He called me “Peter” … His “Rock.” Some “rock” I turned out to be. How many times did He try to warn us? As recently as two weeks ago, He tried to explain to us what would happen when we reached Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. What He said would happen was just too horrible to believe … that He would be falsely accused … have to go through a joke of a trial … be handed over to the Romans by the Temple leaders. He tried to prepare us for His death.
Lord knows how I tried to live up to the name that He had given me. I swore to Him that I would never leave nor forsake Him … that I would be there for Him no matter what happened. I guess it’s easy to be courageous … to speak brave words … when danger is a theory. But it wasn’t some theory and the chance to prove my loyalty came much, much quicker than I expected … not that it would have made any difference when the Temple guards and Roman soldiers came.
I’m only human … and He knew that. He told me that when trouble came I wouldn’t be there, that I wouldn’t be able to keep my promise … and He was right. I didn’t stand with Him … I hung back. When asked if I was with Him, the “Rock” crumbled … just like He said I would.
Everything He said came true. He was betrayed, falsely accused of the worse kind of blasphemy. The Temple leaders beat Him and then handed Him over to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, and demanded that he order this falsely accused blasphemer to be crucified … threatened to notify the Emperor when he balked.
They killed Him just like He said they would.
And yet … miracle of miracles … here He was sitting in front of us eating a piece of fish … alive!
It was … well … how can I describe what I … what all of us … were thinking and feeling at that moment. What words could capture the joy, the confusion, the fear that was swirling around in my head … in my heart?
He was dead. He had been dead for three days … sealed in a tomb guarded by Roman soldiers … and yet, here He was … sitting in front of us … calmly eating a piece of fish!
And as we watched … not knowing what to think or how to feel or how to react … Jesus spoke … and a glimmer of hope pierced the darkness of our hearts and souls. “Why are you frightened?” He asked, “and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and feet … see that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and blood as you see that I have.” (Luke 24:38-39).
Yes … what He was saying was true but totally incomprehensible. Mary and John and some of the women had seen Him take His last breathe … watched as His body was taken down and placed in a tomb. They watched as the Roman soldiers rolled the stone over the entrance of the tomb and sealed it … a tomb that was now empty. We thought someone had stolen His body but here He was … as alive as any one of us hiding in that room … asking us why we were so frightened, why our hearts were filled with fear and doubt … showing us the holes in His hands and feet … the wound in His side. There was no doubt that it was Him … but how? We could see Him … we could touch Him … but our minds couldn’t believe what our eyes were seeing.
As He spoke, my heart began to burn within me. “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you … that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44).
And then … like a flash of lightening … it all came back to me … how the Messiah was to suffer and die and on the third day rise from the dead … how He would send His Holy Spirit so that repentance and the forgiveness of sin would be proclaimed in His name to all nations and all people … beginning, it would seem, right here in this little room in Jerusalem … which is why I, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, can write to you and tell you about the living hope and the inheritance that we will all receive because of Jesus’ sacrifice and resurrection … and that news not only changed the “Rock,” forever … that news not only changed the world forever … it changed me, Gordon Pike, forever … it changed my life forever because I now know … like Peter and like countless other millions and billions of Christian brothers and sisters around me and those who have gone before … that I now have the promise of forever … and that truth has forever changed how I see life and how I live my life today.
When you look at all the craziness going on in the world today … all the panic and the lock-downs or shut-downs and social distancing and toilet paper shortages and masks and hand-sanitizer and empty shelves and the one-way arrows in grocery stores … you want to know what drives it? Fear! Fear of death!
