Hope In All Circumstances

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

Finding Hope in Christ Rather Than Circumstances

As I said before, this afternoon I want to preach to you on the theme of hope. And I want to pose a couple of questions as we approach this. As Christians who are in the world and yet not of the world, where are we to find our hope?

What is to be the Christian's greatest source of joy in the world and then beyond? Whether we're celebrating, as we did this morning, the first birthday of a church, or for our young church, having been alive for only three years and a bit, or we are mourning the death of an old faithful church, whether we're prospering or we are in decline, what is to be the source, dear friends, of our constant rejoicing in Christ?

I'm reminded of an account in the Gospel of Luke, and before we turn to 1 Peter, let's go to Luke 10, verse 20. I'm reminded of an account in Luke 10 that demonstrates, and I think we know this in ourselves, how often we set our sights far too low and find our source of hope and of joy in all the wrong places.

In Luke 10, verse 20, we read about an exchange that happened between our Lord Jesus and His disciples. And you might recall this account that our Lord sent out 72 of His disciples, two by two, to go ahead of Him and to proclaim the coming of the kingdom of God.

And upon their return, as they filed back in, the Lord found the disciples full of hope and joy. And they were rejoicing around one theme in particular, and that is this, they exclaimed to Christ, they said, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.

And our Lord, being that He is a good and a gracious master, and He is kind to us, entered into the joy of His disciples for a moment, and spoke encouragingly about how He saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning.

But then He issues this humbling corrective, a corrective that we should probably hear and consider more often than we do. He said, nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

So often we can become so enthralled with our ministry successes that we lose the forest for the trees. Like the disciples, we can go out into the world, and we can experience that all things are going well.

We can then rejoice in that which we can see, and then forget about the eternal reality. So we ought to keep always before us. And then when difficulties come, because our rejoicing is tied to temporal and material things, advancements, when inevitable trials arise, our hope and our joy wilt like a flower in the desert.

And what we find is that somewhere along the way, we tethered our hope to the fading ornaments of this life rather than anchoring ourselves, our greatest joys, our deepest happiness, our most profound hope in the deep, rock-solid truths of God's Word.

And as our church continues to persevere, and by God's grace as we have seen our church grow in the last number of years and in the last number of months, as we begin to prepare to see an elder appointed in our church next week, Lord willing, I want to bring this exhortation to us from God's Word.

It comes straight from 1 Peter, and it's something that in the hearts of every Christian, it must speak to you. As Christians, Peter's theme where he's going is this, that we are always to be filled with hope.

We must always be found rejoicing. But this hope and this rejoicing must never be tied to the temporal circumstances of this life. It must not be tied to church growth. It must not be tied to ministry success or any such thing.

But rather, we are to find hope in all circumstances by affixing our hearts not on that which is seen, but on that which is eternal, namely, the glorious salvation that is found alone in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

That is what I want for this church, brothers and sisters. More than numerical growth. More than what the world would describe as ministry success. What I want for us is an unwavering joy that goes beyond today and goes beyond when our brother is appointed as an elder, Lord willing, next week and the next year and the next decade and then into eternity.

We live in a world that has almost no hope. Have you seen it? It's a hopeless world. And yet we can attain to a hope that transcends every single circumstance in this life. And some of us are asking, and probably some of us should be asking, how do we attain to a hope like this?

Today, Peter is going to tell us. So now that we're in Luke 10, I invite you to turn to 1 Peter 1. And we're going to look in 1 Peter 1, verses 3 through 12 today. And there are a myriad of ways that I could have broken this up.

I decided to run with three key words that we find in the text. We're going to see how, as Christians who seek to live with a transcending hope, the first word is bless, the second, rejoice, and then the third, behold.

Blessing God for New Birth, Living Hope, and Inheritance

We're going to look at each of those together. And so, let's look at what Peter has to say in verses 3 through 5. Peter 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 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 at the last time. The first verb that I want to put before you is this word bless. Here is, as Peter writes to this group of suffering and persecuted Christians, and if you were to look with me at 1 Peter, if we were to do a public reading of Scripture this afternoon and read through it, you'd find that the overwhelming theme of 1 Peter is that Peter is writing to Christians that are persecuted, that are enduring great trials and suffering for their faith.

And as Peter writes to these suffering Christians, his priority is this, he invites these suffering Christians to join him.

In what?

In grumbling and complaining at God's contrary providences? In feeling self-pity that they are enduring great difficulty at the hands of their contemporaries? Of backbiting and complaining about one another?

He invites these suffering Christians to join him in blessing God the Father for his saving work through Jesus Christ. Let me assure you, brethren, that if you want to have a steadfast and unshakable joy in this life, it must begin where Peter begins, here in verse 3.

Every single day of your life, arise in the morning and make it, dear friends, the theme of your existence to bless God for the gospel of our salvation. Now let me show you how Peter does this. Peter opens in verse 3 with what the Jews would call a barakah, a Jewish greeting that often began with the words Blessed be God, who?

And then they would fill in the blank. And whenever you look in our Old Testaments and you find where these barakahs, what invariably happens is that there is a blessing of God and then attached to that blessing of God is some kind of acknowledgement, recognition, attachment to the salvific work of God.

And we see that, for instance, in Psalm 68, verse 19, where the psalmist says, Blessed be the Lord who daily bears us up. God is our salvation. Selah. But on this side of the cross now, as Peter brings this Hebrew barakah to his audience, Peter is not content to bless God in some vague way.

But he writes to these Christians who in this hour of trial desperately need hope and he details what it is that God the Father has done for his people. Now I wish I had more time to unpack all of this, but for today's purposes I'm only going to hit the highlights and I'm going to hit a couple of them especially hard.

But I want to start in verse 3 and look at one said highlight. In verse 3, Peter reminds us that God's salvation comes to the Christian by the Father's own sovereign initiative mediated through the work of Christ.

Peter writes this, he says, He, referring to God, He caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now when I spoke to the church this morning, I had no idea where they were on the spectrum of this.

Some of you, this is going to be very familiar. For some of you, this might be the first time you have ever heard this. So for those of you who are familiar, just bear with me. But often times when Christians think about being born again, they think that it is their act of repentance and faith that is the instrumental cause of that new birth.

But that is not at all what Peter is saying here. Rather, he reminds us that if we are Christians, if you are sitting in this seat and you say to yourself, Yes, I have been born again. Peter reminds us that it is not because we chose to be born again at some point in time, but it is because God in His great mercy set His love on you from eternity past.

And then fast forward from eternity to time, at the time that He appointed, He gave you new life in Christ. If there are children in this room, maybe your parents can catechize you after and say, Who causes us to be born again?

To which the right answer is God and God alone. And He gets all of the glory for it. And we see this phraseology of being born again by God according to His mercy. Paul is writing to Titus in Titus chapter 3 verse 5.

In Titus 3 verse 5 he says, He saved us, that is God saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, not because we respond to the gospel by faith and God sees it and then He gives us the gift of the new birth.

Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy and how. By the washing of regeneration that is the new birth and the renewal of the Holy Spirit. If you want a real and unending source of joy in your life, bless God every day that He not only delivered His Son over for our sins, which He did.

That's what Christ was doing as He hung on that cross. He was not in the garden the night before, sweating drops of blood, dreading the cross because He was afraid of the Roman nails or the whips or any such thing.

But as Christ was on that cross dying in the place of sinners, and this is a message that is not preached that often anymore unfortunately, He was taking the very wrath of God for the sinner. That your sin was imputed to Him, as it says in 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21, that He who knew no sin became sin on your behalf.

Why? How? So that you might become the righteousness of God in Him, that as He hung on that cross, your sin went upon Him and He paid the debt in full. And then in bringing you to Himself, in causing you to be born again,.

In drawing you,.

In granting you repentance and faith, He imputes His righteousness to you, so that when a Christian stands before God, they stand with no sin between them and God, with the perfect robes of Christ's righteousness.

He delivered His Son over to death. We see Peter mention resurrection. What does that have to do with it? In Romans 4 and verse 25, we're told that He raised Him up, not only delivering Him up to death, but He raised Him to life for our justification.

And more than that, when we were, and some of this is old news to you folks, but you need to understand, and more than that, when we were dead in our trespasses, when we did not have so much as one God-word thought in your mind, when there was nothing about you that was attractive from a divine sense, because of His own mercy, He caused us to be born again to a living hope.

Now there is a powerful story that John Stott recounts in his book, Between Two Worlds, that I just love the way it portrays this idea of how the Lord grants the new birth and the consequences of that.

John Stott tells the story of a man named Reverend William Haslam, who was a minister in the Church of England. And the interesting thing about Haslam was that he was a devoted pastor. He loved to spend time with his people.

He doted on them. He was a very careful and diligent man in the office of pastor. And yet, his congregation knew, almost immediately after meeting him and interacting with him, for any period of time, that while this man knew religion, he knew nothing of Jesus Christ.

There might be some of you in this room that this describes, that you know religion, but you don't know Jesus Christ. But our God is a gracious God. And one day, as the Lord would have it, while he was preaching, from Matthew 22 and verse 42, this was nine years after he was ordained.

