Setting Your Hope Fully on Future Grace

You don’t have to walk with God for a very long time to recognize that he is generous with his gifts. We think about how he provides for our needs and sometimes surprises us with something we didn’t even know we needed. Perhaps one gift that doesn’t come to mind when we’re counting our blessings is the gift of imagination. God has given you an imagination. We use our imaginations to plan, to dream, to escape, to sin. Our imagination is a tool. And a tool can be used for good or evil, or not at all. You can use a shovel to plant a tree or to hit your sister on the back of the head, or you can just leave it in the shed. In today’s epistle reading, the apostle Peter admonishes us to get our imaginations out of the shed, to get ready to use them. Not to make something up that doesn’t exist, but to access something real that we can’t access as well using reason. It takes both imagination and reason to see ourselves into the big story of the Bible and even to see Jesus in the Old Testament, to apprehend valid links in the Bible, and to be able to hope in the promises of God, we need reason and reasonable imagination.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus unlocked the Scriptures for the disciples he met on the road to Emmaus, showing how the Old Testament attested to him. That would be quite the gift to have Jesus himself walking you through the Old Testament. Imagine the various lightbulbs turning on! And in our epistle this Sunday, we see that a theme of the easter season, the season celebrating the resurrection of Jesus is to look at how the Old Testament Scriptures attest to Jesus. So, essentially, Peter is telling us to get ready to use our minds, our reasoning, our imaginations to access something good and true. In our passage this morning, he just got done explaining how the Old Testament witness points to Jesus and he starts in with “Therefore, (vs 13), preparing your minds for action and being sober-minded, set you hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Prepare your minds for action, be sober-minded. We need our minds in good working order, engaged, not hindered by external distractions like drinking too much. And with our minds fully engaged, we use our minds to set our hope fully on the grace that will be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Now what does that mean? What is the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ? Peter’s not talking about Jesus being born. He’s talking about his return. So what grace will be brought to you when Jesus returns? Guided by Scripture, let’s engage our sanctified imaginations. At Jesus’ return, you will see Jesus. We shall see our Lord face to face. And not only us, but the whole world will see him, arriving in glory. And he will greet you in love and you will greet him in worship. And we will be there to witness him fully realize the kingdom that he’s been building by his Holy Spirit for two millennia. War will cease. And every tear will be wiped from your eyes. The apostle Peter wants us to engage our reasoning and our imagination to access a real thing that we haven’t seen yet. So we need to get our minds purified and in good working order. This isn’t pretending. It’s engaging with reality in a way that we’re not able to do otherwise. And having pictured it over time, from various perspectives, within the bounds of Scripture, we are to set our hope fully on that hope of future grace. That means we’re not setting our hope on lesser things. No, we need to orient our minds, ourselves toward the coming of Christ. And we do that by preparing our minds for action. By delving into Scripture, looking for Jesus there. If your hope isn’t set fully on the coming of Christ, it might be because you haven’t engaged with what a Christ is. Or it might be because you haven’t processed through Jesus’ experience as a human. Or what it means for God to sacrifice his son, or what sin is, or any number of other important and relevant facts from the pages of Scripture that tell you what it means for Jesus Christ to be revealed at the end of all things. So in this packed sentence from Peter, he’s saying that we need to have competent minds to build the categories from the Old and New Testaments of who Jesus Christ is and the importance of his being revealed at the end of all things, and part of that is knowing that you will receive a new grace. And that that is the thing to set our hope on fully. If you’re looking for answers in life, if you feel that it doesn’t make sense, if you don’t know where to place your hope, or you’re placing it on something that can’t support your hope, do what is required to get a working and purified mind that can process the gift that is awaiting you when Christ is revealed. And when you can begin to understand what that grace is, it will become something you can set your hope on. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He made you. He holds your molecules together. He is the thing that God and his people have been pointing to since before the beginning of time. When he came to reveal himself on earth, he did it humbly, not with pomp, not taking for himself, but humbly, with love. And when he died, he did it to conquer sin. He did it to obey his father. He did it to fulfill Scripture. He did it to reveal his character. He did it to model leadership. He did it to make a statement of love. He did it to make a new people who can live with him forever. He did it for them. He did it for you. He did it for us. And he changed reality forever when he rose to new life. He grafts us into himself and lets us experience new life, a changed life now, and eternal life forever. He ascended to heaven and is interceding for you right now with his Father in heaven. He forgives all your sin. He forgives all your sin. By his life, death, and resurrection, he forgives all your sin. And he is coming again to meet you face to face and begin the new time of the king where righteousness and love will be the air that you breathe. And you won’t suffocate, because you will be new. You are new, even now. You are made for that world. Jesus has made a way for you to be changed, dying and being raised in baptism, so that your lungs are made for breathing the air of that new reality that is waiting for you. All of this is a taste of the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. It is infinitely meaningful, infinitely interesting, infinitely healing, infinitely rewarding, and worth your time and all the space in your heart.

