1 Peter 1:3-7

As I was saying during our time of um announcements, this is Pentecost Sunday, 50 days after the resurrection of Jesus, the day that the Holy Spirit was given to the church and birthed the church there in Jerusalem.

And there's a um the just a um anticipation, while that was just such a special event then, there's still this sense of Lord, we want your kingdom to come.

We want to see your kingdom um just made manifest.

And um I think that's the cry of all of our hearts as believers.

While we're so grateful for the gift of the Holy Spirit being given to us, it's sealing us for that future day, right?

To be in his presence.

So um, man.

And that's it's kind of where what we're gonna look at this morning in the text is just that middle ground where we're living with so much great, just such a great work of God or having been done in our life, but anticipating so much more, a feeling like, Lord, we've tasted it.

It's like the order, we've tasted it, but there's this, man, Lord, come quickly.

So we saw last week that that Peter is the author of uh 1 Peter, and he wrote this letter to some Gentiles, primarily Gentiles in Asia Minor, and he um is writing to a group of people that are facing incredible suffering and trials.

Um they've these Gentiles have decided that they want to be followers of Jesus, and having heard this message from some missionary that came from Jerusalem, they've heard about Jesus and they've decided we as Gentiles, we want to be a follower of this man Jesus.

And that caused a great deal of suffering in their life.

They were being slandered and persecuted by their culture.

It was it was tough.

And we'll talk about that as we're going through 1 Peter.

Um, I'm gonna share anecdotes of what we know from the first and second century suffering of these early Christians.

But even within the letter itself, it talks about just um being ridiculed, slandered, spoken of as evil by the surrounding culture.

And one of the things that we saw last week is that Peter takes, even though these are Gentiles, Peter takes the Old Testament, specifically stories from Genesis, um, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and he uses it as a motif to map it onto the life of these Christians.

He basically says, you can understand your experience with God by looking back at these other people who followed God and how God worked in their life and the things that God did on their behalf.

And God still is doing that.

We're able, and I would just ask you, as you are a follower of God, what stories, what stories from Scripture map onto your life today to give you a sense of meaning?

When we are growing up, we typically have these this idea of fairy tales.

And a fairy tale always ends with some special words.

What are they?

And they lived happily ever after, right?

It's an up and to the right trajectory.

If you're an economist, you always want to see up and to the right, right?

We've got growth that is scaling up.

And that is kind of the picture that comes to my head when I hear of living happily ever after.

But it isn't the picture of the Christian life.

The Christian life is more of like a picture of eddies.

You know what an eddy is when you study physics?

It's it's um air that travels across something and then it circles back around, right?

And it puts backwards pressure.

I uh now I've gotten lost, Steve.

I'm sorry, but it's it's an eddy is like it's putting, it's kind of like coming back around, right?

It's wrapping around?

Yeah.

Okay.

That's about as far as we can go with physics this morning.

Let's stick with the Bible.

Um, but that that is like the image that I have in my mind of the Christian life is that rather than up and to the right, we go, we're going along, and these trials, the various trials, they kind of wrap us around, right?

And we cycle through a series of trials in our life because God wants to put, he wants to refine us, um, he wants to put on display his glory in our life.

We're gonna see um as we go on further this morning how that that is probably a better way, better image of the Christian life.

And so Peter's writing to people who are experienced a series of trials and they're not living happily ever after.

And Peter is using the Old Testament to help them identify themselves in God's story.

He used this term last week, elect exiles, that you're the chosen exiles, and it's one of the key metaphors.

We're gonna continue on this morning with this idea of elect exiles as we go through this benediction this week, next week, and the following week.

He's still gonna be borrowing from that idea that you're chosen sojourners or elect exiles, that you're on a journey.

There are other key pictures that Peter is going to use as he goes through this letter, but but just keep in mind that image from last week, elect exiles.

This text invites you and I to engage God in a fresh way.

If you are not a follower yet of Jesus, the door is open to you through this text to lay down your self-will, to set aside or allow God to set aside your shame and your guilt, and it invites you to place your faith in Jesus.

