Living Hope (2)

Sermon - 1 Peter 1:1-12 - A Living Hope

Introduction

Joy is an interesting thing. When we hear of the word Joy or happiness, we often think of warm fuzzy feelings inside. Charles Sculz, who wrote the Peanuts comic strip, wrote once that “Happiness is like a puppy”. [1] This gives us the idea of smiling and the warm fuzzies inside when the grief and pain finally slips away. But that is not the case.

Years ago, I heard a song that I fell in love with. It is the old Sunday school song “Joy” It repeats over and over the line “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.”. But then it begs the question what does joy look like in the face of loss, or in the midst of trials? But the band Page CXVI redid the song and made it sound mournful and sad. This is what the lead singer had to say about it.

I remembered my eyes were blurred with tears and I literally began to play the now familiar progression of Joy. I kept cycling through the progression and then, as if it had already been written, I began to sing a different melody to a song I sang in VBS as a child, “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart. . . .” The truth is that I was terribly and profoundly sad. The reality of grief had not even entirely hit me yet. But at the same moment I had a deep sense of peace. He was no longer in pain. He was no longer sick. He was free from all his ailments and restored. Although I still miss him, I know that God has weaved redemption through death into my father’s story.  That brings me great joy. It was not until grief became a part of my story that I realized that joy is not simply an expression, but an attitude and acknowledgment of the deep peace of knowing a Savior.[2]

            You see people get confused when they hear us talk about Joy and suffering in the same sentence, I mean how is that even possible? But the Bbile tells us we have a reason to rejoice. It even tells us what joy should really look like and when we learn about this, we are going to realize that often we miss the mark. The main theme that we are going to go through today is this. HBI – As Christians we are promised that we will go through suffering, but we can do so with joy because of the living hope we have in Heaven.

Peter’s Greeting – 1:1-2

            We start at the beginning of the book of 1 Peter which contains a greeting. The letters we see in the Bible written to churches contain greetings like this that say who wrote the letter and who the letter was going to. I find it interesting to know that there is some debate surrounding even the first two verses in this letter.

            When it comes to some of the debatable issues in the bible that do not change the core message of the gospel we need to remember to keep the main thing the main thing. For example, though it is widely accepted that Peter wrote the letter but there are some people that don’t agree that he did. That is okay, I believe that it says here he wrote the letter, so he must have written it. Even so the Holy Spirit is the true author. We need to remember that either way it does not change the main message of the letter.

            The second thing we see here is the people He was writing to. They are called elect exiles. He is writing to a Christian audience that has been exiled and dispersed because of their faith in Jesus. It could be that he is writing to a primarily Jewish audience because of the wording used here and the Jews were Peter’s main ministry. But again, it does not really matter to the main theme of the letter.

            Verse two contains more information that we do not always agree on. It says that we are “Chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the father”. God’s foreknowledge means that he knows all that is going to happen. From beginning to end the Lord God knows all. To be chosen through the foreknowledge of God would then mean that God does know all who will chose to follow Him, but it means more then that.

It means that our choosing God, our personal relationship, originates in God first calling and choosing us. God chose to form us into His people. We have a choice to follow God or not. The Bible is clear on that. But the Bible is also clear that God calls and chooses us as well and they both work together. But this all says that we have the ability through the power of God to have a relationship with Him.

            The next major thing we see is that we were chosen by God and changed by Him through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. When we confess our sins and repent God does the rest and by means of the Holy Spirit makes us into a holy, chosen people of God. That is what Sanctification means, an unseen cleansing from past sin and a continuing lifestyle. and lastly this calls for a response of a life of obedience to God. We must remember that we will not always agree on exactly how this works or the process, but the main idea is the same. We are saved by God, He knows all who will follow Him and because of what He has done we must follow Him in obedience.

In this we rejoice - 1:3-9

            One of the main themes we see running through the letter we see here. Our hope is what we read about in verse 3. But it starts with God’s mercy and our being born again. Because of the great mercy of the living God, this is not getting something we deserve. We deserved death in payment for our sin but due to the mercies of God we can become a holy people in the process of becoming Holy. We have been born again into a living hope. A living hope is quite the concept. Obviously, it is a hope that does not die. You may place your hope in leaders and governments and things, but our hope is eternal and alive. in the passing of time, as our life wears on, our hope grows more and more as our relationship with Jesus grows.

What this tells us is that our hope comes from being born again as a child of God. When we are transformed by God, made into His child then we receive this hope. But more then that it is only through the mercy of God that we can become a child of God to begin with. It is by no action we can take, no works we can do other then bowing to Jesus in repentance for our sin.

            This hope we are told is alive and active! You see the focus is not so much on the past, on what we have done but rather on the future, in our living hope. This living hope that we have is a confident expectation of something that is to come. It is something that we know is true and it is something that we base our life upon. Our living hope is our future glory in heaven. This is what we read about next.

            This living hope that we have through the blood of Jesus is our inheritance as children of God. Something again that we did not earn but is given to us based on the mercy of God. This inheritance is not like the one you may get from family when you die, but rather it is imperishable, incorruptible. The content of our living hope is our inheritance. And our inheritance is in Heaven. It is an absolutely secure hope, one that will not pass away.

