Christianity and Hope

This morning we consider the Christian and hope.

The Christian and hope, this is the third part of a three-part series on the God-centered life.

Today we're going to think about a topic that is in the Bible a good bit, but we might skip over.

We might downplay.

We might think of as a reality that is true, that is biblical, but doesn't have a lot of grounding.

How you're supposed to be hopeful?

What exactly does this mean?

In fact, hope has a bad reputation out there, doesn't it?

If you think about somebody who's hopeful, if you describe somebody that way, you might think of, I don't know, some sort of Disney character, a Disney animal who walks around chirping things that don't really have a lot of purchase on everyday life.

Hope doesn't seem gritty.

Hope doesn't seem realistic.

I think a lot of times we almost choose between hope and realism.

Realism being, you know, life is hard.

It's better for me to just stay in the trenches, not get my hopes up.

Who's heard that phrase?

We don't want to get well.

Hold on, hold on.

How many times have we said this in a conversation?

Hold on there.

We don't want to get our hopes up.

Now, there are plenty of things we need to be realistic about and we shouldn't get carried away over.

But in terms of biblical hope, Christian hope, here's some good news.

You can definitely get your hopes up.

You can get your hopes way, way up.

Not in yourself and not in your circumstances, but in Jesus.

In God, you don't have to hold onto the balloon.

Okay?

You don't have to hold onto the balloon.

No, I can't let my hopes get up.

No, you can let the balloon go and it can soar.

And in fact, in this strange metaphor, you can continue holding onto the string and the string can carry you as in a raw, dull book into the very celestial reaches themselves.

Okay.

Well, we're off with a bang here and verging far from my notes.

So let's get into 1 Peter 1, 3 to 5.

1 Peter 1, 3 to 5.

Just a short section.

You could go a lot of different places to talk about biblical hope.

I again want you to hear this morning that hope is not the enemy of realism.

Hope is not the enemy of everyday Christianity.

Hope is not the enemy of common sense.

Hope is actually what gives your entire life an upswing.

But not, not the typical worldly hope, not circumstantial hope, Christ centered hope.

First Peter 1, verse 3.

1 Peter 1:3

"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 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." Let's pray.

Father, as we start this morning, I pray for many different folks who are in here who already may be thinking, I don't have a ton of hope or at least on a day by day basis in certain circumstances they're feeling hopeless.

They're genuinely battling despair.

In fact, Father, we can confess that we can broaden that circle to all of us.

All of us at some level battle hopelessness.

All of us feel like we're overwhelmed by the world, the flesh and the devil.

And I pray this morning, Father, that you will fill us with Christ centered hope.

In Jesus name we pray.

Amen.

The major point I wish to make in this session is this.

We Christians live by hope, not by despair.

We live by hope, not by despair.

Let's ground this truth in the word.

The reason, verse 3, we have a living hope.

You see that phrase in the second part of verse 3.

We have a living hope is because of God the Father.

Now remember that when the New Testament authors write about different members of the Godhead, they don't melt everything down so that there's only one person.

Remember that the New Testament itself, including Peter here, feels a lot of freedom to talk about God the Father in distinct terms, God the Son in distinct terms, God the Spirit in distinct terms.

Never disunited, never separated from one another.

Always in perfect divine union.

And yet there are three persons and they are real persons.

They are living persons.

They're not sort of shadowy mirages of persons.

They are actual divine persons.

And God the Father is in view here.

And God the Father is so often in view for both Peter and Paul in opposition to, in contrast to, a Christian faith that again melts the Trinitarian persons down or only really talks about Jesus.

We actually need to talk a lot about God the Father.

Look at what Peter says about God the Father.

Look at the character of God the Father that is highlighted here.

According to His great mercy.

So God the Father has huge stores of mercy that He wants to show.

God the Father is a very merciful Father.

That's not my gloss on the biblical text.

That's not me trying to ramp things up or add things in to the scripture.

According to His great mercy.

So even there, Christian, even there, is that how you think about God the Father?

Do you think about God the Father as having a little bit of mercy?

Or do you think that He has, according to Peter, great mercy?

That's what He has.

He has great mercy, not generically, not abstractly, but for you and for me.

And that's just amazing news.

Just wonderful news.

According to His great mercy, because He loves to help sinners, verse 3, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope.

It is God who causes the new birth, not man.

That's what Peter is teaching us.

There's no person who can cause themselves to be born again.

