Open your Bibles with me to 1st Peter, chapter 1. That can be found, if you're using the Pew Bible in front of you, that can be found on page 1293. Again, that's 1st Peter, chapter 1. We'll be reading verses 3 through 5. This is God's holy and inerrant word. Let's give our attention to it now. 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 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. Thus far, God's holy word. Across the medical field, there is great discussion, study, and improvement plans put into the relationship between a doctor and their patient. And within those studies, there's a more focused area that is geared towards should, and if so, when, should a doctor provide hope to their patient. And the reason why there is so much investment put into this in the medical field is because hope is essential to the human life. You and I, many of us, may have family members who have endured great suffering, who have been diagnosed with diseases that are incurable. And oftentimes, the doctor will say, you must find hope in something. Or you, as a family member, try to bring this hope. You try to comfort the loved one. Because you know that if they have just a little bit of hope in something, they will be able to press on. They will be able to persevere in some way, if it's another day or another week or another couple of months or maybe years. There are many things in this life that offer us hope. Maybe you're here this evening and you're finding hope in your job. You're finding hope in your career. You're finding hope in your personal success, in your family's image. Maybe the most dangerous thing as Christians is finding hope in your own personal holiness. I'm not saying that these things in and of themselves are wrong. These things can be good and they can cause us to press on. They can cause us to be hardworking and diligent. But what do they all have in common? They ultimately fail. They ultimately will cause a failure in your life because you will hold on to these things that are fleeting. They won't offer you a living hope. So in other words, what you place your hope in will determine if it is a living, breathing, life-giving hope or if it is fleeting and will fail. What you place your hope in will determine if it is life-giving or if it is fleeting and will fail you. As we face the demands and the pressures and the trials of this life, we should continuously ask this one question, which we've already done this night. We've already asked, what is our only comfort in life and in death? This is a question that's not just relevant for evening service on Sunday. This is a question that's relevant on a daily basis. We should continuously be asking ourselves, we should be asking our neighbor, what is your only hope? Because in the struggles of this life, if we don't have our eyes fixed on the only hope that is living, we ultimately will despair. And that happens, right? There are often times that we get sidetracked. We lose focus on what hope we really have. And we find ourselves scratching and clawing at the walls of this life because we want to find hope in the world. We want to find hope in the things that are fleeting because the world is constantly telling us that those things will deliver you. So Christians, this evening, God's Word is going to remind us, God's Word is going to encourage us that we have this one hope. And our only hope is in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, is what Peter is saying here. Peter's writing his first epistle to the elect of God as we read in verse 1. The elect of God who have been dispersed in Asia Minor. But they're enduring this great persecution. They're enduring suffering for the name of Christ. Have you endured suffering for the sake of Christ? Have you endured shame? Have you endured people looking at you like you were the oddball because of Christ's sake? Well, in this context, that's not really comparable to what the people of Asia Minor were experiencing. They were being killed for the name of Christ. And Peter here is bringing comfort. God Himself is bringing comfort to us this evening by reminding us of where our only hope lies. And by doing so, Peter is pointing to three things. Peter is pointing to our living hope in verse 3. He's pointing to our inheritance in verse 4. And he's pointing to our salvation in verse 5. It's interesting to note that Peter's going to go on and he's going to command his listeners to live holy lives. He's going to say, you shall be holy as the Lord God is holy. But we cannot lose sight of when he brings in that command, that he's grounding it in the promise or the great truth, the truth that God has delivered us. And so we have to keep that in mind. We have to keep our hope in mind as we press on to live the Christian life. Because our pressing on is always grounded in the good news that God has delivered us from ourselves. So look now with me again at verse 3 as we jump into our first point, which is our living hope. Notice the beginning of verse 3, how Peter begins. He said, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter can barely get the words out before breaking into praise of who this God is. Blessed be the Lord, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter's not doing anything new here. He's echoing an Old Testament word of praise. Think of the psalmist. The psalmist says, blessed be the Lord. But Peter is doing something a little bit different. Peter is giving God a name that was not yet revealed in the Old Testament. He's saying, blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And why this is important, why I even bring it out, is because Peter is concerned with proclaiming. He's concerned with exalting and contemplating the triune Lord. How do I know this? Well, in verse 2, he mentions all three persons of the triune Lord. And now in verse 3, he's going to explicitly mention Father and Son. And then in verse 12, he's going to bring out the name of the Holy Spirit. So the Old Testament reveals God as triune in this shadowy imagery. But now the New Testament revelation, specifically in the incarnation of Christ, Him coming in the flesh, the New Testament is revealing God as triune. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. Yet we serve one God. These three do not come together to make up God. God is not composed of parts. We can distinguish the persons, as Peter is clearly doing here. He's distinguishing between Father and Son and Holy Spirit, but he's not separating the substance. When reflecting on the beauty of the Trinity, as Peter is doing here, the 4th century theologian Gregory of Nazianzus says this, No sooner do I conceive of the one than am I illumined by the splendor of the three. No sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one. And this is what Peter is doing here. He's distinguishing, but he's blessing the name of the Lord. This is important because Peter is actually attributing the work of salvation to God. He's attributing the work of salvation to this triune Lord, which that means that salvation in itself is triune. The Father sends the Son. The Son responds and obeys and accomplishes salvation for God's elect. And the Holy Spirit applies that work of salvation to all who believe. And as we contemplate that great truth, we are brought to our knees in humility before this God who has saved us. And that is why Peter is breaking out into praise. When we think of God, we should think of Him as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds. So as we continue in verse 3, look what else Peter is saying here. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again. He has caused us to be born again according to His great mercy. So as we think of this glorious salvation that you and I participate in, we think of what we bring to the table and it is our wretchedness. It is our sinfulness that we bring and God by His great mercy causes us to be born again. None of us would think of our first birth and say, I did that. Peter here is saying that God in this second birth, he has caused us to be born again. And why is that important? Why can we take hope in that? It's because we reflect on our own sinfulness. We know that if it was up to us, we would stay on the ground floor because we are dead in our trespasses and sins. And that is great news for you and I because God is rich in mercy. But then he uses this term, born again. Peter is picking up language from John chapter 3. Think with me back to Nicodemus when he comes to Jesus by night and Jesus and him have this interaction and Jesus tells Nicodemus and Nicodemus seems to be a little bit thrown off by Jesus saying, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born again. In other words, unless he is born from above, unless he is born from God, He cannot enter the kingdom of God. Here, Peter is picking up that same idea. But why is it necessary? Again, why is Jesus saying that you have to be born again? Why is Peter saying that you have to be born again? Well, it goes back to what I had mentioned previously, that God causes us to be born again because of our status. So in our first birth, because of the failure of our first parents, we are inheriting sinfulness. We are born into sin. And we are in need of reconciliation to God Himself. We are in need for Him to make a move to call us back to Himself. But listen to what Peter proclaims. He proclaims, God in His great mercy has actually provided this way. He's given us a way of salvation. Namely, Himself. He's going to offer His only Son to purchase those who trust in His name. The perfect life of Jesus, the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, and His ascension to the right hand of the Father accomplishes this salvation. And that is our only hope. Christ alone, His person and His work, which is applied to us by the Holy Spirit. If you haven't placed your hope, your faith, and your trust in Christ alone this evening, this promise of hope is not for you. This message of comfort is not for you. What is for you is a pleading to turn from yourself and to look to Christ in faith because you cannot save yourself. But if you turn from yourself, God is faithful to save. God is faithful to save you. So turn away from yourself and look to Christ because He is the only living hope in this world. Look what else. Peter is saying that it is through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Why is this significant? Because our faith or our hope is living because Christ Himself is living. We have a lively hope because the risen Lord is sitting at the right hand of the Father. Which means that everything He did and said is true. Which means that we can trust Him all the more to accomplish what He said He would do in the future. Our hope is lively, meaning that it's working itself out in such a way that we're growing in maturity. We're growing in strength. We're growing in trust in the Lord as we face the trials and demands of this life. We can find our hope in God. And he brings us along through those trials, which is what Peter is going to go on and say in the following verses, is that the trials and the struggles of this life are actually refining you, as gold is refined by fire. So Peter understands this suffering and this struggle. The resurrection is the hinge of Christianity. That's what makes Christianity what it is. Christianity is different from all other religions because Christ is risen. And that is exactly why Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 can say, if Christ wasn't risen, then our faith is in vain. So you and I, we need the resurrection. We need the resurrection daily. We need it now, we need it tomorrow, we need it the next day. And we will never graduate from that need. So we can cling to the fact that Christ is risen as we struggle through this life. So I ask you this evening, again, where is your hope? Where are you placing it? Are you placing it in the things of this world? Are you placing it in yourself? Are you placing it in the things that are ultimately going to fail you? It may seem like it's working out now. it may seem like you're prospering and you're flourishing. But if you're laying up your treasure on earth, it's going to be burned. So that's the plea that we're seeing in this passage here, that Peter is calling us, God himself is calling us this evening to place our hope in the only thing that can save, which is his son. Because in the resurrection, we see the accomplishment of Christ. In the resurrection, Christ conquers death, and He gives the Christian assurance of their own resurrection to