Elect & Sprinkled

So if you want to turn to 1 Peter chapter 1, and then keep your hand in your Bible, we are going to jump around a lot. Peter was a Jew, he was a good Jew. Off the top of my head, I don't know if there were any writers of the Bible that weren't Jews, but I don't want to say that for sure, but Peter uses phrases and words that would have been very familiar to people that understood the Old Testament.

Peter understood the Old Testament, and he knew that Jesus was the fulfillment. And so we're going to look at some words and phrases he used and try to make sense of them all throughout the rest of Scripture, which we just read in paragraph 9 of chapter 1 of the Confession that the interpretator of Scripture is the Scripture itself. And so that's how we choose to interpret Scripture. so 1 Peter chapter 1 Peter an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia according to the foreknowledge of God the Father and the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood may grace and peace be multiplied to you now I'm an ESV guy you may have noticed I'm reading ESV if you weren't following with me exactly.

I don't know what version you have, but there's other versions that may translate this in a way that's a little easier. Because Peter says, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion, then there's a bunch more words, and then it says, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. But if you were looking in the King James Version, it says all the stuff, and then at the end of verse 1, it says, elect. and then it says according to the foreknowledge of God the Father and so it's this election that Peter's talking about that's really the subject of all of the phrases that we find in verse 2 up until may grace and peace be multiplied to you and so we want to look at this word elect elect is a dirty word in a lot of churches in fact if you go to some churches they won't even use that word People will say, I don't believe in election.

Or they'll say, I believe in election because it's in the Bible, but they'll have some different understanding of election than what I think the Spirit of God reveals to us in Scripture. So we're going to take a little look at what election is. We're not going to go very deep in it, but if you turn to Romans 9, I just want to wet your whistle a little bit about election. and in particular in 1 Peter when he says you're elect according to the foreknowledge of God.

We're going to look at what the word foreknowledge means. In our English concept of the word foreknowledge we think having some knowledge beforehand of something. Like me knowing that me being certain that the Browns will not win the Super Bowl next year, for example. I can claim I'm probably right on that one. They don't give you a lot of money for predicting they won't win it, though, so there's no reason to even gamble that one.

But that is not what foreknowledge means in the Bible. When it talks about God's foreknowledge, and particularly related to the plan of His Son's redemption for people and for the elect of God, it's referring to more than just God knowing an event is going to happen beforehand. If foreknowledge meant that, then everything God knows is foreknowledge because he wrote history before he even created the world.

It becomes a meaningless term. But let's look at it. I'm going to tell you that God saying that he foreknew, I'll just say beforehand what I'm going to try to show you. God saying he foreknew the elect is saying he loved them before they were even alive before he even created them God decided to set his love upon the elect and he knew them in an intimate fashion so if you think about in the Old Testament especially in the Old English it would say things like Adam knew his wife and then she bore him a son and it wasn't Adam had factual information about his wife.

When he knew his wife, there was something that happened that showed an intimate love, that showed some kind of something going on that resulted in a child being born. And so in Romans 9, Paul is talking about God's election and the charge that's being brought against Paul and the Christians and what Paul's writing is, is that now that the gospel has gone out to Gentiles and it's not just Jews that are the people of God in any sense anymore, it's saying that maybe God has given up on the Jews entirely, that the promises that he actually made to Jewish people, he's not going to keep. That's the accusation that's being brought.

Paul says in verse 10, Well, verse 9, it talks about Sarah's going to have a son. In verse 10, it says, And not only so, but also, when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac. So Rebekah has twins, right? Jacob and Esau are her twins in Rebekah's womb. Listen, it says, Though they were not yet born, and had done nothing, either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls, she was told the older will serve the younger.

As it is written Jacob I loved but Esau I hated And Paul says what shall we say then in verse 14 is there injustice on God part So that's the question. If God is going to choose before a baby is even born, whether He's going to love that baby or not, whether He's going to hate that baby or that person, I don't want to think of it as a baby in that sense, but whether He's going to hate that person and their sin and never redeem them, or whether He's going to redeem that person and set his steadfast love upon that person and put that person in Christ, there's no injustice on God's part because God doesn't owe anybody salvation. So Paul says, for he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.

