Hope In God! - 1 Peter 1:13 Series

1 Peter 1:13 Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. 14 As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. 15 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy." 17 Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.

Introduction

Setting your Heart on a Better Hope

Imagine for a moment that you are a volunteer for a political campaign. You have never really been all that into politics before, you have certainly never worked on a campaign, but this particular man who is running for president just really has you fired up. You agree with him right down the line on every important issue. He is an outspoken believer, and he has an amazing ability to persuade and make the truth of God’s Word clear and appealing to people. There is no doubt in your mind that if he were president, he could have a major impact not only politically, but morally on our whole country.

And so you do something you never dreamed you would do. You believe in this so much, you quit your job to volunteer full time for this campaign. You are convinced that not only would he make a great president, but the opposing candidate would be an absolute train wreck for the country that we may never recover from. So for two years you put everything you have into helping his campaign full time.

Election Day arrives, and you stay up late to watch the results, and to the shock of all the pollsters your guy wins in the biggest landslide victory ever – fifty states to zero. On his coattails, his party also won the House and the Senate with big majorities, so nothing stands in his way - this is going to turn our country around.

The next weekend after Election Day you head straight from church down to see the Broncos play the Raiders. You are a big Broncos fan and so you splurge on expensive tickets, and you are all excited to take in the big game. By the end of the first quarter the Broncos are down by three touchdowns and it gets worse from there.

Like I said, you are a huge Bronco fan, so the next day every time you think of the game you start to get depressed. But each time that happens you just forget about the game and turn your attention to the fact that we are going to have this amazing president for the next four years (and no doubt four more after that). And that immediately wipes out your depression, because the presidency is so much more important in your heart than sports (because of how much you invested yourself into it).

Now, maybe you don’t care about politics or sports, but whatever you care about and do not care about, everyone in this room knows what it is like to make yourself feel better after a disappointment by taking your attention away from some small bad news and focusing on some big good news. Maybe the small bad news is your dinner plans didn’t work out, and the big good news is you finally found a great job. Turning your attention away from little bad news to much bigger good news is what it means to set your hope on something.

And what Peter instructs us to do in this passage is to set our hope fully on the things he has been telling us about for the past twelve verses. Not on a job, not on an election, but on the grace that is to be revealed at the Second Coming.

Definition

Now, if you have not been here the previous weeks you need to understand that the biblical word translated hope is not like our word hope. The most accurate translation of the biblical word would be our word, “expect.” Hope in God is when there is such a strong expectation that He will fulfill what He has promised, and what He has promised is so delightful to you, that it makes you happy. So there are two ingredients. First, you have to really be convinced the good thing is going to happen. And second, the good thing has to be something you strongly desire. If you know for sure something is going to happen tomorrow, but you have no idea what it will be like, that will not give you any joy. If you know something is really, really fun, but you are not sure if it is going to happen or not, that will not bring you joy either. But if you know for sure it is going to happen, and you have to know for sure you are going to like it, that is hope.