The verses which we have been examining should
be before us on this Lord's Day morning
when we shall enjoy the Lord's Supper together.
I want you to notice verses 7 and
8 again of 1 Peter 1, where the
Holy Spirit says, verse 8 I believe, and
verse 7 we'll pass as having examined that
to our satisfaction, verse 8, Whom having not
seen ye love, in whom though now ye
see him not.
Now that is what we're interested in this
morning.
Whom having not seen ye love, and in
whom though now ye see him not, yet
believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full
glory.
Now we have these two expressions very much
alike, except in their tense.
Whom having not seen, and now ye see
him not.
Having not seen has to do with any
possible seeing him in the past.
And now ye see him not, has to
do with any possible seeing him now.
And these Christians, these elect brethren, who were
gods by sanctification of the Spirit and sprinkling
with the blood of Christ, were believers in
that which they had not seen, and that,
that they were not seeing.
This is contrary to the current, and I
suppose universal, proverb that seeing is believing.
Believing that must depend upon seeing is a
kind of believing, for it is a conclusion
drawn from the testimony of the senses.
But believing that depends upon seeing is not
New Testament believing at all.
For New Testament believing is a believing of
a report about things unseen, and that is
the difference between real New Testament faith and
every other kind of so-called believing.
Now I say they believed in the invisible,
that's another way of stating it.
And this brings it close to Hebrews 11,
27, where it is written of the man
of God Abraham that he was able to
endure because he was looking at the things
that were invisible.
If you and I could see, actually see
the invisible.
Now let us put it like this.
Being what we are, we pretty much trust
what we see humanly, and if we could
see all around us the wonders, the invisible
things of the creation, we would never be
lonely for a moment, and we would never
doubt for a moment.
But the invisible things are there, but they're
simply not seen unless you have faith.
And Abraham had faith, and was able to
carry on because he could see that which
was not seen and could not be seen.
And it says here that in so doing
these Christians experienced the invisible so vividly and
so satisfyingly that they were able to rejoice
with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
I suppose that outside of our singing there
is no time when we are as dishonest
as we are when we are praying.
We sing songs that are so dishonest that
I hesitate to sing them, and yet I
don't want to be a speckled bird altogether.
I have speckles enough on me now that
I don't want to become clear off my
rocker.
But the average song when we sing it,
if God Almighty were compelling us to be
entirely one hundred percent realistic, we just couldn't
sing it, because it's not true of us.
It was true probably of the man who
wrote the song, My Faith Looks Up to
Thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary, Savior Divine.
That's a beautiful song, and the man who
wrote it said, the last line, O bear
me safely up around sin's hole.
And the man who wrote it said, I
was so moved by what I was writing
and what I was thinking about, that the
last verse was written in a flood of
tears.
Now that man meant it, but I wonder
how many of us mean it when we
sing it today.
My Faith Looks Up to Thee, Thou Lamb
of Calvary.
It is only by a charitable adaptation of
the truth that we're able to sing most
of the hymns that we sing at all.
Love divine, all loves excelling.
It's another one of the hymns that we
sing with very little meaning.
But I'm thinking especially of a camp meeting
number, I don't know whether we ever sing
it here or not, but we've all sung
it at some time.
The waves of glory roll, my shouts I
can't control, when comes the love of Jesus
sweeping o'er my soul.
Now I can easily believe that the old
brother who wrote that was so lost in
the grace of God that when he said,
the waves of glory roll, my shouts I
can't control, that he was literally telling the
truth.
But how many of us have sung that
song?
The waves of glory roll, my shouts I
can't control, and if the devil had a
sense of humor, I am quite sure that
he had bold pens wrapped around his stomach
to keep from exploding with laughter.
For a lot of us who sing, my
shouts I can't control, can control our shouts
easier than we can control our lusts.
We can control our shouts easier than we
can control our temper.
The average Christian were to sing the waves
of glory roll, my tongue I can't control,
he'd be telling the truth.
But to say, my shouts I can't control,
is to lavish in the face of God
or me.
And yet we do an awful lot of
it.
And I don't want to work against Brother
McAfee here and suggest that if you can't
feel it, don't sing it.
Rather, let's compromise it and let's put it
like this.
Let's sing it, sing in our hearts, oh
God, it isn't true, but I want it
to be true.
