Living Hope in a World of Hurt Week 1 | Living Hope Gives Us Joy

Hey Fammy Church, Pastor Jimmy here.

I'm excited to introduce our new teaching series through the books of 1 Peter and 2 Peter called Living Hope in a World of Hurt.

You've probably heard it said that you can live three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without oxygen, but hardly any time at all without hope.

And the point is simple.

We need hope.

And we know that because we live in a world of hurt.

Relationships fall apart.

People we love walk away from Jesus, jobs disappear, doctors give us news that we never wanted to hear.

We experience sin and sickness and disappointment and grief and death.

And every one of us carries some kind of hurt.

And there is real hostility to the gospel.

Christians around the world are persecuted for their faith.

And even in this country, you may experience hostility from people who are opposed to your faith and your values.

So we need hope.

But hope is only as strong as the object of your hope.

And Peter tells us where real hope is found.

Saint Peter, you remember him, the fisherman who walked with Jesus, eventually denied Jesus, was restored by Jesus, and then boldly preached Jesus.

St.

Peter writes that believers have been born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Our hope isn't wishful thinking, it isn't positive thinking, it isn't hope in our circumstances to somehow get better.

Our hope is alive because Jesus is alive.

St.

Peter originally wrote to Christians who were scattered and they were suffering, and they were trying to follow Jesus in a world that was increasingly hostile to their faith.

They needed to learn something that we need to learn as well.

Following Jesus doesn't mean we won't experience hostility, and it definitely doesn't mean that we won't experience hurt.

Following Jesus means that hostility and hurt, well, they never have the last word over us because hostility and hurt can never take away our hope.

Over these next 11 weeks, we're going to walk through the books of 1 Peter and 2 Peter.

We'll see how that living hope changes the way that we face trials, the way that we pursue holiness, the way that we navigate relationships, the way that we live in a sometimes hostile world, and through all of that, we are able to stand firm in the truth.

And through it all, Saint Peter keeps pointing us back to the same reality.

Jesus is alive.

Jesus is with us.

Jesus is coming again.

And in the end, Jesus wins.

So get your Bibles out, turn your Bibles on and your devices, and get ready to hear about the living hope that we need to thrive in this world.

All right, thanks so much, Pastor Jimmy.

Man, it's great to see you all today.

Welcome to Family Church Downtown.

My name is Derek Simpson.

I'm one of the pastors here at our downtown campus.

It's great to see you at the uh at the 10 o'clock service.

Uh I'm uh so grateful for all the things that already happened in the room.

I love the new psalm that we sang.

Uh, I love the way that you guys sang along in the service.

In the earlier service, we had uh we had a fifth grade boy named Owen who was baptized in the service and a really powerful story and powerful testimony.

And we're about to have a Bible study together today.

So once you go ahead and take your Bibles out, turn them on to the book of First Peter, the New Testament book of First Peter.

Uh Pastor Jimmy, if you're new to Family Church, Pastor Jimmy is our normal by normal Bible teacher.

He's in uh Georgia today visiting his uh kids uh and uh and grandkids.

And so he'll be back next Sunday.

Uh I really appreciate again your flexibility moving to a new hour.

I can already tell you, I need you to remain flexible because some of you we're gonna be talking to you about helping us uh probably move to the 1130 service.

I can just I can I can see the future, and I'm gonna I'm just I'm just preparing you in advance.

Uh, some of you will be asking you to help us in the 1130 hour.

Uh Pastor Jimmy, of course, wishes that he could be here.

He was super excited about going to uh three services.

So excited that you have me for the first week.

So um now he'll be back next Sunday, and we're excited to have him back.

Um here did a great job introducing our Bible study uh, and this teaching series is gonna be a lot of fun.

I think it's gonna be very helpful uh for everybody in the room because the book of 1 Peter is all about um how the gospel of Jesus uh changes us and equips us uh to uh to to handle and to deal with every dimension of life.

And we're gonna start today by looking at how the gospel helps equip us to prepare us for the the present trials of life, the tribulations of life.

Following Jesus doesn't exempt you, like he said in the video, from uh trials.

There's no immunity that comes uh from hardship when you become a believer in Jesus.

Uh if you become a believer in Jesus, uh your relationships from time to time still are not going to work the way that they're supposed to.

It's still possible for you to lose your job or get laid off from work.

Um, it's still possible for you to experience health challenges.

Uh raising kids doesn't get magically easier.

Uh you still have to pay your taxes uh if you become a believer in Jesus.

