Preached at the Linville's Creek Meetinghouse,
Sunday, January 3, 1836.
Text.—Unto you therefore which believe he is precious.—I Pet. 2:7.
Dear Brethren, this chapter is full of instruction and encouragement. Peter knew by experience what it is to backslide. Now, that he is restored again to full fellowship with the Lord and the church, Jesus seems nearer and more precious to him than ever before. In the seventh verse he says: "Unto you therefore which believe he is precious." I know he must be so, because he is so precious to me. I shamefully denied him when he most needed my loving support, and swore that I did not know him in the darkest hour of his temptation. Who can comprehend his grace? The meekness, the gentleness, the calmness of his forgiving heart under trials the deepest, under persecutions the greatest, even unto death, are surely worthy of God incarnate.
"'I know not the man' were the very last words he heard me utter on his way through tribulations to the cross; and I added oaths to the declaration. I now fail to find words to express my surprise and joy at the message he sent me on the morning of his resurrection. When he was placed in the tomb I had no hope of his ever coming out thence. But what surprised and overcame me more than the direct news of his rising was the special message of love he sent me by the women who saw him first. He said to them: 'Go and tell my disciples and Peter, that I go into Galilee, and there they shall see me.' His forgiving love singled me out as one of its special objects, because I was such a vile sinner, and had treated him so badly. Brother Paul calls himself the 'chief of sinners,' because he persecuted the saints of God; but I feel that I must be, for I denied his Son. Truly did Paul say of all such great sinners as we are: 'Where sin abounded, grace did also much more abound.' Thanks to my risen Lord, I can now with heart and voice join the chorus of those that sing:
"'O, the length and the breadth,
And the depth and the height
Of the love of Christ!
It passeth all understanding!"
I have here represented Peter as giving us some of his experiences; and I believe that my representations are correct; for in the chapter next preceding the one just read, we find this joyful exclamation: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." I must think that the mercy was much more abundant than Peter expected, for it wrought an effect upon him which he calls a regeneration, or a sort of new birth. At any rate, he says he was "begotten again." It looks as if it made a new man of him. It gave him new life. He never denied his Lord again. When called to fulfill the prophecy of the Lord concerning "the death by which he was to glorify God," he faltered not, but met it "as seeing him who is invisible."
Brethren, some of us may, at times, have a taste of Peter's experience. We feel so vile in our own eyes, that, like him, we go out, and over our sins "weep bitterly." Ah, but these are "pearly tears" in God's sight. Though we may not know it, though we may still feel too bad to repair, on bended knees, to a "throne of grace," yet God knows how to value them. They are precious in his sight; and it is your experience and mine that after seasons of this kind he sends us the brightest tokens of his love, and we are joyfully amazed that it is so.