Title:  1 Peter 1 – Walk by Faith

By:  Dan Pancake

Intro

Turn your Bibles to 1 Peter 1.  I had one message that I still wanted to continue to bring about Walking by Faith.  So, tonight we are going to Walk by Faith with Peter a little bit in 1 Peter 1.  It is a wonderful scripture.  I know the scripture itself will be a blessing to you. So, let’s read it.

1 Peter 1:

¹ Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia,

² Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.

³ 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,

⁴ To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,

⁵ Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

⁶ Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:

⁷ That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:

⁸ Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:

⁹ Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.

¹⁰ Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you:

¹¹ Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.

¹² Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister 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.

I read that quickly.  I didn’t stop and give you any commentary as we went.  We will try to do that as we go.  I will tell you, that is some wonderful scripture.  Just to begin at the beginning; of course, this is Peter introducing his book.  Peter was writing at a time when the church was in a lot of distress.  Being a Christian has always been hard.  It was extremely hard in the first century of the church and in the first century, period.  As I said before, it is never easy being a Christian.  A lot of times, it is very difficult.  A lot of Christians, in the first century had to give their lives for their faith in Jesus Christ.

Peter is writing to these individuals that are under persecution.  For a while in the first century, the church got along fine with the government.  The government did not bother them much.  However, as the church grew, it became more of a problem to the Roman government.  So, the government of Rome began to pressure on the church.  Even the government in the city of Jerusalem got involved in the early church persecution.  When they persecuted Stephen and killed him with stones, it dispersed the church all over the place.  Peter is writing to some of those people who scattered abroad.  Why did they scatter?  Well, it scared them to death when one of the leaders—Stephen was a deacon.  He was one of the leaders of the church.  He was stoned to death in the streets of Jerusalem.  They scattered all over the place.  They went everywhere.  As they went, they carried the gospel.  As they carried the gospel, like a fire, they spread it everywhere.  So, Peter is writing to them.  Now where he is writing, nobody knows exactly where this letter is going.  Some say he is writing this letter to Rome.  He says Babylon back in chapter five, but Babylon wasn’t really in existence at that particular time so maybe to Rome.

Now he is writing these words.  He begins with some familiar words we understand.  Peter, he is an apostle.  What is an apostle?  Caught you off-guard.  Didn’t I?  What is an Apostle?  One of the requirements of being an Apostle is that you had to physically see Jesus Christ.  How many Apostles are there?  Well, there are twelve.  Paul took the place of Judas Iscariot as an Apostle of Jesus Christ.  That is someone who is a representative of the Lord.  It is kind of like the word ambassador if you want to think of it like that.  So, Peter is an Apostle of Jesus Christ.  He is going to these scattered people; I told you about.  He is writing to these different places, in the provinces of Rome.  He is saying to the church; so, we know in verse two that he is writing to the church.  Elect—what does that mean?  Saved?  Elect means somebody who is chosen by God.  That means you have been chosen by God.  He says, how are you elected?

1 Peter 1:2

² Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.

How did you come to salvation?  Through the sanctification of the Spirit.  That means the Spirit separated you on the journey of life.  He hunted you down and found you.  He convicted you of sin.  Then you were obedient to the knowledge that you had about the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and you were saved.  He adds these words at the end.  All of these people generally added these words, “Grace and peace be multiplied to you.”  Did you ever notice that he never puts peace before Grace.  It is always Grace before peace.  You will read that all through the book.  That may be just the common way they wrote this.  However, Grace does come before peace.  There is no peace without it.

Now we are getting into what I want to talk about.  Aren’t you glad we are getting into the text of the message.  He is talking about the blessings of faith.  The blessings of living your life and knowing Jesus Christ as your Savior and having faith in Him.  Have you got faith in the Lord tonight?  Amen!  I am glad you do.

1 Peter 1:3-12

In this little area here, verses 3-12; I am going to talk about three things.  I am going to talk about the fact that faith is timeless.  I am going to say that faith has to be tested.  At the end of this thing, as soon as I find my paper, I will tell you what it is.  The end of our faith.  We are going to look at the end of our faith.

So, as we begin; faith is timeless.  It really is.  Faith, although it is tested, it is timeless.  It is something we carry with us.  He tells us in 1 Corinthians, that in the end there are going to be three things that will remain in heaven:

Faith

Hope

Love

Remember that?  Why do we need faith when we get to heaven?  It is not that we need faith.  We are going to be where the culmination of our faith has brought us.  To the kingdom of glory in the presence of the Lord, Jesus Christ.  The question about faith though, is not whether you have faith.  Everybody has faith in something.  Right?  An atheist has faith.  You have to have a lot of faith to be an atheist, by the way.  You have to be a strong believer to believe that everything that is here happened by accident.  Don’t you?  Amen!  That would be one of the strongest faiths in the world.  However, it is a meaningless faith because it is all the time they are trying to believe that it is an accident.  All they are really trying to do is deny the existence of God.  If they can deny the existence of God then they don’t owe God anything.  The fact of the matter is; as hard as they try to deny God on every hand, the world proves He’s here.  The Word proves He’s here.  The changed lives that are living for Jesus Christ today proves that Jesus is real.  God is real.  So, they have a lot of faith.  They have a lot of faith in humanism.  I don’t have a lot of faith in humans.  How about you?  I have some confidence in some of them.  If you put faith in somebody; they are going to let you down.  You can put a little confidence in them and realize from time to time they are going to mess up.  How come?  Cause we are human.  Aren’t we all subject to sin and failure?  Amen!  We really are.  You don’t really need me to tell you that.  Do you?

I love the little children.  All of us do.  When they are around, they are so sweet to be around.  I will tell you; you don’t have to teach them how to lie.  You don’t have to teach them how to steal.  You don’t have to teach them how to hide the cookies.  You don’t have to teach them any of that stuff.  They figure that out by themselves.  Why?  Because within us is the capability of committing sin.

So, the atheist has to have a lot of faith.  There are lot of other people in the world that has faith in different things.  Some people have faith in their abilities.

I am a big football fan.  I don’t know if you are or not.  My team won the state championship in high school.  My team won the national championship in college this year.  I am in pretty good shape this year.  Trump said, I was going to get tired of winning.  I’m not tired of winning at all.

Some people have a lot of faith in their ability.  If you don’t think some of these players don’t then just watch them when they do something good.  They just jump up and down, like the Lord just blessed them real good.  A lot of folks have a lot of faith in their own skills which is good to some degree.  However, anybody is going to fail.  Friends, some people have a lot of faith in their friends.  …Family, Careers and even in themselves.

Genuine faith is a faith or a belief that God is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.  Right?  Hebrews 11:6. 

Hebrews 11:6

⁶ But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

That is what faith does.  It tells us for sure that God is… That is what our faith proves.  Genuine faith in Christ pays off in times of trouble in our life.  Amen!  It really does.  It is wonderful to have faith in the good days.  We should have faith all the time.  I tell you it is really wonderful when you know God is there no matter what.  All of us have been through things.  We have all had a gut puncher here just recently.  It’s reminded us again of the importance of faith, the importance of trusting God, no matter what.  He is always there for us.  Our faith will get us through.  Our faith anchored in Jesus Christ is really the only way to get us through a storm.  Isn’t it?

Do you remember the disciples and Jesus when He was on the boat that night or that time when He was asleep in the ship?  Do you remember reading about that?  Jesus is asleep.  That must be something unreal.  Jesus, He surely got tired.  You don’t read much about where He ever slept.  That is the only time that I can remember reading about where He slept.  He is asleep in the boat.  So, He must have been really exhausted.  Right?  These guys, these fishermen were used to the Sea of Galilee.  They are used to what the Sea of Galilee does.  They say when the Sea of Galilee gets on a boil, it is scary.  The waves get high and they think they are going to die.  So, all these guys in the ship think they are going to die and they wake Him up.  Do you know what He says?  Why are you so fearful?  Don’t you have any faith?  What did He mean by that?  He meant that if they really believe that He is Almighty God; do you think for a moment that the ship could sink?  Amen!  There is no way.  Right?  He stands up of course, and stills the water.  Then they say, “What manner of man is this…”  Here is what they are saying.  I thought He was the Messiah, but He is far more than anything I ever dreamed He was.  Haven’t you and I come to times in our lives with our little bitty faith; we got a hold of God and God did something amazing.  Like this week for you Karen.  God does something amazing and you say, I know He’s wonderful.  I just didn’t know He was that wonderful.  I know He is powerful.  I just didn’t know He was that powerful.  I didn’t know He was working there.  I didn’t know what He was doing.  Aren’t you glad we don’t know what He is doing.  We might interfere with it if we knew what He was doing.  Since we don’t know what He is doing; we just praise His Holy, Glorious name.