When I was about 4 or 5 years old, I became aware of “death.” I remember standing in my front yard … filled with joy at how beautiful everything was … the blue sky … the trees … the green grass … the flowers … the hum of bees and insects … birds chirping and pecking the ground for bugs … the breeze … it was so beautiful. And the best part was that I was alive … that I was aware that I was alive … aware of the sights and the sounds, the smells, the music of life that surrounded me. I mean, I was only 4 or 5 years old … I couldn’t put it into words or thoughts like I can now … but I remember so clearly how good it felt to be alive … to be in that moment … to be aware of the gift of my awareness … [pause] … and then realizing that every living thing around me … including me … was going to pass away … was going to cease to exist … and that my consciousness, my awareness would no longer exist either … and then what? Darkness? Not even that because I would have no consciousness, no awareness of my lack of awareness because “I” … Gordon Pike … would no longer exist … therefore, I would no long have any consciousness or awareness that I ever did exist.
So … where did that leave me? What would happen when I die? Oblivion, I guess … but again, no awareness of oblivion because I would have no awareness … of anything … and that realization brought me a sadness and a resentment towards God that would hang over my head and shroud my heart like a dark cloud for many decades to come.
Death! The Great Unknown. The fear of death is not a fear limited to a few, let me tell you! In fact, death … or the fear of death … the fear of not knowing what lies on the other side of life … is what drives most the world to “eat, drink, and be merry” for tomorrow we what? We eat as much as we can, we drink as much as we can because we don’t know when this … life … will end. That’s how I lived … that’s how most of the world lives … grabbing for all they can … trying to cram as much food, love, sex, fun, money, toys, and “stuff” as they possibly can into every day because tomorrow could be their last … their last Big Mac … their last bowl of ice cream … their last sunset … their last sunrise … their last kiss … their last … well, their last everything.
Oh … the sad irony of it all. We eat and drink with the hope that it will make us merry but it doesn’t because the reason that we’re eating and drinking and trying to be merry is that tomorrow we may die. No matter how much a I eat or drink, how can I be merry with the Specter of Death hounding my every step, amen? As I am in the process of eating that Big Mac … death is sitting right beside me. When I eat that bowl of ice cream, death is right there watching TV with me. As I watch that sunrise or sunset, death whispers in my ear, “How many more of those do you think you’ll get to see?”
For a long time, the fear of death was a bittersweet relish that flavored my whole life … driving me to grab as much of life as I could … driven by the fear that it could be taken away from me at any moment … causing me to run from one pleasure to the next in a panic as I tried to outrun death, who was always nipping at my heels …
And then I would run into you people … Christians! Oh … My … God! Always talking about Heaven and Jesus … pretending to be happy … always singing and yacking about how you were going to glory where you’ll live with Jesus forever and ever … no more tears … no more death … no more mourning or crying or pain (Revelation 21:4).
Now … to my tired and frightened and weary soul, that sounded like, well … Heaven! I can’t tell you how badly I wanted to believe in all that junk … I really, really did …
But then I noticed something. You spoke one way but you lived another. You didn’t seem to live any different than the rest of us fear-driven non-Christians. You seemed to be grabbing for just as much of the good stuff and the good times as the rest of us were. You seemed to eat as much, drink as much, and try to be as merry as the rest of the world who lived in absolute terror of oblivion as I did … and if I looked closely, I thought that I could see the same consuming fear of death that I had …
“So what?” you ask. Enjoying the good things of life is no sin … and I would agree. What I questioned was the motivation behind it. It seemed to me that if you Christians believed in resurrection and Heaven and eternity, you’d be living differently from the rest of us. There would be a peace and serenity, a calm confidence and assurance about you … a rhythm, a pace, a way of living that would make you stand out from the rest of this frantic, frightened, fear-riddle world around you … and the source of that peace, that serenity, that calm confidence and assurance would be the sure knowledge that whatever pleasures the world had to offer, whatever good times and good things you had in this life, they were going to be nothing compared to the eternal joy and pleasures that awaited you in Heaven, amen? At least I was honest about my fear. I knew that the root cause of my selfishness was my fear of the inevitable and the possible oblivion that lay on the other side.
