1 Peter 1:1-9

Well, good morning, everyone.

Uh, welcome to you who are in the room.

Uh, welcome to the you who are joining us online uh with a uh much faster frame rate than last Sunday.

So hopefully uh fewer uh fewer memes will be shared on the various WhatsApp groups.

Um it's good to be with you all.

It felt appropriate to uh to take a pause from our Summer Psalms uh series and to uh look at a text that is encouraging and uplifting, celebratory in tone that uh draws our eyes to the uh the hope that has sustained us these last months, this the hope that we need uh to keep on uh persevering.

And uh so this is just a uh a little one-off foray into the into the book of First Peter.

Uh maybe you have it on your your phone.

Sorry, we're not able to give out physical Bibles, uh, but you may have you know brought uh one of these with you, and so you can turn up First Peter or indeed look it up on uh on an app on your phone or through Bible Gateway or somewhere like that, uh, so that you're following along with the with the text.

Why don't I pray for us as we begin?

Our Father, we do thank you for your uh for your preservation and care uh of us these last months.

Thank you that we are able to gather again, as strange as it uh may seem and be, and yet we acknowledge that there is an inherent goodness, an inherent blessing of being part of the the gathered body.

And so, whatever, whatever the form and whatever the strange measures that need to be taken, we praise you that we can sit around the word together in person again, and in a few moments' time that we'll be able to lift our voices in song again, and so we have so much uh to rejoice in and to thank you for.

Give us uh attentive ears and hearts and minds, we pray in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Victor Frankel uh was uh a psychiatrist in New York, and before he was a psychiatrist in New York, he was a prison inmate in the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

He spent many years there, and after his liberation, he moved to New York and trained as a psychiatrist.

He wrote a work called Man's Search for Meaning, and in it he writes talking about hope, and he talks about hope in light of his uh experiences in the camp.

Listen to what he says.

The prisoner who had lost faith in the future, his hope, was doomed.

With the loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold.

He let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.

Usually this happened quite suddenly in the form of a crisis, the symptoms of which were familiar to the experienced camp inmate.

Usually it began as the prisoner refusing to get dressed one morning or to wash or to go out to the parade grounds.

No entreaties from his fellow campmates, no blows from the guards, no threats had any effect.

He just lay there, hardly moving.

If this crisis was brought about by an illness, he would refuse to be taken to the sick bay or do anything to s to sell sorry to help himself.

He simply gave up.

He had lost all hope.

Each one of us is motivated by hopes of various sorts and kinds.

After all, what is hope?

That's just what Victor was talking about.

It's looking into the future at a goal or a desire and setting your course in the direction of that hope or desire, that goal.

What is the hope of a student?

It is that on graduation day every essay will be written, every exam will be sat, and so you will stand on that stage for that fleeting moment and receive that well done from your chancellor and whatever uh quasi-celebrity dignitary they've rolled in for that day, and you will be king or queen for a moment.

And then a new horizon opens up, and you replace that hope with another.

The hope of the job of your dreams, the man or woman of your dreams, the home of your dreams, and so you set your course to that, and you have that new hope, that new goal.

What that means is that you suffer various indignities.

You suffer the indignity of the unpaid internship, you suffer the indignity of being moved all around the country, even to Waterford to work.

Why?

Because you have the hope of something better.

Hope enables us to endure suffering.

That's one of the things that it does.

Without it, we lapse into despair.

In Dante's Inferno, as Dante's uh had a metaphorical telling of a voyage into hell.

Uh, do you know what is written over the gates of hell?

Dante says that over the gates of hell is written the words, abandon hope, all who enter here.

For 24 weeks, our hope has been put to the test.

We have used that hope to sustain us.

The hope that this day would come, that we would be back together again.

The hope that things, that we, that those who we love would be okay.

And for some, that hope has been severely shaken by the circumstances that have befallen us during this lockdown period.

Things have happened that have shattered the hope that we have.

What's more, while we are back today and have much to be glad in, our future still remains uncertain.

We have kind of entered into this interim period where we don't quite know how things are going to pan out over the next few months.

Maybe Vladimir's uh uh uh uh vaccination will be just wonderful and just be a game changer for everyone, the Russians to the rescue.

Uh but it is hard to see exactly how the circumstances are going to pan out, and so our hope needs to continue to sustain us through these uncertain times.

And that is why, turning to the letter, these opening verses of 1 Peter are so timely and apt.

Because the Christians were living facing an uncertain future.

And Peter says that one of the things that they have in their arsenal, spurring them on, excuse me, uh, that's why we have the screen.

See, money well spent.

One of the things that the Christians have in their arsenal is a new hope.