So that’s the first verse. Learn the story of the Bible. Learn who Jesus is and what he means in the Bible, in ALL of the Bible. Learn what he has done and what he is doing and what he will do and set all of your hope on that. And having done that, let the future grace you will receive govern your life now. Vs. 14: 1 Pet 1:14-16

1 Peter 1:14–16 ESV

14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

What does that mean, to be holy? To be holy is to be set apart. To be different. To be strange for God. And that means leaving behind some things. Your life is different when you’ve set all your hope on the grace that is coming to you. You gain discipline. You aren’t governed by old, bad patterns, by the system of sin that you and others have built around you. To be holy is to transcend. To transcend all of that. To rise above it and see clearly from a new vantage point and to act from there. To see clearly who God is and who you are and what he has done for you and what he requires and to act from there. Verse 17:

1 Peter 1:17–19 ESV

17 And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, 18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

You can’t call the perfect judge your Father and live without considering your actions. Part of calling God Father is not just that he loves you without limit because he does, but also that you are in his family, his household, in his Son Jesus Christ and you represent him in the world by your actions. By your actions you make him look good or you make him look bad. You make his love believable or you make it unbelievable. And God sees your actions, not just your public ones, but your private actions. And he judges with perfect righteousness. So be careful with your actions. Honor God, your Father, who is the perfect judge by caring about how you conduct yourself, by caring about what he thinks about how you conduct yourself…in your exile, says Peter.

It’s tough! We’re living in a world we don’t belong to. We’re living away from our heavenly home while we walk in this fallen world and breathe it’s sinful air. But we have a different set of standards. We live according to the customs of the place we belong, while we sojourn in this place where we don’t belong. We have spiritual food. Peter talks about the return of Christ, calling it the revelation of Jesus Christ. He uses this word instead of calling it his “return” because being revealed shows that he is with us, even now, waiting to be revealed. Our Gospel passage tells us that Christ was revealed in the breaking of bread, though he was with them all along. And because of this, in our time of exile in this place, we share a meal from our new home land at the Lord’s table, breaking bread together.

Peter goes further thinking about what it means to wait in our land of exile. Our ticket out of here, into our new life has been paid, not with money, money can’t buy it, but instead, it’s been paid with the blood of Jesus, so we shouldn’t treat it lightly. We shouldn’t forget about our home while we live away from it. We shouldn’t let this world with all it’s trappings take up all the space in our heart and obscure our view of the place we belong. And we need to do what is necessary not to forget about the one who has bought our ticket back with his own blood. Peter reminds us that Jesus’ blood is not just any blood. His sacrifice of his life was not just any sacrifice of someone giving their life. Jesus’ blood is blood from the one foreknown before the foundation of the world, but who came to be made manifest for your sake. It’s the blood of the one God raised from the dead, to give you faith and hope. That blood that bought your ticket home is uniquely precious. Don’t forget about it while you count the days for the big flight home. While you encounter others who belong there too, don’t be afraid to share camaraderie with a fellow citizen of your true home. Be grateful together that you’re both going home soon. And share a meal together from that place, to be reminded of your hope, to be cleansed by holiness that comes from there, to be grateful together with the others God has put in your life for what has been done for you and what will be done for you.

And finally, Peter ties it all together: the prepared heart and mind, the obedience to truth, the love that comes from it, with the reminder that you have been born again. You are walking around with a new life, one you weren’t born with. One that’s imperishable, a life that is based on the life of the word of God. The livingness, the vibrance of the good news of Jesus Christ is where you draw life from. That good news is the source of your new life. While the old life will wither and fall, the good news of Jesus Christ is something God himself invites you into, to find your life source there. So if you want to truly live, draw your life from there. While everything else crumbles around us, the good news of the risen Christ will sustain you and cause you to thrive. So press into this good news. Press into the word of God that tells you more and more about it. And set your hope on the day you will breathe the fresh air of your true home, when the risen Jesus Christ comes again.