In 1 Peter, the first chapter, verse 19
speaks of Christ, a Lamb, in verse 20,
who verily was foreordained before the foundation of
the world, but was manifest in these last
times for you, who by him do believe
in God, that raised him up from the
dead, and gave him glory, that your faith
and hope might be in God.
Now, this passage of Scripture is a gem
let down like Peter's sheep right out of
heaven.
And it would be just as applicable to
any group of Christians, anywhere in the world,
as it is to this group.
It would fit into the needs, the eternal
needs, of a church in Korea, or among
the Zulus, or among the Indians of South
America, or among the Jews or Gentiles the
world over.
Because it is not timely truth, it's timeless
truth.
It speaks only of three persons, God and
Christ and us.
Now, as a Protestant in a free America,
I am at liberty to discuss any topic
I might find myself capable of discussing.
I might this morning discuss art.
I could bone up on that at the
library.
And talk or two about art.
Maybe literature.
I'd like to talk about Milton, because I've
enjoyed him so much in my years.
I couldn't talk about music, but I might
give my ill-informed opinions on politics and
world events.
And I suppose that if I were real
careful, and you were very patient, some benefit
might come to us by my so doing.
But I don't mind telling you that now
more than ever in my life, I find
myself smitten with something I think is nothing
less than a divine stroke.
Eternity is before my eyes while I talk.
And increasingly before my eyes while I pray.
And even while I think on religious subjects,
I am seized upon by a thought, a
thought that becomes an oppressive thought.
It is that the earth is growing old
and the judgment is drawing near.
And that a wink of God's eye, just
a wink of God's eye, will clear the
earth of everyone now living on it.
Everyone now living on the earth imagines himself
to be vastly important in the cosmic scheme.
But a wink of God's eye only, a
flick of God's lash, and everyone now living,
the most important and the anonymous and unheard
of, all together shall go the way of
the earth.
And that nothing, not one thing of these
now so important things will matter at all
in a very short time.
And that all now listening to me and
all now on the earth will stand very
shortly in awful silence and see the record
of their lives exhibited before them.
And that all distinctions then of race or
color or money or social level will all
disappear.
And God will not see our diplomas, nor
our bank accounts, nor the color of our
skins, but will look at us as human
beings, only beings made in the image of
God, having sinned, then redeemed or not.
That is, redeemed, but whether saved or not,
will lie with us.
So with this upon me, always upon me,
always as a background to everything I say,
in conditioning and determining the tone as well
as the choice of my material, I will
talk to you then about God and Christ
and you, as in the text here.
And the sermon will simply be a repeating
of the phrases that make up the text,
plus what I hope may be one or
two thoughts on each phrase.
Now it says here that Christ, the Lamb,
was foreordained before the foundation of the world.
Most or every version has it foreknown before
the foundation of the world.
Now that foundation of the world expression can
mean either the bringing into being of created
things or the ordering of the vast wild
forces into an ordered universe.
Or it can mean both.
Sometimes it means one in the Bible, sometimes
it means the other, sometimes it means both,
sometimes you don't know which one it means.
But before God brought into being time and
space and matter and law that now make
what we call world, Jesus Christ was foreknown
and foreordained.
And before he took the vast wild forces
that moved through his worlds and ordered them
into a universe, an ordered universe like a
watch, as though a watchmaker were to take
the pieces of a watch scattered all over
the top of a table.
And through his knowledge and skill so arranged
them that they now all compact and beautiful
in a case, tell the time of day
to the split second.
So God somewhere took all these vast forces
and this illimitable matter that he had formed
and within the framework of space and time
he ordered it into the world and that's
sometimes called the foundation of the world.
And before this Christ was our foreordained Savior.
Now I point out that God did not
rush in to apply first aid when man
sinned.
Sometimes in our instinct for direct statement we
forget and we allow the impression to get
out that when man sinned God looked around
for a remedy.
But this is not the case.
Before man sinned the remedy had already been
provided.
And before paradise was lost, paradise had already
been regained.
Because Christ was crucified before the foundation of
the world.
And in the mind and purpose of God,
Christ had already died before he was born.
And in the purpose of God, Christ had
already died before Adam was created.
In the purpose and plan of God, the
world had already been redeemed before the world
was ever brought into being.
