A Living Hope

Let’s turn now our attention to God’s Word to 1 Peter, 1 Peter chapter 1 and we are going to be looking at verses 1 through 9.  Hear the Word of the Lord.  “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with His blood.  May grace and peace be multiplied to you.  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 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.  In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire may be found to result I praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.  Though you have not seen Him, you love Him.  Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”  Please pray with me.

Our heavenly Father, what a Word you have given through the inspiration of your spirit by the apostle Peter.  We thank you for it, we pray that you would open our hearts by your spirit to receive it.  Make us teachable, build us up, we pray, in this word.  Strengthen our faith and give us this living hope, this living hope of an inheritance that you have kept for us.  May you cause us to be a people of hope and as we are a people of hope in the midst of the lives you have given us to live, may you receive the glory that we pray in Christ’s name.  Amen.

What is hope, nothing but the paint on the face of existence.  The least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow cheek harlot we have got ahold of.  These are the words from a member of the Dead Poet’s Society.  Lord Byron, like many he saw hope to be merely window dressing on life, something that superficially helps us get through, an empty platitude, a cherry on top of a desert of gravel, an airbrushed picture of harsh reality.  Hope, it provides shade to the fairytales we live by so that we can get on in this dark cruel and cynical world, but in the end many things, deep down this world and its unforgiving cruelties are all that is.  There is such thing as false hope despite all the powers harnessed by politicians and advertisers, hope can be empty.  True hope, true hope needs a basis, a content, a reason for it to have real enduring significance, otherwise our lives would be a series of dashed hopes that lead increasingly to despair.  To hope with no reason, to hope with no reason to hope indeed shows our lives in the end to be hollow and indeed to be foolish.

Well in this letter 1 Peter, the apostle Peter writes to a church in Asia Minor, Asia Minor of course is modern day Turkey.  This is a diverse church that he is writing to, different tongues, different backgrounds, yet a common faith in Christ and he describes them in verse 1, you’ll see there, as exiles, that is they are out of home, away from the warmth and comfort of hearth and home, exposed to the harsh elements of the world, even exposed to those who would seek their harm.  He writes to a people that will soon, in less than a century, face deadly imperial persecution for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Even before they face that specter they’ll face, indeed they are facing as he says in verse 6, many trials, a lack of power and position in society, verbal abuse, disadvantages and temptations.  What hope, what hope can the apostle Peter give them that will enable them to live in the midst of all this.  What hope can he give to us who live in a very trying world.  What of substance can he lay in their midst which will orient them to what is real, what is lasting, what will give them a living hope, what will give us a living hope in the midst of the circumstances of our lives.  You see hope is always set against the backdrop of the circumstances of our lives.  Hope has meaning for us in proportion to the conditions of our existence and that hope then gives us reasons to view those conditions differently that we would naturally be lead to do.  True hope provides perspective, perspective to see what is staring us in the face differently, and for the church we always need hope, we always need hope in order to see things differently.  Why?  Because Jesus said if they persecuted me, they will persecute you.  Paul said suffering is the lot of Christians in this world as we share in the sufferings of Christ. 

And Peter here suggests in verses 6 to 7, there will be various trials and testing by fire.  Now does this persecution and suffering always look like lions tearing apart Christians in the Roman Colosseum?  Does it look like those dying by firing squad in nazi Germany, or does it always look like being brutally tortured and beheaded in an Islamic state?  No, those are striking manifestations of the suffering of the church which in God’s providence he has for some saints, and they must bear this.  Yet those aren’t the common ailments, the various trials as Peter puts it here that are for all of us.  Jesus has promised that the only eternal institution in this world which will endure into the next world is the church.  You cannot kill the church, you can kick against it, disadvantage it, mock it, but it will endure, it will live.  The church will get her scrapes, she will be bruised, wounds and sores she will show as a result of the cruelty and difficulties of this world, but she will always be living, that is the promise of our Lord.  So, what keeps this scraped, bruised, wounded, sore ridden church pressing forward, what keeps us as her members oriented toward the future.  It is hope, it is a lively hope, a hope with real content, with real reasons, and as Peter seeks to give hope to the church in his day facing these trials in Asia Minor, so the Holy Spirit seeks to enliven our hope here as Christians as the church in the 21^st century and we see him do this through highlighting first who God is, who God is.  It is God and His character and His actions, which give hope and so an eye to God is where we’re going to start.  Yet there is also a consideration of where we the church and how God relates to us and we to Him.  So, we’re gonna look at the church second and finally as we put together this dynamic of God and His people, the church, we’re gonna look at that fundamental ingredient which pulls the church along in this world despite its many trials and that is hope, a living hope.

