Sermon Tone Analysis

1 Peter 1 Verses 1 to 9 Hope That Lives January 8, 2022

Class Presentation Notes AAAA

Background Scripture:

James 1:2-3 (NASB)

2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,

3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

Isaiah 48:10 (NASB)

10 "Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.

Main Idea: Because of Jesus we have help for today and hope for tomorrow.

Teaching Aim: To lead adults to understand that when the Bible uses the word hope, it is speaking of a certainty and not a possibility.

The Life Question: What factors enable me to live with more confidence as a Christian?

Create Interest:

· World crises and personal troubles cause many people to live in fear and uncertainty.

Christians are not immune to such feelings when faced with difficulties beyond their control.

While some people put their confidence in resources of their own, Christians are able to live with confident hope based on the resources and promises of God.

· Peter wrote to Christians in several Roman provinces of Asia Minor.

He emphasized the initiative God took in making them His people in a lost world.

He praised God for endowing these children of His with living hope based on Christ’s resurrection.

This hope is an inheritance kept for believers.

Although they were passing through fiery trials, they could rejoice.

The prophets had foretold this good news.[1]

·

· Peter stressed that regardless of their circumstances, believers have a living hope that cannot be taken away, and they have the resources to continue living holy lives.

· Imagine the fear, uncertainty, and insecurity; the wandering about and the searching for a safe place and for a way to earn a living.

In some cases, the believers did not even know where their next meal would come from.

The church and its dear believers were fleeing for their lives.

All the feelings that attack human emotions when a person is being hunted down for brutal slaughter were attacking these believers: fear, concern, restlessness, sleeplessness, anxiety, stress, uncertainty, insecurity, and a pounding heart at the slightest shadow or noise.

· The believers desperately needed strong encouragement.

But how?

o How do you shore up and strengthen a person who is suffering and hurting so much?

o How can a person be secure through suffering and persecution?

§ There is one way and only one way: he must know that he is saved and be absolutely sure that he is under the care and love of God.

§ This is the discussion of the first section of First Peter.

It clearly tells us how to be secure through suffering.

📷 Our security is this: knowing that we are saved, that we belong to God and are looked after by God[2]

Lesson In Historical Context:

· Peter was an apostle (someone sent out).

In the New Testament, this usually refers to someone sent as an authorized agent by Jesus or the Christian community (Matt 10:2; 2 Cor 8:23; Heb 3:1).[3]

Peter was sent by Jesus Christ and one of the three named pillars of the early church in Jerusalem.

He was the first Christian missionary to the Gentiles, a Christian missionary to the Jews, and a Christian martyr in Rome.

o Simon Peter is one of Jesus’ first disciples and later became the spokesman of the Twelve.

Although Jesus gives Simon the name Peter (Petros/Rock) in Matthew 16:18 and Mark 3:16, his ability to live up to it is often in doubt in the Gospel.

· 1 Peter was written to Christians who were encountering persecution.

The form of persecution does not seem to have been official government persecution so much as slander and abuse from pagan people.

Peter’s letter emphasized two themes—assurance and exhortations.

o The assurancewas needed to help the believers live with confidence.

o The exhortationswere designed to help them live in such a way as to silence the slanders against them.

· Peter wrote to Christians about their need for hope and holiness.

Christians are pilgrims of faith on earth because their true home is in heaven.

o Peter’s readers were being persecuted, but they needed to have hope and assurance of their inheritance in heaven.

o Peter told them they should live on earth by the holy standards of heaven, and they should rejoice—even in times of trouble.[4]

· Peter’s expressed purpose in writing his epistle was that his readers would stand firm in the true grace of God (5:12) in the face of escalating persecution and suffering.

To that end he……………….

o reminded them of their election and the sure hope of their heavenly inheritance,

o delineated the privileges and blessings of knowing Christ,

o gave them instruction on how to conduct themselves in a hostile world,

o and pointed them to the example of Christ’s suffering.

· Peter wanted his readers to live triumphantly in the midst of hostility without abandoning hope, becoming bitter, losing faith in Christ, or forgetting His second coming.

o When they are obedient to God’s Word despite the world’s antagonism, Christians’ lives will testify to the truth of the gospel (2:12; 3:1, 13–17)[5].