If you're not walking with God or you're not a student of the Bible, one of the things that you're encountering in your life is incongruency.

You wish that your life was lived happily ever after.

But instead, you're encountering a fragmented life.

We call that brokenness, where it's like, how does this piece over here fit with this piece here?

You're trying to figure out how to put the pieces of family origin together.

Um, you have your strengths, your weaknesses, broken relationships.

Um you have the things that you're ashamed of, maybe from your past.

You have disappointments, aspirations, plans, your own personal pain.

And you're asking this question: how do these pieces fit together?

I don't know how you have experienced the Bible as a follower of God in the past, but I want you to know that the God of the Bible wants to come and begin to put the pieces together in the same way that Peter helps these Christians through this letter.

And he's making liberal use of the Old Testament as he goes through here.

And so I just I did this last week, but again, I want to commend that method to you.

You've got to just think here of Peter as he is as he is in Rome and he has been given this leadership position within the church, not in a Pope sense, but broader than just the local church.

There's a sense of clear responsibility that Peter takes on for all these Christians, enough so that he cooperates with the Holy Spirit to write this letter.

How does he help them in their suffering?

Again, he uses the Old Testament as a map to give meaning.

I know that's simple, but I just I want to encourage you for your own in your own life to continue to engage God's story through Israel as a map for your own life.

But I also want to encourage you to um recognize the the Holy Spirit's work in your life as you relate to other people around you.

And that you um, as you counsel one another, as you encourage one another, take Peter's example and make use of the Old Testament as a map.

Does that make sense?

Use it as a map to really give a sense of what um what God might be doing in a person's life.

Now, in order to do that, you really have to be a student of the Old Testament.

Now, we're gonna get to 1 Peter 1 here in just a second.

But I gotta just say one more thing about this.

Peter expected these Gentile Christians to know their Old Testament really well.

I mean, it is the underlying assumption of Peter because he doesn't, like he writes a letter and it's like just these coded references, like a little reference, like your exile, your chosen um, your elect exiles.

And he expects, like, oh, you're gonna connect the dots in your head.

There's an a there's a hyperlink, there's a there's a connection that's gonna be made in your heads as modern Gentile readers in the first century with you know 2,000 years of biblical history.

And so, man, saints, we really need to just be students of the Bible.

That's again, that's why we have, you know, that's part of the reason why we spend so much time in the Bible on Sunday mornings.

That's why we pay for you all to have access to that the Dwell app.

We're encouraging you to read your Bibles just because it is, it is how we make sense of life.

Now, let's look at the text here, 1 Peter 1, 3 through 7, and let's read this together.

He says, This 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 in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Let's pray together.

God, as we take up your word, we would just pray that you would speak to us by your Holy Spirit.

Lord, combine, take the Holy Spirit, your presence in our life, and your word, Lord, just with those two dynamics at work this morning, let this be for us just a like a burning bush moment, a tabernacle in the middle of the wilderness moment, where God, we would encounter you in a place that is not the normal place of encountering God.

In the wilderness, on the backside of the wilderness.

God, we ask that here in our own journey, our so-journey, God, that we would encounter your very presence and that you would speak into our lives.

Our lives are very different from one another, different ages, different backgrounds, different stories, giftings, jobs, families, and yet you, Lord, can speak into us this morning.

God, we pray that you would accomplish a winning work over our will.

You know where we our um our will needs to be aligned with yours.

God, would you work and win in our hearts, that you'd win over our affections?

God, that you would sanctify us and set us apart from our own sin this morning.

Use your word and your spirit in those ways, we pray, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So here's where we're at.

We're in the beginning of this epistle, this letter that Peter's writing.

In verse 3, he starts off with this word blessed.

This is a benediction.

One of the things that I become more and more convinced of as I've just read through 1 Peter, and just my own quiet time has had me in the pastoral epistles the last few weeks, is that Peter either was at this season of his life, probably around 63, 64 AD, Peter was in close proximity to Paul.

