Hope That Endures: Anchored in Christ
Notes
Transcript
Handout
If you have your Bibles, open them to 1 Peter 1.
There are some who doubt miracles. There are some who claim that no miracles happen today. To those, I say they should look in the mirror if they want to see a miracle.
Our birth and for Christians, our new birth are miracles, both of which are fully dependent upon God. A. W. Tozer said:
In that great and terrible day, there will be those white with shock when they find that they have depended upon a mental assent to Christianity instead of upon the miracle of the new birth!7
A. W. Tozer
We must understand this new birth and what it brings to us.
Follow along as I read our passage. 1 Pe 1 3-5
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
4 to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,
5 who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
1. Proclaiming our Living Hope
Peter starts with “Blessed be the God and Father” and then he tells us why he is praising God.
God’s mercy toward us brought us a new birth. The question posed to Jesus by Nicodemus is still a critical question when we are talking about a new birth.
4 Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a person be born when he is old? He cannot enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born, can he?”
The idea of being born again, starting a new is impossible.
But at the same time, being born is impossible, at least it is impossible for you to cause yourself to be born. And now you cannot cause yourself to be born again either.
When we realize that being born or born again is impossible for us then we have to put our hope in God.
I know there are various ways for a woman to get pregnant. When a couple is infertile, there are methods referred to as assisted conception.
But even in those various methods, the person born never has any say or any part of their conception.
If our birth is something that lays beyond our control then our new birth is beyond our control as well. Is this important? I think it is very important to understand.
Our birth, our new birth are both acts of God. I have heard the example, and maybe you have heard it too about the dash between the birth year and the year of death on gravestones. That dash is the person’s life.
If we were to actually do it as a Christian, there would be a year of birth, a dash followed by a year of new birth and then a dash before the year our souls leave our body and go to heaven. And then we would have to explain our second birth was into a living hope.
It is a living hope because we know about the work of God bringing Jesus from the dead through His resurrection; which we are promised.
It is a living hope because of God’s empowering work in our lives bringing us to our new birth.
It is a living hope because of God’s empowering work in our lives, bringing us to the last date which is our completed transformation.
2. Promised an Imperishable Inheritance
And this living hope is an inheritance.
We have, we will inherit something that is imperishable, undefiled; something that will not fade away.
It is an inheritance because we have been born again into God’s family and we inherit what Jesus inherited.
The inheritance is compared to what we have on earth.
What we have on earth is perishable. It has been defiled by sin and it will fade over time.
Something I have never understood is why do people go buy jeans that are made to look old, faded, with holes cut into them? I have worn jeans that were threadbare in spots, that had holes in them from being worn but I do not understand buying them that way.
I prefer to buy them new and wear them until they have faded and worn, mainly because they aren’t cheap and I tend to wear them until I can’t wear them.
That is also what life is like here on earth. It doesn’t matter how new you buy something, it doesn’t matter how pretty it looks when you buy it, over time it becomes worn.
That is what I used to think throw rugs were. Rugs you buy, wear out and throw away.
Everything that we have in this life will wear out, except our imperishable inheritance as a child of God. That will only get better.
Something I have told Meg, Adam, Bre and Nate is to cherish these times with their kids. Hold on to them, both the kids and the memories. They grow up so very quickly.
I look over at Kait and see a young woman who has flourished even in the difficulties of life. I see a grown woman who conquers what she sets out to conquer but as her father I still see her racing motorcycle as a young girl; I still see her as we would drop her off at school. I still see her as the daughter who was delighted to watch football or a motorcycle race with her dad.
Everything in this life will perish except our relationship with God through His Son, Jesus the Christ.
That is what we are promised as in imperishable, undefiled and unfaded life ahead of us.
It is difficult to hold on to the knowledge we will have something so wonderful ready for us since all we know is a life that is torn and faded. But it isn’t up to us to keep the promise of the future.
It was never up to us to keep the promise of what God has promised us. It is completely in God’s power to keep for us.
3. Protected by God's Power
Our salvation is protected by God’s power.
From time to time, most people will have some doubt about their salvation, about their relationship with God. If we were all honest we would admit that everyone has those doubts from time to time.
Typically those doubts come when we are facing uncertainty; when we are facing difficulties; when we are facing trials, struggles, disappointments. A big reason we doubt our relationship, our promised salvation is because we cannot hold on to it no matter how tightly we cling.
Charles Spurgeon wrote:
When I hear of anybody losing his temper, I always pray that he may not find it again. Such tempers are best lost
Charles Spurgeon
We are used to losing things in this life.
We lose keys. We sell a hose that we loved. We sell a car that was something we loved. We lose jobs, we lose money, we lose chances.
We often talk about the loss in a person’s life when someone they cared about dies.
There is so much in this life that we lose. And the reason we lose all of these is because we do not have the power to keep everything, to keep anything.
But our salvation is not dependent upon us being able to keep it. As a matter of fact, if it was, we would lose it before we ever had it, or at least we would lose the chance for salvation.
John MacArthur said:
It is unbelievers who are in danger of losing salvation—in the sense of losing the opportunity ever to receive it.
John F. MacArthur
For Christians, we cannot lose our salvation.
It cannot be lost because it is God who keeps us and brings us to our salvation, to our complete salvation.
Philippians 1:6 reads:
6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work among you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus.
Our future is not dependent on us.
We do not bring about our salvation just like we don’t bring about our birth or new birth. Don’t get me wrong, we are participants in salvation but we are not the workers of our salvation.
God brings us to life, brings us to new life, brings us to our completed salvation which will be fully revealed in the last times.
We must place our trust in God’s hands, in God’s power to bring us through faith to our salvation just as His power resurrected Jesus.
If that power can bring us to life, back to life, it will bring us through life.
Let’s pray.