It has to be God the Father working to make us born again.

And that's incredible news.

That's news that puts the spotlight on God's sovereignty.

And so sometimes people are like, "Oh, I don't like this strong doctrine from the Bible." But it's actually very encouraging news that your God is a very, very, very strong God.

Because your God is so good.

So there's the marriage of goodness and strength in the Father.

And that is wonderfully encouraging for us.

This God is so strong that when He wants to regenerate a sinner, give them new life, give them spiritual life, He doesn't.

He causes it.

This is how powerful He is.

You and I are not God.

You and I are not the Savior.

You and I are not tasked with saving anyone.

We cannot save anyone.

But God the Father can save.

And He does save.

And He causes us to experience the new birth such that then we have a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Christian, we do not have a dead faith because we do not have a dead Savior.

If we did have a dead Savior, we would have a dead faith.

Listen to me.

If you had a dead Savior, you should live in despair.

If you had a dead Savior, you should be anxious.

If you had a dead Savior, you should throw up your hands.

If you had a dead Savior, there's no reason to think anything's getting better.

Really and truly.

I mean, eat cake and get ready to die.

Basically, that's what life looks like if your Savior is dead.

But here's the deal.

You have a living hope because you have a living Savior.

You have a living Savior right now.

Jesus Christ is not a word carved in stone up in the clouds.

Jesus Christ, like God the Father, is a living Savior, a living Trinitarian person.

He is, the Bible tells us, seated at the right hand of God the Father this minute.

Jesus is not a cloud.

Jesus is not a mirage.

Jesus is a person, and that person is interceding, is praying for you as a Christian now.

And Jesus Christ now is reigning and ruling over every molecule of the cosmos.

It doesn't look like He is, but you are not supposed to calibrate your understanding of the lordship of Christ by how things look.

We literally are told, don't walk by sight, aren't we?

We live by faith.

This is a kingdom, honestly, that you really can't see.

You can see little touches of it in the world, but you're not supposed to be able to see, at least substantially, the reign of Jesus Christ, the rule of Jesus Christ that has already begun.

It began with His resurrection.

So your Redeemer lives.

Jesus is living.

Jesus is alive.

And that is why hope is ever renewing for the Christian.

There is no such thing as a hopeless cause for a Christian.

You are not a hopeless Christian.

Your life is not hopeless.

If you are in Christ, you have infinite hope in Jesus, but not in a generic big box American.

Well, things will just get better.

Well, hey, I mean, we've climbed up the socioeconomic ladder and we're doing pretty well.

And you know, circumstances just tend to be getting better in life.

And so, look, have hope.

Things get, things are pretty good.

That's not our hope.

That's not our hope.

We're thankful for a, for a thriving country where we can get one.

We're thankful for many good benefits in America over the decades.

We're grateful for that.

We fight to preserve that as much as we can.

All sorts of things to say about that.

But fundamentally, our hope isn't in America.

Our hope isn't in our 401k.

Our hope isn't in our strong family.

Our hope is in Christ.

Everything can be taken from you.

This is how strong your hope is.

And you have total hope in Jesus.

Everything you have right now that is good could be taken from you.

And your, your hope in Jesus doesn't lessen one, one millionth of a percentage point.

Everything could be taken from you and you have the exact same hope you had 10 minutes before it was taken from you.

That is how strong our, our living hope is in Jesus.

Our God, furthermore, we learn is storing up an inheritance for us.

Verse four.

See that?

"To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you." There's no inflation, good news, or deflation regarding your heavenly inheritance.

If you log in online to check the account and its value, it doesn't go down.

It's wonderful.

This is really wonderful.

This is a strong contrast with the global marketplace right now.

And any retirement savings, forget 401ks, you may, just, just check your bank account.

Just try to buy, try to buy a foot long BLT from Subway.

It is now, it is now a decision that requires like some real thought.

You got to check, should I move money into the checking account so that I can buy Subway for this family?

Can we, hey honey, can we, do you think we can do this?

Should I pull the trigger on McDonald's today?

I mean, it's just costs, just rising, rising, rising.

I've had multiple insurance matters just all of a sudden.

It's a different figure on the bill.

It just, there you go.

Okay, well, where's that money coming from?

Magic.

It's magic.

We'll just print more money and figure that out.

All right, that's enough economic discussion this morning.

I've reached the limits of my understanding anyway.

Here's some amazing news.

Your heavenly bank account doesn't flex you in.

