Hello, this is Terry Cheek, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Marion, North Carolina. I want to thank you for choosing our broadcast, and my prayer is that it will be an encouragement to your walk with the Lord. Comments or questions can be directed to me via the link on our sermon audio page. Now, on to your selection. As we continue to take a look At our book of 1 Peter, we continue to take a look at what God was doing with His people and through His people during very difficult times in the Roman Empire. When Christianity went through a stage and a phase of being hated, Christians were martyred, but yet God's Word flourished. People were saved. We may think that is a very strange thing that when Christians are being martyred, they are being publicly executed, that people would still be saved. But that's the power of God. That's the power of God moving in people's lives, the power of God moving in their hearts, and it is also the strengthening of the Christian. During times of persecution and during times of trouble that is brought into the lives of the church, God's people, God's true people, have always been strengthened. And in that strengthening, they have always stood up. And they've always taken the gospel out to encourage and uplift those who were struggling, those who were being troubled. Well, this morning as we continue to look at an introduction into the book of 1 Peter, we get to take a look from God's Word at the strengthening process, at what was going on in the hearts and the lives of the people that were reading this epistle that Peter was circulating. 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 1 and 2. God's Word says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, grace unto you, and peace be multiplied. That's where we're going to stop. The apostle Peter was a very direct person when it came to his preaching. He was to the point and he wasn't alone. All twelve of the apostles and even the apostle Paul, they didn't mince words when they preached. They wanted people to know exactly what God meant and exactly what God expected from It wasn't about being politically correct. It wasn't about being rude and ugly. It wasn't about being mean and vicious. But it was about letting people know exactly what God wanted from them. And that is something that we need today. The church today needs to know what God expects from them, the born-again Christians. And let me make this clear. When I'm talking about the church, that's exactly who I'm talking about. I'm not talking about a membership role. I'm not talking about people who have their names put on a membership role. I'm talking about people who have their names written in the Lamb's Book of Life. They are the church. They are the redeemed. They are the elect. When we hear of God's Word, it speaks two messages. It will speak a message of salvation to those who are lost, and it will speak a message of sanctification to those who are saved. So if you are born again today and the Word of God is being preached and it's brought into your heart and into your life, whether it is in this service this morning or whether it is by radio or by television, if it is the inherent, inspired, true Word of God and you're a born-again Christian today, it ought to be sanctifying you. If you are not saved, it ought to be drawing you to a salvation experience. Now there's something else that goes along with this. Realize this and go back through your Bible if you do not believe me and read it and observe it for yourself. The gospel, when it is preached, it will draw some people to Christ and it will push some people away. There are some people who have it in their heart. They reject Christ. They reject Him. And it's not just a momentary thing sitting in a pew when they are falling under the conviction of their sin to be forgiven and to come forward and to repent. It's not just one of those moments of saying, I'm just too frightened. I don't want to do it right now. It is a matter of their heart pushing away from Christ. You don't think the Bible shows us that? Remember Pharaoh? When Moses was being sent into Egypt to take out God's children, to lead them out, Moses would come to Pharaoh and he would come to him and he would say, God wants you to let his people go. And the Bible says specifically, Pharaoh hardened his heart against God. The gospel, Moses carried the gospel message in the Old Testament to Pharaoh and it was preached and testified before him along with the miracles of God as a testimony and Pharaoh hardened his heart. Pontius Pilate hardened his heart against Jesus. Pontius Pilate wasn't interested in anything Jesus had, and the more he had to do with Jesus, the farther away he wanted to push himself. Agrippa, under the testimony and the preaching of the Apostle Paul, Paul stood before him and Paul testified of his salvation on the Damascus Road. Afterwards, Agrippa looked at Paul And he said, you almost convinced me. He pushed away. People will push away. Where is all of this going? It is going to a point, to a message this morning that will strengthen us. It will strengthen us to be the children of God, to be the mouthpiece of the gospel, which is what we are called to do. The church isn't called to come together once a week and sit in each other's presence and lift each other up and put each