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Christ Community Chapel is a church in Hudson, OH, that invites people to reimagine life because of Jesus. Learn more about us at ccchapel.com.
This is a reading from first Peter 1:1-
12.
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
to those who are elect
exiles of the dispersion in Pontus,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia,
and Bithynia,
according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father in the sanctification
of the spirit,
for obedience to Jesus Christ,
and for sprinkling with his blood.
May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
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 a salvation
ready to be revealed in the last time.
In this you rejoice, though
now for a little while, if necessary.
You have 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
to result in praise and glory
and honor
at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Though you have not seen him,
you love him.
Though you do not see him,
you believe in him and rejoice with him
that is inexpressible
and filled with glory,
obtaining the outcome of your faith,
the salvation of your souls.
Concerning this salvation,
the prophets who prophesied
about the grace that was to be yours
searched and inquired carefully,
inquiring what person
or time the Spirit of Christ in them
was indicating.
When he predicted the sufferings of Christ
and the subsequent glories,
it was revealed to them
that they were serving not themselves,
but you in the things that have now
been announced to you
through those
who preach the good news to you
by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven things
into which angels longed to look.
Hey everybody,
good morning and welcome to CCC.
It's so good to have you here.
We have been, as most of you know,
in the midst of a transition
of the position of senior pastor
from myself to Pastor Zach.
And the last step of that process
was a vote of the membership
to affirm, Zach as pastor.
And now that has been concluded,
and I get to give you the results
according to our constitution.
And, Zach needed at least 50% of the vote.
And because he received over 98%,
I get to have the privilege
of introducing you
to our new senior pastor, Doctor Zach.
Weihrauch.
Well, thank you.
As I've said before,
it's such a privilege.
And, you know, this place has been home
for a long time now,
but it's nice to have that out of the way,
I think, and just let it be home.
So thank you so much.
Hey, I'm really excited
about a new sermon series
we are starting this week,
and it's going to take us all
through the fall,
all the way up until Christmas.
We're going to be looking at First Peter.
In fact, if you have a Bible,
you can go ahead and take it out
and open it to first Peter
chapter one, your phone, your tablet,
however you want to get there.
And hey, if you're here and you're new to
church, maybe it's been a while.
Maybe you've never been in church
and you don't know,
you didn't know you need to bring a Bible.
You didn't know.
You don't know where first Peter is.
Hey, let me just stop for a second
and say, I'm so glad that you're here.
And you are in exactly the right place.
And everything that happens this morning
is as much for you as it is for anyone.
And when I use a verse from the Bible,
it's going to be on the screen behind me.
But if you want to hold something,
there's a Bible in the pew in front of you
or in the back of East Hall.
It's actually the same one I use.
So I can tell you that, first
Peter chapter one is on page 953.
Thanks for being here.
But however you're getting there,
I want to let you know
that we are starting this sermon series
because, we believe there's
a real similarity between the setting
and context of first Peter and our own.
First Peter is a letter
written to a church that is growing
in the midst of a hostile culture
for the church that's growing.
But it's in a culture that is growing
antagonistic towards the Christian faith.
And so Peter is writing to encourage them
to keep going
despite the fact that the world
might make that hard.
We think there are a lot of similarities
between this church and the growth
we're experiencing.
And unfortunately,
the direction that our culture is going.
So we're looking to be inspired,
looking to be encouraged, to be challenged
by the message of First Peter.
In fact, we're calling this series Rise Up
because we think that's the message
God's going to have for us that we need
to, both together and individually,
stand up, speak
up, show up
for what he wants to do in our world.
But you know what I love about
God as he just he understands
us, which shouldn't surprise us
since he made us.
But he begins this letter,
which in a lot of ways is like a locker
room speech challenging us to speak up
and stand up and show up.
But he begins with encouragement.
He begins with hope.
And that's actually
we're going to talk about, this weekend.
And so here are the three points
I'm going to use
as an outline to guide our time together.
Very simple.
First, life is hard.
Second, hope is available.
And third,
hopeful living in hard times is possible.
Life is hard.
Hope is available and hopeful.
Living in hard times as possible.
All right.
Let me start with the first one
life is hard.
You know, we work really hard here
at Christ Community Chapel
to try to make sure that every weekend
you come, you have a great experience
and a lot of energy
and time goes into thinking
about your experience
from the parking lot, how clean
the building is to the temperature
we have in the room.
We want the music to be good.
We want people to smile
when you walk in the door.
We want friendly people
to help you find a seat
or to find your way around the building.
We want you to feel loved.
