A Living Hope — Part One

I invite you to take your Bibles, and we’ll turn to 1 Peter chapter 1 and to the verses that were read for us at the beginning of our worship. First Peter chapter 1. We began, last time, a new series of studies in this book written to young and scattered Christians throughout the then-known world. And as we return to it this morning, I invite you to bow with me in prayer for just a moment:

Father, we thank you that we can study your Word in these moments. And I pray that in your great goodness, you will take my words and speak through them. Take our minds and help us to think clearly through them. Take our hearts and open them to receive your truth. For Christ’s sake we ask it. Amen.

When we looked last Sunday morning at the opening two verses of this five-chapter letter, we discovered that there are three things which Peter tells us are true of every Christian—three things which are true of every genuine believer. And they’re these—you’ll find them in the second verse: that the genuine believer has been chosen by God the Father, has been cleansed by the blood of the Lord Jesus, and is sanctified by the power of the Holy Spirit. And it is with this great and overarching theme of the nature of salvation that Peter is concerned in these opening verses. Indeed, it would be true to say that it is the nature of what it means to be saved that is the consuming passion of Peter’s mind as he writes to these individuals—lest there should be those to whom he communicates who have got some strange and spurious notion of the nature of faith. And so he writes to bring clarity. And as he begins, he wants no one to be in any doubt that when it comes to knowing God, these facts are true—that when a person comes to express faith in Jesus, and as they look back on that experience from the vantage point of time, they’re going to be able to say this: “God the Father planned it; God the Son procured it, or achieved it; and God the Spirit applied it to my life.”

An Outburst of Praise

And when Peter ponders this, and as he writes about it and reaches the end of verse 2, the effect that it has upon him is to create a great outburst of praise. And it is with that word that the third verse begins, you will notice. He immediately begins, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!”—in much the same way that we find in much of our hymnody. Certainly, as we sing, I hope that we do so with our minds engaged, lest we fall foul of the notion that it is simply that we’re led along by the melody. And when we think of great hymns such as “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven,” we come to those tremendous lines which read, of the believer, “Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.” And then, presumably, the writer stopped and pondered the wonder of that, and then immediately takes his pen and writes, “Who, like [thee], his praise should sing?”[1] In other words, the response of a real understanding of what God has done in Christ is the heart of praise. In the same way, in a much more recent hymn:

And when I think that God, his Son not sparing,
Sent him to die, I scarce can take it in,
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.

Then the chorus: “Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee: how great thou art!”[2]

The response of a real understanding of what God has done in Christ is the heart of praise.

Now, don’t ever forget, as we read this, that we’re dealing with a real man. We’re dealing with Peter—Peter, whom we had described for us last time; Peter, who knew what it was to be a dreadful failure. Peter it was who got it right a measure of the time and got it wrong an equal amount of the time. And so, as he thinks of the wonder of what it means to be in Christ, it’s hardly surprising that he expresses it in this tremendous praise.

A Theological Truth

Now, what then follows is theology. It is a knowledge of God. And as it is penned for us here, and as our hearts are open to it this morning, it’s important for us to realize and to reaffirm this fact: that theological truth is not some rarefied concern, akin to an interest in some obscure painter or some obscure composer, but theological truth is the melody line of the Christian’s life. It is the very foundation. It is the score. It is what allows us to play out, as it were, in the musical expression of our days.

And you will notice that here his conviction is that the praise goes not to a god. Will you notice that? He doesn’t say, “Praise be to a god.” He says, “Praise be to the God.” And who is “the God”? He is “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Now, we might be tempted just to skim over that—familiarity with it, perhaps. But let us not miss the point: there are many today, in our nation, who believe in “God”—god with a small g—who believe in a god with a small g. But they have no knowledge of, no interest in, no acquaintance with the one true God, “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

That, of course, was the issue that Jesus confronted and eventually, on one level, led to his crucifixion. If you have a Bible, you might like to turn for a moment and listen to Jesus speak concerning this in John chapter 5, where, in verse 36, he says this:

I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the very work that the Father has given me to finish, and which I am doing, testifies that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent.

