Living Hope (1 Peter 1:3-4)

We're gonna be talking about today about hope and specifically how the resurrection of Jesus Christ provides a living hope for each and every one of us, should we choose it.

You know, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article, and this was a while back, about a guy that had died in Greenville, South Carolina.

After his death, the County Department of Social Services sent the deceased man a computer-generated letter of hope.

It said, your food stamps will be stopped effectively or effective immediately because we received notice that you passed away.

However, you may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances.

You know, the government sending dead people mail, that's one thing, right?

The government offering hope of a changing circumstance after death is a whole other thing, isn't it?

But that brings us to why we are here this morning.

And I'm gonna ask you, why is pretty much every church in the Western Hemisphere making a big deal about today?

And why are we outside having this special service in this park on this beautiful day?

Well, it's really the same reason that we get together and we meet every single Sunday.

It's all because Christ has risen and he's given us the hope of life with him forever.

He is the one that offers hope of an eternal change in our circumstances, unlike the Social Security Department in South Carolina.

And if Jesus simply died on the cross and was still buried, I don't think I would have that same hope that I have today.

You know, all we would have if we didn't have the evidence of that, all we would have is some history of some people that lived 2,000 years ago saying, yeah, there was this guy, and he said that he came and would die for our sins, and we simply need to believe in him, and he's still in some tomb just outside of Jerusalem somewhere.

You know, I personally, I personally wouldn't be very hopeful in that.

I think I'd be highly skeptical if that's where the story of Jesus Christ ended, with his death, and he's still in a tomb somewhere outside of Jerusalem.

You see, it's the historical proof of the resurrection of Christ on the third day, as we just read about, that really makes me believe and have this hope, this hope that we could only find in Jesus Christ.

You know, it's the hundreds of eyewitnesses that saw him resurrected after they saw him die.

It's the ten of the eleven remaining disciples that spent years with Jesus that ended up dying a torturous death similar to Jesus.

And they died those torturous deaths because they wouldn't deny what they saw.

They wouldn't deny what they saw with their own eyes, that Jesus had died, was in the tomb for three days and resurrected to life again.

You know, and beyond the historical proof of the resurrection, I see, you know, the power of Christ in his church today that is evident in every one of his followers.

You know, I see in myself and other followers of Christ a hope that can't be found anywhere else.

That cannot be found anywhere in the world except through Jesus Christ.

That's why we're here today.

That's why I'm here today, at least, because we have a living hope in Jesus Christ.

So I want to read to you, and again, you can find this in your handout, 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 3 and 4.

1 Peter 1:3

So this is written by Peter.

This is one of Jesus' disciples who was with him for all of that time, who is an eyewitness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And church tradition tells us that he died and was crucified upside down because he would not deny that Jesus was God.

He would not deny that Jesus Christ had risen from the grave.

I don't know about you, but if I was threatened with crucifixion because of a lie I was trying to uphold, I think I would tell the truth really quick, wouldn't you?

But Peter, the author of these verses, was one of those ten of the eleven disciples that died for the truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So look at that verse with me.

1 Peter chapter 1, verses, starting in verse 3.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because of his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.

Would you please pray with me?

Lord, we thank you for your word that we get to read here today.

We thank you for this beautiful day and everybody that you've gathered here to worship you and to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Lord, I pray that as we look at these verses, that we would gain a whole new appreciation for what it is that Jesus Christ has done for each and every one of us if we simply accept him.

So I pray that you would open our hearts and our minds and our ears and our eyes to the things that you have for us today, and that you would do a work inside of each one of us, and that we would celebrate you well here today.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

You know, when Peter thinks of God's plan for saving mankind from all of our wrongdoing, he sees the love of God the Father in this whole plan.

Look at just that first part of verse 3.

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

God sent his one and only Son from his position that he had in heaven to this very earth because we had messed things up so thoroughly.

Because we chose sin over God.

We chose our plan over God's plan.

But God loved us too much to leave us in that condition.

Look at the next part of verse 3.

It says, Because of his great mercy.

