Born Again To a Living Hope

Conrad Hertzler

1 Peter: Chosen • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago

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1 Peter 1:3-7 “3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

If you were writing to someone who was suffering, what would you say?

I don’t know if we can grasp the horror of what the early Christians were going through

Caesar Nero was born right around the time that Jesus left this earth and came to power at the age of 17 when his father, Caesar Claudius died.

This was right around the time that the early church was beginning to flourish, and Nero’s name is synonymous with the persecution of the early Christians.

The persecution that he inflicted on the early church wasn’t as widespread as some of the later Roman Emperors. Diocletian, for example

But Nero was a twisted, evil man, and I won’t go into the details of his life, And the ways that found to persecute and put to death the early Christians were horrible.

Painting Christians with tar and using them as torches.

Throwing them to wild animals.

What would be your response, living in a kingdom where this could happen to you?

What would your life be like? How would you face your days?

And if you were writing a letter to someone who was living in the Roman empire during this time, what would you say to them?

It’s one thing to be with those who are suffering. You can convey comfort through your facial expressions,

Through a hug

Just being with someone who is suffering is a means of comfort.

But sometimes, when you are reaching out to someone and the only means that you have at your disposal is to write them a letter or an email,

words alone seem to not be sufficient.

At least for me, anyway. I feel like “They are just words”. They lose meaning when you can accompany them with facial expressions or physical gestures.

And what do you say, anyway?

“Hey, I’m sorry to hear what you are going through”

“Man, a real bummer what happened to you.”

“Sure hope things turn around for you”.

Words don’t seem sufficient

But that is the task at hand for Peter here. His goal is to encourage Believers who are being persecuted and facing potential death.

And I think Peter does it masterfully.

He begins with words of praise

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!”

Peter is considering what he wrote in verses 1 and 2.

That we have been elected or chosen according to the foreknowledge of God

Elected to be holy and blameless.

Elected to be part of God’s sovereign plan to unite everything in heaven and on earth under Jesus Christ (eph. 1:10)

When Peter considers this, his mouth can’t help but utter praise to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ

When I think of what Peter and the believers are going through, and I see how he starts his letter, I am convicted.

Because when things are tough, I forget to praise.

Even though I have sung the song “Blessed Be Your Name” many times, I still forget to praise.

in that song, we make a declaration.

Every blessing You pour out I’ll turn back to praise (easy, right?)

When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say

“Blessed be the name of the Lord, Blessed be His name”

And I think I mean it when I sing it

And then when life seems tough, what is the first thing that I tend to do?

Shake my head and say, “Man, things are hard right now!

“Why are things so hard?” When is this going to end.

Instead of, like Peter saying, “Blessed (praised, worthy of adoration) is God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In times of hardship and suffering, we lift our eyes to God and praise Him. Why?

Firs and foremost, Because He is absolutely worthy to be praised in all circumstances

Because our God has great mercy

According to His great mercy, (vs. 3)

Where would we be without the great and matchless mercy of God?

Do you ever stop to think about that?

The more that my spiritual eyes are opened, and the more that He reveals to me His holiness, and my sinfulness, the more that I realize that the fact that He has lifted me up from my natural and spiritual condition (death)

And granted me a place beside Jesus in the Heavenlies is almost too wonderful to imagine

The fact that I fall so often, yet He looks on Jesus and pardons me (as the song says), is amazing!

We praise God, because of His great mercy

We praise Him because he works and acts according to His great mercy.

There’s that word, “according to” again.

that means in agreement with.

His great mercy is part of His character.

And He always stays true to His character. His mercy will never fail because God will never fail!

You can take it to the bank that God’s mercy will always be true

We praise God because He has caused us to be born again

here we are again bumping up against the little controversy that we touched on last Sunday.

Those who weren’t here can watch the sermon on Youtube

But this whole idea of a new birth, of salvation, of transformation, this whole thing.

This is GOD’S idea. It is HIS plan. and He CAUSED it to happen

“Yeah, but I was told that I should ask Jesus into my heart and decide to make Jesus Lord of my Life”

I would challenge us to find any of that language in the Bible.