God gets to choose who he's going to elect. Hopefully we're going to go vote in a few months and we'll get to do it in person, Lord willing. That's a different sermon. But we're going to go vote, and we get to vote for who we want. Well, within a limit for our case, right? But we get to elect the person that we choose, in a sense.

God gets to elect whom he wants, is what this is saying. So in verse 16, so that it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. And so the election of God, the decision that a person before the foundation of the world is going to be saved by Jesus Christ, is a decision that according to Romans 9 and many other passages, God makes before that person has either done any good or bad.

It could be argued that Jacob was no better of a person than Esau. the end result Jacob did a few more noble things in Esau and Esau was a pretty bad guy by a lot of accounts but it could be argued that neither of them deserved God's love neither of them deserved for God to have chosen them to save and this is why when we are saved by grace through faith we have nothing to boast about if you're a Christian today your boast is that Christ Jesus died for you because you were so hopelessly devoid of any righteousness of your own that God couldn't look at you with any shred of love for you because of your iniquity, but that Jesus Christ had to suffer and die in your place. So there's no bragging with election. For God to have chosen someone to save them is a testimony of his greatness. and it's actually a testimony of your weakness 1 Corinthians tells us God chose what is lowly and despised in this world even things that are not God chose the weak and the foolish in this world that's who God chose so anybody who raises their hands and says I'm a Christian you're confessing you're one of the lowly and despised and weak and foolish now Lord willing that changes practically speaking and we'll see that happen later but Romans 11 2 another verse I want you to jump to God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah how he appeals to God against Israel and so in this passage we see that word foreknew which is the same form it's a different form of the same word it's this idea that God foreknew his people and when he foreknows people, it means that he has already set his love upon them even before they were born.

Before they did any good or bad and it wasn't because of anything good or bad in them. So let me just poke an idol for some people maybe. God did not sit there in eternity and look down the halls of time and see all the good things that one of us would do and decide, okay, well I will elect them. God's election was based on what's in his mind alone before there was anything God decides so we had nothing that could make God love us or even make God decide to elect us in Romans 8.29 we're just jumping around showing you some verses if we ever go through Romans we'll go in great depth of the election and some other passages too, but Romans 8.29, I want you to notice.

For those whom he foreknew, there's that word foreknew again, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son in order that he, Jesus Christ, might be the firstborn among many brothers. Well, so the subject of the sentence is well the subject of foreknew is he those whom he foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son and so here's just an additional proof of what Peter said according to the foreknowledge of God the Father it's God the Father who is the Father of the Son and so in 8.29 when it says he foreknew them and predestined them to be conformed to the image of his son it's another reference from Paul that it's God the Father who foreknew people and He made His election known to His Son. It is the first link in the chain of redemption.

Turn to John 6 while you're turning there. I'll remind you that salvation is not a one-time process. We've turned it into a one-time process or a momentary thing here in our culture because we say things like, when did you get saved? And are you saved? Have you been saved? According to the Bible, and that's actually, it's not a poor use of that term.

It's a legitimate way that we talk about one aspect of salvation, which is called justification. So when we say to someone when did you get saved What we really asking them is at what moment in time did you believe the gospel unto righteousness so that you be justified by faith in Jesus Christ But you not saved from your body right now If anybody here has like one little pain in your body, you've not been glorified. You still have sin dwelling in your flesh right now that you have to deal with.

And so you have not been completely saved yet. And the Bible is adamantly clear that there is way more to salvation than this momentary forgiveness that we've received while still dwelling in the body. We're going to one day have new bodies that are glorified. But the first step of all this was election. In God's mind, electing some to salvation. In God's mind, predestinating them to be conformed to the image of His Son. and then calling them, practically speaking, regenerating them by the Holy Spirit, granting them faith that they'll believe and be justified, and then the next step is sanctification and then ultimately glorification.

And we'll talk about all those things eventually. But in John 6.44, just a reminder, I'm in John 7 here, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. It was R.C. Sproul that used to make a big deal about how, remember when you were a little kid and you'd say, can I go to the bathroom? And the teacher would say, may I?

