Rise Up With Hope | Rise Up | Pastor Zach Weihrauch

This is a reading from first Peter 1:1-

1 Peter 1:1–12

12.

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus,

Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia,

and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge

of God the Father in the sanctification of the spirit,

for obedience to Jesus Christ, and for sprinkling with his blood.

May grace and peace be multiplied to you.

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

According to his great mercy.

He has caused us to be born again to a living hope

through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead

to an inheritance that is imperishable,

undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you,

who by God's power are being guarded through faith

for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary.

You have been grieved by various trials,

so that the tested genuineness of your faith,

more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found

to result 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 see him,

you believe in him and rejoice with him

that is inexpressible and filled with glory,

obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Concerning this salvation,

the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours

searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person

or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating.

When he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories,

it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves,

but you in the things that have now been announced to you

through those who preach the good news to you

by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven things into which angels longed to look.

Hey everybody, good morning and welcome to CCC.

It's so good to have you here.

We have been, as most of you know, in the midst of a transition

of the position of senior pastor from myself to Pastor Zach.

And the last step of that process was a vote of the membership

to affirm, Zach as pastor.

And now that has been concluded, and I get to give you the results

according to our constitution.

And, Zach needed at least 50% of the vote.

And because he received over 98%, I get to have the privilege

of introducing you to our new senior pastor, Doctor Zach.

Weihrauch.

Well, thank you.

As I've said before, it's such a privilege.

And, you know, this place has been home for a long time now,

but it's nice to have that out of the way, I think, and just let it be home.

So thank you so much.

Hey, I'm really excited about a new sermon series

we are starting this week, and it's going to take us all

through the fall, all the way up until Christmas.

We're going to be looking at First Peter.

In fact, if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and take it out

and open it to first Peter

chapter one, your phone, your tablet, however you want to get there.

And hey, if you're here and you're new to church, maybe it's been a while.

Maybe you've never been in church and you don't know,

you didn't know you need to bring a Bible.

You didn't know. You don't know where first Peter is.

Hey, let me just stop for a second and say, I'm so glad that you're here.

And you are in exactly the right place.

And everything that happens this morning is as much for you as it is for anyone.

And when I use a verse from the Bible, it's going to be on the screen behind me.

But if you want to hold something, there's a Bible in the pew in front of you

or in the back of East Hall.

It's actually the same one I use.

So I can tell you that, first Peter chapter one is on page 953.

Thanks for being here.

But however you're getting there, I want to let you know

that we are starting this sermon series because, we believe there's

a real similarity between the setting and context of first Peter and our own.

First Peter is a letter written to a church that is growing

in the midst of a hostile culture for the church that's growing.

But it's in a culture that is growing antagonistic towards the Christian faith.

And so Peter is writing to encourage them to keep going

despite the fact that the world might make that hard.

We think there are a lot of similarities between this church and the growth

we're experiencing.

And unfortunately, the direction that our culture is going.

So we're looking to be inspired,

looking to be encouraged, to be challenged by the message of First Peter.

In fact, we're calling this series Rise Up

because we think that's the message God's going to have for us that we need

to, both together and individually, stand up, speak

up, show up for what he wants to do in our world.

But you know what I love about God as he just he understands

us, which shouldn't surprise us since he made us.

But he begins this letter, which in a lot of ways is like a locker

room speech challenging us to speak up and stand up and show up.

But he begins with encouragement.

He begins with hope.

And that's actually we're going to talk about, this weekend.

And so here are the three points I'm going to use

as an outline to guide our time together.

Very simple.

First, life is hard.

Second, hope is available.

And third, hopeful living in hard times is possible.

Life is hard.

Hope is available and hopeful.

Living in hard times as possible.

All right.

Let me start with the first one life is hard.

You know, we work really hard here at Christ Community Chapel

to try to make sure that every weekend you come, you have a great experience

and a lot of energy and time goes into thinking

about your experience from the parking lot, how clean

the building is to the temperature we have in the room.

We want the music to be good.

We want people to smile when you walk in the door.

We want friendly people

to help you find a seat or to find your way around the building.

We want you to feel loved.

And that's important to us because we believe God is a God of love.

We believe that God loves you and we want to be an extension of that.

We we want you to experience his love through the way you are treated.

And we don't apologize for Polish.