So, our section of scripture begins in verse 2 with a wonderful trinitarian reference.  “According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the spirit, for obedience in Jesus Christ and for the sprinkling with His blood.”  Christians, Peter is saying here, have been known by the Father in His loving purposes for all of eternity, the son has secured our salvation with His blood on the cross and the spirit is sanctifying us now and equipping us to obey our savior.  What a hopeful start to this letter of 1 Peter.  We have a triune God, Father, son and Holy Spirit who lovingly saves and lovingly sanctifies us.  And the knowledge of this draws from the Christian, from the church in appropriate response, and you see that response in verse 3.

So, verse 3 starts with the blessing of God.  “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  You know even in a section of scripture which is going to highlight the trials of the church, blessing God is primary.  And you notice this is not simply God mentioned here, but again God the Father, God the Father.  Father has a relationship inherent in his very name.  He is Father of the Son and he is Father of all those who are united to his Son.  Jesus said at the end of the Gospel of John, John 20:17, before leaving this earth He said, “I ascend to my father and your father, my God and your God.”  So, we are compelled to bless the father when we consider all that the father has done to bring us into His family because that is what being in the son means.  United to the son we are considered as sons and daughters, true members of the family of God, the church, the children of God.  We are children of God, but we must consider we are unnecessary children, that is we’re not natural children of God.  The father only has one natural son, the son of God, Jesus Christ.  We are sons and daughters, as verse 3 says here, of mercy.  Sons and daughters of mercy, receiving what we don’t deserve, receiving a new life through Christ’s resurrection.  A power has been demonstrated over sin and death in history, in real time and space, and that power was demonstrated in Jesus Christ’s resurrection.  And the power of that victory did not stay though contained in the first century, it continues to stream forth down the centuries like gushing white water demonstrating power over sin and death and our own lives through birthing anew every son and daughter who God wills to be born into His family.  You see this in how our location in the divine family is completely a passive affair.

I’ve had occasion to observe the adoption process both in this church, but also up close with my extended family and it’s an amazing process.  Think about it for a minute from the perspective of the child.  Young adopted children don’t chose to be in their new family.  They don’t make an effort to get out of their difficult family situation they were born into, and seek a more loving promising one, though from their perspective adoption is almost entirely a passive affair.  They do nothing to earn their new family.  It is the love of that new family, the resources of that new family which make it happen.  That is our very same perspective in relation to God’s family.  We are not naturally God the Father’s special children.  We need to be born anew, born anew to be members of the divine family.  If you think about it, what does that say about us?  It doesn’t say much at all about us other than we’re completely helpless.  What that says about God though means everything.  As a father He keeps, He keeps.  It’s going to be hard for us to grasp sometimes in a culture with a widespread loss of fatherhood, but our father, God the Father keeps His children, He tends to them, He guards them, He protects them.  We are always safe.  Now that doesn’t mean this flesh may not receive harm or our emotions may not be bruised in this world, but it does mean we body and soul will be kept for eternity.  I say body because even if these bodies waste away, they will by God’s grace be renewed in the resurrection.  Christ’s own resurrection is a guarantee of that. 

