Anchored by Grace

All right. Well, the people are just coming back in. The ones that haven’t left for the airport are here. And we’re going to turn to 1 Peter, if you are able to follow along. And at least in my mind, there is some kind of progression between where we were and where we are. Whether it will also factor in your own thinking I don’t know, but from “My grace is sufficient for you” to “the God of all grace,” so…

Follow along as I read from 1 Peter 4:12:

“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And ‘If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?’

“Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.

“So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory. Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’

“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

And a brief prayer:

Grant, Lord, as we come to this final address, with so many things that have already catapulted themselves into our minds and so many considerations that are there for our attention in the balance of the day and the coming weekend—we pray for just a lovely sense of your overruling presence and Spirit, so that individually we come, gathered as a group, and yet we want to hear, beyond the voice of a mere man, your voice, because we actually believe that it is the Word of God that does the work of God by the Spirit of God in the lives of the children of God. And so we look away from ourselves and to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, as I said this morning, earlier, the challenge of speaking to this group on the subject of grace—especially the last attempt at it after all the others have been able to go before—is a challenge that I accept. And I want us just really to have that notion of the vastness of God and the grace of God in our minds.

Because like every caring pastor, Peter realized that the people to whom he was writing needed to know God. They needed to know God. There are so many things that we need to know. There are so many practicalities of living the Christian life. I mean, just walking around out there, you need to know about how you get your retirement; you need to know how to raise your children, how you do this, how you do so many different things. But in and through and under all of that, we need to know God. We need to know who God is. And theology is of fundamental importance.

We share that conviction, I’m sure. Because vagueness and cluelessness provides no rampart against the prevailing winds about which we were singing this morning—about… It was raining and blowing, I think, if I remember correctly. Made me think I was back in Glasgow for a moment and not like here at all. But is it an amazing thing to be able to say, you know, “It is well with my soul.”[1] And in the original version of that hymn, incidentally—although over here we sing, “Thou has taught me to say”—in the original version it is “Thou has taught me to know.” “To know.” You can say a lot of things without knowing them. And that knowledge of God—who he is and his grace—is absolutely foundational.

Peter realized that the people to whom he was writing needed to know God.

Spurgeon, in 1855, just twenty years old, addresses his congregation in the morning service:

He who [thinks often] of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods [the] narrow globe. … Would you lose your [sorrow]? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know of nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of grief; so speak peace to the winds of trials, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.[2]

That’s remarkable for a number of reasons, but it’s remarkable out of the lips of a twenty-year-old fellow. I mean, Spurgeon was one unique person—died at fifty-eight. He was clearly a genius and picked up by God and used quite masterfully. And he would be surprised, if he were to reemerge at this point in history, I’m sure, to realize that in many of our congregations, we’ve got big thoughts of ourselves and small thoughts of God.

And the reminder that Peter is giving to these folks as he writes to them—scattered throughout Bithynia and Cappadocia and so on, living in what is modern-day Turkey, under the threat of Neronian persecution, realizing that they have challenges that are immense, far beyond anything that we can ever know—he is reminding them as he draws the letter to a close (in fact, he’s at pains to assure them) that the God of all grace, who has called them, will keep them. Because he is not the author of unfinished business. In fact, in many ways, what Peter is saying here is akin to what Paul says at the beginning of the Philippians letter when he says, “being confident of this, that he who [has begun] a good work in you will [bring] it … to completion [at] the day of [Jesus] Christ.”[3]

Our Humiliation

And so it is that these men and women, he is writing to them with a real sense of passion—a passionate concern for their spiritual welfare. He’s well aware of the fact of their alien status—2:11: “Beloved…” (“Beloved.” It’s a great word, “beloved,” isn’t it? Whatever our congregation knows about us or thinks about us, let them be in no doubt that we love them. That we love them.) “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which … war against your soul.”

He wants them to be very, very clear that though they were facing, as he says in 1:6—“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.” If he had chosen a hymn out of an earlier era, he would have had the congregation stand up and sing,

When through fiery trials your pathway shall lie,
His grace, all-sufficient, shall be your supply,
For he will be with you in troubles to bless
And sanctify to you your deepest distress.[4]

We had a little conversation last night about hymns and psalms and contemporary songs. And I rejoice in the privilege of singing all these songs this morning. I think the only one I actually knew was the chorus “When we all get to heaven,” which shows you how old I am and how bad my choice is in contemporary music. But I would say, as a word of exhortation to you, that there is plenty missing in contemporary poetry, in songs, and there is a vast richness in the Psalms, which is the Bible’s hymnbook, and in the breadth that there is in hymnody. They don’t all have to be sung in the same way, but their truth, I think, needs to be kept.