And it was always like the difference between can and may. We all should know that difference. It says no one can come. We're unable to come to Jesus Christ unless the Father draws us. so it's the first chain first link in the chain of redemption is your election if you believe in the Lord Jesus today it's because God the Father you can turn to Ephesians 1 now God the Father elected you before the foundations of the world and it's for his glory and thank God he did because without it you wouldn't have been able to come to him that's why we implore you especially the children here we call on you to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ we say turn from your sin trust Jesus Christ as your Savior and if there's anybody that's not a child that's an adult that's not a Christian we would say the same thing we're going to say to Planned Parenthood on Tuesday Lord willing if there's Buckeyes games or whatever other types of things we can do we're going to be an evangelistic church that goes out and preaches the gospel and when we tell people when we command people repent and believe the gospel our only hope is that God's going to use that word and he's going to change their hearts to believe it that's why we don't have candy bars and other weird seeker sensitive kind of circus deals to try to attract attention we trust the word of God, the pure word of God to save people Ephesians 1.3 in case you weren't convinced yet blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ so we're talking about God the Father with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.

And why did He choose us? That we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will. We have nothing to bring to God. it's not like God's walking in an orphanage to look for orphans and we can kind of clean ourselves up and try to look as good as we can so that he'll pick the best orphan to adopt.

God literally just picks the orphans he wants and he makes them his sons. Orphan's probably not the best term because if you're not a son of God you're a child of Satan. That's what the Bible tells us. But in the analogy it was an orphan. so I was thinking of when little orphan Annie would get all excited when somebody came to visit because I remember that movie so anyway God adopts people by his will one final verse about foreknowledge Acts 2 Peter the guy that wrote this book that we're reading 30 years earlier or so was preaching at Pentecost and Peter says to the people who were standing there that day in verse 23 of Acts 2 I want you to look at it too.

When I say verses and I give you time to get there, it's because I don't think that me explaining it is good enough for you. You need to see the verses yourself. I don't want you to leave here and think, wow, that was some good preaching. I mean, I guess I hope you'd like it all right. I want to be qualified. But I want you to leave here thinking, what a great God.

And I encountered his word in a way that I hadn't encountered it before, and I understand it better than I understood it before. And that's not going to happen by passively listening to somebody else who probably makes a handful of mistakes, says the wrong thing anyway. But in verse 23 of Acts 2, Peter preaching, he says, This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.

You crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. So first thing to note, this Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan of God. So anytime you start to play the, like, why do bad things happen to good people game, in your mind. I sat with an atheist last week and had a discussion about God and his ultimate reason was his niece or nephew died in a miscarriage from his brother's kid and he couldn't understand how that could happen.

And it's like if that's what keeps you from God then I can't help you. Because God delivered his own son up to death who'd never sinned once. It was up to his plan. but more importantly for tonight in this verse it says and foreknowledge of God Jesus was foreknown by God he was foreknown before the foundations of the world but at the last time he was revealed to us that's what it says later on in 1 Peter Jesus is the one who is known by God Jesus is the one who God knew would do the work He was going to do And that how people before Jesus came were able to be saved So people ask you, how were Jews saved?

They're saved the same way we are. God looks at the perfect sacrifice of His Son. God, outside of time, had a definite plan that it was going to happen. And He was able to, in a sense, overlook the sins of people who came before Jesus. Because He knew the sacrifice would come eventually. he's able to apply that retroactively just like for us he applies it forwardness that's why you can be saved on July 4th 2006 and you can continuously sin for the rest of your life and you're still going to go to heaven too because God when he saved me it wasn't a surprise the next day when I was still sinning it wasn't a surprise 10 years later when I still sinned to him God's able to apply his salvation because God actually applied it from eternity past before any of it actually happened.

But it's not a surprise. Foreknowledge is not simply knowing facts beforehand. It's a practical understanding that's more intimate. So the take-home here, your salvation was no accident either. It's not some whim of a capricious being because if God just changed his mind once in a while, then he could change his mind about you now that he saved you. but you have security with God only through the doctrine of election every other doctrine that perverts this a little bit you lose the fact that you are eternally secure because if you have the free will to walk away from God you'll use it one day to walk away from Him and thank God we don't God elected those whom He chose before creation He's not going to change His mind and it's because he'll never stop loving his son, Jesus Christ.