He either was really familiar with 2 Timothy, because there are there are phrases that are in this letter that are also in 2 Timothy.

It could have been that their time in Rome overlapped because 2 Timothy is written right there in Nero's reign.

He's probably Paul's beheaded by Nero's government.

And it just seems like there's too many parallels between the two.

You also see as we go through this that Peter is very familiar with James' teaching.

Now, whether the the book of James or the letter that James wrote had already been written, we don't know.

But man, Peter and James are also tracking together quite a bit in the way that they phrase things.

Look at just, I mean, even in this uh little section, this idea of various trials, both James and Peter talk about.

Um so this is a benediction.

Um, verse 3 through 11, 3 through 12 is a single sentence in Greek.

And um so we're gonna look at it in three parts over the course of three weeks.

There's no good um like break necessarily.

So I'm just gonna stop at verse 7 today.

We'll pick up 8 and 9 the next week and then finish it off in three weeks.

But in this text, these verse 3 through 7, there's there's references basically to time.

There's the things that God has done, there's the things that God will do, and there is what is actually current to these readers and to Peter.

Let's look first at the things that God has done.

The things that God has done.

First of all, in verse 3, do you see it there in your Bibles?

In verse 3, it says that God has caused these individuals to be birthed again or to be born again, and it's by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

These are two things that God did in the past that are that set the stage for the Christian life.

You have been born again.

Christ has been raised from the dead.

Then there is the things that are anticipated.

We see in verse 4, an inheritance kept in heaven for you.

And he gives some adjectives to describe that inheritance.

It's an unfailing, it's a guaranteed inheritance.

The second thing that's in the future is a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last times.

A salvation ready to be revealed in the last times.

And third, there is the, in verse 7, the revelation of Jesus Christ.

So the things that God has done, the things that are yet to take place in the future, and then in the present, we see Peter talking about God's power for you, in you, how you're being guarded through faith.

Second is you rejoice.

Peter says, You are in a state of rejoicing over all that God has done.

And in verse 7, we see you have been grieved, or you are being grieved, you're experiencing grief because of trials and testing, uh, that's testing your faith to find it as genuine.

The key metaphor here in verse 7 is this idea of a furnace testing gold.

Not to see whether it's really gold or not, but it's the idea of proving out the gold to get the dross out.

So the ore would be mixed in with the gold, it would cause a reaction that would have the dross rising to the surface under intense heat until it was said that the metal worker or the metalsmith would be able to see his reflection, the shimmering reflection in the gold.

And so Peter is borrowing that picture to help these believers place their own suffering.

And we'll get to that in just a second.

So, in essence, when you look at verses 3 through 7, we see God is worthy of praise because of what he has done on our behalf and what will be revealed in the future.

He's worthy of praise even as we go through these various trials because they bring forward a purified faith in our lives.

Again, the context is a benediction, making a statement about how, why God deserves to be praised.

That's what a benediction is.

Things in the past, things in the future, and the present.

And so here's the idea.

And I mentioned this in my email that I sent out this morning.

These Christians are living in between the past and a future glory.

They are truly exiles, right?

They're in between locations.

They have left one place and they're being spiritually moved to the next, and they're in this gray zone between the two.

It's like COVID.

Right now, we're in this gray zone.

We have gone through this 18 months of suffering through COVID, and we're going towards a new world of post-COVID.

Kind of reminds you of like 9-11, right?

We went through 9-11, the trauma of it, and then we knew the world would change, but it takes time to realize like what, how, what is how has everything been impacted by by COVID?

How is how is our how are our gatherings going to be impacted?

I think there's a sense of like anxiety and kind of holding our breath to see what's going to happen to the economy.

Is there going to be another?

Is there going to be, you know, is this virus going to adapt or evolve?

Is there going to become a new strain that we go through the whole thing again?

We are true, we are living in this gray zone in between COVID, post-COVID, and that's similar to exact to this idea of being an exile, just kind of in no man's land.

So Peter is describing the gap that we live in, existing between what God has done, where we're heading.