Pastoral ministry is hard. I do not know how you sustain nine years of faithful ministry in this condition. But nine years after his ordination, William Haslam was standing in his pulpit, like I am. He was preaching from God's Word.

And he looked down into his Bible, at verse 42, and he read this question aloud. What think, in this King James Bible, What think ye of Christ? And as he read it aloud,.

In that moment,.

Stott writes this, The Holy Spirit, in answer no doubt to many prayers, opened his eyes to see the Christ of whom he was speaking, and opened his heart to believe in him. And the change that came over him, as he stood there, looking at that verse, was so obvious that there was actually a visiting minister that was sitting in one of the pews.

And he rose from his seat,.

And he said,.

Hallelujah!

The minister is converted. And as he shouted that, the voice of 300 other congregants drowned him out. And as for Haslam himself, we're told that he joined in the outburst of praise. Until he wanted to make things more orderly, and he led the people in the doxology, and the people saying it, we're told, with heart and with voice, over and over and over again.

And the news went out into all of the town, that the minister was converted, and that by his own sermon in his own pulpit. That is what it means when a man or woman is walking dead in their trespasses and sins.

And not by our initiative, but by God's. He causes us to be born again to a living hope. And what were the results? In the years that followed, we're told that Haslam ministered with a vivid sense of God's presence in his ministry.

I didn't say this this morning, so you get a bit of a tidbit for coming to the second part of it, but it was surrounded by a three year revival that happened in the church, where they said, almost every single day, someone in that church was being saved.

Was coming to a sound, saving understanding of the gospel. And then Haslam turned his attention to his fellow ministers, and devoted the rest of his ministry to going back to the church of England. And leading many of his fellow clergymen to a personal knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Now this might strike you as an unusual example. It's a fairly unusual one. Except that, your new birth is no less exceptional. Can you think about where you were prior to the Lord saving you? I recall even my own experience.

I went to church one Sunday chasing a girl. And the Lord was able to redeem that. And as I sat there with absolutely no interest in the things of God or the gospel, the Lord pierced my heart with the sword of His word and brought me to a full conviction of my own sins.

And I went and bought a Bible as soon as I could and sought to read it. And by God's grace, He opened my eyes not only to see my sin, but to see the glories of Christ. If you have been born again, it is not because you have done it.

It is because God has done it. And such a truth ought to bring us to our knees in praise to God. That you did not deserve your salvation. There was nothing about you that was lovely. And yet God, in His kind providence, set His love on you.

And then Peter continues in verse 4 and points out that we have not only been born again, but that we have been born again to a living hope and namely an inheritance. The idea of inheritance was hard-baked into the Jewish mind.

I don't need to explain this all to most of you.

Because you were here.

In the early chapters of Ephesians, except that I'll say this, that in the Jewish mind, inheritance had to do with land. We see Moses speak about that in Deuteronomy chapter 25. Their inheritance was the land except for the Levites whose inheritance was the Lord.

But Peter is not speaking here about land when he says that we have an inheritance. If we look at chapter 1 and verse 1 actually, he speaks to those who are elect exiles. Those who are in the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.

He's not promising a plot of land somewhere in Rome. But we actually see where this inheritance is at the end of verse 4 where he says that it is imperishable, unfiled, unfading, and kept in heaven for you.

Here we are called to bless God for this purpose that even though we are strangers and aliens in a foreign land, we have an unassailable inheritance, an eternal home with God. And we read about this inheritance in John chapter 14 and verse 3.

I'm at risk of saying that this is one of my favorite verses in the Bible because I have too many favorite verses in the Bible, but this is top 200 for sure. And if I go and prepare a place for you, he says, I will come again and I will take you to myself.

And where I am, you may be also. Dear saints, that is your inheritance. And one of the things that is meant to do at this time in your life is cause you to bless God with all of your soul. But not only have you been caused to be born again, as he caused you to be born again, not only do you have an inheritance, but dear saints, we have something that this world can never, ever, ever offer.

I remember being a young boy and thinking that Canada as a country and as a concept was just a given. It's just unstoppable. It will always exist. Life will always go on as it has been. And we've seen that that's just not the case.

That things are far more unstable than we probably ever imagined they were. The Lord here is not giving us something that is unstable, but a secure inheritance. And Peter goes to great lengths to convey this to us.

In verses 4 and 5, he speaks about our inheritance being imperishable. Meaning it cannot decay. It cannot be taken away. It is a Greek word that was often used when an invading army entered a city and they would try to get at something and it was untouched.

It was imperishable. It was untouchable. The enemy could not reach and grasp hold of it. It was out of his reach. But he adds another. That it is undefiled. It cannot be corrupted. And that it is unfading.