And you're hidden in Christ. You've been united with Christ. It's why we do communion. We call it communion. We're communing with not only each other, but with Christ. We're actually one with him.

That's why we ingest it. That's why we smell it, see it, taste it, touch it. So the second phrase in 1 Peter 1 that we're going to look at is the sanctification of the Spirit. So it says, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, we were elect. And it says, in the sanctification of the Spirit, and I'll just toss in, for obedience to Jesus Christ.

So in John 17, we see a little bit about sanctification. John 17, Jesus' high priestly prayer. Jesus praying for his people us says sanctify them in the truth your word is truth and so we have from Jesus' mouth here on earth by the apostle John writing that the word is truth and we are to be sanctified in the truth in 1 Corinthians 2 if you jump over there very good passage to remember a lot of good truth in 1 Corinthians 2 I hate to say there's a lot of good truth all through the Bible but it seems like I go back to that one a lot in 1 Corinthians 2 verses 11 to 13 the apostle Paul says for who knows a person's thought except the spirit of that person which is in him he says so also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God so the whole idea here is that you can't really know anybody else's thoughts except if you were their spirit and he says now we have received not the Spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God that we might understand the things freely given us by God so Paul is saying that we've actually received the Holy Spirit so it starts out with you can't know God's thoughts because you don't know his spirit but then the next sentence is well but you have his spirit and he says and we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom so we share spiritual things not with human wisdom but taught by the spirit interpreting spiritual truth to those who are spiritual and so what Paul is saying here is that you have the spirit of Christ in you.

You've been sealed by the Holy Spirit for the day of redemption. The day of redemption was not the day that you got saved or got baptized. The day of redemption is the day that you get a new body that will never sin again. That's the day of redemption. And you've been sealed for that with what God calls a down payment. He's given you His Holy Spirit to indwell you.

And it's to help you to live a sanctified life. It's to help you understand God's words, to help you to love one another. But it's also just a promise. It's a promise that you're going to go home to glory with God one day because God's Spirit's going to go there. And that Spirit indwells you and is how you are sanctified. So Jason prayed earlier for forgiveness for all the times we tried to really wrestle our own sanctification out by our own strength and not by the Spirit.

So it's God's Spirit that sanctifies us. God's Spirit is the truth as well. So look at 1 John 5, 6, which I will acknowledge that some people will argue is not part of the Bible, which is a whole different question for some of you. Maybe you're like, what? But there are some verses in our Bible that some people don't see in all the old texts. And so there's people that argue about those things. but I'm okay with 1 John 5, 6.

It says, This is He who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ. Not by the water only, but by the water and the blood. But then this is the part I wanted to show you. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. So we know Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. But it says here, the Spirit is the truth.

The truth is what is going to sanctify us. 2 Timothy 3.16, most of you should have this one memorized. All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable, right? For teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. All Scripture is God-breathed. Well, who breathed it out?

We credit the Holy Spirit with being the divine author of Scripture. You can read about that in 2 Peter 1, where Peter talks about how holy men were moved by the Spirit to write out the Scripture. So when we read the Scripture, let me bring this home for you, when we read the Scripture, you're reading the mind of God. So somebody tells you they're a mind reader, they're a liar.

But you can say you're a mind reader because you actually read God's mind when you read God's Word in the Scripture. And I don't care if it's in English or Hebrew or Greek. God has provided in ways that we can understand his mind through even the English translations that are often imperfect at times. You can know the mind of God. You can have certainty about things God has said that we ought to know and ought to do.

You can have certainty about what we're supposed to do, about your sanctification. Look at 1 Thessalonians now. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, Paul says finally then brothers we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God now he's talking this is obedience so in 1st Peter Peter said in the sanctification of the spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and Paul says in verse 2 of 1st Thessalonians 4 for you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus He says, for this is the will of God, your sanctification.

