Our Living Hope

This is a sermon I preached in April 2022

1 Peter 1:3-5 (ESV)

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,

4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,

5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Peter is one of my favorite characters in the Bible. I think it’s because he was so human, full of shortcomings like myself.

I’ve always pictured Peter in my mind as a big man. He was a manly man, who was impressive to look at because of his size. That is why he seems to step forward as a leader because he would have attracted other men to him because of his appearance.

But as we all know appearance and ability are two different things. What we know about Peter is he had two weaknesses; opening his mouth at the wrong time and a lack of education.

The joke I have often heard about Peter is that he had a foot and mouth disease. Every time he opened his mouth, he would put his foot in it and say the wrong thing.

The thing with Peter is he was impulsive. He had a tendency to speak before he thought about it.

Once in a while he would say something profound like confessing that Jesus was the Christ, but the very next minute he tried to tell Jesus what to do and Jesus had to rebuke him by saying ‘get behind me Satan’.

Or there was the time without thinking, seeing Jesus walking on the water he asked Jesus to let him do the same. Peter couldn’t keep focused on Jesus long enough and started to drown until Jesus rescued him.

Even after Pentecost, Peter was still very human. Paul tells us in Galatians that he had to confront Peter in front of the church to stop Peter offending the Gentiles by trying to please Judaizers who had come to the church. (Judaizers were Jewish believers who tried to force Gentiles to follow the Jewish Law before accepting them as Christians.)

Besides opening his mouth at the wrong time, we know Peter also was not very highly educated. He was a fisherman, a man’s man. He probably didn’t have time for school and probably went to work while still a boy.

I once read where some experts in the Greek language of the New Testament once determined the education level of several writers of the New Testament by their level of grammar.

The writer of the book of Hebrews was someone with the education of the highest level. Someone who had the equivalent education a doctorate. Paul wrote at a level of a college graduate, John at the level of a high school graduate and Peter, in his letters, wrote at the level of a middle school student.

That didn’t mean he wasn’t intelligent, he just didn’t have book smarts. My parents grew up during the Great Depression. Both of them were pulled out of school at a young age to work on the farm. I would have never considered them as unintelligent. My Dad was an expert at crossword puzzles and my Mom was always reading her Bible.

Though he wasn’t educated, Peter was recognized by those who were educated for his knowledge. Once Peter and John were brought before the Sanhedrin because they were arrested for preaching about Jesus.

After they heard Peter’s speech it says in Acts 4:13 (ESV)

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.

Having been with Jesus made all the difference with Peter. Jesus changed his life. Yes, he still made mistakes, but his faith in his risen Lord would never waver after He had his encounter with the Risen Jesus.

As Peter was reaching the end of his life, he decided to write a letter of encouragement, which he sent to several churches in the area that is now known as the country of Turkey. These were churches that had a mixed congregation of both Jews and Gentiles.

These believers were also people who from time to time suffered persecution for their faith. If an earthquake happened in a town. The Christians were blamed. If a fire broke out in a town, it was the Christians fault.

Christians were called atheists by the rest of the Roman world because Christians did not worship the gods that the rest of the people worshiped. If something bad happened it was because the gods were angry with the atheist’s lack of worship.

It was not easy to be a Christian during those times. They never knew whether they would be turned in to the authorities and tortured for their beliefs.

Peter was writing to reassure these believers who were suffering persecution that there is a hope for them that goes beyond their present situation and to encourage them to hold steadfast in their faith during their troublesome times.

We may not face the persecution that they did back then. We are fortunate, living in a place that allows us to gather together, but that doesn’t mean we don’t face stresses and troubles like they did.

We too, even today need the encouragement that Peter offered them back then. So let’s look at what Peter wrote to them.

Peter did not waste anytime in getting to his point. Immediately after his greeting he starts telling them about their living hope.

The first thing that he wanted to stress to them is -

A. The Source of Our Living Hope

I Peter 1:3 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,

Peter tells those he is writing to that they don’t just have hope, they have a living hope. A hope that is sure, certain, and real, as opposed to the deceptive, empty, false hope the world offers.