Look at verse 3.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again into a living hope, a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And so we need to consider what is that hope?

How does that hope function?

How is that hope better than the things, the goals that we set the course of our life to?

And so we're gonna ask some questions of this text.

We're gonna ask, why do we need a living hope?

Second, where does this hope come from?

Third, how does it function in our lives?

What is it?

And fourth and finally, how do we get it?

So, why do we need a living hope?

The people that Peter is writing to were suffering.

Look at verse one.

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles.

Elect exiles of the dispersion.

That is that persecution had risen up such that if you were a believer in Jesus, you were scattered.

That's what it means to be in exile.

You are sent to a country that is not your home because you are not welcome in your home.

They were dispersed across the known world.

But Peter also uses this term to hint not just to them, but to every Christian, that we ourselves are exiles away from our home.

He picks up, I think, the language of the Old Testament, where the people of God there were exiles, exiles in Egypt, exiles in Babylon, away from the place where they believed God was, away from their home.

And Peter is saying the Christians are like that, that this world is not our home.

We are exiled for a time from our heavenly home, where our citizenship lies.

What that means is, Christian, don't be surprised when the world around you is hostile to you.

Don't be surprised when people do not love you, esteem you, respect you, see you as a benefit to society.

It seemed for a few generations there that things were going well for Christians, that we were at least respected, the Christian values were at least broadly adhered to.

Peter would say, that's not normal.

Normal is to find Christians on the margin of society, not in the center of it.

Because this world is not our home.

One of the lessons of COVID-19 is just that this world is not our home.

How do we know that?

Because this world doesn't work right.

Doesn't work the way it's supposed to.

For those of us who have faced grief and the sorrow of that, and the strangeness of death, it's supposed to feel strange because this is not our home.

Our world doesn't work right.

These Christians that Peter's writing to, they knew that.

Why?

Because they themselves are suffering.

Uh have a look down at verse 5.

Verse 5 and 6.

He says, Who by God's power are being guarded through faith for 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.

Some were being killed, some were burnt at the stake, some were through tossed to lions in the arena, some were covered in pitch and set on fire as torches to light Nero's garden parties.

Others had lost their businesses or had their property taken away.

This is why Peter needs to bring up the issue of hope.

Because there's no way to get through life without knowing how it is that you're going to get through the suffering that either you're experiencing now or will experience on in your life.

You get through suffering by having a living hope.

That is, what is a living hope?

It's a hope that can't die.

It's a hope that can't be taken away from you.

When suffering comes and you find your future under threat, how is it that people respond?

Some give up and think, well, what's the point in trying?

Some get angry at the world, angry at God, bitter and resentful.

Others simply lapse into despair.

Despair at the injustice of it all.

What we need in order to avoid those consequences is a hope that cannot die.

A living hope.

You see, life only truly has meaning if your hope is in suffering.

Sorry, in something that suffering cannot take away.

I'm not used to having people in the room.

It's still normally just me and my ironing board.

Um the ironing board has been used the most it's ever been used in the last six months.

Let me say that again.

Your life will only truly have a meaning that lasts if your hope is in something that no amount of suffering can take away.

True.

But do you know what?

Every single person in this room or watching on Facebook Live will lose the things that a concentration camp takes away from you.

Everybody is terrified about getting COVID-19.

And we have lost sight of the fact that not one of us will escape death.

Each one of us is terminal in that respect.

And so we need a hope that is going to sustain us beyond the veil of this world.

Just as a concentration camp takes away your freedom, your freedom to do what you want, it takes away your loved ones, it takes away your health, your happiness, your time, you will lose all of those things eventually.

And so we need a hope that cannot be taken away by the circumstances that we face, that cannot be taken away by death itself.

That is why we need a living hope.

Second, where does that living hope come from?

Well, we're back in verse 3.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again into a living hope through, see that connecting word, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

We're born into a living hope.

Why?

Because Jesus rose from the dead.

Hope, in its normal English usage, has two aspects to it.

It has a future aspect and it has a degree of uncertainty.

Biblical hope has the first aspect and not the second.

It has the future aspect, but with none of the uncertainty.

It is a certain future hope.

Why?

Because it's not based on our striving.

It's not based on the chips falling in favorable ways for you.

It's not based on your goodness or on your success, but on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead in history, bodily, physically, an event that happened in this time and space.

Imagine for a second, uh, that you'd booked a holiday.

I don't know if that's something that you'd like to do ever again.

That you could go somewhere that's not Lynch.

Or dummy gall.

Imagine that you'd booked a holiday and you'd you'd secured it by paying a down payment.

From that moment, the place on your vacation is secure.