other on a pedestal and then turn around and walk away until the next week. No. The church is called to come into the presence of God, to hear His Word, to apply it to our lives, to have God move us in a closer relationship to Him and to strengthen us. for that relationship and for what lies ahead. Because I, like many others today, are convinced there are difficult times that are coming to America. And there are difficult times that are coming to the church. not because of a political party, not because of a politician, not because of a Congress, not because of a Supreme Court, but because of sin, because of unrepentant sin in the lives of the people in this country. America is backslidden as a nation. America is backslidden as a nation and America is heading to some serious times if we don't straighten up. And that involves you and me. So God's Word is here to strengthen us today. And the book of 1 Peter is an example of what happens when God judges a people and God scatters His church to perform a work of preaching the gospel because that's what he done. He scattered this church through the acts of persecution so they could continue to preach the word to others around the area, around the region who needed to hear it. When God is ready and when God is prepared to do so and He moves and He acts in this country, it is going to be the church that is going to get scattered and it is going to be the church that is going to be asked to stand up and to preach. to stand up and to lead others to Christ. So my question to you going into this message this morning, are you going to be strong enough to do that? Are you going to be willing to do it? That's going to come back to your salvation. If you are truly saved and you know you are saved, you ought to be in love with Jesus enough to be able to step up for him and to be prepared to give yourself over to the preparations to have the strength to do that. That is a personal commitment that you have to make. I can't make it for you. It's not one of those commitments that says, well preacher, you better be out and about doing this and then you go home and lock yourself in the house. and say, not me, I'm not that kind of a person. I just can't talk to people. God calls us all equally to be His mouthpiece. We're being prepared. We're being challenged. God expects us to step up. He expects you to step up, and He expects me to step up. He expects us to be the mouthpiece of His gospel to the community around us. Well, what does that look like? Well, first, you have to understand who God's people are. We see in verse 2, after He gives the geographical layout of where this letter is going, and it is going that way by the hand of the Apostle Peter, it is going via the elect, the church. the born-again Christian, and there's a lot of talk right now about the elect. There are people out there who want to say, there are people out there that will spend all this time arguing that the elect are those whom God has chosen and called out, and others will say, no, no, no, it is the church that is chosen and called out, not the individual, and they'll get in all of this debate about who the elect is, But let's just, for the sake of this message this morning, and to get out of those theological debates, let's just narrow it down to this one point that every one of us can agree upon. The elect is the blood-bought, born-again church that is saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. If that involves and includes you today, then this passage is for you. If that does not include you today, it's still for you, giving you and extending to you the invitation to come and know Jesus before you walk out of this building this morning. So it's for you. Whether you are the elect or whether you are being called to become the elect, it is about the body of Christ. We need to be strengthened. We are the church. It is about salvation and sanctification. Notice there is the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification. It gives the way that you're going to be taught. It gives you the road that you're going to be taken down. Sanctification. in its simplest terms is being set apart. If you are saved this morning, if you are the elect, you are set apart. You are set apart for a purpose. You're set apart for a work. And that work is the Great Commission. I don't know why there's so much confusion and so much misunderstanding about the Great Commission. It is really simple. Jesus stood on the mount ready to be taken up into heaven in a cloud and he gave the great commission to whom? To the church. And it was very simple. Preach and teach my word and baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And do this until I return. It doesn't get any simpler than that. But yet we struggle with it. We struggle with making ourselves available to it. We struggle with supporting it. We struggle with putting resources into it. We struggle with getting involved and getting our hands dirty. We are set apart to do this for Christ. Why do we struggle? Are we afraid? Are we afraid to stand up and speak for Jesus? Are we afraid that somebody's going to ask us a question? Well, let me put your fears to rest if that's what the problem is. You will be asked questions. People will ask you a question about Jesus. And you should be prepared, as Paul says, to give a