Sermon Tone Analysis
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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.
That their life on earth is temporary and that they do not belong is underlined by the use of “sojourners
A Symbol of Hope
In the 15th century, European countries and merchants were looking for a better way to trade in the eastern lands of India and China.
Road travel was long, expensive, and often dangerous, but that was still the best option.
Imagine staking your livelihood and potential fortune on a journey that might take you a year or longer.
I would be pretty worried especially on the return trip with all sorts of goods to sell, knowing that bandits might be hiding around the next corner.
It’s no surprise then that people explored sea routes.
Columbus headed west and accidentally discovered the New World, as it was called.
But others looked for a way to travel around Africa to get to the East Indies.
This sort of exploration was fraught with danger and uncertainty, and the explorers didn’t even know if it was possible to travel by sea.
They tried anyway.
The first Europeans to sail around the southern tip of Africa were Portuguese, let by Bartolomeu Dias.
But they discovered what seemed a nearly impassable area near that southern tip, a rough patch of sea that was prone to storms.
Bartolomeu Dias was able to cross this area, but it filled him with so much terror that he named it the “Cape of Tempests,” or the “Cape of Storms.”
But the name didn’t stick.
After considering the name further and perhaps getting pressure from his king, Dias changed his tune.
When traveling along the coast of Africa, this cape marked the location where the ship stopped traveling mostly southward and began moving mostly eastward.
It became the turning point in the journey where the travelers could point more toward their destination.
At the time, it was believed that this cape was the spot where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans met, which would encourage any seafarer on a long journey.
The storm prone waters themselves became a promise of smoother sailing ahead.
With all of this in mind, Dias changed the name of the cape.
Instead of being called the Cape of Storms, it became known as the Cape of Good Hope.
It went from being known for trouble to becoming a symbol of hope on the journey.
Can the same be true for us?
In our own journey through life we come to circumstances that are stormy.
What lies around the corner is uncertain.
There is a direction we want to go, but it seems like we’re headed the wrong way, like a ship taking a long, southward journey around Africa to finally go eastward.
It’s in these moments when we have to choose how we’ll look at the situation.
Will we focus on the storm or cling to the hope to get through it?
Hope allows us to navigate through the storms of life.
Take any circumstance, any hardship, any struggle where the outcome looks bleak, and then introduce hope.
The situation changes.
The raging, chaotic circumstance becomes the perfect backdrop for hope to shine brightly.
This world needs people who will shine brightly in hope, regardless of their circumstances.
Perhaps this need prompted the Apostle Peter to write his letter to scattered Christians. is where we’ll be, and you can turn there in your Bibles.
Because of persecution, many of these early Christian communities had to scatter to all sorts of places.
Even in their new communities, they still found mistreatment and difficulty.
So in the opening verses of Peter’s letter to these churches, he injects some hope and reminds them that the future is looking bright.
Let’s read .
In these verses we find hope.
A few specific points of encouragement can give us hope.
The first encouragement is that we should have confidence based on what is truly certain.
In his book, Putting Faith to Work, Robert McCracken shared a story concerning Leo Durocher.
Everyone who follows baseball knows Durocher, how once he was brash, arrogant, loud, impetuous, impatient, and a merciless slave driver.
His philosophy was wrapped up in his description of Mel Ott: “Nice guys finish last.”
He never dreamed that one day he would be a “nice guy” and finish first, and when that day arrived he had matured enough to give the team credit.
He explained that all he did was to wave them home from third base.
But the crux of the story concerned the fabulous center fielder, Willie Mays, of the Giants.
After joining the club, there was a period when he made only one hit in twenty-six times at bat.
The old Durocher would have banished him, benched him, or sent him back to the minors, but he did none of these.
One day, the twenty-year-old player came to his manager, weeping, and begged to be benched.
The new Durocher draped a fatherly arm about the strong young man’s shoulders: “Don’t worry, Son, you are my center fielder, even if you don’t get another hit all season.”
Willie strode from Leo’s office with buoyant step and promptly began hitting the ball.
He became one of baseball’s immortals, because at a strategic moment in Willie’s life, Durocher was keen enough and understanding enough to do the right thing at the right time.
G. Curtis Jones, 1000 Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1986), 327.
Have confidence based on what is truly certain.
The quality of hope is determined by its object.
When we talk about hope, we don’t mean some vague sense of hopefulness that has no basis in fact.
For example, how would you have responded to me three months ago if I told you, “I have hope that the Orioles win the pennant this season”?
You might suggest I have hope in something that is more possible, like winning the lottery.
The hope that Peter describes is not some kind of wimpy wish but rather eager expectation.
He states that God has caused us to be born again to a living hope.
Verses 3-5 explain why this hope is alive.
It comes from a historical event - the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
This comes from Peter, the guy who was so fearful and so lacking in hope that when Jesus was arrested, Peter denied ever knowing Jesus.
Three times he did that.
What changed in Peter was the historical fact that something changed.
Jesus rose from the dead.
Peter’s hope is not simply wishful thinking.
It’s based on an event in history.
Paul writes about this same, confident hope in Ephesians.
Those riches of God’s glorious inheritance are something Peter describes in detail.
Because we have been born again into God’s family, we receive the right of inheritance.
The Bible describes our salvation in terms of adoption.
We have a new Father in God, and we are placed in his family.
We are his.
That comes with the right of inheritance.
Last January, my sister and brother-in-law adopted their child, Asher, down in Florida.
Florida adoption law actually makes clear that the adopted child has inheritance rights.
One website put it this way: “This enables adopted children to claim all the rights of inheritance on equal footing with the biological children of the family.“
That’s what God did for us.
New birth into God’s family means we get an inheritance, and this is what Peter says about it.
It is imperishable.
Unlike those leftovers I like to stash in my fridge, our inheritance can never go bad.
It is undefiled.
No outside influence can tarnish or ruin it.
It is unfading.
This word describes the way a flower eventually wilts and withers away.
This is not a fleeting thing that lasts only for a short time.
It lasts.
It is kept in heaven for you.
It is set aside.
You have a reservation with your name on it.
And Peter tells the Christians that they themselves are being guarded through faith for salvation.
Do you know the entourage of professional bodyguards that surround the President?
This is the same kind of word picture we find here.
There is a Fort Knox of faith that surrounds you and your promised inheritance.
It’s held until that ultimate salvation - what we call glorification - that will one day take place.
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