If you don't pay a down payment, if you don't pay a deposit, then you might wonder: well, will Michael O'Leary let me down?

Will I be able to go?

The past reality of the down payment gives you a more certain hope for the realized reality in the future.

Jesus' resurrection is like that.

Jesus' resurrection is a down payment that secures the future hope of our life with him in the world to come.

Beyond death, beyond the circumstances that you are facing at the moment.

That is why it is called an inheritance.

Something that we'll come back to in just a moment.

But just note for now that this inheritance, this future that's laid up for you, is secured for you, not by what you have done, but by Jesus' own resurrection from the dead.

And where is it kept for you?

It's not hidden under the mattress, it's not in your own head, it's not in your own heart, it's kept where in heaven?

Where no sickness can penetrate.

No illness can seize that healthy shore.

And so Peter says that it is imperishable.

Verse four.

To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, it cannot be spoiled for you.

That it is unfading, that all of the luster and glory and beauty of it will be undiminished by the time you receive it.

It is a living hope.

Over and over and over again in this world, we lose the hopes that we have.

Not so with the hope that is laid up for us in heaven through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

What comfort is this in the midst of our suffering?

It's that you have a certain hope that no suffering can take away because it's not kept in this world.

So many have lost so much as a result of COVID-19.

Some of you, perhaps in this room, some of you watching this are grieving, angry, and hopeless.

Jesus would offer you a hope this morning that no amount of suffering can take away.

It is secured for you because he is alive.

How does that hope function?

So it said, it's there, it's in your future, right?

So you think, okay, well, great.

Well, what about now?

And what Peter says is that future hope actually functions in the present now in your life.

Let's look at how.

Look with me at verses six and seven.

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.

The first thing that I want you to notice is right there at the start of verse 6.

Notice the tenses.

Not in this you will rejoice.

There will be rejoicing for you in the future.

No, no, present tense.

In this you rejoice.

Present tense, even though, continuing on in verse six, even though now, in this present time, you have trials of various sorts and kinds.

Do you see?

Present tense joy.

Present tense suffering.

Suffering now.

Joy now.

Working in tandem.

And the suffering here, the the trials, the trials word, there's no small thing.

It's the same word that is used on Jesus' lips when he's in Gethsemane, when he cries out to God and says that my my that I am overwhelmed with sorrow.

The word sorrow there is the word trial here.

And so it's not any small thing that Peter is saying that they're going through, that they're feeling crushed and when they die with sorrow and grief.

And Peter still says you can rejoice now, present tense, even though you're crying out in sorrow now, present tense.

He does not say you have been rejoicing and now you're grieving, but don't worry, your joy will come back.

It's just around the corner.

No, he says the most peculiar thing.

He says that you can be filled with joy and at the same time be full of sorrow.

Wow.

This is just off the radar for most people, isn't it?

I know it is in my own life.

They are paradoxical things like oil and water.

They don't mix.

You have joy and you have grief.

How is it that joy and grief can mingle together in the Christian life like this?

Most people say it's impossible.

Why?

Because how can you rejoice in hope when the thing that you hope in has been taken away?

You're either in joy or in sorrow, but you cannot be in both.

That is why people can't get their heads around it.

It doesn't compute.

Why?

Because for most people, their hope, their source of joy, is a circumstance.

It is something that is earth-bind, time-bined, space-bined.

Your hope, the source of your joy, is your family, your career, your success, your children, your health, your comfort.

And if those hopes, those sources of joy are taken away, then you are plunged into sorrow.

But for the Christian, because our hope is in the living hope that is in Jesus, that means that it can never be taken away, that it never be, that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading.

It means that we can face sorrow and still have joy.

And I think that this is not just off the radar for uh for people who wouldn't consider themselves Christians.

It's off the radar for us.

It's off the radar for the average Christian.

Because we think that we think that we should always just be joyful and not really experience grief and you know, rejoicing and give thanks in all circumstances.

That's what we say.

And praising God in all circumstances.

No, no, no.

To do that, Peter's not talking about repression.

Job tore his clothes and cried out and wept and sat in the dust of the earth.

And in all of this, we're told that Job did not sin.

Here's what a living hope does.

It drastically, drastically changes the relationship between joy and sorrow in your life.

This is so important.

Without a living hope, it's one or the other.

You're in joy or you're in sorrow.

But if you have a living hope, then two things can happen.

First, when you're in sorrow, it can deepen your joy by enabling deeper, greater faith.

That is what he means when he talks about in that little parenthesis in verse seven, when he says that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, that perishes, though it is tested by fire.

That's what happens when you put gold in the fire, it becomes brighter, more pure, it becomes stronger.

