Is the Hope of the Christian Life Just Wishful Thinking? (1 Peter 1:3-9)

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This is Pastor Creighton.

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The second lesson from 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 3 to 9.

1 Peter 1:3–9

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.

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.

The word of the Lord.

According to God's great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

So let's pray.

Lord, you have made known to us the path of life, and you will make us full of gladness with your presence.

Lord Jesus, your resurrection means we'll rise.

So we pray, Lord, would you implant this hope deep in our hearts?

Nurture it by your Holy Spirit, cause us to behold you with the eyes of faith, risen, Lord Jesus.

We pray this in your precious name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Is the Christian life a life of hope or wishful thinking?

Is the Christian life a life of hope or wishful thinking?

One fellow was convinced of his answer.

His name was Sigmund Freud.

Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis and one of the most influential minds of the last century.

He writes that religion, and particularly for him the Christian religion, is a system of wishful illusions, together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find nowhere else but in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion.

I wonder what he really thinks.

So you ask Freud, well, what do you think about the resurrection of Jesus?

What do you think about eternal life?

About Christian hope?

And he'll tell you exactly what he thinks.

Christians are the worst sorts of wishful thinkers.

They are just as deluded as an institutionalized patient hallucinating a reality of their own.

Maybe even worse off, because these Christians would expect others to submit to their own delusion.

Fred's objection here, I think, is worth us wrestling around with.

It's worth us taking seriously.

Maybe we've wondered for ourselves.

Are we Christians delusional for believing the gospel?

Is trusting God's word, his promises, and scripture a disavowal of reality?

Does faith demand that we check our brains at the door and stop asking questions?

Does the Christian life confuse hope with wishful thinking?

I think we wandered along those lines, we find ourselves in good company with Thomas the Apostle.

For hope to be hope and not wishful thinking, we could say, it must be a realistic expectation for a certain thing to happen.

An expectation is realistic when we have reasonable grounds to expect it.

So growing savings and making wise investments is a reasonable hope for our retirement.

Me saying my retirement plan is winning the lottery is wishful thinking.

Especially because I haven't bought a lottery ticket.

See, without reasonable grounds, hope cannot be realistic.

And all we really have is wishful thinking, untethered from reality.

You tracking with me?

Hope is why we're gathered here today.

Hope is essential to the Christian life.

The gospel itself is a proclamation, not of what we we hope is true, not what our best wishful thinking can conjure up.

The gospel is a proclamation of hope that through the crucified and risen Lord Jesus, we can expect to be delivered from sin and death and to spend eternity with Jesus in his everlasting kingdom.

But is this hope realistic?

What gives us reasonable grounds for having such a hope?

Or are we indeed just deluding ourselves?

Peter's convinced of his answer.

Peter was commissioned by Jesus to be an apostle, a witness, and a pastor to the very first generation of the church.

Peter wants to make clear that a Christian's expectation of deliverance from sin and death to eternal life is not wishful thinking.

It is not delusion.

It's not a disavowal of reality.

It is a living hope.

And this living hope, Peter wants us to understand, is grounded in the resurrection.

It guards us for our inheritance, and it transforms our present trials.

Friends, this is your living hope, my living hope, if our faith is in Jesus.

So let's open up the scripture, let's open up our order of service or whatever else and turn to 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 3 to 9.

1 Peter 1:3–9

Peter writes this letter to first century Christians scattered throughout Asia Minor, many of whom are suffering for their faith because of the brutal oppression of the Roman Empire.

So he writes to encourage these Christians to persevere through their present suffering by keeping their hope alive in God's saving promises.

Our living hope is, first and foremost, grounded in the resurrection.

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 to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

So Peter wants his fellow Christians to be so clear, so so clear.

Christian hope is a grounded hope.

It is grounded in the reality of Christ's resurrection, an actual historical resurrection from the dead, which Peter himself and many others witnessed.

It's this resurrection that opens the way from death to new life.

Or put it another way, the fact that Christ that Christ was dead and is now alive is reasonable grounds for a Christian to hope that though she die, yet like Christ, she too will live.