And look, we're just gonna stop right there.

This is why God the Father intervened with his love.

It was because of his great mercy.

Now, maybe, you know, you've heard the definition of mercy being not getting what we deserve.

You know, that's a common definition that floats around, and I have no problem with that.

But in the definition of this word, in its original Greek that it was originally written in, mercy here, I want to read you the definition.

It's kindness towards the miserable and the afflicted, joined with a desire to help them.

That's how God saw us in our state of sin, miserable and afflicted, yet he desired to help us.

You know, I want to tell you a story about a father's mercy.

We know, my family knows a man quite well that was splitting wood with his teenage daughter.

And before I start this, I want you to know she's fine, okay?

Everything, everything's fine because use your imaginations.

But they were using a wood splitter, and it was a hydraulic wood splitter.

And if you don't know what that is, there's a wedge on one end, and then there's a blunt end on here, you put the log in the middle, the wedge pushes, breaks the log in half.

And you have to be really careful with those things.

And this father had told his daughter so many times when you put the log on the rail, you grab it from the middle.

You don't ever put your hands, you know, on either side of the log because the wedge can get your fingers.

And in a moment where she had a lapse in judgment, I guess, she put her hand between the blunt end and where the log hit, and her hand got crushed a bit.

Now, no mercy from her father would have looked like, see, I told you, you got what you deserve, now you're gonna have to suffer the consequences.

Good luck with your hand.

A biblical type of mercy from her father is running to the hospital praying the whole way that her hand will be fined.

Which he did, and her hand was fine in the end.

But that's the difference of what God could have done and what God does with us, with this mercy.

He wants to help us because he's seen what we've done to ourselves.

That's what God did for us.

He had so much compassion and mercy on us, even when we didn't listen, that he did something about it.

Because of God's great mercy toward us, who are so miserable and afflicted, like we saw in that definition, in our sin.

And because of his desire to not leave us in that condition, but to help us, he sent Jesus Christ.

Look at what he did in the next part of verse 3.

He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And new birth may sound weird to you if you're not used to this definition.

Maybe you've heard the term born again or a born-again believer in Jesus Christ.

Well, it comes from a conversation that Jesus had with this man named Nicodemus back in John chapter 3, where Jesus is telling him that our spirit must be born again into him.

John 3 · chapter mention

You know, the part of us that is eternal, it must be born again.

You see, we were born on this earth physically, but we were born into corruption.

And we were born into a sinful world.

And that world just seems to be getting worse and worse, doesn't it?

And we try to put our hope in all kinds of different things.

We try to put our hope into other people.

Uh maybe it's saving the environment, putting it into leaders, or maybe relationships, or whatever it might be.

And we think, you know, if we can only change this one thing, or if I can only have that one thing, or if I'm only able to do that one thing, then I'm gonna be satisfied, then things are gonna change, then things are gonna get better.

But when we put our hope in these things, we only end up disappointed, don't we?

So Peter says we need to be spiritually born again so we can have a living hope.

In the book of Ephesians, chapter 2, it says, But God who is rich in mercy, there's that word we're talking about again.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

God who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ, even though we were dead in trespasses.

You know, it's because of the resurrection of Jesus that we can go from dead in trespasses, as it says here, to alive and to reborn in Christ.

And this is where our hope needs to be found.

It's where our hope needs to begin and our hope needs to end as well.

And this kind of hope that we're talking about today that's in Jesus, it's very different than the kind of hope I had a couple weeks ago that it wouldn't rain on Easter.

I kept looking at my phone, because last year there was that threat of rain, and it was cloudy and a little windy, and I was just praying early.

I never pray as a Californian that God would stop raining.

But I always I will pray that he'll move it a little bit, you know, just a couple hours later or something like that.

I think it worked, because look at this.

This is beautiful.

Anyway, we're talking about a confident hope here in verse 3.

A very confident hope.

By definition, this word hope means a joyful, confident expectation of a new and eternal life with Christ.

So it's a joyful, confident expectation that everything that Jesus said is true.

