Untitled Sermon (9)

3 am Life is Hard so Praise God

Outline

Background: v 1-2

3 am Life is Hard so Praise God

Change your mindset 3a

Focus on Hope 3-5

Remember the Purpose of Trials 6-9

See your Advantage 10-12

Welcome to Rise, Jr High Ministry. It is awesome to be here. I am pumped, Are you pumped?

This is the first Wednesday back from camp. Was camp incredible or what?

It was so cool. From the aracade, to In-N-Out, Fancy Night. It was so fun. And I personally loved John Kim’s sermons and d group time and the one on ones. I am just so pumped.

And as we are back home and getting back to our lives, we want to keep our focus on Christ. So on Wednesdays, we will be here having fun and talking about God and HIs word.

And this week, we start a brand near sermon series. I am so incredibly excited for this series. We are going to be going through my favorite book of the Bible, drum roll please.....

1 Peter.

1 Peter is an awesome book. No matter what we face in life, whatever the world throws at us, We can survive it all through the hope found in Jesus Christ. Through all trials, temptations, and persecuations we can stand firm because of hope.

So we have called our series on 1 Peter, Survial Through Hope. Survival through Hope.

What is our series called? Survival through hope.

And today, we are going to start our series of with the first 12 verses. So let’s start of by reading these first 12 verses together.

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen 2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood: May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure. 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 and 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. 6 In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, 7 so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; 8 and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory 9 obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. 10 As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, 11 seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. 12 It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which now have been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things into which angels long to look.

That is our text for the evening. Before we get into the meet of this message, I want to talk about the background. Let’s talk about what is going on so that we can bettr understand this passage and this book better.

Look back at your Bibles. In verse 1, who does it say the author is?

Peter.

Who is Peter?

He was an apostle

a fisherman

dear personal friend of Jesus

He was a hothead and cut off a man’s ear in John 18

But he grew into the man who preached one of the most amazing sermons in Acts 2.

Peter was a great man. He loved Christ and followed him with his whole heart.

And Peter is writing a letter to these aliens. Do you think people means little green martians?

Than what is he talking about?

He is talking to these people who are living somewhere that is not there home. Pretty much Peter is talking to Christians to who dealing with trials.

Just to give you an idea of what these trials looked like, at this time Christians were hated people. People made fun of them with their words, they were treated like second class citizens. And sometimes they were physically hurt for their faith. I am not talking like they were kicked. I am talking like burned and tortured for their faith.

These people are outcasts and misfits. People spoke badly about them and sometimes even physically hurt them. Ad on top of that. They were kicked out from their homes. And they scattered around.

Things are not good for these people. But the crazy thing is that it kinda reminds me of today. Right now in the world, people speak badly about Christians. They call us mean, unloving, stuck up, proud, bigots, rasicts and sexists. And in some places Christians are even physically hurt for their faith.

This is a book that I think is so important for us today.

But even in these trials that we face, Peter gives us comfort in these next verses.

If you were to remember one thing, I would want you to remember this,

‘Life is Hard…So Praise God’

Life is hard so praise God

That is it. No matter what trial you are facing,

whether it is friendships in your life, or family troubles, or maybe there are money troubles, no matter what it is Peter is telling us that even when life is hard we need to praise God.

So we are going to talk about why and how we do that in rest of our time. We have 4 points tonight. Are you ready?

Point 1: Change your mindset

Change your mindset