And one of the things that it does is it reminds us that the journey of the Christian life is marked by ups and downs and ins and outs—that faith in Jesus does not remove us from the painful and from the difficult and the sad experiences which are part and parcel of living in the world. That’s why, again, he’s reminded them, “You shouldn’t be surprised by these things.”

Nor should we be surprised in them in pastoral ministry. The lovely thing about being in the company of fellow foot soldiers is that we don’t have to keep explaining ourselves to one another, because we’re able to use language, and we understand what we mean by these things. The final Presbyterian minister in a church in Ayrshire (Macleod was his name), before Eric Alexander, was the last Gaelic-speaking minister in that particular church. And the only hymn that I know that he wrote begins, “Courage, brother[s], do not stumble.” That’s the opening line. And he’s writing it for his fellow pastors. And one of the verses goes like this:

Some will love thee; some will hate thee;
Some will praise thee; some will slight.
Cease from man, and look above you;
Trust in God, and do what’s right.[5]

Now, that kind of poetry, I think, is very helpful, at least to me. And I think that Peter recognizes that himself. He realizes, as Paul says elsewhere in Romans 8—he says, you know, inwardly we groan.[6] We groan. Groaning’s okay; moaning is not okay. I don’t usually like going to pastors’ conferences because of a lot of moaning—a lot of moaning and a lot of lies. It sounds terrible to say, but it’s true. You know, you don’t know where to sit with your coffee. You sit down and just hear little bits: “Oh, we’re growing immensely. We’re tremendously encouraged. This is the finest year we’ve ever had.” I go, “I’m not sitting over there. Let’s go over here.” They said, “I’ve never been so depressed in all my life.” I said, “Oh, I’m not sitting over there.” You go and sit in the toilet and drink your coffee.

Now, let’s be honest: Creation groans,[7] and we, too, groan; but moaning is not part of the program. We don’t need any more moaners. And as pastors, we understand, don’t we, that we preach weekly. That’s with two e’s, but also, sometimes it’s an e and an a. But we preach weekly to men and women whose lives are often marked by quiet desperation—that underneath the hellos and the putting the children in children’s ministry and whatever else it is, everybody under our care, just like ourselves, has a wheelbarrow full, metaphorically, of all kinds of stuff: unanswered prayers, difficulties, the insinuations of the Evil One.

And the great challenge in being—and I say this with Dave here, because he’s coming to our church to help us know how to be married to one another—but I know that Dave knows that there’s no practicality that he can give to me to help me with my wife unless she and I understand that what we really need to do is to know God and to understand our identity in Christ. And then the helpfulness of those things blossoms, you know, out of the seedbed of that foundational reality. And the danger, I think—I acknowledge it in myself—the danger is the danger of calling people to a standard that we ourselves are not living by. Then there’s a falsity about things that is painful to experience.

In The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis addresses this, you will remember. He says,

Those like myself whose imagination far exceeds their obedience are subject to a just penalty; we easily imagine conditions far higher than … we have … reached. If we describe what we have imagined we may make others, and make ourselves, believe that we have really been there,[8]

“and so fool both them and ourselves.”[9] And one of the ways you can get to that is by using other people’s illustrations. Don’t do that, except to say, “There was a lousy illustration that Begg used. It was so bad, I want to use it again.” But not… Because people are listening, and they go, “No, he doesn’t know anything about that.” It’s like if I try to use an illustration from science or from mathematics, people just go to sleep for a minute, ’cause they know, “He must have got that from somewhere. He’s braindead on that side of his head”—or if you talk about some great spiritual exercise that has more to do with a Puritan that you read in an old book somewhere. No, we mustn’t do that. We mustn’t do that. If we preach what we’ve imagined, then we’re in danger of just being absolutely hypocritical.

And so, I say all of that because there’s no danger of Peter actually talking down to those to whom he writes, if you think about it, in the way he goes from the exhortation to the elders and the call, which, again, follows on from some of what we were saying this morning into this very important principle of “Make sure that you clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility towards one another, because God opposes the proud and he gives grace to the humble.” Don’t you think that cost him to write that? Can you imagine when he wrote that? I mean, what do you think he’s thinking about? He’s thinking about when he didn’t do it. He’s thinking about when he looked Jesus in the face, and he says, “You know, even if all these other guys bail on you, I’m not going to bail on you. I’m Peter!”[10] Well, he came down, didn’t he?