It's not God's will just that you get saved by Jesus, and then your life remains unchanged, and you just go the whole rest of the time just waiting for when he calls you to glory. And then all of a sudden your knee doesn't hurt anymore, and there's no more sprained ankles, and none of us have to wear glasses, and if you're bald, you'll have hair, whatever all the things people think a glorified body is going to look like. some people think baldness is the glorified state and some of us are just ahead of others right but the whole point is that God didn't save you and leave you here so that you could stay the same God saved you he gave you his spirit to sanctify you and to change you because that's his will people walk around all over the place with magic 8 balls and enneagrams and all sorts of stuff out there that people look at and they say what is God's will for my life and they try to figure it out. They roll a dice and they open their Bible and they say, well, this is what I'm going to do.

And they point here and they read some verse that, well, then they don't like what that one says, so they open their Bible, read another verse. The Bible tells us God's will is your sanctification. You wake up in the morning, what is God's will for me today? It's your sanctification. Be free from sexual immorality. You'd be free from drunkenness and debauchery.

You worship Him in spirit and truth. That's God's will for you. And if you master sanctification in this life, then start rolling dice and figuring out what the next thing is. How's that sound, okay? If you got it all down, unless that went over someone's head, we're never going to actually figure that out, okay? I don't want to be on record saying, you know.

But every day you wake up and you have a chance to continually be conformed to Christ's image. And God's going to do it one way or another, for you. But you can yield to him. You can yield to his wisdom. And you can try to obey his precepts. Spurgeon said, obedience to Jesus Christ is the same thing as sanctification in the spirit.

And I would agree. I think sometimes these guys use these triple phrases in the Bible. You'll see three phrases next to each other. And a lot of people have argued, especially in the Hebrew literature, that it's often just three ways of saying the same thing. And it's actually to teach us. So we're supposed to read it and understand that it means the same thing.

And we do it in English too. We don't talk about it when we do it. But if you listen to people, a lot of times people will say something and then they'll say something else in other words. And you know what they meant. You know that they were actually defining their own term or whatever, right? And Peter says, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ.

So maybe those three things together are supposed to be the same thing. That's a Spurgeon thought. My bad. I said that. Spurgeon said, sorry. Spurgeon said, no man is really saved unless he is in his heart obedient to Christ.

So it's not outward obedience that God's looking for. So when you're working on your sanctification, it's not about the outward obedience but look at verse 7 of 1 Thessalonians 4 Paul speaking still for God has not called us for impurity but in holiness therefore whoever disregards this disregards not man but God who gives his Holy Spirit to you so there we are again this is not just something Peter made up it's not something I'm just pulling out of Peter and making into some kind of doctrine that's not. I'm trying to show you from other passages of Scripture that it is without a doubt God's will to give His Holy Spirit to people and that His Holy Spirit is really the power and the reason behind your sanctification.

And it should motivate you. It should motivate you. I remember as a new Christian, I'm not sure this is the best example, but I read the scripture about how you should not be joined to a prostitute if you have the spirit in you because then you joining the spirit with a prostitute also And I just remember thinking to myself that that literally applied to every use of my body I've heard of other people try to make exegetical arguments that, well, that's not true, but I don't see why it wouldn't be.

Why would I ever use my body in any unholy or impure matter anyway? But if being motivated by the fact that I don't want the Holy Spirit to have to experience that impurity and unholiness that I'm jumping into, if that helps me, I don't see any problem with that and maybe it's not the point of the passage about the prostitute and the spirit but it helped me early on Colossians 2 just jumping around, giving you a little taste of all these things Colossians 2, 6 and 7 therefore as you received Christ Jesus the Lord so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith just as you were taught abounding in thanksgiving. So you receive Jesus Christ by faith.