And that's important to us
because we believe God is a God of love.
We believe that God loves you
and we want to be an extension of that.
We we want you to experience his love
through the way you are treated.
And we don't apologize for Polish.
I mean, we we believe
good music is better than bad music.
My guess is you would agree.
We believe smiling people at the door
is better than grumpy people.
At the door.
You probably agree with that.
But if we're not careful,
sometimes I worry about
an unintended consequence
of all that polish,
and that
is that you might get the impression
that this church is for polished people,
that it's for kind of happy
clappy people for whom life is perfect.
They look perfect. They they act perfect.
They must be perfect.
So this church is for perfect people.
And of course, the danger in that
is that you might think that's who God is,
that God is interested
only in polished people,
imperfect people.
And that's
why it's really important that you hear me
say that nothing could be further
from the truth.
In fact, look here at our passage first
Peter chapter one, look at verse six.
Look what he says.
He says in this you rejoice,
though now for a little while,
if necessary.
You have been grieved by various trials.
I mean, he's writing a letter to people
where he's going to tell them to stand
up, speak up, show up.
But he starts with this
life is hard, life is hard.
And you know, God knows that.
And the Bible knows that.
Let me show you multiple times.
The Bible says this in Psalm 4034.
For example, David says this.
He says,
Psalm 43 says, as many
are the afflictions of the righteous,
many are the afflictions of the righteous.
Here's
what Jesus says in John 1633 in the world
you will have tribulation.
James chapter one, verse two.
Count it all joy, my brothers,
when you meet trials of various kinds.
David, Jesus, James,
what are they all saying? Life
is hard.
It's okay to say that
it's okay to feel that
because it's true.
Life is hard.
And it's hard in in big ways
and in little ways in like
national news ways and living room ways.
Like, for example, Wednesday,
I found out that there had been a
school shooting in Colorado.
Heartbreaking.
All too common and heartbreaking.
I have five kids in schools.
That is one of the most terrifying ideas
is that I can get a call
from my school
about something like that devastating.
By Wednesday afternoon, I had heard
of an ideological assassination
that had happened.
Awful, awful.
Then by Wednesday evening,
I had heard that on the floor
of the United States
House of Representatives, the Republicans
and Democrats had a shouting match over
which one of those incidents
deserved a moment of silence.
Life is hard.
Last week
was hard.
But it's not just hard in the news.
It's hard in the living room.
I. I drove home that day, came into the
living room, started talking to my three
teenagers about what had happened,
particularly with the assassination.
And one of my kids asked me if I would
retire, so that wouldn't happen to me.
Now. I
think they
dramatically overestimate my platform.
But you get the point.
Then I'm driving
to preach the Thursday night service
this weekend on Hope,
and literally minutes
before I walk in the building,
I get a call from a family member
to tell me he's just been diagnosed
with pancreatic cancer.
I hope I smile up here,
but don't for a second
think that means life is easy for me.
Life is hard.
Life is hard.
It's okay to say that it's okay
to feel that God
acknowledges that he never asked us
to pretend that it isn't.
This must be a place
where the music is good
and the people smile and it's okay
for life to be hard
because it is.
But here's the second thing
I want you to see.
The Bible is very honest
about how hard life is.
But second, it's very optimistic
because hope is available.
This is a passage about hope.
We acknowledge the heart.
He acknowledges the trials,
but he he's telling them about hope.
Verse three
he says, you have been born again.
You have been made into Christians
for a living.
Hope.
Hope is the whole point.
That's what he said.
So the question, of course,
is, well, well, where does hope
come from for a Christian?
And there are three places
he tells us to look here in the passage.
Here's the first one.
He says, if you're here
and you're a Christian, you have a story.
Look at what he says in verse
three is what he says, 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.
He says that the source of our hope
is the story of the life
and death and resurrection of Jesus. Why?
Well, because when Jesus came to earth,
he told us he had come from God.
He told us that he was
God here to rescue us.
He told us he would die.
He told us his death was the doorway
that God was going to open to allow us
to be part of what God was doing.
He told us he would raise from the dead.
And when Jesus did,
he showed us that human
history is not random.
It's not arbitrary.
It's not chaos.
God is writing a story.
He's going somewhere.
The arc of human history is the narrative
that God is writing through
Jesus, and Jesus is the way
we enter that story.
If you're here and you're a Christian,
you have a story, but that's at all.
The second thing he says is
you will inherit.
Look at verse four.
Look at what he says next.
He says this two an inheritance
that is imperishable,
undefiled and unfading,
kept in heaven for you.
He says, not only is God writing a story,
but the conclusion of that story.