So that paradise lost did not drive God
to some distracted action and bring about redemption.
But paradise lost was foreseen before the world
was and before paradise existed and God had
already preordained and foreknown the land that was
without spot and blemish.
And this purpose in eternity lay in the
mind of God.
Now it says that this was manifest in
time.
It was foredetermined before time, but it was
manifest in time.
That is, man's sinning was done in time
and space.
And therefore the timeless one came to time
and space in order that he might undo
that which was done in space and time
by man.
The one who was pure of spirit.
Because there were creatures who had sinned in
the flesh, he himself became flesh in order
that he might put to death that which
was destroying the human race.
So the spaceless one came to space and
the timeless one came to time and he
who was pure of spirit above matter took
upon himself a material body and came.
And so that man's sinning was done in
the material body and Jesus Christ redeemed us
in the material body.
Now that sounds as though it might be
simply a repetition of truth already known.
But brethren, if we ever lose the ability
to wonder at this, we are in grave
need of soul-searching and spiritual revival.
If we ever lose the wonder out of
our hearts just to hear these words, Christ
forlorn before the foundation of the world but
manifest in time for you, if those words
ever cease to move your heart, then your
heart is hard.
I was telling our friend McAfee the other
day something that I had read of old
Saint Bernard.
There were two Bernards, you know, Bernard of
Clairvaux and Bernard of Cluny.
It was Bernard of Cluny that wrote so
many of the songs that we sing in
our day.
It was Bernard of Clairvaux that wrote The
Celestial City or Bernard of Cluny that wrote
The Celestial City from which we get the
song about Jerusalem the Golden.
But this was old Bernard of Clairvaux that
has been canonized and called a saint though
he was a saint before he was canonized
and he wasn't any more of a saint
after he was canonized.
But old Clairvaux was an old godly saint
and a teacher and he had a young
fellow under him that he thought a great
deal of and taught and prayed for and
helped along.
The young fellow outstripped his teacher and was
pushed upward and pretty soon he became Pope.
And Clairvaux wrote him a letter.
And he said, now you're Pope.
But he said, don't think that that affects
me.
He said, love doesn't know office and love
can never be put in awe by any
man's position.
Now he said, the reason I'm writing you
is this.
He said, once when I knew you, you
had a warm heart and you served God.
But he said, now you've got a big
job and everybody's around you and you've got
a lot to do.
Now he said, what I'm afraid of is
that your heart will get hard.
He said, if you want to know what
a hard heart is, don't ask me, ask
Pharaoh.
He knows.
And he said, the very fact you think
you don't have a hard heart is plenty
evidence that you have it already.
I like to hear a man talk that
way as a Pope.
In fact, I like a man to talk
that way to anybody.
I would thank any man for reminding me
that it's entirely possible even for a man
who in those early days, but many of
those men didn't were Christians and did walk
with God, and this old Saint of God
saw what was happening and warned his younger
people.
And I would thank any man for warning
me as I now faithfully warn you.
If these old-fashioned, simple, conventional statements of
scriptural truth do not move you or in
some degree affect you inwardly when you hear
them, then it is time for you carefully
to rethink your condition and search your own
heart to see if perhaps that has already
taken place, that hardness of heart which Bernard
spoke of.
And if you are flippantly sure that it
has not taken place, then on the authority
of that good man, I would repeat that
it has already taken place and very greatly
need your attention.
Now, it says here that he was manifest
in time for you.
Now, I like those two little words.
If you'll read your New Testament, you'll find
them.
For you.
What was the purpose of it all?
Well, it was for you.
Why was he born?
It was for you.
Why did he die?
For you.
Why did he rise?
For you.
Why is he at the right hand of
God?
For you.
And for whom is he now making intercession?
It is for you.
Now, in public service, I try to be
dignified and not embarrass people with any too
intimate personalities.
But when I am with God by myself,
I have no hesitation at all in becoming
just as intimate as my faith will allow
me to.
So when we come to the words for
you, I don't hesitate to write that right
into the Bible.
I go over some of my old Bibles
that have gotten so badly banged up I've
had to replace them and retire them and
put them out to pasture for the next
generation, if anybody's interested.
