The Hope That Sustains Us!
1 Peter 1:3-12
A colonel in the Air Force, who spent eight years in a North Vietnam prison camp,
reflected on what had kept him going during that ordeal.
He spoke of the solitude and terrible
loneliness that he felt.
“We were forced to spend so many hours and weeks and months and years with nothing to occupy our minds,” he said.
How did he survive it?
How did he manage to retain his sanity?
He said thoughts of coming home “to a good family” kept him going while he was in prison.
Thoughts which he said “turned out to be completely justified.”
Thoughts of home gave that man something to hold on to.
It’s the same with the Christian and his thoughts of home.
Our heavenly home that is!
It’s the hope of heaven that has given Christians of every generation the courage they needed to carry on.
In our text today, Peter is holding the promise of heaven before the weary eyes of his readers.
We, would be wise to make sure that thoughts of our heavenly home are in our minds at all times.
How beautiful are the thoughts of home and Jesus!
How strong they can make us when we are being pressed hard by Satan and the world!
I. The Nature of Our Hope!
Paul has been referred to as the apostle of faith,
John the apostle of love,
and Peter the apostle of hope.
No one could deny that these themes were shared in the writings of these three men.
But it’s with good reason that Peter was moved by the Holy Spirit to make hope his major theme.
Peter was writing to suffering Christians.
They were already suffering persecution for their commitment to the Lord Jesus,
and it would get worse before it got better.
So he wrote:
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade - kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time” (I Pet. 1:3-5).
As to the future, the child of God has an “inheritance” reserved in heaven.
How is it that we have this inheritance?
Because we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and our Savior, we have been born again.
We have become “children of God ... heirs of God ... joint-heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:16-17).
The very thought of it is staggering.
We are God’s children and we will receive from Him a great inheritance when we die!
And that inheritance is eternal life in heaven!
So grand is our eternal inheritance that it can not be described with human language.
Therefore Peter spoke of our inheritance negatively;
It “can never perish, spoil or fade.”
The things of this life don’t seem to last long, do they?
The things of heaven are incorruptible (i.e., imperishable, permanent).
Even the best things of earth are tainted by sin?
The things of heaven are undefiled, for there is nothing unclean in that most perfect of places.
Even the pleasures of this life are received with a cynical spirit.
Why? Because we know they will not last.
But the joy of heaven will never fade,
for everything about it is not only everlasting but also perpetually fresh.
How is all this possible?
Well, our bright hope for the future is rooted in a past event.
God raised Jesus from the dead and made
His resurrection the pledge of our own.
“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him” (I Cor. 15:20-23).
On the eve of His death, Jesus looked beyond His death
to His resurrection and continuing work on behalf of His people.
He said,
“In my Father's house are many rooms ... And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2-3).
Looking to the past,
we see God’s power and hear Jesus’ promise in connection with the resurrection.
Looking to the future,
we have the confident hope of a heavenly inheritance.
But what of the present?
“Through faith you are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time” (I Pet. 1:5).
The power of God is working in the present
“to keep you from failing and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy” (Jude 24).
If we let our faith fail, we forfeit the
security spoken of here.
So long as our faith in God is strong,
as long as we trust in God and in His Word,
as long as we allow the Holy Spirit to guide and direct our life, our inheritance is certain.
With a strong faith in God, we become conscious of what Peter calls a “living hope.”
It’s grounded in the reality that we serve a God who cannot and will not fail us.
Others, who put their hope and their faith in this world,
see their lives crumble away, as health fails,
as wealth fails, as relationships fail, as dreams fail.
But our hope lives on, as it is based in the eternity of God!
II. The Power of Our Hope!
That great hope gives us the
power to keep going.
Knowing that victory is at hand will cause the weary soldier to keep on fighting.
The certainty of reaching his destination
will cause a tired traveler to press on in his journey.
The knowledge that better things await us in heaven
will keep us from getting caught up in the trivial fascinations of the world.
Why get all excited about the things of this world,
when they can in no way compare to what awaits us in God’s glorious heaven?
This great hope has the power to bring us great comfort
when we must suffer for our commitment to the Lord.
As Paul expressed it:
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18).
Peters readers were going through some very
"painful trials"
which would put their faith to the test (cf. I Pet. 4:12).
So Peter wrote about the sustaining power of
their hope:
“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire - may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (I Pet. 1:6-9).
Peter knew that if his readers could only
look beyond the circumstances of the moment
to the eternal things of God, they would find the strength to hang on.
How is it that we can hang on in the midst of the pain and agony and sorrow of life?
How is it that we can keep on serving God and living for Him
when everything around us seems to be falling apart?
Can we hang on?
Yes! And it’s the reality of heaven,
the reality that there is a better place where we can and will spend eternity with God,
that keeps us hanging on.
Our faith in Jesus, as our Lord and
Savior, and in His promise that in Him we have eternal life
and will one day live with Him in heaven, keeps us hanging on.
Quoting Paul again:
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:16-18).
Our faith in the unseen things of God,
is what sees us through the trials of this life, the sorrows of this life.
Now we must realize that God does not
cause these things to happened to us.
But He does allow them to come into our life.
Not for the purpose of hurting us, but to
test us.
Faith that is not tested, is not really faith at all.
Anyone can say they have faith in God, but to know if that faith is real, it must be tested.
The trials of life come to put
our faith to the test.
Our salvation is based on our faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.
Our salvation is based on our faith in
Jesus Christ,
to wash away our sins and to recreate us into His image.
If our faith is not real, then
neither is our salvation!
It ‘s the trials of life that test our faith.
As with the passing of gold
through a refiner’s fire,
these challenges allow the reality of one's faith to be made evident.
And it’s this living hope, the promise of
spending eternity in God’s wonderful heaven,
that helps us to endure the trials of life.
For we know, there is a marvelous place
waiting for us, if we are faithful to God.
III. The Certainty of Our Hope!
How do we know that all of this
is real?
Well, Peter talks about that.
He said that our salvation had been
prophesied by the Holy Spirit,
through the Old Testament prophets.
“Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things” (I Pet. 1: 10-12).
What is the connection between
these verses and the hope of which Peter has been writing?
Well, the Old Testament prophets had foretold things
whose meaning they had not fully understood.
They spoke of salvation that the Messiah,
Jesus Christ, would make available to us.
They spoke of the virgin birth, of the
miracles He would do,
of the suffering that He would endure.
Yet they did not see how or when these things would come to pass.
But the
accomplishment of these things was not dependent upon their ability
to understand them, explain them, or to bring them to completion.
The Holy Spirit was in them to give them the
message they spoke and wrote,
and divine power and wisdom saw to their fulfillment.
The same Holy Spirit guided the New Testament prophets
to deliver their messages of assurance about the outcome of events in this final age?
It’s the same Holy Spirit who has told us
of our heavenly inheritance?
The same divine power and wisdom, which saw that all the promises,
made through the Old Testament prophets, were brought to their fulfillment,
is still at work in the world today, to bring about the things which have been promised to us.
The writer of Hebrews spoke of
being “greatly encouraged” by means of
the “hope offered to us ... as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Heb. 6:18-19).
This is the hope which every Christian
must have, to face life’s most severe challenges.
Such hope is not mere wishful thinking
but is the confident expectation that God’s promises to us will not fail.
Conclusion:
Thoughts of home were what kept
an imprisoned man alive and sane
during his ordeal of eight years in a prison camp.
Thoughts of their heavenly home kept many
a Christian of the first century
strong in the face of wild animals and cruel men.
These same thoughts in your heart will see you through your darkest hours.
The Bible calls us to view life from the end,
to take what we might call “the eternal perspective,”on things.
A woman in great pain endures it triumphantly,
for she is looking to the birth of her child.
A scientist persists day after day through
failed experiments,
for he is looking for a cure for cancer.
The Word of God tries to get us to see
things the same way.
Yes, at times the pain and
sorrow is great.
The frustrations and problems of life are all but unbearable.
It’s then that our faith reaches
out for strength,
and it is our LIVING HOPE that gives us SOMETHING TO HOLD ON TO!
Something so wonderful that human words can not describe it.
The reality that we have an eternal home in Gods glorious Heaven!