I say “possible” oblivion because, like I said, I wanted to believe what you believed … I wanted to believe so bad. You see, my brother, Scott, died in a car accident when I was 24 years old. He had just turned 21. I remember looking at his body lying in the casket and praying … praying for him to sit up … to get up … to rise up out of that coffin. I prayed to God to bring him back to life. But he didn’t wake up … he didn’t rise up out of that coffin … and I realized that he was truly dead … gone forever … but I couldn’t accept that this was all there was … death and oblivion. Scott might not be here with us but I wanted him to be in that place that you all described … that place where there would be no more tears, no more sorrow, no more pain, no more suffering … a place where he would be waiting for me … a place where he was alive somewhere, somehow and that I would get to see him again. There just had to be more to life that being born, living, and then dying … there just had to be.
When I crawled back into church, I was tired … I was beaten down … I was lost and desperate … but I still had a tiny mustard seed of hope that God was real … that Heaven was real … and that all of God’s promises were real … and when I knelt down at the cross … when my heart and soul began to heal and grow stronger … what happened to Peter happened to me! I came face-to-face with my Risen Savior, Jesus Christ. As I read the Bible, as I listened to sermons and music, as I fellowshipped with other Christians and what I like to call “secular survivors” like me, my heart began to burn within me as the Holy Spirit opened my heart and my mind to the truth of the scriptures concerning Jesus’ sacrifice and His resurrection!
Think about it! The religious leaders begged Pilate to seal the tomb and post guards in front of it so that no one could steal Jesus’ body, thus perpetuating a hoax in the minds of the people that Jesus had risen from the dead and thus was not only the Messiah that He claimed to be but, in fact, was the very Son of God who made the blind to see, the lame to dance with joy … who healed the sick … who sought and found the lost and put them back on the path of righteousness … and who … gulp! … gave new life to the dead … who had demonstrated His power and authority over nature, over demons, over death itself!
If the empty tomb was all that we had to go on, then there could be room for doubt. Perhaps His body had been stolen somehow … despite the Roman guards and the watchful eyes of the Jewish authorities. But that is not all that we have to go on is it?
We have the words of one of His disciples who saw Jesus three days later … who heard Him say, “Peace be with you” …who stood in Jesus’ presence and watched Him eat a piece of fish … who saw Jesus standing on the beach cooking breakfast for him and his fishing buddies … who jumped out of the boat and swam to shore and hugged Him … who heard Jesus command them to go feed His sheep … and who watched as Jesus ascended into Heaven.
And so, Peter … the “Rock” … did as Jesus commanded and took care of Jesus’ sheep … and one of the ways in which he did that was by writing letters to the sheep who had been scattered all over Asia Minor … Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia … speaking to them about the “new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1st Peter 1:3) because he had seen and experienced it firsthand. Peter, who saw Jesus’ dead body placed in a tomb … Peter, who was there when Jesus rolled away the stone and appeared to His followers who were hiding behind locked doors … victorious over our greatest enemy – death … the result of Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden … now overcome by Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.
Peter’s letter wasn’t written to a particular church or congregation. It was meant to be a “circular” … a written document that was meant to be passed around and read by all the Christians living in the Asia Minor region where the church and Christians were being affected by growing persecution. To claim the name of “Christian” … to identify yourself as a follower of Jesus Christ or as a member of His church … could be a dangerous thing to do and I have no doubt that there were some who faltered … who questioned if it was worth it to be a Christian or not given the dangers that they faced. Some had questions. How could God allow this to happen? Why was God allowing them to suffer and be persecuted like this?
Peter’s letter was written in hope that it would be shared and passed around and that everyone who read the letter would be inspired and encouraged to hang on in what were to be difficult times ahead … kind of like what we’re going through now with this pandemic … not sure what’s happening … living day to day … not sure how long this is going to last … will I get sick … and if I get sick will I have to be put on a respirator … will there be a respirator if I need one … will I survive this thing … and what will my life look like at the other end of this pandemic … if we ever reach the other side of this pandemic, amen?
