Finding Hope

How many of you enjoy going to art galleries?

How many of you enjoy going to art galleries?

I will be honest that I have never really developed an appreciation for fine art.

I can look at something and usually see that it took a lot of talent and hard work, but I haven’t really been able to get what I see.

A few months ago, I had a chance to get a different perspective on that.

One of our church members had some artwork featured in a local gallery, so a friend and I went to see it.

I was impressed by the pieces this member had painted, but as I talked with him, they took on a whole new life.

He would draw my attention to this part of the painting and why he had rendered it like that, or he would highlight something going on with the colors that I wouldn’t have noticed before.

In talking with him, I discovered that much of appreciating art is learning what to focus on.

When you know what to look for, suddenly, the painting takes on a new life.

You may have no desire to ever attend an art show, but can I suggest that this is a principle you and I need to develop in our every day lives as well.

It’s awfully easy to get caught up in everything that is going on right now, isn’t it?

It is hard to stay positive when our Facebook feeds are full of friends who are hurting, the news channels are constantly churning up fear, and life seems more challenging every year.

It is easy for us to get swept up in it all and lose sight of what really matters.

This morning, I want us to take a look at God’s word together.

In these pages, we are going to find what nothing else in this world can truly offer: we are going to find hope.

Turn in your Bibles to .

Over the next few weeks, we are going to be looking at some highlights from this incredible letter.

We aren’t going to cover it verse by verse, but we are going to spend some time looking through it.

I would encourage you to be reading through this fairly short letter and allowing God to challenge you through what he says to us in it.

The apostle Peter, the one who is infamous for being bold but fickle, is writing to a group of believers who are scattered around a variety of places.

They were living in a time that could have brought lots of fear as persecutions against Christians were beginning to mount.

There was some confusion because it had been several years since Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection, and yet he still hadn’t come back to rule and reign like he said he would.

Peter is writing to encourage those believers to stay faithful and continue walking with God while they wait for him to return.

Here’s what’s interesting, though: in the middle of the persecution and the confusion, these believers are living exceedingly joyful lives!

So what was their secret? What was the trick to how they found joy?

Is it to bury your head in the sand and pretend like nothing bad is happening? Well, as you read the rest of the letter, that sure doesn’t seem like what they did.

Is it to just grin and bear it, suck it up, and tough it out? No, not really. They didn’t gloss over how hard things were for them. They acknowledged the difficulty.

So what is the trick to not losing your joy? How do we maintain hope when things aren’t going like we expect?

To find hope, we need to shift our focus.

It is so easy to look only at what is going on in the here and now. Even when we do, as we will see, we often have our focus in the wrong place.

I am not the artist who can highlight these for you. That’s what the mirror of God’s word is for.

What we will see from this passage is that there are three different places we can look to find hope this morning.

We can find hope when we look ahead and…

1) Focus on our promised future.

In verses 3-5, Peter paints a beautiful and vivid picture of the hope we hold to when we endure our present suffering.

As Christians, our use of the word “hope” is very different than the way our society uses it.

Most people could change the word “hope” for the word “wish”. For example, “I hope the weather is nice when we go to the beach.” That is essentially the same as saying, “I wish we would have nice weather when we go to the beach.”

There is uncertainty in that kind of hope.

Biblical hope is something different, though.

Biblical hope has no element of uncertainty.

We see throughout the Bible that God has been working His plan from eternity past, and He already knows how it is going to end, so our hope is in the unchanging character and nature of God.

Our text here says that God birthed us again into a new and living hope.

Think about the picture of birth: when you are born physically, you are brought into a whole new world and life. Although you were fully a person from the moment of conception, you were brought into a totally different manner of life, and you can’t go back.

When He caused us to be born again to a living hope, it isn’t that He told us to blow out your birthday candles and with that something good might happen.

No, when we come to Christ, we are born into a new life! We have a certain, unshakeable knowledge that God is working something incredible for us in the future.

Look at how Peter describes it in verse 4…

Our hope, through Jesus’ death and resurrection, is that God is laying up for us an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.

Imperishable means that it cannot get damaged or marred.

Undefiled means that it will be perfectly pure, without any stain or trace of sin.

Unfading means that it will not wither; that it’s beauty or luster will never fade away.

Look at verse 5.

Not only is God making sure nothing happens to your inheritance, he is also preserving you, keeping you safe, and will bring you safely home to the salvation that He has prepared for you.

“But, if I came to Christ, aren’t I already saved?”

You have been saved from the power of sin, so you no longer have to obey it and the punishment for your sin has been paid by Christ.

However, you still live in the presence of sin. It is still all around you, and you still fall into the pattern of sin.

The salvation that is ready to be revealed at the end of time, our inheritance, is that moment when every stain of sin is removed and we enjoy an inheritance with God that cannot be destroyed, damaged, dinged, or darkened!

This is the “already but not yet” salvation we have. We already enjoy many of the benefits of salvation, but there are more coming!

So, how does that bring us joy? Because we know what is waiting for us just on the other side.

When we face trouble and heartache and suffering for the cause of Christ, we can be encouraged that no matter what happens, it is only temporary!

Even if you are persecuted for Christ every moment for the rest of your life, it is still only temporary!

That’s why Paul would say,

For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. (, CSB)

2 Corinthians 4:17 CSB

For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.

When you need hope, turn your focus onto the inheritance that is waiting, the salvation that is coming, and the certainty that one day, God is going to make it all right.

We aren’t shutting out the pain and the suffering we and those around us experience; we are simply looking at it correctly and remembering that it isn’t always going to be like this.

We find hope when we shift our focus to the incredible inheritance that is coming.

That isn’t the only place we can find hope, though. As we look at what has us concerned and frustrated, we can find hope as we…

2) Focus on our current preparation.

Look with me at verses 6-9…

“In this” is one of those phrases that you need to stop and examine when you are reading a passage like this.

What is Peter talking about?

The “in this” here refers to this incredible salvation we have been promised.

Let’s be clear here: Peter is not saying that we have joy in the midst of suffering because suffering is so wonderful.

The stories from our brothers and sisters in Christ who are being persecuted around the world should break your heart.

Two weeks ago, World News Group reported this about Early Rain Covenant Church in China:

“This past Sunday in China, members of Chengdu’s Early Rain Covenant Church gathered inside living rooms for worship as they’ve done since the Chinese government shut down the church and arrested its leaders in December. But this week, police showed up at two homes, forcing everyone—children, the elderly, and pregnant women—into police buses and taking them away to the local station. Police detained a total of 44 people, the youngest of which was only 2 months old, according to Early Rain’s Feb. 25 update… Xu Miaozhuang, the wife of imprisoned elder Matthew Bingsen Su, and her four children have also faced constant harassment since her husband’s detention began. Twice police have pressured their landlords to evict them, forcing them to find a new apartment…[During an interrogation of these women], according to a church update, a national security officer said: “Too bad we can’t go back in time 40 years and put dunce hats on them and behead them.” He added that they would kill them sooner or later. The women were released the next morning.”[1]

Do you think they are happy these things are taking place? No; in fact, in the article, one picture is of the pastor’s wife hugging her son while he cries over their eviction.

Yet, here is how they concluded their update:

“A Feb. 21 church update ended with a passage from the book of Revelation describing the heavenly picture of a multitude of people in white robes who have experienced great tribulation. The update read, “’Even though we are struggling with the unbearable weight of harassments, surveillance, threats, and humiliation, as soon as we remember that this is a way of being imprisoned with those in prison, heavenly joy rises up within us.’”[2]

They are still joyfully following Christ!

Why?

Because of what Peter says here in verse 6-9…

These persecutions and sufferings are not destroying them; instead, they are refining their faith like gold in a furnace.

God uses suffering, especially when suffering for Christ, to prepare us for the glory that is to come.