You see, it is not enough this morning that we go out and find out if people believe in God. The issue is: What God do you believe in? And Jesus says categorically, “You have never heard his voice. You have never seen his form. His word doesn’t dwell in you. The reason is not that you don’t believe in God”—because the Jews believed in God. They were monotheists! They believed in God big-time! But Jesus says, “No, you’ve got it wrong, because you do not believe the one he sent.”

Listen to this: “You diligently study the Scriptures”—that’s a good thing to do—“because you think that by them you possess eternal life.” And you may! But, says Jesus, “these are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” And then he asks this question: “How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?”[3] How can men and women in our twentieth-century society, consumed with the accolades of those around them, ever truly believe in “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” unless they come to him in the name and in the person of his Son?

Now, these things are very important, living in an environment where the Mormons are filling our television screens and spending multimillion dollars making out that they hold the answer to life. Loved ones, no matter how sincere they may be, no matter how excellent may be those advertisements (and boy are they good!), they must weight up against the words of Jesus himself, who said, “If you don’t accept me as I am, truly man and truly God, the incarnate Son, then you cannot believe even in the Father.” It is vital, living in the New Age environment in which we do, in which men and woman are saying, “Oh, of course we believe in God! Everyone is God, and you are God, and I am God, and we’re all just a little bit of God. We all have the seeds of God in us. If we can just plug in somehow…”

Now, you as believers, this morning, are going to go back into that environment tomorrow. What are you going to say to those people? Are you just going to cough over your coffee? Are you just going to say, “Oh, yes, that’s interesting”? No, you see, you must be into your Bible. You must be saying, “Well, you know, I’d love to talk with you about that, because just yesterday morning, we were discovering what Jesus had to say concerning that. I wonder: Have you ever read John’s Gospel?” For what we do on these days—and this is on my heart so heavily at the moment—what we’re doing in the moment as we gather is not for the benefit of us. It is for the benefit of those who don’t know. It is for the benefit of those who have never believed. It is for the opening of the eyes of those who have never conceived of Christ.

A “New Birth”

Now, there are three things that I was going to deal with, and I’m going to only deal with one of them, I would imagine, which will be a great encouragement to all. But there are three things in verses 3, 4, and 5 that we’re going to pay attention to as we go through it. First of all, Peter tells us what we’ve been given, then he tells us what we’re guaranteed, and then he tells us how we’re guarded.

First of all, what we’ve been given. This is in the third verse: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us…” Now, let’s just pause for a moment on that first phrase, “in his great mercy.” The word “mercy” describes pity and compassion towards the miserable. It describes the gracious activity of someone towards an undeserving party. Now, we’re all familiar with people who get prizes for running the fastest, or for jumping the highest, or for talking the loudest, or for writing the clearest, or whatever it might be. You do this, you get that. You perform, and you receive the award. But Peter is not speaking in these terms. He says, “No, it is because of God’s mercy that we discover this.” And the word assumes only two things: it assumes need on the part of the recipient and adequate provision on the part of the donor. And when Peter uses this phrase “in his great mercy,” it is in his heart. The word for “mercy”: eleos. The word for “much”: polu. Polu autou eleos: “much, much mercy,” he says—the same word that Paul uses in Ephesians 2.

Those of you who’ve gone to the photographer and had to sit for something—perhaps somebody told you that you needed a photograph because you were going to do something, and so you went and had your photographs taken. And you thought, as you woke up in the morning and looked in the mirror, that you didn’t just look your best. And I can speak from personal experience, and I’m not going to embarrass anyone in the congregation by naming them, but nevertheless, in recent months, I’ve been in this predicament. And sitting there under the invasive gaze of this lens, you might be tempted to say to the photographer, “Now, I would very much like for this portrait to do me justice.” And the photographer may well be ready to respond, “Alistair, what you require is not justice.” Right? “It is mercy. Mercy. There’s only so much you can do with a face like that. If your mother hadn’t lifted you out of the crib by your ears as much, we could have done better. No, you don’t require justice; you require mercy.”