The principle, I think, is very important. You’ll notice that we’re not asked to pray about being humble. We’re not asked to feel like we’re humble. The notion of humility is not just a kind of general winsomeness, a kind of deferential approach to life. Some of us have tried that, and our friends are going, “That’s not you. That’s not you.” Peter wasn’t like that. The reason we like Peter is because he shot it off. You know, it was all net, and then he was just banking it off the thing all the time, hitting the rim again and again and again. And we go, “We love this guy! He’s terrific!” He takes one foot out of his mouth so he can put his other foot in his mouth. So he’s not a naturally winsome fellow. He’s a passionate guy. He gets it right; he gets it wrong. And in the midst of all of that, he recognizes that it is the grace of God that is at work within his personality—who he is, established, his own DNA, given to him by Almighty God, that has chosen to use him despite all these things. So when he says, “Humble yourself,” it cost him something.

Again, I mentioned this morning… I mean, you think about 1 Corinthians, when Paul says, “You know, when I came to you, you know, I didn’t look like much.”[11] and then he says, “And frankly, you didn’t look like that much either.” You remember? ’Cause around 1:26, he says, “And consider your calling, brethren, when you were called. Not many of you were pretty smart. Not many of you were from a mighty background. Not many of you at all!”[12] I mean, if you take the average church choir and look at that… (You don’t have a choir here, do you? That’s good. So you’re okay.) But I mean, you look at the people in the church choir, and you go, “We’re going to change the world with that group? I mean, this is fantastic! This is unbelievable!”

Humility is an attitude of mind generated by the work of the Spirit of God, allowing us to recognize that God’s grace is the key to understanding who and what we are.

No, humility is an attitude of mind generated by the work of the Spirit of God, allowing us to recognize that God’s grace is the key to understanding who and what we are and understanding who and what we’re not. That’s okay. I don’t need to know math. I’ve got friends that know math—not many, but I’ve got one or two.

God’s Exaltation

And the idea of exaltation, of being lifted up—in “the proper time he may exalt you”—well, Peter got exalted in a way that he never anticipated, didn’t he? “You used to be able to put your own clothes on,” do whatever it was, Jesus says, “but one day, the time will come, and they will lead you by the hand.”[13] And his exaltation was a strange exaltation. He was given the privilege of writing these letters, but he went the same way that Jesus went.

Incidentally, I think it’s important we understand that that principle there—“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you”—that’s not there, I don’t think, as a motivation. That’s there as an explanation. In other words, the only people that God ultimately exalts are those who have humbled themselves under his mighty hand. We can exalt ourselves. We can do all kinds of things for ourselves. But it’s the one that God exalts.

Do you remember that—talking about interesting songs—do you remember “The Butterfly Song” from the ’60s? Now I’m having a moment. “What ‘Butterfly Song’?” No, it went like this:

If I were a butterfly,
I’d thank you, Lord, for giving me wings.
And if I were a robin in the tree,
I’d thank you, Lord, that I can sing.
And if I were a fuzzy-wuzzy bear,
I’d thank you, Lord, for my fuzzy-wuzzy hair.
But I just thank you, Father, for making me, me.

Because you gave me a heart, and you gave me a smile,
And you gave me Jesus, and you called me your child.
And I just thank you, Father, for making me, me.[14]

We’re coming to terms with who and what we are under the grace of God. It cost him, I think, to write that. I’ll check with him one day.

But what about anxiety? “Casting…” Incidentally, you’ll notice there, in the NIV it’s an imperative, but not here in the ESV. Rightly so! Because humility is the key to the casting of our anxieties. Because the reason I’m anxious is because I want to be in control of the whole operation. If you don’t like flying in, you know, 38B in a horrible storm, you understand. Because you’re trying to fly it from 38B. Guess what? You don’t have any control over it at all. You’re going to have to trust that the guy up front is not looking out the window for sightseeing, but he’s flying the instruments.

And so it’s only as we recognize that the God who overrules us has it all entirely under his control. And yet anxiety—there’s so much about it in the Bible, isn’t there? “Why are you worried about this?” says Jesus. “Why are you worried about that? Why are you…”[15] It’s not as if worry is an unusual reality. It is a reality. And I wonder whether, when he said, “casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you,” he actually had just a picture in his mind where he says to Jesus, “I’m coming to you. I’m walking on the water. I’m… Whoa!”[16] Yeah. He took his eyes off Jesus! He got anxious that he could make one step or two steps, but he wasn’t going to make it all the way to the end. That might minister to somebody’s heart. I don’t know.

Phillips paraphrases this wonderfully, where he says, “casting all your anxieties on him.” The verb is a big verb. It means to chuck it. It means to throw it. It’s not moving nice Chippendale furniture around your house. It’s taking your garbage and taking it to the trash. And Phillips gets it well: He says, “You can [turn] the whole weight of your anxieties [on] him, for you are his personal concern.”[17] “You are his personal concern.”

And then he goes on, and he says, “Well, what about adversity?” Adversity. “Be sober-minded; be watchful.” Pause. What was the instruction given by Jesus to them? “Watch and pray so that you do not enter into temptation.”[18] They did neither. Now, as the journey of his life has unfolded and he has the experience of looking back, he’s writing now not in a position of, as I said at the beginning, talking down, but I can imagine that if he penned this or he was giving it to his amanuensis, his secretary, it cost him. Because he was aware of the fact that the Evil One had made such an impact on him. And he was also aware of the fact that Jesus had said to him, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift … you [like] wheat.”[19] And so he knew that it was on account of the amazing grace of God, “the God of all grace,” that he was sustained: “But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you[’ve] turned back, strengthen your brothers.”[20] What an amazing and wonderful thing it is!

You know, the Christian life is, for most of us, a series of new beginnings. A series of new beginnings. And it’s akin to marriage as well, in this one sense. I’ve been married to my wife now for forty-nine years. Last Sunday was the fifty-sixth anniversary of the day we met on the twentieth of October in England. And I don’t have my marriage certificate with me. I don’t know if any of you do. Who cares? It’s somewhere safe. But the real test is not a certificate that was signed in Philadelphia in 1975. The real significance is: She walks with me. She talks with me. She tells me I am her own. You get it? That’s a hymn. But it’s Jesus:

He walks with me,
… He talks with me,
… He tells me I am his own;
And the joy we share as we [tally] there
None other has ever known,[21]

except in Christ, except by the wonder of his grace—grace that covers every need.

Annie Johnson Flint… I’m on a hymn thing now, and I’ll try and get out of here without mentioning any contemporary lyrics from the pop world. But you remember Annie Johnson Flint’s thing:

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father’s full giving [has hardly] begun.

For “his grace has no measure,” his love has no something, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

For out of his infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.[22]

In Christ!

Peter is reminding his readers and reminding us this morning that we are the undeserved recipients of the love of God—an unmerited favor that is not tied in any conditional way to our performance but is tied directly to the unchanging merit of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s why in the routine of our days, however we work our days, we need to come consistently to the throne of grace to feed constantly on the Word of grace so that we might bow humbly before the God of grace.

You know, it’s like a golf swing: It’s straightforward, but it’s not easy. Why is it not easy? Well, because the devil is “a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour,” roaming around. You remember the beginning of Job, and God says, “And where have you been lately, Satan?” He says, “Well, I’ve been roaming around here and there,[23] you know—just looking for people to pick up: working my way through some congregations, trying to give pastors a fat head, trying to discourage their wives, trying to insinuate conflict between elders, trying my darnedest to bring down this operation.” Antidote: “the God of all grace.” Because we can count on him to fulfill his purposes.

We who, by our nature, exchange the glory of God,[24] fall short of his glory,[25] find ourselves called to eternal glory. And in Christ, all my shame might be covered by his glory.

Something beautiful, something good—
All my [nonsense] he understood.
All I had to offer him was brokenness and strife,
[And] he made something beautiful [out] of my life.[26]

That’s what Peter, I believe, is saying here. And since God has gone to such lengths—“He who knew no sin became sin for us, that in him we might become the righteousness of God”[27]—having gone to such lengths, God is not about to abandon his project.

The Promise That God Himself Keeps

So, he’s absolutely convinced that God can be counted on to complete the work that he’s begun. There’s salvation. And the verbs are future; they’re not optative. They’re expressing not a wish but a promise. And it is here that I want to just wrap this up.