All right, some of you have to start paying taxes when you become believers in Jesus.

Um, there's all kinds of things that happen uh when you become a believer in Jesus, but you don't, one of the things that doesn't happen is you don't get immunity from the hard things in life, from the trials in life.

Instead, what you get is you get a different perspective on your trials.

And that's what we're gonna learn and study here today.

So this is the word of God.

This is 1 Peter chapter 1, starting in verse 1.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

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 and 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 gen 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.

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 preached the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you.

And 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 long to look.

And this is the word of God, and all of God's people said, Amen.

We received God's word at family church.

There's a few comments about the text, a few things we just want to say by word of introduction about 1 Peter and Peter in general.

Peter was an apostle of Jesus Christ.

He had a long and close personal relationship with Jesus.

He is one of the most colorful characters in the New Testament.

He was a key leader in the early church, and he was one of Jesus' most trusted disciples.

And he's writing at this time about 30 years after the death, burial, and resurrection, and ultimately the ascension of Christ.

Close enough to the time that there's still a lot of people who were eyewitnesses to his life, eyewitnesses to his ministry, would have known Peter, would be able to validate and substantiate the claims that Peter makes about Jesus and his teachings.

It would be like for those of you that are, you know, uh that were alive in 1996, all right?

30, think back 30 years from now.

Uh a lot of you were alive in 96.

Some of you were not, but almost all of you that were not, you know, people that you trust that could tell you and validate some things that happened in 1996.

Things like the uh Olympics coming to the city of Atlanta, uh and all the memories that came out of that.

Um that was the year that Bill Clinton was re-elected uh to a second term in the White House.

That was the year that Will Smith uh saved the world from alien invasion on Independence Day, okay, one of our great, our nation's most important triumphs.

Even if you weren't alive in '96, you know people that were connected to that.

I was in the sixth grade.

I remember all those things.

But whether you were alive or you don't, you were connected to people that do.

And this and the same would have been true in Peter's day.

And so he's writing to these different communities in what are what are called uh what's called Asia Minor.

It's in modern day Turkey.

He's writing to these groups of believers, a mix of Gentiles, mostly probably Gentile believers, some Jewish Christians who've been sat scattered across uh modern day Turkey.

And um uh he's writing to people and he's and he's he he calls them exiles, even though some of them uh were living in the same town that they had grown up with, because he's he's gonna introduce them to this idea that their faith in Jesus uh puts them uh aside from the rest of culture.

And that's where we're gonna pick up our Bible study in in uh in in just a minute.

So uh if you want to write some things down, you want to fill some things out, take some notes, here's some thoughts about how Christians live in present trials.

Christians live knowing, number one, that God gives us a new identity.

God gives us a new identity.

In verse 3, the Bible says that God has caused us to be born again, born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

So right off the bat, we learn that our uh we have a new identity because we have a new uh, we have a basically a new body, we have a new spiritual body.

We are born again, the Bible says.

And it's important for us to understand uh that this is important.

Like we are uh the the we uh the Bible says because of our sin, because of our brokenness, we are totally and completely in need of regeneration, of a new body.

And this regeneration that we get because of the resurrection of Jesus, it's not a quick makeover, it's not a partial fix, it's not a facelift.

The born-again reality that you have if you're a believer in Jesus that's accomplished through the resurrection, it is a complete, ground up, like complete down to the studs renovation of your mind, of your heart, of your attitude, of your appetites, uh, your affections.

Everything about who you are changes by the power of Jesus Christ.

You have a new identity.

And so real hope begins and only happens when the real brokenness that's deep inside each and every one of us gets affected and gets really mended by the resurrection of Jesus.

The book of Ephesians says it this way.

St.

Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2, verses 4 and 5.

Ephesians 2:4

He says, But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love for which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved.

You have a new identity if you're a believer in Jesus.

So Peter is writing to these exiles, and they're not exiles, they're not political exiles or tribal exiles necessarily, but in the first century, Greco-Roman world, uh the world looked much different.

That world had uh virtually no sexual boundaries, it gave almost no rights to children, almost no rights to women.

Uh it was consumed with materialism and with status.

It was dedicated to the worship of false gods.

And all Christians, regardless of whether they were Gentiles or Jews, when they became a believer in Jesus, they became exiles.

They were those who reside as aliens among us.

They were temporary residents that were living detached from their real ultimate home.

And so for the Christian, your real home is in heaven.

My real home is in heaven.

So when I experience, when you and I experience darkness in the world, like just this past week, we remembered the 25th anniversary of 9-11.