It can never lose its pristine character. Again, it's interesting to see how this language was used. The Greeks used this word often to refer to a flower. When a flower would fade, coming from this Greek word, it meant that it lost all of its beauty.

It wilted. It went away. But imagine for a moment a flower, something that is fragile and perfect and beautiful, but it never, ever, ever fades. It never loses its color. It never drops a leaf. It never gets a little bit of orange on the edge.

It is always perfect. Such is the character of our inheritance. And then he says that it is kept in heaven for you. This inheritance is already prepared. It is finished.

It is waiting for us.

It is in God's storehouse. And then, lest you think that this salvation is completely divorced from our relationship to God, to the means that God has made, you'll see in verse 5, he says, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time.

This guarded comes from the same word they would use when they would arrest someone. You arrest someone and they are in your custody and you have care and control over them. You are responsible for them.

Well, hear the Lord in causing us to be born again has arrested the hearts of the Christian and by his power through your real faith.

You are being guarded.

For a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time. What a joy! The same power that keeps our inheritance is the same power that keeps us day to day to day the very power of God. Dear Christian, you are secure in him.

Some of you have heard me share about going to a Billy Graham evangelistic conference and one speaker getting up and standing up and saying from the front, you must be born again. We'd agree with that.

But they said, you must be born again every single day. As if to say, you wake up in a state of spiritual death as if sleep somehow unsaves you. And then having been unsaved in the night, you wake up in the morning and you must be born again.

That is an enslaving doctrine and that is not at all what Peter is getting at here.

But what he is doing is he is shouting.

Security for the believer.

He who began.

A good work in you.

Will bring it to completion on the day of Christ. And if you are saved, you are saved indeed.

And we'll see this.

Get laid out more and more and more. But I'll take us next to our next word that is to rejoice. Verses 6 -9. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.

Should 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 now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. I just mentioned that Peter is writing to suffering Christians.

And do you think.

Maybe it's a little bit insensitive that Peter would encourage them. I know you're going through great trials. I know that there are afflictions that you are under the hammer of oppression. But rejoice.

How is it? How is it that Peter mingles suffering and rejoicing? How can this be? It is because Peter invites us to a kind of rejoicing that is divorced from the transient joys and trials of this life.

And what Peter is seeking to do is to take our joy, to take our hope, to pluck it out of the world, to put it where Christ is seated and to keep it there. And he goes to show us that it is a rejoicing that sees that even trials even great difficulties disease and death and the worst things that you can think of your worst fears our sovereign God when he brings about every contrary providence when he brings about every difficulty he is using each one of these to refine us to purify us and to prove the genuineness of our faith.

We read about this in Proverbs 17 .3 there the author writes the crucible is for silver the furnace is for gold and the Lord tests hearts. And what is the outcome of such testing? We know Job that he did not suffer all that well but he did say some true things as did some of his counselors.

Along the way.

And one thing that Job said in Job 23 and verse 10 is this that when he has tried me I shall come out as gold. That when the Lord puts us in the furnace of affliction when we endure every difficulty not only is our joy divorced from these trivial trials that we experience but every tear every pain every difficulty is in us refining us making us more like Christ and producing in us an eternal weight of glory beyond compare.

Now, what were the trials that Peter is speaking of that these Christians in the dispersion were experiencing? Peter likely wrote this letter in AD 62 or 63.

During the reign.

Of the Roman Emperor does anyone remember the name of that Roman Emperor? Wasn't a nice guy.

Nero.

During the reign.

Of the Roman Emperor Nero and Peter is writing to these dispersed Christians.

In Asia Minor.

So that is a region north of the Taurus Mountains.

In what would be.

Modern day Turkey. Important cities. If you were to look in your Bible and see some of the letters that were written places in Asia Minor included Ephesus Colossae.

Laodicea.

Iconium and others to name a few. And an important thing to note was that Asia Minor was a cause of great difficulty for these Christians for at least two reasons. One because it was a hotbed for Emperor worship the worship of the Roman Emperor Caesar and because we know that there were still existing Jews in those places that created great difficulty for the Christians like those Jews that persecuted Paul and then followed him from Thessalonica to Berea.

And while there isn't evidence to suggest that there was yet a statewide campaign of Christian persecution there was a growing intolerance for Christians that manifested itself in regional eruptions of violence that resulted in Christians being despised and slandered and criticized and harassed.

One historian writes this Romans viewed Christians as anti-social.

Now.

I said this this morning and it was off the cuff.

And I think it's important.

For us to say it again. Christian don't you ever feel in the world like.

Like maybe we are.