I mean, we we believe good music is better than bad music.

My guess is you would agree.

We believe smiling people at the door is better than grumpy people.

At the door.

You probably agree with that.

But if we're not careful, sometimes I worry about

an unintended consequence of all that polish,

and that is that you might get the impression

that this church is for polished people,

that it's for kind of happy

clappy people for whom life is perfect.

They look perfect. They they act perfect.

They must be perfect.

So this church is for perfect people.

And of course, the danger in that is that you might think that's who God is,

that God is interested only in polished people,

imperfect people.

And that's why it's really important that you hear me

say that nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, look here at our passage first Peter chapter one, look at verse six.

Look what he says.

He says in this you rejoice,

though now for a little while, if necessary.

You have been grieved by various trials.

I mean, he's writing a letter to people where he's going to tell them to stand

up, speak up, show up.

But he starts with this

life is hard, life is hard.

And you know, God knows that.

And the Bible knows that.

Let me show you multiple times.

The Bible says this in Psalm 4034.

For example, David says this.

He says,

Psalm 43 says, as many are the afflictions of the righteous,

many are the afflictions of the righteous.

Here's what Jesus says in John 1633 in the world

you will have tribulation.

James chapter one, verse two.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.

David, Jesus, James, what are they all saying? Life

is hard.

It's okay to say that

it's okay to feel that

because it's true.

Life is hard.

And it's hard in in big ways and in little ways in like

national news ways and living room ways.

Like, for example, Wednesday, I found out that there had been a

school shooting in Colorado.

Heartbreaking.

All too common and heartbreaking.

I have five kids in schools.

That is one of the most terrifying ideas is that I can get a call

from my school about something like that devastating.

By Wednesday afternoon, I had heard

of an ideological assassination that had happened.

Awful, awful.

Then by Wednesday evening, I had heard that on the floor

of the United States House of Representatives, the Republicans

and Democrats had a shouting match over which one of those incidents

deserved a moment of silence.

Life is hard.

Last week

was hard.

But it's not just hard in the news.

It's hard in the living room.

I. I drove home that day, came into the living room, started talking to my three

teenagers about what had happened, particularly with the assassination.

And one of my kids asked me if I would retire, so that wouldn't happen to me.

Now. I

think they dramatically overestimate my platform.

But you get the point.

Then I'm driving

to preach the Thursday night service this weekend on Hope,

and literally minutes before I walk in the building,

I get a call from a family member to tell me he's just been diagnosed

with pancreatic cancer.

I hope I smile up here,

but don't for a second think that means life is easy for me.

Life is hard.

Life is hard.

It's okay to say that it's okay to feel that God

acknowledges that he never asked us to pretend that it isn't.

This must be a place where the music is good

and the people smile and it's okay

for life to be hard

because it is.

But here's the second thing I want you to see.

The Bible is very honest about how hard life is.

But second, it's very optimistic because hope is available.

This is a passage about hope.

We acknowledge the heart.

He acknowledges the trials, but he he's telling them about hope.

Verse three he says, you have been born again.

You have been made into Christians for a living.

Hope.

Hope is the whole point.

That's what he said.

So the question, of course, is, well, well, where does hope

come from for a Christian?

And there are three places he tells us to look here in the passage.

Here's the first one.

He says, if you're here and you're a Christian, you have a story.

Look at what he says in verse three is what he says, 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.

He says that the source of our hope is the story of the life

and death and resurrection of Jesus. Why?

Well, because when Jesus came to earth, he told us he had come from God.

He told us that he was God here to rescue us.

He told us he would die.

He told us his death was the doorway

that God was going to open to allow us to be part of what God was doing.

He told us he would raise from the dead.

And when Jesus did,

he showed us that human

history is not random.

It's not arbitrary.

It's not chaos.

God is writing a story.

He's going somewhere.

The arc of human history is the narrative that God is writing through

Jesus, and Jesus is the way we enter that story.

If you're here and you're a Christian, you have a story, but that's at all.

The second thing he says is you will inherit.

Look at verse four.

Look at what he says next.

He says this two an inheritance that is imperishable,

undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you.

He says, not only is God writing a story, but the conclusion of that story.

The climax of that story is that God is going

to have something wonderful for for us.

And look at the adjectives he uses.

It's imperishable. It's undefinable.

It's kept in heaven.