It doesn't change.

It's not up and down.

Heaven is coming.

Beyond heaven, the new heavens and new earth are coming and they are imperishable, undefiled and unfading.

That inheritance, that eternal fate that awaits you is not changeable.

No one can change it.

Nothing can change it.

Nothing can take it away.

This isn't being so heavenly minded, we're no earthly good.

See, there's another sentence that you can tell.

It's like from the devil himself because it works against the idea of hope, doesn't it?

It's just like, it's so gloomy.

It's so dour.

It's so miserable.

There are so many miserable phrases out there that we just repeat to ourselves almost without thinking.

Well, the Bible goes the opposite way.

Peter goes the opposite way and says, "No, you've got to be so heavenly minded that you are some earthly good, but even forget earthly good for a second.

Forget earthly good.

Why are you so focused on earthly good?

You have a heavenly inheritance." That's amazing news.

If Peter thought this was a waste of time and wouldn't cause Christians to be hopeful and change their lives, he wouldn't include this here, would he?

He's trying to encourage exiles. He's trying to encourage his audience who are scattered Christians.

They are not experiencing anything close to political domination.

He doesn't call for any project along those lines.

In fact, basically what Peter says throughout this letter to the elect exiles is, I mean, bear up under suffering, honor the emperor.

It's the opposite of a takeover things.

What Peter is saying is things are really rough out there in the world.

Does that apply to us in 2024?

It absolutely does.

But he's saying to Christians, don't find your hope in those circumstances.

You're going to be tempted to.

You and I are tempted to.

Hourly, and the first century church didn't have to deal with 24/7 news channels and all the rest and social media that really can work against, oh man, it could just whittle down hope like a little tree twig till there's nothing there.

Just keep whittling.

Just take out the stick of hope.

It's already a little small, it feels like.

And then take a knife and just cut, just whittle all day until all of a sudden you look down and your hands are bleeding.

There's blood on the knife handle and you've got no hope left in functional terms because it's just been cut to nothing.

That is not what Peter is setting our eyes on.

Peter is saying, this isn't a little tree twig of hope.

This is a massive tree.

This is a redwood oak.

This is one of those trees you see on people's backdrops of their desktop, of their computer.

This is so huge the human eye can barely take it in.

This is a living hope so big that you go to the base of the tree and you look up and you can't see the top of it.

That is how strong your hope is in Jesus Christ.

That is everyone's hope in here who is in Jesus.

Some of us don't have more hope than others.

We all have imperishable, undefiled, and unfading inheritance and thus hope in Jesus Christ.

But the news just keeps getting better in this passage.

This inheritance, Peter says, is secure and stable, but it's not just in a state of being fine.

It is "teterimene n'uranois," that's the Greek, verse 4, "kept in heaven for you." Or you could say, "being kept," more technically, "being kept in heaven for you," verse 4.

Why is that significant?

Why go to verb tense?

Because the passive voice there is very important.

This eternal inheritance, your fate, you going to heaven and then the new heavens and new earth beyond that, your ticket is punched.

It is being kept in heaven for you.

No one can take it from you.

It's not even dependent on you.

Sometimes when preachers, even preachers who love the sovereignty of God from the scripture, talk about God keeping us, eternal security in Christ, election, etc.

Such concepts.

Sometimes we say something like, you're being kept and then we super quickly jump to, and yet you've got to work, you've got to make sure that this is, you've got to do your part.

I want to talk about that.

I've got sermons to preach on that about our accountability and our responsibility and fear and trembling before the Lord and pursuing holiness.

That is vital.

All of that is absolutely a part of vital Christianity.

But I don't want to skip past the divine part.

I think we are terrified sometimes of being heard as people who would put too much hope in God and too much confidence in the divine and people would start hearing us and they would think, wait a minute, maybe this guy is a creeping antinomian and he doesn't think my life matters.

And I think we're almost scared of that.

And I want to just push reset for a minute.

And I want to just linger on what the Bible teaches.

And I want you to hear that your eternal inheritance, your ticket to the new heavens and new earth is being kept in heaven for you.

Period.

It is not going to be you fretting this out and sweating this out to keep that hold on your ticket, kid.

No, it's being kept in.

God Himself has the ticket.

God Himself has the gate code on heaven.

And when you approach the gates, God will ensure that they swing open for you.