No other faith and no other belief can give the hope that the believer in Christ has. That is because we serve a living God who is the source of our living hope and that living God has made us some wonderful promises that we can look forward to with certainty that it will come true.

In verse 3, Peter says a few things here about the source of our living hope.

First that we have this living hope because it is “according to” God’s mercy.

Secondly, because of the mercy of God, He has caused us to be born again.

And thirdly that it was because of the death and resurrection of Jesus we have access to that new birth and living hope.

When talking about the mercy of God, what does it mean to be merciful?

Actually, grace and mercy go hand in hand. Grace is receiving a favor that you don’t deserve and mercy means to not receive a punishment that you do deserve.

As humans, we all make mistakes. We all know that. Any mistake or failure on our part can be called a sin because the meaning of sin is ‘to miss the mark. Think of trying to hit the center of a target with an arrow. Anything less than hitting the bullseye in the center would be called a sin.

That is the point Paul is making when he said in Romans 3:23

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

All of us have missed the mark and fall short of coming close to the glory of God, which is the standard of perfection we would need to reach to stand before the Lord.

Because we have all sinned there is a consequence.

Romans 6:23 says

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

No matter how much we may say we have lived a good life, we all fall short of the perfection that is God and we all deserve to die.

God in His mercy did not leave us in this hopeless state. He did not give us what we deserved, which was death. Instead, He, through grace, provided a gift, Jesus.

Jesus came and died in our place. He took our sins upon himself. He did not stay in the tomb though. He rose to prove that our sins are forgiven.

Paul describes how we can receive the gift of God in Romans 10:9-10,

9 If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Returning back to 1 Peter 1:3, Peter is saying that God and His mercy is the source of our living hope. By His mercy, He provided the means of salvation through Jesus when He raised Him from the dead.

Not only did He save us from our past sins, He has also given us a certain, future hope.

When Peter said God has “caused us to be born again”, the grammar he uses is past tense. That means being born again is done. When you put your faith in what Jesus has done by dying on the cross for your sins, and you receive Jesus as Lord of your life, you became something new and that something new has a living hope.

Ephesians 2:1 says,

1 And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins,

You see, before we give our life to Jesus, each one of us is spiritually dead, disconnected from God. But the moment we turn to Jesus and allow Him to be our Lord, we are reborn spiritually. Our spirit is once again alive and we become connected to God.

So you see, our living hope and new birth was made possible by, through and because of the resurrection of Jesus.

It is a living hope because it centers in a living Christ.

The one thing the people in Peter’s day needed was hope. The stories of the tortures they faced were horrible.

It has been reported that the emperor Nero tied Christians on poles, soaked them in oil and then lit them on fire, using them as torches for his parties.

Others would be put inside a hollow bronze statue of a bull and a fire would be lit underneath the statue heating the metal of the bull until those inside literally roasted.

Some were crucified, others burned at a stake, and many were taken to the arena where wild animals were let loose on them while thousands watched calling it entertainment.

These people needed hope and Peter said there was hope, a living hope that only Jesus could provide. The scope of our living hope is what Peter describes in verse 4.

B. The Scope of our Living Hope

1 Peter 1:4 (ESV)

to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading,

The living hope is in a future inheritance. You receive this inheritance because of what God has done for you when He caused you to be born again. When you receive Jesus as Lord, God makes you his child.

You can see that in Galatians 4:5-7

5 to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.

6 And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, "Abba, Father!"

7 Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

We become heirs of God, receiving an inheritance when we finally come before Him, when our time here on earth is done.

Now the full scope of all we will receive I believe is beyond whatever we could ever imagine, but the Bible does give us a glimpse.

Many years ago, I found something interesting in the back of a reference book I own called Halley’s Bible Handbook. It is a comparison of the books of Genesis and Revelation. Not only does is show the beautiful unity of the Bible, but it also points out some of the things we have to look forward to in the future.