Well, how does God keep us, how does he keep us.  You know, does He bubble wrap does He freeze dry us so that nothing can touch us.  No, He is very clear here that he keeps or guards us through faith, through faith of faith lived out in the world.  Now does that strike you immediately as odd.  We often are conditioned to think of faith as something we are in possession of and that we then place in whatever we choose.  But that’s not what the scriptures genuinely say about faith.  Here we see that our faith is an instrument, that is it’s a means, it’s a means by which God sustains us, not by shouting down to us to try harder, but by pouring into us true faith what we need to endure in this life.  And what we need is the power and presence of God, that is what we need to endure in this life.  Faith is an instrument or a means by which we receive the presence and power of God and that is received principally in His son, the person of Christ and so we’re guarded, we’re protected, we’re provided for by staying close to Christ, by walking with Him, by listening to Him through His Word while the father will send the spirit as a heavenly adhesive who will never let us be severed ultimately from Christ.  Why?  Again, we are a part of His family.  We are a part of God’s family.  The father keeps and guards his family.  Jesus teaches us that the church is the only eternal institution and eternity starts now. 

In this passage Peter has something to say about the state of the church now as we are living in this world.  The state of the church is that she lives as we’ve seen as exiles.  Exiles, what do exiles commonly face?  Well in Peter’s words here, various trials.  Now that term, various trials is an elastic one, it’s an elastic one.  Perhaps we can see it have four different manifestations in the churches or Christian situation in the world.  First, being a stranger or a sojourner as an exile means lacking position, lacking power, perhaps lacking provision.  I’m sure some in a room of this size you have faced or known what it is to be passed over, to be disadvantaged because of your faith or the implications of your faith.  Another manifestation of trial in the church’s life is verbal or even physical abuse.  Now 21^st century America, it’s not the point, we’re not at the point where there’s widespread physical persecution, but some know it, but we do know plenty of verbal sneering.  We sense a certain disrespect in how we’re commonly described in broader western culture.  Third there’s physician pain for various trials, physical suffering.  Physical suffering and praying is often brought by God into our lives by His providence as a trial, like Paul’s thorn in his flesh, a way to throw us upon God in His strength. 

As we look at these various trials, we also have a fourth temptation, and that is temptation, we can be tempted in these trials in at least two ways.  We can be tempted to have hard and bitter thoughts about God due to the experiences that we’re having.  Ya know, not just wondering why is God letting this happen to me, but blaming Him, holding Him in contempt for the experiences that we’re going through.  But temptation of course also has a more common form and as we live in a world with proliferating and tantalizing sin, we’re tempted moment by moment to enter into that sin.  So various trials, it’s an elastic term and it can cover a multitude of things.  Now Peter does not leave us with a merely sympathetic acknowledgement though of these various tribes.  He wants to interpret them.  He wants to interpret trials in the context of the surer and living hope of believers.  He wants us to prosper in the midst of trials and he knows that we will not prosper in the midst of our trials unless we have a lively living hope.  But before we can talk about that hope, that hope with an orientation to the future, we must once again talk about faith in its relationship to our trials.

Trials are the proving ground of our faith; trials are the proving ground of our faith.  We’re promised that they only endure, that is our trials, for a little while for our lives are short, a mere breath in light of eternity.  Nonetheless, they are there in our lives, these trials and we’re called to live in faith in the midst of them.  They refine us and part of the refining is our response to them.  There is not a passivity to our response to trials, we don’t just let them come over us as waves, but enduring with faith that is actively learning Christ in the midst of them as we submit to them, that is our call.  This is something the great British journalist and friend of C.S. Lewis, Malcolm Muggeridge learned in his life.  Indeed he says it taught him everything of value there was to know in life.  Listen as Muggeridge explains the role of faith and trial.  Of learning Christ in his cross in the midst of his life he says this “I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my 75 years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained.”  In another world if it were ever possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo jumbo, as Aldous Huxley envisaged in his Brave New World, the result would not be to make life more delectable, but to make it too banal and trivial to be endurable.  This of course is what the cross signifies, and it is the cross more than anything else that has called me inexorably to Christ.  It’s a remarkable statement.  Muggeridge is saying it is through identification with Christ in trials that He has learned genuine real faith.  A faith tested, tried and refined.  A faith that endures.  You see an enduring faith lives with Christ in the midst of trials.  It is the faith which lives the chin to see Jesus, not the trials themselves, but in the midst lifts the chin to see Jesus so that he can lead us and work through us as he is refining us.

