Our Scripture reading this morning is 1 Peter
5, 6-14.
1
Peter 5, 6-14.
God of all grace, he has called us
unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after
he has suffered a while.
Make ye perfect, establish, strengthen, settle ye, to
whom be glory and dominion for ever and
ever.
Amen.
By Sylvanus, a faithful brother unto you, as
I suppose, I have written briefly exhorting and
testifying that this is the true grace of
God in which you stand.
The Church that is at Babylon, selected together
with you, will be with you, and so
doth Mark our son, will choose one another
with a kiss of love.
Peace be with you all that are in
Christ Jesus.
Amen.
It is difficult for those of us who
were born into and brought up in Christian
homes, who were taught the gospel from earliest
years, and who while very young received Christ
as a personal Savior, to have any real
concept of the grace of God.
For while no person, apart from a consciousness
of his own sin and apart from a
recognition of his own lostness, will trust Christ
for his salvation, yet the concept of a
child, of what it is to be lost,
falls far or short of that which is
the actual experience of the faith.
Those whom God has brought through himself in
maturing years, perhaps out of a life of
sin and degradation, can more adequately conceive of
the infinite grace of God that sought them
when they were altogether lost, that cleansed them
from their filth of sin and brought them
into the family of God.
Apart from the word of God, no individual
can adequately understand the grace of God.
Because the man's soul of chastity was brought
to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ in
maturing years, from a life of hatred and
animosity against Christ, Paul could never get away
from the magnitude of the grace of God's
vision.
He stood in utter awe that God would
save such a rebel, such an enemy as
Paul of Tarsus, and make him Paul the
Apostle.
The Apostle Peter had a similar concept of
the grace of God, for the Lord Jesus
had appeared to him when he was engaged
in successful business enterprise, and had conferred upon
him the high calling of an Apostle of
Jesus Christ, not because of what he was
but in spite of what he was.
And the Apostle Peter, no less than the
Apostle Paul, magnified the grace of God.
As the Apostle Peter has been exercising his
responsibilities as a shepherd over the sheep, he
has been instructing them concerning the place that
sufferings have in the life of God's children.
And as Peter comes to the concluding words
in the first epistle which he as a
shepherd wrote to his sheep, he is again
found magnifying the grace of God and the
God of all grace.
We're in those verses through which we would
direct your attention this morning.
Verses 10 to the conclusion of chapter 5
of 1 Peter, we find Peter writing, "...the
God of all grace, who hath called us
unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after
that he hath suffered a while, making perfect,
established, strengthened, and subdued the king of glory
and dominion for ever and ever."
And the Apostle Peter emphasizes once again that
the God under whom he serves as a
shepherd is a God of all grace.
We find a remarkable portrayal of the grace
of God found from the pen of the
psalmist in Psalm 103, beginning at verse 8.
The psalmist writes, "...the Lord is merciful and
gracious."
Slow to anger and plenty in mercy.
And when in the Old Testament you read
the word mercy, you have a counterpart of
the New Testament word grace.
And David is here extolling the God of
all grace, a God who is merciful and
gracious, a God whose grace manifests itself in
patience, for he is slow to anger and
plenty in mercy.
He will not always try, neither will he
keep his anger for ever, for God would
find a way to pour out his displeasure
upon sin on a substitute for the sinner.
The psalmist says further in verse 10, "...he
hath not dealt with us after our sins,
nor rewarded us according to our iniquities."
And here is the biblical concept of grace,
that God sets aside what a sinner deserves
in order to give that sinner what he
could never deserve.
For the sinner, because of his nature and
because of his actions, deserves condemnation, deserves judgment,
deserves punishment, deserves death, deserves to be separated
from God.
And if God gave the sinner only a
small fraction of what he deserves, that sinner
would be lost forever.
But the psalmist says, "...God hath not dealt
with us after our sins, nor rewarded us
according to our iniquities."
What is the alternative to what we deserve?
The grace of God.
