What’s So Great About It?
Text: 1 Peter 1:3-12
Introduction
Illustration: Farmer who was so fed up with His farm he wanted to sell it, but when he listed all the features of it with the realtor he realized he had all that he wanted
Peter writes this letter to a church in the midst of suffering. To a church suffering because of their faith in Jesus. To a people who might be on the verge of selling the farm. And here in the opening lines of His letter he wishes to give them some encouragement--a gentle reminder that
Proposition: No matter what you might be facing in your life today If you have received the gift of Salvation you are unbelievably fortunate--You Have "a Living Hope".
Interrogative: What exactly is it that makes our New Life in Jesus so special?.
Transition: I would like to undescore from our text today four features of our Salvation that remind us "What’s so Great About it. The first is that:
1. The Promise is Perpetual
3-5 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, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, 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.
You see God’s Promises to us who have received His wonderful salvation to us are not just a temporary thing they are ongoing, His Promise is Perpetual first of all because He has given us...
a. The Promise of Eternity
v. 4 …into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you…
If you have put your trust in Jesus for salvation you have the promise of eternity, a permanent inheritance kept in heaven where you will be a joint heir with Jesus forever.
No matter what your life on earth is like, no matter what is spoiled, no matter how your dreams seem to have faded. Your inheritence in heaven is good as new because Our living hope is an eternal promise.
ILLUSTRATION: People buying Gold in preparation for Y2K
Our inheritance in heaven is genuinely eternal, nothing on this earth can touch or affect it. No matter what passes away on this earth, It will never Pass Away
And there is another aspect to our Perpetual Promise
b. The Promise of Protection
v. 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.
Remember this letter is being written to a people who know oppression, who know genuine sorrow and pain, Peter’s Spirit inspired promise to them is that they are sheilded from all that the world can throw at them by God’s power. Ultimately, no matter what happens we know that God has us in the palm of His hand and nothing happens to us that takes our loving father by surprise.
And this promise of Protection is also a part of God’s Perpetual Promise--It is a two part promise God has a place reserved for you in heaven and until you join him ther to partake of your eternal inheritance He is watching over you and sheiding you from the enemy of your soul.
The second thing that make our salvation special is that...
2. Our Problems are Passing
Wheras God’s promises to us are Permanent, the trials of this life are temporary...
6-7 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
There is in fact a two part truth here the first is that..
a. Our Trials are Temporary
v. 6 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.
Peter says that while we are waiting to receive that eternal inheritence we can rejoice in our living hope in spite of the fact that right now life may not be so grand..in fact you may be suffering in all kinds of trials, trials of faith, trials of persecution, physical trials but these only last a little while. We are looking forward to eternity.
ILLUSTRATION: As a chaplain for basic trainees I often had conversations with them about long term goals and short term problems. Often in the midst of the trials of training they lost sight of the goals that had brought them to the army in the first place and we’re ready to throw all their hopes away just to escape the passing problems.
The trials of our life have another similarity to Basic Training because our...
b. Our Trials are Training us
v. 5 These [trials] have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine…
Peter uses the metaphor of Gold being refined by fire to speak of how the trials of our lives prove our faith to be genuine
I read in the encyclopedia that modern refining techniques can profitably extract pure gold from rock that has only one part gold to 300,000 parts worthless material. Our lives are a lot like that nearly worthless rock that contains a small amount of something very valuable--our faith and through the heat and pressure of the trials of our lives that precious faith is refined.
So then not only our Promise Perpetual, our Problems are passing and as they are passing through our lives they are working for our Good. The next thing that makes the salvation we have in Jesus so great is the fact that...
3. Our Pleasure is Profound
8-9 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
This inexpressible Joy is shown to be the result of two things in our passage, the first is
a. Joy of Loving Jesus
v. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,
There is something about loving Jesus that fills our heart with a joy that can be found in no other way. It makes sense though when you understand that Loving Him, being in relationship with Him is what we were made for. Knowing Jesus and loving Him is like finding the heart’s true home. We experience this usually for the first time at the moment we put our trust in Him and receive His gift of salvation, But we experience it again each time we meet with Him in heartfelt worship and thanksgiving.
Our Pleasure is Profound also because we have the...
b. Joy of Being Redeemed
v. 9 …for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
There is something about knowing that the most important things are taken care of. Are you like me? Do you like to get those tasks that worry you taken care of first so that you can do your other chores in relative peace? There’s that sigh of relief when the most difficult part of a project or of your day or week is done. The spiritual parallel to that is what Peter mentions here in verse 9. We have inexpressible Joy because we know that the most important thing..the eternal thing is taken care of it’s the Joy of being redeemed, of having the burden of your sin lifted by the fact that the Blood of Jesus has paid it all, of knowing your account is settled. It’s even better than the feeling my wife get’s when the bills are paid.
Well there’s one more thing that makes our salvation a special thing and that is that...
4. It Was Predicted by the Prophets
10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care…
Our salvation represents
a. The Fulfillment of God’s Plan
v. 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.
We live in the time that God was planning for all along. The remedy for sin is in place. The messiah has come. The price is paid. The things that the prophets had been promising by the spirit of God have already taken place.
All that the Prophet Isaiah Spoke of that we read earlier from Isaiah 12: In that day you will say: "Surely God is my salvation;I will trust and not be afraid. The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation." With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.
Our salvation is the Fulfilment of God’s Plan and it is also...
b. The Fulfillment of the Prophets’ Hope
v. 12 It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke …Even angels long to look into these things.
What’s He saying here? remember He’s writting to a suffering church, a persecuted church a church that could easily have thrown a big church pity party and said "woe is us." But Peter’s word through the Spirit of God is "don’t think this is the worst of times, this is the time those heroes of the Old Testament wished they could live in, the time of Salvation through the Blood of Jesus In fact even the Angels in Heaven are envious of your salvation."
Conclusion: Our salvation is a living hope because:
The Promise is Perpetual
Our Problems are Passing
Our Pleasure is Profound
It Was Predicted by the Prophets
