be losing it as men come to you, but, uh, says Christ, you're keeping it unto life eternal. What a decision it face- a decision it faces us with them. How can a man save his soul then? In this biblical sense, I mean now, in this context. How do you save it? Well, ponder it well. Once you've spent it, there's nothing you can give to buy it back, you know. A soul is not a something you can keep in the bank, is it? I think we've observed that before, though. You can't say, now my soul is saved, you know, I keep it in Barclays Bank or somewhere on the bank of heaven, saved. When it's necessary, after this life is done, I'll call for it, and I shall begin eternity with a soul that's saved. It isn't done that way, is it? A soul is a life. A soul is made up of not merely life and time, but emotions and energies like love and, uh, ambition. And the fact is that you have constantly to spend your soul. You can't keep it in a box. Constantly you have to invest it. There is the initial decision that a man must make when faced with Christ. For do let's observe what true Christian conversion is. It isn't just an application for a seat in heaven, a ticket to get a seat in heaven. It's a decision to receive Christ, and conversely, to invest everything one has in Christ. And that investing is a very practical matter. And, uh, you have to make the decision to spend this life, this soul, knowing it's the only one you've got, and when you've spent it, you can't get it back. But every day of the week, if you be a believer, every day of the week you have to invest this soul. You're investing the time element in it. You spend so many hours, don't you, every day? You're spending your soul, your life. You have energies, loves, ambitions, goals, ideals, and as every minute of the clock ticks round, you spend those loves. You are loving this and loving that. You are spending yourself. You are giving yourself. You are investing yourself, investing your life. Oh, says Christ, do you be careful. For you invest it according to the world's standards, and you will keep it by their standards, but you know the Son of Man is coming one day in the glory of his angels, and if you've spent your life for self and for this world, when he comes, what will you have? With those lessons ringing in our ears, we come over to Peter's epistle, and he says in his chapter one, um it is possible for us to receive the salvation of our souls. How does it work? Well, notice the verse, verse eight. whom having not seen you love, on whom, though now you see him not yet believing, you rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory, glorified, receiving the end of your faith, reaping the end of your faith, the salvation of your soul. What's all this about this joy tinged with glory? I'm not altogether convinced it, it, it, it is the result of, um, good health and, uh, a stable psychological makeup. That can produce a certain glow upon the face. This is a question of believing somebody you've never seen, and believing him though you still can't see him, and trusting somebody you've never seen. Hey, what if it's all moonshine? If you haven't seen Christ, have you now, when I come, when it comes down to last text, you jolly well haven't seen Christ, or physically you haven't. How do you know this other world is there? Suppose you're on a string. Oh, what says Peter, you know. I've been up that mountain, I saw that glory, you know, it's real. Oh, listen to him in his second epistle. We weren't telling you this. This isn't just a nice fairy story made up to put the Christian view across. We were on that mount, and we actually heard, with these things here, a, a voice come out of heaven. And we saw with two eyes his unspeakable glory. We're not telling you men. By God's spirit, you can come to that same unshakable conviction. It dares to trust a Christ it has not seen and believe a Christ still though it can't see him, assured that that other world is there, and already in your heart rejoicing in its implications. All this isn't just a joy that comes when you sing a particular catchy tune to a hymn. This is a joy that's got to learn to survive when the going's tough, when the body breaks, when, uh, life goes wrong. When you've invested a missionary career in Christ, and then some virus comes along and kills you off. Or as my friends in Ethiopia are building a house for God for, for their missionary work in their service of God, and along comes a hurricane and blows it all down and kills two children, and then what do you say? This joy is a joy that's got to survive in spite of those things. Convinced there is that other world, it receives the salvation of its soul. The word means to harvest it in, to receive it like a man sitting at the, the box office receipts, you know, raking in the cash, receiving the salvation of your soul. How? Because, because that world is real to you, you are learning to invest your soul in it. And therefore, though you're spending your soul, because you're spending it for Christ, you are keeping it unto life eternal, you are saving it. It gives life a certain solemnity as well as richness, doesn't it, to think that this, uh, we have a life to spend, and uh, according to how we spend it, we're either going to keep it eternally or lose it. And to help us in those