A Lively Hope [B]

Listen Online:

Transcript:

Tonight, we’re going to finish up the message from this morning about a lively hope. If you’ll turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 1. And we’ll start again just to.

. . I hope I don’t start that coughing again.

I haven’t been coughing all afternoon. We’ll read through the whole passage again just to give ourselves some context. And it says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace unto you and peace be multiplied.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. And we talked this morning just to refresh you. I know sometimes I go home in the afternoon and I think, what did I?

By the time I get back to church, I think, what did I talk about this morning? And some of you may have napsed since then. But just as a refresher, we talked about the difference between hope in the Bible and hope the way we use it.

And I hate when my own words that I’ve taught come back to haunt me. but even this morning as we were leaving, I was standing out in the front talking to, out in the yard there talking to Sandy, and she was telling me about some medical issues, and I told her as we were leaving, I said, well, I hope it works out for you. Folks, we’ve got to be careful.

I’m not telling you change the way you talk, but I want to be careful about cheapening that word hope, because as I was talking to her, I have no guarantee that her medical issues are going to work out. I do know that God’s going to take care of her no matter what, but I have no guarantee of the way the medical issues are going to turn out or anything else. So I looked at her, I said, there I did it again.

I said, better I should say, I want it to work out for you. But hope is a much stronger word the way the Bible uses it. It is absolute certainty.

It is something that God has said it, and so we don’t wish for it to happen. We don’t think, oh, that’d be nice if it happens. It’s something we expect to happen.

We know it’s going to happen and we’re just waiting until it does. And so when he talks about this and says that God has begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and talks about all these things that we discussed this morning and that we’re going to talk about tonight, these are things that we can be certain of. This morning we discussed the fact that verse three tells us that in Christ we have a hope of a new life.

We have the certainty that God does, God can and will and does change those who trust in Jesus Christ, those who come to him by faith. God loves us just as we are, but doesn’t intend us to stay that way. And he says that he’s begotten us again.

Yeah, we talked about how in Christ we have the hope of a resurrection and eternal life that one day, folks, death is not the end. For the believer, we should know better than anybody that death is not the end. And I understand that sometimes we’ll go to a funeral. There’s going to be sadness there.

I shouldn’t say sometimes. I can’t think of a funeral I’ve been to that wasn’t sad. I’m not one to typically rejoice that somebody has passed on.

We go to a funeral and there’s sadness there. And I think for believers, if we’re believers in Jesus Christ and the one who has passed on is a believer in Jesus Christ, it’s all right for us to be sad for ourselves and for our loss. We don’t need to be sad for them.

They’ve gone on to something better. and the separation will not go on forever because we have the hope of a resurrection. We have a hope that in Jesus Christ we will be raised.

We will be raised again. The Bible talked in John chapter 5 that we talked about today, the resurrection of life and the resurrection of damnation. Everyone will be raised again and those who have trusted in Jesus Christ will be raised to eternal life.

We have that as a promise from our God and it’s something that we can bank on that death is not the end of all this. And we talked this morning about how in Christ we have the hope of a lasting inheritance. That not only the perks and the fringe benefits of heaven, all the streets of gold and the mansions and the crowns and all those nice things, I believe they’re real. But even more so, the inheritance that we have of a relationship and eternal life with Jesus Christ. That’s an inheritance that doesn’t lose value over time, that can’t be stolen from us, that can’t be taken away, can’t be changed or exchanged.

that we have a lasting inheritance. And we have that to look forward to, not only, ladies and gentlemen, not only in heaven, but we have that as our inheritance as God’s adopted sons and daughters here on earth. We have that relationship with him and with his son, Jesus Christ. Tonight, we’re going to talk about the final two things that I see in this passage, both out of verse five, where he talks about us being raised to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, he says in verse five, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in that last time.

And when he says here that he refers through verse 4 to you, it’s reserved in heaven for you who are kept. Those of you who are kept. As believers in Jesus Christ, he says we are kept by the power of God through faith.

And so the fourth thing that I see in this passage is that in Christ, we have the hope of God’s promise to uphold us. And again, I want to drive home again. You’re going to get tired of hearing this.

I can almost guarantee it. It is not a wishful thinking kind of hope. It’s not a wishful thinking kind of hope that, well, I hope God keeps me.