You should be aware of the fact that there is a solidarity of your experience. The same grace that reconciles us to God antagonizes us to the Evil One. The Westminster Confession of Faith helps us: We’re involved in “a continual and irreconcilable war.”[28] The war that wars within us, between the spirit and our flesh, between the world and the flesh and the devil. Aware of all of that, you should know that nothing peculiar is happening. This is the reality of Christian living. “But I want you to know,” he says, “that after you’ve suffered a little while”—and if we suffered for a lifetime, it would still be a little while in relationship to eternity—but “after you[’ve] suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will” do these things. Let’s just notice the assurance that is given here.

“Will himself restore…” “Restore you”—put things in order. You’ve preached on this. That’s why I said I’m not here to tell you things you don’t know, just to remind you about things you can’t forget. It’s the same verb that is used of the disciples mending their nets.[29] It’s the verb that would be used in orthopedics for dislocated bones and putting them back into the right position. It’s the same verb that would be used of refitting a vessel brought back into harbor for repairs and painting and various things, to be cared for by the builder.

Let it hit you where you’re living. You may have come here, and, known only to you and not even the people who came in your car, you came here because you need restored. This is, for you, pulling back into the dry dock for a minute so that you might be refurbished, restored. Maybe the only reason God brought me here to speak was so that I might be restored, so that the joy of the Lord might prove to be my strength,[30] so that my spirit would be lifted up within me by seeing a whole crowd of people that are doing things all over the world. I’ve never met them once in my life, and it allows me to go home on the plane and go, “This is fantastic! This is amazing!” It’s restorative.

That’s what he does: “After you[’ve] suffered a little while…” You just came from your deacons’ meeting or whatever your elders are; it just drove you totally nuts, and you just suffer for a little while. That was last Wednesday. But “the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore … you.” So lift your eyes. Get them from your chest.

And not only restore you but “confirm” you. In the NIV: “make you strong.” “Make you strong.” Well, you can tell I’m pretty strong, can’t you? That’s another thing I never use as an illustration: the gym, you know. My congregation are going, “Oh, forget it! You’ve never been in a gym. That’s ridiculous!” But he can make me strong.

It’s actually “supported in a way so as not to topple.” “To topple.” Now, you topple if you get top-heavy. You got one of those big heads again? It’s what you do with your grandchildren when they come over, and you don’t really have a place for them—especially the early ones. You take a single bed; you wedge it in a right angle, like that. They’re too wee for the bed, but you put them in the bed, and then you suffocate them to death with pillows so they don’t fall out. The danger is suffocation, not falling. And there they are. And you have to go in about every fifteen seconds and go, “Oh! They’re still awake. That’s good. Fine.”

My recent visit to my doctor at the Cleveland Clinic, he said, “You seem pretty healthy to me.” He did the things and everything else. And he said, “But I’ll tell you one thing: Make sure you don’t fall.” That’s what he said.

I said, “I beg your pardon! You think you’re talking to my dad here or something?”

“No, no. No, no,” he says. “Make sure you don’t fall.”

I was a little ticked about that, I must tell you. So Christmas Day, Sue says, “Can you get something out of the fridge in the garage?” I go out to the garage in my socks, hit the top step, go flying off, fall, break open the water thing that gives you that plastic thing. That splits apart, catapults around the place, cuts my fingers open, and I’m lying in a dead faint on the floor. And I said, “Ah! I think that’s what he meant!”

How am I going to be strong? Paul to [the Ephesians]: “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.”[31] That’s it. I don’t feel particularly strong. Sometimes I wonder how come I’m still a Christian. Sometimes I wonder whether the only reason God made me a pastor was so I’d go to church. You ever thought about that? It’s not a good thought! But I was riding a bicycle in Florida years ago. It was a Sunday morning, and I’d gone to get a coffee or something, riding a bike, and the thought came in my mind, “I don’t need to go to church. Nobody knows where I am. I mean, my wife does, but I could just… It’s so sunny. It’s lovely. He wouldn’t mind that, would he?” And then I began to talk to myself, and then it dawned on me: “Maybe the only reason God made you a pastor was so you would go to church. Because if you weren’t the pastor, would you actually go?”

Why do you do what you do? Why are you still doing what you do? Out of routine? Out of the sense of the hand of God on the back of your neck in a lovely and in an encouraging way. This is John Owen (I eventually squeezed a theologian in): We cannot perform our duty without the grace of God, nor does God give his grace for any other purpose than that we may perform our duty.[32] We cannot perform our duty without the grace of God, nor does God give his grace for any other purpose than that we might perform our duty.

