Please turn with me in your Bibles this morning to the book of 1 Peter. The book of 1 Peter. We'll be looking at chapter 1 and reading the first 12 verses of this epistle. And it is my hope that as I have a chance to exhort here, that we may be able to work through 1 Peter. I know my time may be few and far between, but I hope to look through this book and consider it with you. So we'll begin at the beginning. 1 Peter 1. Verses 1 through 12. This is the word of God. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God's elect strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood. Grace and peace be yours in abundance. 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. 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. 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. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come to you searched intently and with the greatest care, 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. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things. So ends the reading of the Word of God. Let us pray. Lord, we thank you for your Word. We ask that you would illumine our hearts to look into your Word and send your Holy Spirit upon us, Lord, that these words would not be idle reflections from my mouth, but that it would be the Word of God that is heard this evening. This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So when starting a book of the Bible, any book in preaching, it's good to kind of get an overview, to see what are we looking at. First of all, we know that this is an epistle, it's a letter, and it's a letter to a church. And so I thought it'd be good to just take a brief moment answering some questions about what this letter is about. The who, the what, the where, the when, the why of 1 Peter. Well, the where and the when are fairly simple. Peter is most likely writing from Rome in the middle to the late middle part of the first century. And that leaves us with the who, the what, and the why. And there's a little more to that. First of all, we see who is writing? Peter. And it's interesting because it's Peter, not Simon. Just as when we read Paul's epistles, it's Paul, not Saul. This is the book of an apostle. This is not just the writing from some man giving helpful tidbits for good living. This isn't Dr. Phil. This is the Word of God coming from the Apostle Peter. And then secondly, who is he writing to? Well, he tells us. He says he's writing to the elect strangers who are scattered. And he lists some areas where they are scattered too. And he's writing mainly to Gentiles. And what we see right from the beginning is that by using this term, the elect strangers, that he's using Jewish terms for Gentiles. He's showing that the gospel is no longer for the Jew alone, but that it is extended to all people who would believe in Jesus Christ. And we see this characteristic flowing throughout the entire epistle. In 1 Peter 2.9, he refers to those he's writing to as a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God. Now, this term of exiles would make people think of the dispersion of 587 B.C. that was with the Babylonian, the Assyrian captivities. These terms are intentional to show that the gospel is not just for the Jew anymore. It's for the Gentile as well. But who is he writing to then? Jew and Gentile. But who? He's writing to triune believers. Believers in the Trinity. Because he begins this epistle with a Trinitarian address that is interesting because we don't really find it put quite like this in any other epistle with the explicit mention of the Holy Spirit. In verse 2 he says, Who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ. So he's writing to Jew and Gentile. He's writing to those who believe in the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the focus of this letter seems to be on the Greeks as an ethnicity. But what we see at the end of this introduction is it's no mistake he uses the terms grace and peace. because grace was often a greeting associated with the Greeks, where peace, shalom, we know is often associated with the Jewish people. So once again, Peter's hammering home that this is a letter for all people, all who would believe in Jesus Christ. And so why does he write this to them? Well, he wants them to be encouraged. He wants to help them grow in their faith. he wants to point them to Christ he wants them to be prepared and he does this by telling them early on that they are born again that they have been reborn in verse 3 we read praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in his great mercy he has given us new birth and what he does is he goes on to tell us what this new birth is, what this new birth looks like. And it looks like three different things. It's first a birth into a living hope. Secondly, it's a birth into an eternal inheritance. And finally, it's a birth into a seasoned joy. So first, let's look at what this means that this new birth is a birth into a living hope. Well, first we see what it is a hope in. In verse 3 we read that you have been born into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Peter immediately points us as readers to Jesus Christ. He's not saying keep a stiff upper lip. Have hope that tomorrow will be better than today. Just go out there and put a smile on your face. Have hope that things will look better. No, it's a hope grounded right from the beginning in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And may we remember that that is our hope. Peter, it's no mistake, he says this right from the beginning because this is always the hope of the believer. And we're to remember this when times are tough, when we see brothers and sisters falling, having times of trouble, loved ones sick and dying, poverty, disease, warfare. We must remember that our hope must never be that maybe tomorrow will be a little better than it was today, but that our hope is always in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. As we read in Romans 6, verse 4, Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live new life. Our hope is in Christ. And it's also a living hope. I think that's an important thing to state because hope, by the very nature of what it means, looks forward. You know, some synonyms of hope is to look forward, to