Living With Great Expectations Series

Living With Great Expectations

Living-Hope – week 2

Bumper

LAST WEEK – we began a study on 1 Peter a 2000 year old letter full of God breathed words…

LISTEN – if your hope is running on empty. If you think your story is finished. Peter has a word for you about a living-hope. A sure anchor in troubled times. YEAH – sometimes it takes the darkest night to see clearly.

NOW – last Sunday we introduced this series by talking about…

The From

The To, and

The About

of these 2000 year old words that were breathed by God.

These words are…

FROM – Peter.

(and remember ‘from matters’)

From often determines how we both receive and respond to a letter…

This letter is from Peter…

You know Peter - the strong fisherman who left His nets (and everything else) on the beach by the Sea of Galilee in order to follow Jesus…

Peter the guy who lived with God for 3 years and had a fornt row center-staged seat to ALL the amazing things that Jesus did when He wore flesh and walked on this planet:

opening blind eyes, healing lame limbs, curing deadly diseases, casting out powerful demons, multiplying food, feeding thousands, walking on water, turning water into wine and raising the dead…

Peter the guy who had some incredible and thrilling victories… walking on water, telling Jesus that He knew who he was – the Christ, the Son of the Living God and preaching the very first Gospel message before thousands on the day of Pentecost…

Peter the guy who also experienced some crushing set backs and painful defeats… rebuking Jesus for bringing up the subject of the cross and his death, taking his eyes off of Jesus and sinking in the crashing waves and the ultimate fumble – standing in the courtyard – warming his hands in the fire – and crying out with I curse “I never knew the man…”

YEAH – that’s the guy who penned these words 2000 years ago that we will be digging into the next few weeks - From matters.

AND – that is why I’m convinced…. THAT – this man who…

knew Jesus so well, who knew the church so well (and who loved both so much that it cost him his life)…

and who I’m had a knowledge about – a relationship with and access to Jesus Christ that is unprecedented in human history… HAS - something to say to us. To you. To me. Over the next

Few weeks…

From natters… and this letter is from Peter.

TO – a bunch of Jesus-followers who were scattered throughout what is now, modern day Turkey…

TO - men and women who had been driven from their homes because of intense persecution.

TO - people just like you and I, who were in the midst of great hardship and difficulty… were finding it hard to hang on to hope.

From Peter

To… these 1st century Jesus followers and us…

And it’s…

About…

• God the Father who choose us (even though he knew us)

• God the Son who shed His blood and died to pay our debt

• God the Spirit who is working in us

• Praising God for His great mercy that has given us a new birth (a second chance, a new beginning) into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

CHECK OUT…

How the NLT words 1 Peter 1:3 (they are basically defining what it means to have a ‘living-hope”)

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation.

- 1 Peter 1:3

WHAT – does it mean to have a ‘living-hope?’

IT MEANS – to live with great expectations… and

AND LISTEN – for some of us that would be a radically different way to live…

BECAUSE – more often than not… we live with low or negative expectations…

MGCC – that is what I want to talk about this morning… ‘Living With Great Expectation…

Prayer

Okay… as people

God the Father chose

God the Son died for, and

God the Spirit lives in

As people who have been given a new birth into a living hope, what can we expect?

We Can Expect…

An Inheritance

Peter writes…

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation, and we have an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade--kept in heaven for you…

We can expect what?

IMAGINE – that this coming week, you go out to your mail box, open it up and you find an official looking letter from a law firm out in California. You open it kind of cautiously, hoping you’re not getting sued…