decisions, notice the lovely thing that Peter says in chapter two, And the last verse of that chapter, you were going astray like sheep, wandering anywhere as the fancy took you, where the grass seemed greenest, with no particular plan, like sheep going astray. But you are now returned unto the shepherd and overseer of your soul. What does that mean? Well, it means simply this, that, uh, before you were spending your life in a random kind of a fashion, spending it on the passing pleasures, the, uh, common ambitions, and so forth and so on, without regard for that other world. You were, in fact, losing your soul. You were in danger of losing it in the ultimate and permanent sense of, of, of, of banishment from God forever, eternally. You will now return to Christ. You say, I've got eternal life. Well, you have indeed, if you have believed him. You will never perish. Indeed, you will never perish if you're touched of Christ. But look, you're never going to perish, but you have a life to live. You've got love to invest, you've got energy to invest, you've got time to invest, you have a soul to spend. How will you spend it? Oh, it's lovely thing. There's a shepherd alongside, and he watches like an overseer watches a workman. And when I'm about to spend my love on something, he says, half a minute, half a minute. Did you really want to spend it on there? Won't last, will it? Why don't you spend it on this? Now, this is going to last eternally. He won't let me get my redeemed life and throw it away on sugar puffs and trifles, you know. The shepherd and overseer of my soul will watch my investment of my life as a cat watches a mouse, as a mother tries to guide a child spending his two sixpence pocket money, trying to persuade him not to spend it all on candy floss, but on something that will, uh, give more permanent enjoyment. And watch the under shepherd Peter at the same task? Let me quote you, in fact, one or two illustrations of how this works. I have said that our souls are made up of many elements, our life, so to speak, our soul life. There is the matter of our love, and how I use it, and how I spend it, and what I invest it on. Uh, look, if you like, uh, to verse twenty two of chapter one. Seeing you have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth, unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from the heart fervently, having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory thereof as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower falleth, but the word of the Lord abideth forever. And this is the word of good tidings which was preached unto you. Here is the shepherd and the under shepherd standing by our side to guide the investment of our love. What would you spend your love on? Some lovely things around, not a lot, no. Let's fall to thinking. All those flowers. Lovely, aren't they? Yes, says Peter, yes, did you know those, those flowers over there are going to perish one day. There's some lovely people around, cultured people around. But now wait a minute, says Peter, wait a minute, be careful. I shouldn't love the world if I were you. I should love your brethren. Oh. Do you happen to know my brethren? I was away in the southern part of Ireland not so long ago, staying a night with a friend of mine. I don't have many friends like him, I I confess that forthwith. Before he got converted, one of his main occupations was attending debutant parties. He moved in that rarefied stratosphere. He got converted. Some Christians held a party, but it was a party with a difference. They got a preacher to come along and preach the gospel at the party. He'd never heard such an absurd thing in all his life, frankly, going to a party to hear a sermon. My God spoke through the sermon, and the man eventually got converted. And then God sent him to work in a remote part, where the only Christians that he could come across for the moment were very good folks, but from the point of view of culture, they were very lowly folks. The hymn tunes they sang were an agony to him. He preferred Bach in trouets and exiats and things and recessionals. And then the doggerel they sang by way of hymns, oh wow, it was excruciating English. And the preachers. Their grammar all added. They didn't share his same interest in literature and art, and... He said, it was a tremendous blow to me, a tremendous difficulty to overcome. The vast difference in cultural level that conversion had involved me in. It's not wrong to love nice things, innit? I hope you don't take a jaundiced view of life. God describes this pathing world and all in it, he says, a beautiful grass, isn't it, what ho? The lovely grass. And those flowers, all those beautiful flowers. I don't mean those of ground stalks, I mean people, you know. There's some lovely flowers around, oh ho. Some of us are more like dandelions, but there are some very real cultured orchids around. And it's natural for us to love the nice things, isn't it? I'm not telling you it's sinful to love them either, but watch your step. For all flesh is as grass. And the nice things, all those beautiful nice things, the flowers, not the cabbages, the flowers, the lovely things, they shall perish. It's a temporary world. You be careful what you love. Lest when you've spent the last drop of love you have, you