No, ladies and gentlemen, we have the promise throughout scripture that God upholds us as those who believed in him. We may stumble and fall at times, but the Bible is clear. We will not fall away because we are his.

And I’ve said before that there’s a big difference. I believe that Christians can stumble and trip and fall into sin at times. But one of the marks of a true believer is that we don’t stay gone forever.

I mean, I have every day there are times I trip and fall into sin. And yet as a believer, I feel that conviction of the Holy Spirit. I feel bad about it.

And sometimes even while the sin is going on, I feel the conviction. But certainly when it’s over, I feel the conviction and realize this is not right. And the thing I want to do most at that point is deal with the Lord about it.

because His Spirit is there upholding me, trying to keep me from sin, but even more than that, keeping me in the love and forgiveness of God. The Bible calls the Holy Spirit the earnest of our redemption. I didn’t really understand what this meant until I bought a house for the first time when I bought the house in Norman and then had to put earnest money also on the house in Fayetteville.

I had to give some money. In one case, I had to give $500. In one case, I had to give $100 just as evidence to the seller of the house that I was serious.

It was the sort of the down payment, not really the down payment because they want more for that, but it was the bank wants more for that, I should say. But to the seller, it’s the down payment. It is the proof where I’m putting my money where my mouth is.

I am serious about buying this house. I’m so serious that if I walk away from this contract, you get to keep the $500. And I don’t know about y’all, but $500 is a lot of money to me.

I don’t spend $20 lightly, let alone $500. That is an earnest deposit. That is proof that I’m serious about buying the house.

When I got the offer on the house in Fayetteville, I called my realtor back and said, I’m pretty close to having you call them back and say, I don’t understand the joke here. Because they were offering me $10,000. At first, they were offering me $10,000 less than what I had asked for what I needed.

I priced it as low as I possibly could to sell it quickly. $10,000 less than I had asked for, and there was no earnest money in the contract. I said, I have no reason to believe that these people are serious.

I take it off the market, they walk away scot-free, and I’ve lost other potential buyers. And the real estate agent said, well, here we’ve done away with earnest money in the last year or so. And I thought, well, that’s crazy.

You didn’t do that when I, I mean, they hadn’t done away with it when I was a buyer. But as a seller, I’m looking at that and thinking, that earnest money says something to me. It tells me those people are serious about their offer.

That’s exactly what it’s intended to do. Folks, the Holy Spirit, the Bible says, is God’s earnest of our redemption. That is who and what he has left behind to demonstrate to us his seriousness in redeeming us.

And we are kept by the Holy Spirit. We’re kept by the power of the Holy Spirit. And God looks at us and says, they’re mine, and they’re always going to be mine because they’re mine.

In John chapter 10, verses 28 and 29, it says, Jesus is speaking and says, And I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father which gave them me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. Ladies and gentlemen, I understand that there are a lot of people smarter than I am who believe you can lose your salvation.

It doesn’t matter whether they’re smarter than me or not. I can’t go by their opinion. I go by what I see in the Bible and I see verses like this and you cannot explain to me passages like this in such a way that make it mean anything other than we are upheld by God and once we’re his, we are his, period.

And it says in 1 Peter 1. 5 that we are held, we are kept by the power of God through faith. In Christ, we have the hope of God’s promise to uphold us.

You know what? My salvation, as I discussed this morning, my salvation was not because of how good I was. My eternal life, this gift of eternal life that God has given me, has nothing to do with how good I was.

As a matter of fact, if it was based on my goodness, I wouldn’t have it. Because I can’t be good enough for God, and neither can you. But my salvation, my eternal life through Jesus Christ is not based, my obtaining of it was not based on how good I was, at how good he was, how good he is, and similarly with hanging on to it.

It wasn’t based on me when I got it, and it’s not based on me today. Praise God. Your salvation, if you believed in Jesus Christ, was not based on you when you got it, and it’s not based on you today.

We have the promise that it is God who upholds us. We have the promise that it is God who keeps us. I thought as I was coming in tonight about Romans chapter 8, we looked at it just briefly, I think, last week, But it says in verse 35, starting in verse 35, who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Who indeed? He goes through to list all of these things. Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?

I mean, that just about covers the whole spectrum of things that could drive a wedge. And he says in verse 36, as it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

In other words, all these things are to be expected. It didn’t catch God off guard. In verse 37, it says, Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

In other words, he answers his own question. From verse 35, he asks, Can any of these things separate us from the love of Christ? He says in verse 36 that all of these things we go through are for his sake.