So, we have this faith.  So, we have this faith that is wonderful.  He says about three different things about our faith here for us.  I will go through these pretty quickly in verses 3-5.

1 Peter 1:3-5

³ 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,

⁴ To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,

⁵ Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

First of all, he tells us that our faith in Jesus Christ will not fade away.  I am glad that it won’t.  When you have something that fades away, that means it gets worse as time goes on.  Our faith doesn’t get worse as time goes by.  What does it do?  It gets stronger.  It gets better.  It becomes more real.  When we first get saved, we start talking about faith.  We try to exercise faith.

I have to be honest with you.  I have been on the road a good while.  I feel like my faith is so weak sometimes.  Do you feel that way?  I’m glad it’s there, and I know who it’s in.  You see, where my faith gets weak is not that I don’t believe God.  It’s not that I don’t believe that God can do anything He wants to do.  It’s that I don’t always believe in Dan.  I don’t always believe that Dan can trust God the way I ought to trust God.  I am not one of these Pentecostal preachers that says that if you have enough faith, you can do this or that.  I’m not that.  That is not what Jesus meant when He said if you have enough faith, you can move mountains.  All He is simply saying is that if you have enough faith, God will move the obstacles in your life.  I want to tell you that when I look at Dan, I realize how weak I am.  I tell you, in times of tremendous weakness in my life and in your life; I found that faith in Jesus Christ to be the thing that got me through.  That is what Peter is saying.  My faith gets me through.  He tells us if we have faith, it will not fade away.  You have a scripture there before you.  I am going to read it for you.

Matthew 6:19

¹⁹ Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

I wish we would pay more attention to that part of that verse.  Because we lay up a whole lot of junk that somebody is going to have to throw away when we die.  That is good preaching, Dan.  That is just the truth.

I have teased the kids.  I get some kind of junk and I say, this is going straight to the basement so you guys can take care of this later.  I have good news for you kids.  I cleaned up the basement and I painted it here this last two or three weeks.  So, I have to start all over again.

Listen.  We gather up the wrong things.  We put our attention on the wrong things.  We lay up too many things that don’t mean anything in life.  Are you with me tonight.  Too many things…  We like a lot of things.  I am a man.  I like things.  I like guns, motorcycles, cars, trucks.  I am not so much on clothes.  I like good stuff.  We lay up too much stuff.  Jesus said, don’t lay up those things on earth where moth and rust doth corrupt.  If it is worth anything, thieves may break through and steal.

Do you remember me telling you the story about the lady that wouldn’t go to church with her husband.  Her husband was a very faithful member of the church.  However, she wouldn’t go because she was scared that somebody was going to come and steal all their stuff while they were gone to church.  There had been a lot of thieveries in their neighborhood.  She was afraid they were going to take everything she had.  Then he died quickly.  She said, “Will you take me to church?”  I said, “Sure, but aren’t you worried that somebody is going to steal your stuff?”  She said, “I don’t care about that stuff.”  What happened?  She realized that her real treasure wasn’t in that old house.  Part of her real treasure had already gone to heaven.  She wanted to go to be with him, where he was.

Matthew 6:19 & 20

¹⁹ Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

¹⁹ Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

How do you lay up treasures in heaven?  How can you make investments in heaven?  Witness to your family.  How do you make those investments in heaven?  Live for Jesus Christ every day.  I think that is a shortened way to say what you just said.  Why?  Why do lay up treasures in heaven?  Why are they laid up in this place called heaven?  Why not lay them up here where everybody can admire them with you?  That is where we are going to be forever.