And as the Christian interacts with God's past work and the future work, the experience is an experience of faith.

In Romans chapter 1, Paul talks, and in his letter to the Romans, he says that we move from faith to faith, right?

Romans 1 · chapter mention

We wish it were they lived happily ever after.

But the reality of the Christian life is more like these stepping stones where it's like, okay, this is a step of faith.

This is a step of faith.

You know, this is a step of faith.

And it's just one step of faith after another.

We wish we had the entire map laid out.

And really, what we have is we just have an old pattern of how God has worked in the past, but in our own life, it's like, ooh, I don't know how this is gonna work out.

I don't know how these pieces are gonna come together.

So let's talk, let's let's apply Peter's words here to our own life.

The Christian life is meant, our life is meant to be lived with an inspired imagination and vision.

Our life is meant to be lived with an inspired imagination.

Where do you get that from?

From.

Again, for Peter, his image of living out the kingdom is based off of being a student of the Old Testament.

He read about all that God had done with this young man who's the youngest son named David, and how he was a shepherd, and he learned faithfulness and obedience and faith with the sheep, and he played his harp, and he fought off a wild bear and a lion, you know, and that prepared his heart for a fight with Goliath.

You know, Peter would read those stories and it would animate his imagination of what God could do in his own life.

He saw the story of Egypt and how these Hebrews were in a place of deep suffering.

And in Exodus 3, it says, God heard their cry.

God heard the cry of the Hebrews.

And he saw their suffering.

And God intervened.

He redeemed his people.

He delivered his people.

The Christian life is meant to be lived within an inspired imagination and a vision.

I think one of the great things that should inspire us this week, let's talk about the next seven days of our life.

What should inspire our next seven days?

I think Genesis 1 and 2.

I think the Garden of Eden should be something that just excites us.

The idea that God created the world as a garden, put humans in that garden, commanded them to be fruitful and to multiply, to oversee, to subdue, to execute leadership and stewardship in that garden, that there was a flourishing, a human flourishing that was to take place.

There was an image-bearing nature in Adam and Eve where it's like, I am going to act out the image that God has given me in how I bear his image.

Our again, our imagination as we look at Baltimore City, our neighborhood, our workplace, our families, should be this longing of like, God, look at what you created, look at all that you can do, look at how powerfully you work.

The present existence, though, is in reality is one where we are facing trial.

So our imagination is caught up with a heavenly vision, but our life is filled with brokenness and suffering and pain.

Our city's filled with pain.

And so how do we reconcile those two?

As we long, because I think we are called to be longing for God's work, but yet we're going through these trials.

And I want to just focus in terms of application upon verses six and seven.

Verses six and seven say four specific things to us about our trials.

First of all, trials meet needs.

And this is bar, I'm borrowing liberally here from Warren Wearsby, who's a saint that's gone on to be with the Lord and wrote a number of great commentaries in the Bible.

But um he he pulls forward these four things.

First of all, trials meet needs.

If you look at 1 Peter verse 6, he says, In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.

This word um necessary here is in the text.

There's a necessity that our trial meets.

Here's how Warren Wearsby explains it.

He says the phrase, if need be, or if necessary, it indicates that there are special times when God knows that we need to go through trials.

Sometimes trials discipline us when we have disobeyed God.

He gives that reference there.

At other times, trials prepare us for spiritual growth or even help to prevent us from sinning.

We do not always know the need being met, but we can trust God to know and to do what is best.

We must not think that because we have uh because we have overcome one kind of trial that we will automatically win them all.

Trials are varied, and God matches the trial to our strengths and to our needs.

So the first point is this that trials meet needs.

God knows your life, he knows my life, and when he puts us through a trial, there is something necessary in our life that is being accomplished.

When you look at James chapter 1, and Paul here is telling the church that is facing various trials, he is encouraging them to be patient.

James 1 · chapter mention

He says, be patient in your trials, and let patience finish its perfect work.

Let your trials complete that perfect work.