anticipate, to expect. And that's certainly very true. We do look forward, and we'll consider that more later. But Peter says this is a living hope, a hope we have now, a hope we have today. So often we focus just on glory, the hope that we have to come, and there's warrant for that in Scripture. In Colossians 1.27 we read, To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious richness of this mystery, which is Christ in you. the hope of glory. So there we see a hope that is looking forward to glory. And in Titus 1-2, a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time. So it would be a mistake to say that hope does not look forward to when we will be glorified and given eternal life. But what Peter tells us is much more than that. It is a living hope. It is alive and well today. It looks forward, but not solely forward. In 1 Corinthians 15, verse 19, we read, For this life, we have hope in Christ. And we see here that a living hope is indeed closely bound to faith in Christ. We look forward, yet we still have what is today. And that is our salvation in Jesus Christ. This is so crucial for our understanding as Christians of what it means to live in this world, what it means to have a living hope. Peter tells us that spiritually we are blind. We cannot see yet. We know that Christ has saved us, but we do not see Him yet. We look to Him with the eyes of faith. So we are blind in that sense. But we are not dead. we are made alive in Jesus Christ to have a living hope is to have faith that looks to Christ for our salvation not just in the abstract future not just someday but today and what follows from here is glorious Peter goes on to talk about the glory we look forward to but we must remember that we are looking to the full revelation of God's glory when we look to the future, not some truer salvation. We are saved today by grace through faith. And now that we've established that this new birth gives us a living hope in which we have confidence this very day, we may look at our second point, that what flows from this living hope is indeed our eternal inheritance. And we see this in verse 4. We're promised an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade. It's imperishable. This tells us clearly what our hope is, what the character of our hope is, of this inheritance, rather. This inheritance that we receive is not of earth, but is of heaven. And this is a problem clearly for unbelievers, but for believers in the church today to focus far too much on the things of this earth, to worry far too much about cars and houses and jobs. And I always think when I come to verses like this of a bumper sticker that was very popular for a long time that said, He who dies with the most toys wins. But I really liked another bumper sticker I saw you know after this one had become such a fad he who dies with the most toys still dies and that's true and that's the Christian outlook that there is certainly profit to this earth and this world but it is not the final story it is not the end our hope is to not be in cars and houses and I was reminded of this when I was away in Australia for the summer how vehemently I needed to get to my internet connection at least once a day to find out what happened in the Padres game to see if they won or lost. And at some point I thought, you know, if they win or lose, it's really not the end of the world. My friends won't believe this is coming out of my mouth, but it's true. If the Padres get in last place and fall off the radar, we still have an eternal inheritance waiting for us in heaven. The things of earth are not where our hope lies. And we see this in the psalm that we read for our call to worship and that we sung, Psalm 33. And if you'd like to turn there with me, I'm just going to read a few verses where we see the eternal nature of our inheritance and not the earthly nature of our inheritance. I'll begin reading at verse 12. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He chose for His inheritance. From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind. From His dwelling place He watches all who live on earth. He who forms the hearts of all, who considers everything they do. No king is saved by the size of his army. No warrior escapes by his great strength. A horse is a vain hope for deliverance. Despite all its great strength, it cannot save. But the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear Him. on those whose hope is in his unfailing love to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. We wait in hope for the Lord. He is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you. And what we see there is the Israelites who lived in a time where indeed they had an earthly king, where they had an earthly kingdom that pointed forward to the eternal kingdom that indeed will come. If anybody had a right to say, wow God, thank you that we have these horses. Thank you that we have this army. Thank you that we are conquering this earth. It would be them. But they still say, Lord be with us. Lord, it is not the things of this earth, this world that matter, but the things of heaven. So this inheritance flows from our living hope. We rejoice in our salvation today. It's complete. Our salvation is done. When Christ died and rise, He ensured our salvation. But we also do look ahead to the fulfillment of the glory of our salvation. It is an inheritance kept in heaven. And what we read in Peter is that it is kept through faith. Faith is the instrument of apprehension. We often think of faith as an instrument for how we receive this eternal inheritance. But what we need to remember more is it's the object of our faith that saves us. It's Jesus Christ. Our faith may be weak, but the object is strong. And because of that, we are shielded by God's power, we read. Here's another reference to the work of Christ. Because when He protects us, it is with the very power of God. And when He comes again, it will be with the very power of God. In Matthew 24, 30, we read, At that time, the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. It's important to note that we will be upheld when this Son comes again to ensure us of our eternal inheritance. We sang in Psalm 146, verse 7, He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. And