There are 10 points:

First, Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and earth”

Revelation 21:1 says, “I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth”

Second, Genesis 1:10 says, “The gathering together of waters He called the Sea”

Revelation 21:1 says, “And the Sea is no more”

Third, Genesis 1:5 says, “The darkness He called night”

Revelation 21:5 says, “There shall be no night there”

Fourth, Genesis 1:16 says, “God made the two great lights” (sun and moon)

Revelation 21:23 says, “The city has no need of the sun nor the moon”

Fifth, Genesis 2:17 says, “In the day you eat thereof you shall surely die”

Revelation 21:4 says, “Death shall be no more”

Sixth, Genesis 3:16 says, “I will greatly multiply your pain”

Revelation 21:4 says, “Neither shall there be pain any more”

Seventh, Genesis 3:17 says, “Cursed is the ground for your sake”

Revelation 22:3 says, “There shall be no more curse”

Eighth, Genesis 3:1 says, Satan appears as a deceiver of mankind

Revelation 22:10 says, Satan disappears forever

Ninth, Genesis 3:22-24 says, Man was driven away from the tree of life

Revelation 22:2 says, The tree of life re-appears

Tenth and last, Genesis 3:24 says, Man was driven from God’s presence

Revelation 22:4 says, “They shall see His face”

To that I say, Amen! What a day that will be.

Getting back to today’s text, Peter also gives us some idea in verse 4 of what we can expect with our inheritance.

First, he says our living hope is an inheritance that will be imperishable. What that means is what we receive will be unaffected by corruption and decay.

Secondly, our living hope is an inheritance that will be undefiled. Undefiled means unspotted, describing that which is far removed from every kind of contamination.

Third, our living hope is an unfading inheritance. The root idea of the word unfading is that it is unaffected by the withering which is common in everything as it ages like the flowers in a vase.

Now, though we may never know on this side of eternity all that we will receive as an inheritance from God, I think I know what Peter is referring to here.

Paul describes the same thing in 1 Corinthians 15:52-54. He says,

52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”

Those Peter was writing to were facing the real possibility of death at any time for their faith. Peter was encouraging them that death was not the end. Death was not something to be feared because death was only a doorway to an eternal life with God.

One day we will be given a glorified, immortal body that will be imperishable. It will be undefiled by sin and it will be unfading, that is, it will not wither and grow old.

That is a hope that we that we can hold on to.

Peter doesn’t stop with simply describing the scope of our living hope, he also describes –

C. The Surety of our Living Hope

Peter continues on at the end of verse 4 and verse 5 by saying that our inheritance is a sure certainty.

Starting at the end of verse 4 it says.

4 (Our inheritance is) kept in heaven for you,

5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

The idea of our inheritance being kept in heaven is that you already have been given it and all that needs to happen is you need to go there to receive it.

The idea behind the word ‘kept’ in the Greek is that your inheritance is under the watchful care of our Lord until we go home to Him.

The word ‘kept’ is also in the perfect tense in the Greek which has a unique meaning.

I had a mentor, who was an expert in the Greek New Testament. When he came across a verb in the perfect tense he always pointed out the significance.

You see, a perfect tense means something in the past was happened and is complete, but what was completed has a continuous effect into the present and the future. There is no way to express that in English or any other language.

For this verse, what Peter is saying is when you became born again in the past, that inheritance became yours. It is done, complete. It started being watched over by God at that point. But the end result of what happened at the point you were born again is your inheritance continues to be watched over by God and will continue to be watched over until it becomes a reality to you some day.

It is hard to express it in any more certain words than that.

Peter goes into even more detail though. He says in verse 5 that you yourself are being guarded through faith by God’s Power!

What greater hope could be given to those undergoing persecution than the knowledge that God’s power guards them from within, to preserve them for an inheritance of salvation that will be completely revealed to them in God’s presence.

It is not our works that guarantee our living hope, our inheritance. It is nothing but God’s Power.

In my studies I noticed something interesting about the word guarded in verse 5. It is not the normal word for guarding, keeping or watching. In fact in the whole Greek New Testament this word for guarded is only used 4 times.

It means to be protected by a military guard, such as in a fort, surrounded by walls, to either prevent hostile invasion, or to keep the inhabitants of a besieged city from flight.

That is how protected you are. God the Father has surrounded you with His power to protect you. No attack of our spiritual enemies can take away what God has promised you.

It reminds me of what Jesus said in John 10:27-28

27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.

28 "And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.