It isn't so, Lord, but please make it
so.
Then I think God will understand, as when
we sang this morning, our souls, how heavily
they go to seek immortal joy.
Some people have made great fun of that
song, and they have said, how could it
be, please?
Well, how could it be that we could
sing a song like that?
We grovel here below, fond of these earthly
toys.
Isaac Watts wrote this song, and he says,
look how we grovel here below, fond of
these earthly toys, our souls, how heavily they
go.
Some editor got to this and Isaac Watts
wrote, our souls, how heavily they go to
reach eternal joys.
I've heard that made fun of and satirized
and lampooned by holiness preachers.
But brethren, if we're absolutely honest, the average
Christian will sing, see how I grovel here
below, fond of these earthly toys, rather than
sing the waves of glory, oh, my shouts
I can't control.
For the average man can control his shouts
better than he can control his love of
these earthly toys.
Now, the invisible, they saw the invisible and
believed in it, and rejoiced with joy unspeakable
and full glory.
I don't know how to tell you they
got that.
I only know how they got it.
They got it by believing in what they
couldn't see.
And I suppose that's the only way you
and I'll ever have a joy unspeakable and
a shout that we can't control.
Now, I want to call attention to this,
that it's characteristic of a Christian, that he
believes in things that he cannot see.
That is, he's a believer in the invisible.
He believes that there is a real world
coexisting with this world, touching this world, and
accessible to this world.
I want you to get those three qualifying
words, that there is a real world.
I repeat, that there is never any contradiction
between spirit and reality.
The contradiction is between spirit and matter, never
between the spiritual and the real.
So that the believer accepts and believes in
a real world of which God is the
king, an eternal kingdom, an eternal world, a
spiritual and invisible world, coexisting with, touching, and
accessible to this world.
Heaven is not so far away that we
must take a jet airplane and continue through
light years of speedy travel to get to
heaven.
That's the average Christian thinks of heaven, as
being so far away.
And it's only again by accommodation that we
sing about heaven being near, and glory coming
down our souls to grief.
The fact is, brethren, that the eternal world
of which God is the king, which is
inhabited by immortal spirits, and which has taken
our dead Christian loved ones for a little
time out of sight, that world is as
real, in fact more real, than the physical
world at which we are so very familiar.
And it coexists with our world.
There is not a great vacuum, gap between.
As the stars in the heavens, there is
a star.
Then there are a few million light years
of space, and then another star.
No, my brethren, that is not the way
with heaven and earth, but that the world
you and I now see, and the invisible
things of him, are coexistent with each other.
Now I said yesterday on the radio, maybe
a couple of you listen, but I said
yesterday that two things of equal density could
not occupy the same place at the same
time.
And that is so widely and commonly known
that I almost apologize for quoting it.
But here is something we must remember on
the other side, that two things that are
not of equal density may coexist in the
same place at the same time.
For instance, if you're sitting in front of
your fireplace, nobody does anymore, but if you
should be sitting in front of a fireplace
with a fire on, there would be two
things coexisting for you.
There would be light and heat.
They are not of equal density.
They're not mutually exclusive.
They're mutually compatible.
And they are the two things that are
coming out of that fireplace, or change the
figure to the sun in the heaven above.
We have two things coming from the sun
at the same time, coexisting with each other.
Heat and light were warmed by the sun
and were lighted by the sun.
And light and heat do not exclude each
other.
They're compatibly between each other and live together.
So the world that God has made and
we call nature, and the world that God
has made and he calls the heavens, are
coexistent with each other.
And not only coexistent with each other, but
they touch each other.
And they're accessible to each other, so that
God could put a ladder up on the
earth and have its top reach the sky,
and angels ascending and descending upon that ladder.
The one world was accessible to the other
world either way.
Their gates swung from both directions, so that
God could send his only begotten son down,
and he could carry Stephen up, and our
prayers can go up and the answers can
come down.
The two worlds touch and are coexistent with
each other and accessible one to the other.
The believers in 1 Peter, that Peter wrote
about there, are believers in that.
They believed in the world that was real,
the invisible world.
And this distinguished them from every kind of
materialist and materialism.
Materialism has fallen on evil times in our
day, so that the newspapers and magazines and
radio commentators are all over on the side
of the spiritual rather than the material, that
is, in a carnal kind of way.
