A Living Hope永活盼望
Notes
Transcript
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. You are being guarded by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
我們主耶穌基督的父 神是應當稱頌的。他照著自己的大憐憫，藉著耶穌基督從死人中復活，重生了我們，使我們有永活的盼望，可以得著不能朽壞、不能玷污、不能衰殘，為你們存留在天上的基業，就是你們這因信蒙 神能力保守的人，得著預備在末世要顯現的救恩。
INTRO
Easter-important
Skeptics(won’t answer your questions but appeal to your hearts) not your minds
Story of buying pills online. There was a guarantee, a false hope! I am here today to tell you that God has something far better in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! 我們主耶穌基督的父 神是應當稱頌的。他照著自己的大憐憫，藉著耶穌基督從死人中復活，重生了我們，使我們有永活的盼望，”
Peter begins with praise and thanksgiving. Blessed means that someone is praise worthy: worthy of adoration! We don’t give God our blessing, we receive His. When Peter says “blessed” he is declaring that God is the BLESSED ONE. He is saying church, it is good for us to declare God’s excellence it is good for us to declare that God is the blessed one! When we talk about feeling hopeless, the bible says that one of the best medicines is to declare, to open our mouths and begin to proclaim who God is and why He is worthy of our praise. Why He is blessed:
I remember on our wedding day when I was standing in the front waiting for Allison to come around the corner. As soon as she turned that corner and I saw her, there was so much adoration and praise and thanksgiving in that moment!
Peter begins by says God is the BLESSED ONE! This is what we were singing!
Now you might be here and you say, “well I don’t really think God is that great.” Or “I’m not where Peter is at.” Why is God that great, or why is God worthy of this kind of praise?
Peter is going to show you:
“According to His great mercy He has caused us to be born again”
Peter says God has had mercy. Not just a little mercy, but Peter says according to His GREAT mercy.
When the bible talks about the mercy of God, it is speaking about God having compassion towards people who have offended Him.
Grace is giving people what they don’t deserve: undeserved favor
Mercy is not giving us what we DO deserve.
-Peter says God is GREAT in compassion and mercy because He has not given us what we DO DESERVE!
The bible says that wages of sin is death. Period. Every single one of us fit that category. All of us have sinned. From the smallest of sins to the largest. None of us in here are perfect. None of us in here have lived life perfectly. Because of that, God says that we all deserve His judgement. Death.
Peter was someone who understands this very personally. Peter was someone who denied Jesus 3 times. Think about that. I’m sure all of us have done some pretty bad things, but could you imagine being Peter? Walked with Jesus for 3 years, had Jesus teach you, lead you, provide for you, save you multiple times, you know that He is the Messiah, yet when Jesus goes into His darkest hour, you run away like a coward. Even to the point where you deny Jesus to a little girl. This is the man who is writing this book. He is aware of what he deserves! HE deserves God’s judgement, not His kindness, he deserves God’s rejection, not His acceptance. And yet, Peter says, God is a God who is GREAT IN MERCY!
-Whatever you have heard about Jesus, or about God, I want you to know today, that God is a God who is RICH in mercy. Forgiving and compassionate.
We do not live in a merciful culture do we? We live in a culture, where if you do one thing wrong, people tweet about it, people record you on facebook, and no matter how sorry you are, your moment of weakness could define the rest of your life. Right? Am I right? Our culture boasts of tolerance, yet I find that we are the most intolerant generation.
Not only that but I find that we struggle to extend mercy to ourselves.
Peter says you will not find mercy in the world, you will not find mercy in yourself, you will only find mercy in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In His GREAT MERCY! So instead of running to the world, or looking inside of yourself, Peter says look to Christ! the God of GREAT MERCY!
What God do in His mercy?
“Caused us to be born again!”
This is a really strange phrase isn’t it? We have terms in Christianity that are sometimes really hard to understand if you’ve never been to church, and I think this phrase “born again” is one of those phrases. You might be here, and saying, “born again?” What is this white foreigner talking about? Is this reincarnation, like buddhism? Definitely not!
Jesus tells one of the religious teachers that unless he was “born again” he could not see or understand the kingdom of God. So born again isn’t just enlightenment. It isn’t just getting more and more teaching and religious information.
