ENGAGE/TENSION
In general, I tend to be a pretty optimistic person. But I’ve got to admit that it is getting harder and harder to be hopeful about life here on earth in the 21st century. Let’s face it, 2016 didn’t exactly get off to a great start:
• This week, the stock market plunged over 6% in reaction to worsening economic conditions around the world. And there is certainly no shortage of pundits and financial gurus who are predicting a worldwide economic collapse sometime soon.
• Things are rapidly unravelling in the Middle East as various factions and nations fight for control of the region. And in spite of claimed advances against ISIS and other Islamic terrorists, we face a greater threat of terrorist attacks here in the United States and around the world than ever before.
• Here in the United States we see levels of domestic unrest that we haven’t experienced in decades. Instead of trying to solve our differences through the legal system or through dialog, we have armed activists barricading themselves inside a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon and others engaging in looting and violence in order to protest what they consider to be injustice.
Those kinds of threats to our way of life exist for all Americans. But for those who are disciples of Jesus and who desire to live in obedience to His Word, the difficulties and threats are even greater:
• Most of us are probably familiar with the Oregon couple who was forced to pay a $136,000 fine just a couple weeks ago for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a homosexual wedding.
• On Tuesday this week, the Arizona Daily Star published an editorial that praised a Massachusetts court ruling that held a Roman Catholic School violated the civil rights of Matthew Barrett when they chose not to hire him because he was married to another man.
• Last year Houston mayor Annise Parker directed the city’s legal department to issue subpoenas demanding that all the sermons and correspondence dealing with homosexuality from several pastors be turned over to the city. After nationwide outrage, the mayor was later forced to rescind the subpoenas.
Those are only a few examples of the increasing hostility to Jesus, His kingdom and His disciples here in the United States.
So how can I possibly be hopeful in the midst of that kind of world? As Peter begins the body of his letter that we’re studying, he is going to help us answer that question. So go ahead and take your Bibles out and open them to 1 Peter chapter 1 and follow along as I read beginning in verse 3:
TRUTH
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…
I want you to note the phrase “living hope” there in verse 3 because it is going to be the main focus of the message this morning. So as I continue reading through this passage, I want to encourage you to think about what Peter reveals here about how we can make that kind of “living hope” real in our lives. Let me finish reading our passage with that in mind.
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 in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that 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, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.
(1 Peter 1:3-12 ESV)
There is certainly a wealth of important teaching here in these 10 verses, but I want for us to concentrate on Peter’s main message here, which we can summarize like this:
Living hope
is a matter of looking ahead
rather than looking around
You’ll remember that last week we discovered that as disciples of Jesus we are living as aliens here on this earth because our real home is in heaven. And living in both of those worlds simultaneously for a period of time will inevitably cause us to experience trials in our lives. As Peter reminds us here, those trials often cause grief in our lives. But it is possible to have hope and joy in the midst of those trials if we have the right perspective.
While it is true that God’s kingdom does have both a present and future element, what we find here is that the key to maintaining a living hope in the midst of our trials is to understand that there is more to life than just the here and now and to constantly think about our future inheritance that has been purchased for us by the blood of Jesus.
Peter reminds us here of the stark contrasts between what happens when we look around at our circumstances and what happens when we look ahead to our inheritance:
If I look around at my circumstances, my trials will…
• Challenge my faith
Viewed only through the lens of this world, our trials are going to tend to push us away from God, rather than draw us toward Him. As we discussed last week, if we don’t understand that we are exiles here on this earth because God elected us and not rejected us, then we’re going to have a tendency to think that our difficulties are taking place because God has abandoned us in some way. And that thought process will inevitably lead us to question God and our faith.
In the mid to late 1980’s I worked for a land development company in Albuquerque, New Mexica and here in Tucson and during my employment I accumulated a fairly sizable balance in my 401(k) account. When the company I worked for went bankrupt I had to roll those funds over into an IRA and I invested them in the Baptist Foundation of Arizona, who claimed to be using those funds to help start new churches. As it turns out, the directors of that organization were essentially running a Ponzi scheme in which they were using newly invested funds to pay the interest on the funds of existing investors.
The whole thing unraveled in 1999. When the BFA filed for bankruptcy then they had $530 in liabilities and only $70 million in assets. Although some of the losses were later recouped from various individuals and corporations responsible for the fraudulent activities, all the investors, including Mary and I lost a substantial portion of the money we had invested.
It was really interesting to watch the reactions of various investors, most of whom claimed to be Christians. Many of them ended up being very angry and questioned how God could allow something like this to happen. And there were even some people that I knew personally that ended up abandoning their faith and the church. And, because their focus was primarily on the situation itself, their reaction is not all that surprising.