“So,” he says, “you should know this: that the God of all grace, who has called you, will himself restore you, confirm you, strengthen you.” “Strengthen you.” You say, “Well, we’ve already had this, haven’t we?” Well, actually, no. Because the picture here is not the picture of toppling, but it’s a picture of collapsing. It’s about being stabilized by the ongoing mercy and grace of God. It’s about being strengthened in the inner man.[33] Because, frankly, “outwardly we are wasting away,” but “inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”[34]

Now, how is that inward renewal taking place? By the work of the God of all grace. “They that wait upon the Lord renew their strength. They mount up with wings as eagles. They run and are not weary. They walk, and they’re not faint.”[35] Hebrews 12 talks about our weak knees and our feeble hands.[36] “My heart is weak and poor until it master find”[37]—you know, that amazing hymn.

And “make you … steadfast,”[38] or “establish you.” “Establish you”—establishing as foundations. Years ago, in Hong Kong, I was speaking in an Anglican church, and immediately next to the church they were doing construction. And they had one of those machines; I think they call them pile drivers. Is that it, what they call it? Pile driver? And it just makes the most amazing noise. It’s a big thing that goes boom!—you know, like that. Bigger than that, actually. And since it was next door, it was incredible, because I’d say, “So I exhort the elders”—boom!—“among you … and a witness of the”—boom! And it went on for the whole talk. I mean, it was almost like if I’d had a better cadence, you know, I could have got it going. But it was driving me crazy. And I said to the guy afterwards, “What are they doing over there? What are they doing over there?” Well, they’re going down so they can go up. They’re going down so they can go up.

“He who hears my words and puts them into practice is like a man who built his house upon the rock. And when the winds blew and the rain fell”—that’s back to this morning again—“it stood firm, because it was founded on the rock. The person who hears my word and fails to put it into practice is like somebody who built the house on the sand, because they didn’t put the foundations down.”[39] If two people were walking down the road, and guy one and guy two were working, the guy on the solid rock with the pile drivers—people say, “You don’t want to buy a house from him. From the time he tells you he starts, there’s no saying when he finishes. You should get a house from that guy. Look, he’s already on the second floor already!” That’s ’cause he never put the foundations in!

Apply it to your life. Apply it to your church. Apply it to your organization. Apply it to your convocation. Apply it. It’s a promise. It’s a promise.

So, the God of all grace provides support so that we won’t topple, strength so that we won’t collapse, a foundation so that we won’t be blown away, and he attends to it “himself.” “The God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself…” “Will himself”! It’s no merely fortuitous or instrumental help that is promised to us but God’s own active intervention—mysterious, wonderful, and real.

The ultimate reality of that, of course, is when we go all the way to the book of Revelation, and “the dwelling … of God is with [men],” and “he will [live] with them,” and “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”[40] And he’s not sending an assistant.

It’s no merely fortuitous or instrumental help that is promised to us but God’s own active intervention—mysterious, wonderful, and real.

I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to violate it and quote Johnny Cash. In the Man in Black album from a long time ago, he had a song called “I Talk to Jesus Every Day.” And all I remember is it goes like this:

I talk to Jesus every day,
And he’s interested in every word I say,
And no secretary ever tells me he’s been called away.
I talk to Jesus every day.[41]

I’ve got friends—some of my hyper-Reformed friends—who think that some of my songs are not the best. I already quoted “And he walks with me, and he talks with me,” and they said, “That’s just a bunch of piety, Alistair.” I said, “No, it’s not. I guess you never had the experience. I guess you never heard the sweet voice of God speaking to you in your sadness and lifting your spirit, or speaking to you about the fact that you’re in danger of collapsing or toppling or whatever you’re doing.” He does. He does. He absolutely does.