You receive Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Continue to walk in Him. Be sanctified. Your faith was given to you, again, not so that you could sit around and eventually go to heaven. And I don't love naming names and stuff, but if anybody knows, there's churches in Columbus, one of which I used to go to, that will teach you. you can get saved and then you don't have to do really anything different because it's all by grace and they're right about that that it's only grace and only faith but the part they're wrong about is that a grace that doesn't end up changing you is not the grace of God that's just some kind of licentious grace, it's meaningless God's grace changes us and motivates us, Ephesians 2.10 for we are his workmanship right after we talk about being saved by grace for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand that you should walk in them I could preach three sermons on that verse there's so much in there but again it's about God's grace motivating you to do the good works that God planned for you to do and if you do the good works you turn around and you cast your crown at the feet of Jesus Christ because it's all him that helped you do it in the first place if it wasn't for him you wouldn't have done any of it we're constantly evil all the time apart from Christ if I can get you to just believe that that you have nothing good in you apart from Christ it's not like you had a little goodness and a little sweetness and a little evil and the evil started winning and then the temptations of the world came and made it no, you were evil continually from the moment of your conception because of our sin in Adam that we all would have committed as fast as he did we read about this morning but Jesus Christ had no sin in him in him there was no sin he was perfect he took care of our sin for us on that cross Philippians 2 right after we talk about Jesus' glory it says every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord the glory of God the Father in 2.11 but then in 2.12 it says therefore my beloved as you have always obeyed so now not only is in my presence but much more in my absence work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

It's not telling you work for your salvation, which is how Roman Catholic interprets this verse. It's telling us to work it out. Like, you show that you're a Christian by working out your salvation. You start to see fruit in your life. And you do that as the result of Jesus Christ being Lord. It's because He's Lord you can do that.

Spurgeon also said and this is really Spurgeon some Christians are very curious but not obedient plain precepts are neglected but difficult problems they seek to solve ok so this is a little bit what I was saying earlier some Christians are curious but not obedient plain precepts are neglected but difficult problems they seek to solve so there's some people that want to sit around and do theology and they want to argue about stuff and they want to argue about genealogies and words and all these kinds of things. They might even have some right things they say about those things, but they don't even obey the most basic commands of God. It's easier to sit and argue like some hypothetical question with people or some ethical dilemma you can make up and then try to argue back and forth and actually wake up in the morning and love the people in your house sacrificially.

It's easier to sit and argue with somebody about some of these things that ultimately don't matter a whole lot than to maybe go out and hand somebody a tract or give somebody the gospel or to write your cousin or your family member a letter who you know is headed for hell and you've never told them how to avoid it. So we find things that are easier for us and we actually fancy ourselves to have some kind of lofty thoughts. Oh, well, I'm arguing with a seminary student or whatever it happens to be.

Obey God's basic precepts. He's given us His precepts so that we might know what to obey. And He's given them to us in His Word. He doesn't reveal things to you outside of His Word. And if you disagree with me, we can talk about it. I can prove that to you.

God reveals Himself through His Word by His power of His Holy Spirit, opening your eyes to what His Word says so that you will know the thoughts of God. So finally, I want to talk about the last phrase in 1 Peter 1, 2, and then I promise I have my mind made up. I'm going to move quicker than I guess two-thirds of a verse a week so far. But it says, for sprinkling with his blood.

And the sheer number of different opinions on what Peter meant by sprinkling is just great Because I can say whatever I want And nobody can really argue because somebody said everything it seems like But the sprinkling brings to mind a few things for people In Hebrews 10, 22, which for a lot of you it's a footnote in your Bible, the writer of Hebrews says let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water so there's a reference to sprinkling if you look up sprinkle in the bible it's all over the place sprinkling was used all throughout the Old Testament especially in the sprinkling of blood when they were doing the sacrifice for atonement. So there's a lot of sprinkling. There's a lot of washing.

So there's sprinkling and then there's washing and cleansing. And so you have in Titus 3.5 the washing of regeneration. In 1 Corinthians 6.11 Let's turn to that one. In 1 Corinthians 6.11 after a whole list of sins they're going to keep you out of heaven Paul says and such were some of you he says but you were washed you were sanctified and then you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God so we have a washing we have a cleansing going on but sprinkling sprinkling is when I think of sprinkling I don't think of cleansing so maybe there's more to it but I don't think of cleansing in 2nd Corinthians 7 but it does bring it to mind that he says sprinkling in 2 Corinthians 7.1 Paul says since we have these promises beloved let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of the body and spirit bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God so there's another verse talking about our cleansing and it supports the idea that Peter wants us to be sanctified in the spirit but there's two references to sprinkling I want to bring out one of them is Isaiah 52 and Brother Jason brought this to my mind actually.

