A Daily Walk

Guest (Male): Pastor John Randall says there is good reason to rejoice even in the midst of hardship.

John Randall: Harry Ironside, great commentator, great pastor. Here is what he said. I love what he said. This helped me a lot. He said when I get to heaven, I will see a sign over the gates saying, "Whosoever will, let him come." As I pass through those gates and enter into glory, I will look back and see another sign saying, "Chosen before the foundations of the world."

Here is how you can rejoice. You can rejoice today in any kind of suffering hardship because you know you are a sojourner. You are just passing through. This is temporary. You also can rejoice. God chose you. He loves you. He chose you before the foundations of the world. He knew you before you were ever knit in your mother's womb, and he loves you. This is the thing that can help me through any kind of difficulty.

Guest (Male): Typically, Christians either believe God elects some for salvation or that man is responsible and has the freedom to choose to be saved. Is it possible God's sovereignty and man's responsibility beautifully intersect somehow? While it may seem they are contradictory to one another, Pastor John Randall believes they are complementary to one another, and it is okay to admit we do not fully understand it all.

Today on A Daily Walk, we continue our study of 1 Peter. Again, we are in chapter one, looking at the various reasons we can rejoice as Christians even in hard times.

John Randall: You can rejoice. You can have hope because you know that this is temporary. You are sojourning, and it really is temporary. Life is a vapor. Fifty, 60, 70, 80, 90 years, maybe, in comparison to eternity is like a drop in the bucket. It is like a drop in the ocean compared to what is coming, the glory of being with Jesus for eternity.

Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, it has not entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love him. What a glorious future. Therefore, because you are a sojourner, you can rejoice and be glad. The second thing he points out and why we can have hope and rejoice in the midst of suffering is because of our salvation. Do you really have anything to praise God for today? Really? How about your salvation? How about you are saved? That is really good. You are not going to hell. That is amazing.

Salvation is something that sometimes we forget how priceless it is. The psalmist would say, "Restore unto me the joy of my salvation." Knowing that I am saved, knowing that I am no longer in darkness, no longer dead, no longer lost, no longer blind, all of that should produce within my life a sense of gratitude because I am saved when before I was not saved.

There are three aspects that Peter mentions concerning our salvation. Three things he points out. First of all, he tells us we were chosen by God. In verse two, he writes and says, "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father." The word elect means chosen by God. God in his grace and his mercy chose us to be part of his family. We have been adopted into the family of God. The word literally means those who are the called out ones, the chosen ones.

God's choosing was based, the Bible tells us, and Peter mentions it here, upon God's foreknowledge. Paul mentions this also in Ephesians chapter one in verse four when he says, "Just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestined us to the adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will."

What a wonderful thing this morning to realize that God chose us. Even though he knows everything about us, he still chose us because he loves us. Again, this should spark within us gratitude and thankfulness as well, that God actually wants us to be part of his family and to spend eternity with him. When did God choose us? The Bible says before the foundations of the world, which is just mind-blowing.

Before he said, "Let there be light," and it came into existence, before he ever placed the stars in space and put the earth in its place, before any of that happened, before that, he chose us to be part of his family. I love what D.L. Moody said. He said, "I am glad that God chose me before the foundation of the world because he surely wouldn't have chosen me now." I am glad for that as well.

Briefly, let me say that some get hung up on the whole idea and the concept of God choosing people. For some, it presents tension, debate, and points of reason. Much of the debate stems from finite men and women trying to comprehend the infinite God, which is impossible. But people try. There are things about God's character, about God's nature, about who he is that I do not fully understand.

I do not fully understand it. In fact, the Bible tells me I am not going to completely understand it in this life, that some of God's ways are past finding out. We are going to find out one day. We have figured it out now. We have five things that we feel this puts God into. That is not going to do it. God is way beyond your five things. You are going to somehow in your finite mentality bring the infinite God. It is impossible.

One of those things has to do with God's perfect foreknowledge, God's predestining, God's choosing. I have come to the conclusion that I cannot understand how this works completely. I do not fully understand the sovereignty of God, his foreknowledge in choosing, and man's responsibility to choose. But the Bible teaches both. God knows all things. He knows who is going to be saved. He knows who is going to be lost.

There are those that say in their own estimation that must mean then that God chooses some people for heaven, and he chooses and even creates some people for hell. Folks, that is not what the Bible teaches. That is false. I stand against that wholeheartedly based upon scripture. The Bible teaches that God has perfect foreknowledge. He is sovereign and yet he gives man a choice. How does that work? I do not know.

It just teaches both. When I come to it, I teach what it says and I accept it. The fact that God foreknows those who are not going to be saved and chooses them does not stop any person from coming to God. In fact, God desires all people to be saved. Will all people be saved? No. But that is God's desire. That is why Jesus came. "Whosoever will," the Bible says, "let him come." The Lord never turned any person away who came to him.

Quoting D.L. Moody again, he said, "The 'whosoever wills' are the elect, and the 'whosoever won'ts' are the non-elect." Some say that is not fair that God chooses. What if he did not choose me? My question would be how do you know that he did not choose you? Because I am not a Christian. Why are you not a Christian? I do not want to be. Then maybe you are not chosen.