But I find in some of those old
Bibles some things that almost embarrass me now
with the simplicity of them and the intimacy
of them that I put myself in there.
Salvation was not for the whole round world.
I remember the first prayer only, I mean,
for the whole round world.
I remember the first prayer I made.
I remember the first prayer I ever made
in public.
It was at a church meeting.
It wasn't a church meeting.
We were eating and not meeting.
But we met to eat.
In that church.
And they asked me to pray.
Now, I had never prayed in public before.
So I stood up and said, Lord, bless
the missionaries.
Amen.
That was my first prayer.
And I suppose that a great many people
are so general, as general as that prayer.
I didn't tell God what missionary.
No, I didn't tell him, request anything particular.
I was just getting out of a jam.
And I suppose that it's possible for us
to think about redemption as being so general
that there's nothing particular about it.
Brethren, I repeat that you can get so
general that nobody gets any good out of
anything.
I remember hearing of the young pastor who
was very intellectual and very studious and just
out of school.
But he was also very orthodox and pressed
upon his hearers the need of being born
anew.
And he summed up an eloquent passage with
this statement.
He said, I tell you, if you don't
get saved on general principles, you'll never get
saved at all.
And I've often thought of the brother and
his general principles.
You can get your principles so general that
they never touch you at all.
Now, it says here, for you.
For you.
You is a pronoun, of course, standing instead
of a noun, and that noun is you.
So if you just put your name in
there, that'll mean you.
So that all this preordination, all this before
-time purposing of God, this coming of this
spotless Lamb into the world and the shedding
of his most precious blood, it was all
done specifically for you.
Now, it was done also for the whole
world, but it was done for you.
A thing can be for the whole world
and nobody can get any good out of
it.
So while we believe in the universal atonement
of his blood, we also believe in a
specific atonement, which means you and me.
Our name, our number, our size.
We, ourselves.
We can be identified.
So it's done for us.
It says, For you who through him believe
in God.
Now, there can be no true believing in
God apart from Christ.
There is a great deal of believing in
God.
I wonder what's happening to this country.
The newspapers and the Saturday magazines like This
Week and the bestsellers, many of our bestsellers
are religious books.
It's astonishing how the bestsellers are religious books.
Now, many of the bestsellers, quite a number
of them, Peace of Mind and Peace of
Heart and A Man Called Peter and Mr.
Jones Meet the Master and a number of
other religious books have become bestsellers.
Thomas Merton's Seeds of Contemplation are now sold
25-cent editions, copies, anywhere in the drugstore
you can buy them.
And it's religious.
It's old-fashioned mysticism.
And the publishers are saying that a wonderful
new something is taking place.
People are interested in religion.
This Week magazine last evening had in it
by somebody the thesis developed that the world
could be saved by religion.
And it gave the various religions and Christianity
was one of them.
Now, if this is God's book and Peter
was God's apostle and this New Testament is
divinely inspired, then I am led to conclude
that real belief in God can come only
through Christ.
That any other kind of faith in God
or belief about God is spotty, imperfect, perverted,
and very often erroneous.
Some things we can know about God certainly.
We can know His eternal power and Godhead.
And the Indian stands on the shore of
the lake and raises his arms to the
Great Spirit and invokes the help of the
Great Spirit on his hunting trip as they
used to do in America before the white
man drove them out.
That was approach to God of some sort.
And that belief in God was some kind
of belief.
Edison saying he believed that God was force
and that if he could live long enough
he believed that he could invent an instrument
sensitive enough to detect God.
That was some kind of belief in God.
And the belief of the deists such as
Voltaire and others, deists who were not atheists,
but deists, their idea of God was that
God was a great principle but he was
not a personality.
That was some kind of belief in God.
And the heathen in their blindness every place
have some kind of belief in God.
And I suppose in the long run any
belief in God is better than no belief
in God.
That's open to question but at least I
for the moment give you my tentative statement
that I suppose it's better to believe in
God in a vague, shadowy way than not
to believe there is a God.
But oh, how much better to say you
who through him do believe in God.
You believe in God not as a pagan,
not as an Indian on the shore of
the lake, not as a yogi looking at
his nose and controlling his bodily forces.
You believe in God as the one who
raised Christ from the dead and gave him
glory.
That's also in the text.
You will find back here what that means
in John.
