Christian Altitude (Part C)

It's nothing but the blood of Jesus and that's why that hymn is so popular because we know it. You take His sacrifice on the cross away and then faith will get you nowhere. I'm not trivializing faith at all.

I hope you don't for one moment think that. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen by it. The elders obtained a good testimony. It is critical by faith you are saved and that not of yourselves.

It is the gift of God but you take the blood of Christ away and it all dies. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1st Peter.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now let's join Pastor Rick in the book of 1st Peter chapter 1 as he continues his message Christian Altitude. So you say you're a follower of Jesus Christ and if you call on Him, who judges incidentally, He does judge. Still the fatherly tone is in this. When you're right, it's not a preaching tone. It's not until you get in front of people does it become a preaching tone.

And mood largely dictates that but it doesn't take away from the content if it be true. Without partiality, that is, this is not about your salvation incidentally. When he says, who judges without partiality according to each one's work, he's talking about service here. God is looking at how we serve. Should He not? Should He just serve us?

Redeem us? Conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here. In this life, back to being sober-minded about these things, in this life, live as though you are a believer, that you are serving a great King.

This mention of where he says, let me go back a minute here, without partiality judges according to each one's work. Conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear. Now that word fear is the idea of reverence. Reverence is a type of fear but it's a balanced fear. It's a sober fear. It recognizes God is not to be trifled with. That's what this type, this reverent fear understands.

This is not the paralyzing fear that drains life, the terror. This is the sense of the awesomeness of God, the stupendous essence of God. How many lives in Christianity and out of Christianity lack reverence? The house of God in a junkyard really is no difference with them. They don't ever connect what goes on in one place and what goes on in another place. They don't understand that there is a throne and there's a God on the throne, the God of the Bible, and that in His presence we don't have the right to be reckless about holy things. I heard one probably a well-meaning Christian who was speaking about a church he was about to go into and this was on a YouTube thing and he referred to the church. He said, okay let's go inside this joint. He doesn't understand. I don't think he was intentionally trying to be irreverent but if that kind of attitude catches on, reverence dies.

Someone needs to pull him aside and say, listen, this is the house of God bought with His blood. It is made so by the intention of those who attend there, submitting to Him what He has said in His word. Supposing that holiness somehow is not beneficial, is not a good way to think about holiness. Well what's in it for me? Why should I suffer for Christ?

What do I get out of it? Who could applaud such an attitude? Because there are those that want to sort of communicate in some way that being holy is not cool.

Where's that written? Who says so? In heaven being holy is the coolest thing you could be and heaven will all have sunglasses on.

Non-prescription ones too. And so people try to bump you off of holiness, especially you younger Christians, someone they're always trying to okay tone it down. I'm not saying be overly righteous either and become a pain in the neck and kill joy.

You can't even laugh at anything that is genuinely humorous. In fear, the fear that brings life. Proverbs 14 27, the fear of Yahweh is a fountain of life to turn one away from the snares of death.

There are such things as healthy fears, we all know it is what keeps us in our lane when we're driving, especially on a single lane road where there is one traffic going one way and the other going the other. Our lower selves, as I mentioned, can find courage in irreverence. This would explain why the profanities fly when a person is hot and angry and building themselves up to attack something. They do not have the courage that comes from holiness, they have it that comes from that type of courage that comes from irreverence, it gives them a sense of power that they do not have to submit. They can just give free license to their own passions. Hebrews 12 28, therefore since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.

I hope we got that. Verse 18, knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers. You think there was maybe somebody that would have would have liked to have been waiting at the door at the end of service if Peter preached these words and take issue with them.

What about the traditions of my father? Peter wouldn't be the guy I'd like to go up to and mess with incidentally, he just might have a carnal flashback or something and wouldn't be good for me. But these are strong words that he is throwing out there and he's getting people between the eyes as the scriptures do. You know we come to Christ, we don't realize, we see the salvation, the love Jesus has for us and all the sins have passed away, we have a we're born again, that means we a baby when a child is born they have no past, there's no record, that everything is ahead of them and that's what it's like being born again. And we don't stop to think, wait a minute, from the book of Acts all the way to the end there is conflict, there is struggle, there are these apostles trying to constantly tell Christians to get it together, gird up the loins of your mind, pull it together, stop drifting back.

We do good to remember that, unless we become puffed up. And so he says, you know you weren't redeemed with with trivial things, you weren't bought with gold or silver, that could never buy peace with God, nothing man-made can buy peace with God, gain peace with God, it is the precious blood of Christ. Redeemed, that word redeemed at its root in the Greek means freed, not from, say, the way you would untie a dog from a leash or something like that, but free from a legal burden, it's been taken away, you don't have this thing hanging, this judgment hanging over you any longer, and he says, knowing that you were not freed from judgment with common things, from your aimless conduct, your meaningless conduct, your useless life that was garnished with things that have no lasting value, they have no place in eternity, now you do, now you've come to Christ, you have these things, that old way of life was moral folly, and Christ is calling us out of that, and our flesh is calling us back to that, and the tug of war is is constant, that's why Paul said, don't get tired of doing good, why would anybody have to tell you that?

