Isaiah 33: 5, 6
2 Peter 1: 10-12
Hebrews 12: 22-24, 28
1 Peter 5: 10, 11
I would like to speak to you about stability, which is something that I feel the need of very much for myself. As believers with our faith in the Lord Jesus, we have “an anchor of the soul, both secure and firm" (Heb 6: 19), but the enemy of our souls never gives up trying to shake us. The scripture that we read in 1 Peter conveys what I want to speak about, with the Lord’s help: “the God of all grace”. That grace is the source of strength and stability; we have our faith in Him. He has called us to “his eternal glory”. I want to give you a phrase of Mr Raven’s because these phrases help us to understand the truth. He said that there is no stability on the ground of responsibility, vol 2 p189. The stability that we have in Christianity is on the ground of God’s purpose for us. I hope you can understand why Mr Raven said that. If you read something in ministry and you remember it, that is good; but if you read it and you understand why it was said, that is even better. Have you found from your experience why that is true, that there is no stability on the ground of responsibility? We walk here as responsible believers but our stability, our foundation, is based firmly on what God has in mind for us and in His purpose for us. He has given us the Spirit so that we should be true to that and hold onto it.
That is why I read in Isaiah 33: “he shall be the stability of thy times”, and as we hold on to Him, He is our stability. We cannot find it in ourselves. If you have not found that yet, then you will. For us, the “He” who is our stability is particularly the Lord Jesus, in all that He has done; in His death and resurrection and in the place where He is now. I remember seeing the Kings James version of this scripture in Isaiah on the front of the Rockefeller building in New York. It is an enormous building, an American skyscraper, and over the door this scripture from Isaiah is inscribed. Perhaps the person who designed or built the skyscraper thought, ‘This is a stable building; I have built it stable’. Well, we know what happened in New York several years ago now; man’s strength, even the best of his intentions, cannot bring stability. The best of your intentions or mine cannot bring stability; it is entirely in the Lord Jesus.
The scripture that we ended with says, “the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, when ye have suffered for a little while, himself shall make perfect, stablish, strengthen, ground”. These words are all linked in their meaning. I think it is wonderful that the God of all grace will do this; He shall “make perfect, stablish, strengthen, ground”. Then Peter’s soul breaks forth in worship even as he writes these words.
I wanted to speak about what Peter wrote as to our “calling and election”. It is very interesting to think of the man who wrote these two letters. Peter wrote them, and remember who Peter was. He was an impulsive man; he said that he would follow the Lord, even to death, and then a few hours later he was denying him. That is what Mr Raven meant when he said that there is no stability on the grounds of responsibility. Peter thought that, in the strength of his love for the Lord, he could go with Him all the way. He did love the Lord, and there is no doubting the love of the Lord for Peter; He said, “I have besought for thee that thy faith fail not”, Luke 22: 32. He did not pray for Peter that he would not fail; He prayed that his faith would not fail.
So it is Peter who wrote these words, “Wherefore the rather, brethren, use diligence to make your calling and election sure”. What did he mean by that? If what I am saying is true, and that our calling and election is secure in the purpose of God, what did Peter mean by saying that we have to make them sure? Surely it is sure if it is God’s purpose for us? It is! This is not a question of making it sure in the heart of God. God does not change His mind; there is stability in the purpose of God, because once God has purposed to do something, He will never, ever change His mind. He is God and He cannot change His mind; once He purposes to do something, He will do it. So Peter did not mean that their calling and election needed to be made sure in the heart of God, but he is writing to these believers to make the “calling and election sure” in their hearts. That is what is in my mind today. I feel the need of this, to make our “calling and election sure, for doing these things ye will never fail”. What a wonderful thing it is to come into the blessedness of God’s purpose for us and to get hold of it in our hearts. That helps us not to fall, because when Mr Raven spoke about there being no stability on the ground of responsibility, he was not advocating that we should be irresponsible. He was not advocating that we should think that, because of the purpose of God, and that we are saved for all eternity, it does not matter what we do. It would be irresponsible even to think in that way. But God has in mind that we should be preserved by making our calling and election sure in our own hearts, in our own lives, in our own links with Him, “for doing these things ye will never fall”. Again, you might say that Peter certainly knew what it was to fall. We need to get a view of the purpose of God for us first of all, so as to hold on to it. Then it will be that “the entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ be richly furnished to you”. That is what we were speaking about in the reading, this movement of soul into the purpose of God and into the thoughts of God, “the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour”.