Peter is saying that your faith is like that when you face trials with your hope set in Jesus.

It is that refiner's fire that will brighten and beautify and strengthen the faith that you have.

It is sorrow that is used to actually drive you deeper into Christ.

And that in turn gives you fuller joy.

That's the first thing.

Your sorrow can enable greater joy by deepening faith.

But the second thing that it does, and this may be hard to get our heads around, but I think this is true.

The second thing that it does is it's not only that the sorrow increases joy, but that the joy enables you to truly have sorrow.

The joy enables you to truly have sorrow.

To really grieve.

What do people do when they face sorrow and grief?

We often, I think many of us, just run and hide from the pain.

Try to dull it any way we can.

Explain it away.

Repress it.

We go into indifference.

We go to anger.

You think of a guy who's he just had his heart broken over and over and over again.

And a guy turns around and says, I'm I'm done with women.

I'm done with them.

I hate women.

What's happening?

Instead of feeling the pain and moving through it, he's running to anger.

You think of the person who is grieving right now.

He's like, I'm done with God.

To hell with him.

What are they doing?

They're running to anger.

The normal way to deal with sorrow is to harden ourselves because we're scared of feeling pain.

We think that it will crush us.

And we think that we will never have joy again.

But in the Christian life, you get joy and hope from heaven.

And that enables you to feel the sorrow of this world.

So you don't have to be scared that it's going to be taken away from you.

You will rejoice.

Joy will come in the morning.

It means that you can move through the grief and process it and feel it rather than around it in a way that makes your heart hard and calloused.

If you move through it, you will learn more.

You'll learn more about the world.

You'll learn more about yourself.

You'll learn more about what really matters, and you'll learn more about God and His sustaining grace.

And so don't run from the wisdom that sorrow has for you.

Don't run from the wisdom that grief will teach you.

As a Christian, with our hope set in heaven by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, we can look at that grief full in the face and know that it will not overwhelm us.

Because we have a living hope that is kept for us in heaven.

Do you see?

That's why a living hope, not based out of our circumstances, is so important.

It deepens your joy in the face of suffering now and allows you to face grief in an emotionally healthy way that's not going to crush and overwhelm you.

That's really important, isn't it?

Being a Christian offers you that.

What is that future hope?

Are we able to nail it down from this passage?

Well, kind of.

I'll read from the start, but I think it's this last sentence.

Is it so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, that perishes though it is tested by fire, and here's the hope I think may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ?

I think that's the hope that your life in the end might result in the praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Now here's the thing.

Who deserves praise and glory and honor?

Sunday school?

Jesus.

There we go, well done.

He is the one who deserves praise and glory and honor.

But let us remember that the rest of the New Testament speaks of how we as Christians share in all of the blessings due to Jesus.

He himself prays in his high priestly prayer in John 17 that we might have the same sort of relationship with God that he has with his own father.

And so what is that living hope?

That living hope is that one day God, who is your father, will give you all the things that Jesus Christ Himself deserves.

That He will give you praise and glory and honor.

Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master.

That is our hope that one day we will enter into the full realization of that relationship as a child of God.

Knowing that, knowing that that is what is kept in heaven for you will help you to endure life in this world, this world that is not your home, and to look beyond it and to glimpse, just from time to time, to glimpse across Jordan's stormy banks to that promised land where your inheritance lies.

And how do you get it?

You get it by faith.

Verse 8, though you have not seen him, you love him.

Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with a joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.

It is by faith.

Though you have not seen him, you believe in him.

You put your trust not in the fleeting hopes of this world, but in the one who died and rose for you.

If your faith, your trust is in Jesus, you will have a hope that no amount of suffering can take away.

We cannot live without hope.

Hope has sustained us these last six months in ways that I imagine we can scarcely comprehend.

God is about ten billion things in each of your lives.

And from time to time he lets you glimpse three of them.

We cannot live without hope.

And so I invite you, whether you're here in this room or whether you're watching online, to grasp hope, to grasp hold of that hope by faith that will never perish, spoil, or fade.

We're going to take a moment of silence.

If you're watching online and you're able to, though I imagine some of you have children running around right now, but if you're able to take a moment just to reflect on what God might be teaching you, then I will pray.

And after that we get to sing.

Let's just keep silence just for a moment.

Oh Lord, we bring to you our griefs, our sorrows, and our fears.

And we ask that by your Holy Spirit you would use them in the ways that we have just described to deepen faith, to increase joy.

Father, renew and restore our hope in the risen Lord Jesus and our joy in the blessings that are laid up for us.

And in all that you have done for us.

Be with us now as we sing.

We pray it in the name of Jesus.

Amen.