So it'd be very easy at first glance to mistake a Christian's living hope for wishful thinking, wouldn't it?

Resurrections don't happen every day.

If they do in your life, then we need to talk.

It would be nice enough to suppose that Christ rose from the dead, or maybe choose to live our lives as if that were the case.

But supposing that Christ rose from the dead means that we can only suppose that we might do the Peter is not writing as someone who supposes that Christ rose from the dead.

He's not writing as a wicked thinker, an unflappable optimist, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Rather, he's writing as an eyewitness to the fact of the resurrection.

See, the gospel tells us that Peter himself ran and saw the empty tomb on that first Easter Sunday.

And Peter would have been in the room with the other disciples when the risen Jesus stood among them, held out his hands, and said, Peace be with you.

And shortly after this, John tells us that Jesus tenderly restored Peter by asking him three times, Do you love me?

Much like Jesus, or Peter denied Jesus three times himself.

See, all this results in Peter's crowd of thousands in Acts chapter 2 and proclaiming this Jesus, God raised up.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

And of this we are all witnesses.

This is a real, historical, bodily resurrection, not supposition.

And the memory of tells us that Peter went to his martyrdom proclaiming this same risen Jesus.

See, the resurrection of Jesus was not supposition or thinking, but for Peter it was vividly real and it reshaped his view of reality.

For Peter, the living hope of a Christian is rooted in the real reality of resurrection.

One commentator writes that believers have an unshakable hope for the future.

For Christ's resurrection is a pledge of their own future resurrection.

So the Christian life is a life of living hope because it is, it is not wishful thinking, it's grounded in the reality of Christ's own resurrection from the dead.

History has reshaped itself around this one remarkable fact that Jesus is alive.

Living hope is grounded in the resurrection, and living hope guards us for our inheritance.

See, this singular living hope changes everything, doesn't it?

By it, Christians are born again, writes Peter, 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 at the last time.

So what does Peter mean here by inheritance?

Did you catch that?

No doubt the imagination of his first Jewish audience would quickly remember the inheritance of the promised land that was pledged to their ancestors to Abraham at the very beginning of the Bible.

This land is described in Deuteronomy chapter 12 as the inheritance that the Lord your God is giving you.

Deuteronomy 12 · chapter mention

So for God's people, the inheritance represents the outcome of all of God's promises.

That God's people received their inheritance, the promised land, was the greatest assurance that God's promises are not empty, but they are guaranteed.

Generations later, when God's people finally occupy the land, we read in Joshua chapter 21 that the Lord gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it and they settled there.

Joshua 21 · chapter mention

Not one word of all the good promises the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed.

All came to pass.

That is a word of assurance.

God's promised inheritance tells God's people that what God says he'll do is as good as done.

Peter understands this.

And this is why he describes God's promised inheritance as imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.

God himself, his word, is the guarantee.

But unlike the earthly inheritance of the promised land for God's people Israel, Peter has in mind a heavenly inheritance for his new covenant people.

See, Abraham understood that God's promised land, as innocent as a pledge was in itself, Abraham himself understood that it pointed to greater things to come.

In Hebrews chapter 11, we read that by faith Abraham went to live in the land of promise, for he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer is points to a greater promise still.

Hebrews 11 · chapter mention

This ultimate inheritance which Abraham expected, the whole of the Bible point is the heavenly city that we see pictured at the very end of the Bible in Revelation chapter 21.

Revelation 21 · chapter mention

The holy city, the new Jerusalem, the new Jerusalem, in which the dwelling place of God is with man, and death shall be no more.

This saints is the fullness of our inheritance secured for us by Christ's resurrection.

Through the risen Christ, we are born again to an eternal hope that we ourselves will be raised from the dead, like our Lord Jesus at his coming.

And having been raised from the dead, death itself will be no more, and we will dwell with God in his kingdom forever.

Our living hope is to be raised and brought into this heavenly promised land.

And this hope is as sure as God is true to his promises.

To this end, Peter writes that by God's power you are being guarded through faith for a salvation, ready to be revealed at the last time.

