A Living Hope

A LIVING HOPE

1 Peter 1:3-12

Online Sermon: http://www.mckeesfamily.com/?page_id=3567

In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl, successor of Sigmund Freud at Vienna, argued that the “loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect on man.” As a result of his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp, Frankl contended that when a man no longer possesses a motive for living, no future to look toward, he curls up in a corner and dies. “Any attempt to restore a man’s inner strength in camp,” he wrote, “had first to succeed in showing him some future goal.”

Hope is necessary for our well-being. Hope gives significance to life choices and enables people to endure living in a fallen world where pain, suffering and injustice are the norm. When tribulations come like a thief in the night and rob a person of their livelihood, material possessions or physical health; the enormity this kind of suffering can crush even the steadiest of souls! How does one survive the losing of a loved one, being fired from a job, having one’s marriage fall apart, or being diagnosed with a life-threatening disease? Like the Gentile believers of Peter’s day and all other generations, living in a fallen world means one will inevitable experience one, several or all these tribulations. Victor Frankl was correct when he said that to restore such a person’s inner strength they must first have hope of attaining some future goal. Peter stated that the only goal that cannot be crushed by this fallen world is the living hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the kind of hope that finds unspeakable joy in our: future heavenly reward, suffering in the present because it proves and refines faith and the receipt of salvation of whom the angels and prophets searched intently for generations.

HOPE AND JOY IN OUR FUTURE HEAVENLY REWARD

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 (NIV).

Living hope begins with the acknowledgement of praise that God has mercy on His fallen creation. During suffering and pain, we often focus on what we have lost, rather than on what we still have! While God temporarily allows injustice to occur never forget that God has dealt mercy to every man, woman and child. While we would like to blame this fallen world and our “living by the sweat of our brow” (Genesis 3:19) on Adam and Eve, it is the wages of our sin that has brought tribulations and death upon us (Romans 6:23)! Doesn’t every choice that we make to disobey God not drive another nail into Christ’s hands and feet? No matter what one’s circumstances, Peter reminds his readers to praise God the Father for His choice to give His only begotten Son Jesus to die and atone for our sins (John 3:16). Instead of death God gave us the chance to be born again, not of the original flesh and blood that was so easily corrupted but of water and the Spirit (John 3:5-7). To be born anew as a child of God is that not the ultimate act of mercy?

To be born again is a major miracle, a “unique work of God in human nature.” God transforming a person dead to sin into a believing child of His is one of the greatest miracles ever received. Peter reminds Christians that their “growing hope is to be the expected result of being born again.” The degree in which a believer intensely believes and lives their life in view of spending an eternity with God is a good measure of how spiritually mature that believer has become. Peter has in view the kind of maturity that does not read the commands of God and see them as a burden (1 John 5:3) or embarrassment to be followed, but instead reads these commands fully expecting another miracle: the constant “putting away of the old nature” (2 Corinthians 5:17) so that one’s mind might be renewed and further transformed in His likeness (Romans 12:1-2). After having God write His laws upon our new hearts of flesh, the cry to have a clean heart (Psalms 51:10) is now not just Ezekiel (36:26-28) and Jeremiah’s (31:33) prophesy but has become our reality. For Peter, a living hope is one that never forgets the mercy God showed when He raised us up with Jesus Christ (Romans 6:4) so that we might no longer be a prisoner in a tomb of spiritual death but His redeemed child!

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 (NIV).