But you can find out whether or not you are chosen by responding to his love and the message of the Gospel. You can answer that question this morning by responding and repenting of your sin, and guess what you are going to realize? You are chosen. As you read through the Bible, you realize God has chosen knowing the choices we would make and yet gives us a choice to respond.

How do you reconcile those two logically? It just short-circuits. You cannot. It does not work. But here is what works. The Bible teaches both. The sovereignty of God and the free will of man go like two poles into the sky, high up into the sky side-by-side parallel, and somewhere they cross. They intersect.

Harry Ironside, great commentator, great pastor, said when I get to heaven I will see a sign over the gates saying, "Whosoever will, let him come." As I pass through those gates and enter into glory, I will look back and see another sign saying, "Chosen before the foundations of the world." You can rejoice today in any kind of suffering hardship because you know you are a sojourner. You are just passing through. This is temporary.

But you also can rejoice. God chose you. He loves you. He chose you before the foundations of the world. He knew you before you were ever knit in your mother's womb, and he loves you. This is the thing that can help me through any kind of difficulty. Another aspect concerning our salvation and a reason to rejoice in suffering is that you are set apart, sanctified. He says here in verse two, "Sanctification of the Spirit."

The word means to be set apart. It means to be consecrated. To sanctify something or someone is to set that person aside or apart for the use intended by its designer. In a positional sense, when a person receives Christ, like the men yesterday that came forward and prayed to receive Christ, when they received the Lord Jesus as their savior, when they were converted, when they put their trust in Christ, they were set apart by the Holy Spirit.

Positionally, they were set apart by God for his purpose in their life. But not only does sanctification speak of our position, that is being set apart for God's purposes, but it also speaks of a process. By that, day-by-day becoming more like Jesus. Sanctification is a process where the Spirit of God is working in the life of the believer, making us more like the Lord Jesus to be conformed into his image.

That is a work of the Spirit. It is the work of the Holy Spirit bringing the whole nature of a person under the influence of gracious principles implanted in the soul at regeneration. Someone said it this way: salvation is the miracle of a moment. It happens like this. But sanctification is this process of a lifetime until we come into the presence of the Lord and enter into glorification.

Until that time, we are being set apart and transformed through the work of the Spirit of God, through the word of God in our lives. In that sense, I can rejoice today. Lord, you set me apart for your purpose. Lord, there is a plan in all of this. Lord, you are working in my life. I am a sojourner. I am passing through. Lord, you have saved me. You have sanctified me. In that, I praise God.

He says in sanctification of the Spirit for obedience. He saved us, he sanctified us, and he calls us to walk in obedience. Obedience to God's will and God's word, again, a byproduct of the work of the Holy Spirit in my life. The word obedience literally means to be hearing under. It is listening from a subordinate, submissive position to God's word and complying with it.

God does not call us to obedience to keep something good from us. God calls us to obedience in order to bless us. There is blessing in walking in obedience to the word and the will of God. If you have ever lived apart from the Lord, if you have ever lived outside of relationship with the Lord or walked disobediently, you know and you remember the sting of that, where that leads and the pain that it causes.

Walking in obedience to God's word and God's will, there is blessing in that even when it is difficult. To obey, the Bible says, is better than sacrifice. To be obedient. God does not do this to be restrictive, but only to protect and to bless. It is when a person disobeys the word of God that trouble and heartache follow. If you know what God's word says and you are living contrary to it, you are not in a good place today.

The Bible would say you are in a backslidden place today, and you need to repent and get realigned with the path of the Lord that is narrow. Saving faith always produces obedience to the word of God. If somebody is truly saved, you want to walk in obedience to God's word. A person who claims faith in Jesus Christ but whose pattern of life is utter and complete disobedience to the word of God, you would question whether or not they really knew the Lord.

To know the Lord is to walk with the Lord, and to walk with the Lord is to walk in obedience to the Lord. Here is what John said, and I think he said it so profoundly in 1 John chapter one, verse six. He said, "If we say we have fellowship with him and at the same time we walk in darkness, we lie and we do not practice the truth." To lie is to be deceived, to think because I have said it but I do not live it, I am good. Actually, those two need to line up.

To just say it and then live in darkness is not right. For example, if you have plans to sin after church, it is ready, you scheduled it, it is set up. You are just waiting for when this is over because you have plans to sin. You lie. You are lying to yourself. You are being deceived. The devil is lying to you. You are trying to lie to God, but God sees it all. Do not live in darkness.

In 2 Timothy chapter two, Paul writes to Timothy and here is what he said in verse 19. He said, "Nevertheless, the solid foundation of God stands having this seal: The Lord knows those who are his, and let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity." Let me put it another way: run from sin, not run after it. Do not make plans to engage in it. We have been graciously selected by God, set apart in sanctification by God.