Peter writes further, “I will be careful to put you always in mind of these things, although knowing them and established in the present truth”. That is the word that came to me as I was thinking about this address, “established in the present truth”. I desire, dear brethren, that I might be more established in this way, to be aware of the purpose of God and to be established in the present truth.
In Hebrews 12, the writer speaks of what we have come to, “but ye have come to mount Zion; and to the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem”. Sometimes in the ordinary use of English, we say that we have ‘come’ to something, and what we mean is that we have thought something through and have arrived at a conclusion. That is not what this means. What mount Zion speaks of is something that was there already in the purpose of God. Mount Zion is spoken of in the psalms, the place of God’s purpose, the place of God’s dwelling. There is a reference in the psalms to God establishing mount Zion forever, Ps 48: 8. That refers in its literality to the thoughts of God for Israel, and He brought them to that. Israel came into the land and eventually David took Jerusalem, and what was there in mount Zion was established under David and Solomon. But in the thoughts of God, it is even greater than that, and there is something very secure and firm in this idea of Zion. So it says “ye have come to”. These Hebrew believers had known what it was to think of things from a Jewish point of view, but now the writer to the Hebrews, who we assume was the apostle Paul, was telling them that they had to come to this. He was crediting them with coming to it, “ye have come to mount Zion; and to the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem”. This is what faith would have in mind. Abraham “waited for the city which has foundations, of which God is the artificer and constructor”, Heb 11: 10. What a wonderful thing it is to see that God’s purpose never changes! He has built something, and He is building something; He is doing it now in a meeting like this. What God is doing, He is doing forever. If you get an impression in this meeting of the purpose of God, it will stand you in good stead for ever. You can come into the appreciation of something today which you can carry with you into eternity. Think of the stability which that would give you. These impressions of Christ that you gather up in the service of God, these thoughts that you might gain in a meeting like this as to the greatness of what God has in mind for you, they are not things just for time: they go all the way through into eternity. They will be what we will enjoy eternally, for there will be an answer to God eternally because of what He has formed in us now. I was thinking especially of the first two; I did not mean to go through all of these wonderful things that are spoken of here. Mount Zion relates to the purpose of God, and then, “the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem”. There is something established in the thoughts of God that can never change.
The question for us is in verse 28, “Wherefore let us, receiving a kingdom not to be shaken”. As I read that, it that came as a challenge to me. It is not just that there is a kingdom that is not to be shaken. There is one, and it would consist of these things that the writer outlines in verses 22-24, which comprise a kingdom that can never be shaken. But the question for us is, ’Are we receiving it?’. The writer says, “Wherefore let us, receiving a kingdom”. That is not passive; you do not receive anything passively. The things of Christianity are active, they are to be actively received by us. The Lord Jesus is on high interceding for us, appearing before the face of God for us; think of the activity of His service towards us. I had an impression recently of what we enjoy in our relationships with divine Persons as being in holy activity. The Lord Jesus ever lives to intercede for you - do you understand that? Every hour of every day, the Lord Jesus is interceding for you that you should not sin. He intercedes for you to keep you at the level at which God regards you. Jesus has died for you and if you are a believer in Him, He serves you as your great high Priest to keep you at that level. If we do sin, His service as Patron comes in, for John tells us in his epistle that “we have a patron with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”, 1 John 2: 1. Heaven is a wonderful realm of living divine activity. May we get a sense of what is going on in heaven all the time; the Lord Jesus is interceding for you and for me every moment. And if we do sin, He speaks to the Father about us as our Patron there. And then the Holy Spirit is here. How great are the blessed activities of the divine realm, and it is to stabilise us. We sang in our hymn:
Blest Saviour, keep our spirits stayed
(Hymn 151).