· “Babylon” from which Peter wrote (5:13)” is most likely a cryptic name for Rome, chosen because of the Imperial capital’s debauchery and idolatry (which will characterize the Babylon of the end times; cf.

Rev. 17, 18).

With persecution looming on the horizon, Peter took care not to endanger the Christians in Rome, who might have faced further difficulties if his letter had been discovered by the Roman authorities.

The strong association of Peter with Rome in early tradition further supports the view that the apostle wrote 1 Peter from Rome.

· The most probable date for 1 Peter is just before Nero’s persecution, which followed the great fire that ravaged Rome in the summer of a.d.

64.

The absence of any reference to martyrdom makes it less likely that the epistle was written after the persecution began, since numerous Christians would by then have been put to death.

· Nine or ten months after Peter wrote his letter, the persecution against Christians that had been simmering for quite some time came to a full boil.

On July 19, A.D. 64, Caesar Nero set fire to the Imperial City of Rome.

You see, determined to stamp his image upon a new Rome, Caesar hired arsonists to destroy the old one.

Maybe you remember stories of Caesar fiddling while Rome burned.

While that may not have happened literally, Caesar was fiddling around very definitely!

The ensuing devastation gave him justification to rebuild structures like the Circus Maximus.

Seating over one hundred thousand people, the existing Circus Maximus wasn’t big enough for Nero.

So, he had it burned along with most of the city and rebuilt it to give three hundred thousand spectators the opportunity to witness sporting events, gladiatorial bouts, and, eventually, Christians being thrown to lions.

o Due to the immediate suspicion that he had a part in the fire, Nero knew he had to quickly find a scapegoat.

He conveniently found one in the Christian community.

“It’s not I who burned the city,” he said.

“It’s these who speak of the unquenchable flames of hell.”

Coupled with the absurd misconception that, due to their observance of Communion, Christians were cannibalistic, and combined with the fact that because Christians stressed love and purity, they were a threat to the rampant perversity of the day, the populace was eager to blame Christianity for their crumbling families and charred capital city.

· Consequently, only months after Peter’s Epistle was penned, persecution would come that would result in the annihilation of six million Christians as they were lit as candles or fed to lions.

So, Peter addresses this issue as he writes to people who would be understandably vulnerable to confusion and depression as they questioned the reason for their relentless persecution.[6]

Bible Study:

1 Peter 1:1 (NASB)

1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen

· The term “scattered” (diaspora) refers to the voluntary scattering or dispersion of the Jewish people throughout the ancient world.

This voluntary departure from the Holy Land began very early.

Technically, diaspora is not exile.

o The Babylonians carried the leadership of the nation and many of its people into exile after conquering Jerusalem.

Thus, while the Babylonian Exile was a forced deportation, exile became a voluntary residence outside of Palestine when the Persians allowed the exiles to return home, and many chose instead to remain in Babylonia.

o But after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in A.D. 70 and the last vestiges of independence were removed in A.D. 132–135, the Jews once again regarded themselves as exiles.[7]

· At the time of Peter perhaps a million Jews were living in Palestine and two to four million outsideof it, a significant group in the Empire, to be sure.

They were spread in communities over the entire Empire, but they belonged to Palestine and hoped (however vaguely or even formally) eventually to return to Palestine (perhaps when the Messiah came).

· Here in 1 Peter, we find a natural transfer of one of the titles of Israel to the church, as we will frequently later (cf.

2:5, 9).

o The church consists of communities of people living outside their native land, which is not Jerusalem or Palestine but the heavenly city.

These people owe their loyalty to that city, from which they expect to receive their king.

o That their life on earth is temporary and that they do not belong is underlined by the use of “sojourners” (also found in 2:11 and Heb.

11:13): they are pilgrims, foreigners, those who belong to heaven (cf.

Eph.

2:19; Phil.

3:20.

“they pass their time on earth, but belong as citizens to heaven”).

o As V. P. Furnish (author of “The Ministry of Reconciliation” in 1977) puts it,

§ “Christians are the elect (chosen) of God and thus only temporarily resident in the present world.…