And I think these are two things that Peter could have had in mind when he references the sprinkling of Jesus' blood. There could be another place, or it could be more things than that, I guess. I don't know exactly. But in Isaiah 52, Isaiah says in verse 13, Behold, my servant shall act wisely. He's talking about Jesus Christ. he shall be high and lifted up and shall be exalted as many were astonished at you his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and his form beyond that of the children of mankind and then in 15 he says so shall he sprinkle many nations kings shall shut their mouths because of him for that which has not been told them they see and that which they have not heard they understand and I think this is a reference to the fact that Jesus Christ is going to open the door for many nations to be saved there's going to be people all over the world now who are able to become Christians who are able to be justified by grace through faith because of what he did on the cross on their behalf and I think Peter writing to a group of people who I think were probably Jews he was writing to.

But he's writing to a group of people in Turkey. Remember? Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia. He's writing to these people, and they're in Turkey, and they're kind of spread out. And they're starting to, I think, be mixing more with more Gentiles, probably. And they're having to share what's going on, what's changed.

Okay, so Jerusalem hadn't been destroyed yet. so I think there were still some people kind of holding out hope that this was just a new dispensation of the Jewish religion but Peter understands because of what happened to him in Acts chapter 10 with Cornelius and the sheep coming down and the eating of unclean animals and all these things I think Peter's understanding here no this blood of Jesus Christ is not just for Jews this isn't something that God made just for my little tribe or my 12 tribes and to hell with the rest of the world. Peter's understanding that. Peter's understanding that the blood of Jesus Christ sprinkles many nations, that there's going to be people from all sorts of places that are going to believe and be justified and they're going to receive the same Holy Spirit that those believing Jews received.

It was very confusing for Peter. Peter was very confused by all this at first. You might remember. Not much of a pope. He should have known it all at first, right? But anyway, he's not a pope anyway.

But I want to draw your attention to one other thing that is what really drew my mind. Exodus 29. And my understanding of what Peter wrote in 1 Peter drew me here. and if you had to ask me to definitively tell you what I think Peter meant by sprinkling with his blood this is what I think is the best interpretation and I'm going to tell you after we read from Exodus 29 19 so it's talking about consecration of the priest if you have a heading in your Bible there's all sorts of sacrifices that are being made so that these priests could be made holy so they could do the service of God because they weren't like Jesus could just march into the holy place and be like, here's my sacrifice.

I'm perfect. All these other guys had to have all sorts of special stuff happen to show how impossible it was for man to ever actually be holy enough for God, so that when a man holy enough for God showed up, we'd know the difference. Remember we said when Peter saw Jesus he like get away from me I a sinful man It was so clear that Jesus was holy and Peter wasn But listen to how they consecrated the priest This is just part of this chapter.

Verse 19, you shall take the other ram, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands on the head of the ram. And you shall kill the ram and take part of its blood and put it on the tip of the right ear of Aaron and on the tips of the right ears of his sons and on the thumbs of their right hands and on the great toes of their right feet and throw the rest of the blood against the sides of the altar. So there's the beginning part.

Now listen. Then you shall take part of the blood that is on the altar and of the anointing oil and sprinkle it on Aaron and his garments and on his sons and his sons' garments with them. He and his garments shall be holy and his sons in his sons garments with him. So if you go back to 1 Peter who wrote more verses than just the first two I want you to see something that Peter says in chapter 2 verse 5 he says you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be what?

A holy priesthood. What does a priesthood do? To offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Peter is telling the people he's writing the letter to, later in the letter at least, that they are being built up to be a holy priesthood to offer sacrifices to God. So the sacrifices of slaughtering animals and spraying blood all over and dipping hyssop in it and then spraying it on the altar.