Where do your find hope and encouragement in times like this? Peter says that the only place we should look for hope … the only place that we can expect to find meaningful and enduring hope … is if we put our hope and trust in Jesus … Period! Jesus … the only “person” to come out of death alive, amen? Jesus … the only person to face death head on and defeat it, amen? Jesus … the only person who can offer us any hope that there is something beyond this life, beyond death, amen?
Remember what I said last week about paying attention to every word in the Bible? Look closer at verse 3. Jesus doesn’t offer us just any old “hope.” Jesus doesn’t offer us the kind of hope that the world offers us, does He? He offers us a very special, unique, one-of-a-kind hope … the kind of hope that only He can give us. Have you found it yet? In verse 3, Peter says that our Lord Jesus Christ, by His great mercy, has given us a new birth into what kind of hope? Yeah! A “living hope!”
What kind of hope?
A “living hope.”
What is “living hope” and how is it different from the kind of hope that the world has to offer? Well … glad you asked. The hope that the world has to offer stops at the grave. Put your trust and faith in power … guess what? When you die, your power doesn’t go with you? Put your trust and faith in wealth … well, guess what? When you die, it stays here and someone else gets to spend your money, amen? Put your faith in “stuff” … you know what happens! You die and your stuff stays here … and, as the saying goes, you don’t see any U-Hauls in a funeral procession, amen?
The hope that the world has to offer is not a “living” hope … that hope dies when you die. But the hope that Jesus has to offer us is “living” or “eternal” hope. It never changes and it never dies because, in a manner of speaking, we never die. Our hope doesn’t stop at the grave because our lives don’t stop at the grave, amen?
Look at verses 3 and 4. Peter says that we have an “inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in Heaven for you” through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Our hope, our inheritance is imperishable … our hope is undefiled … our hope is unfading because it doesn’t stop at the grave just as Jesus didn’t stop at the grave, amen? Our inheritance is secure, it is eternal, because it is being kept in a secure and eternal place … Heaven! I can’t think of a more secure and eternal place to keep my hope, my treasure, my inheritance than Heaven, can you?
The hope that we receive from Jesus Christ is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading because Jesus Christ is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Our hope is eternal because it not dependent on the world … which is perishable, defiled, and fading … but on Jesus Christ … who was, and is, and will always be … and our inheritance is secure because Jesus paid for it with His life. No matter what happens in life or in the world, we have Jesus Christ and we have the hope … the “living” hope … the eternal hope … that His life, His death, and His resurrection secured for us … and because it is being kept in Heaven … nothing on earth can take it away from us, amen?
We have a hope that survives death. We have a hope that conquers the grave. We have a “living” hope as a direct result of Christ’s victory over death … a “living” hope that enables us to face whatever life brings our way. When we place our hope in the eternal God through His Son, Jesus Christ … that hope will never die … that hope will never decay … that hope will never deteriorate … that hope will never be destroyed. “Living” hope is a pretty awesome thing to have, am I right?
That is why, my brothers and sisters, there is such a fundamental difference between the way that we Christians respond to life and the way in which the rest of the world responds to life. Christian or non-Christian, none of us will get through this life without some kind of pain, some kind of difficulty, some kind of challenges, some kind of defeat or despair … but there is a vast difference in the way that we process and react to the pain, the difficulty, the challenges, the defeat and despair of life and the way that the rest of the world may respond to similar challenges. Like everyone else, we may reel from the blow … we may get knocked down … run over … pushed to the side … but we have something that the rest of the world doesn’t have … a quiet confidence in our hearts and souls that comes from knowing the truth of our situation … that our pain, our hurts, our problems, our suffering does not have the final say in our lives … that there something beyond all this … that our pain, our hurts, our suffering are limited only to the time that we spend here on earth and that all of that … our pain, our hurts, our suffering … will stop at the grave, amen?