reason for that hope that lies within you. If you're not prepared to answer questions, read. Read and study your Bible. And I don't mean read just to say I've read X number of pages. And I'm not talking about reading just so you can say I have read through my Bible X number of times in my lifetime. I'm talking about reading from God's Word so that it will penetrate your heart, so that it will move you to be able to give an answer for that hope that lies within you, so that your love for Jesus can be lived out boldly in front of others, so that the sanctification process of being set apart can come to fruition in your life and you can be the messenger that God has called you to be in order to grow in that sanctification because every day and every moment in our life is an extra step forward. We've kind of been given an easy way out in the Southern Baptist Church. We've been given an easy way out because sanctification has been redefined to say this, that well, it's something that we'll never fully achieve this side of heaven. It's a growing process and well, I'm just growing. Show me. Show me in God's Word where it says that is the definition of sanctification. Now, I'm not angry. I'm just challenging this morning. I'm challenging the status quo. I listen every week, I read articles that come from the Southern Baptist Convention, that come from the North Carolina Baptist State Convention, that come from all of the talking heads, and I say that respectfully, all of the talking heads inside of the denomination, about the church and it's struggling, the church and the membership is falling off, the church and they can't really get a grip on their theology or where they're standing or where they're going, and the church is this and the church is that. And they're asking the question, why? Where did it all come from? It came from watering down the doctrine of the Word of God in order to make it fit something that makes people feel comfortable because they don't want to serve God. We've been made to feel comfortable by compromising doctrine and theology, and we've adopted it. We have learned how to skate around all of this stuff, but we've not learned how God wants to strengthen us to step into it. If the church is going to grow, and it will grow, the body of Christ will grow. But is it going to grow through you and is it going to grow through this congregation? Or is it going to grow through someone else who have people who will step out and take God at His Word and step out in faith and be the people of God? I can't answer that for you. I can't. You're going to have to make that commitment. You're going to have to realize that God has set you apart. God has set you apart. He has set you apart for a purpose. Are you going to step up and meet it? Well, what is that purpose? Let's look back into our passage. Unto obedience. So we're growing and we are the elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father and that elect is being developed and is being proven through sanctification and it is being done through and delivered through obedience and obedient life to God's Word. We come right back to that whole point once again of the Great Commission. It is pointing others to Jesus. It doesn't matter whether it is persecution, whether it is hardship, whether it is humiliation, whether there's even death involved. They are all possible struggles that we are going to be asked to face. And we're going to be asked to endure them for the Lord. That possibility exists in all of our lives. It is the reality of Christianity. Now, if we want to live it out as the Bible tells us to do, if we want to live it out and we want to be the people that God has truly called us to be, are we prepared and are we set up to handle these things? Are we strong enough? Well, let's look at them for just a moment. Persecution, being asked to physically suffer. I want to use for an illustration a prisoner of war. Someone is captured in war. They are taken and they're being interrogated. A gun is placed to their head. and they are asked questions about what they know. And they, to save their life, to save their life, they start telling everything they know. They start giving all the information out to the enemy that they have. The enemy writes it down, and the enemy goes and verifies it, and they come back, it's true. So they come back to that POW, and they tell that POW, that, oh, you've given us good information. You've been really, really true and really honest with us and really straight up and we really appreciate it. We have a reward for you. They turn around and they shoot the POW in the head. Someone asks, why did you do that? He gave you what you wanted. He's a traitor. We don't want traitors among us. When you're saved, you are a traitor to the devil. The devil will persecute you. The devil will try to humiliate you. The devil will try to bring you through all kinds of sufferings and hardships. The devil will even threaten your life every chance he gets. But understand this, if you try to compromise with the devil in what's going on in your life, he's still going to take it and he's still going to destroy you because the devil wants nothing to do with the traitor. You can't undo your salvation. You may deny Christ in order to try to save your hide, but you're not going to undo your salvation. You are