There's an appropriateness to our long suffering and patience because God wants to do something through the pain.

The second point here is that trials are varied.

Trials are varied.

Again, in verse 6, he says that you have been grieved by various trials.

There is a variety.

There is not one size fits all trial.

Warren Wearsby, he says this: we must not think that because we've overcome one kind of trial, that we will automatically win them all.

Trials are varied, and God matches the trial to our strengths and our needs.

There is going to be a bunch of different obstacles that you face in your life.

And I'm sure that you've already faced.

And so one of the things that Peter will say later on is don't be shocked, don't be surprised as you're going through these various trials.

Because sometimes that's what they are.

It's like something comes up and it's like, whoa, that one's out of the blue.

God, I thought I would get that trial over there, or I thought that one, I would get that one over there, but then it's like, whoa, where'd that one come from?

This is um this word various, is it's it's the idea of variegated or multicolored.

All kinds of trials.

Sometimes when you go through a trial, you feel like, wait, wait, wait, wait.

That one's outside the bounds of what can happen to me.

That one doesn't fit.

And again, the scriptures come along and go, no, no, no, there's a lot here.

The boundaries of what kind of trials you can face is pretty broad.

You can face all kinds of trials.

The third thing that we see here in the text is this that trials are not easy.

And I know some of you are going through trials, and we want to say, yeah, no kidding, no kidding.

But the Bible agrees with us because it says in verse 6, you have been grieved.

Peter here is writing to these Christians who God's done some amazing things.

They're birthed again, born again to a living hope.

They have an inheritance, and they're rejoicing in that position, but in this very moment, Peter is realistic.

He says, You have been grieved through these various trials.

As we go through life, the Bible does not ask us to put a happy face on things that are hard.

The Bible doesn't ask us to pretend that hard things are not hard.

One of the great things, and one of the great apologetic points for the Christian faith is that God asks us to be so true to what is real.

One of the reasons I believe in Christian, one of the reasons I am a Christian is because I believe that what the Bible teaches is true corresponds with reality so well.

And here Peter is saying that trials are hard, that you've been grieved.

Yeah, you're rejoicing in all that God's done for you, but you are grieved.

This is the word heaviness that's used to describe Jesus in the garden.

When it says you're grieved, it's it's you feel under the weight of you feel heavy.

Have you ever been there?

You ever been where your trial makes you just it just is like this heavy thing.

That's where Jesus was at as he's praying in the garden, sweating drops of blood.

It's okay to be a Christian and to grieve.

This that's a very important thing culturally for us to say in the West, because um there is this perception in church culture, and mind you, I'm a third-generation church planter.

My grandpa planted churches for 49 years, my dad is pastoring and has been pastoring for over 40 years.

So I can speak authoritatively about Christian culture.

And one of the things that is not good is that we like to pretend that Christianity is this 24-7 party.

You know, sometimes I go on and and you know, I'll follow different Christian leaders on their Instagram account, and it looks like they're living a life that's a party that never ends.

And it kind of can make you feel like, wow, I'm really something must be wrong with me.

I must not be spiritual because their party just never stops.

It's one exciting thing to the next.

That's not an accurate, that's not a biblical portrayal of the Christian life.

Peter says, yeah, we're rejoicing in what God has done in our life and what we are looking forward to, this inheritance, this salvation, the revelation of Jesus in the end.

But right now we're grieved.

I remember when I was nine, my dad took me to Kenya on my first trip to Kenya, and I remember we were staying in the home of a family in Theka, and I remember waking up at 2 a.m.

Um, our house guests, they were members of the church.

I think that they were lay leaders in the church where my dad was the guest speaker, and I heard this woman wailing and just crying out.

And she was praying because her son had been taken by the dad to the hospital because he had a spiking fever.

Um, and he had they thought he might have malaria.

And this woman, regardless of having house guests, she was just crying out to the Lord, have mercy, God, on my son.

And it just was such a poignant moment in my life as a nine-year-old to just hear somebody be grieved like that.