We we we we've experienced real, if you were alive on September 11th, 2001, you experienced real darkness, real evil, and every day subsequent, we we experience it in part.

And we're reminded that even when the world is at its best, and certainly when it's not at its best, this place is not our ultimate home.

Our new identity makes us citizens of a future world, a different kingdom that is to come.

And so Peter uses words like election and like foreknowledge in verses one and verses two.

And this sermon isn't primarily about the doctrine of election.

We've preached those before, and it's helpful to understand, but it is important to understand that the doctrine of election is what it's supposed to do for you as a believer.

It's supposed to do what it does exactly right here in 1 Peter chapter 1.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

The doctrine of election should give you hope for the future.

Hope that the universe is not just operating uh by chance.

It should give you a sense of confidence that the entire Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, are working in conjunction with one another to give you confidence that God sees you and he knows about your situation.

He sees you in your station of life, he understands your trial, and it's not a surprise to him.

You don't have to ask the question when you're going through a trial, has God forgotten about me?

God, do you see me?

God, do you understand my pain?

Your entire present reality, no matter what you're going through right now, your entire present reality is wrapped up in the fatherly comfort of God's divine plan.

And so you can rest with confidence, knowing that God has you right where he wants you.

It's not a surprise and it's not a mistake.

God doesn't just give us a new identity, he gives us, the Bible says, a helper, the sanctification in verse 2, the sanctification of the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit helps us become more like Jesus.

And the Bible says that the blood of Christ is sprinkled on us and the promise of our sin will be forgiven.

We won't reach perfection.

You can't obtain perfection in this age.

Uh our struggles against uh external forces, our struggles against our own sin and its effects are real, but we are continually, the Bible says, we're continually restored to God and we are held by God.

Peter says, we're held by God through the covenant of love, through the covenant of Christ.

And so he says in verse 3, we have this living hope.

This living hope, this idea of living hope is uh one one person said it like this that hope is disciplined waiting.

It's present day, it's moderated waiting.

Living hope is it's living, it's active, it has the ability to change and to adjust and to mature with your season of life.

But living hope is not primarily about the future, it's primarily about your present reality, whatever that may be, you can have confidence that you have a new identity and you can have living hope right now.

But it's not just about right now, it also is about the future.

One number two, I need to not say we uh we can um Christians live knowing that we have a secure inheritance.

We have a secure inheritance.

In the New Testament, inheritance is all about uh salvation and rewards and status in heaven.

Salvation that is kept for us.

And so he says in verse four that that salvation, that inheritance is imperishable.

It's not able to decay.

It's a term, that word imperishable, it's a term that's only used to talk about three things in the scripture.

Number one, it talks about God Himself.

Number two, it talks about His Word, the Word of God.

And number three, it talks about our resurrection bodies, our bodies in the new heavens and the new earth that are imperishable.

He says that your salvation is, your inheritance is undefiled.

It's unstained by sin.

God can't be in the presence of anything that has the hint of sin.

And so anything that's defiled can't be in God's presence, and our inheritance contains nothing that God would not approve of.

It's undefiled.

The Bible says it's unfading, it won't wither or rust or tarnish or fade.

We don't receive a Timu inheritance.

We don't receive a knockoff, a cheap imitation of the real thing.

We get the real thing kept for us by God through his power in the future.

And so salvation is two things.

It is already, it happens, it changes us, it gives us a new identity right now, but also it's in the future.

It's not yet, it's felt in the moment that you repent and believe of your sins, but it's also a future aspect of future glory that will be revealed to us only after our death and ultimately after the return of Christ.

You know, the future is a hard concept to think about sometimes.

Our past is easy because we know our past.

We are face to face every day with the with the results and the uh the impact of our decisions in our past.

Sometimes it's a range of emotions, sometimes there's guilt and grief and regret and shame connected to our past.

Sometimes there's excitement and pride and joy about things that happened in the past.

But when we look to the future, it's all unknown.

So sometimes that can cause doubt, sometimes it causes fear, sometimes anxiety.

Because it's unknown, it's not clear for us.

We don't know how to think about the future.

But what Peter is telling us here is that our salvation and our future glory are being guarded.

It's so important and it's so valuable, it's being guarded by God's power.

So we can have real hope because our hope is anchored not just in belief, but it's anchored and it's tethered and it's being held and protected by the character and nature of God Himself.

They're prepaid, pre-delivered, kept safely for us inheritances that are waiting in the day to come.

And the younger you are, the harder it is for you to care about things that are happening in the future.

