I am sure you've got the PTL Friend, not PTA, not PTO, your PTL friend.
Anytime you say something good happens, they're gonna respond.
PTL.
What does PTL mean?
Church.
Praise the Lord.
And, and it's not that they're disingenuine about
that they, they mean it.
Praise the Lord, PTL, but it's kind of become a, a, a
trope in Christianity, right?
The, the PTL.
Yeah.
Praise the Lord.
We should be praising God, right?
In fact, we should be praising God at all times.
But there are times it's, it's hard for us to feel like we should praise the Lord.
In fact, there's times that even your PTL friend is not gonna say, Hey, PTL.
Like if you showed up and said, Hey, guess what?
I, I just lost my job.
They're not gonna be like, oh, praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord for that.
Or if you said, man, I, I, I was at the doctor, I got my
results back, and it's cancer.
They're not gonna look at you and say, man, praise the Lord.
Or if you were to say, man, my, my marriage is just
really struggling right now.
Oh man.
Praise the Lord.
Hey, we took our car in this last week and, and it looks like the repairs are
gonna be way more than we can afford.
Oh, well, praise the Lord.
We're used to praise the Lord, following the, the good things.
Hey, the scan came back, no cancer.
Praise the Lord.
Praise God.
You know what things are are going really well in my marriage.
They were rough for a while, but they've gotten so much better lately.
Hey, praise God for that.
That's such a good thing.
My kids are doing well.
Praise God.
My daughter got saved.
Praise God.
Those are the things.
Those are the times that we think, man, yeah, praise God.
And yet as we consider what Peter's.
I'm gonna say here in verse three, right after he's addressed our audience, the
original audience says, elect exiles.
Remember those that have been driven away from their house?
I mean, picture it for a second.
If you, you will, if you wrote to a friend and, and you had been driven away
from your home, you'd had to give up all your possessions, your relationships,
your friendships here, you'd had to go somewhere, you know, some godforsaken
area like Oklahoma or something like that.
They resettled you up in the barren wasteland up there
and, and, and you're away from everything that you once held dear.
And you call your friend and you say, man, I, I, I was forced to move up here.
I I didn't have a choice.
Chances are your friend's not gonna say, praise God for that.
Right?
After addressing his audiences elect exiles, Peter says, praise God.
Blessed be the godfather of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That's what that word blessed means.
It means to praise God And, and what's important for us, and what I hope to
show us this morning is that there's a reason why no matter our circumstances,
we can always praise God that there is a living hope that we have.
There's a bit of news that's so good that no matter what else is going
on in our lives, we will always have reasons to say, praise God.
It boils down to this, and this is the general thrust of our sermon
this morning, is this, there's no better news than Jesus is alive.
There's no better news.
There's no greater news.
There's no better news that that could come circumstantially.
There's no better news that could come in the future as far as anything
that you could imagine or dream or hope that would rival, that would
challenge the good news that Jesus is alive, and it's this news right here.
That means that no matter what season we find ourselves in,
we can always say, praise God.
Our passage opens in verse three.
Peter writes this, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed.
It's the word EU in the Greek.
It's where we get our English word eulogy to speak well of someone to praise them.
He says, praise be to God.
Worship God exalt God the father.
Of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We get Peter's Trinitarian theology coming through here right off the bat.
His focus on what's known as the imminent or the economic trinity,
rather the economic trinity, is how God relates to creation.
It's how God shows his relations within the Godhead with creation.
That's why Peter calls God the God of Jesus Christ.
That may come across as odd to you.
'cause you're thinking to yourself, well, isn't Jesus God?
So why is Peter referring to God as the God of Jesus then?
Well, it's because as we studied in John's gospel, as salvation history
worked out, Jesus submitted himself to the will of the Father, right?
Jesus subjected himself to what the father desired of him.
Paul writes in Philippians chapter two.
By humbling himself to the point of death, even death on a cross.
And that's still happening right now to an extent because Paul writes in
one Corinthians 15 that there's a day coming in the very end, in the
culmination of all things, when all things will be subjected to Jesus.
And then Jesus will subject all things then to the Father,
including himself at that point.
And so this is not about an inferiority of Jesus.
This is not saying that Jesus is less than God.
This is simply looking at the way that God relates to himself within
the Trinity as Father, son, and Spirit as it pertains to us, you and
you and I, and that has everything to do with the mission of Jesus.
And it's the mission of Jesus that Peter has in mind here because
it's the mission of Jesus that culminated in the resurrection.
That is the reason why we have the, the cause to say, praise God.
Blessed be the godfather of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But remember, he's writing to people that were scattered, that were removed
from their homeland, that were taken away from either Jerusalem or Rome
or other territories, and made to repopulate these five kind of in
the sticks regions of Asia Minor.
It's these people that he's saying, Hey, praise God.
It it's not the people coming off the mountaintop experience.
It's not the people that are feeling secure and comfortable in their homes.
It's people that are suffering.
And he says, praise God.
Why?
What would cause them to want to or to have reason to praise God?
Well, he continues.
He says this, 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, according to his great mercy.
God's mercy is part of who he is.
By the way, mercy, if we can remember this, grace is
getting what we don't deserve.
Mercy is not getting what we do deserve, right?
Mercy is God not wiping us off the face of the planet.
Mercy is not God sending us straight to hell.
The first moment that we sin mercy is God's patience.
It's described in the Old Testament as his steadfast love.
In fact, it's a word that's connected to his covenant identity in the
Old Testament with his people, his hesed love in the Hebrew.
His steadfastness, his mercy.
In fact, when Moses asked God, Hey God, can I see you?
God says, Moses, I'm gonna cover you in the cleft of this rock.
And when I pass by, I'm gonna declare my name before you.
And here's what the Lord said The Lord, the Lord a God in the first descriptor out
of the mouth of our God, is this the Lord?
The Lord a God, merciful.
And so back in our text, it's according to that great mercy.
With without God's mercy, we have no living hope.
Without God's mercy, none of us are here saying, praise God this morning.
It's because of God's mercy that we have this, according to his mercy,
he has done what he has caused us.
Again, notice that this is God's initiative.
God's the one doing the heavy lifting of our salvation.
He has caused us to be born again.
We talked about that last week with the work of the Spirit.
The spirit sanctifies us.
And the first part of our sanctification is that positional
sanctification, we call it regeneration.
Being born again, Jesus and Nicodemus, that whole interaction there.
So God has caused us to be born again to, and there's three things that He's
caused us to be born again to in our passage, verse three, a living hope.
Verse four, an inheritance and verse five, A salvation.
So he is caused us to be born again.
Verse three, to a living hope, verse four to an inheritance,
and verse five, for a salvation.
That word four is the same Greek preposition that's described
as or translated as two in verse three in verse four.
So there's three things that are part of us being born again.
We've been born again to these three things.
And, and what we wanna do first is, is talk about the first two
of these in verses three and four.
But before we even get there, what's the foundation of this new birth?
What's the, the whole grounds upon which we have a living hope?
What's the whole point of our, our inheritance and, and why
do we have an inheritance?
The answer comes in his next phrase here.
He's caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead.
That's why if we go back here, there's no better news than Jesus is alive.
This is the linchpin.
Without the resurrection, everything else is moot.
The resurrection is arguably the most important component of the entire gospel,
and yet it's oftentimes the one that we neglect to share and talk about.
More often than any other part.
So often we'll share the gospel of someone, Hey, Jesus Christ died on
the cross for your sins and rose from the dead so that you can be forgiven.
Oh, we don't say that part.
Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins so that you can be
forgiven, put your trust in him.
But if Jesus Christ never rose from the dead, what does Paul say?
Your faith is what?
It's okay.
We can talk.
It's all right.
Your faith is what?
It's vain.
It's futile.
It's meaningless.
It's pointless.
In fact, Paul says, man.
We're the most to be pitied.
You guys could be at home asleep still.
The donuts aren't that good to show up on a Sunday morning.
They're good.
They're not that good.
He says, we are most to be pitied if the resurrection's not true.
The resurrection is the linchpin to all of this.
The resurrection is the reason why we have a living hope.
Our living hope is living because we have a living savior.
The resurrection of Jesus is the, the crux of the gospel and has been
targeted by opponents of Christianity for ages and withstood every
single attack brought against it.
Jesus didn't simply faint on the cross.
The disciples didn't go to the wrong tomb.
They didn't steal his body.
They didn't slip a body double in there.
A stunt double in for Jesus at the last second.
There wasn't a mass hallucination experienced by hundreds and
hundreds of people all seeing the resurrected Jesus at the same time.
You see, see, these are, are some of the explanations that the world has thrown
at why, uh, maybe we shouldn't believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead.
Now, the truth is we serve and worship a living savior, so we have a living hope.
I preached on this in greater detail back in April of this year.
You can go back if you are interested in that sermon.
It's called What To Do About Jesus from April 20th of this year.
I go into more detail on the resurrection, some of the evidences there, the defense
of the resurrection, that I don't have time, unfortunately this morning, to
unpack for us as much as I'd like to.
But this whole passage hangs on the reality of Jesus's resurrection
and what it means for us.
He's caused us to be born again through the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead.
Now, let's talk about some of those things that he's caused it to be born again, to
first, this living hope, a living hope.
We just sang about it.
We sang that we have a living hope.
These elect exiles weren't left to despair.
They weren't left to sit there and, and their hope wasn't contingent upon men.
I hope I get to go home someday.
Their hope wasn't, man, I hope I can find a steady job.
Their hope wasn't.
I hope I can have a, a good marriage.
Their hope wasn't.
I hope.
Whatever.
Fill in the blank.
Their hope was living and it, it was living and it was sustaining
because their hope was anchored.
Not to this world, but to the world to come.
See, that's one of the problems.
Church, when we have a a hope, that's something that's temporal.
We know it because that's how Apple has built its entire existence, I
hope, in a new iPhone, until you get it and they're already talking about
the next iPhone, two generations later.
And then what are you doing?
You're hoping in that one man, I, I, I hope, I remember being a, a, a young man
in, in high school and thinking, man, I just can't wait to graduate high school.
I just, my hope is I just wanna graduate high school.
In fact, I used to be, I used to think, Jesus, I want you
to come back, but not yet.
Not, not until I get to graduate high school.
And then it was, man, I just wanna graduate college.
And then it was, I just wanna graduate.
I, I just wanna get married.
And then it was, I, I just wanna graduate seminary.
I wanna have my kids and y'all.
There's still things in times that today I am tempted to put my hope in
things that aren't my living hope.
I'm tempted to temp hope.
Man, I, I, I hope God, that you protect my kids.
I, I hope that you know my, my kids.
You don't come back Jesus until you save my kids.
Look, those are good things.
I'm not saying those are bad things.
But our living hope is a living savior in the future that he secured for us,
which is the second thing that we've been born again, to not just this
living hope, but to an inheritance that's imperishable, undefiled, and
unfading kept in heaven for you.
It is imperishable this inheritance, this future that we have, which
means it's, it's incorruptible.
It's incorruptible, it is immoral.
One Corinthians 15 says that we will be raised imperishable.
Our inheritance is connected to our eternal state and glorified
bodies raised imperishable.
But it's not just imperishable.
It's also undefiled.
It's unstained.
It's absolutely pure.
You get something new, you're gonna immediately notice if there's any
blemishes about it, aren't you?
If there's anything wrong with that of any defect, you're gonna think, oh man,
this, this is so great except for this.
Your eternal inheritance that's connected to your living hope is gonna have nothing
for you to point out to say, man, my inheritance in Christ is great, except
for you're not gonna have anything.
It's gonna meet every expectation that you have.
It's undefiled and it's unfading.
Jesus said, storm treasure for yourself in heaven, where moth and rust can't destroy.
North eves breaking in steel.
In other words, work for treasures that will never fade, that will never
degrade, that will never be broken down.
And that's our eternal inheritance that we have in Christ.
And it's being kept, it's being preserved in that state, in heaven for us.
So we've been born again to a living hope through the resurrection of the dead.
And this living hope is this inheritance.
That's undefiled, that's unfading and that's being kept in heaven for us.
That's the, the, the mindset that Peter's casting for the elect exiles.
That's where he wants their minds.
He's trying to cast their gaze from the here and now to the
then and there and saying.
You know what?
That's why we can say, praise God, man.
You take me away from my home, my family, my workplace, all
that I've known for so long.
It's gonna be hard for me to say praise God.
But the living hope Peter's saying, the living hope that we have, that
was good enough for the elect exiles.
In the dispersion.
It was good enough.
Remember Paul and Silas and Philippi when they're arrested
and they're put in prison.
You, you remember what happens there?
The earthquake happens, right?
And, and the Philippian jailer gets converted.
But before all that, and they didn't know that that was about to happen.
They didn't know what was coming next.
What are they doing in the dark depths of that prison cell?
They're singing hymns to the Lord.
It was good enough that Living Hope was good enough for Paul and Silas in
prison, and it's good enough for you and me where we sit here this morning.
Our first point along those lines this morning is this.
I hope that.
I hope that fires you up.
I hope that gets you energized this morning.
And along those lines, point number one is this, energize your
faith through your living hope.
Energize your faith through your living hope.
My car's a, an electric car, which is a badge of shame
for some of you in this room.
I, I, I get that.
I know that.
Don't come at me with your big diesel trucks.
That's fine.
I didn't buy it because it saves the environment.
I bought it because it goes fast.
It's the fastest car I've ever had.
And, uh, I, that gives me great joy within the boundaries of the speed limit,
because I know every time I pull up to a stoplight, most cars that pull up next to
me, I'm gonna torch that car off the line.
I know it, I know it, and it makes me feel good.
I've driven cars.
I, I, if I was gonna do that, I had to turn off the radio.
I had to turn off the air conditioner.
You know what I'm saying?
Right.
On the, on those types of cars, like you had to make sure you were diverting
all power to the, to the gas pedal.
And even then it was a prayer and a hope.
No, my, my electric car, it flies.
And that's just in standard mode.
It's got a sport mode too.
And if I put it, so if I pull up next to a young kid in a car and he's kind
of flexing on me, I'll casually just drop it into sport mode and take off
all the regenerative braking on it too.
And that's when like the imprint of my back is in the seat when I get done
hitting the gas pedal all on that thing.
It flies.
It goes so fast.
You hit sport mode and it energizes the whole thing, right?
Y'all kick your faith into sport mode because you're
living hope in Jesus Christ.
Like, this should fire us up.
This should get us excited.
Look again at what our living hope consists of.
It's an inheritance that's imperishable, undefiled, and
unfading kept in heaven for you.
After Jesus rose from the dead, he meets Mary in the garden
there and he tells Mary this.
He says, Mary, go tell my brothers.
He doesn't say Go, go tell my my servants.
He doesn't say, go tell those faithless disciples that weren't at the cross.
He says, go tell my brothers.
Paul's gonna pick up on this in Romans chapter 80.
He's gonna say, Hey, guess what y'all, we've received the spirit.
Not a fear, but the spirit of adoption as sons of God.
And now guess what?
Paul says, we are co-heirs with Jesus.
Think about that.
You and I are co-heirs with the son of God.
That means your inheritance, your living hope, is a portion of the inheritance
that Jesus Christ earned and merited for himself through obedience to the Father.
That should fire us up.
That should get us excited.
The resurrection is the most central truth to Christianity.
Our faith rises and falls on the resurrection.
Our living hope rises and falls on the resurrection.
Our ability to say praise God regardless of our circumstances to
sing in the midst of exile, rises and falls on the resurrection.
Peter would die for his faith in the resurrection.
The church was going to explode on the scene and spread further
and faster than anyone could have imagined because of the resurrection.
Paul was gonna go from persecuting churches to planting churches because
he encountered the resurrected Jesus.
And for 2000 years, the church has been preaching and proclaiming a
resurrected Jesus and it's undefeated Your faith rest upon a certain and
sure living hope your Hindu neighbor's faith doesn't have a living hope.
They're hoping in a cycle of regeneration so that they can
escape that and reach Nirvana.
And as my Hindu neighbor told me, they have seven tra chances of that, and
she's not sure which one she's on.
That doesn't sound like much hope to me.
Your Muslim coworker doesn't have a living hope.
He's sitting there hoping that in the end that his good works on the scale
of Allah are gonna outweigh his bad works, and so desperate Are they?
For any grasp at security that there are some who are willing to get into
planes and hijack them and fly them into buildings and kill thousands of people
for this empty promise that that will guarantee their entrance into paradise.
And they'd rather do that than live in the uncertainty of, are my
goodies gonna outweigh my bad dates?
That's not a living hope.
Your atheist friend
doesn't have a living hope.
They've put their confidence in their own intellect.
They have a God.
Their God rests between their ears
and they're doing everything they can right now not to have
to think about the brick wall of death and what happens afterwards.
That's not a living hope.
You and I have a living hope, a resurrected savior,
and the question is, what?
What is that doing for us?
And we have to, to really first ask, do we believe this?
That Jesus is alive.
Do we believe that?
That he's sitting at the right hand of the Father right now making intercession
for us, such that if you and I sin, we can confess our sins and know that he is
going to plead his righteousness on our behalf before the Father, do you believe
that he's gonna come back for his church?
If we do, are we live ready for it?
Do you believe that He's commissioned us to go and preach
the good news that Jesus is alive?
He's overcome death.
He's overcome sin.
Do you believe that he's better than any earthly possession or relationship?
Do you believe he is the only way truth in the life?
Do you believe that there's no other name under heaven by which a man must be saved
other than the name of Jesus Christ?
See, these are all things that we can extrapolate out of the reality
that Jesus Christ is alive and we worship and serve a living savior,
and that should energize us.
If we answer yes to these things, it needs to show up.
It needs to show up.
It needs to show up in how we live and how we're engaging
with people in our community.
It needs to show up by taking these little cars that are inside
our bullet and saying, Hey, I'm gonna put this in my Starbucks.
I'm gonna put this at the the Christian Brothers Autocare Center.
I'm gonna take this.
I'm gonna give it to my neighbor across the street.
I'm gonna invite them to come to church.
I'm gonna have a conversation with somebody about Jesus.
It needs to show up because it is the living hope and the only living hope
our sending pastor used to compare.
The world that we live in to a sinking ship and used to say of us that,
that we know where the lifeboats are, we know where they are, the world
that, that we find ourselves in.
Everybody still wants to sit in the restaurants and sit at the
bar and, and, and dance and, and be in the pool, in the hot tub.
Meanwhile, the, the ship is going down.
And as Christians, you have the living hope of knowing where the lifeboat is and
there's, there's room on the lifeboat.
And so your, your job and my job is because we've got this living hope is
to go the, to those that don't recognize the peril and the danger that they're in.
And to say, Hey, you need to hope and put your trust in Jesus.
You're at risk.
Your life is at risk.
The ship is going down, but I know where the solution is.
I know where the answer is.
And so we do that with a somberness.
Yes.
But man, we also do that with a great sense of, of excitement.
It's a privilege to know the living hope and to be able to
tell other people about it.
To be able to tell other people, man, I've got the best news you're ever gonna hear.
Jesus is alive.
And lemme tell you why that matters.
Remember, y'all we're the exiled church, living in an area where it's
so easy and so tempting to become the vacationing church instead.
And so this first point, reminding ourselves of our living
hope is so necessary for us.
Because it reminds us that our hope is not here.
Our living hope is seated at the right hand of the Father right now
there, and he's preparing a place for us and he'll come back for us.
Some of y'all already have your faith in sport mode.
Others of y'all, you're in fuel efficiency mode with regenerative breaking full on.
I hope this morning.
This reality, this reminder of your living hope gives you reason, not
just to say praise God, but to say, man, I can't wait to go out and, and
live my life like Jesus is alive.
Look at verse five.
It's not just that we've been born again to a living hope, into an
inheritance, but also to this salvation.
Look at verse five.
He says this, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a
salvation ready to be revealed in the last time, I I, I love this verse in Peter.
He says right there, who, who's the, who, the, the who.
There are those that have been born again.
If you've been born again, you are the who, you who by God's power, are being
guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Let's talk about this.
Let's break this down for a second.
Number one, you're being guarded by God's power.
That, that there is no greater power than that, that that's the top.
You can't get better protection than God.
You're being guarded by his power, his dunamis, his, his ability, and it's
unrivaled, and, and that that power is really ultimately founded in and realized
in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The apostle Paul writes in Philippians chapter three, verse
10, he says that I may know him and the power of his resurrection,
the power of his resurrection.
Why is the resurrection so closely associated with God's power?
Well, I think here in this context, his power to guard our faith, it's
so closely associated because the resurrection was God's stamp of
approval on Jesus' death saying payment received, accepted, and applied in full.
It it's the to telles die of Jesus on the cross when he says it is
finished, the resurrection is God the father saying, yes, it is finished.
It's his power of the resurrected Jesus that's guarding your faith for a salvation
ready to be revealed in the last time.
But what about this guarding?
It's guarding in that word guard?
It has two meanings.
It can mean guard from escape and guard against attack, and
I think both are present here.
A lot of times those that believe that you can lose your salvation might
respond to a passage like Romans eight that says that there's nothing on
earth that can separate you from the love of God by saying yes, but you can
separate yourself from the love of God.
And I think Peter's argument here is, no, you can't because God's, if you're truly
in Christ, if you're genuinely saved, God is guarding you from escaping his love.
God is guarding you from escaping his grasp.
In fact, you remember what Jesus said in John.
He said, all that the father gives me will come to me and of them I will lose.
None of them.
No one can take you from the grip of God, including yourself.
And so you're being guarded from escape, but second, you're
being guarded from attack.
We're living in a world as exiles that hates your risen savior and
that hates your faith in him and will do everything within its power.
To come at you and to try to undermine that faith and to try to rob you
of the confidence that you have.
Well, God is guarding you by his power against those attacks as well.
Your hope, your living hope in Christ and all of this is happening.
He's being guarding.
He's guarding you through your faith.
The faith that he gave you is the faith that he will sustain within you as well.
For what?
While He's guarding us by his power through faith for a salvation ready.
To be revealed in the last time.
That word ready means prepared.
You remember Jesus with his disciples in John 14.
They're, they're saying, Hey, Jesus, where are you going?
Jesus says, don't worry about it because where I'm going, I'm going
to prepare a place for you and in my father's house there are many rooms,
so I'm going to prepare a place for you and I'll come back for you as well.
He says, I'm going to prepare a place for you.
Peter now is saying that God is guarding us through his power, by His power
through our faith for a salvation prepared for us in the last time.
It's ready for us.
Jesus has gone.
He's made it ready for us.
I, I love verse five because verse five is, is such a comforting verse.
It soothes the doubts.
It comes alongside.
Doubts are gonna happen in this life.
I don't know if there's ever been a, a true, genuine Christian who's ever
not at some point in time struggled with assurance, but it's a passage.
It's a text like this that can be such an incredible comfort during those times.
It's a reminder of our security being in the hands of God and he
can soothe our doubting souls.
Your heavenly Father loves you and he's given us a text like this to remind
you and to comfort you because he wants you to know that he's got you.
Point number two this week is this, soothe your doubts with your living hope.
Soothe your doubts with your living hope.
Moms, you know what it is to soothe your children.
In fact, even from the very earliest moments of your baby's life, the
hospital will take that baby and put that baby's skin to skin on your bare chest.
Why?
Because that baby knows you.
The baby knows that you are, its source of comfort, safety, protection.
A baby grows older and falls down and skins its knees, and the baby's
still gonna come to you because it knows that you're gonna comfort that
child, protect that child, soothe that child, or your child's gonna
come home from school because the kids have made fun of them at school and
they're gonna come to you to comfort them, to protect them, to soothe them.
When your kid gets hurt, they're not just gonna run anywhere
to anyone to soothe that pain.
They're gonna come to you because they know you love them.
They know you'll be able to, to comfort them.
They know through experience what your comforting touch is like,
and they know that you'll be able to calm them down no matter.
IT Church, when your confidence in your salvation gets wounded,
are you running to your father?
Who's guarding your faith?
Are you coming back to the promises of God's word that remind you that he's
faithful and just to forgive us our sins?
Are you coming back to passages like this one that reminds you that he's protecting?
He's guarding your faith by his power for salvation ready to
be revealed in the last time.
Are you going back to John and see Amen.
Those that, that come to the father through Christ, he's
not gonna lose a single one.
Or are you running to your good works to soothe you?
Are you thinking, man, my, my doubts rather than going back to God's
word, I feel like I, I need to clean myself up before I can do that.
I feel like I, I need to solve this on my own.
And, and then I'll come back to the word.
Or are you running to the pleasures of this world to soothe yourself instead
of running to the promises of God?
To distract yourself from the thought of, well, man, I, I feel unsure.
I feel doubts about where I'm at, and, and so let me just go distract
myself with the pleasures and sins of this world so I don't have to
actually think about those things.
Are you running from him into the dark alleys of shame, guilt, and
condemnation that lurk everywhere and the enemy more than willing to
direct you right down those alleys?
Church come to God because God soothes us, comforts us, helps us overcome.
Our fears and anxieties through our living hope as the exiled church, the enemy
is going to attack you in this area.
He's gonna introduce doubts he's gonna cause you to question whether or not you.
I don't even know if I'm a Christian.
I don't.
Would a Christian say that?
Would a Christian do that?
And while there's good self-reflecting, introspective
practices, this can go too far.
When we don't run to the promises of God.
The resurrection demonstrated once for all that the payment for
your sins was received, accepted and applied to your account.
Through your faith in Jesus.
When I go to the auto mechanic, I, I always know it's never gonna be just what
I brought my car in to have dealt with.
Right.
And, and, and there's the pin in your stomach when you watch them walk in the
door and you're sitting in the waiting room and you're just kind of hoping that
they're gonna come for somebody else.
And then they lock eyes with you and they're already, you know, kind
of looking down as though they know that this is about to wreck you.
And then they make your, their way over and they sit next to you and they say, so
we, we, we did what you asked us to do.
But you're like, I knew it.
I knew it.
And, and, and what they've done is they've found more things
that are wrong with your car.
And they're gonna say, and, and so now you owe this much more.
If I was to take my electric car and they'd come to me and
be like, it needs an oil change.
Some of y'all like, woo, you're gonna be driving home going, wait, it
doesn't have oil on an electric car.
Um.
Listen, y'all, sometimes we, we walk through life as Christians
with that same pit in our stomachs, waiting for God's spiritual mechanic
to come to us and sit down with us and say, Hey, I, I've got bad news.
Yeah, I know you put your faith in Jesus and everything and that's
great, but, but you owe more.
And that is antigo that undermines.
What God has done that, that, that denies your living hope.
In fact, listen to what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 8 33 through 34.
It's up here on the screen too.
He says this, who's gonna bring any charge against God's elect?
It's God who justifies.
Who is there to condemn Christ?
Jesus is the one who died more than that, who was raised.
Did you catch that from Paul Christ?
Jesus is the one who died more than that, who was raised.
Who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
So God's saying, okay, listen, you may feel like you're sitting in the
courtroom right now, but guess what?
There's no prosecuting attorney.
'cause the only one that could be the prosecuting attorney is the one that
you're defense attorney through the cross and through his resurrection.
And so church, when you encounter your doubts, your fears, your anxiety.
Run back to your living hope.
Yes, there's something that needs to be done with the sin, with
the thing that causes the doubt.
We need to figure that out, but it doesn't need to become the crushing weight that
that denies the sufficiency of Jesus' death and resurrection on your behalf.
Soothe your doubts with your living hope.
Next Peter goes into.
Trials that are, again, a part of what it looks like to live is the church in exile.
Look at verse six.
He says In this, in, what is this?
It's, it's everything we've been talking about.
You're living hope in this.
You rejoice.
Now for a little while, if necessary, you've been grieved by various trials
so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, that
perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found a result in praise and glory and
honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
We are going to encounter trials and, and Peter's writing to these
elect exiles knowing that they were going to encounter trials beyond what
they had already suffered, beyond what they had already encountered.
And he's writing to them to say, Hey, you know, that's coming,
but you can even rejoice.
And, and even in the midst of your trial, you can know that these are
not just accidents that are randomly happening to you, but, but God's
got a reason for these things.
He says in, in this, you rejoice though for a little while that phrase
means in comparison to eternity.
That's coming.
In comparison to what our living hope is, anchored to our living
hope remembers not about the here and now, but the then and there.
And so our living hope is about casting our gaze from the temporal to the eternal.
And so for a little while, like Paul says, the light momentary affliction, I get it.
It doesn't necessarily feel like a little while when you're in the midst
of the valley of the shadow of death.
It doesn't feel like a light momentary affliction.
And that's kind of Peter's point here.
He's reminding us that there's gonna come a day when we're looking back at
our life going, it was a little while.
It was a light momentary affliction because of what
our living hope has for us.
And this, you rejoice though if necessary for a little while.
He says There next.
If necessary.
Your trials are not just a, the result of a, a cosmic toddler with
a magnifying glass up there just wanting to zap fry little ants down
here and be like, look at them.
They're suffering.
Ha ha, ha.
No, no, no.
God's brought them into your life for a purpose and a a reason.
They're necessary.
They're necessary for what?
Well, they're necessary for where he is gonna go.
The, the, the proving of our faith, the tested genuineness of our faith.
But that's part of the comfort that we can have too.
Knowing that God always has a reason, always has a purpose for the trial
that you're going through right now.
He says for a little while, if necessary, you've been grieved by various trials.
I love that he puts that in there.
Many different kinds of trials.
I love that because there's, there's no two kinds of trials in this
room that are exactly the same.
Your experience is gonna be different than every other person's experience in
this room, but every trial brought into the life of a believer has a purpose,
and that's where it goes in verse seven.
That purpose is what?
So that.
The tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, that perishes,
though it's tested by fire, may be found to result in the praise and glory and
honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
God tries our faith in order to give us a greater assurance in our living hope.
In other words, God tries our faith so that when we come through the trial,
we can have a greater con confidence in our standing with him than we
did on the front end of that trial.
He brings it in that the tested genuineness of our faith may result
in the praise and honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
By the way, y'all, that's your praise and honor and glory as you hear the savior
say, well done, good and faithful servant as you've come through the life of exile.
And yes, that praise is ultimately gonna red down back to the
glory of Jesus, but that's him.
Commending your endurance, commending your faithfulness, and that is the
reason why the trials are necessary.
Listen, y'all, the, the living hope that we have is not earthbound, and
that's what Peter's admitting to people that knew that all too well,
these exiles that he was writing to.
And in a room like this, I'm sure that you know that all too well.
Also, this life is not about your best life now.
This life is about living faithfully now.
And you're able to do that as you endure these trials, uh, in accordance with
your living hope, the resurrection of Christ, all that it is secured for you.
And as we get into this, uh, uh, another thing to consider is that when you
encounter these trials, the enemy's gonna be there with his temptations, with his
lures, with his other ways out, for you to escape the trial, for you to escape
the pain, and for you to, to upend what God is trying to do through the trial.
Your living hope will reinforce you.
Your living hope will restabilize you so that you're able to endure.
Our final point this morning is this, reinforce your
resolve by your living hope.
Reinforce your resolve by your living hope.
How many of y'all have heard that God will never give you more than you can handle?
How many of y'all have felt like God has given you more than you can
handle to all of us in this room?
The Bible never says God will give you, will never give you
more than you can handle that.
That's a, a misapplication of when Paul says that you will never be tempted
beyond what you're able or beyond.
That which is common to man.
God often gives us more than we can handle.
In fact, one of the main reasons he does that is because of what we're
looking at in this passage right now.
Because when we weather by his power with our hope in the living hope that we have
the resurrected Jesus Christ, the future inheritance that we have, what will happen
is we're gonna come through that trial stronger than we were at the outset.
We're gonna come through that trial with our faith more
assured than it was beforehand.
In fact, there probably is nothing that gives you more assurance of
faith than weathering a trial.
Sermons can't do it the same way.
Books can't do it the same way, but weathering that trial, staying
faithful to God through your living hope will result in a great confidence,
which is more precious than gold.
When the Hoover Dam was built, it was built with enough concrete to pave,
to pave a road from San Francisco all the way to New York City.
That's how much concrete is in the the Hoover Dam.
It's a lot.
But it's not just concrete in the Hoover Dam because concrete is good
at withstanding against compression.
Right?
But concrete's not real good at withstanding against what tension.
And, and so in order to strengthen that Hoover Dam to be able to withstand all of
the pounds of pressure that we're gonna be up against it on just our consistent basis
from the, the Colorado River, they had to put inside of the concrete what rebar.
Rebar, it's called reinforced concrete.
And the reason that people put these strands of rebar within the concrete
is that rebar reinforces the the concrete against tension, so that
if a crack happens in the surface of the concrete, that crack is not
gonna spread through the whole thing and cause the whole thing to crumble.
Without the rebar, the concrete is not as strong as it would be otherwise.
Church, the trials you endure are the strands of rebar that God
continues to add into your faith.
To strengthen your faith so that your faith will continue to hold up.
I mentioned earlier temptations will often accompany our trials and they
will the temptation to try to get out of the trial earlier through a sinful
pursuit, or maybe it's to escape from that reality and, and numb the pain
through indulging our sinful flesh and, and just not having to think about the
trial that we're going through right now.
We do this, we short circuit, we upend.
We pervert God's purposes for those trials in our lives, which are to
strengthen our faith, which are to cause us to have a greater resolve.
This is what James meant in James one, two through four when he said,
count it all, join my brothers.
When you meet trials of various kinds for you know that the
testing of your faith produces endurance or produces steadfastness.
And let James says, let that steadfastness have its full effect that you may be
perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
Let Steadfastness have its full effect.
When, when we seek to get out of the trial early, we're not letting steadfastness
have its full effect in our life.
We're short circuiting we're, we're upending what God wants us to do.
And so when you're faced with that temptation to evade the trial
through something that you know is wrong and sinful, but you're
thinking this is just gonna gimme a temporary repre reprieve from the
pain or the stress or the anxiety, you know, because of the resurrected
Christ, you don't have to go there.
You can stay faithful.
In Romans chapter six, Paul explains that.
He says that, that we've been united to him in a death like his, and
also in a resurrection like his.
He says, starting in verse six, he says this, we know that our old self was
crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, in
other words, rendered powerless, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
For the one who died has been set free from sin.
Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe we will also live with him.
We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again.
Death no longer has dominion over him for the death he died.
He died to sin once for all.
But the life he lives, he lives to God.
And you're thinking to yourself, yeah, but.
But that's a future resurrection.
And Paul says it's a future reality that has present implications
because he continues on.
So you must also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Your Lord, verse 12.
Let not sin, therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.
Don't present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness,
but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from
death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.
And so again, church, when you're tempted to short circuit the trial
by pursuing sinful escapes, no, you don't have to because Jesus is alive.
You have a living savior.
You have the spirit dwelling within you.
You've been born again, and you have the ability now to withstand and resist.
I had a mentor in college, tell me this.
He said, pj, don't sacrifice eternity on the altar of immediate gratification.
Withstand endure.
Hold up under the tension and know you can because of your living hope.
Maybe it looks like this.
Your kid is sick.
And your favorite Instagram influencer just told you that it's because
you've been using the wrong detergent.
You laugh.
So you begin to spiral on that.
You begin to doubt.
You begin to, to, to fall into despair.
And this is a, the, the, the trial is man, your, your kid is sick.
You have a living savior who knows that, who loves you, who
loves your child more than you do.
You have a God, Psalm 1 39, who knit that child together in your
mo, in it's his mother's womb.
You have a God who has determined the days of that child's life from beginning to
end before one of them even came to pass.
You have a a God that's saying, do you trust me?
But you also have your flesh over here that's saying, this is your fault, and
you have the flesh over here that's going.
Why don't you jump onto the endless doom, scrolling in real after real
and find out all the other things in your house that are giving.
Your family cancer and causing diabetes and everything else like that, and, and
get rid of it all because you, you are single-handedly killing your whole family
and you're being crushed under the weight of that anxiety.
What do you do in that moment?
Well, your living hope,
I hope I pray, causes you to remember someone 39 causes you to
remember, man, that, that God has given you the task of loving your
child and nurturing your child.
Doing the best that you can, but also remembering that you are not
sustaining his life, Jesus is.
And to remember that God has called you not to be anxious,
but to bring your request to him.
Different scenario.
Maybe you're in a marriage where you just feel like your spouse
doesn't pay enough attention to you.
If you're in a marriage and, and man, you feel like more, your marriage is
more like roommates than it is husband and wife, and so you are all of a sudden
tempted to look at greener pastures.
In fact, you notice greener pastures all the time.
You, you look around a room like this and you see other marriages, and you
think to yourself, man, why can't my marriage be like that marriage?
Why can't my spouse be like that spouse?
Why can't my husband be like that husband?
Then you begin to to fantasize even about what it would be like to be with someone
else, someone who met your needs, who cared for you, the way that you need to
be cared for, the way that you want to be cared for somebody who could hold a job.
The trial is you've got a hard marriage.
The temptation is you can get outta that.
Your needs that aren't being met by them, why don't you go find
them, be met by somebody else, a person, a website, a phone call,
and where we're at here in this final point is realizing, man, God has, has
brought the trial to show the tested genuineness of your faith so that in
that moment where you're going, man, my marriage isn't where I want it
to be, but I gotta remember, man, my marriage is more about the glory of
God and Jesus than it is about me.
I gotta remember that God has called me to be this type of husband, this
type of wife, and I have to remember that this marriage is meant to remind
me of the greater relationship that I know that is certain, that I know that
I have, and that is my relationship with God through Jesus Christ and his
love for the, the church, his bride.
When you fight like that, it's showing off the genuineness of your faith.
The tested genuineness of your faith and it's more valuable than anything else
you might pursue to escape that trial.
If the trial costs you, your comfort, your satisfaction, your security,
your job, your marriage, look at what Peter says about that tested faith.
Still, it's more precious than gold
because it anchors you even closer to your living hope.
Again, if, if we are the exiled church, we should expect.
Life to be less than ideal.
More often than not, this is what Jesus said.
He told his followers, I'm sending you out a sheep in the midst of wolves.
If you haven't watched National Geographic recently, wolves and sheep,
they don't hang out together very often.
Wolves tend to unli sheep.
Jesus also said this, they're, they're gonna hate you because they hated me.
What else did Jesus said?
He said, you know what family member is gonna betray family member?
He said, you're gonna be hated, not just by a few.
You're gonna be hated by all for my name's sake.
So you can think about it this way, church, we're going to encounter
trials, and that trial is gonna say more about your soul than it is
about your body or your possessions, or anything else that you have.
Will the tested genuineness of your faith show up because of your
confidence and trust in Jesus?
The living hope that you have, the resurrected savior reinforces your resolve
by this living Hope so, praise God.
Praise God.
Because Jesus is alive and, and because Jesus is alive, you'll never
lack a reason to say praise God.
So I hope that that truth will energize you this week.
I hope that that truth will soothe your doubts this week, and I hope that that
truth will reinforce your resolve for the trials that God may be bringing your way
If you aren't already in one this week.
Will you stand with me as we pray together?