If I look around at my circumstances, my trials will…
• Steal my joy
I’m not telling you anything new when I say that it is never a pleasant thing to experience trials in our lives. None of us want to experience relationship problems or financial problems or health problems or loss or any of the other kinds of trials that are part of living as exiles here on earth. So it catches off guard a bit when Peter instructs us to respond to trials by “rejoicing with joy that is inexpressible” or to do as James instructs in this familiar passage:
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,
(James 1:2 ESV)
These commands only make sense once we understand that joy is not just an emotional experience. It is not the same as happiness or cheerfulness. Rather it is a settled state of mind based on my confidence that God is in control of every detail of my life. Using that definition, it’s easy to understand why focusing on my circumstances alone tends to steal that joy from me. If I observe those conditions apart from God’s purposes in them, the natural tendency is to think that God isn’t in control or that He’s not powerful enough to take care of my problems. And that steals my joy.
That is exactly what happened to so many of the people who lost money by investing in the Baptist Foundation. Many of them became angry and bitter and I have to believe that was largely because their joy was stolen because they couldn’t see beyond the circumstances.
If I look around at my circumstances, my trials will…
• Rob God of His glory
I’m convinced that this is actually the most severe of all the results of looking around at my circumstances. The first two we looked at primarily affect me. But this third consequence impacts God’s glory and honor here on earth. As we’re going to see in a moment, when God uses our trials as a means to prove the genuineness of our faith to ourselves and to others, God gets glory out of that. But if instead we whine and complain about our trials and even question God’s love and His goodness, then we rob God of the glory that He deserves.
In the case of the Baptist Foundation situation, that is unfortunately what happened. While I’m sure the vast majority of the investors did not respond that way, the press was able to find a few disgruntled people who were angry not only with the individuals who had perpetrated the fraud, but also with God. Regrettably, the voices of that minority were allowed to drown out those who refused to blame God for these losses and as a result, Christians were painted in a bad light and God was robbed of the glory that could have been his had those people followed Peter’s instruction in this passage.
Clearly, looking around at my trials instead of looking ahead to my inheritance has some severe repercussions. Fortunately, those negatives can be overcome by a change in my mindset and focus. Let’s see how that works.
If I look ahead to my inheritance (instead of looking around and my circumstances), my trials will:
• Prove my faith
Look at the point Peter makes in verse 7. He reminds us there that one of the most important purposes of trials in my life is to prove to me and to others that my faith is genuine. He compares the process to the way gold is purified in a fire. Gold is purified by heating it to a high temperature so that the impurities can be separated and removed from the gold. Trials work a lot like that in our lives. Our trials tend to separate genuine disciples of Jesus from those who only claim to be Christians.
The Baptist Foundation scandal certainly did that. I’ve already talked about many who became very bitter from that situation and who let it challenge their faith, steal their joy and rob God of His glory. But there were many others who were able to look beyond the circumstances of that time and understand that this situation was being used as a test by God to prove the genuine faith of many. It was a test to reveal whether they really believed what they said when they claimed that God owned everything and that they were only stewards of what belongs to Him. It was a test to reveal if they really believed what they said when they claimed that God would meet their needs. It was a test to see if they really believed that God could use this evil for good in their lives. It was a test to reveal whether they really believed that their future inheritance in heaven was far more valuable than their earthly retirement account.
And for those who passed that test and proved the genuineness of their faith to themselves and to others that ended up being a really encouraging situation. I can say that with confidence because by God’s grace I was one of those people. I’m not going to tell you that I wasn’t angry at first or that I didn’t worry at all. But I can honestly say that was one of those times in my life where I really was able to just give the entire situation over to God and trust that God would do what He promised to do for Mary and I and meet our needs.
If I look ahead to my inheritance, my trials will:
• Increase my joy
When we look ahead to our inheritance, how could we ever not do as Peter instructs here and “rejoice with joy that is inexpressible”?
Let me just quickly run through some of the aspects of that inheritance that Peter covers here:
o Because of His mercy, God caused me to be born again so that I can receive this inheritance. In other words, this inheritance is completely undeserved or merited. I receive it only because God elected me completely apart from anything I could ever do to become His child.
o My inheritance is a result of and guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus. The author of Hebrews reminds us that Jesus was able to persevere in the face tremendous persecution, including crucifixion because he looked forward rather than looking around:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
(Hebrews 12:1-2 ESV)
Not only that, but His resurrection is what guarantees that we, too, will experience a future resurrection, at which time we will receive our inheritance.
o My trials, no matter how severe and no matter how long they last, are only temporary and they will fade away and perish. But my inheritance is everything that my life here on earth is not – it is imperishable, undefiled and unfading. I’m reminded here of what Paul wrote to the church in Corinth:
For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
(2 Corinthians 4:17-18 ESV)
o And, as we see in verse 5, in my life here on earth I am being guarded by God’s power in a way that guarantees that I will receive that inheritance in the future regardless of what may happen to me here on earth.
Earlier I defined joy as a settled state of mind based on my confidence that God is in control of every detail of my life. And for those of us who chose to look ahead to our inheritance rather than looking around at the circumstances during that Baptist Foundation fiasco, there is no doubt in my mind that our joy was multiplied greatly, being confident that God was in control of that situation, no matter how bad it looked from the world’s perspective.