In verse 4, Peter says that Jesus has given us a hope that is secure … steadfast … a hope that is beyond decay and destruction. And then, in verse 5, he goes on to say that we are being “protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” The word that Peter uses for “kept” or “protected” literally means to be “garrisoned” or “surrounded by an army.” In other words, when we put our faith, our trust, our hope in Jesus, we are as safe and secure as if we were surrounded by an army. Sounds pretty safe and secure to me … how about you?
But Jesus will protect you in another way … He will help you stay on the path that will help you secure your victory over death so that you can receive your inheritance when the time comes. “If you keep your hope in me,” says Jesus, “if you put your trust in me … if you keep your eyes and heart focused on me … if you believe that I have conquered the grave … if you believe that you too are going to be victorious over death and with me for all eternity … then I promise to keep you in the process that will lead you to the ultimate realization of your hope.”
Peter is being a “rock” here. He’s not trying to be some motivational speaker. He’s not trying to be some cheerleader pumping up his fellow Christians. He’s not trying to give them false hope or encourage them to whistle in the dark. He’s not writing checks that he can’t cash. What he is sharing with them is the truth that he’s experienced in his own spiritual life. “Put your trust in the Lord and get ready for some challenges,” he tells them. “There are going to be trials in your Christian walk … count on it. They’re going to be rough sometimes, but … while you’re going through them,” he says, “know this: God has a plan … God has a purpose for all of this and you just have to trust Him as you’re going through them.”
Look at verse 6. It starts out: “In this you rejoice.” What? Rejoice in what? Being locked up in my house or apartment? No idea how long this will last? Losing my job because of this? Rejoice in the stack of bills on my dining room table that I’m not sure how I’m going to pay? My car that needs a new transmission? Another session of chemo-therapy? Not being able to visit my son in jail or my mother in the nursing home because of this pandemic? Rejoice because my daughter is dating a beast? Again I ask, rejoice in what?
No … Peter is not saying that we should rejoice because we have all these serious problems. We should rejoice, he says, because we know that our problems … serious as they may be … will only last for a time. “In this rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials” (1st Peter 1:6). “… even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials.” Well, the term “a little while” can be pretty subjective. The persecution of Christians in Asia Minor was just starting … they would last for nearly a century or more … a life-time for some of the people Peter was writing to … but when viewed through the lens of eternity, a thousand years is like a day … so a century of suffering, while it may seem interminable to those being persecuted, is but a few seconds or minutes in the grand scheme of time.
What you’re going through right now might seem like it’s never going to end … but it will … either through natural causes over the course of time or at the grave … where your problems won’t matter any more and, when we get to Heaven and look back, our problems will seem like they lasted a New York second and will quickly fade into the past as we rejoice forever with all our brothers and sisters in Heaven.
I know that the promise that your problems will end at the grave … I know that the promise of eternity when you’re suffering now doesn’t seem like much of a comfort or bring you a lot of hope but when we receive our reward in Heaven … when we receive our inheritance because of what Jesus Christ did … then our suffering in the here and now, says Paul, will be worth it … and for what it’s worth, I totally agree with him.
Now, follow me on this. What Peter says in verse 7 could be interpreted as God putting us through our trials and problems for a reason … which suggest that God caused the persecution of Christians in Asia Minor or that God caused this pandemic or the problems that you have had or have right now in your life. “In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith – being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” I don’t believe that that is what Peter is saying because I don’t believe that that is what God is doing. Life happens. We live in a fallen, imperfect world. There are going to be trials. There are going to be problems. There is going to be loss, and pain, and suffering … but God will use these to strengthen us, to refine our faith and our trust in Him. The fact that we will be better, that our faith and our trust in God will be stronger, results in praise and glory and honor to the One … Jesus Christ … who got us through it … who gave us the hope of eternity because of His death and resurrection.