And yet, you know, it’s hard to go through a week without somebody in your office or in your faculty in the university saying to you, “Oh, you know, I don’t think it’s fair. I don’t think it’s right. I deserve better than this, you know. I should have something more. This shouldn’t happen to me.” Listen, loved ones, we need to understand this: that it is in God’s great mercy that he gives us anything at all. It is by his mercy that we have breath to breathe in this morning hour. It is by his grace and his mercy that he allowed us to dress and to have the faculty of our thinking, both to speak and to listen. And it is “in his great mercy” that “he has given us new birth,” says Peter, according to “the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

The word that he uses here, the verb that he uses here, for “new birth,” anagennaō, is a distinct and singular usage. It’s an exclusive term, and it is a descriptive term. Many people today say, “Oh, you’re not one of those born-again people, are you?” Every so often, I’m involved in a conversation somewhere, and they will say that to me. And I say to them, “Yes, I am.” And they will then say, “Well, what, have you been listening to religious television or something? Isn’t this a twentieth-century phenomenon?” And I say, “No, no. Let me tell you. Let me show you.” Go in and get your New Testament. Just turn to John 3. And just say, “Listen, this was Jesus with a religious guy—thought he had it down—and this is what Jesus said to him.” He said, “Hey, Nicodemus, unless you’re born again, you’ll never see the kingdom of God. Unless you’re born again, Nicodemus, you’ll never enter the kingdom of God.” And Nicodemus said, “What? Can I, a grown man, enter a second time into my mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus must have scratched his head and said, “Man, I thought you were brighter than that, Nicodemus. I mean, don’t be ridiculous. We’re talking spiritual terms.”[4]

And Peter had understood that. That had taken place in Peter’s life. And he says, “This is marvelous! It’s because of his mercy that he has given us something. We didn’t earn it. He gave it to us.” What did he give us? He gave us new birth. Why would you ever need birth? Why would you ever need life—unless, of course, you were dead? And the message of the gospel this morning is not for us to go out and say to men and women, “You know, you are lost, and you need direction.” They are. It is not to say to them, “You’re unhappy, and you need joy.” They do. It is not to say, “You’re confused, and you need an explanation.” That’s true. It’s not to say, “You’re weak, and you need strength.” It is to say this: “The Bible says, face the real facts: you’re dead, and you need to be alive.” When Paul writes concerning it in Ephesians 2—and you can turn to this if you have your Bible, again—Ephesians 2:4, look at what he says: “Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy…” Polu eleos. What did he do? He “made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in [our] transgressions” and in our sins.

Now, there’s an interesting thing about this verb anagennaō, because by the second century, this word started to be used for baptism. And that has led to much of the confusion in the subsequent years and the preoccupation with baptism as a means of salvation. That is why many people today believe that if you’re baptized either as an adult or a child, somehow that confers salvation upon you. But in actual fact, what the New Testament teaches is that while baptism pictures salvation, it doesn’t perform salvation. And it is a word that is descriptive of a life-changing event.

“A Living Hope”

Now, you will notice that it is his mercy that is the ground of this—that he has given us new birth. This means a change of status, it means a change of nature, and it means a change of prospect. What has he done? He’s given us new birth, which has led us into something: into “a living hope.” “A living hope.”

The reason the hope is living is because Jesus is living. That’s what the next phrase means: “a living hope [by] the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” In other words, if Jesus Christ is not alive, then the whole thing’s finished. “But,” says Peter, “I know he’s alive, because I saw him. And I talked with him. And he came to me and met me on the shore. And he said to me, ‘Peter, do you still love me?’ And I said, ‘Yeah I do.’ And he said, ‘Feed my sheep.’[5] And that’s why I’m writing you this letter: in obedience to the risen Lord Jesus.” And he says to the scattered Christians, persecuted by those around them: he says, “I want you to know that, in your hearts, he has transferred you from the realm of the hopeless into the realm of the hopeful.”