So materialism is not now the problem it
used to be, but it's still a problem.
And it recurs and has a recrudescence every
once in a while of interest, that all
that we see is simply made of matter
and that's the end of it.
That matter is all.
We still run on to people who believe
that, and if we live and the Lord
carry another 25 years, it'll probably be back
in the saddle, because materialism and spiritism have
chased each other in and out off the
throne over the centuries.
And Christians creep right on believing, no matter
who may be among the popular throne, the
materialist or the spiritist.
But a Christian is sharply distinguished from all
kind of materialism and all sorts of materialists.
He does not believe that what he sees
is of any great value.
He does not believe that what he is
able to touch with his hands ever really
worth very much.
He endures as seeing the invisible, the immaterial,
the spiritual in other worlds, not ghostly and
phantom, but the spiritual, that which has real
existence but is spirit instead of matter.
And the Christian believes that and lives in
the light of it, and that distinguishes him
forever from all brands of materialism.
But it also distinguishes him from all kinds
of superstition and idolatry, for the idolater believes
in the invisible too.
But the difference is that a Christian is
one whose faith in the invisible has been
corrected and chastened and purified by divine revelation,
so that an Indian in Africa can kneel
down before a stone.
And if he's an intelligent Indian, you say
to him, why do you worship that stone?
And he answers, I don't.
I worship the deity resident in the stone.
The Greeks used to kneel in front of
Mount Olympus.
And if you said to them, why are
you worshiping toward Mount Olympus?
They said, we do not worship the mountain,
we worship the gods in the mountain.
And even today there are those who kneel
before statues in churches, and if they're obstructed
in their own beliefs, and you say to
them, why do you worship that image?
They say, we don't worship that image.
We worship God, of whom that image reminds
us.
So that it's possible to be a believer
in the invisible and not be a Christian.
But it's not possible to be a Christian
and not be a believer in the invisible.
It's possible to believe that there's some kind
of a spooky world somewhere that we've got
to placate with rabbits' feet and chestnuts and
man-streamed sayings and chains around our neck
and medallions and all sorts of things.
That's a belief in the invisible, but it's
a pagan, erroneous belief.
But when Jesus Christ came and brought life
and immortality to the gospel, and he stood
up on his feet or sat down and
opened his mouth and taught us, he corrected
that false and sinful belief in superstitious things
and told us what the real world really
was.
The only one who'd ever been there to
come back and tell us.
Abraham died and sleeps his body in the
cave of Machpelah and his spirit with God,
but he's never been back to tell us
what it's like.
But Jesus had been there from eternity, and
when he came, he told us of things
of heaven, and touted us because we didn't
accept what he said.
And he told us of things above.
So the Christian is not a materialist, believing
in the validity of all material things.
And he is not an idolater, but just
believing vaguely in the existence of another world.
He is a Christian who believes in what
he was taught by the one who had
been there and come across the threshold into
our world, smelling of married aloes out of
the ivory palaces, fragrant from the presence of
the eternal King.
Now, not only does a Christian believe in
the invisible world, but he figures on it.
He acts and plans and lives as one
who counts on the reality of the invisible.
The businessman doesn't.
That is, the unsaved businessman.
The man of the earth doesn't believe in,
or if he believes in, in the sense
that he nods dutifully toward the beneath in
another world, he doesn't let it change his
plans any.
He acts just the same as if there
was no other world.
He lays his plans precisely the same as
if there wasn't any invisible world, and he
continues to live as if heaven was a
myth and didn't exist.
But the Christian counts on the other world,
so that the invisible presence of him, God
and his eternal kingdom, and the spirits of
just men made perfect in the holy church
of the firstborn, and the Holy Ghost and
the invisible world actually influences his life, actually
shapes his plans, actually determines his habits, and
as well as comforts and consoles and supports
him.
Ah, it's a comforting thought that there is
God nearest.
It's a comforting thought that there are invisible
worlds near us, and it consoles us to
know that when Jesus prayed in the garden
of Gethsemane, there came a legion of angels,
or there came angels to comfort him, and
he said he could have had legions of
angels by his side.
Now, nothing has changed, my brethren.
The angels keep their wanted places, but it
is we, it is we who have failed
to see it.
It is our unbelieving hearts that have missed
the many splendid things.
The angels are still here.
