A Living Hope for Our Future
1 Peter 1:3-5
Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz
Peter's letter starts with a doxology. A doxology is a short hymn to praise God. Imagine if we began all of our conversations, whether written, oral, or electronic, with praise to our God? We would be invoking the Holy Spirit into our daily conversations. By doing this, we would create an environment of love and grace. It would be easier to get our messages across to each other if we did this. So, the question is, why are we not doing it? The writers of the letters in the New Testament did this. The early Bishops of the church wrote letters this way. Somewhere between the apostles and us, we lost that methodology.
The authors of the New Testament letters burst out into praise the moment they mentioned the name of our Lord and Savior. Opposed to today, where the name of our Lord and Savior is used as a swear word. We should stop here for a moment and offer a doxology. Blessed be the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who graces us today and every day with an abundance of mercy and love. Amen.
The early Christian church was characterized by praise to God and a sense of joy and expectation. They wanted to be blessed by God, and they told God that every moment that they could. It may be difficult for us to imagine today offering praises to God all day long. When you get up in the morning, do you praise God? Do you praise God during the day? How about when you retire to sleep?
Today it seems the church comes together for resounding praise to God when revival worship occurs. We seem to connect praising God with song, dance, and as good United Methodists, food, and a lot of it. There is nothing wrong with revival events. They are an excellent opportunity to express our love for God. Revival should be in our hearts daily. Praising God is a response to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was meant to become an intrinsic part of our lives as Christians. Jesus is found offering a lot of praise to His Father through the Gospels. If we want to emulate Christ's behavior, then we need more praising of God in our lives.
We come to church every Sunday to claim our belief in the wondrous event of the resurrection of the Son of God. We do this in several ways in our worship celebrations. Why are you here today? I pray your answer is to join your sisters and brothers in your Christian family to offer praise to God for Jesus' resurrection that gives us a living hope for the future. It is an astonishing fact that Peter tells us about. The resurrection of Jesus Christ offers us a living hope. Our future is secure as we are secure in our discipleship to Jesus Christ.
The resurrection event is the cornerstone of our belief. Without the resurrection of Jesus, there is no Christianity. It is the ultimate vital event that holds together everything the theologians have told us for two centuries. Without the resurrection, the apostles would have returned to their lives before meeting Jesus, and we would not know anything about Him. Think about Peter for a minute. He denied his knowledge of Jesus three times before the resurrection. When Friday was over, and Jesus was in the grave, he threw in the towel. He figured it was over. The master was dead, and with his death, all the promises made by Jesus seemed lost. He was ready to return home and go back to fishing in the Sea of Galilee. What turned Peter around to wanting to tell the world about the Gospel? It was the resurrection. He and his fellow apostles saw and talked with Jesus three days after His death. They did not just sense His presence. They saw Him alive and well. The message in the book of Acts is about Jesus and His resurrection.
We derive lots of different things from the resurrection. The one Peter talks about in this letter, the first chapter, is a living hope. There is a lot of definitions of Christian hope today. They are wonderful things, for the most part. That hope is different than the living hope that we receive from the resurrection. It is one of the most important meanings of that first Easter morning. It is something substantial, something specific, and something vibrant. It has power and life associated with it.
The New Testament is a practical document. It tells us about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah from God. It contains the actual facts about how God sent His Son to die on a cross for our sins. It is not a fairy tale or some made-up story by some obscure storyteller. The New Testament is accurate. It tells us the truths about God's laws and ways. It tells us that no matter how dark the world becomes, those who believe in Jesus Christ have a living hope for our future. We can hold on to this gift. Living hope can see you through any difficulty that you may have in your life.
When you realize that you have living hope, thus knowing your future, you will be able to endure anything thrown at you. Satan is constantly throwing his worst at us. Those who believe in the living hope from the resurrection know that Satan will never win unless we let or want him to win. Satan can throw a lot of negativity and violence at any of else. But we have living hope from the resurrection that will see us through.