There was a woman who wanted to see how gold was made and so she went to a local goldsmith in town and he enthusiastically invited back into his shop to watch. As he worked, the goldsmith explained how he had to place the gold in the fire for the exact right amount of time so that the impurities would be burned away but the gold would not be damaged or destroyed. “How do you when the temperature is perfect?” she asked. “Ahhh,” he smiled, “the process is finished when I can see my reflection in the gold.” Peter says that God is in the process of refining us and that He knows the process is finished when we praise Him, when He and others see His reflection, His glory, in our hearts, in our faces … when we live our lives in ways that honor Him.
Why should we rejoice, as Peter says, while we suffer various trials? Scottish Theologian Samuel Rutherford explained it this way: “If God had told me sometime ago that He was about to make me as happy as I could be in this world … and then He told me that He should begin by crippling me in arm and limb or removing me from all my usual sources of enjoyment … I should have thought it a very strange mode of accomplishing His purpose. And yet,” says Rutherford, “how is His wisdom manifest even in this. For you should see a man shut up in a dark room idolizing a set of lamps and rejoicing in their light … and if you wish to make him truly happy, you would begin by blowing out all the lamps … [pause] … and then throw open the shutter and let in the Light of Heaven.”
We don’t rejoice in our trials … but we can praise and honor and glorify God in the midst of our suffering because we absolutely know that God specializes in growing roses … and you can’t grow prize-winning roses without a good share of manure. We anticipate what God is doing in our present suffering … watching and wondering how He’s going to bring good out of what seems like a hopeless mess. And He does … again and again and again.
When life snuffs out the lamps that we’ve been idolizing, as Rutherford points out, the glory, the wonderful light of our Savior … our “living” hope, as the Apostle Peter calls it … bursts into our lives and we rejoice with “indescribable and glorious joy” (1st Peter 1:8).
There’s an old saying that says the only things certain in life are death and taxes. Let me add to that by saying that the only things certain in life are death, taxes, moments of joy and happiness, challenges, some heartache, trials, and disappointment. The question is … how do we face our challenges, our disappointments, our heartaches, our trials? For the person who puts their hope and trust in the people, in the institutions, of the world, their hope has a definite shelf-life … and when one hope goes out, they have to find another … and another … and another … all the way to the grave.
For the believer, for the person who puts their hope in Jesus Christ, there is an “indescribable and glorious joy” that resides in our hearts and radiates from within us. Our hope has no shelf-life … it extends beyond the grave into eternity. Our hope is not elusive or fickle. It doesn’t fade away. We don’t have to keep chasing after new hope because the hope that we have is imperishable. Christians have superficial sorrow and eternal hope while the rest of the world has superficial gladness and superficial hope.
Let me say that again: Christians have superficial sorrow and eternal hope while the rest of the world has superficial gladness and superficial hope.
“Living” hope is not “pie-in-the-sky” hope. “Living” hope is not “by-and-by” hope. “Living” hope is not wishful thinking or “hope so” hope. “Living” hope is a “knowing” hope … “k-n-o-w-i-n-g” hope … “knowing” hope because we “know” Jesus Christ. “Living” hope is a “knowing” hope because our hope is based on the fact that Jesus Christ “knows” us, amen?
Author C.S. Lewis gives us another way of looking at this. “If you aim at Heaven,” he says, “you will get earth thrown in … but if you aim at earth, you’ll get neither one.” In other words, if you don’t get Heaven here, you won’t get it there. In the process of not getting there, you won’t have anything worth living for down here because it is only when you have your anchor fixed in eternity that you begin to have some stability in your life here on this side of the grave.
Today we break bread together. Today we share a cup of wine. This table is another beautiful way for God to remind us that we have an “inheritance that imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in Heaven for [us], who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” We come together at His table and, even though we haven’t seen Him, we love Him … and even though [we] we do not see Him now, we rejoice with an “indescribable and glorious joy” because [we] believe in Him and, because of Him, are receiving the outcome of our faith and the salvation of our souls, amen?