saved. Your name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life, and you're going to deal with the devil, the enemy. The purpose that we have is to face it headlong and be strong enough to endure it. Romans chapter 1 verse 5, Paul says, obedience to the faith among all nations for His name. For His name. Our obedience isn't about us. Our obedience isn't about a denomination. Our obedience isn't about a church building with a name tacked out front. Our obedience is about the Lord Jesus Christ. Are we true to Him? Are we really and sincerely true enough to Him to be able to say He is the only thing that matters? It is His work and His will and His way. So that's a pretty hard thing to tow. Yes it is and you can't do it. That's why it has to be through sanctification by obedience to the Lord. It is the Lord that does it through you. But you have to make yourself a vessel that He can work through. a vessel. A pipe is open at both ends. If we want to get water from the front of this church to the back of this church, we have to have a way to get it transferred from point A to point B, and that goes through a pipe. That pipe works wonderful. as long as it doesn't get clogged up. But when that pipe gets clogged up, nothing flows from one point to the other, does it? That's the way it is with being obedient to God and allowing yourself to be that servant, that conduit that He works through, that pipe that He works through. If you say, no, no, no, I'm afraid of that, I won't do that, and if you plug up or block off that pipe, God's trying, he's putting it in, he's putting it in, but nothing's coming out the other side. You know what the dangerous part of that is? Sooner or later, God's gonna bring out his spiritual auger. In the maintenance trade, we call it a Roto-Rooter. It's a big machine when you get a stopped-up pipe. It's used a lot in the prison. There's a lot of stopped up plumbing in prison. They'll bring that big machine up there and it's got a thing that looks like a funny shaped drill bit on the end of it. And they'll put that piece of metal in there and it'll have a thing inside of it and it'll spin that metal when they turn the switch on. It'll spin that big drill bit and then they'll feed it down that pipe till it hits that clog and it'll grind it up. and chew it up, and then they'll grab it and they'll pull it out, and then the water will start to flow again, and the conduit, the pipe will be open for everything to go through. You want to know what's going to happen in your walk with God? If you keep cutting off the pipe that He's using to work through you, He's going to bring out something to clean that pipe out. He's going to clean you out and clean you up so that He'll remove that blockage that you've put in place. His purpose is for His people to be His church to proclaim His Word to those that are lost and undone and are dying and going to hell spiritually. That is our purpose. Nothing is going to change that. Why? Because of the promise. Because of the promise. Look down at the very end of verse 2. Grace unto you and peace be multiplied. Christians are strangers to this world. You cannot be a truly born-again Christian and be comfortable in the world that we live in. It's not possible. Your home is in heaven. Your kingdom is in heaven. Your Lord and your Savior is in heaven. That's where your citizenship is. There's a lot of talk right now about illegal immigration. There's a lot of things going on about immigrants in general. When you became saved, you become an immigrant in this world. You're just a sojourner. The Bible calls it a sojourner. There are three kinds of people that are mentioned in the Bible like this. There is the stranger, there is the sojourner, and there is the citizen. The sojourner is someone who just passes through. Who comes in across the country and walks across the countryside and goes from point A to point B. For example, it's someone coming from Mexico across the United States going to Canada. A stranger is someone who sojourns into your community, into your land with the intentions of becoming a citizen. A citizen is someone that is an inhabitant of that land. The Christian is a citizen of heaven. The Christian is a sojourner inside of this world that we live in until we get home in heaven to where our citizenship is. Sadly enough, there are too many Christians today who want to take the role of being a stranger. They want to be a citizen of heaven but they want to be walking the world that we live in and they're looking for citizenship. They're looking for dual citizenship. They think that there is a way to have citizenship in the world and citizenship in heaven and the two are going to work together and everything is going to be just fine with no problems. It's not going to work that way. God didn't design it like that. You changed your citizenship from a worldly citizenship to a heavenly citizenship when you accepted Jesus as your Lord and as your Savior. And when you accepted that, you took with it the responsibility of being that messenger, of being that elect, of carrying that message. if necessary being scattered across the land as a messenger of Jesus Christ. I don't know who started this whole idea that Christianity is this walking, talking, feel good, pie in the sky, health and wealth type of a walk. If that's what you've