Because doing good is often rewarded with trouble, you try to, you try so hard to come to do something the right way and nobody else sees it, they attack you for it, your own brothers and sisters can be guilty, you and I can be guilty of this, I've never done it myself, but I've seen you'd mess up, I wish it could be so, one day we'll never have to make such analogies, the day is coming when we will be in that place, where all of this is forgotten, do any of you want to remember any of this, when there's, you know, you want to say, you know, I wish so and so was here to see this, well if they're in heaven, they're wishing you were with them to see that, you're not, they're not the one missing out, we are, but our time is coming and you know, I don't know how it's going to be that transition into heaven, I know that I won't die, Jesus said, he who believes in me shall never die, it will be sort of a tuck in, wake up in a flash kind of a thing, but I like the picture that the psalmist paints, I shall enter his courts with thanksgiving in my heart, I shall enter his gates with praise, I will say this is the day the Lord has made, I will be glad and rejoice, to teach ourselves to praise in this life takes work, because anybody can do it when you've got things to thank God for, but how do you, how do we really enter into expressing a genuine gratitude and not sort of going down a checklist, you know, lights check, you know, gauges check, like a pilot about to take off, it's got to be something better to praising God, how much does God hear coming off the planet and how much of it is praise, how much of that is genuine praise and how much of that genuine praise has been learned in the school of the Holy Spirit, I am asking God, I've been asking him for some time, teach me to praise you, but remember, I'm really weak, so if you can skip hard lessons and just kind of instill it, it's greatly appreciated, sign the management, but anyway, pseudo-management, by tradition of your fathers, your aimless conduct, that empty way, by tradition of your fathers, he's talking to Jews and Gentiles in this letter, yes he starts out talking about the Jews, the diaspora, others, dispersion, but he includes as he moves through his letter all the Christians, and by this time there were many Gentiles coming into the church and in the church, until finally they were the majority, which makes mathematical sense because they are the majority of people on in the world, but he says the tradition of your fathers, the Jews, they had this idea that God had imparted the law, the spoken law to Moses, he gave the law, but that there was also an oral tradition that we don't have in print, and that's where they started making the wrong turn, and they began to expand on this body of rabbinical teachings more and more and more, until you could not even have little studs on the bottom of your sandals on a Sunday, because you were doing work by carrying the, and just these ridiculous things, and it gave the Jews the Talmud, this writing of their rabbinical teachings, and they killed the law of Moses. Eventually it did eclipse their own Bible, so that on spiritual matters the books of Moses became secondary to the rabbis and what they had written down. It was a terrible work of scholarly tradition. It was one of the things that caused them to hate Jesus, because Jesus would not submit to it. Jesus called it for what it was, worthless, and so they sat in the synagogue on a Sabbath day daring him to to dare heal somebody, and of course he took that as provocation, he cast out demons, he healed people, he did it in their face, and the Bible tells us they hated him for it.

From that day forward they sought how they could kill him for it. New Testament Christianity has also piled up her traditions that she finds worth defending, just like the rabbis defended theirs, worthless, obstructionist traditions, things that we do that actually hinder righteousness. It's okay to have a tradition if it's harmless in and of itself, but when it starts becoming mandated, put on people as a burden, it's no good. You know John Calvin in Switzerland, he had police to make sure you followed their rules.

The great Swiss reformer, as some saw him, I'm a John Knox man, if I like John Knox more I'm not really all that great on any of the reformers, I appreciate the work they did, but that work of having police, religious police, was a bad idea, and so my point is that Christianity cannot look down at rabbinical Judaism as though we're above it, we have to watch out for these things, the traditions of your father that obstruct the word of God. Verse 19, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish, that word precious, objectively it means costly, subjectively it means valuable or honor, honorable, esteemed, and of course he was both. When Paul writes this in 1st Corinthians he says, now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones would he stubble. Valuable, honorable stones, the same Greek word that Peter is using, and so Peter is saying the blood of Christ, this is special, there's nothing like it. It's red, but it's what it means, not the actual blood that splattered on the Roman soldiers, the meaning of it all, that's what counts. It would be accurate to say the blood of God, or God's blood, Acts chapter 20 verse 28, therefore take heed to yourselves, and to the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood. Blood is not money in this life, it is in the spiritual realm with God, the blood of Christ is, that is what has purchased our salvation. It was not faith that saved the Jews there in Egypt on the Passover night, it was the blood on the door. You could have a gallon of faith, but if there was no blood on the door, you were struck dead by the angel of death.

If you had blood on the door, but you really didn't believe it, but it was there, you were passed over. I don't want to split too many hairs here except to make this point, the blood gives life to the faith. Any faith we have comes from God. Yeah, our free will is involved, we do receive it, but it is his work, otherwise we could find it somewhere else.

