INTRODUCTION
St.
Peter wrote his first letter to Christian believers who were suffering for
their faith. Peter addresses his letter to “the exiles of the Dispersion.”
Peter called them “exiles of the Dispersion” because they were living among
pagan people who were hostile to them because of their loyalty to Christ. They
were suffering in many ways. They were misunderstood by their pagan neighbors
who sometimes treated them like criminals. Some of them lost their jobs. Family
and friends had turned against some of them.
These
new believers had put aside the sinful ways that characterized their old
lifestyle. But their neighbors put constant pressure on them to return to what
he calls “the passions of their former ignorance.” Their friends thought they
were weird because they didn’t join them in the wild behavior of their former
lives (1 Peter 4:4).
Some
of the Christian women had unbelieving husbands, and Peter challenged them to
live in such a way that they might win their husbands to the faith. And he
instructed Christian husbands how to conduct themselves toward their wives with
affection and honor.
Many
of these new believers were slaves. Slaves were property, and their masters
could treat them as cruelly as they wished. Peter gives Christian slaves advice
about handle the difficulties of their unhappy situation in ways that will
bring credit to Christ.
Considering
all the problems his readers were facing, it is interesting that Peter doesn’t
begin his letter with advice about coping with their problems. He starts by
praising God for the living hope that God has given them in the midst of their
difficulties.
After
he has greeted his friends, he gets right to the point. He writes:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance
which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are
guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
In this you rejoice, though now for a
little while you may have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of
your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire,
may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Without having seen him you love him;
though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable
and exalted joy.
I.
Let’s talk about what it means to be “born anew to a living hope.”
A.
When give ourselves to Jesus, we experience a new quality of life. Peter calls
it being “born anew.” Paul expressed it in an equally colorful way. He wrote in
one of his letters, “If anyone is in Christ, that one is a New Creation,
everything old has passed away. See, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians
5:17).
Sometimes
this happens in a dramatic way. I remember my friend Nathan who I met on a
troopship on its way to Korea.
Nathan
had found Jesus—or Jesus had found Nathan—at a Sunday evening church service in
Seattle, a day or two before we boarded our ship.
We
were on our way to take part in a war. None of us wanted to go to Korea. None
of us wanted to be in a war. But Nathan was so happy in his new-found faith
that he was just bubbling over with joy. He wanted to talk about Jesus. I
remember seeing him look up at the sky and remarking about how much bluer the
sky was since he had found Christ.
Most
of us haven’t had such dramatic experiences as Nathan did. Maybe we can’t put
our finger on the time when we actually were “born again.” But we know that Christ
is our Savior because we can see what he is doing in our lives.
And
the first thing Peter wants to tell these suffering Christian believers is
about is about the “living hope” that God has put into their lives.
Hope is what I want to talk about
today, because hope can change our lives. Hope can give us the strength and joy
and faith to deal with our troubles.
B.
People use the word “hope” to mean wishing for something they would like to see
happen—no matter how unlikely.
They
say, “I hope spring comes early this year.” “I hope my headache will go away.”
“I hope my daughter calls today.” “I hope I can get to sleep tonight.” “I hope
the Hawks win.”
But
hope in the Bible is a lot more solid than just wishing hard. Hope in the Bible
means desire combined with expectation. New Testament hope is a
joyful waiting, a patient, confident expectation that what God is going to
bless us with is grander than anything we can even imagine.
Maybe
there was a time when your strongest desires were for a luxurious house…a new
car…lots of money…a handsome husband…a loving wife. But by this time we’ve put
those desires behind us.
If
we love Jesus, our strongest desire is to learn to love as we’ve been loved, to
see God bless other people through our lives.
We
pray that God will be so real in our lives that we can face death with calm
assurance and a witness to others that God is real in our lives.
The
hope God gives us is confidence that the things we hope for will happen.
C.
Our hope, Peter tells us, is a living
hope. The hope God gives us is alive, and it gives life, a life full of
joyful anticipation.
This
living hope—this confident assurance that Jesus is always with us—gives us
peace in the midst of difficulties and disappointments. And our living hope
gives us the strength and courage and faith to keep on with God to the end of
the road.
Peter
tells us that our living hope is imperishable,
undefiled and unfading—it will never die,
will never spoil, and never fade. In fact, the longer we live—if
we live for God—the more real, more alive, the more sure our hope will become.
II.
We all want this “living hope.” Now I want to tell you some things that nourish
thie life-giving hope in our lives.
A.
Troubles can actually strengthen our hope if we can make sense of them. Troubles
are easier to bear if we can see a purpose for them.
Just
now I read these words, “In this hope
you rejoice—though now for a little
while you may have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your
faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may
redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
God
can use our troubles for our good.