What we do find are statements like this.

God caused us to be born again

When we were dead, God raised us up

and many more

Now, does there have to be some “buy in” from us? Does there have to be some agreement from us?

Well, I still think that there does

But way more than I used to be, I am convinced of and amazed at God’s power in salvation

And I am ever more convinced of our powerlessness in doing anything to save ourselves and get ourselves out of our sinful state

We praise God, because He has caused us to be born again

What are we born again to?

We praise God the Father because we are born again to a Living Hope

Wow, is this message needed today. A living Hope!

You know, this word “hope”,

The way that we use it today is sort of like when things seem out of control and not likely to happen

I hope the Hawkeyes win the national championship

I hope it rains today (we have no control over that)

I hope my investments do well

If someone is going into the doctor because something is wrong, we say, I hope he gets a positive report

Yeah, I have hope. I hope something will happen, but I don’t know.

We say “I hope” when things seem kind of out of control

But not so with what we are talking about today!

Peter says that we have been born again to a LIVING HOPE

The Greek word for “hope” ἐλπίς (elpis) that is used here means

A looking forward to in confident expectation.

Looking forward in confident expectation

This is not hopelessness. This confidence. This is the expectation that what God has said will come to pass!

Our hope is a living hope

Because it is a hope that is always growing, always becoming greater

And because it is placed, not in a random set of events, not in something that might happen

We don’t just “hope” that maybe I’ve done the right things for God to be happy with me

that perhaps I’ve done enough good deeds that I will make it to heaven somehow

On the contrary. Our hope is in a real PERSON.

A person, who was dead but now is alive.

That Person is Jesus Christ who God raised from the Dead

And He is now with God the Father, actively interceding for you and for me!

Without Jesus, our hope would be a dead hope.

It would be like I talked about before

Sort of an “I don’t know what will happen to me. I would like to go to heaven or paradise, or wherever. But I don’t know”

in 1 Cor. 15, Paul writes earnestly to the Corinthian believer to make sure that the Resurrection is a sure thing in their minds

“Because”, he says, 1 Corinthians 15:16-19 “16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Absolutely right! If Christ has not been raised, then our faith is dead and we are to be most pitied

But He HAS been raised and now we have a LIVING HOPE.

We live in confident expectation that since God raised Jesus from the dead, then all that He says will come to pass

Our hope is a LIVING HOPE

We praise God because He has given us an inheritance

This inheritance is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading

You know our lives on this earth are so consumed by…STUFF

We just moved, and as many times as we have moved, I am amazed at how much STUFF we have and accumulate

And then, this stuff that we have keeps breaking.

We have this old van in our driveway that keeps leaving pieces of sheet metal on the ground when you shut the door

And the other day, one of the brakes ground right down into the brake disc and I had to rush out to the auto parts store and do an emergency repair so that we can have two vehicles to drive

And you try to make the decision is this old bucket worth sinking more money into

And there the questions of What do I keep, what do I get rid of.

I was talking to someone the other day whose dad passed away a while back

And we were talking about this very thing.

We know it’s just STUFF. But it means something to us. And we want to keep it around, all the while knowing that it won’t last forever.

These are the questions that we have to deal with on this earth

there is coming a day when this won’t be an issue anymore

Peter says that we have an inheritance

This is the same word used in the Septuagint, which is the Greek OT, to refer to Israel’s promised possession of the land.

It was her possession, granted to her as a gift from God

Peter says that we have such an inheritance waiting for us

This is an inheritance which

Cannot be destroyed by hostile forces (won’t perish)

It will not spoil like overripened fruit

It won’t face in color as things tend to do

this inheritance is as indestructible as God’s Word

1 Peter 1:23 “23 since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;”

Peter uses the same word to describe the indestructible word of God as he does to describe our indestructible inheritance

In times of hardship, this should bring us joy as we look forward to what is waiting for us

We praise God because we are being guarded by God’s power

Verse 5 begins with “who”

Interesting because in verse 4 he is talking about a “thing”: our inheritance.