Those sacrifices were done by Jesus Christ. But we still make sacrifices to God. Now they're heart sacrifices. Now we purpose things in our heart for Him. And we live a life that shows that we don't want to be conformed to this world, but we want to be renewed in our minds. And we offer our bodies as living sacrifices to God. that's Romans 12 but here we are he says you're a holy priesthood now if Peter's going to tell a group of people now remember Peter was a Jew he knew what the priests were Peter understood the separation of the Levitical priests from the rest of the Jews he understood that Peter wouldn't have been a guy that just marched into the temple and made his own sacrifice he knew he had to go to the priest the priest could go to God and then Peter could get the forgiveness that he was seeking through that system.

But now that Jesus Christ, the great high priest, has torn the veil of the temple, that God is with us, Emmanuel, God with us, we have the Holy Spirit indwelling our hearts, we don't have any need for a human priesthood, which is a neat dagger in the heart of the Roman Catholic Church. But nevertheless, Peter calls all of us priests. And if you're a priest, you need to be purified.

And the sprinkling of his blood corresponds with Exodus 29 nicely, in my opinion, as a purification for your priestliness or your priesthood. Look at 1 Peter 2.9. He says, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood. You're a royal priesthood, kingly priesthood. You were a priest to the king, right? You can go directly to the king on behalf of other people.

You can intercede for people. You can make sacrifices in your own life. He says you're a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for its own possession. He also says you're a chosen race. So if you want to be the right kind of racist today, there's Christians and there's non-Christians. Those are really the two races.

So I know we've got all sorts of weird stuff going on in the United States, but there's two types of people. Those who are in Christ and those who are not in Christ. What we have in common is that we're priests together. So I want you to remember, we're elect unto obedience. So we've been made secure in our election unto obedience, the work that we're going to do as priests of God.

So one thing to note, there's no special Christians. I'm not like a different kind of priest than you because I'm up here right now another guy that's got more people listening to him right now he's not a different kind of priest than I am we're all, if you're a Christian part of the royal and holy priesthood of God we go to God on behalf of men we intercede for people we don't have to make animal sacrifices for their sin but we offer ourselves as living sacrifices so since we're all the same we have a responsibility too we extend grace and peace toward all men whether it's through evangelism or through loving the brother so if a non-Christian offends you, you evangelize them even if they don't offend you, you evangelize them but you go to them and you try to make peace between them and God you try to show them God's grace if a Christian offends you, you are to extend grace toward them and forgive them. So there's always a way to extend grace and peace to people.

That's the end of the verse, right? May grace and peace be multiplied to you. There's always a way to do that in whatever context you're in. So seek peace with one another, forgive one another, intercede with one another. one more thing to note about the priesthood is that there's no it's just so important that there's no special Christians there's nobody who's above another in that sense because we're all priests of God but at the same time you to go to people and to love them as a priest too.

So whereas a priest's responsibility would be to kind of oversee others in some sense too. And we all are to do that for one another. That's why it's not just an elder's job or a pastor's or a deacon's job to go to someone else and say, hey, I'm questioning something you're doing or I think I see you in sin or I just want to talk to you about something.

And that's not just a job for professional clergymen or even lay elders or anything like that. We all have that responsibility toward one another. And it should start with husbands and wives. It should start with children. You should come to church and people should be ready to have theological conversation. Like, that's what we want.

Theological conversation, challenging one another. We're going to try to have the ladies' discipleship group. I hope ladies grow. I hope they grow by the power of the Holy Spirit showering each other with the word of God and actually opening themselves up to be corrected by one another because each other is a priest or unable to help one another So God is truly glorious in his salvation of sinners.

His salvation of sinners not only ensures your future redemption, it promises present sanctification. If you don't see fruit, it's probably a dead tree, okay? It promises present sanctification and it ensures that you're a priest of God. You've got responsibilities and privileges because of that. So let me pray. Father in heaven, we pray the blessing on the preaching of your word, that we would understand your word, that we would recognize it as the supreme authority, that we would understand it as sufficient and inerrant, and that we would treat it as such.

I pray, Lord, for all of us here today that heard this word, that we would be moved to live lives that show that we really believe what Peter has told us and what really the rest of the Bible testifies to. In Christ's name I pray. Amen.