And so, as they faced, and we face, grief and all kinds of trials, storms rage around them, Peter was absolutely convinced that it was imperative that the vessels of their lives should be anchored to that which doesn’t shift or turn or change. It’s Hebrews, isn’t it? That “we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.”[42]

I was in a group called the Life Boys, which… Yeah. I happened to go into that. But we would do… We wore funny little hats, and when you graduated, you became part of the Boys’ Brigade—not American Boys’ Brigade; the real Boys’ Brigade. Because people say, “Oh, yeah, I remember that.” No, you don’t. You absolutely don’t. So you’ve got to get this picture in your mind. And we would do parades. You think about it: I’m born in ’52. That’s… I mean, we still had air raid shelters in the back of our yard. So we still… We did parades. So you would go to the church service, for the special church service—nice, big Presbyterian church somewhere in suburban Glasgow. And when the service was finished, we would all “man up,” so to speak—all these little boys, the Life Boys. We had hats on that came out like pillbox hats or something. I don’t know what they were; they were ridiculous. And you had your thing, and then you would walk through the street, and you sang,

We have an anchor that keeps the soul
Steadfast and sure while the billows roll,
Fastened to the Rock which cannot move,
Grounded firm and deep in the Savior’s love.

That was the chorus. The verse goes,

Will your anchor hold in the storms of life,
When the clouds unfold their [winds] of strife?
When the strong tides lift and the cables strain,
Will your anchor drift or firm remain?[43]

Then the chorus again.

But when I think back on it now, what makes me laugh so much is we’re all, like, eight and nine years old. So you don’t think it’s going to sound—it’s like “We have an anchor that keeps the soul!” People are going, “This is ridiculous!” But I was seven, and now I’m seventy-two. It’s the same anchor. It’s the same Rock. It’s the same God of all grace. We praise him. We thank him.

Father, thank you for your Word. Thank you that we can go back and read it and really figure it out. Thank you that your Word always accomplishes its purposes.[44] And we are glad of the privilege of one another’s company and the opportunity to exhort and encourage one another—and all the more as we see the day of your return drawing near.[45] Bless each one of us, Lord. We know you’re far more willing to bless us than we even are to ask you for a blessing. And so we look away from ourselves to you, and we commend ourselves into your care. In Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] Horatio Gates Spafford, “It Is Well with My Soul” (1873).

[2] C. H. Spurgeon, “The Immutability of God,” The New Park Street Pulpit 1, no. 1, 1.

[3] Philippians 1:6 (NIV).

[4] “How Firm a Foundation” (1787). Lyrics lightly altered.

[5] Norman Macleod, “Courage, Brother, Do Not Stumble” (1857). Lyrics lightly altered.

[6] See Romans 8:23.

[7] See Romans 8:22.

[8] C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves: An Exploration of the Nature of Love (1960), chap 6.

[9] J. I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1973), 7.

[10] Matthew 26:33; Mark 14:29 (paraphrased).

[11] 1 Corinthians 2:1 (paraphrased).

[12] 1 Corinthians 1:26 (paraphrased).

[13] John 21:18 (paraphrased).

[14] Brian M. Howard, “The Butterfly Song” (1974). Lyrics lightly altered.

[15] See Matthew 6:25–30; Luke 12:22–28.

[16] See Matthew 14:28–30.

[17] 1 Peter 5:7 (Phillips).

[18] Matthew 26:41; Mark 14:38; Luke 22:46 (paraphrased).

[19] Luke 22:31 (NIV).

[20] Luke 22:32 (NIV).

[21] Charles Austin Miles, “In the Garden” (1913).

[22] Annie Johnson Flint, “He Giveth More Grace.”

[23] Job 1:7 (paraphrased).

[24] See Romans 1:23.

[25] See Romans 3:23.

[26] Gloria Gaither and William James Gaither, “Something Beautiful” (1971).

[27] 2 Corinthians 5:21 (paraphrased).

[28] The Westminster Confession 13.2.

[29] See Matthew 4:21; Mark 1:19.

[30] See Nehemiah 8:10.

[31] Ephesians 6:10 (ESV).

[32] John Owen, Pneumatologia (1674), bk. 4, chap. 1.

[33] See Ephesians 3:16.

[34] 2 Corinthians 4:16 (NIV).

[35] Isaiah 40:31 (paraphrased).

[36] See Hebrews 12:12.

[37] George Matheson, “Make Me a Captive, Lord” (1890).

[38] 1 Peter 5:10 (NIV).

[39] Matthew 7:24–27; Luke 6:46–49 (paraphrased).

[40] Revelation 21:3–4 (ESV).

[41] Glenn Douglas Tubb, “I Talk to Jesus Every Day” (1971). Lyrics lightly altered.

[42] Hebrews 6:19 (NIV).

[43] Priscilla Jane Owens, “We Have an Anchor” (1882).

[44] See Isaiah 55:11.

[45] See Hebrews 10:25.