Now, walk in obedience to God. Then Peter says, "Cleansed by God," by the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Peter, in writing to Jewish believers, takes an Old Testament concept, an Old Testament picture of the sprinkling of blood. If you have read through it, you may have noticed there is a lot of blood in the Old Testament. People just leap right through Leviticus. Let's move on. There is so much sacrifice.

Why is there so much blood? Because it is all pointing to one sacrifice that is to come, which is Jesus. But there were occasions when the priests would take blood and they would sprinkle it on things and on people. Have you ever seen blood that is supposed to be in your body, but it is outside of your body? Some people just faint. They see blood and they are like, "Ah!" Other people cry. It is frightening.

Imagine when you see blood, there were times when priests, for example, when a leper would be cleansed, one of the parts of the cleansing of the leper was to take blood and hit him with it, sprinkle it on him. It is all over you. If a priest was to go and minister, for the leper, it signified his cleansing. For the priest, this was part of their process of going into service. After they were washed in water, anointed with oil, they were hit with blood.

It would just sprinkle all over their garments, all over them. You can imagine the dots everywhere of the blood of a lamb reminding them that what you are about to enter into and your life of service is only because something was put to death so that you could serve. You talk about cleansing so that you will be reminded that leprosy that you had that is no longer part of you, that was killing you, there is a very graphic picture in your mind and on your body that you have been cleansed by the blood, and now you are free.

Moses took blood and he sealed the covenant made by the people and God. Relationship. The blood was sprinkled so that the people would know in order for them to have relationship with God, something had to die. Blood had to be shed for service, for cleansing, for relationship. All of that pointed to the person of Christ. For us to be cleansed, we needed the blood of Jesus. For us to enter into service, it is only by the blood. For us to have relationship with God, it was through the blood of the Lamb that was shed on our behalf.

We are sprinkled by it. We are washed by it. Is somebody grateful for the blood of Christ today? There is a passage of scripture that the Lord is reminding me of even as we are going through this, where John is there in heaven and he is in the midst of the throne room. He is seeing all of these things unfold, and he is reminded of the one who had washed him in his blood.

The New Testament here, Peter, applies it to the work of Christ upon the cross and the efficiency, the cleansing that he has provided. Isn't it marvelous to think if you want reason to rejoice even in the midst of hardship, here you go: your sins, my sins, our sins are forgiven. You can praise God for that. You can thank him for it. There is reason to rejoice in the fact that our sins are forgiven.

I do not know what kind of a sinner you were. Some of us were professional. It was our business, but we have been forgiven. We have been washed. We have been cleansed. We have been made new. Here is what John said in 1 John chapter one, verse seven. He said, "If we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his Son continually cleanses us from all sin."

The blood of Jesus is efficient. It produced what only it could provide in atonement, in salvation, once for all. The blood has been shed. So no matter what suffering, no matter what hardship, here is what I know: I am a sojourner. I am passing through. In that, I am on my way to heaven. I am set apart for the purposes of God, selected by God. I do not know why he would do that other than he is gracious, and he has forgiven me and cleansed me from all of my sin.

Therefore, I have reason to praise him and to glorify him because of what he has provided. You know, there was a hymn that I remember that we used to sing, and the lyrics were as follows. It says, "There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains." They lose all their guilty stains. lose all their guilty stains, and sinners plunged beneath that flood and lose all their guilty stains.

Friend, I pray that you have plunged beneath that flood and have found the forgiveness that is found in Jesus Christ. To know that you are forgiven. You know, there are people that live under the weight of guilt and shame, and the devil keeps them there. He never lets them forget who they were and what they have done. You're never going to. And the blood of Jesus and the forgiveness that he provides can free you from that, liberate you from that so that you can truly know that you are forgiven.

Peter says to the troubled saints that are scattered abroad: Hey, you are on your way to heaven. You are a sojourner. You have been chosen by God, selected. You are sanctified, set apart for his purpose, and you are washed and you are cleansed by his blood. Grace and peace be multiplied to you. How wonderful. Grace, that unmerited, undeserved favor of God. Peter prayed that it would be multiplied to the people, enabling grace for daily Christian living. Grace, but also peace. Always in that order, experiencing the grace of God and then the peace of God.

No matter what you are going through, there is grace and there is peace that is available to you today. Are you suffering? Are you in the midst of a hardship today? If not today, tomorrow, next week, all of us are going to experience that. But there is sufficient strength. There is sufficient grace. You are on your way to heaven, friend.

Guest (Male): You are listening to A Daily Walk and part of Pastor John Randall's new study in 1 Peter. We house our recent programs at adailywalk.org. You will find them on our mobile app as well. Do a search for Calvary South OC and download it for free today. Look for us wherever you get your podcasts and at oneplace.com.

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You will find these encouraging video daily devos at adailywalk.org. We are reminded on a continual basis that the Lord is doing great things through the radio today, and maybe he is doing something amazing in your life. We want to hear about it. Pastor John would be very encouraged by what you have to say. Write to us today by email at adailywalk@gmail.com. That is adailywalk@gmail.com. Next time on A Daily Walk with John Randall, we will discover that our salvation provides us with a living hope. See you then.

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