You would think that perhaps he would say “which is being guarded”

but, no. He said in verse 4 that our inheritance is being kept in heaven for us

But we also are being guarded !

This is a military term. You are being detained, confined

This usually has a negative connotation for us.

Prisons aren’t meant to be a place where people want to go

The whole thing of being detained by authorities, handcuffed, taken to jail is meant to be intimidating

In MAF, we were given security training to prepare us in case we were detained at a border crossing or were taken hostage

It was a little scary, if you want to know the truth!

But we are told here, that you are already being guarded. You are already a prisoner.

But in the best possible, most unbelievable way possible!

In suffering, you are being guarded through faith by God our Father

When it seems like the test is too hard, the trial is too overwhelming, through faith you will continue to be guarded by God

We were just talking to someone the other day who is trying to process some tough things that happened to them.

And wondering “what was God doing? What is God doing in all of this?”

And we shared with this person how we went through some things in Mozambique that at the time seemed too tough to handle

At the time, we felt like the trial was going to overwhelm us

But we look back on our time in Mozambique now, and that’s not the first thing that we remember

Instead, what we remember is God being faithful in the good times AND the times that, at the time, seemed to hard to bear.

Why is that? I believe that was God guarding us, keeping us secure.

Isaiah 43:2 “2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”

Isn’t this a cause to praise God? in times of hardship and suffering, isn’t this a cause for rejoicing and praise?

In ALL of this you rejoice!

Though now, for a little while, if necessary you have been grieved by various trails

Peter doesn’t downplay the toughness of what his listeners are going through. He doesn’t tell them to buck up and take it

Yeah, it’s tough. It’s grievous! Family members have been arrested and killed

You are hiding, wondering if today is your last day of freedom.

It’s hard to go out and try to buy stuff at the markets. You never know who you will run into there and what they will do for you.

But do you know what? It’s just for a little while.

And there is a point to this suffering

So that your faith will be tested and found to be genuine.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I have found myself wondering, “Is my faith really genuine? Maybe I love God and have faith in Him because things have been relatively easy for me”.

I mean, I haven’t had to face death because of Him. Not yet, anyway!

Would my faith hold up if things became REALLY hard?

I don’t know.

But what I am sure of is that God in His wisdom and Grace tests our faith along the way

In order to purify it

Just as gold is put into a crucible and melted to burn off the dirt and the foreign material so that it is pure gold

God tests us to purify our faith

And as much as we value gold, purified faith is worth much more than purified gold!

You see, gold perishes. It gets lost. It tarnishes. It is physical and temporal.

But your faith, you purified faith has eternal value

I remember coming home on furlough and we were still trying to figure out how we were going to make it through the test that God had given us

And we went to some counseling to get some help and I remember thinking, “What I need is some tools to cope with this test.”

What actually happened was God worked on ME! He dealt with some pretty major things in MY heart

His purpose was to put ME in the crucible and burn off some junk in my heart and purify me just a little more

And He continues to do that

Why?

Well, not in order for me to “be a better me”. That’s not the ultimate reason anyway, though He does desire growth in my life.

But He uses suffering and trials to burn off the slag and impurities of sin

What does a purified faith look like?

It’s one in which doubt has been burned off.

We see a purified faith in folks who, during suffering, have a quiet confidence that God. That His ways are always good.

And their faith isn’t dependent on God “always coming through for them”. Rather it is dependent on God being who He says that He is. (big difference)

Where the idol of “me” is pushed more and more into the background

Because suffering really has a way of reminding us that we aren’t in control.

I can plan my life all I want. But in the end, it’s God who guides my steps.

In being purified, I learn to give up my “beautiful idol” and rest in His sovereignty

And what is the result of purified faith?

It’s so the end result will be the praise and glory and honor or our Lord Jesus Christ when He is revealed.

You and I bear His name as Believers. What greater witness is there to who He is than to have a purified faith?

So, praise Him in the storm. Praise Him in suffering. We have a living hope!

Born Again To a Living Hope

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