He wasn’t caught off guard by any of them. And so in verse 37, he says, no. And it’s not just that we survive these things, but he says in all of these things, we are more than conquerors. That all of the things that could conceivably drive a wedge between us and the love of Christ, through his power, through his grace, we not only survive them, we overcome them, we sail through them because God upholds us.

And in verse 38, for I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing, ladies and gentlemen, nothing. We have this hope in Jesus Christ, whereas it says in 1 Peter 1.

5 that we’re kept by the power of God through faith. He upholds us. And is there anything that can separate us from His love?

Is there anything that can alienate us from him? Paul says, I’m persuaded there’s nothing. And he lists off all of these things.

And he says, none of it, not one little bit of it, not all of it, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Folks, it’s not just a wishful thinking. I know some folks, wonderful people, but wonderfully wrong on this point, I think.

Wonderful people who think that they can lose their salvation and say, well, I better go get prayed up. And you know what, there was a time, there was a time in my life, I won’t say that I disbelieved security of the believer, but when I questioned and went back to the, and I think it’s helpful for us at times to question from the scriptures, are the things that I believe really taught in the scriptures? I’m not saying are the things I’m taught, do they make sense out here?

You know, we want to go by the world’s philosophies, but I’m saying according to the scriptures, we want to check from time to time and make sure that we’re really with what Christ teaches and not just with what somebody else told us. But when I questioned and studied this out for myself, and just the very thought that I could lose my salvation, folks, it was a distressing week for me before I got those questions resolved. And folks, there’s something very comforting to know that God upholds us.

It’s not just wishful thinking that salvation is always there. It is a hope, it is a promise that we have from God that it’s by his power we’re held. It’s not my goodness that holds me up here.

It’s his power, it’s his goodness. Folks, we have a loving Father who promises to uphold us, who promises to keep us. And what a blessed assurance we have, ladies and gentlemen, that He promises to uphold us.

I don’t know about you, but that gives me hope to know. And contrary to what some will tell us, it doesn’t make me think I have license to sin either. I’ve never met a serious Christian who thought that.

Well, because once saved, always saved, I can go out and sin as much as I want. Now, there may be people who think that, but I’ve never met a serious, apparently born-again Christian who’s thought that. On the other hand, it makes me feel like, you know what, I want to live up to what God expects from me.

If he’s invested all of this in here, if he’s invested all of this in me, and he’s invested all of this in us, and he’s there upholding me every day, I know I’m going to let him down, but it makes me want to do my best to live up to what he expects. It makes me want to do my best to make him proud. And the knowledge that we can live our lives, we can live our lives and serve him.

I’m not talking about living our lives exactly the way we want to, but we can live our lives and try to serve him to the best of our ability without worrying I’m going to slip up and that’s going to be it for me. Folks, that’s liberating that we can go and serve him the way he’s called without having to constantly worry, well, does my good outweigh my bad? Am I good here?

Folks, we’re upheld by his love and by his power. And as he says, no man shall be able to pluck them out of my hand. Finally tonight, so we not only have the hope of God’s promise to uphold us, but we have the hope of salvation.

We have the hope of salvation. He says here in the same verse in 1 Peter 1. 5, that we’re kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.

Now, this does not mean that we’re not saved right now, that we’re only saved later on in the future. Folks, I believe the Bible teaches throughout that when we’re saved, we are saved right then. That God justifies us because of the righteousness of Christ. He justifies us at that point.

And that’s just a theological term that means he wipes the slate clean. He sets the accounts right. We have this deficit.

We’re in the red as far as the bank account of righteousness is concerned. And we are so far in the red, we will never be able to bring that back up to a positive balance. and God takes the righteousness of Jesus Christ and puts it in there and we’re back in the black.

Justification says God wipes the slate clean. God is not a fool. God is not confused or forgetful.

God knows that we are still sinful, but God chooses to look at us and see the righteousness of Christ. That’s justification. And from the moment we’re born again, from the moment we trust Christ as our savior, we are justified before God and we are bound for eternal life. We’re born again.

And God does something called sanctification at that point. I know I’m throwing out some big words here, but they’re important words. Sanctification, the process of being set apart.