That's even better than a safety deposit box.

What he's saying is that what God has for us,

what the story is leading up to, cannot be altered.

It cannot be changed. It cannot be threatened.

It cannot be eradicated.

If you are here and you are a Christian, God's story is headed towards this.

He will give you the universe

to live with him in forever.

Here's the third place Peter says to go for hope.

It's pretty simple.

He says, if it's true that God has a story of which you can be part of,

if it's true that God has an inheritance that he wants to give you,

then the third thing that's true is you are loved.

Now he shows this beautifully.

Look, think about verse four, right.

You have an inheritance. And what does he say about the inheritance?

He says it's under a ball that you can't get rid of it.

It's kept in heaven.

In other words, there is nothing that could threaten your inheritance.

And then look at verse six.

Keep that in mind because that's going to make verse six pop.

Look at what he says.

I'm sorry.

Verse five he says, who by God's power

are being guarded through faith

for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

You see what that saying?

He's saying there is absolutely nothing that could threaten what God has for you.

But God loves you so much and he wants you to have it so bad

he's going to guard it for you anyway.

So great is his love for you.

So great is his mercy.

So great is his kindness.

Peter says, if you're here and you're a Christian, you have a story.

You are.

You will inherit and you are loved.

He says, listen, I know life is hard, but these things are true.

And by the way, if you're here and you're not yet a Christian, you

you maybe you don't know where you are, but you know you're not.

That when I say if you're here and you're a Christian, these things

that's not meant to exclude you, it's meant simply to say this.

You can have all three of those things in Jesus right now.

If you ask.

Because the way to have

those things is to acknowledge your sin before God, to find

forgiveness in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.

The hope that God is writing a story.

Maybe the events of this week drove you into church looking for hope.

And here it is.

It's Jesus

and the story and inheritance and love that he gives us.

Now, of course, here's what I'm worried.

You hear me saying that as Christians, we hold life being hard

in one hand over here, and then in this hand we hold hope.

And both of those things are true here in the present.

We have hard things, and in the future we'll have hope.

But that isn't really helpful.

A hope that is theoretical only in the future.

Esoteric is not help, but what we want to do is take these two things

and mash them together.

Which is why my third point is that hope for living

in hard times is possible.

In other words,

this hope that Peter is telling us about is meant to change the way we live.

Well. Well, how would that happen?

Well, the answer to

that is in each one of those three things, let me show you what I mean.

If it's true that in Jesus you have a story, then here's what that means.

The difficult things you're experiencing right now are a chapter.

They're not the ending.

They're a chapter.

They're not the ending.

Now, I don't mean it's not a hard chapter.

That's of course, I don't mean that it isn't a long chapter.

I don't even mean that for some of us, it's been several chapters.

But what Peter is saying is whatever, however hard

the chapter you're in, it is just a chapter.

It is not the ending.

You see, if the universe is random, if human history is just chaos,

then it's entirely possible that your diagnosis that

that your divorce, that your unemployment, that your addiction, that your struggle

with mental and emotional health might just be your ending.

But if life goes on, if Jesus shows us

that God is writing a story into eternity,

then no matter how bad the chapter, it's just a chapter.

It's not the ending.

Let me illustrate this.

Have you ever watched a movie with a really little kid?

It's a funny experience because they don't understand stories yet,

so even if you're watching a kid's movie, there will be a

couple of scenes where it looks like the bad guy is going to win.

That's I mean, that's how you build a plot.

That's how you drive tension.

And the kid will feel smothered by the.

At one point, events just happened with all five of my kids.

They will say, pause it, pause it, pause it.

I don't want to watch this anymore.

And they're looking at you like, what kind of parent are you?

Is this how the world?

Is this what you're trying to tell me?

That in the end, the witch wins or the the bad guy wins?

Is this the kind of world we have?

I don't want to watch this. This is awful.

And that's when you look down at them

with a twinkle in your eye and a smile, and you say, hey, hey,

hang in there.

It gets better.

Friends, do you see that?

That's what Peter is saying.

See, some of us are in the midst of really hard chapters,

really hard scenes, and we've hit the pause button

and we're saying, I don't want to keep moving.

I don't want to go on. Is this how life is?

And Peter is saying, unpause the movie.

It doesn't end this way.

The bad guy doesn't win.

The bad stuff isn't true in the end.