And as I've grown up and grown in the Lord, I've realized that that's probably a more accurate way to be a Christian.

It's a more healthy way to demonstrate our emotions, is to not pretend that everything is all right all the time.

It's okay.

It's okay to be grieved for a season.

Jesus, as he speaks and writes a letter to the seven churches through the book of Revelation, he says, Look, I know, I'm in the midst of the lampstands.

Jesus portrays himself as the one who's in the midst of our of the church.

Jesus is in the midst of our church gathering this morning, and he knows, like he looks at the church, he says, I know what's going on in your church.

Sometimes there's a rebuke that's needed, oftentimes there is.

But one of the things that Jesus says through John the Apostle in those letters is, hey, I know the difficult stuff you're going through.

And so it's okay.

It's okay to know that trials are not easy.

You're not called.

I'm belaboring a point here, and I often am guilty of this, but so I'll stop quickly here.

But it's okay to be sad.

Okay?

It's okay to be sad.

It's okay to be, it's it's okay, you don't have to just maybe I'm belaboring it because I often feel this pressure of like that I don't have the freedom to be sad over something that's truly sad.

You know.

Trials are controlled by God.

Peter says that these things are for a little while.

These things are for a little while.

It's a season, it's just for a season.

He's allowing, God is allowing the suffering to accomplish its purposes, but suffering does end.

Again, that picture of the eddies, the cycling through.

The Christian life that you and I walk in is that God lets repeated trials to occur, but those trials cycle through.

And as you're allowing God's redemptive themes to permeate your life, if it's a chastening and God wants to purge you of sin or separate you from an idol in your life, and you're receptive to that, then probably the season ends.

And you go through a little selah, like in the Psalms, you go through a selah of peace, and then you start another one because God has a purpose, you know, that He wants to accomplish in your life.

And it's good, it's good.

You but you need to know, though, that God trials are controlled by God.

Job went through Job, right?

Job went through his story.

That was hard.

That's a miserable story.

None of us would ever want to go through what Job went through, but it comes to an end.

Let me just close with this.

In verse 3, it says that God has birthed us again to a living hope.

We're doing life between the past work of God in our life, anticipating a future work.

We're living in this gap between the past and the future.

Hope, this idea of a living hope, is the idea that the gap can be bridged.

Our imagination is caught up as we as the Bible just takes a hold of our hearts and we have this vision of God's kingdom, we're seeing what could be, what could be on the other side of the gap, but yet the gap has to be bridged.

The idea of a living hope is that you and I believe, we're convinced more and more that that gap can be bridged by God.

That this thing that has taken a hold of our imagination, whether it's God's kingdom manifested in relationships or God's kingdom manifested in the city, or God's kingdom being manifested in our neighborhood or with our kids, it's like as I'm waiting for that prayer to be answered, I have this been birthed to a living hope that the gap can be bridged.

We're called to a place of hope.

That these things that we imagine that have been kind of birthed in us by the Spirit of God as we interact with Scripture, we believe that they will be real in the future.

Amen.

Let's go before the Lord.

God, we thank you for letting us delivering us, letting us be exiled.

So, God, we needed to leave some stuff behind.

Lord, you called us out of being sons of Adam.

You called us out of sin.

You called us out of dysfunction.

And you've given us this future vision of what life could be, of the kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven.

And yet there's a gap, Lord, in our life.

As we suffer, the present, Lord, we're looking forward to that future, that future work.

Lord, would you just fill our hearts afresh with your hope?

Lord, use the trials in our life in a powerful way.

Let them be meaningful, let them be something that we can actually wrap our arms around and say, thank you for this trial, God.

Thank you for all that you want to accomplish in my life through this painful, grievous moment.

Lord, we ask, Lord, if we have to suffer, Lord, if it's necessary, oh God, let it be fruitful.

We don't want to hear what Jeremiah said to Israel, that they suffered in vain.

That'd be horrible, God.

We want to suffer for good purposes to be accomplished in our life.

Only by your spirit, Lord, can these things happen.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's uh let's stand together.