find you've spent it on something that disappears, never to be found again. You love your brethren. They're not very nice flowers, Peter. Some people would call them weeds. I know, said Peter. Yes, I know that. But you see, I'll tell you something about your brethren. That they have been born again by the incorruptible seed of the Word of God that liveth and abideth forever. And your brother in Christ may look a common old daisy, but that brother of yours is going to last eternally, and when God has finally transformed him, that daisy will be one of the permanent adornments of God's eternity. Love him! And if you've got some spare energy, love him in a very practical way. Pray for him, scrub his floors if they need to be scrubbed. Love him. And every bit of love you spend on him, you'll see it back and get it back a thousand times and more because he's got to last forever. And the flowers and the grass are gone. Or take the matter of our worship, says Peter. Let me point it out to you in chapter two. For there he talks to us about our privilege as living stones built up a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. He's talking about our worship. And worship, you will observe, does involve the highest powers of a man's mind and body and soul and spirit, doesn't it? What we think is valuable, what we think is glorious, what our hearts goes out after, to the extent we're prepared to bodily worship. In a man's worship, you will see preemptively the things he really counts bad. What do you worship? Now, says God, I want your worship. I would like to build a temple. I don't want one of stones particularly, he says, not not ordinary stones, they're rather dull things. They're the same today, yesterday, you know, as long as they are. I want living stones. Life. And I'll tell you what, if you want to know how I want my worship arranged, so to speak, and how it's done, uh, I'll give you some idea. Look, says God, I'm going to put the cornerstone here. There it is. I want you other folks to come and be fitted on the cornerstone. It's only a metaphor, isn't it, a picture. If you were building a literal temple made of stone, you would, as the architect, put the great chief cornerstone, as they did in the ancient world, there. It would set the angles, and then you would get all the lesser stones, you see, and you would abut them round here, and so they all had to be fitted round that chief cornerstone. That was the cornerstone, the chief cornerstone, because it gave the angle to the building. And in the realm of spirit, God says, now I'll tell you how I want your worship and what I want from you. Look, I put the cornerstone, that cornerstone is my son. And I want you to come and be fitted around him. In your ideas, of course, in your standards. In your objectives, in i- i- in your ideals. So, God made the chief cornerstone, and up the road came Annis. Look at this. Bit rough there. Don't do that. Ooh, listen to him now. If he isn't talking about hell, well, no, we couldn't live that. Everybody worried. What made he say that? Telling the man he can have his sins forgiven and now it's almost preposterous, they said. And look, he's, he's gone on an evangelistic mission down there to the parakans and... by those political outfit columnists. Um. Um, oh no, they said, we don't like him. This is what we like. So they had a piece of pageantals. Ooh, the pageantry was beautiful. You should have seen the vestments and the chanting and all the symbolic movements, golden pitchers and water going down at the altar, and all the, uh, palm trees are waving, and that was a massive thing. And they just got to the last day of it, and they said the nearly the final amen, and they were saying, Hosanna, save now, O Lord, we beseech thee, when a voice was heard in the courtyard, if any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. I was really livid. The impertinence of it to suggest that there's something wrong with us and we haven't got everything there is. I'll have his blood. You can't expect us cultured folks to listen to a peasant from Galilee like that. And look at that Peter. Did you ever hear him? Anyway, and they took him outside Jerusalem and put him on a cot. Well, they weren't falling out with God, of course. They were still going to worship God, so they went back to the temple. It was the preparation, you know, they were going to have a big service tomorrow, and they went back to have another service. We're going to worship God. But you see, they wanted to worship according as pleased them. Why, merely giving your wife a Christmas present or a birthday present, your standards of choice would be not first what pleases you, would it? But first what pleases your wife. You're coming to worship the living God, it will be not what pleases you, it will be what pleases him. Now, as Peter writes it, perhaps there was a tear fell on the sheep to whom coming as unto a living stone, you also. Yes, I came, I came to him, that living stone. Rejected indeed of men. Ah, the very word that Christ had used, that which Peter had objected so strongly. Why was Christ rejected? For a simple reason, as the Bible puts it, God's thoughts are not our thoughts. As far as heaven is above the earth, so far different are God's thoughts from our thoughts. It stands logically