Hang in there.

It's a chapter, but it's not the ending.

Second, Peter says, if it's true that you will inherit,

then the flaws you are sweeping today, you will own tomorrow.

Now here's what I mean by I want you to visualize.

You walk into a business,

you know, late in the evening, second shift, and you see a young man

sweeping the floors and he's whistling and you think, well, this is

this is interesting.

So you stop the guy and you go, hey, man, do you like working second shift?

He goes, no, I hate it, I hate it.

Do you like sweeping floors?

Because, no, it's the worst.

It's the worst. Well, why are you so happy?

Why are you whistling?

And he says, well, this is my family business, and one day I'm going to own it.

My dad just says, I have to start here.

Is he one of the reasons life is hard is because it's so full of disappointment.

It's so full of all the things we're not going to get to do,

all the things we're not going to get to be.

I tell my kids all the time.

This is the hardest part of getting older.

I think,

is all the doors that close, all the things you won't be,

all the experiences you won't have, all the places you won't go.

But the Bible tells us, well, let me come back to that.

Let me say this.

There is a danger in being a Christian who's

too preoccupied with the end of the world.

You can go down that YouTube rabbit hole.

You can watch all the.

Stuff.

You can watch all these videos on when Jesus is going to come back

and who the bad guys are and all that. Let me just tell you this.

Let me invalidate that.

All those videos in one single sentence and tell you that Jesus said, was he

when he was on earth?

Even he didn't know the day he was coming back.

So I don't know if that YouTuber knows more than Jesus.

I'll let you decide that.

But there's a

danger in under thinking about those things too.

And what I mean by that is the Bible doesn't say that heaven

is us floating around in the sky.

We're in diapers, playing harps.

I mean, if that's your idea of a good time, that's a you thing.

Not for me.

What the Bible says is at the end of the world,

God is going to take heaven and earth and make them one,

and he's going to rid the earth of all the damage that we've caused.

He's going to give it back to us,

and he's going to tell us now you have an eternity

with me to do it all again, to build, to shape, to create.

You know what that means.

That means that all the things you don't get to do in this life,

you can

dedicate centuries to in the life to come.

Let me put it this way.

Every February I get away to go spend some time with pastor

friends of mine who are about my age, churches of similar size.

The idea swamp hang out.

Every February I leave Ohio to go to Southern California.

It's hard, but someone has to do it.

And you know, some people think it's great that here in Ohio we have four seasons.

My wife is one of those people.

So to her, when she thinks about the new heavens

and the earth, she thinks of it as four seasons in Southern California.

They only have one season.

It's called perfection.

So every time I come back from that trip, I tell my wife,

hey, if you're looking for me in the new heavens,

new earth, I'm going to be in Southern California.

I live in Ohio for Jesus, but

if I get to pick, I'm in San Diego.

But you see, that's the point, isn't it?

Friends, God has an eternity for you.

And I in this universe made new with her.

You might be sweeping floors today,

but you're going to own the universe

in the future.

And then here's the third thing.

Of course, if all that's true,

then here's what that means.

I don't know what hard chapter you're in,

and I.

As your pastor, it's going to be my privilege

to sit with many of you as you die.

And you're going to ask me,

and your family is going to ask me why,

and I'll just tell you in advance.

I'm not always going to know.

But if it's true that you're loved,

then what I will do is take some wives off the table.

It won't be because you're being ignored.

It won't be because you've been forgotten.

It won't be

because you aren't loved.

Because Peter says the whole story is about God's love.

The whole climax is when he gives you everything.

So of course you're loved.

Living in hard times with hope isn't pretend.

Life isn't hard.

Living in hard times with hope says, I don't know why last week happened,

but I can tell you why it isn't.

It isn't because God doesn't care.

Because I've got a story.

I've got an inheritance.

And I know

that I am loved.

Let me pray for you, father God.

Thank you for the challenge of first Peter that is coming.

I know

your message for us as a church, for me

as a leader, is going to be that we need to step up,

show up, speak up.

Rise up.

But God, in your kindness, you don't even start with that.

You start with hope.

You start with encouragement.

You start by saying, I know, I know, life is hard,

but don't you for a second think you're not loved.

God, we are amazed by your kindness to us,

and we ask that you would help us to become

hopeful people

living in hard times.

In Jesus name we pray. Amen.