That is an old fashioned word; some of you may not understand what it means. A stay is a rope on a tent that holds it up, or you can have a flagpole with stays on it, the ropes that hold it steady. So what the writer here was meaning is that our spirits are kept steady:
Blest Saviour, keep our spirits stayed,
Hard following after Thee.
That is what I have in mind. It is not that we are static; we are following, we are growing, but there is stability and an establishment that we can possess as laying hold of the purpose of God, and understanding the way in which the divine realm is in movement, through the service of the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit. It is a wonderful thing that divine Persons serve us. The Lord Jesus is God in His Person, the Holy Spirit is God in His Person, and yet in all the lowly grace of divine purpose they have come near to us. What a God of grace we have, as we read of in the last scripture. Dear brethren, let us actively receive these things into our hearts. Let them not just be what other persons speak about. May we put our roots down in the purpose of God as we appreciate these wonderful truths, and see that as well as truths, they are wonderful divine activities. Let us grow in them; there are many analogies in scripture of trees putting their roots down - which brings stability - and bearing fruit upwards.
“The God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus” - what a God He is! Remember who Peter was writing to. If you look at the beginning of this epistle, he wrote as “Peter, apostle of Jesus Christ, to the sojourners of the dispersion”, 1 Pet 1: 1. These were Jews who had lived in Samaria and Judæa, and the Roman powers had expelled them all over much of the then known world: “Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia”. Peter was writing to them about, “the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, when ye have suffered for a little while ...”. The enemy would use suffering to shake us. These persons knew what suffering was. How would you like to be uprooted by the government and told that you had to go to Siberia or wherever? Some believers in Russia have had that happen to them in the past one hundred years. These Jewish believers had known what it was to be forcibly dispossessed of their houses, of their families, and sent to another country where they did not know the language or the customs. Peter says to them, “when ye have suffered for a little while”. These persons had in their hearts something of the glory of this, “himself shall make perfect, stablish, strengthen, ground”. Then there is this upwelling in Peter’s heart. Worship flows from a heart that is rooted in the love of God. That is where you get stability. You get it as you enjoy and absorb the love of God for you. As you answer to that, there is this upwelling of heart in which Peter breaks out here, “to him be the glory and the might for the ages of the ages, Amen”.
You might ask me, dear young friend, ’How do I know that these things are true in me?’. I trust that you believe that they are true about you. I trust that as having accepted the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, as having put your trust in Him and in His work, you understand and believe that the things that I have been speaking about are true about you. God regards you as justified. But how do you know that they are true in you? Have you ever had this experience, that when you have heard the Lord Jesus spoken about, something welled up in your heart in response? That is the Holy Spirit working in you. Have you ever felt that there was an answer in your affections when you spoke to another believer about the Lord Jesus? That is the Holy Spirit working in you. What happened here as Peter wrote of “the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus” was that something welled up in his heart and he expressed it in this note of worship, “to him be the glory and the might for the ages of the ages, Amen”. All of this has in mind a response to God. One thing which always impresses me about the doxologies - that means ‘words of praise’ in Greek - in Scripture is that they are very short. When we are engaged in the service of God, we might be concerned about how much we can say in response to God. But Peter, who was an apostle of the Lord Jesus, simply wrote, “to him be the glory and the might for the ages of the ages”. That is not more than about a dozen words, but they were the result of Peter’s appreciation of what he was in the purpose of God, an answer to God in worship.
These have been a few simple thoughts about something that I believe is important. May we all be established in the present truth, established in the purpose of God, not only in believing what is true about us, but our roots going down into the love of God, resulting in an answer to Him in us.
May we all be encouraged, young and old, for His Name’s sake.
Spaldwick
23rd November 2013