A Lively Hope [A]

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Transcript:

And if you’ll turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 1, 1 Peter chapter 1, we’re going to talk this morning about hope, about hope. And as I’ve studied this through the scriptures, I’ve come to the conclusion that we misuse the word hope a lot. We misuse it when we say, well, I hope this happens.

I hope this doesn’t happen. We misuse it according to the way the Bible uses it. And I think specifically of Wednesday, last Wednesday, you know, we had reports on the news that we were supposed to have, there was a possibility of bad weather.

And so I was paying close attention to that. And my dad and I were supposed to leave Wednesday afternoon to go back to Arkansas. And he was going to help me do some work on the property, getting it ready for the buyers.

But we were watching this and I kept saying all week leading up to this, well, I hope we don’t have bad weather. I hope we don’t have bad weather. Everybody in Moore watches the forecast religiously, and we hope there’s no bad weather.

Wednesday morning, or Wednesday, I was doing some running around. I had Madeline in the car with me, and we’d gone to have breakfast and took her running around while my sister had Benjamin. And while we were out running around, I noticed I didn’t like the way the air felt outside.

And, you know, I counted up the other day, and I think I’ve been through six tornadoes. And so I’ve kind of gotten the idea that air feels a certain way when the weather’s going to be bad. And I just didn’t like the way the air felt.

And then as she and I were driving around running errands, there’s really just a glorified creek that runs through more. It’s called Little River. But down there south of the Walmart, they’ve got a place where there are geese and all sorts of things.

And the geese hang out there. Well, Wednesday, the geese were not where they were supposed to be. They were not down at Little River.

They were getting in traffic at the Chick-fil-A. They were nesting in the Home Depot parking lot. Not in the grass median things.

That’s not what I mean. They were in the parking lot. Like they had commandeered parking spaces.

And I thought, this is not normal. Okay, the air feels weird. The geese are acting funny. I called my dad at work.

I said, we are not leaving for Arkansas tonight. We are staying close to storm shelter. And still, I hope, I said, I hope there’s no bad weather.

And as I was using that word, I used it the way we so often do, where I’m really wishing, it’s not so much hope, I’m wishing that it turns out to be the way I’m saying it should be, but I really have no guarantee, no proof, no real expectation that it’s going to be that way. And that’s the way we use the word hope in our society, in our world, in our language. We say, I hope this happens.

I hope my kids don’t get sick. Well, ear infections every other week, it’s bound to happen. I hope gas prices go down.

I have no reason to believe that I’m going to get back to the city today and find $2 a gallon. I have no reason whatsoever to believe that. But I hope the gas prices will go down.

I hope Frida has a good week. Well, I have no guarantee one way or the other. I hate to say it for you, but I do hope you have a good week.

We say all the time, I hope this happens. I hope that happens. And hope becomes such an empty word, really little more than wishful thinking when it comes to the way we live and the things that we look for.

That is not at all the way the Bible uses the word hope. And it’s easy to see why the way we use hope could bleed over into the way we read the Bible. And when it says we have this hope or we have hope that this happens, great, what does that mean for me?

Hope in the Bible is something completely different. The Bible, I did some deep study yesterday. And what I mean by that is I like digging through and seeing all the times that a word is used and the different ways it’s used.

And I found out that the Bible uses the word hope about 110 times. And behind that, there are some 15 Greek or Hebrew words. And I didn’t write them all down.

I’m not going to bore you with all the Hebrew and Greek grammar because all these different words that are behind the one word hope really all basically boil down to one definition. You know, you get these Greek and Hebrew dictionaries that accompany the Bible and they’ll give the deeper definitions because there are words in the Bible that have more shades of meaning. Greek and Hebrew are wonderfully expressive languages, very precise too.

I mean, we have the one word love and they have four different words, which is kind of nice because you’re gonna be in trouble if you love your mother the same way you love pizza. I mean, it should be two different things. Well, they’ve got four different words for love.

There are 15 different words for hope in the Greek and Hebrew combined that are used in the Bible and they all mean an expectation. They all mean something that you are not just wishing would happen, but something that you expect to happen. Something that you just know it’s going to happen, you take it to the bank and you’re just waiting on it to actually happen.

The word that’s most often used in Hebrew, and I’m not going to try to pronounce it for you this morning, but the word that’s most often used in the Hebrew 20 times in the Old Testament, they also use that word for a cord or a rope, something that you would use to tie everything together. And I thought about this because we did end up going to Arkansas this week and coming back, obviously, but we just left at 5 a. m.

on Thursday instead of 5 p. m. on Wednesday.

Driving down I-40, I noticed there are always trucks that are hauling big things, pipes especially, are the ones that scare me the most because I think, how did those not just fly out of there? But they have secured these things with, what do you call them, winches and ropes and straps, cords that they used to hold everything in place, and they couldn’t get away with just kind of throwing them on there and I hope, I wish they would stay in place. Now, they have to secure them with these things in such a way that it holds everything together and that they have every reason to expect that those pipes or those rocks or whatever they’re carrying are going to be right where they put them when they get to where they’re going.

And it made me think of this, that this hope, since the Bible uses the same word for hope as it does for a rope, I didn’t rhyme that on purpose, that hope is sort of the thing that ties everything together. It is an expectation that what we, we’re not just wishing for it, we know it’s going to be right where it’s supposed to be. We know it’s going to happen just the way God said it is going to be.

So hope in the Bible is not this empty word where God says we have this hope for a certain thing or we have hope in Jesus Christ. Oh, good, wishful thinking. No, he’s saying it is absolute certainty and we can expect it. This hope ties everything together.

And folks, we can take it to the bank. It’s a promise from God. And so this word hope, we use it completely differently.

And the reason I’m saying this, we need to get in mind what the biblical meaning of hope is, because we’re going to talk this morning about a lively hope that God says he’s given us through Jesus Christ. Some things that he says we can hope for. And we need to understand it’s not just wishful thinking. It is the expectation that what God says will happen will happen.

And we’re just waiting for it to happen. And in 1 Peter 1, starting in verse 1, he identifies himself. He says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. And then he explains who he’s addressing in this letter.

He says, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. And when he says strangers, that’s not a word meaning people I don’t know. Peter is not writing here to people he doesn’t know.

That word also means sojourner or traveler. He’s writing to people as it says scattered throughout all these places. Now, there’s a lot of different regions that are listed there, but basically they all fall in the category of what’s today known as Turkey.

And so Peter says he’s writing, he’s an apostle of Jesus Christ, and he’s writing to the travelers who are scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, throughout Turkey. And just to give you a background on who these people are, so we can kind of better understand why he’s writing these things to them and what they’re going through, these were the believers from the Middle East, from Jerusalem, from the area around there, who had been scattered because of persecution. We know that when Jesus, right before he ascended to heaven, he told the believers, he told Christians that they were supposed to go into every nation.

They were to go to the ends of the earth and to preach the gospel to every creature. But what we see in the book of Acts is that at first, Now, Jesus did give them just a little bit of time. He said, now you wait until the Holy Spirit comes.

And so what they did is they kind of all gathered together in Jerusalem and huddled there while they waited for the Holy Spirit. And we see in the beginning of the book of Acts that the Holy Spirit came upon them and they were empowered to go out and do ministry. And yet most of them still stayed in Jerusalem.

Now, they were only supposed to stay put, stay herded together, if I can use that word, in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit came, and then they were supposed to disperse. They were supposed to scatter. Well, they didn’t do it quite the way they were supposed to do.

And that’s why I believe God sent men like Saul of Tarsus, who would later become the Apostle Paul. He went around as a Jewish official with the authority to do so, to arrest Christians, to break up churches, to have people tortured, to have people killed, in order to stop the spread of Christianity. Now, what would this do?

You know, say you sent a wolf into a bunch of sheep, the sheep are going to scatter, or they should. I don’t know about sheep because I’ve been told by people who own sheep that they’re dumb animals. But get a little bit smarter animal and put a wolf, set a few wolves loose in the middle of the herd, and they’re going to scatter.

They’re going to run in every which direction. And so even though I don’t think God put it in Saul’s mind to kill the Christians, God used this and said, fine, you’re not going to scatter on your own. You’re going to scatter one way or the other.

And so the Christians went in every which direction. Some of them went to Egypt. Some of them went to Syria.

Some of them went to Turkey. Some of them may have gotten as far as India, but they scattered. They had scattered because of persecution.

And some of these people may have been on the run for quite some time. Not only that, but they were in the face of Roman persecution because a lot of these were Jewish background Christians. And we were getting to a point in history.

This book was written about AD 65. We’re getting to a point in history where not only is the Roman Empire persecuting Christians, but they’re also not too happy with the Jews either because the Jews in Jerusalem want to be independent from Rome and the Romans didn’t like that. As a matter of fact, within just about five years of this being written, Roman armies would go in and lay waste to Jerusalem and would actually destroy the temple so that it doesn’t stand even today.

took place in this time. These people were hunted. They were persecuted.

They had rough lives. We can’t even imagine the suffering that these people went through, the persecution that they went through, the trouble on every side. Imagine having to flee with your children to some faraway country in the middle of the night and being on the run because the government’s still after you and the religious authorities are still after you.