The only Protestant book or tract or booklet
I've ever seen or heard of that ever
came out and said that there were angels
and that we could live what they call
the confederate life, I lost long ago and
don't know where it is, and if anybody
knows where the little booklet is, I'd like
to get hold of it.
For this was a Protestant approach to the
angels.
Now, I know that our friends on the
other side of the ecclesiastical stone hedge, I
know that they are great for angels, and
they're celebrating the panangelic host almost any time
day or night.
But I have a sneaking suspicion that there
is a very close relation between their concept
of angels and that of the pagan concept
of Mount Olympus and there is of the
New Testament or Bible concept.
But because they go in big for Saint
angels, we don't need to turn our backs
on the angels and say they're not here.
They are here.
And Jesus said about the little child, their
angel do behold the face of my father
which is in heaven.
So because pagan religion had mixed with Christianity
and given us a perverted and false view
of the angelic ministry, that's no reason for
our turning our back on the whole thing.
Because the Mohammedans pray falsely and futilely five
times a day is no reason why I'm
not going to pray.
Because the Mormons have the Book of Mormon,
that's no reason I'm going to kick the
Bible out into the alley.
Because the Christian scientists meet in the church
building is no reason why I'm going to
bomb this one and tear it down.
No, the fact of counterfeit should never force
us to throw out the real thing.
I have here a counter, I mean a
real quarter.
And it says on this quarter, oh that
one is so badly, so many people have
bought a cup of coffee with that one
that I can't even read it.
But there's one here that says, Liberty in
God we trust, 1946.
And on the other side it says United
States of the American people who have betuned
them one quarter dollar.
Now there is a quarter dollar.
I have never to my knowledge ever handled
a counterfeit quarter.
But if I got a hold of a
counterfeit quarter and somebody picked it back to
me and said that's counterfeit, I wouldn't go
to my passport to take out all the
quarters and throw them out in the yard.
So because there is false counterfeit abroad, there
is no reason why I should reject the
truth.
And if some people make too much of
angels, there's no reason why I should to
get neither of them and make too little
of them.
There is a world, and that world, God,
and the presence of God, and the spirit
of God, and the inhabitants of that world
into which really you and I have entered
in our spirits.
For we live in that world too.
We live, as Thomas Kelly says, on two
planes.
We live on the plane of the natural
and we live on the plane of the
spiritual.
And that's why a Christian is such a
wonderful and weird and strange and puzzling creature.
Because he's both animal and spiritual, and he
insists upon living for the spiritual while he's
down here in his mortal body.
That makes a Christian a funny fellow.
Oftentimes two men living on the same street
together at 1631 and 1633, side by side,
one of them is a good-natured, easy
-going, relaxed, downright old sinner on his way
to hell and doesn't believe it, and is
easy to get along with.
Nobody bothers nobody.
He's friendly and waves when he goes down
the street.
He's a sinner, and he saw a good
-natured rebel on his way to hell.
Alongside of him there lives a Christian, one
who has been born again and who has
been given the blessed Holy Ghost as the
wedding ring.
And he has his troubles.
He has his troubles, really.
He weeps when there's apparently nothing to weep
about.
He's moody when apparently there's nothing to change
a mood at all.
Preoccupied when somebody else or the man next
to him is all wanting to talk.
He's preoccupied when the man next door can't
keep his radio off.
He's worried about whether the bimbons will win
the series.
This fellow may put his Bible under his
arm and start off somewhere to a street
meeting or to prayer meeting.
He's not as comfortable a fellow as the
sinner.
He doesn't act quite the same.
Why?
Because the sinner lives on only one plane,
the physical.
And the Christian lives on both.
In his body he's down here in the
flesh, but in his spirit he is up
yonder with God.
And the result is that he's not as
comfortable a being to be around, maybe, as
he might be.
I've always said prophets are never comfortable people
to have around, but they're indispensable if we're
not going to rot.
Now, the Christian is also, it's characteristic of
him, that he is preoccupied with the invisible,
but I think I've said enough about that.
Now, I will speak briefly about the invisible
and the Lord's Supper.
What is a sacrament?
A sacrament is that where in the invisible
meets and touches the visible.
The eternal meets and touches the temporal.
Water baptism we call a sacrament, and there
material water and material river, material tank, is
made to body forth an invisible and spiritual
truth.