Isn’t it funny though.  I mean you buy something and you think, “Man, this is great!”  Like a new car.  Finally, you get that thing paid off.  What is it worth when you get it paid for?  You think when you get that, everybody is going to love this car.  Maybe they do.  I don’t know.  After, ten or twelve years, everybody says, “Why are you driving that old Jalopy?”  Treasures on this earth are meaningless.  Lay up yourself treasures in heaven.  How do you do that?  What is the avenue to laying them up there.  Well, it is faith.  We lay them there by faith.  I am saying faith is our connection to this glorious place that you and I call heaven.  We are going to go there when this life is over.  We are going there.  That is our connection.  That is our life source.  Our Lord Jesus Christ through faith, gives us life.  He gives us hope.  He gives us joy.  He gives us love.  He gives us determination to live.  He gives us a life worthwhile.

I finished this verse.  I didn’t mean to spend all this time.  The last part of that…

Matthew 6:21

21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Treasures.  I know we get all messed on this stuff.  I met a lot of Christians through the years that are all messed up on what is really important and what is not.  Haven’t you?  We have.  If we set our faith on the things of this world, then we have a perishing faith.  We have something that is not going to last.  So, our faith will not fade over a period of time.  Our faith is in heaven.

Part B of this thing says, our faith is incorruptible.  What does that mean?  That means it can’t be tarnished.  Nothing in this world can touch it.  Do you know how Jesus—let me take a little side road here for a minute.  Okay?

Leper

Do you know how Jesus when He was on the earth and He would come up to a leper?  Travis talked about this.  I don’t know if it was in the book, he talked about it, or if he said something about it here one night.   Do you know how—do you know how among the lepers; nobody would ever touch a leper because they were scared to death.  Leprosy was very contagious.  Nobody could touch them.  So, when this leper came to Jesus, and said, “Lord, if you want to, you can make me whole.”  Do you remember that story?  Jesus touched him.  Now, why did He do that?  Because what was in Jesus was way stronger than whatever that guy had.  Amen!  His power to heal was far beyond this guy’s power of leprosy.  “I want to.” He says.  “Be healed.”  Aren’t you glad we have a God in heaven.

How can our faith be incorruptible.  It is because it is not in the hands of man.  When we look at men, I got a statement in here somewhere that says, Absolute Power corrupts absolutely.”  Someone said that I think Walter Martin is the guy that gets credited with that.  Absolute power corrupts Absolutely.  I think that is true.  I think that almost any individual in this world with soul power, absolute power; that means all the power gathered within themselves becomes a monster, generally.  Even if they look okay on the outside; on the inside they are plotting ways to rule, take care of, control other people with what they have got.

How come our faith is not like that?  Because our faith is not placed in the hands of mortal men that get corrupted by the things of life.  Nothing in this world can corrupt our Lord Jesus Christ.  He doesn’t want anything from this world.  Just you!  He wants you!  Isn’t that an amazing thing.  Nobody in the world may want you, but God wants you.  Isn’t that something.  I’m telling you.

Do you remember when you were little, your mom used to say to you, “Go, wash behind your ears. Go get that dirt off your neck.”  God loves us just like we are.  I wished I could have known that when I was a kid.  I could have told mom off.  God wants me like I am.

He can’t be corrupted.  He has no pride.  He has no ego.  He has no desire for the things of this life.  He made everything that is here that is worth having.  Amen!  He made it all.  Anytime He wants to He can make it all again with just the breath of His mouth.  So, He can’t be corrupted.  I am glad our faith is incorruptible.  Incorruptible, undefiled and then he says it fadeth not away.  It just doesn’t go away.  It is timeless.  I am going to go to heaven.  Are you going?  The same faith that I had that believed that Jesus Christ could save me will be the faith I have about Him, with Him, for Him in heaven.  The same thing.  Only I will be face to face.  The wonderful thing about faith is that fatih does not have to see the object to believe.  Right?  That is what faith means.  Paul says in the book of Romans, chapter eight; if you see it, why do you hope for?  In other words, if you have your faith in things that you can lay hold of then why would you be putting hope in that?  Why would you want something like that to come to your life later on?  Faith and hope work together.  Hope says God will do what He says He will do.  Faith says, I believe what He said about it.  Amen!