Folks, these people didn’t have a moment’s peace. And so as Peter writes to them about hope, it would be something that they desperately need to hear, but it’s also something that a, well, wishful thinking kind of hope isn’t going to cut it for these people. You know, when things are going well for us, that whole wishful thinking is nice.

But when we’re in the midst of the greatest struggles of our lives, having somebody say, well, hope it gets better for you. It’s a nice sentiment, but it really doesn’t make me feel any better. And for him to express hope to them that was a certainty, that was something that they could expect, that they could count on, is exactly what people needed to hear.

He calls them in verse two, he says, the 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. Now, this is something else that would have been important to them at this time to be called the elect. That means chosen, but he says elect according to the foreknowledge of God, the father.

And I’ve told you before in the last few weeks. I know there are people, there have been debates for hundreds of years over how this all works, and there are some people who say, well, God chose some for salvation, and God chose some for help, okay? There are people smarter than I am who believe that.

I don’t happen to see that in the scriptures. I don’t happen to believe that, but people debate about that, and I’m sure I’m not going to, I wouldn’t change anybody’s mind one way or the other, but they say elect according to the foreknowledge of God. And what that tells me is even if God didn’t choose and say, okay, you’re going to heaven, you’re going to hell.

God said those who trust in Christ will go to heaven. God set up the plan of salvation and God still knew, even though he didn’t choose, God knew who was going to choose Christ and who was not. And that’s my understanding of it.

Either way, whether you believe he chose individuals or you believe he chose those who would be in Christ, he’s able to look at these people and say, according to the foreknowledge of God, that means God knew you, God knew who you were going to be, and God knew your plight before any of this was ever thought of. In other words, their persecution and where they were because of Jesus Christ did not catch God off guard. It didn’t surprise God.

God didn’t wake up one morning and say, oh, wait, they really are being persecuted for my name, like I told them they might be. No, they were elect according to the foreknowledge of God, not only did God know that they were going to trust Christ, he knew they were going to suffer for it. God knew every bit of this.

God wasn’t surprised. And folks, it should be a comfort to us in times of trouble, times of, in good times as well, but especially in times of trouble, that our troubles, our suffering, our persecution, whatever it is, doesn’t come as a surprise to God. God has seen us before time began.

God knew who we were and God loved us even then and had our best interest at heart. Excuse me, I got up here, I was fine before I got up here, and I’ve got a little tickle in my throat. So he calls them the elect according to the foreknowledge of God, the Father, through Jesus Christ, and he says, Grace unto you, and peace be multiplied.

Not just a little bit of grace did he want them to have, not just a little bit of peace, but I want you to have all the peace and all the grace there possibly could be. He gets really into the heart of the matter in verse 3 and says, 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. And so he tells them, he reminds them that all of this that has happened to their good, every good thing that they have spiritually going for them is the work of God.

That it was God the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again. He talks about them being born again and he says it’s according to the mercy of God. And I know this comes up in almost every message I preach because it seems to be in the text, but we can’t be reminded too strongly or too often that the salvation that we have, the salvation that any of us can experience through Jesus Christ, is not a result of God loving us because we were good enough and God looked at us and said, well, you’re such nice people, I’m going to love you and I’m going to do what’s necessary to forgive you.

The reason God sent his son to die for us, the reason God loved us enough to do that wasn’t because we were good and lovable. It wasn’t because we were worthy. Precisely the opposite was the case.

We’re unworthy of God’s love. We’re unworthy of God’s forgiveness because we’ve so strayed from him as a human race and as individuals. But it’s because of God’s mercy.

Because God is good. Because God is loving. Because God is merciful.

Has nothing to do with us. and because God was so good and loving and merciful, he sent his son to die for us. And he says, because of this, you’ve been begotten again.

You’ve been born again into a lively hope, a living hope, not a dead hope, not a wishful thinking kind of hope, but a hope that you can put stock in by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Folks, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead was the proof that we have hope in Jesus Christ. All sorts of people follow dead leaders today and think that they even follow living leaders today and think that they have any chance of making a real difference in their lives. They’re even willing to put their eternal destiny in these men’s hands.

And we have no proof that they are who they say they are. You know, what proof is there? What proof is there really along the lines of resurrection that Muhammad was the messenger of God?

The Muslims don’t worship him, but they believe that he spoke on Allah’s behalf. What proof is there along the lines of resurrection of the dead? What proof is there that the Buddha came into some kind of spiritual knowledge?

It might have sounded good, but what proof is there that he had tapped into the supernatural? Folks, what proof was there when millions of people thought that Adolf Hitler was going to be their salvation? When they thought that Adolf Hitler was some sort of superman who was going to bring their country into a new millennial kingdom type of thing?

What proof was there? There was absolutely none. Of all the people, of all the religious systems, of all the philosophical systems that people put their trust in, not one of those people has ever died and risen again from the dead to prove that they were exactly who they said they were and that they spoke for God the way that they claimed to other than Jesus Christ. He’s the only one.

Because of that, we have proof that this is a living hope because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He says in verse 4, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled. So this resurrection, this rebirth is to an inheritance for us, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away reserved in heaven for you, for you who are kept by the power, verse 5, of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.

Now he goes on from there and we may talk tonight about the trial of our faith and temptations, but I want us to focus on these three verses here, verses 3, 4, and 5 this morning in just the next few moments, and see some of the things that he speaks of us having a hope in or hope of because of what Jesus Christ has done. We have hope of these things. God promises us these things as a result of what Christ has done, and the reason I went through all of that about hope this morning already was so that when we talk about having a hope of these things, it is not just wishful thinking.

God has said it, it is a promise, and we can expect it to happen. So when we say, I hope, I hope, I hope, we’re not just saying, I wish it would happen. We’re saying, I know it’s going to happen, and I’m just here waiting in the meantime.

First of all, first of these things that it talks about that we have hope of in Jesus Christ is that we have the hope of a new life. We have the hope of a new life, and what I mean by that is we have the hope that we do not have to clean up our lives and get our lives straight and then come to Jesus Christ. We can’t. If this is your first time here and you’ve not heard me say this before, let me make it abundantly clear.

We can’t clean up our lives first enough for God and then come to him. That was the whole point of Jesus coming. We have this hope that we don’t have to clean up our lives and then come to God and hope he’ll accept us.

We have the hope that we come to God as we are, sin and all, and he deals with the sin, and he forgives the sin, and he creates in us a different heart, a changed heart. He creates in us a clean heart, as King David prayed for. He creates in us this new heart, a new man the Bible talks about.

It gives us a new life that we suddenly then are able to walk in his ways. We’re able to follow him in a way that we could not do so before. And he tells us this in 1 Peter 1.

3 when he says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again. That word begotten is used so many times in the Bible to mean birthed. He birthed us again.

The Bible talks about the need to be born again. So many people have taken issue with the idea that we have to be born again. I’m puzzled by this idea of born again Christians.

Now I consider myself a born again Christian, But what I take issue with is what other kind is there? What other kind is there? Jesus himself said, you must be born again.

Now they use this in opinion polls and stuff, and I guess they separate born again Christians from what they call mainstream Christians. Well, if you’re calling yourself Christian, you can’t get more mainstream than the founder. Go back to the source himself.

And he says in John 3, 3, he answered Nicodemus and said, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. If we’re Christians, excuse me, I don’t understand how we can call ourselves Christians, but dispute the fact that we’ve got to be born again. As a matter of fact, when Nicodemus questioned him on this further and said, I really, I think it was Nicodemus, said, I really don’t understand.

Jesus said, Marvel not that I say unto you, you must be born again. Don’t be so surprised. For Jesus, this wasn’t a surprising thing.

This wasn’t a revolutionary thing. This is everything that had been taught throughout the Old Testament, that God, folks, God loves us where we are. I know I’ve said this lately and said it sounds like a cliche, and it probably is, but it’s true, that God loves us where we are but loves us too much to leave us that way.

Folks, God is in the business of changing people’s hearts and lives and has been for 2,000 years. This was, not 2,000 years, excuse me, 6,000 years. This was nothing new in Jesus’ day.

Now the idea that you come to him through Jesus Christ was something they hadn’t heard before. But this idea of being born again was not entirely new. And so he told people in his day and he tells us today that we need to be born again.

Several places in the New Testament make it clear that the way that happens is through faith in Jesus Christ. Ephesians chapter 4 talks about putting off concerning the former conversation. Conversation a lot of times in the New Testament means behavior. the old man putting off the former conversation the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of your mind that you put on the new man which after god is created in righteousness and true holiness he talks about someone coming to christ and taking off the old man and putting on the new man becoming a different person I don’t mean our I don’t mean our personalities completely change that uh that if you and your likes and your dislikes that if you liked baseball before, you’re suddenly going to hate baseball but love basketball, or you’re going to suddenly be into Chinese food.

That’s not what I’m talking about. But the innermost part of ourselves, the spirit, God changes that from the inside out. That’s why the Bible tells us if any man be in Christ, he’s a new creation.

Old things have passed away and all things are become new. But he tells us that it was according to his abundant mercy, he’s begotten us again. As he’s talking about this hope, he reminds them, even in the midst of their struggle, even in the midst of the tribulation that they are not the same people that they used to be.

I am not the same person that I used to be. And that’s hard to say when I was, when I came to Christ at the age of five and was a little kid who was scared of my parents, still am a little bit, and so didn’t have time to get into a whole lot of trouble. But I, you know, I knew even at five years old I had sinned.

I knew that I, I knew I was a sinner. I knew it was my nature to lie. I knew it was my nature to do all these things.

And, And I may not be able to look at, as some people are able to do, at this dramatic conversion story and say, well, I used to drink and cheat and do, but now I’m different. But I can certainly look at where I would have been otherwise, apart from Jesus Christ, and say, he changed me from what I would have been. He changed me from the path I was born on.

And folks, he changes each of us when we come to faith in him. We are not the same people that we were when we set out on this journey. Should not be.

And so we come to times of tribulation. If you read through, excuse me, the rest of 1 Peter, you see that, which we’re not going to do this morning. I promise I will not preach through the whole book of 1 Peter this morning.

But you read through the rest of it and you see the persecution. You see him talk about the persecution they were going to face. And it wasn’t just from the government.

It was from people who were going to try to worm their way into the churches and start teaching wrong things. And it would be very easy to get to the point of saying, I can’t do this anymore. But he reminds them, we are not the same people we started out as.

Because of God’s abundant mercy, because of God’s abundant mercy, we have been begotten again. And God makes it clear that he’s in the business of changing people’s hearts and changing people’s lives. And we’re new creations in Christ. And so we have the hope of a new life.

When I say the hope of a new life, again, I don’t mean that we come to Christ and he’s going to make us all healthy, wealthy, and wise. But I mean from the inside out, we are new people. we have the hope that God can change us no matter how far we’ve run from him and no matter how bad we’ve been, God can change us and God can clean us up and God can forgive us.

Second of all, in Christ, we have the hope of a resurrection and eternal life. The Bible talks about Jesus’ resurrection. We’re familiar with that, but the Bible also talks about the resurrection from the dead, that we will be resurrected one day.

I don’t know when that’s going to happen, but the Bible says it’s going to happen, so I believe it will. He says unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now, Jesus’ death and burial and resurrection was the proof, as I’ve already mentioned, that he was who he said he was.

But it’s also the proof that he has power over life and death. And when Jesus Christ, who has proven himself to have power over life and death, says that we will live again, ladies and gentlemen, you can take that to the bank because he’s the only one who has the power to authoritatively make that claim. And he said in John chapter 5, Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice and shall come forth.

They that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation. Now that doesn’t mean, again, that if you’ve been good enough, God will raise you up and you’ll go to heaven. And if you haven’t been good enough, he’ll raise you up and you’ll spend eternity separated from him in hell.

We cannot do good or do well on our own. We cannot follow God on our own and live up to the demands of his holiness, his own standards. The way we do well is by faith in Jesus Christ, where Jesus accounts his righteousness.

He puts his righteousness in our account where we have none of our own. But the Bible speaks clearly that there’s going to be a resurrection one day, that everybody’s going to be resurrected. I was surprised when I first read our BMA doctrinal statement a few years ago and saw it talked about two resurrections, the resurrection of life and the resurrection of damnation.

I thought, really, everybody, even the non-believers are going to be raised? And here it is in John chapter 5. He says, yes, everybody’s going to be raised again.

Everybody is going to be raised and is going to be judged and is going to be sent wherever they’re going to be sent on the basis of the way they’ve responded to Christ’s offered mercy. And in Christ, we have this hope that because he rose again from the dead and because he said that we will rise again with him one day, That we will. As Christians, we have the hope that if we’ve trusted in Jesus Christ as our Savior, we can believe His promise that death is not the end.

One day we will live again and we will live with Him. He promises eternal life to those who trust in Him. Think about that.

Eternal life with Him. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Try to wrap your mind around eternity sometime, and I promise you, you will get a headache.

There are some concepts in the Bible that are taught there that I believe because they’re taught there, and yet I cannot figure out. I cannot come to a complete understanding on these. The Trinity is one of them.

I believe one God, three eternally distinct persons, and yet I can’t completely wrap my mind around that. Eternity is another one of those. I imagine the longest period of time I can possibly imagine, and then it goes on beyond that.

And then what is there after that? There’s more eternity. It just never ends.

Think about that too long and you will get a headache. And yet God promises that after we’ve died, if we’ve believed in Jesus Christ, if we’ve truste