to reason, therefore, that if God's thoughts are not our thoughts, when God chooses his cornerstone, it won't be the stone we would have chosen. As I come to Christ, I shall be made aware that he's different. I want to worship God. Well, now this is what I like, says God. This is, this is, this is what I want. If you want to worship me, you must come and keep coming. And as you come, you'll find you're coming to one that's different from what you think, and you must let me change you. You must let Christ change you and fashion you and fit you around him, his ideas, his way of looking at things, his standards, his values. And when the Jews rejected Christ, what do you think God said? Did he say, well, of course, yes, I, you see, you know, as long as you do it in good faith, every man has his own taste, you know, one man does it one way, one another, so it doesn't really matter as long as you're sincere. And they don't like Jesus, well, never mind, I let them come their way. Well, no, indeed, says God, I give you chance to repent. But if you don't repent, come and be built on this great cornerstone. Thank you. I don't want your temple, and I shall turn it over until not one stone is left on another. I say again, our worship is the very heart of our life. Oh, my good brother, find out what God wants. Keep coming to Christ, shall we not? Honestly prepared to have our ideas changed, to see where Christ is different from what we are, constantly to be changed, so that we might constantly be built up to him and consequently offer sacrifices that are pleasing to God. Don't let s- from ignorance or self-will spend the most intimate, the deepest energies of our mind and soul and heart on worship, only to find, because we have rejected God's choice, God doesn't want it. Oh, if your baby child of six years old came and brought you a birthday present, and it was a jug from Woolworths. You would say behind the scenes, look at that hideous looking object. Wow. I put it there on on the mantelpiece. Hidious looking thing. Ah, but the child didn't know any better. And you take the will for the deed, don't you? And you say, yes, well, the child didn't know any better. Uh, um, he wanted to please me. He just didn't understand my tastes. But if your grown up son, for your Christmas present, presents you with a Beatles record when you've told him fifty thousand times you cannot stick the stuff, you don't find it funny, do you? God wants us to be grown up sons, and he's told us what he wants. There will come a point if we were to persist in in giving what he doesn't want, he'll turn around and say, I don't want it. Investing life. It's half past eight, it's half past seven. That's merciful. I shall be about to finish. My last five minutes will be nonsense. Well, I'm going to mention those words of Peter to Christian women. They form a good illustration, don't they, of the basic principle that we are considering. And when men talk about women, it tends to be sometimes a little bit nonsensical, and when rusty old bachelors talk about it, they know nothing about it anyway, so it's bound to be nonsense. Having said that, just let me take it as an illustration of, uh, principle. Perhaps if I confine myself to the ancient world, uh, perhaps I might just know one or two things about the ancient world anyway. And writing to these dear women in the ancient world, he said, some of you good women, you've got a trouble, haven't you? You've got a very big problem. Your husbands are not converted. They don't obey the word. Now, says Peter, in his fatherly way, try and behave in a way that will bring your husbands to Christ. And, uh, don't let your adorning be this and that and the other, but let it be chaste. I don't know whether Peter knew what he was talking about. I'm talking about the ancient world, you see, and the Greek-speaking part of the ancient world. They didn't have quite the same manners, you know, as Christians do. Men married their wives to look after the house in those days. Today they get one. They went out to business dinner parties, there were plenty of women there, but they never took their wives. Do you see? You get the point, don't you? You Christian wisen- women here present, if you'd have been living in those Greek cities, your husband went to his firm's dinner, you wouldn't go. There'd be plenty of women there, one each. And the women that would be at the dinner, they didn't always trouble to dress in a chaste kind of fashion, you know, that would have made them too dull, wouldn't it? What? And, uh, these are ancient women, oh, don't get the wrong impression, ancient women. I fancy some of the ancient women might have said to Peter, if they did say it to Peter. You know, if we're going to listen to you, we shan't stand a chance of keeping our husband's attention compared with those birds down in the office. That's a very big human problem. And the competition was fierce. Well, says Peter, you'll have to face that very practical problem. And in Christ's name, I'm asking you to dress in a chaste fashion. You say that will put you behind the times and you'll fall behind in the competition? Then I ask you to remember what world are you living for? It's not matter on the negative side merely, is it, of being chaste. But on the positive side of getting our