You know, this is very unlike the things that we tend to place our hope in in the world around us.

You know, one of my earthly hopes right now is a hope that gas prices go down.

Probably all of you, right?

I have a hope that the Giants win the World Series this year.

I've been hoping that for 12 years and it hasn't happened.

We can't put our hope in things like that, can we?

Or maybe our hope is in a relationship working out.

Or our hope is to get that job or to get that promotion.

Or even, you know, I hope it's not terminal.

You know, you put your hope in things on this earth, and you will only be more and more disappointed and have less and less hope.

I don't see a lot of hope in the world today.

Do you?

You know, I was talking to my neighbor earlier this week, and we were just talking about the state of this world, about injustice.

We're talking about corruption and how disheartening it is to see all of this, and how everybody seems to be out to get theirs right now, don't they?

He was talking about even the way that people drive.

They have this attitude of, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna get to where I need to be, because where I'm going is more important than where you're going.

And me being on time is more important than you being on time.

So I'm gonna run this stop sign and I'm gonna go first, or I'm gonna cut you off, or whatever it might be.

Maybe our hope is in other things.

You know, how many times have we opened up the news to watch it or read it or whatever it is, just hoping that maybe today will be a little bit different?

Just hoping that maybe something positive happened today.

But most of the time we read the news and we end up a little bit more depressed at the state of the world, don't we?

Our hope has to be found in Jesus and in him alone.

You know, there's nothing wrong with reading the news.

I do that too.

There's nothing wrong with having strong political opinions.

I have those too.

But that's not where our lasting hope is gonna come from.

You know, if we want our hope to be lasting and even eternal, it has to come from Christ and his resurrection from the grave.

From the fact that we can live spiritually because he's living physically.

And it's this living hope that enables us to live through the hopelessness that we have right now in the world.

It's this living hope we have in Christ that allows us to live through the pain and the suffering and the trials and the persecution that we have in this present life.

You know, we need to know deep down that he will never fail us, that he will never leave us or forsake us.

Those are promises that we can place our eager expectations in, in Christ and in Christ alone.

So I think the question becomes how do we get new birth and this living hope that we're talking about in Jesus Christ?

Well, while Jesus was talking to this Nicodemus guy that we were just talking about, about this new birth, Nicodemus asked him that same question.

How can these things be?

And here's exactly what Jesus told him.

He said, For God loved the world in this way.

He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.

That's true hope, isn't it?

Jesus went on and he told him, for God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned.

Because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.

New birth and living hope comes from belief in, comes from faith in Jesus, the one and only Son of God, as it says right here.

So new birth and living home, it comes from Jesus Christ, from him and him alone.

Jesus died and rose again so that we wouldn't be condemned for our sins, for what we did in the first place to royally mess things up.

And what Jesus did on the cross and in his resurrection, it's a free gift that he offers to us.

It's something that he already paid for, and he just asks us to simply believe and receive that gift of what he's already done for us.

You know, when I think about hope, hope has to be for something in the future, doesn't it?

We can't really hope for things in the past.

I can't hope today that the Giants won the World Series last year or did, can I?

We can't hope for things in the past.

So the question is now, what is the future hope that Jesus provides?

What is the object of that hope that we've been talking about so much already?

Well, we'll see that in verse 4.

You know, we have hope through the resurrection, but look at verse 4.

And into, so this is future, an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.

Have you ever heard of stories of people gaining a large inheritance, maybe from a relative or a friend or something like that, and then they squander it in a matter of years?

You know, they spend it on ridiculous things and they end up more bankrupt than before they got the inheritance in the first place.

Or maybe they're banking on an earthly inheritance only to realize that they were never in the will.

You know, my wife and I know somebody that didn't save for retirement because they were banking on a rich uncle to leave them everything.

And he didn't.

In verse 4, we're talking about a guaranteed inheritance that doesn't go away and that cannot be squandered, it says.

An inheritance that we can bank on and it does not fade away.