Faith Tested

So, your faith will be tested.  You know that is true.  Your faith is going to be tested.  It probably has been tested.  If you are a new Christian, if you haven’t had a big test of faith yet; you will have.  I promise you that you will have.  Somewhere it will come.  Then as you go down the journey of life, there will be all kinds of them.

I will tell you what happens to you as you get older.  You can’t hear anything.  You can’t see anything.  So, very little bothers you.  I threw that in for nothing.  That has nothing to do with the Bible.

Here is what happens.  As you get older, your faith gets tested too, in different ways.  As you are younger your faith gets tested by the things that are going on in your life.  It might be a sickness.  It might be a financial need, or a relationship problem.  As you get older, some of those things kind of go away.  You don’t think about them very much.  I will tell you.  The tests are still there.  The tests of your faith is to stay committed and engaged to the end of the journey.  Did you guys hear me?  Those of us that have been here a while, we need to stay engaged, stay committed, stay committed to Jesus Christ and continue to serve Him to the best of our ability, till the moment that we go home to be with God.  Amen!

Alright, so our faith will be tested.  Why?  Why is faith tested.  Anything of any value has to be tested somewhere along the way.  I will tell you why your faith is tested.  It is because it is valuable.  It is very valuable.  As a matter of fact, Peter in this text we are talking about; he starts thinking about a goldsmith.  So, let’s look at these verses.

1 Peter 1:6 & 7

⁶ Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:

⁷ That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:

He is thinking about a goldsmith.  I have never owned anything much with gold.  I might have had a ring or something with some gold in it, but that’s about it.  I guess some people have really had some experience with gold.  Not me.  I don’t know anything about it.  I have had experience with lead—a lot of lead.

Years ago, when I worked at National Mines; I worked in an electric shop for a little while and I used to have to pour the little lead seal that went around the headlights.  They had to be explosion proof because they went in these mines.  No electricity could get through that thing.  So, they would pour a lead seal.  Well, that was my job.  I had a little mold.  I would heat that lead up.  As I would heat that lead, as I would heat it; it would begin to melt.  Then some ugly stuff would come to the top and float around on the top.  I would have to take that little ole thing and scoop it off.  I would try to get as pure lead as I possibly could and then I would pour that seal.

I understand—as I said, I have never worked with gold—but I know they do very much the same thing.  They heat gold and the more heat you put on it the finer it gets.  As you heat gold, like every other precious metal that is heated there will be dross, or things in it that are not gold.  So, they need scrapped off and done away with. As that happens over a period of time, you will get pure gold.  Now the goldsmith knows that they have got pure gold when they can look into that gold and see their reflection coming back.

The Lord tries our faith.  When He tries our faith what happens is that He burning away all these different things we don’t need in our life.  He takes them away one by one.  He knows He has pure faith when He looks into our lives and He sees His own reflection.  You got it?  It is a great example.  Isn’t it? 

So, your faith is valuable.  Your faith is probably the most valuable thing that you have in your life; your faith in Jesus Christ.  It is also revealing.  Your faith reveals some things.

In verse seven, it tells us that faith will help us to be found unto the praise of His glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.  When we appear in the presence of the Lord—I don’t know—somebody said we are going to hear Him say, “well done.”  We read that in the book of Matthew.  Well done, my good and faithful servant.  You have been faithful over few things I will make you ruler over many.  You remember that.  Right?  I don’t know that we will hear the words “well done.”  I don’t have any idea.  What I do want to hear is “I love you.  You are my child.  You are home.  Just your being here brings glory to my name.”  isn’t that an amazing thing when you think about it?

Workmanship

The book of Ephesians tells us that you and I are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works.  What does that mean?  You are a work of art.  That is exactly what that word means—a work of art.  Did you know that?  Somebody said, you are a piece of work, but I am saying, you are a work of art; according to the Bible.  Are you still here? 