proportions right. For the true adornment is adornment of character, which in the sight of God is of a great price. God asks nobody to dress in a dowdy fashion. God has his idea of clothes, you know. So did Christ. He called attention to it on occasion. He said, you know, Solomon didn't know how to dress. Well, he thought he did. Got himself up there in robes and what have you. Well, that really is it. That's God's idea of dress. Beautiful, colorful, magnificent. God is not asking anybody to look thin, but he is asking them please to look chaste. And when the ancient women at the dinner parties wore their curious length skirts and their see-throughs, they were cheating, weren't they? We'll have to decide, says Peter, oh God help you, to dress for that world, for that approval, by those standards, and in the sight of God, it is of an exceeding great price. Is Christ interested in how we dress and what we spend, or he is indeed. It's part of our life, isn't it? Part of our creative activity. We express ourselves here. God isn't asking anybody to frustrate his natural artistic abilities, but he is saying, use them in the light of God's standard and to please God. Do like those women did. What hope had they? They went, ah. They hoped in God. I think this perilous in your nonsense, I just want to see, because I say again, I'm a rusty old bachelor, and what can I possibly know about it anyway? But I dimly perceive a kind of a principle in this matter of the salvation of our souls. There is this other world, and if we are born again, we are born again unto this living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we are resident aliens, says Peter, we are on the move and on the march. The time of our sojourning here is to be spent in fear. Because God is critical of the way we live. He had a right to be critical, hasn't he? He bought our lives back from their empty way of living by such expensive cost as the precious blood of Christ. God has been waiting centuries, says Peter, for your life. The Lamb who redeemed you was foreknown before the foundation of the world. Well, then why wasn't he manifested as soon as Adam sinned? No, says God, I was waiting for you. He was manifested this last time for you. The God of eternity that's redeemed our lives at such in- incalculable cost has been waiting for those lives for eternity, and here they are, a few brief months and years, and we spend them. And God, who has invested so much in them, is critical of the way we spend. Come, says Peter. Take it seriously. We are pilgrims on the move, and there's a glory and an inheritance in front of us. Do you hope, have you been born again to that glorious hope? You started on pilgrimage? Oh, thank God. You've been redeemed? That's marvelous. And now, says Pete, I want, please, if you'll take your coats off, roll up your sleeves and do a bit of, uh, hard work. I want you to gird up the loins of your mind, a synonym for taking off your jackets and rolling your sleeves up, and hope perfectly. Whatever does he mean? Oh well, you see, just like faith has to be tried and purified, so Christian hope has to be perfected. It's possible to our, for us to hope in a half-hearted kind of a fashion, and not to work out our hope and perfect our hope. So, says Peter, I want you now to do a bit of hard work. Off come your mental jackets, up go your sleeves, and hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you at the coming. Let me try and illustrate it. You come to me and say, where are you going to spend your summer holidays? Oh, I say, um, maybe where? Shall we say now, Costa Brava. Everybody goes to Costa Brava. Um, Costa Brava. I'm hoping to spend my holidays in Costa Brava. I see, yes. Mm-hmm. How are you going? On a flight. Oh, yes. Mm-hmm. Made any arrangements? Not yet. When you going? July. I see. Um, when you're going, uh, uh, uh, what time are you leaving? Well, I hope you gets the ten o'clock plane from Heathrow. I see, yes, yes, yes. Uh, July, July fifteenth. would make it. July the fourteenth, nine o'clock in the evening, you come around and say, oh, going on holiday tomorrow? Oh, I hope so, yes. Packed? Well, not yet, no. Oh. Well, I got a little bit done, but not really yet. I see. And you better pull up your socks and, uh, get up the, I mean, get up the lungs of your mind a little bit and, uh, uh, take this hope seriously. Oh, plenty of time yet. Don't want to take these things too seriously, you know, got to live. Comes tomorrow. You're in the back garden. I thought you were going to, uh, Costa Brava on the ten o'clock plane. Well, I hope so. But you'll never get it. Oh, there's these carrots to see through. I've got to hit the garden. I'm not really hoping to go to Costa Brava at all, I would. For if my hope is anything more than a vague wish, hoping perfectly will mean working it out. What would you have said to an Israelite if you had come across him in Egypt forty five years after Moses had left and said, oh boy, you going to the Promised Land? He said, oh yes, I hope to be there one day. Rather late, aren't you? And it will come down to this, how real the eternity is. And the more real it is, the more solid my hope, the more practical will be my vigorous thinking in thinking out the implications of that hope and investing my life accordingly.