If you have put your faith in Jesus, there is no fear of the future. We are in His hands and we can take comfort in that.

Not only do we have the guarantee from the Father and the Son, but we also have the guarantee of the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 1:13-14 says,

13 …you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,

14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.

The certainty of our inheritance of eternal life could never be doubted. We are guarded by the Power of God the Father. We are held in the hand of God the Son and we are sealed with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The entire Trinity of God is involved in your eternal inheritance, your living hope.

The only thing lacking in our knowledge is just how much that inheritance will be. That we will learn when all is revealed.

1John 3:2 says,

Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

The believers in Peter’s day faced a horrible fate. By not renouncing Jesus and by not worshiping the Roman gods, including the emperor himself, they were seen as traitors and faced the possibility of death.

They had a lot to be fearful of, but Peter said that fear could be turned into hope, a living hope, because there was nothing that could be done to them that would take away what God had prepared for them in heaven.

We today may not experience the fear of persecution. At least here in America at the present time, but we still all face pain or sickness or death at some point in our lives.

We may not face the threat of death for our faith like those in Peter’s day, but we are still mortal. Unless the Lord comes back real soon to take us home, we all will one day die.

The beauty of this living hope that Peter describes to us is the comfort it gives us knowing that when we die, we will live again with the Lord.

1 Thessalonians 4:16 says,

16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.

17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.

We often quote verses 16 and 17 which describes the rapture of the believers, both the living and the dead. But we often forget verse 18. Verse 18 is the key though.

Verse 18 tells us what to do with the fact that the Lord is coming back. We are to comfort one another. We are to encourage one another when faced with struggles in this life.

The fact that Jesus is coming back for us is our hope. We can go on another day knowing Jesus has a future for us.

But imagine not having that hope. Before describing the rapture, in

1Thessalonians 4:13, Paul had this to say,

But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.

Without Jesus, there is no hope. I once watched a Larry King show years ago. He had several religious leaders from various religions. Larry King asked these religious leaders if they knew they were going to heaven. Only one, the Christian John MacArther said yes. The others, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and even a Catholic said they had no assurance they were going to heaven. They had no hope.

The other week I was listening to Dr. David Jeremiah on the radio. He was preaching on the rapture. He told a story about how when he was in seminary, he worked as a Chaplin for Baylor Hospital.

Whenever his beeper went off he knew he had a difficult situation ahead of him because a lot of times it meant someone died and he had to comfort the family.

He said it got to the point that by the time he was done comforting those who had lost a loved one, he could tell which ones were Christians and which ones were not.

For those who were not Christians there was a sense of despair and hopelessness. He said some of them would get down on the floor and beat their heads on the floor because they lost someone they loved.

For those who were Christians, there was sorrow, there was tears, but not like someone who had no hope.

My Mom was like that when my Dad past away. Sure she cried. After 59 years of marriage she missed him so much. But she had the assurance that she would be with him again one day. She knew where he was.

But years before, when I was just a small child, maybe 10 years old, there was a night I will never forget. Dad and I were watching the Redskins on Monday night football play the Cowboys. If you know anything about football you know that was a big game, especially back then.

The phone rang and Mom answered it. The next thing I know she let out a loud scream and fell to the floor sobbing. Dad ran to hear helped her up the best he could and took the phone.

Mom’s sister Louise had died. There was no consoling Mom that night. Why? Because she had tried to witness to Louise over the years, but Louise always rejected the gospel.

Mom knew that was the last time she ever was going to see Louise again and it broke her heart. There was no more hope for Louise.

Conclusion

If you are a believer in Christ Jesus, you have a future and a living hope.

The source of that living hope is according to the mercy of God and through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

The full scope of the inheritance of our living hope we won’t know on this side of eternity, but what we do know is that it is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.

Finally the Surety of our Living Hope becoming a reality is based upon God’s power, which involves the entire Trinity of God.

We need to comfort one another with that hope when difficult times come.

If you are not a believer of Jesus, I encourage you to receive him today. Don’t live another day without Jesus in your life. Don’t be like Louise and put it off. You may not have another day.

It is as simple as Romans 10:9-10,

9 If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.