A little bit anti-social that when someone makes a crude joke in the lunchroom that when someone wants to show us a graphic meme or some kind of ridiculous thing that's certainly not going to edify our soul and might even displease the Lord.

Don't we find that it is very difficult to encounter those things. I spoke with a sister recently who said it is just so difficult to be around my unbelieving family.

Because it feels like.

We have nothing in common. We have nothing to talk about. Nothing to rejoice in to share together. Well dear Christian if you feel like sometimes the world slanders you or thinks of you as being anti-social at least it is not a new thing.

But that in the first century of the church Christians were considered anti-social. And then more than that the Romans viewed Christians and this increased over time as atheists because they rejected their pagan gods.

They saw them as cannibals because of their practice of the Lord's Supper. They even accused them of incest. And it was for reasons like this that the churches the Christians would come and go throughout the day and while I don't like the label of being incestuous I do love this about the church and about our church that when we see one another we say I love you brother.

I love you sister. The world has no category for that kind of relationship. No category for that kind of love and so they said incest. But here it was a community of Christians that simply loved one another and were slandered for it.

And yet.

In the midst of all these difficulties Peter and his audience had no idea what was coming next. On July 18th in AD 64 there was an event in Rome that changed that transformed the whole makeup of the church in that area.

Maybe you're familiar with it that on July 18th just outside the chariot stables in the city of Rome a fire started. And this fire spread for six days.

It burned.

It raged through the city so that when they finally were able to put the fire out six days after it started they found that over 70 of the city had been burned to the ground. Hundreds were killed. Thousands left homeless.

And conveniently very conveniently in fact.

Nero.

Was in his vacationing villa in Antium on the edge of the sea as the city burned. And when Nero came back to the city he saw the great fire of Rome as a perfect opportunity not to offer benevolence and to care for the Roman citizens but to undergo an aggressive building agenda a building program to pad his legacy.

And so he rapidly started to rebuild with bigger and better materials and to build bigger edifices and even he created a palace for himself that was one square mile in terms of its footprint. Established a massive amount of luxury for himself at the extent of the people.

And we're familiar sometimes with how this works that this will sound familiar to you but as a result of Caesar's aggressive building program taxes went up inflation went up and what happened to the citizenry?

Well they were upset. And so there began to arise these rumors amongst the citizenry.

That not only.

Did Nero want to rebuild bigger and better and faster. But that Nero actually conspired to start the fires so that he could carry out his aggressive building program. And so then Nero ended up with a critical PR crisis that all of the citizens were beginning to turn on him as they gossiped among themselves that it was Nero that started the fire.

And as we see with the politicians even of our day when we're caught in some kind of controversy.

It seems.

Rather than seeking to be honest and forthright and humble he sought to redirect and to shift the blame and so what Nero said was this that I did not cause the fires but I knew I know exactly who did.

It was the Christians. And he took all of that blame and he loaded it onto the backs of faithful Christians who were just seeking to serve their Lord with a clear conscience. And what resulted is probably one of the most grotesque instances of Christian persecution that the world has ever seen.

Tacitus writes about this. Tacitus was a Roman historian. He did not speak favorably about Christians. He said to stop the rumor he falsely charged with guilt and punished with the most fearful tortures the persons commonly called Christians.

In their very deaths they were made the subjects of sport for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts and killed by dogs or nailed to crosses or set to fire and when the day waned burned to serve for the evening lights.

Nero offered his own garden players for the spectacle. And there's an account from one historian that says on one particular evening Nero had guests into his garden. He had his garden players serenading all of his guests with music and then he came to the party dressed as a charioteer.

A self-exalting costume party. And as he went around greeting the people and they enjoyed music.

And food.

And dance. The courtyard was lit by the bodies of burning Christians. And what's more tradition tells us that following the great fire in Rome even the apostle Peter was killed on one such cross as he hung upside down suffering for his savior.

This was only about two years after Peter wrote this particular letter. And you see Peter is not writing something here that he wasn't prepared to leave himself. He understood that it is not only the Christian's duty but it is the Christian's greatest privilege to rejoice in the face of suffering.

And to think.

I want to ask you what is your favorite New Testament epistle? If you can think of one that expounds the glories of Christ and the beauties of the Gospel and the application of those truths to the Christian life.

I would not be surprised if many of you said that it was Paul's letter to the Romans how he speaks of our propitiation of us having peace with Christ how we are more than conquerors how we are to offer ourselves as living sacrifices holy and acceptable to Him that we see perhaps most clearly in the Gospel of Romans the beauty of Christ on full display.

And to think that of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Christians that hung on those crosses acting as night lights for the city many of those were the recipients of Paul's letter to the Romans.