One commentator wrote this, “The fires of affliction or persecution will not reduce our faith to ashes.  Fire does not destroy gold, it only removes combustible impurities.”  Listen to that again, “The fires of affliction or persecution will not reduce our faith to ashes.  Fire does not destroy gold, it purifies”, and that is what Peter he recalls genuine faith in this passage.  Did you catch it, he calls it gold and gold under fire does not weaken, it does not disintegrate, it does not burn up, gold is purified.  So we may look at trials as burning up our self-confidence.  We may look at trials as assaulting our pride, certainly they can feel like that.  Anything that will not endure to the next life will not withstand the fires of trial.  This is God’s design in order to prepare us for eternity with Him.  But that faith will come out as gold.  Well, it’s within this dynamic where you have a loving, caring, keeping father, attentive to the trials and temptations of his children and then those children call to live within his providence in the wilderness as it were with faith, a faith where we learn identification with Christ and refinement in Him.  It is within this dynamic loving fatherly God tried enduring church where another ingredient emerges and this ingredient is vital for the church’s life and wellbeing.  I mentioned it, danced around it, but we’re now brought to a place to focus upon it and that’s hope, hope, a lively hope.

As God’s family called to live in the here and now we press forward, we press forward in hope and that hope has real substance, real basis, which the faithful church walking hand in hand with her Lord simply cannot deny.  It’s not window dressing; it’s fuel for living.  So, as we speak about hope more directly, we see that tied to this lively hope is an inheritance.  You see that in verse 4 of our passage.  Tied to this lively hope is an inheritance.  Now to have an inheritance in a home you have a family, and we remember it as God who is our father and those united to His son who are our family.  And so we share together as brothers and sisters a common inheritance.  And Peter, it’s interesting here, has difficulty finding words to do justice to this inheritance.  So spectacular is our inheritance he has to tell us what it is by telling us what it is not, and describing it in this way he is not only hinting at its splendor, he’s also teaching us by way of contrast and he has to teach us this way because he’s telling us something about which we don’t really have tangible knowledge.  We don’t know it tangibly, what we know in this world is what, things fall apart, things change.

The second law of thermodynamics tells us everything a person in his middle age can tell you.  The law of increased entropy is that the quality of matter or energy decreases over time.  I don’t know about you, but sometimes I get thrilled about the pristine shape of a new purchase, right.  You buy something new; it seems perfect and you just wanna keep it there.  Have you ever had something brand spanking new and you’re just, you’re on pins and needles for that first blemish, spot, break to emerge.  In my life I’ve only ever owned one new car.  It was right after Lisa and I got married.  I still remember, it was also on a Sunday, just getting out of church I’m sure in a most sanctified state, we’re pulling out of the parking spot in our new silver Volkswagen Jetta wagon, and I hear a thud from the front of the car.  Our front bumper had caught on the parking block and as I put it in reverse I ripped the bumper off the chassis of the car, and I remember, ya know, looking down at that bumper and, oh well, join the rest of my life kind of posture.  More recently, a few years ago we had our hardwood floors refinished.  Beautiful, pristine, smooth floors and I wanted to shut down all foot traffic, that’s just all try to float around the first floor of our house, but you know our family, we have eight members, humans, plus a Golden Retriever, and so not a day passes without a new scratch or dent in our beautiful white oak floors.  But you know, even as we perceive something to be perfect, it’s not absolutely so.  We know relative cleanness; we know relative perfection.  Nothing is ever perfect.  In contrast to our inheritance, we don’t know exactly in this fallen world what that is. 