And I’ve taught for the last few years that sanctification is both instantaneous and ongoing. At the moment of salvation, God not only justifies us and wipes the slate clean, but God also sanctifies us at that point, sets us apart and says they are mine. So in terms of our standing before God, we are sanctified right at that moment as part of our salvation.

Now, sanctification, as far as learning to live holy lives, that takes the rest of our lives as God works in us and through us and conforms us to be more like Jesus Christ. But there’s also glorification. There’s also a part of salvation that the Bible talks about also here in Romans chapter 8, where when we are raised again to be with God and we’re given those glorified bodies and we see him for who he really is. and all things are different.

Folks, that is a part of our salvation. That’s involved in the deal. That’s part of the package, but it’s a part of the package we don’t have yet. We have the hope of it.

We know with certainty that it’s coming. We know with certainty that there’s going to be an eternity in heaven with the Lord Jesus Christ and all the things entailed with it, but we’re not home yet, are we? So when I say we have the hope of salvation, again, don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking wishful thinking and we’re not really saved here, but we’re not really saved until we die.

We’re saved. and we are at the moment of conversion we are as saved as we’re ever going to get but there’s part of it we just haven’t received yet we haven’t received all the fringe benefits and if you think well that sounds like heresy wouldn’t you say heaven is one of the fringe benefits of salvation and we haven’t quite received that yet have we he says here in verse 28 of Romans chapter 8 we talked about this a little bit a few weeks ago he says and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God to them who are the called according to his purpose and again, that doesn’t mean that we are promised a favorable outcome in everything. We read on to verse 29 where it says, for whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

And what that means is when God looked through time, I believe God sees all of time and all of eternity as though it’s the present. God is not bound by time the way we are. And when God looked through eternity and saw and knew those who would trust in him.

It was always his plan that those who trusted in Jesus Christ would be conformed to the image of Christ. In other words, when it talks about predestination here in verse 29, I believe it’s talking about his plan through the ages has been not just to save us, but to change us to be more like Jesus Christ, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And then it says in verse 30, moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called and whom he called, them also he justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified. There’s a part of salvation that is glorification, that means this resurrection and this glorified resurrection body, and I don’t know, there are all kinds of questions, what that’s going to look like, what that’s going to be like, are we going to look the same?

I have no idea. He didn’t tell me. I just know what the Bible says.

But there will be a day when we’re raised again, when we are part Resurrection of life. And when we receive that glorified body and where we see things and understand things as we never have before. I don’t believe that means we get to heaven and suddenly we understand everything.

We’re still not going to be God even in heaven. But we’ll understand things as we never have before. And there’s a glorification in that as we reign with him in these new glorified bodies.

But we have this hope of salvation. We have the hope. We have the certainty.

We have the certainty that we’re saved now and we’re as saved as we’re ever going to get. What proof do we have? We have his word.

We have the hope, the certainty, the expectation that God will live up to his word and means what he says when he says he justifies those who believe in Jesus Christ. But we also have the hope of something that is to come. We have the hope that we will see the full result of the salvation we currently possess. We have the certainty that what God began, he will complete.

What Paul says is that he’s certain that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. And I don’t remember offhand where that’s found. I want to say Philippians.

But that tells us that God has begun to work in us. God has begun to work out the things that involve salvation. We are as saved now as we’re ever going to be.

But God is continuing to work on us and to give us the things that are part of that package deal. And folks, we have a hope that God won’t just get halfway through the process and give up, but that we’re saved now and we will see the fruit of that salvation, the completion of that salvation on the other side. Do we have proof? Can we put it in a laboratory and test it?

Can we put it on a mathematical table and figure it out? No, but we have the promise of a God who has never broken his promises before. And because of that, folks, God has an absolute 100% track record of faithfulness in keeping his promises.

And for that reason, we can look at all of these things and say, I hope in those things. I hope in Jesus Christ that this will come to pass. And when we say it, we don’t have to be talking wishful thinking, but a certainty that the word of God ties all of it together.

If you remember this morning, I told you that one of the words in Hebrew that is most often used in the Bible for the word hope also means a rope or a cord, something that ties everything together. And folks, it is the word and the promise of God that ties all of this together and gives us a reason to hope. Because his track record in keeping his promises is sure.

And so we have this hope, not only of our salvation now, but to see the full result of our salvation in the times to come.