"...For as the heaven is high above the
earth, so great is his mercy, or grace
to them that fear him."
Now, does God's grace manifest itself toward the
sinners?
Verse 12 tells us, "...as far as the
east is from the west, so far hath
he removed our transgressions from us."
From infinity to the east, until infinity to
the west, so far has God separated the
sinner from his sin.
Why would God deal in grace with sinners?
Verse 13 tells us, "...like as a father
pities his children, so the Lord pities them
that fear him."
Pity, in the Old Testament, is an expression
of love, an expression of affection, and as
a father loves his children, no matter how
erring they may be.
So God loves those whom he has created,
and he has provided for them in grace,
and grace provides for the removal of sins,
the forgiveness of sins.
The psalmist, you see, extols the God of
all grace.
The Apostle Paul, in writing to the Romans
in the 5th chapter and the 20th verse,
emphasizes the same fact as at the conclusion
of the verse he says, "...where sin abounded,
grace would much more abound."
Or, to draw the contrast, Paul writes that
where sin abounded, grace superabounded, and the superabounding
grace of God has flowed out the sinner
to meet their needs.
Our God is the God of all grace.
But going back to Peter's statement in 1
Peter 5, you find that after Peter emphasizes
this character, this quality of God, that he
is the God of all grace, he underscores
what God in grace has done for us.
He has called us unto his eternal glory.
Called us unto his eternal glory.
I cannot escape a contrast that was evidently
in the Apostle's mind when he wrote these
words.
If you turn with me to the 19th
chapter of the book of Exodus, at least
you will see this contrast, too.
In the 19th chapter of the book of
Exodus, the children of Israel have expressed a
willingness to submit to the rule of God
over them, and they have chosen to submit
to the authority of the law that God
revealed.
Now, in the 9th verse, God made it
known to Moses that he was going to
take Moses up to the mount, and there
reveal himself in the law to Moses, and
reveal the law through Moses to the children
of Israel.
But in the 11th verse, we have some
specific instructions.
God said, Be ready again the third day,
for the third day the Lord will come
down in the sight of all the people
upon Mount Sinai.
And thou shalt set bounds unto the people
round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves that
ye go not up into the mount, or
touch the border of it.
Whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put
to death.
There shall not an hand touch it, but
he shall surely be stoned or shot through.
Whether it be beast or man, it shall
not leave.
When the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come
up to the mount."
And in these restrictions, we see that God
was unapproachable.
Man's sin had put such a barrier between
God and man that man could not come
into the presence of God.
The curse because of Adam's sin had come
upon creation, and all creation was cursed.
And a beast of the field, even though
that beast was not guilty of volitional sin,
was under the curse.
And because that beast was under the curse,
the beast was no more approachable to God
than was sinful man.
They were to set bounds around the base
of the mount lest one should approach into
the presence of God, and should one approach
God, he was to be executed because there
was a barrier between a holy, righteous God
and man and beast and creation that was
under the curse.
We find this emphasized again in the 9th
chapter of the Epistles to the Hebrews, Hebrews
chapter 9.
The apostle writing concerning the temple or the
sanctuary in the Old Testament, writes to emphasize
the fact that God is unapproachable and that
no man can come into his presence.
In 9.1 we read, "...the first covenant
also had ordinances of divine service and a
worldly sanctuary.
For there was a tabernacle made, the first,
wherein was a candlestick and the table and
the showbread which is called the sanctuary."
That's the holy place in the tabernacle.
Then he says, "...after the second veil, the
tabernacle which is called the holiest of all,
which had the golden censer and the ark
of the covenant overlaid round about with gold,
wherein was the golden pot that had manna,
and Aaron's rob that budded in the tables
of the covenant, over it the cherubims of
glory shattering the mercy feet of which we
cannot speak particularly now."
Here he has described the holy of holies
in the tabernacle, and that which was the
very center of attention in the holy of
holies was the Shekinah glory of God that
dwelt above the mercy feet between the cherubim.