Well Peter uses three words in verse 4 to describe our inheritance which each teach by this way of contrast, imperishable, undefiled and unfaith.  These three are not synonyms.  Let me just briefly define each of them.  Imperishable means cannot be destroyed, cannot decay over time.  You know what perishable goods are, they’re those which are going to decay.  Well, like God, like our resurrected bodies, this inheritance is made for eternity.  Everything we know is exposed to time, it goes down.  Not so Peter says of our inheritance.  Undefiled.  Undefiled means pure, not stained with sin.  You know we know this world and ourselves to be stained with sin.  There’s a powerful scene in Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, complicit in the murder of the king, sleepwalking, rubbing her hands, wondering if she can ever get the blood off her hands she says, what will these hands ne’er be clean.  We may not be murderers, but we know what it feels like to never feel completely cleaned, always sense the stain of sin with us and with this world.  Not so with our inheritance.  There is nothing in it unworthy of God’s approval and I wanna beware here of cynicism.  We’ve betrayed sometimes by bad theology, sometimes by our postmodern culture to think all of reality deep down is impure, and that’s not true.  All of earthly reality, light of the fall, yes.  But heavenly reality which contains our inheritance is as pure as Christ’s righteousness. 

The third word to describe our inheritance is unfading, which means it doesn’t wither or grow dim, or lose its beauty.  There’s no decay, no breakdown of the elements of the body.  Ya know, figure that fading, threadbare favorite sweatshirt that you wear every time you wonder if it’s going to completely fall apart.  Well, our inheritance, it can’t be worn out, it can’t lose its beauty.  So why is our inheritance imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.  Well Peter tells us in verse 4 because it’s kept in heaven, it’s kept in heaven.  Ya know we’ve seen stories of certain spoiled children frittering away their inheritance through careless living.  I remember one several years ago of somebody losing upwards of 50 million dollars in inheritance and of course the Bible contains the story of the prodigal son and the prodigal before turning in repentance to his father frittered away his inheritance through selfish indulgent living.  We don’t have to worry about our inheritance being frittered away.  Our inheritance is kept because we have a keeping God who matches within Himself power and will to care and to keep it, and that is important because not only is He our divine watchdog for our inheritance, he also keeps us for our inheritance.  Think about it, what good is it say if you have an inheritance you will only receive at age 65, when you know full well you’re going to die at age 60.  For us the destination, the age when we will receive the inheritance will be reached.

Well, it seems throughout this section of scripture Peter is working with an illusion to the ancient Israelites condition.  Remember the Exodus.  That period in the history of the people of God when they were in bondage in Egypt, just like we were to our sin, they were freed through the sovereign hand of God just like we have been through our salvation by God’s grace.  And they were given an inheritance, the Promised Land, just as we have been given a glorious salvation kept for us, which we experience in some measure now, but only as nibbles of that which we will some day gain in the new heavens, in the new Word.  Where in this picture of Exodus of going to the Promised Land is hope.  They, that is the Israelites, they had faith in God by which He strengthened them and communicated His promises, but that kept them moving, what kept that moving ahead.  Remember they had to move from Egypt to the Promised Land and in the course of that journey they faced many trials in the wilderness.  What kept them moving as they were saved from bondage, going through the wilderness to the Promised Land.  Well of course, what kept them moving was hope.  By looking to the future, to their future inheritance they had hope despite the challenges and the trials that surrounded them.  They had hoped that God would save them ultimately.  Well, you might say, hasn’t He to some extent already saved them, I mean He took them out of Egypt where they were oppressed.  Isn’t that a certain kind of salvation from bondage.  Yes, but as glorious as that is for us to be saved from our sin, it is a mere inkling of what God intends for His people.  He does not just save us from the bad stuff and where that bad stuff ultimately leads, no He gives an inheritance, he gives a rich salvation set before us.  He gave to the Israelites the Promised Land.  He gives to us our inheritance.  Our eyes are set upon that as God tantalizes us through His Word of what he has for us and so in our hopes, in our lives, in the midst of our hope, we run forward, we run forward and hope like children on Christmas Eve, we peak into the closet to see this rich salvation that God has for us.  But as soon as we want to run forward in hope, we want to run back to the present.  We run back telling of what we have seen of God’s inheritance.  You see hope is peering into the glorious future, but not to escape there, no our hopes run forward only to run back into the present and thereby transform the present with all its challenges and all its trials.  Think about it, isn’t that what the Lord Jesus Christ himself did?  It says in Hebrews that it was for the joy set before Him that he endured the cross.  He experienced severe temptation.  He underwent the trial, the extent of which we will never know.  He was a victim of ultimate persecution and what pulled Him through, the joy set before Him.  He hoped, He hoped, He looked forward to the exaltation He would receive in resurrection and ascension.  He peered into the eternal communion that He has at the father’s right hand and that enabled Him to endure the cross, the most severe of trials. 