The climax of that story is
that God is going
to have something wonderful for for us.
And look at the adjectives he uses.
It's imperishable. It's undefinable.
It's kept in heaven.
That's even better
than a safety deposit box.
What he's
saying is that what God has for us,
what the story is leading up
to, cannot be altered.
It cannot be changed.
It cannot be threatened.
It cannot be eradicated.
If you are here and you are a Christian,
God's story is headed towards this.
He will give you the universe
to live with him in forever.
Here's
the third place Peter says to go for hope.
It's pretty simple.
He says, if it's true that God has a story
of which you can be part of,
if it's true that God has an inheritance
that he wants to give you,
then the third thing that's true is
you are loved.
Now he shows this beautifully.
Look, think about verse four, right.
You have an inheritance. And
what does he say about the inheritance?
He says it's under a ball
that you can't get rid of it.
It's kept in heaven.
In other words, there is nothing
that could threaten your inheritance.
And then look at verse six.
Keep that in mind because that's
going to make verse six pop.
Look at what he says.
I'm sorry.
Verse five he says, who by God's power
are being guarded through faith
for a salvation
ready to be revealed in the last time.
You see what that saying?
He's saying there is absolutely nothing
that could threaten what God has for you.
But God loves you so much
and he wants you to have it so bad
he's going to guard it for you anyway.
So great is his love for you.
So great is his mercy.
So great is his kindness.
Peter says, if you're here
and you're a Christian, you have a story.
You are.
You will inherit and you are loved.
He says, listen, I know life is hard,
but these things are true.
And by the way, if you're here
and you're not yet a Christian, you
you maybe you don't know where you are,
but you know you're not.
That when I say if you're here
and you're a Christian, these things
that's not meant to exclude you, it's
meant simply to say this.
You can have all three of those things
in Jesus right now.
If you ask.
Because the way to have
those things is to acknowledge your sin
before God, to find
forgiveness in the life
and death and resurrection of Jesus.
The hope that God is writing a story.
Maybe the events of this week
drove you into church looking for hope.
And here it is.
It's Jesus
and the story and inheritance
and love that he gives us.
Now, of course, here's what I'm worried.
You hear me saying that as Christians,
we hold life being hard
in one hand over here,
and then in this hand we hold hope.
And both of those things are true
here in the present.
We have hard things,
and in the future we'll have hope.
But that isn't really helpful.
A hope
that is theoretical only in the future.
Esoteric is not help, but what we want
to do is take these two things
and mash them together.
Which is why my third point
is that hope for living
in hard times is possible.
In other words,
this hope that Peter is telling us about
is meant to change the way we live.
Well. Well, how would that happen?
Well, the answer to
that is in each one of those three things,
let me show you what I mean.
If it's true that in Jesus you have
a story, then here's what that means.
The difficult things you're experiencing
right now are a chapter.
They're not the ending.
They're a chapter.
They're not the ending.
Now, I don't mean it's not a hard chapter.
That's of course,
I don't mean that it isn't a long chapter.
I don't even mean that for some of us,
it's been several chapters.
But what Peter is saying is whatever,
however hard
the chapter you're in,
it is just a chapter.
It is not the ending.
You see, if the universe is random,
if human history is just chaos,
then it's entirely possible
that your diagnosis that
that your divorce, that your unemployment,
that your addiction, that your struggle
with mental and emotional health
might just be your ending.
But if life goes on, if Jesus shows us
that God is writing a story into eternity,
then no matter how bad the chapter, it's
just a chapter.
It's not the ending.
Let me illustrate this.
Have you ever watched a movie
with a really little kid?
It's a funny experience
because they don't understand stories yet,
so even if you're watching a kid's movie,
there will be a
couple of scenes where it looks like
the bad guy is going to win.
That's
I mean, that's how you build a plot.
That's how you drive tension.
And the kid will feel smothered by the.
At one point, events
just happened with all five of my kids.
They will say, pause it, pause
it, pause it.
I don't want to watch this anymore.
And they're looking at you like,
what kind of parent are you?
Is this how the world?
Is this what you're trying to tell me?
That in the end,
the witch wins or the the bad guy wins?
Is this the kind of world we have?
I don't want to watch this. This is awful.
And that's when you look down at them
with a twinkle in your eye and a smile,
and you say, hey, hey,
hang in there.
It gets better.
Friends, do you see that?
That's what Peter is saying.
See, some of us are in the midst
of really hard chapters,
really hard scenes,
and we've hit the pause button
and we're saying,
I don't want to keep moving.
I don't want to go
on. Is this how life is?
And Peter is saying, unpause the movie.
It doesn't end this way.
The bad guy doesn't win.
The bad stuff isn't true in the end.
Hang in there.
It's a chapter, but it's not the ending.
Second, Peter says,
if it's true that you will inherit,
then the flaws you are sweeping
today, you will own tomorrow.
Now here's
what I mean by I want you to visualize.
You walk into a business,
you know, late in the evening,
second shift, and you see a young man
sweeping the floors and he's whistling
and you think, well, this is
this is interesting.
So you stop the guy and you go, hey, man,
do you like working second shift?
He goes, no, I hate it, I hate it.
Do you like sweeping floors?
Because, no, it's the worst.
It's the worst. Well,
why are you so happy?
Why are you whistling?
And he says, well, this is my family
business, and one day I'm going to own it.
My dad just says, I have to start here.
Is he one of the reasons life is hard
is because it's so full of disappointment.
It's so full of all the things
we're not going to get to do,
all the things
we're not going to get to be.
I tell my kids all the time.
This is the hardest part of getting older.
I think,
is all the doors that close,
all the things you won't be,
all the experiences you won't have,
all the places you won't go.
But the Bible tells us, well,
let me come back to that.
Let me say this.
There is a danger in being a Christian
who's
too preoccupied with the end of the world.
You can go down that YouTube rabbit hole.
You can watch all the.
Stuff.
You can watch all these videos on
when Jesus is going to come back
and who the bad guys are and all that.
Let me just tell you this.
Let me invalidate that.
All those videos in one single sentence
and tell you that Jesus said, was he
when he was on earth?
Even he didn't know
the day he was coming back.
So I don't know if that YouTuber knows
more than Jesus.
I'll let you decide that.
But there's a
danger
in under thinking about those things too.
And what I mean by that is the Bible
doesn't say that heaven
is us floating around in the sky.
We're in diapers, playing harps.
I mean, if that's your idea
of a good time, that's a you thing.
Not for me.
What the Bible says
is at the end of the world,
God is going to take heaven and earth
and make them one,
and he's going to rid the earth
of all the damage that we've caused.
He's going to give it back to us,
and he's going to tell us now
you have an eternity
with me to do it all again,
to build, to shape, to create.
You know what that means.
That means that all the things
you don't get to do in this life,
you can
dedicate centuries to in the life to come.
Let me put it this way.
Every February I get away to go
spend some time with pastor
friends of mine who are about my age,
churches of similar size.
The idea swamp hang out.
Every February
I leave Ohio to go to Southern California.
It's hard, but someone has to do it.
And you know, some people think it's great
that here in Ohio we have four seasons.
My wife is one of those people.
So to her,
when she thinks about the new heavens
and the earth, she thinks of it
as four seasons in Southern California.
They only have one season.
It's called perfection.
So every time I come back from that trip,
I tell my wife,
hey, if you're looking for me
in the new heavens,
new earth,
I'm going to be in Southern California.
I live in Ohio for Jesus, but
if I get to pick, I'm in San Diego.
But you see, that's the point, isn't it?
Friends, God has an eternity for you.
And I in this universe made new with her.
You might be sweeping floors today,
but you're going to own the universe
in the future.
And then here's the third thing.
Of course, if all that's true,
then here's what that means.
I don't know what hard chapter you're in,
and I.
As your pastor, it's
going to be my privilege
to sit with many of you as you die.
And you're going to ask me,
and your family is going to ask me why,
and I'll just tell you in advance.
I'm not always going to know.
But if it's true that you're loved,
then what I will do
is take some wives off the table.
It won't be because you're being ignored.
It won't be because you've been forgotten.
It won't be
because you aren't loved.
Because Peter says
the whole story is about God's love.
The whole climax
is when he gives you everything.
So of course you're loved.
Living in hard times
with hope isn't pretend.
Life isn't hard.
Living in hard times with hope says,
I don't know why last week happened,
but I can tell you why it isn't.
It isn't because God doesn't care.
Because I've got a story.
I've got an inheritance.
And I know
that I am loved.
Let me pray for you, father God.
Thank you for the challenge of
first Peter that is coming.
I know
your message for us as a church, for me
as a leader, is going to be
that we need to step up,
show up, speak up.
Rise up.
But God, in your kindness,
you don't even start with that.
You start with hope.
You start with encouragement.
You start by saying,
I know, I know, life is hard,
but don't you for a second
think you're not loved.
God, we are amazed by your kindness to us,
and we ask that you would help us
to become
hopeful people
living in hard times.
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.