In other words, God doesn't make big promises as well and then toss us out into the wilderness to do our very best to keep the faith until the end.

He is keeping watch.

He is protecting and providing for us.

The same word for guarding is used in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, where Paul recounts that the governor under King Eratus was guarding the city of Damascus in order to seize me.

2 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

Peter wants the Christian to know that their heavenly resurrection inheritance is guarded by the power of God, by the power of God.

As guarded as Damascus, locked down by God's own power.

So a Christian's living hope for an inheritance of resurrection life is as sure as Christ's own remission.

And it's as sure as God's ability to keep his promises.

And it's as sure, pardon me, it's as sure as his power is sufficient to beard us until we receive that fullness of our inheritance.

Perhaps we can start to see why for Peter, this living hope can transform life's many trials and sorrows.

In this hope, Peter writes, 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 honoration of Jesus Christ.

Wishful thinking does us little good in the trials of life, doesn't it?

I mean, sure, positive thinking is great in difficult stance in difficult circumstances, there's no question there.

But when we receive that news, when we receive that diagnosis, fill in the blank.

There's no amount of wishful thinking that can change our circumstances, no matter how much we might want to, there's no amount of wishful thinking that can guarantee us a brighter future.

What we need in these trials is grounds for hope, a real hope, reasonable grounds to expect something other than the way things are.

So let's remember that writing to Christians with the luxury of wishful thinking.

He writes to Christians who've put their trust in the risen Lord Jesus as their living hope, despite the very real possibility that this faith could mean that they lose their social standing, endure political pressure to conform, get cast out of their families, or even lose their very hearts.

Peter wants to make it clear we can rejoice in this living hope, not despite our trials and hardships, but surprisingly enough, we can rejoice in our living hope because of our trials and hardships.

Peter writes, it's not like the pass or fail sort of test.

It's more like how the purity of gold is tested by the end of a forge that burns away any impurities or corruption that doesn't belong, leaving the gold even more radiant and stronger than it was before.

The pain of our trials is not God's pleasure, but the result of a stronger faith forged through trial radiates his glory all the more brilliantly.

So, what trials are you facing?

What circumstances in your life grieve you?

Do you struggle to conceive of a brighter future ahead?

Facing the trials of life as a Christian does not mean we don't wrestle with despair, that we don't feel overwhelmed.

Even Jesus himself was greatly troubled on the His cross and agonized over the suffering that was in store for him there.

Living hope does not mean that Christians live with a naive optimism when life gets hard.

It does mean that we're in sight of the hope of the resurrection.

That no matter how difficult our present circumstances get, Christians can remain confident that God has not abandoned us or forsaken us, and that He is still guarding our inheritance, that He can you and that He can use the trials we face to refine us so that we can shine with an even greater resurrection glory.

Living hope means that as surely as the greatest trial of Christ's cross was redeemed by his resurrection, God will surely redeem our present excruciating trials by the outcome of our faith, our salvation, our future resurrection.

We are never, ever left without hope, living hope, because of our Lord Jesus Christ, because of God's sure promises, because of his power to guard us and to refine us through our Lord Jesus.

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.

So the question is, is the Christian life a life of hope or wishful thinking?

Is it a disavowal of reality or a hallucinatory confusion?

The living hope that Peter writes about means that we bring the reality of Christ's resurrection to bear on each and every one of our present circumstances.

The fact that Christ is reason, as Peter himself bore witness, gives us reasonable expectation that we too will rise.

Reasonable expectation that his promise is a sure thing, reasonable expectation that we are guarded and refined for that day where we ourselves will be raised with our Lord Jesus and be with him in his kingdom forever.

In light of the resurrection, we can recognize that no matter how hopeless our present good Friday circumstances may seem, God is preparing within us a glorious Easter morning that will far outweigh all of these momentary trials.

Living hope means we persevere.

Living hope means we hold fast, knowing that we are held fast by the risen one.

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

Amen.ca slash giving for more information on how to do that.

May God bless you and keep you today and every day.