Fullness of joy is for heaven, it’s for the new heavens and the new earth, but this is not an all or nothing proposition.  Proverbs 10:28 says, “The hope of the righteous brings joy.”  Present tense, David knowing the loss of joy and sinning prays in Psalm 51:12 that God would restore the joy of His salvation.  You see the Lord can bring us joy now even as we wait the full joy of the fullness of our inheritance and our salvation.  This only comes by submitting to every situation, every trial that we face as from the Lord’s hands, trusting Him in the midst of it with hope.  And as we do so our faith will be strengthened and we will rejoice all the more.  Let me ask you in closing, what challenges, what trials are you facing right now?  What difficulty is in your midst.  In the midst of that let me ask you where are your eyes, where are your eyes?  Are those eyes only on your circumstances, are they glancing on the puffed up hopes of this world or are they as Peter would direct us, on our perfect inheritance.  Are they on Jesus who though you do not see, Peter says, you love.  Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.  Filled with glory because we have set our eyes on the risen Christ, and as we set our eyes on the risen Christ the scent of heaven fills our circumstances and transforms them from trials to occasions, genuine occasions for growth, for glory.  In fact, as a result of bringing us through trials, God brings more glory to himself.  When we are plunged into trial and in the midst of it experience the sustaining presence of the Lord, realizing in the midst of it he is working for our good, we are able to bring more glory to God if we had not been brought through such a trial.  That is to say God brings more glory to himself through our trials as He is refining us for our good and for His glory.  And this glory abounds to God because our love for Jesus is quickened.  Our love for Jesus is quicken as we stand in the flames and He is with us, and He is fueling our faith.  We experience a deeper and sweeter intimacy with him as we share in the fellowship of His sufferings.  So, Christians, do not fear, do not fear the various trials of this world, walk in faith.  Press forward with a living hope in your perfect inheritance.  Your Father loves you; your Father will preserve you.  His Son has secured you by his blood.  The Spirit is sanctifying you that you might be presented holy, blameless, and above reproach.  Let us rejoice in our triune God who has given us so great a salvation both now, but even more in eternity.  Let’s pray together.

Our heavenly Father, what a Word has been given to us by your spirit to strengthen our faith and fuel our hope.  May it be so for each one in this room.  Indeed we do know various trials, trials of different kinds for different days, for different seasons, for different people, we know them all as your people, but we pray that we would look to you, you would feed and strengthen our faith and refine it as we walk with you and you would pull us forward as well peer into the hope that you have given us in our inheritance the fullness of our salvation in your son and we know one of the ways that you sustain and strengthen our faith and cause us to endure is as you feed us both by Word and sacrament.  And so, as we turn in this service to the table we do pray that you would open our mouths so that they might be filled.  Open the mouths of our faith that we might be strengthened, and able to endure in the midst of this life you’ve given us, not just endure, but endure with glory, giving glory to you Father, to you Son, and to you Holy Spirit.  Amen.