An unknown author, I'm not sure who said it first, said, we have an inheritance that will never be touched by death, stained by evil, or faded with time.

It is death-proof, sin-proof, and age-proof.

And that's what we get to look forward to.

That's the object of our hope that we get to look forward to in heaven.

Now it'll be everything that God intended for us to have here before we mess things up, and so much more that he has waiting for us.

Jesus said before he ascended into heaven that he was going to prepare a place for us.

A glorious heavenly home.

A place that we can look forward to.

Not a place where we're floating around on clouds and we're playing harps and there's little babies with wings and stuff like that.

Scripture talks about a place that is much more like this earth, but with no corruption, with no hurt, with no pain that's filled with God's glory.

Where every day we get to get up and do things that we enjoy and that we can't wait to do that day.

Where we'll be feasting and enjoying each other to the fullest without any friction in our earthly relationships like we have now.

We'll be in perfect relationship with each other, in perfect relationship with God.

Doesn't that sound amazing?

You know, God loves us so deeply and so perfectly that in his great mercy, as it says, he had compassion on us because he didn't want to leave us in the state that we were in, with our destination being held.

So he sent his son Jesus to give us a living hope and an inheritance that's greater than anything that we can imagine.

You know, we have a present tense living hope in Christ on this earth, but he's also giving us a future tense hope for all of eternity being with him.

That is a hope for the future, isn't it?

I want to end with this.

You know, at the beginning I asked you, why are we here today?

Why are we doing this special service today out in the park?

Why are all Western churches making such a big deal about today?

It's because of the hope of Jesus Christ.

And it comes from his resurrection from the dead.

Because when we were dead in sin, he offered his resurrection into new birth.

You know, if we believe in Christ, Scripture tells us that we are a new creation.

The old has passed away, and behold, all things have become new.

Doesn't that sound great?

All of the wrongdoing in the past that we've ever done, everything that keeps us up at night when we're trying to fall asleep and we start thinking about, I can't believe I did that.

Can't believe I did that five years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, all of those regrets, God wants to forgive and cleanse and make you into a new creation.

If you do not have the hope of Jesus, but you know here today that you need that hope in your life, we as a church, we have this to say to you.

And it comes from 2 Corinthians 5.

We plead on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.

He made the one who did not know sin, that's Jesus, to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

God loves you so deeply that he offered to take on our sin.

Jesus did that on the cross, in exchange for his righteousness.

That's the gift.

And he couldn't have made it any easier.

Jesus did all the work for us already.

Scripture says that we simply need to confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead and we will be saved.

Jesus also said that nobody comes to the Father except through him.

This is the only way into that living hope.

And it's through this free gift that Jesus is offering.

All of your sins forgiven.

A new life awaits you now if you choose.

And an eternal inheritance is awaiting you in heaven.

And the thing is here this morning, if you do believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the grave, all that's left is for you to confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.

And you can say that right now from your seat.

You know, whether you've believed in Jesus for 30 plus years, or maybe you're here today and you're believing for the first time.

Let's all just say it out loud together.

That Jesus is Lord.

You ready?

Jesus is Lord.

And if you just said that and believed that for the very first time today, God is wiping away all of your sins.

You're being cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

And now you are saved for all of eternity.

You now have that living hope in Jesus Christ.

Praise the Lord.

Will you please pray with me?

Again, Lord, we thank you so much for today, this beautiful day.

Not just because of the weather, but this beautiful day that we gather to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And that means everything to us.

We thank you for the gift of Jesus.

We thank you that He died in our place for us.

A brutal and horrific death that we deserved.

And he was that sacrifice in our place.

So that we can simply receive this free gift that you offer us and be saved forever.

We thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord, for that sacrifice.

And we thank you that on the third day he was raised from the grave, defeating sin and death for us.

And now that free gift is offered to us that we can start living a resurrected life spiritually now, but for all of eternity as well.

That future hope.

God, you are so good and your love is so abundant.

Help us to all know that here today.

Lord, help us again to celebrate you well, to celebrate Jesus well and all that He has done for us today.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.