If I look ahead to my inheritance, my trials will:
• Add to God’s glory
Everything about our inheritance should point to God and give Him glory. We only receive the inheritance in the first place because He has caused us to be born again, completely apart from anything we do to earn or deserve. God preserves that inheritance for us regardless of what trials and difficulties we may go through on this earth. And the resurrection of Jesus guarantees that we, too, will experience a resurrection and receive that inheritance in the future.
So it’s no wonder that Peter points out in verse 7 that when our faith is proved genuine through our trials, it is God, and not us, who gets the glory.
For Mary and I, the collapse of the Baptist Foundation came at a really bad time financially. Although those funds had been set aside for our retirement, the collapse occurred at a time in our married life when our expenses were at their greatest and our income was at one of the lowest points in our lives. Several times in the years leading up to the bankruptcy of the Foundation, we had been forced to pay the early withdrawal penalty and use some of those funds to meet our living expenses. So once all our funds were frozen due to the bankruptcy, that was no longer an option.
But to this day, I still remind people that God was faithful to provide for us during that time. We never once were unable to make our mortgage payment or be able to buy food and other necessities for our family.
The entire reason I’ve shared the illustration of the Baptist Foundation this morning is not to in any way claim that Mary and I deserve any credit at all for how we handled that situation, but rather to give glory to God for the way He sustained us through that trial in our lives. He is absolutely the only one who deserves any glory out of that situation. And I am absolutely confident that if you’ll keep looking ahead rather than looking around, God will do that for you, too, regardless of what trials you might face in your lives right now.
We’ve discovered this morning that…
Living hope
is a matter of looking ahead
rather than looking around
APPLICATION
That sounds great in theory, but what does that look like in practical terms in my life? What are some practical ways that we can develop this kind of living hope both individually and as a body? There are obviously many things I could suggest, but let me leave you with just two very practical steps that we are all capable of implementing in our lives.
The first one is something that will benefit each of us personally.
1. Make choices that encourage looking ahead rather than looking around
As I pointed out at the beginning of this message, when I look around at the state of the world today, it’s really hard for me to be optimistic and to have a great deal of hope. But that’s not God’s fault, that’s my fault.
By nature I’m a bit of a political and news junkie. I enjoy following politics and keeping up with the news. But to be real honest, I know that at times in my life, I’ve no doubt taken that to an unhealthy extreme. Sometimes I can be a pretty slow learner, so it wasn’t until several years ago during one of those times that I finally realized there was a correlation between my focus and the amount of optimism and hope that I was experiencing in my life. I finally recognized that the more time I spent looking around at the conditions around me, the less time I spent looking ahead at the great inheritance God has for me.
Obviously there is nothing wrong with keeping up with the news. I think Christians do need to be students of our culture to a degree in order to be effective witnesses for Jesus. But when we get to the point where we’re spending hours a day watching, listening to and reading the news, listening to talk radio for hours on end and spending countless hours on the internet rather than filling our minds and hearts with the things of God, then we will naturally be looking around rather than doing what we need to be doing and looking ahead. And when that happens, we shouldn’t be surprised when we have a negative, hopeless outlook.
That means I have to make some choices every day. If I want to look ahead rather than look around, I have to choose to read my Bible before I read the newspaper. I have to choose to pray before I turn on my favorite news station. That means that sometimes when I get in my car, I just need to change the station and listen to some Christian music or some Bible teaching rather than my favorite talk show host. I could go on here, but I think you get the picture.
Obviously as we individually take that step, it will also impact us as a church family as well. But the second action I’m going to suggest, is intended to benefit us more as an entire body, and that is good for us individually as well.
2. Encourage each other with the reality of our inheritance
Often when others around us are going through trials, there is not a lot that we can do to help them through those trials other than to just be there for them. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that as the Day of the Lord and the second coming of Jesus approaches, things are going to get harder for Christians, not easier. Therefore, one of the most important things we can do for each other is to encourage each other and remind each other of our inheritance:
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
(Hebrews 10:24-25 ESV)
INSPIRATION
Can you imagine how much more hope we would all have if we did just those two things on a regular basis? Think about what it would be like to approach our own personal trials and the challenges that our culture presents to us as disciples of Jesus knowing that no matter how difficult things might be right now for a time, God is using those circumstances to prove the genuineness of our faith and to prepare us to receive the unimaginable inheritance that He is keeping for us in heaven? Think about the kind of living hope we could experience as we live our lives here on earth knowing without a doubt that God is guarding our lives in a way that guarantees we will receive that inheritance one day? I sure know that’s the way I’d like to live my life. How about you?
ACTION
The good news is that the Bible promises us that we can all live with that kind of living hope if we’ll just look ahead rather than looking around. As we begin this new year, will you join me in making a commitment to live life like that? Will you join me in committing to make choices that encourage us to look ahead rather than look around and to encourage each other with the reality of our inheritance?