Now, the word “hope” here doesn’t simply describe an objective prospect. It’s not something simply that is out there towards which we look, but the word describes a subjective reality. It is something in here which we experience. We have been delivered from the realm of hopelessness.

You see, it’s so helpful that Christopher would give testimony this morning in this way, because I think that sometimes we are preoccupied with the symptoms of hopelessness. You see, we think that, somehow, hopeless people are those who are maybe not as fortunate physically or mentally or materially as we might be. But the fact of the matter is, this morning, dear ones, that the happy, fulfilled, suburban pagan is just as lost and just as hopeless. The only difference is that he has built more walls, accumulated more toys, found more securities to stave off that notion that maybe, in actuality, he lives in a realm of hopelessness.

What a tragedy it was to see in the newspaper there on Friday that Del Shannon took a .22 and blew his head away. Do you remember his song “Runaway”? Remember how he used to sing with all the joy and everything? He was surrounded by famous musicians these last few weeks, guys that were getting with him again. They were going to make a new album. Del Shannon was going to arrive out of the dust and ashes of his past career. The tragedy was that he lived in the realm of hopelessness. And the believer has been delivered out of that into a living hope.

All we need to be is humble enough to acknowledge our need and openhanded enough to receive God’s grace, and the great transfer takes place.

Do you remember reading Hamlet at school? You remember those opening scenes? You’ll find it in act 1, scene 2, actually—I know ’cause I went to check, just to be sure—the tragic description of the events that Hamlet regards as quite devastating in the loss of his father, the remarriage of his mother to his uncle. And the king comes to him—that is, his uncle—and he says to him, “How is it that the clouds still hang on you?” Some of you are here this morning, and that is a very apropos question. You’re going to walk out the door and get into your comfortable car and drive for a comfortable lunch in your comfortable home. But I want to ask you a question: How is it that the clouds still hang on you? And Hamlet, in that first soliloquy, says, “[Oh,] how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!” But for the believer: transferred from the realm of hopelessness, in by the great mercy of God by the giving of a gift—not by the earning of a salvation—by the giving of a gift into living hope because this Jesus is alive today.

That answers the first question that many people have concerning faith, and that is simply this: “I don’t think I could ever be good enough to join,” as it were, “that Christian club.” Listen: you’re dead right; you never could. And neither could I. And we don’t need to be. All we need to be is humble enough to acknowledge our need and openhanded enough to receive his grace, and the great transfer takes place.

“Well, then,” somebody says, “but if I were to do that, how would I ever be able to keep going?” Well, that’s the second thing that he addresses. That’s the guarantee. And that, all being well, will be the focus of our study come next Sunday morning.

Shall we bow together in prayer?

Praise be to the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his great mercy, has given us new birth into a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Thank you, this morning, gracious God, that Jesus is alive from the dead. Thank you that you have so ordered things that you look into our hearts to see whether we would have the faith as of a little child to realize that we are great sinners but that Christ is a great Savior and to come with the clouds hanging on us to receive all the joy and peace that he offers. I pray that you will take us as a congregation and make us not arrogant but sincere. Make us diligent, Lord, and genuinely concerned. Grant that we might be gracious in the days of this week—that having pondered again these truths, having had it illustrated for us so graphically in the testimony that we’ve heard, may our hearts be stirred within us. May our lives tell out your greatness.

And may the love of the Lord Jesus draw us to himself. May the joy of the Lord Jesus give us strength. May the hope of the Lord Jesus fill our hearts and overspill to those around us. For we pray in Christ’s great name. Amen.

[1] Henry Francis Lyte, “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven” (1843).

[2] Carl Gustav Boberg, trans. Stuart K. Hine, “How Great Thou Art” (1885; 1949).

[3] John 5:39–40, 44 (NIV 1984).

[4] John 3:1–10 (paraphrased).

[5] John 21:15–19 (paraphrased).