been exposed to, you've been exposed to a lie. Christianity is a struggle. Christianity is work. Christianity is making a stand for God in the face of people who refuse to accept it. Christianity is making that stand firmly in front of people but fairly in front of them so that they can see that God is worth standing up for. Why are fewer people coming to Jesus Christ? Well, two reasons. One, their hearts are being hardened so badly that they're not interested in Him. But number two, the church hasn't got enough backbone today to show that there's something worth standing up for. That may be bold, and that may be brash, and that may rub somebody the wrong way, and if it does, it does, but there's no other way to say it than to just put it out there. If Jesus is worth talking about, he's worth bragging about. If he's worth bragging about, he's worth standing up for. If he's worth standing up for, then he is worth putting everything else behind us and saying nothing else, no job, no government, nothing else is as important as Jesus Christ, not even my family, because if the devil's going to attack me, he's going to attack me and kill me and try to take me out. for standing up for Jesus and he's going to try to do it for being a traitor to him. So why keep waffling around with trying to avoid what we're actually called to do and set apart to do? Jesus is worth it. Yes, it puts you in some tough predicaments at times. But when you do the right thing for the right reason with the right result in mind and in heart, God's going to bless it and God's going to open doors. So there it is laid out before you this morning. The strength of a Christian begins with knowing that you are truly a born-again Christian. No religious experiences, no rituals, no ceremonies. It's just the moving of the Holy Spirit breaking your heart to confess that you're a sinner before a holy and righteous Savior in Jesus Christ. When you call upon Jesus and when He moves in your heart and you know He has moved in your heart, you are a new creation. The old person has passed away. The new person is born. And yes, there is a growing experience. But that growing experience is set by God. not by us. So, when that takes place, Christianity doesn't stop with becoming that new person. You see, we have a new purpose. And that new purpose is a voluntary obedience to God's Word. That word obedience is voluntary. It's because there's a desire. A desire that's overwhelming. A desire that draws us and takes us into the presence of God to do His purpose and for His will and for His work. And I fear this morning that there's too many people that are part of His kingdom that are not being obedient across this land. The church isn't being obedient to what God wants. The church is trying to rewrite the rules and is asking God to come alongside them. We don't have that priority. We don't have the priority of saying, this is what I stand for, and God, I want you to choose what I stand for. And then there's another person over here saying, God, this is what I stand for, and God, I want you to choose me. And then there's somebody else standing over here saying, God, this is what I stand for, and God, I want you to choose me. God's laughing at every one of them. Because God says, I've already given my son, and you can choose me through him. There are no other opportunities. There are no other options. That is our purpose. Our strength comes from identifying our purpose and making ourselves submissive to it. And that only happens by being obedient to Christ. And the results are given at the end of verse 2. Grace and peace. Those two words be multiplied. That's one Greek word and it is a verb. That is the only verb there is in that passage. Now you may say, well what's that got to do with anything? A lot. A verb is an action word. Multiplication. God's action through that whole passage is multiplication. Multiplication of people being saved. Multiplication of people living a sound life. Multiplication of obedience. Multiplication of submission. Multiplication of understanding what our true purpose is. multiplication of seeing the world touched. It may be a small number, but those that are being called and have a heart to receive Christ, it will be multiplied to them through you. Through you. That is the end game. It's not the means. I've talked to you about the means. The means are the people, the purpose, and the promise. The end result is a multiplication. So are we going to be part of that multiplication? Are you going to be part of it? That's a commitment you have to make. If you're not saved this morning, That's a commitment you're going to have to make. Either the gospel is drawing you to Jesus, or the gospel is pushing you away because you're so hard-hearted it can't touch you. If the gospel is drawing you to Jesus this morning, you have an opportunity before you leave to accept Him as Lord and Savior. If you're committed to salvation, if you're saved and you're committed to obedience and the practices and the purposes of what we've talked about this morning, God will bless you, God will strengthen you, and God will move you forward. But that is your commitment to me. Both of those are yours. God's already made His commitment through Jesus Christ. The ball's in your court. What are you going to do with it? What will you do with it?