            Verse 5 tells us that we are being guarded. If you are a child of God, then this unfading living hope that we have is a promise from God. This is something called the eternal security of the believer. What we read about elsewhere in the bible though is the way that you show that you are guarded by God is that you live your faith. If someone does not live out their faith, their security may be in question if they are not willing to change. This is important to understand as we go into the next part of this passage.

            We have learned that as followers of Jesus we have a living hope, this living hope is the promise of heaven. This living hope that we have is being guarded for us which means that no one can take it away from us. But it also means that we must live like we are followers of Jesus as well. We do this because of verse 6 and 7 which tells us that suffering is assured to those that are followers of Jesus.

            We need this hope because the world is going to come against us, we will face trials and suffering we can find hope because this world is not our home. Not only that but it tells us that in this we rejoice. This joy is an interesting thing. I mean, how do you tell the lady that is losing her second husband to cancer that she can find Joy in Jesus in the suffering? You see Joy is not the absence of grief, Joy is not the sudden removal of suffering and trials. Joy here is not a fuzzy feeling and smiles all the time. We do not say smarten up and have joy but rather because of your faith you can have joy.

            Joy is the understanding that eternity is real life is confusing, and we need to rely on God in the midst of it all.  In this we rejoice because we have a savior who dies so that we can be set free from our sin and go to be with Him some day. Joy can also be seen in learning to find peace and contentment in the arms of Jesus. Because of that we can live for Jesus. In this we rejoice because we love Jesus for what He has done for us. As we rejoice, we live by faith for the world to see.

            That is what verses 7-9 tell us. The emphasis on all this is the joy we can have. Yes, trials and suffering is real, grief is a normal part of life but so is the joy we have in our relationship with Jesus. We must look to him in all that we do, or joy is going to be hard to find. This is where the idea of Holiness comes in, the idea of growing closer to Jesus and the refining of our faith. If we allow them to, our trials can draw us closer to our Lord and Savior.

            A divine crucible our sufferings can be. Believers who suffer, though they may be beaten down temporarily do not stay there, they learn to rejoice in the midst of them. We see here the picture of refining, proving the character of our faith. Our faith is continually seen as a refining process. Precious metals are put through intense heat to remove the impurities in them. The furnace of our suffering can be used to refine us until we reflect the glory of our savior.

In this we rejoice even though we do not always understand or see what is going on. We can go through all this by the blood of Jesus, whom we have not seen but will someday. We can rejoice in the hope we have because of our relationship with Jesus. because of the goal we run towards. Our Hope and Joy we have are mainly due to the prospect of our future glory in heaven. Our salvation is supposed to be looking forward to the end when we are going to see Jesus. And we need to remember this because suffering will happen.         

Salvation was always part of God’s plan – 1:10-12

            We move on the last few verses in the passage which ties all that we just went through to the Old Testament. The amazing thing about our salvation is that it how been part of the plan of God since the beginning of time. That is why we must read the bible in context, because that is the only way that it all comes together. We see the phrase “concerning this salvation” that is what tells us that it is going back to what has gone on before.

            The salvation that we will experience in the future was prophesied about in the past. This was always part of God’s plan and was no new thing or surprise to God. The prophets may not have always understood what they were saying but our eternal hope was spoken of since the beginning. They themselves were told that it was not themselves they were serving but it was a promise given to people in the future. We have to understand that this salvation that we have, was diligently searched for by the prophets well before us. If they so diligently sought what this meant, then we must seek for ourselves how to live a life worthy of the salvation offered through the blood of Jesus. God’s plan from the beginning was to send Jesus to suffer for our sins so that we could have this hope of eternity.

So What?

Thomas penned a poem called “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” and in the poem he writes “The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, and all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Awaits alike th' inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”[3] Mans glory does not last, all the power of the earth leads to the grave but what we have been born to as children of God is a living hope, one that grows more and more with each day that we grow closer to God. This introduces what we are going to go through in the book. We are chosen by God to be born again with a living hope from which comes from looking forward to eternal glory with God. So with that we remember a few things.

Remember your Living Hope. we are saved into a living hope. Though we go through trials, God allows us to go through trials, our hope is alive and eternal. What the trials we face go through point us to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. Though difficult they may be when we focus on Jesus our trials should cause us to grow closer to God as we look to Him for all we need.

How Is your Joy? Biblical joy has been misunderstood. It is not the absence of grief; it is not found in living for yourself, but it is found in Jesus. We live for Him, we love Him, we look the future when as His children we will be with Him. Nothing then can steal this joy. Knowing this then, How is your life reflecting the Joy you have in Jesus? How are you living out your faith.

[1] R.C. Sproul, “The Key to the Christian’s Joy,” May 7, 2018, https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/key-christians-joy.

[2] Craig Thompsn, “Harmonizing Sadness and Joy,” A Life Overseas, n.d., https://www.alifeoverseas.com/harmonizing-sadness-and-joy/.

[3] Gray Thomas, “Poetryfoundation,” Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, n.d., https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44299/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard.