Living Hope
Notes
Transcript
There was a fascinating conversation on Rush Limbaugh’s talk show a while back. Having just completed Tom Brokaw’s wonderful book The Greatest Generation, a book filled with inspiring stories of the WWII generation, Rush had taken the position that the current generation of young adults, those in their 20’s, are, for the most part, a bunch of whiners. He said that while they are constantly whining and moaning about the difficulty of their lives in fact, when compared to the hardships faced by their grandparents’ generation, they’ve actually got it easy. Their grandparents had endured truly devastating events like The Great Depression and WWII. The current crop of young adults, he concluded, doesn’t even have a clue about real hardship.
Once Rush had finished his monologue a self-professed member of this younger generation of adults called in to offer a different perspective. Bright and extremely articulate, the 23 year-old caller said that, while The Great Depression and WWII certainly created terrible hardships for the people who faced them that he, nonetheless, believed his generation faced an even greater hardship.
Limbaugh asked, “And what exactly would that be?”
The caller said, “The loss of hope.”He said that his experience indicated that many of today’s young adults had simply stopped believing that things were going to get better. They didn’t expect to live as well as their parents had lived. They weren’t expecting a brighter future. They have simply given up hope.
He said, The Great Depression, as terrible as it was, in many cases brought families together as they worked side by side in the hope of saving their families. Most of his friends, he said, grew up in families in complete disarray and have given up the hope of ever having a real family experience of their own.
He said, WWII was a terrible event that obviously cost thousands of Americas’ young men their lives. Then he said, and even though they knew the risks they still enlisted voluntarily by the millions because they saw it as a cause worth dying for. Most of those in his generation, he said, can’t imagine anything worth dying for and they’re committing suicide in record numbers because many can’t imagine anything worth living for.
He said, “Mr. Limbaugh, The Great Depression and WWII created terrible hardships. But I submit to you that the greatest hardship of all is living without hope.” --Tom Marcum
Living without hope. Can you imagine living without hope? I cannot conceive of living without hope. Our Christian life is grounded in hope because of the resurrection of Jesus from the grave. Peter begins this letter identifying who he is writing to. He is writing to the Christians throughout the world, including us.
Peter writes and tells us that we are a chosen people. We have been chosen by God. Look at what he wrote there in verse 2:
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God the Father chose you because of what he knew beforehand. He chose you through the Holy Spirit’s work of making you holy and because of the faithful obedience and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
He chose us. He chose us through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. I think that it was leads him into his words of praise there in verse 3.
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May the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ be blessed!
That word blessed is not the same as Jesus used in the beatitudes. That word meant happy. The word that Peter is using means to be praised. God is to be praised. Why?
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On account of his vast mercy, he has given us new birth
God is to be praised because he has given us new birth. This new birth is through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This passage is a message of the resurrection. This is an Easter message. This passage reminds me of Jesus encounter with Nicodemus in John 3.
3 Jesus answered, “I assure you, unless someone is born anew, it’s not possible to see God’s kingdom.” 4 Nicodemus asked, “How is it possible for an adult to be born? It’s impossible to enter the mother’s womb for a second time and be born, isn’t it?” 5 Jesus answered, “I assure you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom. 6 Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Don’t be surprised that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’
When we come to saving faith in Jesus something extremely radical happens by the transforming work of the Holy Spirit that the only way to describe it is being born again or the new birth. Peter points out for us three results or the fruit of this new birth.
A Living Hope
A Living Hope
If you are a Christian, you have been born anew or born again. You are no longer what you were.
Elmer Homrighausen, one-time teacher and dean at Princeton Theological Seminary, calls hope the "oxygen of the soul." We human beings are creatures of hope.
The message of Easter is that the Risen Christ gives substance to our hope.
His doctor revealed to him in his eyes that death was close by. His Aunt May and Grandma and Grandpa gave him anything he wanted. "I had dreams. I had hopes. I had ambitions -- but I was running out of hope." On his 9th birthday, there was the usual ice cream, cake, candles, balloons, and books -- all things for a bed-ridden child. But then Uncle Bob came on the scene. Uncle Bob, the no-good scoundrel uncle who always smelled of gin.
"Where's my birthday-boy? Where's my Buddy?" he said, brushing by Grandma as she ate her cake. Uncle Bob sat next to Joseph on the canvas bed and shoved a box into his face, saying, "Happy Birthday!"
Opening it, Joseph began to cry. Grandpa moved toward Bob with incredible speed. "How silly!; How insensitive!", shouted Grandpa as Joseph cried all the more. Then Joseph held up a pair of ball-bearing roller skates -- the only gift he received for when he would get well. Someone believed he would live."
(story told by Rev. Joe C. Poole, "Prisoners of Hope", May 3, 1987, First United Methodist Church, Dallas, Texas)
For Joseph, Uncle Bob gave substance to his hope in those ball-bearing roller skates." Everybody else had accepted the prognosis -- that Joseph was going to die of tuberculosis. But it was those ball-bearing skates that gave him the hope -- and he lived to be a man -- he himself telling the story.
That's what Paul was saying in our text: "On account of his vast mercy, he has given us new birth. You have been born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
The resurrection of Jesus is the source of our hope. We don’t deserve salvation, we don’t earn. It was “on account of his vast mercy, he has given us new birth.”
The Message of 1 Peter 1. God Establishes Our Hope in Christ (1:3)
The means of our new birth is not first the message of the resurrection; it is the fact of the resurrection.
21 Baptism is like that. It saves you now—not because it removes dirt from your body but because it is the mark of a good conscience toward God. Your salvation comes through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
Listen to what Paul wrote about this hope.
12 So if the message that is preached says that Christ has been raised from the dead, then how can some of you say, “There’s no resurrection of the dead”? 13 If there’s no resurrection of the dead, then Christ hasn’t been raised either. 14 If Christ hasn’t been raised, then our preaching is useless and your faith is useless. 15 We are found to be false witnesses about God, because we testified against God that he raised Christ, when he didn’t raise him if it’s the case that the dead aren’t raised. 16 If the dead aren’t raised, then Christ hasn’t been raised either. 17 If Christ hasn’t been raised, then your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins, 18 and what’s more, those who have died in Christ are gone forever. 19 If we have a hope in Christ only in this life, then we deserve to be pitied more than anyone else. 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead. He’s the first crop of the harvest of those who have died.
This living hope points to the disparity between Christian hope and the defeated, empty, and false hope of the pagan religions. There is no true hope apart from Christ. I see also that in a living hope is that it is not some future thing. A living hope means that it is hear today. Our salvation is here today. Our hope is not empty, it is made possible through the resurrected and living Lord Jesus Christ.
An Inheritance
An Inheritance
Through the new birth we are guaranteed an inheritance.
This is a promise. It reminds me of the promise of the land of Israel. Remember as they left Egypt and journeyed to the promised land? Throughout their journey they held onto the hope of that inheritance in the promised land. God told them it would be theirs as long as they were faithful to God.
8 I will give you and your descendants the land in which you are immigrants, the whole land of Canaan, as an enduring possession. And I will be their God.”
This inheritance that Peter is writing about is an eternal inheritance. It is a free gift to us, it is not something that we deserve or earn. It is given to us by God as a result of the resurrection.
Do you remember the story of the Prodigal Son? Jesus said
12 The younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the inheritance.’ Then the father divided his estate between them.
It was inheritance because he was his son. You know the story, he went off and wasted everything. His inheritance was wasted and lost.
1 & 2 Peter, 1, 2 & 3 John, Jude: A Bible Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition The Results of the New Birth
Peter Davids explains that “this inheritance is described using three adjectives: (1) incorruptible—it is permanent. (2) undefiled—it is morally and religiously pure. (3) unfading—it is eternal.
Our inheritance in Christ Peter says is pure, enduring, cannot perish, and kept safe in heaven. Peter wrote a number of times about this inheritance.
18 If the inheritance were based upon the Law, it would no longer be from the promise. But God has given it graciously to Abraham through a promise.
14 The Holy Spirit is the down payment on our inheritance, which is applied toward our redemption as God’s own people, resulting in the honor of God’s glory.
The Holy Spirit is just the down payment. I cannot even begin to comprehend what the inheritance is based on the gift the of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, God Himself is the down payment. Just think for a moment about that. God comes and lives in us and he is the down payment on our inheritance. I don’t think the image of heaven that John paints for us in Revelation even begins to describe what it will be like. It will be beyond our imagination.
The down payment of the Holy Spirit is just a small picture of what is in store for us. There in verse 4, Peter says that this inheritance is kept safe in heaven for you. That is a completed action.
A Salvation
A Salvation
The people that Peter was writing to were facing persecution and all sorts of troubles and trials. I suspect that many where wondering where God was at in all of their situations. I suspect that many Christians today are wondering where God is in the midst of this Corona-virus. People are looking for answers.
An interesting thing about this salvation is what Peter wrote there in verse 5
5 Through his faithfulness, you are guarded by God’s power so that you can receive the salvation he is ready to reveal in the last time.
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guarded by God’s power so that you can receive the salvation
God’s protection is all around you.
In Paul’s second letter to Timothy he reminded him that these were dangerous times.
1 Understand that the last days will be dangerous times.
The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 34: James / 1 & 2 Peter / Jude The Fringe Benefits of the New Birth
The phrase “kept by the power of God” is translated in the New International Version of the Bible as “shielded by God’s power.” That is the promise of God to us. Until the day we claim our heavenly inheritance, God has promised to provide for us a living hope, and He has promised to shield us with His power.
This powerful shield is ours if we live by faith in the living Christ. Faith is absolutely essential for Christian discipleship. It is by faith that we come to Christ, and it is by faith that we live for Him day by day (Gal. 3:11). Paul instructs us to use the shield of faith to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one (Eph. 6:16).
This powerful shield is ours and the key to it is that it is God’s power. Paul wrote:
20 God’s kingdom isn’t about words but about power.
7 But we have this treasure in clay pots so that the awesome power belongs to God and doesn’t come from us. 8 We are experiencing all kinds of trouble, but we aren’t crushed. We are confused, but we aren’t depressed. 9 We are harassed, but we aren’t abandoned. We are knocked down, but we aren’t knocked out.
18 I pray that the eyes of your heart will have enough light to see what is the hope of God’s call, what is the richness of God’s glorious inheritance among believers, 19 and what is the overwhelming greatness of God’s power that is working among us believers. This power is conferred by the energy of God’s powerful strength. 20 God’s power was at work in Christ when God raised him from the dead and sat him at God’s right side in the heavens, 21 far above every ruler and authority and power and angelic power, any power that might be named not only now but in the future. 22 God put everything under Christ’s feet and made him head of everything in the church, 23 which is his body. His body, the church, is the fullness of Christ, who fills everything in every way.
20 Glory to God, who is able to do far beyond all that we could ask or imagine by his power at work within us;
And one last passage
10 Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and his powerful strength. 11 Put on God’s armor so that you can make a stand against the tricks of the devil. 12 We aren’t fighting against human enemies but against rulers, authorities, forces of cosmic darkness, and spiritual powers of evil in the heavens. 13 Therefore, pick up the full armor of God so that you can stand your ground on the evil day and after you have done everything possible to still stand.
Do you get the idea of the power of God?
We have a living hope, we have an inheritance and we have salvation. None of it, absolutely none of it was through anything we have done. It has been done by the power of God who raised Jesus from the dead.
Easter began when a stone was rolled away to find an empty tomb.
20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead. He’s the first crop of the harvest of those who have died.
3 May the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ be blessed! On account of his vast mercy, he has given us new birth. You have been born anew into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
That’s the way it begins and one day it will end when we see Jesus face to face.
We are going through a strange and challenging time.
6 You now rejoice in this hope, even if it’s necessary for you to be distressed for a short time by various trials. 7 This is necessary so that your faith may be found genuine. (Your faith is more valuable than gold, which will be destroyed even though it is itself tested by fire.) Your genuine faith will result in praise, glory, and honor for you when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Although you’ve never seen him, you love him. Even though you don’t see him now, you trust him and so rejoice with a glorious joy that is too much for words. 9 You are receiving the goal of your faith: your salvation.
Do you see it? Everything may not be all right tomorrow, but tomorrow will be all right, because Jesus will be with us tomorrow.