Father said Jesus, I will that they also
whom thou hast given me may be with
me where I am, that they may behold
my glory which thou hast given me, for
thou lovest me before the foundation of the
world.
And the glory which God had given him
before the foundation of the world God restored
to him when he raised him from the
dead and gave him glory.
And then it says, And all this was
that your faith and hope might be in
God.
Now, hope is a beautiful word, but it's
also a treacherous thing.
Because it's possible to hope invalid hopes, hopes
that have no foundation underneath them at all.
For instance, a condemned man who is supposed
to die next Friday one minute after midnight
never ceases to hope.
He believes to the very last that his
sentence will be commuted or he will be
pardoned.
And every knock on his cell door his
eyes brighten with the hope that this means
the governor has halved the sentence or at
least taken the sting of death out of
him.
But that condemned man goes on to die.
Paul and Hedy went to their death in
the Missouri death gas chamber probably convinced to
the end that they couldn't die, that somehow
there would be hope, but that hope failed
them.
And there's been many a mother, God knows
many a mother, who has hoped through to
the end that her boy would return when
all the time her boy was lying, his
physical body gone back into decay in some
far hidden corner of some burnt-over battlefield.
The hope that she'd see her boy failed
her.
It was a treacherous hope.
The condemned man's hope is a treacherous hope.
And we can hardly go on here without
remembering at least Tennyson's famous and touching illustration
of the young woman who expected her sailor
lover back from the sea and who knew
just when he was supposed to arrive at
her cottage and who dressed for that occasion.
And he tells in tender cheer-bringing language
of how she stood before the mirror and
turned every way and did the last little
touch that she knew he'd love.
And he said, poor girl, she doesn't know
that already his lifeless body is being tossed
and heaved on the billows following the wreck.
Hope may be a deceitful thing and a
treacherous thing, but real faith never disappoints because
that faith is in God.
It is grounded on the character of God,
the promises of God, and the covenant of
God, and the oath of God.
Now remember that an oath, a covenant, and
a promise, any of them or all of
them, would only be worth as much as
the character of the one who made them.
There is, they tell me, a couple of
men.
We're going to write him up a little
in the weekly.
There are a couple of men running around
claiming to be friends of the Alliance.
And they are simply bums and robbers.
One Christian brother took such a man in,
and he got up in the middle of
the night, robbed him of everything that wasn't
nailed down, and disappeared.
Another fellow calling himself Tom Leslie.
Now, I don't know whether that's his right
name.
Maybe he made it up for the occasion.
It's kind of a nice name.
I know lots of nice Toms, and I
know some nice Lesleys.
But he combined the names, and he's going
about telling that he's a friend of Dr.
Schuman, and he knows the missionaries, and can
quote them by name.
Then he gets all he can get and
disappears.
Now, a promise from a man like that,
how much would that mean, brother?
He could stand on a pile of Gideon
Bibles and swear, and I wouldn't believe it.
He could write with his own blood on
a piece of paper, and he's still alive.
A promise is only worth the character of
the one who makes it.
Even an oath is only worth the character.
That's why I've never been too strong for
a belief.
It's had no place here, but it's accepted
as an illustration that certain teachers should be
made to swear an anti-communist oath.
My brother, you can't pin a communist down
with an oath.
He'd swear on two bushels of Bibles and
then turn around and sneer and sell out
his country.
So a character has to be there before
there can be promise and oath and covenant.
And the scripture says, this Jesus Christ the
Lamb led us to a faith in God
so that our hope might be in God.
So if God is God, then our hope
is sound.
And we Christians can walk around absolutely sure
that everything is all right.
Because we have God back us.
His oath, his covenant, his blood support me
in the whelming flood.
And God, because he could not swear by
any other sword by himself, he by himself
has sworn I on his oath depend, I
shall.
On ye angels' wings are born to heaven
ascend.
So let's sing together, in closing, that song
that contains the verse or the stanza, His
oath, his covenant, his blood support me in
the whelming flood.
What is it?
236.
Remembering that we sing this in support of
or to set a little crown of music
upon the words of Christ ordained before the
foundation of the world but manifest in time
for us who believe in God through Jesus
Christ that our faith and hope might be
in God.
Shall we stand to sing?