The fact that you have a living hope through your belief in the resurrection of Jesus should give you a sense of security and certainty. You will triumph over any dark circumstance. Living hope can guide you through the maze of life. The Easter message tells us that Jesus was crucified, died, buried, and three days later, He rose out of the grave. The bounds that Satan had on us were broken because through repentance and faith in Jesus, our sins are forgiven. The tomb was empty on Easter morning. The whole of Jesus, his body and soul, was gone. What happened to His body is a mystery that we will not understand until we join him in Heaven. We should not dwell too long on this because it is not relevant to those who believe.
The second person of the Trinity came to Earth to experience our lives. He was born of a woman in the same way each and everyone was born. His mother, Mary, took care of Him and nurtured Him until His teenage years. Jesus was susceptible to the same corruption that each of us can fall victim to. However, Jesus did not fall to evil. Instead, He preached a Gospel of love, grace, and peace. Jesus lived under the Laws of God in the same way we do. He was tempted by Satan, just like us. Evil tried to drag Him away from God, again just like us. Satan mustered together all of his evil forces and demons to attack Jesus, but Jesus prevailed.
Demons who had possessed men and women cried out for mercy when Jesus approached them. He showed them mercy by not destroying them on contact. Jesus cured many people of infirmities that were caused by sin and poor hygiene. He gave back life to a lot of people by releasing them from Satan's clutches. In the end, He found Himself on a cross because Satan and Evil were angry that they could not turn Him. The leaders were corrupted by Satan to declare Jesus a sinner. Under God's Law, a sinner deserved death. If you are thinking that Jesus did not commit a sin, then your thinking is correct. Jesus did not commit a sin. It was the sinful people reacting to a man of peace. The wicked people liked being sinful and did not believe that they would be judged by God. Jesus went to the cross for the sins of the world that were not His.
But that was God's purpose. He sent Jesus into our world to be born like us, live like us, and die for sins. With His death, he took our sins to the grave. He paid the price of all sin. He was the cosmic sacrifice for past, present, and future sins. Jesus' resurrection is the significant announcement by God that Christ's work on Earth was done. He did what He came to do. He brought the message of love from God to us and a way to satisfy God's Law over sin. That produced living hope for us.
When we connect ourselves to Christ, we attach ourselves to the living hope from the resurrection. At our baptism, we learn that we die to our old selves and the ways of sin. We are reminded about the cross of Christ. We are then reborn into the resurrection of Christ, thus receiving living hope as Peter described it. A baptized disciple of Christ can say, "death has no dominion over me, for I have a living hope." The union with Christ allows the living hope from the resurrection to be passed onto each of us.
God created a paradise for humankind. He called that place Eden. God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden of Eden, a perfect location. It was sin that broke that perfection and caused God to remove Adam and Eve from that paradise. However, through the Bible's pages, we learn that God was not happy that this happened, and God wants to restore Eden's paradise and place us in it.
The living hope from the resurrection can be viewed as a renewed world. When Jesus returns, He will initiate the new Heaven and Earth, and the world will be reborn. It will become a paradise as Eden was a paradise. Jesus will destroy any remaining evil in the world and cleanse all hearts. He will renew God's creation back to what it was before the fall of Adam and Eve. It will be a glorious kingdom again.
That is what living hope is all about. Satan and his followers will be destroyed. There is one thing that we have to consider. Jesus conquered sin through the resurrection. He won the battle with Satan, who tried very hard to prevent us from having living hope. But there is sin in each of us. How are you going to conquer your sin? Satan and evil surround us constantly. Negative energies flow into our souls. We must learn to recognize the sin, the corruption, the negativity of this world and fight against it. Use the shields that Jesus gives us in the Gospel to fight the good fight. For each of us who are followers of Jesus, know that we will win the war. Never give in to evil or Satan. Know that the Holy Spirit is always with you and is waiting for you to call upon it. The power to fight Satan and evil will come to you through the Holy Spirit. As you wage that war, you know that victory will be with you because the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the cosmic sign that this war can be won.