Not only is your faith revealing but your faith is centered in the love of Christ.  That is important, because faith that is not centered in Christ is not faith at all.  It is meaningless.

I have automobiles at home, and I have an old truck at home.  I go over sometimes.  I let it set there two weeks or sometimes three weeks before I start it.  It depends on whether I have to go to Lowes and get wood or not.  Right?  So, I go out to start that truck and sometimes I go out there and sure enough it fires right up.  I thought, I knew it would.  Sometimes I would go out there and hit that key and click, click, click.  I thought you dirty rascal you.  I had faith in the wrong thing.  I should have had a good battery.

My faith is not, your faith, our faith is not in the things of life.  Do you know the Lord never fails.  He never fails.  He never takes a moment off.  You are never—I want you to listen to me.  I don’t know what is going on in your life, you are never for a second out of His sight.  Never.  He takes good care of you.  He is watching over you.  When you go down the journey of life, where you go; you think I made plans, I went this direction.  I want you to know that probably the Lord is directing your heart and leading you where you need to go.  The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.  Those that are otherwise cannot be…  So, in your lifetime, as you are living for Jesus Christ, He is guiding you down the journey of life.

We think that things that happen to us by accident; you might be in a little accidental wreck.  I was in one some time back.  A lady hit me in the backend and oh she was scared to death.  She was scared what her husband was going to say.  She was scared what I was going to say because she hit me.  I calmed her down and said, it’s just cars.  It’s nothing.  Don’t worry about it.  She said our insurance will take care of it.  I said, I am not worried about it.  What you need to do honey, is trust Jesus Christ, look unto Him.  She was so scared that I don’t know if I made any impact on her or not.  I just took it as one of those events that God wanted me to talk to that little girl about her soul that morning.  I did.  I talked to the police officer about his soul for a moment or two as well.  Not a lot, just a little bit.

Now, the last part of this.  The end of our faith, the result of our faith.  Listen to what he says here.

1 Peter 1:9

⁹ Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.

We say, we got saved a long time ago.  No.  You got the down payment on salvation.  The full payment on your salvation comes the moment you leave this world and enter His presence in heaven.  If you take your first breath of heavenly air, you will realize how wonderful salvation really was.  You will get to be in that place where Jesus is.  You will get to live with Him for all eternity, to be with family members that have gone on before, to live in a place where there is no sin, no heart ache, no sadness, no sickness, no funeral directors; at least not employed.  Amen!

Now he talks about the prophets looking into this thing and salvation wondering what was going on and searching what time.  It makes a reference to Isaiah 53, in verse 11; talks about the sufferings of Christ.  Then it says in verse 12, that it is something so wonderful, salvation, your salvation is so wonderful that even the angels desire to look in…

Closing

Now here these angels.  They know a lot of stuff.  They have seen a lot of things in their lifetime.  I mean they were there when God created the earth to begin with.  They were there when God created the first man and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.  Wouldn’t that have been something to see?  They were there when God destroyed the earth by water.  They were there when Jesus Christ was born.  Wouldn’t you like to have seen that?  They were there when Jesus walked the earth and did all the miracles that He did.  They were there the day Jesus died on the cross.  They were there the day that He arose from the dead.  They saw a lot of stuff.  However, the thing they would really like to look into further is this wonderful thing you and I have, which is called salvation.  Why?  They have a relationship with God.  It is not like yours or mine.  They are angels.  They are ministering spirits.  You are a child of God.  We ought to make more of that.  No. no. no.  We shouldn’t beat anybody over the head with the fact that we are a child of God.  However, man we ought to be deeply grateful and thankful that God saved our souls.  We are special.

Dolly said this a little while ago.  We are special.  He says in Titus 2 that we are a peculiar people.  That does not mean weird.  That means a people of His own choosing.  That is exactly what that means.  A people zealous of good works.  We are His people.  We are His children.  Hey!  Are you walking by faith?  Let’s walk by faith all year.  What do you say?  Amen!  We do that one step at a time.  Don’t we?

Come and pray.