Being Born again is one of the sweetest most encouraging phrases in the bible. What born again means is that YOU CAN BEGIN AGAIN. You can begin anew. You have can have a completely fresh start. In new birth God himself give you new spiritual life.
Peter is someone you and I can relate to. After denying Jesus 3 times, and that act of denial being written down in the Bible for all generations to see(!), He has experienced this new life, this new birth of Jesus Christ. Where the old has passed away and the new has come!
This is Peter’s story, this is my story, before I was born again, I didn’t care about God. I didn’t care about the Bible. But then According to His great mercy, God reached into my heart gave me new spiritual life, then all of the sudden, I couldn’t put the bible down, I couldn’t stop thinking about God, I wanted to serve God, I desired to love God. Not perfectly, and still not to this day, but I am able to do it!
THIS IS NOT REINCARNATION.Explain this.
How many of us would like this? How many of us would like to experience and receive this new birth?This is where it gets even better!
This incredible gift of new birth, of beginning again, of God’s future coming to us, is according to His mercy. It’s His work.
“He has caused us!”
Where other religions say that you get mercy only because of your work or your deeds, the Gospel says I choose to give you mercy because of what I have done!
None of us chooses when and where and to whom we will be born. Right? None of us, before we were born, walked up to our parents and said, “Okay, I think I’m ready, now it is my time to come into the world, the world is ready for me!”
The same for new birth: We don’t walk up to God and say “okay I think I’m ready!”
In the new birth, God has done for you, what you could not do for yourself! You can not save yourself. You can not hope in yourself.
Peter knows this! Remember Peter was a guy who thought he was “the man”. He put a lot of hope in his own devotion, in his own commitment, in his own passion, and where did all of that leave him? running away like a coward denying Jesus to a little girl. Broken and hopeless.
Your hope for new birth, for things to begin again, for God’s future coming into your present reality is God’s work, not your own!
ILLUSTRATION: There is no greater earthly miracle than child birth. IT is such a good example, of what being born again is. You know watching my wife give birth to 3 kids, watching all of her work, all of her labor, not once did when one of my kids was finally born, did Allison give the child a high five and say “good job, look what we did!” No! That child is completely dependent upon the work the labor of Allison. Peter says it is the same for spiritual birth, it is not ACCORDING TO YOUR WORK YOUR LABOR, But to God’s great mercy and what He has accomplished in Jesus Christ!
Now Peter is going to shift gears and he’s going to say “okay” what have you been born again into? In the same way where natural birth you are born into a family(whether you like them or not), you are born into a culture, an ethnicity, even an inheritance. Our Spiritual new birth is the same:
HOPE盼望
HOPE盼望
Here is where we get to the hope of Easter church. We are going to spend the rest of our time unpacking these next few verses.
Hope. This is a word that we’ve used a lot this past year. “I hope that the virus gets better.” “I hope that I can travel again.” “I hope that we don’t have online school anymore!” I hope that as I get older that somehow my body doesn’t become more and more weak. Is this the kind of “hope” that the Bible means here?
When the bible uses the word “hope” it speaks of a certain expectation. Something that is certain but hasn’t been seen fully or experienced yet. It is a certain hope.
How many of us have experience the pain of hoping in something or someone that has failed us? How many of us have had our hopes completely destroyed? How many of us are even afraid to hope because it’s too hard dealing with the pain of not knowing if things will really work out? Peter says that living hope true hope is only found in the Resurrection of Jesus.
All of us want to put hope in things that we can see. We all want proof. When I asked Allison to marry me, I gave her a ring. This proved to her that her hope for marriage wasn’t just in an idea, but there was proof. Many of us, this is why it is so easy to put our hope in people, things, bank accounts, leaders, teachers, because there are things that we can see.
ILLUSTRATION: Many Taiwanese wonder why as Christians we don’t worship idols or gods that we can see. In Taiwan the gods and the idols that fill the temples are people who previously lived. So you can go and find the grave or the tomb of Mazu. You can go and hear about this persons life and how they died. You can find the grave of this god or this god.
Paul said that if that was the same for Jesus. If Christianity was just about worshipping this guy healed people, who did good works, who taught amazing things, and lived a good life, but died. He said our faith is worthless. It doesn’t mean a thing. let’s all pack up go home, and never have church again.