That Shekinah glory gave light to the holy
of holies.
Then the apostle emphasizes this great fact that
no Israelite could ever hope to approach into
the holy of holies because of the barrier
of sin, and he writes in the sixth
verse, "...when these things were thus ordained, the
priest went always into the first tabernacle, accomplishing
the service of God, that is, the priest
could minister daily in the holy place, but
into the second, that is, the holy of
holies, went the high priest alone once every
year, not without blood, which he offered for
himself and for the errors of the people,
the holy ghost thus signifying that the way
into the holiest of all was not yet
made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was
yet standing."
What does this passage emphasize?
That throughout the Old Testament, while man had
a revelation of the glory of God, while
they had seen a manifestation of the holiness
of God revealed through the pillar of fire
and the pillar of cloud, no man could
dare to approach God, to stand in his
presence, to dwell in the light of his
countenance, because a holy God was a consuming
fire for sinful man.
That which characterized the Old Testament was a
veil, a veil that separated sinners from the
presence of God, and obscured the glory of
God, and shut men out from the face
of God.
But Peter writes that the God of all
grace has called us unto his eternal glory.
Peter is not saying God has called us
so that someday in the far off future
we should go to heaven.
He is saying that God has parted the
veil and has revealed himself through Jesus Christ,
and through Christ has provided a way whereby
sinners who once were separated can come now
to dwell in the very presence of God,
to enjoy the light of the countenance of
God, to have peace and shine upon them.
God, the God of all grace, has called
us not to behold his glory reflected in
the crowd from afar.
He has called us into his very presence.
Peter emphasizes another great fact here, and that
is that this call comes to us because
of the work of Jesus Christ.
No man can cleanse his hands, let alone
his heart, to make himself acceptable to God.
No man can cleanse the record of his
life to purge away the guilt and the
sin to make himself acceptable to God.
But Jesus Christ, by his death, has provided
cleansing blood so that sinners who plunge into
that fountain wash away every sin.
He is a God of all grace, a
God who has called us into glory, a
God who has provided for salvation by the
death of his Son.
Should we use the suffering through which we,
to have received the grace of God, must
himself, would he mean that we will observe
in the tenth verse as a temporary period?
For he says that the God of all
grace recalled us unto his eternal glory by
Christ Jesus after he had suffered a little
while.
Now, the little while could very well last
from the time that they accepted Christ until
the time either that Jesus Christ appeared to
take sinners into his presence, or God called
them home by physical death.
Yet in the light of the eternity that
God has provided for his Son, and in
the light of the permanence of the home
that Christ is going to prepare for those
who trust him, the sufferings of this present
earth were referred to as just lasting a
little while.
He who has said so much about those
sufferings in the course of his epistles now
looks beyond those sufferings, and in the last
part of verse 10, Peter expresses to them
that which is his hope, his desire, and
his prayer for his sheep.
That God of all grace would perfect you,
second would establish you, third would strengthen you,
and fourth would settle you.
He is a shepherd now, showing his shepherd's
heart that which he desires for his sheep.
This is what he wants the God of
grace to do for them in their present
circumstances.
And even though we are not called upon
to suffer because of the blessing of our
Christian heritage, the privilege of being born into
a land where God traditionally has been honored
and his word revered and his gospel known
and believed, because of this we have been
prepared for much suffering.
Yet, these four things are things that, as
a pastor, we can wish for the sheep.
Today is a very significant day for me,
because it marks the completion of ten years
as pastor of Great Bible Church, and the
commencement of an eleventh year.
Who can doubt that God is the God
of all grace?
We will see what he has done for
us in days past, for the blessings that
have come to us under his hand.
And I can think of nothing that I
could more wish for God's sheep here today
than that the God of all grace would
graze us first, and we might be perfected.
The perfection of which Peter speaks is a
perfection about which the Apostle John wrote in
1 John, chapter 3.
When he says in verse 1, behold what
manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon
us, that we should be called the sons
of God.
Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it
knew him not.
Beloved, now are we the sons of God,
and it doth not yet appear what we
shall do, but we know that when he
shall appear we shall be like him, for
we shall keep him as he is.
Perfection in the Apostle's mind was complete conformity
to Jesus Christ, to be like him.
The Apostle John reminds us that the time
will come when we will be translated into
his presence, and the God of all glory
will have called us into his glory.
We will complete that which was begun the
moment we were saved.
The process of transforming us experientially to the
Lord Jesus, who loved us and watched us
march in his own blood.
And Peter prayed for his sheep, that they
might be perfected, that that work of the
Spirit of God might be carried on in
each of them, so that they who behold
his glory are being transformed into the same
glory, into the same image from glory to
glory, that they might be perfected to be
like Christ.
Peter prayed that they might be established.
This word established suggests that they might be
put on a firm foundation.
Peter has the same picture of a building
that he had back in chapter 2, when
he reminded the believers that they were being
built on a spiritual house, 1 Peter 2.
And a house that is not built upon
a firm foundation can never be a permanent
structure.
Peter wanted them, in the face of the
difficulties and trials that surrounded them, to be
firmly established upon a sure foundation.
The Apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians
3 that other foundations can no man lay
than that is laid, and that is Jesus
Christ.
There can be no foundation other than the
person of Jesus Christ and the word of
God.
No work can long endure, nor be effective,
that is not firmly founded upon the rock
Christ Jesus, that does not find its basis
and its support in the person and work
of Jesus Christ, is not built upon a
ministry of the word of God.
So Peter prayed that these might be founded,
that they might be established.
Remember, our Lord taught that man could build
a great edifice, but if it were built
upon sand, when the flood came it would
be swept away.
Unless it should be built upon the rock,
it should have no firmament.
May God badly spot the person of his
son through the word of God.
So Peter desires, in the third place, that
they might be strengthened.
This strengthening has to do with making firm,
making sound, making whole.
It would be possible to build a wall,
but build it without adequate support, so that
when a stress came it would collapse, since
it was their practice to plaster over the
walls with mud.
When you looked at that mud wall, it
would look like any other mud wall, and
you could not have confidence in that wall
unless you knew that what was under the
external plaster was sound and was strong, and
was securely fixed together.
So Peter prayed that as they moved to
build upon that foundation a superstructure, it shall
be a superstructure whose walls are sound, whose
materials are true, that can stand because it
is strengthened or is strong, is sound and
firm.
Then Peter desires, in the fourth place, that
these believers should be settled.
The word settled here suggests being brought to
rest.
It has the idea in it of a
babe nuggling down into its mother's arms.
Just squirming and wiggling a little bit to
get into a comfortable position.
It rests them in the strong arms of
love that support.
There are many of God's children who have
believed God to the saving of their souls,
who have not believed God to the experience
of peace in their daily lives.
They've never nuggled down into God yet.
Peter prays that the suffering through which these
are going should not cause them to doubt
the God of all grace, who has called
them into his glory by Christ Jesus, who
has placed them upon a firm foundation and
is in the process of building them up
into a spiritual house.
And Peter, who saw the foundation laid, the
superstructure being built, wanted to see that edifice
completed to the glory of God.
The child of God, sheep of his flock,
may God-descended work in us that as
shepherds and sheep, the God of all glory,
who has called us in grace, may protect
us and we delight in Christ, might establish
us on the firm foundation of the person
of Christ and the word of God, might
make us sound and whole and firm, strengthened
with all might, and brought to rest in
the arms of the God of grace.
May I say to you, you may not
as yet have received Christ as your personal
Savior, but God is the God of grace.
He is able and willing today to put
aside what you deserve because of your sins,
to give you forgiveness of sins, to give
you salvation, to give you eternal life.
If you reject Jesus Christ as your Savior,
the God of all grace must become a
just God who punishes sins.
If God gives you what you deserve, it
must be condemnation.