this is that our words may be those of Paul in 2 Timothy 4.7. That we may say, I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Now it's these words that we turn to our final point. We've seen how our new birth gives us a living hope. We've seen that it promises us eternal inheritance. And now finally, we view how our life is to be in this new birth today until the day we are taken home. It is a life of seasoned joy. This final point helps to remind us that this is, he's writing to us in our daily living. He's writing to us today. These aren't just abstract themes that Peter's telling us about. He's not just saying, yeah, there's an inheritance to come. Yeah, there's a hope you have, but he says, this is the real world. This will be a seasoned joy. This tends to be the reality check. What do I mean by a seasoned joy? I mean a joy that is tested, or a joy that is weathered. In verse 6, he tells the readers to rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. There will be joy. But Peter is honest. Peter says there will be grief. He wants to prepare his listeners. There is no hope in a message that does not account for suffering. We see this in the church as a whole today. Nobody wants to talk about suffering. Nobody wants to deal with issues of sin in a world that is totally affected by sin. But if you don't deal with suffering, hope is an empty shell. Joy is not true, because we live in a world where we will suffer. But Peter promises us, or encourages us, to rejoice, even in the midst of suffering, with our eyes fixed on the cross. And I thought a helpful book to turn to when you're thinking about suffering is the book of Job. When Elihu is talking to Job in Job 36.15, he says, But those who suffer, he delivers in their suffering. He speaks to them in their affliction. And later in Job 42.2-4, Job gives a response. I know that you can do all things. Speaking to God, he's saying this. I know that you can do all things. No plan of yours can be thwarted. You ask, who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge? Surely I spoke of things I did not understand. Things too wonderful for me to know. And what we see here is that even Job, in the midst of all the suffering that befell him, could rejoice because he had salvation. Could rejoice because God was his God. And Peter goes on to give us a helpful analogy in verse 7. He says, 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. We see again him pointing us away from the earthly and pointing us to the heavenly. The truth of Jesus Christ revealed is more precious than gold. and just as gold was a great symbol of wealth for his readers back then it's still a great symbol of wealth for us today and yet what we have in Jesus Christ is more precious than gold and it comes here that true faith is precious even in the midst of suffering even though refined by fire he says it may be proved genuine and may result in praise glory and honor and may that be a reminder for us all we have to do is read the bulletin week to week to see people suffering all you have to do is turn on the news to see people suffering all you have to do is go for a walk outside to see people suffering but we have a hope we have a joy and though it is seasoned by struggles and suffering it is a joy that rests in Jesus Christ looking beyond this world and we also see that this joy is not only encouraging in the midst of present suffering but there is much more it isn't a seasoned endurance it isn't a seasoned contentment but as we said it's a seasoned joy we are to have joy in the midst of suffering in verses 8 and 9 we read though you have not seen him you love him and even though you do not now see him 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 we are filled with an inexpressible joy this last line reminds us of our first point we have received our salvation not someday but now we have an inexpressible joy not someday but now even in the midst of our suffering I would like to conclude this evening by looking at verses 10-12 because I believe they nicely sum up everything we've looked at this evening In 1 Peter 1, 3-9, he tells us to rest in the resurrection, look forward to our inheritance, and live in the present struggles with joy. So this dear salvation unifies us with those from all time who professed the same, the prophets who foretold. In verses 10 and 11, we see the prophets who also rested in the resurrection when they looked forward. Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. These prophets who had not yet known Jesus looked forward with a living hope as we today, who read of Jesus, who know He has come and has risen from the dead, still look forward in a living hope to that day He will come again. And we also see the apostles, those who preach the gospel. In verse 12, the things that have now been told to you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. These who preach now, these men like Peter, have a connection with us being in this time of seasoned joy, looking forward to our eternal inheritance. And we see that Peter even draws a connection with the angels. In verse 13 he says, Even angels long to look into these things. And one commentary gave the picture of they're peering, they're straining to see. Because they can't understand this living hope, this seasoned joy that we have is there already in glory. But these three groups, prophets, apostles, and angels, we are all united by Christ our Lord. In a similar way, whether we are speaking of our living hope, our eternal inheritance, or our seasoned joy, We must always be speaking in a faith that looks to Jesus Christ. What a comfort. What a Savior. Amen. Lord, may you bless your words to us, your people. May we reflect on these words of Peter, your servant, and have joy that though we do live in a world that is full of suffering that even this we do not let lead us into despair but rather put on a seasoned joy that though we may struggle now for a while we do indeed have a living hope now and we do indeed look forward to an eternal inheritance may that influence every part of our life Lord May we never be ashamed to profess the gospel to any and all who would hear it. And may your word not return void, Lord. This we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen.