Having Hope as a Scattered People
Passage 1 Peter 1:1-12
Speaker Steve Nichols
Service Evening
Series Hope for a Scattered People
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1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To God’s elect, exiles, scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, 2 who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood:
Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. 12 It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.
Great. Thank you, Steph. Can I say hello and welcome to those joining us online. If you're at home watching the service, you're very welcome indeed. If you've got a Bible, do keep it open there at one Peter, chapter one.
And we'll do the same here in church as we're beginning a new series. There it is. Hope for a scattered people from one Peter. So why don't we pray as we start to look at this letter written by the apostle Peter together? Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for this letter from Peter to these scattered christians all those centuries ago. And it's your letter to us today. And we pray that we would hear it as that, and we would hear the lessons that you want us to learn. Help us to live as christians who are on the margins of things more and more. Help us to live as faithful people waiting for our inheritance.
And we thank you for the new and living hope that we have through the resurrection of your son, Jesus Christ. We pray that he would be our teacher tonight. Amen.
So David McNee was the commissioner of the Met police in the. He told the story of an imaginary police examination. Glenn, I'm nervous seeing you here already with this illustration, but here we go. Maybe you'll, maybe this will send shivers down your spine. But this was an imaginary police exam question that all prospective police officers had to answer.
So here it is. You turn over the paper and this is what you read. You are on patrol when an explosion occurs on the next street. As you arrive, you note that a crowd of people are running about, flailing their hands in the air and screaming. Upon further investigation, you find a large hole and an overturned van lying nearby.
Inside the van, there is a strong smell of alcohol. Both occupants, a man and a woman, are injured. You know that he is an unlicensed driver and his passenger is the wife of your inspector. A motorist stops to offer assistance and you recognise him as a felon wanted for armed robbery. Suddenly, another man runs out of a nearby house, shouting that his wife is expecting a baby and the shock of the explosion has brought on the birth.
At that moment, you hear someone crying for help. Having been blown into an adjacent canal by the explosion, they cannot swim. Describe in a few words what you would do.
And one young police officer picked up his pen and wrote, I would remove my uniform and mingle with the crowd.
And that's the temptation here in one Peter, for these christians to remove their uniform and mingle with the crowd. And that's our temptation as christians today. When we're under pressure, isn't it? It's 62, 63 AD. Peter, who was one of Jesus closest disciples, his apostle, he's sent out by the Lord Jesus to teach authoritatively in his name.
He's writing from Rome to scattered christians in these roman provinces. You can see them on the screen there in modern day turkey. And he's writing to christians scattered, beginning to face opposition. And faced with his opposition, they're tempted to take off their uniform and mingle with the crowd. And Peter is going to say, in this letter, you are called to suffer.
You're called to suffer. Suffering is part of the package of following Jesus. And we live in an age where Christianity is sold as being about contentment and happiness and peace, about Jesus making our lives more fulfilled. It's a sort of therapeutic deism, often a God who wants us to be comfortable and happy and makes no demands. But that's not the God of the New Testament, and we'll see that in one Peter.
In this letter, the apostle writes, peter is going to remind us again and again that suffering is part of the package of following Jesus. It's not the whole package. God has promised us a wonderful inheritance in the new creation after this life of suffering and rejection. But suffering is part of the package of following Jesus, because Jesus himself suffered before entering into his glory, and we follow him. So right at the start of this letter to this bunch of suffering scattered christians, Peter's going to say to us tonight, get your thinking right about your salvation.
Let's be realistic. And there are three little headings, could be quite long headings. Here we are. We're assured of our salvation through the resurrection. We grow in our salvation through trials, and we're educated in our salvation by heaven itself.
Let's look at the first one. We're assured of our salvation through the resurrection. Verses three to five.
Christian life doesn't begin with you or me making a resolution. I'm going to follow Jesus doesn't start with us deciding to be a Christian or deciding to turn over a new leaf. The christian life begins. The Bible says, with this supernatural birth, we're born again by the Holy Spirit, who washes our hearts clean and makes us new. We are born again.
Verse three says, praise be to the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. I remember chatting to a student from Korea some years ago, and I was trying to explain to her that christians are people who have been born again. And she said to me, what does it feel like to be born again? Do you feel any different?
What are you born into? Those are great questions, aren't they? And we looked at Nicodemus a few weeks ago in his meeting with Jesus, and he asked a great question. How can someone who's old be born again? Great questions.
And Peter answers in verse three, we were born into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now, hope doesn't sound a very positive word, doesn't it? A very certain sort of word. We might say, I hope there's going to be nice weather over half term, but you never know. I hope to go on holiday with my friend, but something might come up.
Hope, as we normally use it, is a wish, but it's not 100% certain. But that isn't how the Bible uses the word hope. When the Bible talks about hope, it always means something that is absolutely certain. And it's certain because it's based on what Jesus did for us in the past. That can't be changed.
In this case, his resurrection from the dead. Jesus took a human body so that he could die and so that when he rose again, he could drag human bodies through death into resurrection life, never to die again. What happened to him 2000 years ago will happen to us one day if we put our faith in him and are united to him. But this world has passed the point of no return with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So it's called a hope only because we haven't actually seen it yet.
It's still in the future. It's not wishy washy. Maybe it will, maybe it won't happen. It definitely will happen. We just haven't seen it yet.
And that's the way in which the Bible uses the word hope. We're born into a living hope, a future inheritance, absolutely certain because Jesus rose from the dead, even though we haven't received that yet.
I guess the moment we were born physically into this life, into this world, we were probably, most of us, born into an inheritance of some kind, our parents inheritance, whether big or small. One day you will or you have inherited or will inherit something, and that is the same when you become a Christian. You're born again into God's family and into his inheritance. And you might be going through some nasty things at the moment, but the ultimate, the long range future opened for us by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, the Bible says, far outweighs what we might be going through now.
Peter says our inheritance can never perish, spoil or fade. I don't know if you've inherited a piece of furniture, maybe a book, a bit of silver. Things we inherit, they fade, they fall to pieces. Over the years, the heirlooms get very fragile. But Peter says we're born again into an inheritance.
They can never perish, spoil or fade. It's a 24 carat, double glazed inheritance. It can't be taken away from us. And our name is on the label because 2000 years ago Jesus rose from the dead and you can't undo that. And where he has already gone, we will go one day too, if our lives are joined to his.
Jesus went through suffering and death and came out into a glorious inheritance. And where the head has gone, the body will follow into that as well. But you might say, well, it's all very well. It's all about having this inheritance that is kept for us. But how do we know that we'll be around to get it?
How do we know that we'll be there to collect it? Maybe Peter's readers were anxious when they got this. They're facing suffering, the persecution. They might be thinking, I might not keep going. As a Christian, I'm feeling pretty wobbly.
I don't like life on the margins, on the edges. And maybe you feel that as well. I feel as if I'm just hanging on by my fingertips. As a Christian, how can I be sure that I'm going to get there? So look down at verse four.
Not only is our inheritance kept for us, but Peter says we're kept for it. Look at verse five. He says, you who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed at the last time. Not only is our inheritance kept for us, but God keeps us for it. He wants us, you and me, to receive our inheritance, that full salvation.
And he makes sure that happens every day. As we keep trusting in Jesus, he keeps us. Now, it doesn't mean that he keeps bad things from happening to us. It doesn't mean that he stops suffering happening. Of course that happens.
We read that in the rest of one Peter. We know it from our own lives and experience, but it means that he guarantees that his children will get their inheritance one day. Nothing will disqualify us from it. Jesus has gone ahead of us through death into new creation life. And where he's gone, we will surely follow.
I wonder if you think about that future very much. I don't think about it as much as I should, but I do have a friend and he says that every day. He gets up, he says, it could be today. Maybe today. Jesus is coming.
And that's how he begins his day. And I love that attitude. I love that it could be today. Maybe today the skies will part and Jesus will step back down onto planet Earth and then it will all begin properly. Maybe it's today when we're going through suffering, we need to know, don't we, that it's not always going to be like this.
But there's a day coming. Jesus is going to come and put it right. And that day gets closer and closer and closer.
Followers of Jesus will suffer. Now, it's part of the package to be unpopular and to suffer, Peter says, but because of Jesus' resurrection, we've been born again into an inheritance and nothing can change it, nothing can take it away from us. So we're assured of our salvation through the resurrection. But second, Peter says, we grow in our salvation through trials. We grow in our salvation through trials.
Have a little look down at verse six.
He says, in this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. And the liv is a bit naughty there. It's not really past tense, it's present tense.
These trials come, he says, so that your faith, of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may be proved genuine. And this is a verse we really need to get into our hearts and minds before the trials come. Verse seven. These come, these painful trials come, so that your faith, of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed. Now, I know even just standing here and looking out at you in the congregation this evening, I can see many people who have suffered and who are suffering, going through suffering.
And I want to say this carefully from God's word, and I don't want to sound trite, but Peter is saying that when we suffer, our suffering is not meaningless. Our suffering is not pointless in God's sight. Your faith and my faith are incredibly valuable, more precious than gold, Peter says, and we might think gold. That's amazing. I love some of that.
I love some gold. But Peter says, no, no, even gold is going to perish. But your faith is more precious than gold in God's sight. Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ cannot perish. And suffering, as terrible as it is, if we can say, polishes that faith, makes it shine more brightly, it helps us to see the true value of things.
It refines you, I guess those who've gone through suffering or are going through suffering, you might be able to say, before I went through this trial, I used to think that these things were the important things in life, the really important things. Maybe it was health or money or family or a relationship or my career or whatever it was. But then I went through suffering, I went through a real trial and during that time I realised that actually those things aren't the key things in life. The most important thing actually is the Lord Jesus Christ and trusting him, the thing that will last forever is this living hope, this trust in Jesus.
I mean, I can say from my own limited experience of suffering that the times when Jesus has been most precious to me have been the times when I have experienced the hardest times, the suffering times. That's when he's been most precious to me. And if you're suffering or have suffered, maybe you can echo that, maybe think that's true, that's your experience as well. God is growing us as christians. We grow in our salvation through trials.
So Peter's writing to these Christians living on the margins, living on the edges, everybody else is looking down on them. They're despised, they'rejected, and though they are suffering, it's not a pointless suffering. Peter is saying they are already receiving the goal of their salvation, the goal of their faith, the salvation of the souls. They are growing as christians.
So those are our first two. We're assured of our salvation through the resurrection. We grow in our salvation through trials. Peter says, last of all, we're educated, we're taught in our salvation by heaven.
In the face of suffering and rejection, Peter's readers were trusting Jesus and their faith was being refined and they were growing up in their salvation. But how are they going to understand this idea of suffering now, but glory later? Suffering now in this world and in this life, but glory is coming. How are they going to understand that as the principle of normal christian life so that they don't get swept away, so they don't take off the uniform and blend in. After all, they never met Jesus personally as Peter had.
What about us? Well, Peter reminds them that he's not launched this new product. What's true for the christians he's writing to, that we may have to suffer now, but we've been born into this wonderful future and the glory is coming. What's true for them is true for us today and it's always been true. So he says, remember the Old Testament Christians.
Have a look down at verse ten. Peter writes verse ten concerning this salvation the prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come to you searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. There it is again, the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. Now, just incidentally, I don't know if you ever heard people, you know, the Old Testament people, people lived in the Old Testament. They didn't really understand the gospel.
They didn't really know the messiah, Jesus the Messiah, like we did. They didn't really. Actually, the prophets didn't really know what they were writing. They spoke better than they knew.
And if you think of that, well, the Old Testament is a bit of a puzzle. You think, well, what did they think they were writing? What did they imagine they were writing? What was going on in their heads? Well, is that how the Bible talks about the prophets?
No, of course it isn't. Throughout the Bible, the New Testament says that the prophets always understood what they were writing. They always knew that they were writing about the coming of Jesus the Messiah. Just as we look forward to his second coming, so they look forward to his first coming and his second coming. And of course they didn't know all the details, the times and the circumstances, as it says in verse eleven, they didn't know the times and the circumstances of Jesus birth and his life and his death and his resurrection, but they knew that he was coming.
They knew his suffering and the glory that would follow. They knew that he would die for our sins, but he would rise again and ascend and would come again, and all peoples would be included in his salvation plan. They knew that it was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves. But you Jews and Gentiles, when they wrote, they knew all this because the Holy Spirit, verse eleven, who inspired them, was none other than the spirit of Jesus Christ in them.
So I wonder who first explained the gospel to you? Maybe you can remember who it was, maybe you can't. But ultimately Peter says it was the Holy Spirit sent from heaven as he was to Peter's readers. He opens our minds and our hearts to understand the gospel. He reveals the truth of Jesus to us, and he's sent from heaven to teach us as we read the scriptures day by day.
In Peter's day, who was it who preached the gospel to them? Well, we don't really know, but ultimately it was the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. He was the missionary from heaven, the Holy Spirit. So how do you and I keep going as christians when we are more and more on the margins, when more and more we're in a minority, maybe at school, maybe at work, maybe even at home, how are we going to keep going? How are we not going to take off the uniform and try and blend in?
How are we not going to keep quiet? How are we going to keep trusting Jesus day by day as we wait for this inheritance? Well, Peter says it's through the spirit inspired prophets and apostles, in other words, through the Bible, through what they wrote.
I think it's almost too late to start reading the Bible when suffering comes, it's almost too late to do that.
Often when I'm visiting people in hospital at the end of their lives, they're not in a state to read the Bible. We're often so drugged up or unconscious or just don't have the energy. It's too late then. But sometimes I visit christians who are maybe near the end of their life. And I visited someone a few weeks ago, and as I turned to the scriptures with him and began to read, he interrupted me and he took over and he started quoting those scriptures from heart, from his heart.
It was somebody who had just been reading the Bible all his life and it was God's word was in him. And as I started to pray, he interrupted. He just took over and was praying there. He had just a few hours left to live, but he had been feeding on God's word and been educated in his salvation. It was deep in his heart when he needed it most of all, he was there.
So Vic is going to ask, how's your Bible reading going? It's the inevitable application, isn't it? It is easy, isn't it, just to let it slide. Let's encourage each other. We've got out of the habit.
Let's get back into the habit. Let's just develop a little bit of appetite each day for reading God's word. Maybe if you're beginning or beginning again, maybe that little lent devotional book that Antonia mentioned there at the back. Just pick up a copy. If you haven't got a pound, don't worry, just take it.
And we want to get an appetite for the Bible. And if when you're reading the Bible, you come to a bit you don't understand, doesn't matter. Turn the page. If you get bogged down, turn a page. Read something that you can understand.
Keep going. Like with any book, if we read it in big chunks, we'll understand the story. If you just had a novel and you just read a page or a paragraph and then you stop. You never get it, would you? Same with the Bible.
So let's just get into the habit of reading the Bible. And the more we read it, the more we'll understand.
There we go. We want to have God's word in our heads and in our hearts for when that suffering comes. Because by reading God's word, we're educated, we're built up, we're prepared, we're fed, so we're assured of our salvation through the resurrection. We grow in our salvation through trials. We're educated in our salvation by heaven.
Peter's readers are staring persecution in the face. It's coming down the road towards them, if it hasn't already. And for you and me, if we're serious about following Jesus, it's coming for us too, probably has come for many people here already, at work or at school.
And we can't just remove our uniform and mingle with the crowd. Peter says suffering is part of the package. It's not the whole package, but it is part of the package. Suffering now, glory later.
So what is Peter's pastoral response to these christians who are facing suffering? Well, as we end, the first thing he does is praise God for our salvation. He wants us to be totally assured of the future that we have through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, because in the meantime it's going to be tough. But you've passed the point of no return. Nothing can take that inheritance away from you.
It's coming down the road.
And he wants us to get to grips with God's word, with the Bible, because that's the way we'll understand what's happening to us. That's what makes sense of the world we live in. That's what reminds us and assures us of this salvation that Jesus has won for us. So if you're counting the cost at the moment of being a Christian, Peter would say, get God's big picture in place. Only if we understand our salvation will we be able to live as God's elect, strangers in this world, as he says and scattered.
Why don't we pray? And then I think we're going to sing again. Let's pray. Our heavenly Father. Our heavenly Father, we praise you for this new birth that we have through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
We praise you for this inheritance that we have in Jesus that can never perish, spoil or fade, kept in heaven for us. And we praise you because you shield and keep us so that we'll receive this inheritance one day. And, Lord, we want to pray for christians that we might know who are really going through it at the moment, who are suffering.
Lord, they may be sitting next to us, or they may be sitting near us in church tonight, or they may be many, many miles away. And we think of christians suffering in Nigeria and in Afghanistan and in Ukraine and in the Middle east. And, Lord, we pray that they, too, would know that they have this new life and an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. And that though suffering is real and is part of the package, it is not the whole package. But Jesus is coming again and will bring his new creation with us and make all things new.
Lord, may we grow up into this salvation. May we understand this more and more. Help us to put these things in place in our hearts and minds so that when the trials come, Lord, we might not be swept away by them, but might be established by your word and grow in them to become more and more like your son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Help us, Lord, as we go into a new week, whatever it holds, you know. But help us to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, and we ask for his name's sake.
Amen. Amen.