The Lord's Supper is another sacrament wherein we
use the material as a thin garment to
disguise the spiritual.
Wherein we use the temporal as a plate
upon which we serve the eternal.
And that's always been the belief of the
Christians.
Now, there are two schools of thought about
the Lord's Supper, the sacrament.
One is that the elements actually become visible,
the invisible becomes visible, and that when you
take the cake from the tray, you are
touching consciously and lifting the very body that
Mary gave to Jesus.
That seems to me unworthy of a serious
answer.
There is another school of thought, and that
is that the invisible is present in, underneath,
and behind the visible, and I believe in
that.
I believe that wherever faith has eyes to
see, there is the smiling presence of the
Son of God.
I believe that in the Lord's Supper, the
bread and wine, we can trace it, we
know where it came from, we've bought it,
there's nothing magic about it.
It could be fed to the birds, it
could be drunk by any sinner, there's nothing
magic about it.
But it is an object lesson.
It sets forth in material terms the spiritual.
It sets forth in temporal terms the eternal.
And wherever faith is present, we touch and
handle things unseen.
Paul rebuked the Corinthian Christians because they failed
to discern the Lord's body.
What did he mean by that?
He meant you have been engrossed with the
material, and you have not recognized the spiritual.
He meant that you have drunk the wine
and enjoyed it, eaten the bread and been
full, but in doing it, you have not
had faith in the invisible.
You have not discerned the Lord's body.
You are materialists, he said, and you are
eating and drinking at the Lord's Supper as
a carnal thing, and it will condemn you.
And some of you actually will die early
because of it.
You'll get sick and sleep because you grieve
God by your materialistic things.
He said, don't you know that this is
the approach to the invisible?
That this is the doorway to the spiritual?
And when you take the Lord's Supper by
faith, you will recognize that you receive the
spiritual.
So you know what the elements are, and
the Echemist could tell you.
Nevertheless, it is through the gateway of the
material that we reach the spiritual in this
instance.
So that the spiritual and the invisible and
the eternal are right here.
Faith recognizes it.
Unbelief waits until the service is over and
thinks it's too long.
Now, said the man of God, now do
we touch and handle things unseen.
Exquisitely said, now do we touch and handle
things unseen.
If he had meant, now do we touch
the bread, now do we touch the wine,
he wouldn't have said unseen.
Now do we touch and handle things unseen.
Jesus said, I have meat to eat that
you know not of.
Here was the tired, dusky, weary Jesus.
Hunger from a long day of travel and
fasting.
And when they came to him, he said,
don't worry about me.
I have meat to eat that you know
not of.
He was feasting on the invisible.
Be known to us, the man of God
prayed, be known to us in breaking bread
that do not then depart.
Savior, divide with us and spread thy table
in our heart.
Then suck with us in love divine that
thy body and thy blood, that living bread,
that heavenly wine, be our immortal food.
Some of the old Saints call the sacraments,
though, food of immortality.
Why can't we believe it today?
Not believing superstitiously in the magic of words,
not believing ignorantly in some woozy ghostly ideas
of another world, but believing with clean, sharp
belief in the revealed truth that Jesus Christ
brought.
And believe that heaven is not far away
only but nigh at hand.
That the eternal God is not in some
Olympia, hidden in clouds, but is accessible to
the human heart wherever faith is.
That ought to transform our simple Protestant communion
service into a heavenly service indeed.
Now, Father, we pray, we would repent before
thee this morning, Lord, rather than just pray.
We would repent before thee, Lord, for our
materialistic minds, thinking in terms of this world,
judging, weighing, measuring, valuing as men do.
Father, this is wrong, forgive us.
And Father, our preoccupation with earthly things also,
we would repent this morning.
As a people, we would repent for our
absorption in the things that pass away.
Lord, forgive us, cleanse us, wash us, so
that as we quiet our hearts and in
silence hear a voice, we may not have
on us the ragged, ink and dust of
unconfessed sin.
That our garments may be white this morning,
pure, shiny, we may receive as unworthy but
believing people.
Break the bread of life this morning, O
bread of life.
Break it, wine of the soul.
Spill it, feed us, till we want no
more.
In Jesus' holy name.
We go on into the Lord's Supper.
The table is open for every child of
God, regardless of where your church membership is.
The president will meet me at the front.