But guess what? They never found Jesus’ body. They can look they can search but it will be in vain. They never found and never will evidence for a dead Jesus. Why? Because the tomb is empty! Dead has been defeated! The reason why we are all here today, is not because there is some good teaching, it is not because there is some good singing, it is not because we are nice people, or that we are all dressed so nice, the reason why we are here, the reason why billions of people all around the world, from every tribe, every tongue, every nation are worshipping today, is because JESUS Christ, got up from the grave, walked out of the tomb, defeated death, defeated sin, and is alive today! He is Alive. He showed Himself to over 500 people. The Jews couldn’t stop Him, death couldn’t hold Him, and Peter says that is why our hope is alive!
“The resurrection is a fact better attested than any event recorded in any history, whether ancient or modern.” C. Spurgeon
Jesus Christ went into death, the wages of sin is death, and when he came up out of the grave that meant it was paid. That's how you know it was paid. Or you can think of the Resurrection as a receipt. If you're in a store and you buy an object, you always ask for the receipt because you're still walking around the store. And what if a security person stops you and says, "Excuse me, can I look in your bag, you don't have a receipt." What you really want to be able to do is if somebody stops you, you hold up your receipt and you say, "This receipt proves that this has been paid for and I do not have to pay it again." The Resurrection is a giant receipt stamped across history for all people to see, that you can know that your future is certain if you believe in Jesus Christ.
Do you know the power of His resurrection? Is your hope in dead teacher, a false idol, a powerless idea, or is your hope alive because it is the resurrected Jesus Christ?
Finally Peter says through the resurrection of Jesus we have a living hope, but also “ to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
all of understand what an inheritance is right? It’s a gift. It’s a gift that is based upon relationship. Like a father or family member leaving an inheritance to his kids. We don’t get an inheritance because of our wages or because of our performance we get an inheritance through our relationship.
an inheritance:
Imperishable
not bound by earthly rules of decomposition
undefiled
not bound by sin or the curse of sin
unfading
not bound by time
God keeps the inheritance for us and HE keeps us FOR the inheritance!!
I know that for many of us we feel the burden of providing an inheritance for our kids. Taiwanese feel the burden of not just providing for their kids, but also the pressure for burning paper money to provide for those who have passed on. There is the pressure from culture and family that if you do not worship your parents then they will not be provided for in the afterlife. But what does Peter tell you here? Only in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that burden lifted from you. The burden for the Christian to provide this inheritance is not on you, but on God Himself. He provides guards this eternal inheritance. So if we really loved and wanted to honor our parents, our families, the best thing we can do while there is time, is tell them about the goodness of our God who keeps an eternal inheritance for those who trust in Him.
Eternal, unfading inheritance. I remember the first time I saw the ocean. I was in 7th grade in California. I remember stepping into the water, smelling the salt water, feeling the power of the waves, hearing the roar of the ocean and I remember as I swam wave after wave after wave, being pushed towards the beach, I had this incredible joy. I could spend hours upon hours enjoying the ocean. Friends, no eye has seen no ear has heard what God has prepared for those who love Him. What awaits for us, the future that God has for you. Where every tear is wiped away, there is no pain, there is no death, there is no fear, there is no more dealing with anxiety, there is no more dealing with the lust in your heart, the pride in your heart, there is no more dealing with broken bodies broken relationships. All there is is endless joy. Endless joy. Sights you’ve never seen, colors you can’t imagine, food that has never tasted better, and the joy of being with Jesus face to face for all of eternity. This church is the living hope that is given to us through the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Do you know this God of great mercy, who gives you a new life, and gives you an eternal unfading hope through Jesus’ resurrection?
So what does Easter mean for you?
30th bday party story.
The death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus happened over three days. Friday was the day of suffering and pain and agony. Saturday was the day of doubt and confusion and misery. But Easter—that Sunday—was the day of hope and joy and victory.
"And here's the fact of life: you will face these three days over and over and over in your lifetime. And when you do, you'll find yourself asking—as I did—three fundamental questions. Number one, 'What do I do in my days of pain?' Two, 'How do I get through my days of doubt and confusion?' Three, 'How do I get to the days of joy and victory?'
"The answer is Easter. The answer … is Easter."
Do you know the power of His resurrection? Do you have a living hope in Jesus Christ? Let’s pray.