Sermon Tone Analysis

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!

In 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 can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.

Even angels long to look into these things.”

The message today is “Our Indescribable Salvation.”

In this letter we find Peter counseling Christians who are going through severe trials.

At the outset of the letter, in verses 1 and 2, we’re introduced to the counselor, Peter; the counselees, the scattered elect of God; and we’ve also been introduced to the counselor’s attitude, “Grace and peace be yours in abundance.”

As we open today’s letter we find Peter focusing not upon the hardship that is being experienced by those to whom he is writing.

He’s not focusing upon their trials or their painful external circumstances.

Instead, he is focusing on spiritual realities which do not change.

When we find ourselves in a trial the temptation is to look at the enormity of it and to be panicked by it.

Peter’s doing the opposite of that by focusing our attention first upon the Lord.

And the real key to getting through any trial is to do this exact same thing—focus in upon the Lord.

Peter’s saying to believers who are looking down on their circumstance, “Look up to the Lord.

Look up to the salvation which you enjoy in Him.”

The key is not to focus on the problem but to focus on the promise.

Not to focus on the crisis but to focus on the Christ.

Peter begins with praise.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:3).

The word for “praise” in the Greek is the word “eulogy.”

It is something we associate as being delivered at funerals.

In its root meaning it means “to speak well of.”

And, literally translated, this phrase would read something like this: “Let the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ be eulogized.”

When we’re in a struggle, one of the things we can immediately begin to do is complain to God for letting us in that situation.

Peter says let Him instead be eulogized.

Notice he says, “Let the Father be eulogized.”

I have found in ministering to people on a one-on-one basis that many persons have not had a pleasant home experience with a father.

When, therefore, the term “God the Father” is used, they don’t know exactly how to relate to that because perhaps their earthly model would have been not what would have been desired.

Peter’s word here, though, is “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

No matter who your earthly father was, good or bad, the Lord Jesus Christ had a good Father.

He has the same Father we may enjoy together.

Let Him be eulogized.

When we give praise to God, we eulogize Him.

Peter is eulogizing God for the great salvation which we enjoy.

In this passage he says four things about our salvation.

I. First, salvation gives us a living hope

In His great mercy, He, the Father, has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

The salvation which we have is not the result of our own seeking or our own effort.

God has already made provision for us, and His salvation flows from His grace, as Peter says in verse 2, and His mercy, as he says in verse 3. Sometimes we have difficulty making distinction between God’s grace and God’s mercy.

Perhaps this would be helpful.

Grace has been called God’s kindness to the worthless.

And mercy has been called God’s kindness to the helpless.

Or maybe a Peanutscartoon puts it best of all: “If you’re kind to Lucy, that’s grace.

If you’re kind, to Charlie Brown, that’s mercy.”

The origin of our new birth is in God and His mercy.

This new birth which we experience results in a living hope.

Peter goes beyond the phrase “hope” to add the adjective, “living hope.”

He does this because he would have us in our own minds contrast it with hopes that are dead or hopes that are not reliable or attainable.

There are hopes we may have had which are no longer viable, attainable.

But this is a hope not in the sense of an ordinary hope.

This is a hope that is so sure it is a guaranteed hope.

It is a living hope.

It’s living because it’s assured by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Through the resurrection.

We know that salvation is ours because of what Christ has done.

Therefore the first thing salvation does, our first eulogy to God for salvation, is because of the hope He has given.

II.

Secondly, Peter tells us that salvation guarantees us an inheritance

God has given us “an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven” for us (verse 4).

An inheritance.

That is the simplicity of God’s grace to us.

We don’t work for it.

All we do is line up before God and we confess the Lord Jesus as our Savior and say, “We want to receive the estate which He has promised, the gift of salvation.”

Peter says we’re heirs of salvation.

He talks about an inheritance that has three descriptions to it.

A. First, the inheritance is not subject to destruction.

It can never perish.

Jewish Christians knew a great deal about the word “inheritance” because it is a word used throughout the Old Testament to describe Canaan.

Canaan was the Promised Land.

God had an inheritance for them there.

But we know that that inheritance perished.

In fact, the word that Peter here employs that we translate “perish” can also be translated as “a territory,” an inheritance that is unrivaled by an invading army.

The Holy Land was time and again ravaged by invading armies.

Peter here is saying, as the Spirit inspires him, that God’s new Israel, the Church, has an inheritance kept for it which can never be destroyed and which never perishes.

B.

Not only that, it’s not subject to defilement or spoil.

We know a lot in Southern California about pollution.

The kind of pollution that’s being described here is in contrast again to an Old Testament term.

For example, the temple in God’s Promised Land was time and again defiled by heathens that came and desecrated it.

Peter is saying God’s new Israel has a place that can never be trampled on and turned into something that’s impure and that will in any way defile its luster and glory.

C.

Not only that, the inheritance that’s waiting for us is not subject to decay.

It will not fade.

Flowers fade, but not our inheritance.

Why is there no destruction, defilement or decay?

Because God keeps it for us.

It is kept in heaven for you.

We all know the importance of traveling with reservations.

We wouldn’t think about taking a trip without reservations.

How much less should we think about our eternity without making preparation.

Kept in heaven.

III.

Our salvation is the crown of all our trials

Peter goes on to say that our salvation is not only giving us a living hope, it’s not only guaranteeing us our inheritance, but our salvation crowns—it’s at the apex—of all of our trials (verses 5–9).

In Matthew’s Gospel salvation involves at least these four things.

Deliverance from danger.