3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! 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, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
(ESV)
1 Peter 1:3-5
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! 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, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
Invite you to open your bibles to 1st Peter chapter 1. This is our 2nd week going through a series that will take us at least through the summer, probably part of the fall. 1st Peter chapter 1, we'll begin reading in verse 3. Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 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, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.
Joel Brooks:Pray with me. Our father, we ask that now through your spirit, you would open up our hearts and our minds. Lord, to mind the depths of your word that is here. Lord, on our own, we are blind, we are deaf. We can't see or hear you.
Joel Brooks:And so, Lord, we need you to do something supernatural to us, and allowing us to hear you speaking to us in this moment. Lord, I ask in this moment, people wouldn't hear from me, but my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
Joel Brooks:We began this letter last week with, with some pretty heavy stuff. I told you that the letter was was packed. It was dense. It was full of a lot of rich theology said in just a few words, and, and you could see it right away in just the first two verses. Peter wasted no words at all.
Joel Brooks:He he jumped straight into the doctrine of election that we looked at last week. He addresses his letter to the elect exiles. But I want to be crystal clear about this. Peter is not he doesn't see himself as a professor teaching a class. He's not giving a doctrinal lecture here.
Joel Brooks:He's not throwing out an issue that he then wants us to go discuss in our classrooms. What, what Peter is doing is giving us a reason for worship. He's giving us a foundation for worship. This is the very first thing he does after he introduces the letter. He he worships.
Joel Brooks:We read, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. All good theology leads to doxology. It's something my professors used to just hammer into me. All good theology leads to doxology. It leads to worship.
Joel Brooks:And as Peter thinks about the great doctrine of election, he simply can't help himself. He he bursts into praise. Blessed be the Father, God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. What you're seeing here is something that you find throughout scripture. Often when you're dealing with this issue of God's sovereignty and salvation, usually it leads to a burst of praise.
Joel Brooks:Probably the most famous of those is found in Romans 11. If you're familiar with Romans, Romans 9, 10, and 11 are all about election. They're all about the sovereignty of God and salvation. And when he comes to his conclusion, and he finishes teaching on that doctrine, he bursts into one of the great doxologies of the Bible. He says, Oh the depths, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.
Joel Brooks:How unsearchable are His judgments. How inscrutable his ways. Who is known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?
Joel Brooks:For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. And this is the same goal of Peter. The the goal for Paul as he was laying that laying that out was worship.
Joel Brooks:The goal for Peter as he is laying this out is worship. And so I want to just from the very start, as we are looking at these few verses ahead of us, I don't want us to look at these things with cold lifeless eyes. I want us to get the point of this, and that's literally we want to burst in doxology, we want to burst in praise as we read these things. When I look at this text here, I want us to look at 3 things. I see 3 things.
Joel Brooks:Three reasons that cause Peter to burst into worship. 1st is he is reminded of God's mercy. 2nd, he's reminded of his new birth. And 3rd, of his living hope. God's mercy, our new birth, and our living hope.
Joel Brooks:And so first let's look at God's mercy. We read this in verse 3 when we say, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope. And he's just picking up where he left off last week, because if you could boil down the doctrine of election to to just three words, 3 words, you're gonna get what's written right here. It's gonna be God or his great mercy. God's great mercy.
Joel Brooks:That's really what election is. We see this in Titus 3:5 when it says, God saved us, not according to works done in our own righteousness, but according to His great mercy. Ephesians 2:4, which we just heard earlier, but God being rich in his mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead and our trespasses made us alive together with Christ. God's mercy is the answer to the question, why am I a Christian? Answer, God's mercy.
Joel Brooks:It's also the answer to why you are a Christian, and perhaps your neighbor is not. God's mercy. I know you might be struggling with that and thinking, well, you know, I'm I'm a Christian because I made a decision to to follow Jesus. I made that decision. My my neighbor didn't.
Joel Brooks:And I would just ask the question, well, why is that? Why why is it that you made that decision, and your neighbor didn't? And so you might be thinking, well, it's because I considered the facts, and I just understood the gospel. And I would ask, Okay, so how was it that you came about those facts? How was it that they made sense to you, that you could respond to this?
Joel Brooks:And you might say, well, that was just maybe I was given the mind to understand that. I was given the person to come by and help me out in that. Who gave you those things? When you keep asking the question, why is it that I believe? And you keep asking, why why why?
Joel Brooks:Ultimately, you're gonna come down to one of 2 choices, and you only have 2 choices. And it's either this, either at the very core of your being, you are somehow better than those who chose not to follow Jesus, or simply God's mercy. Those are your only two options. There's there's no third choice. Because if same situations, hearing the same things, and you boil it all down, and then you decide to follow Jesus, and the other person doesn't.
Joel Brooks:Your only two options you have are either there's something in you that's innately better than the other person, or God simply just showed you mercy. I reject the first option Scripture emphatically rejects it because all have sinned. All have turned away from God. Says together we are worthless. And so that leaves me with the second choice, the one that Peter spells out for us saying that we are simply saved by God's mercy.
Joel Brooks:And Peter wants you to feel this. He wants you to know that when you were running away, God pulled you to him. He wants you to know that when you were enemies of God, God took you and He made you his friend. When you were dead in your sins, and you could do nothing, God reached out and He made you alive to him. Peter wants you to feel that.
Joel Brooks:And if you're still wrestling with those things, some someday someday when you stand before your Creator and you look back at your life, you'll be shocked to believe or to ever think that you once believed otherwise, and you were saved by God's mercy. Now I want you to know and me saying this, you need to know this about me. Is that everything I've just told you, I had a huge problem with for half my life. An enormous problem. I I really actually thought there was something innately in me that was better, something that that shows.
Joel Brooks:And I got really angry if anybody ever brought up election. And not just a little angry, I mean, I got really angry. 1 of my friends, I shared this at a coffee house about a year ago. 1 of my friends, he kept asking me about these things and actually went, and I got a Bible, and I removed every chapter except for Romans 9, and I gave it to him. And I said, since this is all you're gonna read, you know, you might as well have this.
Joel Brooks:I remember I did something John Piper actually did this, his professor, one time, but I I got a a pen. And I went to somebody who was arguing me arguing with me about election, and I said, I dropped that. I dropped it. Don't don't talk to me about the sovereignty. That was my decision.
Joel Brooks:And so I got really hostile and angry. And then as scripture just kept flooding over me, and God became changing me, it was a very hard experience because this is the way you react when your world is crumbling in. And my world was imploding. My world that thought it was all about me and my self determination, and when it was crumbling down, it was a painful and it was a humbling thing. But the end result was doxology.
Joel Brooks:The end result was worship. Because I could say in worship, God, you saved. And so if if some of you here are having a similar reaction to what I had, that's okay. It's okay. I'm patient.
Joel Brooks:I'm not going to push this issue on you, but I do want you to look in Scripture because it's not something you just throw aside. Peter's laying a foundation here. Alright, let's go back to verse 3. Let's read it again. We're probably gonna read it about 20 times by time this is over.
Joel Brooks:Blessed be the God and the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope. The results of God's mercy on our life is something called rebirth. We we've been born again. So in in order to live a life where we can worship God, we can say that doxology.
Joel Brooks:In order for us to receive the living hope, something has to happen to us. We don't just make a decision. Something happens to us. We are we are born again. So we see right off the bat here that becoming a Christian is not simply believing new facts.
Joel Brooks:It's not just making some decisions, or turning over a new leaf. It's some of those things, but it's not merely those things. Be becoming a Christian is so much more. You're born again. And this is the language that Jesus uses.
Joel Brooks:Paul is just picking up, or Peter's just picking up from Jesus back in John chapter 3. You could turn there if you want. It's a famous conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. And in John chapter 3, we read these words. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
Joel Brooks:This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you were a teacher come from God, for no one can do these things unless God is with him. Jesus answered him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to Him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
Joel Brooks:That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.
Joel Brooks:The result of receiving the mercy of God is that you are given a new birth. It's what it means to be a Christian, to be born again. And the story that we have here, we see a man named Nicodemus coming to meet Jesus. Now Nicodemus, he was a Pharisee. Pharisees, a lot of times, now they get bad raps, but they were very well respected in their day.
Joel Brooks:They actually lived outstanding moral lives. There were certainly some of them that had a problem with Jesus. There were some of them that were hypocrites, but but many of them were were devoted in their faith and trying to live out what they thought God would wanted them to do. And here we have this this Pharisee, Nicodemus, coming, and he's actually seeking Jesus out. So he's a very moral man, and he's a man who's seeking after Jesus.
Joel Brooks:And when he meets Jesus, he's very respectful. He He humbles himself, because he's one of the rulers of the Jews, one of the teachers of the law, and yet he calls Jesus, Rabbi. Even says, I know that you came from God. You're a matter of fact, you're doing God's work. And then what Jesus says to him is astounding because it gets to the heart of what it means to be a Christian.
Joel Brooks:Jesus looks at this religiously, morally outstanding person, and says, Nicodemus, you gotta be born again. He doesn't say, Nicodemus, you're so close. I mean, you've got so many things right. You're you're so close. Maybe if you could just just tweak a few things, then then you can enter the kingdom of God.
Joel Brooks:Or maybe if you could just supplement what you have with maybe just 1 or 2 more truths, just let's just kind of turn a few of these things, and then you're you're almost there. He doesn't say that to this man. He looks at one of the most outstanding individuals of his day, one who was seeking after God, Good moral life, humble, respectful of Jesus, and he says, you know what? You need to have a whole new life. You need to be born again.
Joel Brooks:You've got to be a completely different person if you ever want to see the kingdom of God. Right now, as good as you are, you're just a fleshly man, and you need to become a spiritual man. And so hear me. Do not, do not, do not ever think that becoming a Christian means that you need to merely be a moral person, or you need to merely just kind of make a decision. Maybe just add a few things.
Joel Brooks:To be a Christian means you need to be born again. The old must go. The new must come. You become a new creature. So how do you know?
Joel Brooks:I mean, as you're reading this and you're like, how how do you know? And I've I've I've met with a number of you asking this question, well, how do I know if this has happened to me? How do you know? Was does one know if they're born again? And I would say, look at your physical birth.
Joel Brooks:What what proof do you need that you have been physically born? Alright. If if if the proof you bring to me is like a birth certificate, I'd look at you like you're crazy. Alright? The proof that you were physically born is that you're alive.
Joel Brooks:You're you're breathing. You're thinking. You're talking. You have appetites, desires. You you're alive.
Joel Brooks:That's the proof of your physical birth. And the proof of your spiritual birth is the same. How do you know if you you've been reborn? Well, you are alive to God. You now have spiritual appetites.
Joel Brooks:You hunger for the pure milk of the word. You hunger after him. You've got spiritual thoughts, spiritual joys. You think about God, and you delight in him. This is what happens when you've been given a new spiritual nature.
Joel Brooks:You now think of these things, Because before that part of you was dead, and now it is alive. And we see here that this birth comes from God. John prayed this earlier in his opening prayer. Birth is a gift from God. Any of y'all play a part in your natural birth?
Joel Brooks:Any of you? Like, not a person here had anything to do with their own birth. Matter of fact, you came into this world kicking and screaming. Many of us became Christians the same way. God overriding our will, and God pulling us to Himself.
Joel Brooks:And Peter, just in case you you didn't get the point of just saying born again, he says, God has caused us to be born again. And let me say, the more that you understand this, the more your response is going to be like Peter's, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You will burst into doxology. I'm gonna say, by God's grace, I am who I am. And this leads us to the third reason for Peter's praise.
Joel Brooks:Recap so far. We've looked at Peter praising God for his great mercy, then Peter praising God for his new birth, and now he talks about praising God for what we have been born into, which is a living hope. Verse 34, again, if you if you haven't noticed, I want this in your head as you're going to bed tonight. Blessed be the God and the father of our lord Jesus Christ. 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, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.
Joel Brooks:If you set out to become a great musician, perhaps a pianist, you don't start with the rules. That's not what you start with. You know, if you're teaching a student, young Ben, he remember here, he teaches our kids piano, and he doesn't start by like saying, here's the different rules. This is this is how you read the meter. This is how you read the notes.
Joel Brooks:This is how you read the rhythm. This is what a whole note is. This is what a half you don't start there. What you do is you start by letting your student listen to Mozart, or listen to Chopin, or listen to Schubert, or listen to something amazing. You you inspire them.
Joel Brooks:And when they when they hear greatness first, that gives them the strength they need, the inspiration they need to then start following the rules, and to start learning these things. It's gonna encourage them to practice. It'll tell them, this is why I'm learning how to play the piano. And that's what Peter is doing here. It's what he's doing at the very start of this letter.
Joel Brooks:He he doesn't start off these are the rules and everything you need to know how to be a Christian. What he's gonna do is tell them, he's gonna paint this picture of this glorious hope. This is everything God's done for you, and he is moving you in this direction to this glorious hope. And he paints it so vividly, because once we have that, everything changes. We tend to underestimate the power of hope in our lives, but Peter did not.
Joel Brooks:Peter understands that hope is the engine that runs our lives. We can't live without hope. We're hope based creatures. To illustrate this, think of 2 2 people who have the same job. Alright?
Joel Brooks:It's a miserable job. I'll just describe the job that I had after, after I first got married. Alright? Working in a warehouse with no air conditioning, under fluorescent lights, and let's say all you do all day is count things. Alright?
Joel Brooks:You count things and move them around. You move a pile from here to here, and then you count it, and then you move a pile pretty much from here to here, and you count things. That's what you do. But let's say now you're you're working this 80 hours a week. 2 people are doing this job 80 hours a week.
Joel Brooks:The only difference between these two people is that the first guy, after a year, is gonna get paid $20,000, And the second guy is gonna get paid 20,000,000. 20,000, 20,000,000. Same job, same conditions, same working hours. Who do you think whistles at work? I mean, one of the the first guy is going to be pure misery.
Joel Brooks:It's gonna be hard for him to get out of bed. He's gonna, he's gonna hate every moment of it. He's probably gonna quit after a month or 2. 2nd guy, I mean, it doesn't matter how bad his bosses treat him, doesn't matter what's thrown his way, doesn't matter if they say, hey, count this again and again. He's whistling, he's skipping.
Joel Brooks:Hope. Hope in what is coming. Listen, circumstances do not they're not what dictate our joy. The hope is what dictates our joy. Same circumstances, 2 different hopes.
Joel Brooks:Everything was different for these 2 people. What Peter is offering us here is a lot more than 20 million. Listen, the hope of working someplace for a few years, and maybe you can add an extra week of vacation. Alright? That's that's somewhat of a little hope that's going to get you through a little bit.
Joel Brooks:As a parent, do you know the hope of, if I could just get through the next few years, have my my kids potty trained, sleeping through the night. If I could just get there, I mean, that's that's somewhat of a hope. I don't want to put that down. That's not a life changing hope. That's what Peter's giving us.
Joel Brooks:He's giving us an ultimate hope that changes everything. It's what he calls a living hope, a resurrected hope. Let me tell you, there is no hope like the hope of Christianity, in which every wrong is righted, every pain is gone, every tear is dried, and we will live with God forever. There there's no hope like that. A hope that says we will be swallowed up in joy.
Joel Brooks:And hope is really not the best word for this, because we say things like, I I hope it won't rain. I hope it's a good day. I hope I do well on my exam. And that all always connotes a certain uncertainty. We're not really sure how it's gonna go.
Joel Brooks:That's not biblical hope. That's not what Peter is talking about here. The word that Peter is using here for hope means a certain and fixed reality. There's no doubt about it. This is a hope that doesn't die.
Joel Brooks:It's a living hope, a life changing hope. And so then Peter goes on to define this hope as an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. In other words, this hope is unlike any other hope you have in this lifetime, in this world. Says, the hope is imperishable. This means it's untouched by death.
Joel Brooks:Death can't get a hold of this hope. Then he goes on and says, this hope is undefiled, meaning it won't be stained by evil. Listen, every good thing you have is sooner or later stained by evil. If you don't believe this, parents, just just give your kids one toy. Alright?
Joel Brooks:Just give them one toy or one cookie, and say, share. Alright? Now, you're giving something good to them. Yet quickly, if not a minute, certainly in 5 minutes or an hour, they will stain that gift with sin. They will fight over that gift.
Joel Brooks:A good gift will become something that provokes hostility towards one another. There is no good gift that we can receive that we won't stain by sin. We see it in our children easily enough, but it certainly happens in us over and over. But not this inheritance. And this inheritance also will never die.
Joel Brooks:It will not be it will be unimpaired by time. Meaning, we're always going to be receiving joy from it. Actually, we'll be ever increasing in our joy of it. It's interesting. Peter doesn't exactly define what inheritance is here.
Joel Brooks:He's he's gonna keep moving on with this later, but he doesn't define it because it's so many things. But here's the 2 main ones. 1st, the inheritance is our resurrected body. It's a new resurrected body, because they're going to give it be given a body that will never die. It will never sin, and it will never break down, and that awaits you.
Joel Brooks:It kinda lets you think, okay, world, give me your worst, because I know what's coming. I can endure any job for a season. And then this new body is going to enable us to enjoy a new heaven and a new earth that is never going to end, never be spoiled, and there will never be sin, and it will never fade. But most of all, our inheritance is God himself. That's really the vision that Peter wants to put there.
Joel Brooks:The Lord is our inheritance. He's our portion. The reason that we delight in a new body, the reason we delight in a new earth is because we will delight in our God forever. Imagine hearing this if you're those Christians here who literally are being stripped of their inheritance, which was tied up in their land or tied up in their houses, and those things are all being taken away. And Peter says, you have something so much better.
Joel Brooks:Stay strong. Stay firm. God is the one who has saved you. God is the one who has chosen for you for this. God is the one guarding you and will keep you to the last day for this inheritance, which ultimately is Him.
Joel Brooks:You will enjoy Him forever. That's the living hope we have in Christianity. Pray with me. Lord, even as I read this over and over and over, I realized my complete insufficiency to communicate the greatness of these truths. God, I fail.
Joel Brooks:And I just ask that where I fail, you would overcome. Through your spirit, you would press in these truths deep in our hearts. May we burst in doxology, not just here, but everywhere. May we live lives to the praise of your glory and your grace. Thank you for the inheritance that you've given us, for the new life you have breathed in us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the name of Jesus who makes us all possible. Amen.