That is where we find joy in the middle of pain.

Our joy in the midst of our sufferings is because every heartache we suffer for Christ is only serving to shape us more and more into the image of Jesus.

When we are discriminated against or persecuted or made fun of for following Christ, it is one more reminder that God hasn’t fully established His kingdom, and that there is more to come.

When you hold tightly to faith when everything seems to be going wrong, when you love unloving people around you like Jesus loves you, when you turn your back on a sinful way of living so that Jesus will be honored in a greater way in your life, your faith is being tested and refined like gold.

When we suffer well like these believers in China, we bring honor and glory to the God who is able to give us strength to endure.

Verse 8 describes this beautifully. When you suffer for the cause of Christ, you demonstrate total and complete faith in Him; that He is able to do what He says.

You bring honor to God by showing that you are more concerned about being prepared to give him praise and glory than even your own comfort.

Shift your focus off the surface level of suffering and find hope in the fact that God is going to use it to shape you to look more like Jesus!

If you are human, though, you have probably had your doubts.

If you are human, though, you have probably had your doubts.

In the hardest days, you might even ask yourself if it is worth it.

Is God really going to deliver you? Is there really a heavenly reward waiting for us?

The answer is a resounding yes, but not just off what I say.

Instead, Peter points us to God’s track record.

We can look forward to what God has promised us in the future, and we can look at what God is doing now. To validate it all, though, we can also…

3) Focus on God’s past faithfulness.

Look with me at verse 10-12.

We can trust that God will keep His promise of a completed salvation because He has fulfilled every promise He has ever made.

We get some incredible insight into the people of God in the Old Testament.

When you read through books like Daniel and Ezekiel, maybe you have wondered, “How much did they know?” “What did they think they were talking about?”

Peter gives us a glimpse of it.

When God gave them the prophecies, they weren’t content to simply write down what God said or showed them.

They searched, they poured and prayed and sought God to try to figure out more details.

Who was going to fulfill these things? When was it going to happen? What is it going to look like?

God didn’t give them those answers in this life.

I believe they know those things now, but they didn’t have the inside scoop while they were here.

Can you imagine the moment, though, when God told Isaiah in heaven that Mary was the one who was going to fulfill the prophecy about the virgin birth? How about with David, when He told David that those words he wrote expressing his own suffering would one day be called out by Jesus on the cross?

Can you imagine the awe?

What He did tell them was that they were giving those prophecies for us!

It wasn’t for their benefit, because they didn’t live to see them fulfilled.

Instead, all those prophecies about Christ and the New Covenant God would make with His people and everything else were given for our benefit.

They describe the salvation we have already received as well as the fulfillment of it that is yet to come!

So, how do we tie in past promises to our future hope?

God, through the Old Testament prophets, made promises that He would send salvation to His people.

They didn’t see the fruit of that in their life, but God still kept His promises.

If God kept His promises that He made in the Old Testament to redeem humanity, then why won’t He keep the promises now about what is to come?

We can rejoice because we know that God is a covenant-keeping God!

You see, the hope we have isn’t based on us. It isn’t about our goodness or our ability to carve out a better life through our hard work.

We aren’t hoping that we will be strong enough to have good health or smart enough to invest wisely or good enough at our career to excel, although you and I should seek to do those things for God’s glory.

Our hope isn’t in a president or a stock market or a degree or a relationship.

Our hope is found in a God who loved me so much that he would take my sin upon himself on a cross.

My hope is built on the fact that the God who did that for me was buried and raised from the dead, and he is the one in charge of all of creation.

My hope is a certain trust that the God who would do that for me as a fulfillment of the promises he made, who is right now using every single frustration and pain in my life to make me who I need to be, and who has promised an unfading, imperishable, and undefiled inheritance for me is going to bring it all to pass.

Where is your hope this morning?

Notes:

[1] https://world.wng.org/2019/02/harass_assault_repeat. Accessed 9 March 2019.

[2] Ibid.