That is not a teaching that defeats the pursuit of holiness or something like that is a teaching that inflames that is a teaching that invigorates it because now you can run not with anxiety, but with confidence that you're going to make it because God is going to get you.

There's no greater spur to holiness and killing sin and loving Christ than knowing that your heavenly Father is going to get you there.

It's going to happen.

Your heavenly Father is not impersonally keeping this.

He's personally keeping watch over.

This inheritance, but that's not all the Father is doing for you.

Verse five indicates that you are being guarded.

You see that in verse five who by God's power, God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time here again.

Verb tense matters for a Roman us being guarded in the Greek by the Father's power.

That passive voice is so important because it's not that you are guarding yourself.

It's that God is guarding you here again.

That's incredibly encouraging.

You're not going to be guarded by the strength of your own efforts.

You're guarded right now through God's work, through God's power, not through a synthesis of your power and God's power, but the text Peter throws all the emphasis on God's power.

You're being kept, you're being guarded by God's power.

So hey, when you're driving around this week, when you've got these moments where you're low and you're wondering if you can just keep going and you're wondering if you can get through this latest trial that is hitting you and you honestly feel like you're not sure that you can.

This is not pie in the sky teaching that has no bearing on those moments.

This is not impractical material.

This is the most practical material you could get.

Ask your mind to the text and to heaven and just remind yourself when you're hitting a low point as you will, as we all do.

Wait a minute.

I'm feeling like I'm just drifting in the ocean and there's not hope in this situation.

Right now I'm being guarded by God's power through faith and that will encourage, that will strengthen you.

Your inheritance is being kept and you are being guarded by God's power and that ensures that your salvation will endure and you will eventually see it revealed in the last time.

These are certainties.

You understand?

These are matters you can have confidence in.

There's no like maybe this will happen for you in Peter's language.

This is confident language.

Peter knows of what he speaks.

Peter has sinned tremendously against Christ and Peter has had the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Look him in the eye and restore him to ministry and give him hope.

Peter himself, after he denied his Lord and Master three times, does that resonate with you?

Have you denied your Lord and Master in some practical functional way this week, this past week?

I have.

I'm guessing you have.

Have you been perfect before the Lord this past week?

You haven't.

You and I have been.

We have been unfaithful to our Lord and Master.

We too have wandered from our King.

We haven't we haven't witnessed a Christ as we should.

We haven't loved our spouses.

We should.

We haven't loved our family members as we should.

We haven't walked with Christ as we should sit is real sit is serious.

But here's a bigger reality.

Our Lord and Master comes to us to through text like this and he restores us and he calls us back and he gives us hope and he lifts up our eyes and he says effectively you have a living hope.

Let's get after it.

So what does all this mean in practical terms?

Three quick applications.

Three quick applications for you.

First, focus your attention on God's goodness to you.

Focus your attention on God's goodness to you.

You've got a choice here.

You got a choice.

I have a choice.

You can focus on one of two things day by day and minute by minute.

You can focus on what you don't have and what is hard or you can focus on what you do have and how good God has been.

It's a little simple but I think it's actually pretty functionally true.

I think that's what Peter is doing for a bunch of people who don't have a homeland as he's writing to them.

A bunch of people who are dispersed and scattered and struggling and wandering.

Here again God's people in the New Testament era are effectively exiles again and guess what you and I are effectively today?

Exiles.

Exiles again.

I don't mean you're not involved in your country and your community.

That's not what I'm saying but I'm saying in terms of your true home, you and I are without a country basically.

We're waiting for our country, our better country as Hebrews 13 says.

The ordinary setting of the Christian life is not misery.

You are supposed to focus your attention, as a Christian I think, taking your cues from Peter and many other passages we could talk about, on the goodness of God.

Focus your attention on the goodness of God.

We should be watchful about Satan.

We should grieve our sin on a daily basis.

We should fight it.

We should lament the abiding presence of evil in our world.

When suffering hits we are right to mourn it.

When loved ones die we are justified.

In many nights of weeping all that is sound and even faithful.

All that is part of a full-orbed Christian life where there's great joy and yes at times there is great mourning.

But the ordinary setting of the Christian life I repeat myself is not gloom.

It's not misery.

It's not what we lack.

It's what we have.

It's what God has given.

This is not a button you push and then everything's solved for the rest of your life.

This is a fight day by day.

It's its total war against evil and despair.

It's block by block.

It is a fresh minute by minute commitment to hope.

Set your mind on the hope of Christ.

Second, don't be swallowed up by worldly causes.

Don't be swallowed up by worldly causes.

We want to be salt and light in our world Matthew 5 13 to 14.

There's a ton to say about that.

There's books to be written about that we should expose unfruitful works of darkness.

Ephesians 5 11.

But I want to encourage you in 2020 horror especially with the year ahead to be very careful about your intake.

I'm not saying don't think societally and politically I'm not saying don't be involved.

I'm actually trying to be a small voice to say be involved in appropriate ways.

So again we can talk about that.

But what I want you to hear in this particular teaching time is this.

It's easy for you and me to get off track here.

It's easy for us to focus more on the darkness and what is being done.

We think it's best we can perceive it and you can't perceive it very well.

Satan keeps things very shadowy doesn't he?

He's always done that.

What's the council of Satan right now for the world?

What's the 50 step plan of Satan for the world?

How's he going to make the world burn in days ahead?

Do you know?

We don't know.

We know the broad parameters in the New Testament.

We don't know.

We're not called to zero in on the darkness.

The more you peer into the darkness that the fuzzier it gets.

Be a thoughtful Christian.

Be wise.

Don't be easily led astray.

Keep the night watch.

All these things must be done.

But the more time you spend peering into the darkness, conspiracy theories and terrible things that are happening, the more they darken your outlook.

The more your outlook darkens because you're your focus not on the light.

But on the darkness, the more the darkness.

It has an effect.

This is why you and I are supposed to be very careful about engaging evil.

We have to engage it.

Yes, but we have to do so carefully because even if you even if you're saying to yourself, I'm engaging the darkness so that I can be a part of overcoming it.

You'd be surprised at how much the darkness will affect you.

You are not Jesus.

You are not the Holy Spirit.

You can easily lose your purchase on gospel, light and gospel hope.

I'm telling you just a warning.

The more you obsess over the world and worldly imaginations and worldly processes and terrible things happening, especially where it's not exactly clear what's happening, you're you have an eye to it.

But the more you get lost there, the more God gets small, smaller God gets.

You've been around a person like that.

I have.

Maybe we've in fact slipped into being that in some season of our life where all we can talk about is this thing where every conversation goes to this thing.

Maybe the thing actually is happening.

But here's the thing.

Peter is writing to an embattled people who are in desperate circumstances and he's not saying everybody focus on narrow focus on the Roman emperors, focus on what they're doing.

Figure this out.

Launch the campaign against them.

What Peter is saying is lift up your eyes to your living hope.

Christian, focus on your living hope.

You can easily be led astray.

The world is on fire, yes.

But God's got you.

God's working in you.

God's sanctifying you.

God's making you look more and more like Christ.

God's Spirit is powerfully changing you.

God is going to cause you to make it to the end.

God's keeping an inheritance for you right now.

These are the things that Peter focuses his people's eyes on.

Third, third and final, fill yourself full of hope.

Fill yourself full.

Fill your tank full of hope.

Don't expect that if you fill the tank with despair and gloom and terrible things, even things that may be true, just don't expect there's going to be a lot of encouragement and cheer and happiness and Christian joy just pouring out of you.

On the other hand, by contrast, what you and I need to do is take in a lot of God-centered content.

We need to fill our mind with the things of God, especially the goodness and grace and love of God, which Satan wants to shrink to nothing in your vision.

Satan wants the world and evil and sin and politics to explode in your vision.

And Satan wants God's goodness and grace and mercy and love to be this, until it disappears and then you're living in despair.

It's Satan's victory.

So be careful about the worldly content you engage.

Serve your church, evangelize, disciple someone, meet up for fellowship.

When you see your thoughts dipping, bring a Bible passage to mind about hope.

Ask God to fill you with hope.

And remember this in conclusion, John 1, 3-5.

All things were made through him, through Christ the Word.

And without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

The light, remember this verse.

Bring this verse to mind.

I challenge you, I encourage you, you don't have to.

But here's a thought.

Here's one verse you could bring to mind this week.

When hopelessness starts to close in and God's grace and love and mercy start to shrink.

The light shines in the darkness.

And the darkness has not overcome it.

And the darkness never will.

Let's pray.

Father help us to be men and women of hope.

Increase our hope.

We all need help here.

None of us does this as we should, but we thank you that you are gracious and kind to renew our hope day by day.

Thank you that we have a living hope because we have a living safe.

In Jesus' name, Amen.

[BLANK_AUDIO]