It's just that earlier, Pastor John was talking about our retreats that we had coming up, and that we have at family church we have a dividing line between what a young adult is and what a not young adult is.

It's 39.

Another way to determine if you're a young adult or a not so young adult is how you think about the future.

If you think about your future in terms of what do I want to do with my life, that's the kind of thought that a young person has.

A person that's not so young thinks slightly different terms.

They think about what do I want to do with the rest of my life.

When you start thinking about what do I want to do with the rest of my life, you're thinking about the future and you're realizing that time is limited and the future is coming, and there's an importance to it.

Number three on your notes, God has a purpose in trials.

God has a purpose in trials.

I love that Peter doesn't ignore the reality that our secure future and our ultimate hope and our new identity doesn't eliminate real trials here on earth.

Babies are still born.

You can still get cancer, jobs get downsized, parents get divorced, spouses sometimes aren't faithful to their covenants.

The permanency, though, I love what he does if you look at verse 6.

The permanency of our inheritance, it's contrasted with this limited scope.

He says, hey, you're going to experience trials, but they're limited for a little while.

Various kinds of trials.

He's saying don't overlook them, but but also keep them in perspective.

He says that you'll experience trials that are necessary.

If necessary, he says in verse 6, God does not give us trials without some kind of reason or some kind of purpose.

That purpose may oftentimes be hidden from us on this side of eternity, but God always has a purpose and a reason for the trials that we're going to experience.

And our ability or inability to see them and discern them and understand them doesn't make that reality any less true.

Our trials are real.

They really do grieve us.

And the kind of hope, the kind of real living hope that St.

Peter is talking about isn't what we're trying to encourage you to build at Family Church.

It's not a Pollyanna hope, it's not a blind hope.

It's rooted in something that is real.

It's not made up where we say everything's perfect and everything's just gonna work out.

Real hope requires a real adversary.

Real trial, a real trial, real challenge.

The Bible says in verse, I think in verse 6, he says that you're to rejoice in your salvation, but sometimes it's hard to keep that same posture of joy that we have for our salvation when we're experiencing these trials.

These trials, though, they build our faith.

Twenty years ago, mom uh Megan's uh mom, her name was Lisa, she's a wonderful lady.

She was diagnosed with cancer 20 years ago.

She was a believer in Jesus.

Megan and I at the time were believers in Jesus, our families were believers in Jesus.

She was connected to a great church.

We were connected to a great church.

We had pastor buddies all over the country.

And we prayed, we put her on prayer lists, we fasted, uh, we did everything that we possibly could.

And about three years after she dies, she was diagnosed with cancer, God took her to heaven.

About three years ago, our son Wyatt was born.

Wyatt was born with a lot of complications, both of his lungs collapsed, he had multiple procedures.

Uh they told us that he's at a great hospital to Europe.

They said, hey, we really need to take him to Miami, but he's too unstable.

We can't take him, we can't fly him, we can't drive him to Miami.

We're just gonna have to do the very best that we can here.

And we had, and this little guy sat for three days, and a lot of you prayed and fasted with us.

And we prayed and we fasted and we pleaded with God that he would save and spare his life.

Same prayers, same fasting, same.

We did everything the exact same way we did it with Megan's mom.

Megan's mom went to heaven and Wyatt, man, this is why just this past week.

This is Wyatt, man.

This is why in our neighborhood.

Okay?

Yeah, you can get up for Wyatt.

Wyatt's awesome.

This is our neighborhood, it's not our house, but it is our it is our neighborhood.

Um I want you to get it, get it twisted.

Um same things, different result.

Trials build our faith.

I don't know why.

I don't know why God didn't answer the prayers to heal Lisa, but he did answer the prayers to heal Wyatt.

But one day we will.

I do believe that trials built our faith.

Gold, the Bible says, is the most uh valuable of all metals, and even when it's in its purest form, even having uh been tested by fire, the Bible says in verse 7 gold, even though even the most purest form of gold is less valuable than genuine faith.

You need trials to build your faith, and the final result of our faith may only be seen in the final revelation of Jesus Christ.

The purposes of our trials might stay hidden from our view until we meet Jesus face to face.

But the reward, I want you to just think about what kind of reward do you think the God of the universe might have and might keep for those of us who persist in our faith, who refuse to turn our backs on the one true and living God, that persist and then believe in the blessings that He might have for us in a faith that is more precious than gold.

And who choose to do so only because, not because we know or we're certain that something's gonna happen for us in this age, but we believe these things stubbornly in our faith because we believe that God is real.

We believe God is true, his promises are true, and that he is a good God that loves us.

I wonder what those rewards in heaven might look like for you and me.

Number four on your notes.

Jesus is our living hope.

Jesus is our living hope.

One of the great sources of hope in the gospel is that it's a reality that's rooted in an ancient faith tradition, that tradition that goes all the way back to Adam and Eve and to the Garden of Eden.

God is remarkably consistent in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The basis of justification, you are made right with God based on your faith in the promises of God.

In the Old Testament, it's faith in the promised Messiah.

The Old Testament gradually reveals through prophets and through kings the shortcomings of the sacrificial system and the promise of the Messiah.

Peter calls back to those things and he says, in the New Testament, you have you're saved and you're justified by the same faith, but you're saved by looking backwards on the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus.

And in verse 8, he says, Jesus is so real, though you have not seen him, you love him.

The realness of Jesus in the life of the believer is something that sets us apart, something that exiles us from the rest of the world.

In the Apostles' Creed, we declare some things about Jesus that we know to be true, that he's born of the virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate, he was crucified, dead, buried, coming again.

We believe that Jesus is fully man, fully divine.

We don't know how all that works itself out, but we believe that his resurrection and his promise to prepare a place for us, this inheritance that's kept for us, holds the ability for us to create real joy no matter our circumstances.

All other attempts at trying to obtain real joy will ultimately fail.

You can make as much money as you want, get as famous as you want, have as much sex as you want, have as much power as you want, have as many followers on social media as you want.

You can have all of the trappings of all of it, and none of it will ultimately produce in you real joy.

It's all fleeting.

But in verse 8, he says, rejoice.

Rejoice.

It's the same word as he says in verse 6, but he adds this disqualifier.

He says, rejoice with an inexpressible joy.

Your present reality of being daily, maybe being able to daily connect with Jesus, to pray to Jesus, to read the words of Jesus, to fellowship with Jesus.

It fills you with glory, the Bible says.

It is joy that is infused with heavenly glory.

It is the glory and the joy of heaven before heaven, the Bible says.

And it's experienced now.

You can have it right now in your fellowship with Christ.

One more reason not to discount the trials, your trials and your faith.

The Bible says in verse 12, 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 12, it says the stubborn faith of the, your stubborn faith and the promises of God, your insistence on worshiping Jesus and praising God in the midst of trial, your constant regard for the promises of heaven rather than the temporary pleasures of earth, coupled with the presence and the work of the Spirit in your life, the sanctifying work of the Spirit in your life.

1 Peter 1:12

It might, it might put you on the outskirts of culture.

It might make you a mockery of some of your friends and some of your coworkers.

The Bible says that it captures the imagination of the angels.

Captures the imagination and the envy of the angels.

The angels who are created beings who see things only from God's perspective.

Look at you and your relationship with Christ, and their curiosities are stirred by relationship that you share with God that they cannot.

Jesus Christ is the living hope.

He is our living hope.

Jesus Christ understands your trials.

The Bible says that Jesus said he went to the cross of Calvary.

And God raised him from the dead.

And now he sits at the right hand of the throne of God the Father Almighty.

The Father who loves you, the Father who is calling you to trust in him, the Father who wants you to persevere through your trial so that your faith can grow.

Because he knows and he holds the future.

That's our living hope.

That's our resurrected King.

That's King Jesus.

And we celebrate every single week at Family Church, we celebrate the Lord's Supper, which is a reminder for us of the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Lord's Supper is for believers in Jesus.

The way we teach uh uh thing about the Lord's Supper here at Family Church, is the Lord's Supper is for believers in Jesus.

If you've been baptized, believers baptism by immersion, uh, we encourage you to take the Lord's Supper.

If you're a child who's never been baptized, if you're an adult who's never been baptized, or if you um uh uh if you have some kind of sin that's keeping you uh from from uh having a right relationship with people in our church or people in your family, you should not take it.

You should instead make those things right and make a commitment to make those things right.

If you uh are a guest with us today and you would normally take the Lord's Supper at your home church, we invite you to take it as our guest as part of the worldwide family of God that goes all over the world.

But right now, let's reflect, let's pause, let's think about uh maybe even uh maybe even repent of ways that you've tried to get out of trials that God's put in front of your life, and maybe instead uh ask God to show you what he has for you, what he wants for you.

Ask God to grow your faith in the Lord Jesus in your trials.

As we reflect, Nathan's gonna sing, and in just a minute we'll take and eat.

Okay.