God
doesn’t send us our troubles. Some of
our troubles come from our own foolish choices. Some of our troubles come from
the misdeeds of other people. Some of our troubles come from chance happenings.
And some of our troubles come from the Evil One the devil.
But
Peter tells us that just as gold is refined and purified and proved genuine by
fire, so our faith is refined and purified and proved genuine by the fire of suffering.
If
everything always went well for us, we wouldn’t need faith, would we? We could
just sit back and enjoy life. But our troubles can make us depend more and more
on God. When we depend on God in our troubles, we prove that our faith is real.
We show others that God is real. Our troubles can make us strong witnesses for
Christ.
B.
Second, our troubles can make sense if we can see that they can actually
increase our confidence—our hope in God.
If
we were secure in this world—if we had no troubles, no setbacks—hope would
vanish.
Jesus
told a story about a rich man, whose crops produced so plentifully that he had
nowhere to store his grain. The rich man thought to himself, “What should I do,
for I have no place to store my crops?” Then he said, “I will do this: I will
pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain
and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up
for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry!”
But
God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.
And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Luke 12:16-20).
The
rich man’s security proved to be his downfall. It gave him a false assurance
that all was well. And in the same way, if we were secure in this world, we would
have no need for hope. But we are not secure, so our insecurity gives us an
incentive to put our hope in God.
In
Romans 5, Paul mentions some of the good things that might come out of
suffering. He writes, “Suffering
produces endurance, and endurance produces tested character, and tested
character produces hope…” It is remarkable that he lists hope last rather
than at the beginning where we might expect it. Hope doesn’t come from thinking
positively; hope comes from struggle. Hope is a product of faithfulness.
C.
The third way that we can make sense of our troubles when understand how our
sorrows can help us to sympathize with the sorrows of others. We live in a
world of troubled people. And if we have experienced troubles of our own, we
can begin to understand and sympathize.
We
will never understand just what our friend is going through because everyone’s
troubles are different. We can’t say, “I know just how you feel,” because we
can never know just how anyone feels,
but we can tell them of a time when we were despairing—or doubting—or ready to
give up—and we can tell them how God comforted us and gave us strength.
D.
The fourth way that we can make sense of our troubles is to remember that Jesus
bore his cross of sorrow and calls us to take up our crosses and follow him.
He
said, “If you want to follow me, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow
me.” The way of the cross means death to the self-centered life. It goes
through death to resurrection with Jesus.
When
we think about what Jesus did for us on the cross, our troubles bind us more
closely to Jesus who suffered.
St.
Paul wrote that his aim was to know
Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings,
so that he could become like him in his death—and attain the resurrection from
the dead (Philippians 3:10-11).
Suffering
washes away the dust from our eyes so that we can see into the Promised Land of
light and glory.
I
have read that the Indonesian word for “hope” means “looking through the
horizon to what lies beyond.” Hope looks beyond the horizons of this world to
see into the glorious world to come.
E.
We nurture hope in our lives by obedience. Jesus urges us to lay up treasure in
heaven. The more we have invested in the Kingdom of God—time, money, effort—the
more firm will be our hope. If we can’t see the future, we can see the duty
that lies before us.
This
short time we have on earth is a time for working out our salvation—for putting
our faith to work in whatever ways we can.
We
pray for strong faith when our time comes to depart this world. The more time
and effort we put into our life with God now—by earnest prayer, generous giving,
church fellowship, sharing our faith, encouraging others, and using
every opportunity we can find to serve our fellow humans—the more we will be drawn to the world to
come—the more real heaven will be to us.
CONCLUSION
I
want to close with a true story I read recently of a pastor’s visit to a
faith-filled woman near the end of her life. He writes:
“This past week I visited a lovely lady in the hospital
who is dying with cancer. Doctors have given her about three months to live. With
great faith and assurance and peace, she told me that everything was going to
be all right. She is not delusional. Her mind is not clouded with morphine. She
is at peace because her King reigns from a cross. He is not far away from her,
sitting a throne removed from her agony. Her King is at her side suffering with
her. Christ is not above her pain. He is experiencing her every pain. He is not
slowly taking her life away from her. He is giving his very life to her, and
promising her every minute of every day to see her through.
“Because of this, she told me that she has never known a
time in her life when she more close to her Lord. All of her despair has been
transformed into hope. And she is absolutely convinced that her death will
be transformed into life everlasting.”
After she described the intensified intimacy she now
shares with her Lord, she then said something miraculous. With a hopeful joy in
her smile and eternity in her eyes, she told me that she is really looking
forward to celebrating Thanksgiving this year. Think about that for a moment.
A woman, dying with cancer, told me that she has a lot
for which to be thankful.
Don’t we all?
(From
a blog by Jarrett Banks)
I
want to depart this earth like that—full of faith and hope and gratitude. Don’t
you?
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