We can find solutions in other things, we cannot. It is nothing but the blood of Jesus and that's why that hymn is so popular because we know it. You take his sacrifice on the cross away and then faith will get you nowhere. I'm not trivializing faith at all, I hope you don't for one moment think that.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen by it, the elders obtained a good testimony. It is critical by faith you are saved and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. But you take the blood of Christ away and it all dies.

Any body without blood is dead, it is true in figure and it is true in fact. And so he says, as the lamb without blemish, without spot. Well, blemishes are acquired defects on a sheep or animal for sacrifice.

The spots were natural defects inherent, born with. When Christ, four days before he was crucified, he entered into Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday. That was the day of selection. That was the day when you would select the lamb for slaughter and you would quarantine that animal. And for four days you would watch and make sure the animal did not get sick or have a defect show up that you did not see earlier before you could bring him to sacrifice. And so when Christ comes into Jerusalem, he is the selection of God, he is the lamb of God. He is separated for the sacrifice. He would go to Bethany, come back to Jerusalem, go to Bethany, go back to for four days. He was right there in front of everybody so that they could observe the lamb of God without blemish, without spot.

The perfect man that he is to the believer, that he is even independent if you don't have to believe he is perfect. But Jesus dismissed those who wanted his teachings without blood. Unless you eat of my body and drink of my blood, you cannot be with me. John chapter 6, it's too much for us. He was saying there's got to be blood. There's got to be pain and suffering attached to dealing with sin.

It has been that way since those animals were sacrificed in Eden on behalf of Adam and Eve. You preach the blood, you preach man's sin. You preach the blood, you preach the Savior, the solution, the only solution. And churches that don't preach sin do not preach exclusively the blood of Christ. They are churches without the blood and if you have not the blood you're dead. Verse 20, if I see overly passionate, I mean I can't run out and see myself and then come back and it just doesn't work, but I'm passionate about these things because I believe you are too. We take them as though they come from God.

Not that somebody sat down and wrote them while he was waiting for, you know, a check to clear or something. These things are given to us to do just what we are doing. We know what human history looks at like when the Word of God is locked away. Just look at the dark ages, look what the Roman Catholic Church did to Europe when it said it's a sin to have the Word of God, to speak to God, the Word of God in the lives of the people. How they hounded those men who were translating scripture for people to read. Tyndale and Wycliffe and Luther and Knox and all the rest of them, they wanted to murder those men for daring to make the Word of God available.

We have it now. Some of you have five, six, seven Bibles. We have the Word of God now. John Wisher was one that moved in the heart of John Calvin. He was sort of his mentor. They burned him at the stake because he loved the Word of God.

He preached the Word of God. So may we not take these things ever, casually. Verse 20, and indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you. Indeed was foreordained. That is not just a mere point in time, that's eternity past, it's always been. One saint puts it this way, before man's sin the remedy had already been provided.

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. And the purpose of God, Christ, had already died. Before Adam was created and the purpose and plan of God, the world had already been redeemed before the world was ever brought into being.

That is what is meant by indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world. God wasn't caught off surprise. His manifest comes in human form the day came.

The New Testament times, he tells in verse 20, that is the Christian age. And then he says for you. What was the purpose of all this? For you. Why was he born? For you. Why did he die the way he died?

For you. And for whom is he now making intercession for? And for whom is he delighted to see in heaven one day?

You and me. Verse 21. For through him for through him believe in God who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God.

Well that certainly verse 21 goes better with verse 20. Manifesting these last times for you who through him believe in God. Ephesians 2 18. For through him we both have access by one spirit to the father. John 10 9. I am the door if anyone enters by me he will be saved. I purposely am not saying I am the way the truth of the life no man comes to the father except through me.

I'm purposely not using that verse because I want to expose us to other verses that are saying the same thing as forcefully and I just read two of them in Peter's word here in verse 21. Through him believe in God is yet another. Your faith and hope are in God. That's how he ends this 21st verse. We don't have faith in faith.

That would be a waste. We have faith in God. Faith is no power in and of itself. Faith just describes what God is doing. True faith. So you may lack assurance and I'm finishing with this. You may lack assurance of your faith. That won't be enough to undo what Christ has done for you.

You got that. Where he says who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. God is saying if you're not a hundred percent sure on this but you're sure enough I take it. You know Jesus is Lord and Savior you've got it.

That will pull the teeth from Satan's bite concerning things of salvation. We're so glad you tuned in today to study the book of 1st Peter on Cross Reference Radio. Cross Reference Radio is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia and we're blessed to bring you God's word with each broadcast. If you'd like more information about this program or want to listen to additional teachings from Pastor Rick please visit our website crossreferenceradio.com. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never have to miss a program. Just search for Cross Reference Radio in iTunes, Google Play Music or your favorite podcast app. We hope you'll tune in again next time to join us as we continue our study through the scriptures right here on Cross Reference Radio.