life. So as we think about living eternally, we can consider that we will one day be resurrected as Christ Himself is resurrected. And that brings us great hope because we live now in this world of sin. We live with our frailties. We live with our bodies failing us. But again, the resurrection brings so much more as we sit and we contemplate what it is to come. That we will be given new bodies. That we will live eternally with God Himself. When Christ rose, He secured our inheritance. And that brings us to our second point, which we find in verse 4. If you look at verse 4 with me now, Peter's describing this inheritance, and he uses three adjectives to do so. He says that our inheritance is imperishable. He says it's undefiled, and it's unfading. So because of our adoption, we now enjoy union with Christ. We are now co-heirs with Christ to this imperishable, undefiled, and unfading inheritance. We can be confident that we will receive it. But again, Peter understood that Christians would face suffering in this life, but he also understood the refinement that happens through that struggling and that suffering. And as we had a picture of this this morning, as we came to the Lord's table, and we were reminded that we come as a family of God. We were reminded that God is nourishing us in this time of partaking of the sacrament. We can take great hope in that adoption. Peter is pointing us back to the adoption as he speaks about the inheritance that we will receive. And again, we must find our hope there and only there. I don't know the details of your suffering this evening. I don't know what it is that keeps you up at night. Or what it is that you're constantly thinking about or constantly struggling with. But what I do know is that God is bringing, God is offering hope to you this evening. Through the proclamation of his word, you are being nourished, even if you don't feel like it. Which is the beauty of it, right? That God is faithful to nourish us even when we don't think we need it. Or even if we don't feel like it's happening. He's faithful to allow us to sit under the means of grace and to partake with the body of believers in this hope that he has freely offered us. So this idea of inheritance, we see in the Old Testament, speaking specifically of the earthly inheritance that the people of Israel were going to receive. The book of Joshua uses this term inheritance to specifically talk about the portions of land that the tribes of Israel would receive. So notice what Peter's doing here. He's picking up on this idea of inheritance, but he's drawing a contrast between the earthly inheritance that the people of Israel were going to inherit and this heavenly inheritance that all those who are born again are going to inherit. So notice how he works through that. He says imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Well, the land of Canaan was perishable, wasn't it? The land of Canaan was ravaged and it was plundered by enemies. But the heavenly inheritance is imperishable. It will never be ravaged and it will never be plundered. The land of Canaan was defiled. It was defiled by the sin of the people, defiled by the sin of the nations, but the heavenly inheritance is undefiled by sin and contains nothing unworthy of God's approval. The land of Canaan faded. The nation of Israel was taken into exile. But the heavenly inheritance is unfading in the way that it will never wither, it will never grow dim, and it will never lose its beauty. And best of all, it will never be taken from the people of God. But it gets better than this. How could it get better? Because it's being kept for you in heaven, is what Peter says. And if we think about the idea of what it is that we're receiving in this inheritance, we're receiving the Lord himself. God is giving himself to us, and he's calling us to be his very own possession. What that means is that the inheritance is kept for us, but we also are kept for the inheritance. The inheritance is kept for us, but we also are kept for the inheritance. This is great news because, again, it reveals God's faithfulness to us that He has an inheritance for us, and we are His own. We are His, and He is keeping us. But how are we kept? Does Peter address it? Can we be sure that we're going to receive this inheritance? That's what Peter is doing in verse 5. He's addressing these questions. He's addressing if, in fact, his listeners, his audience, are they going to actually receive this inheritance. Look now with me at verse 5. We'll read that now. Who by God's power are being guarded through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. Peter now describes this inheritance that we were just discussing in verse 4 in terms of salvation. In other words, being rescued from God's punishment, or being rescued from God's wrath. But notice what Peter says about the receiver of this salvation. They are being guarded through faith. The term to guard means to watch carefully or to keep safe. But it's important to notice that it's frequently used in military contexts. So for instance, the gates of the city are guarded against the enemy. And that gives us a good picture of what's actually happening. By way of analogy only, of course, we don't want to push it too far, but God himself is watching over us as a soldier watches his post in the wee hours of the evening. Not taking his eyes off any sound. That is how God is guarding us. And it is by God's own power that he's guarding us. But how is it that He's guarding us? Yeah, it's by His power, and He for sure is. But Peter mentions something else that is key. He says He's guarding us through faith. What does this mean? Well, faith is the instrument that God uses to guard the Christian and to secure their salvation. Again, this means that the Christian's life is characterized by growth and maturity. Because through this faith, God is bringing us along. And as we grow and as we mature in the ways of the Lord, we can be assured that God is for us. We can be assured that He who began a good work in us will continue it until the day of Christ Jesus and He will complete that good work that He started in us. So we see this assurance that Peter is even bringing to us is that if we're growing in faith, We can be assured that God is for us, that God is with us, and He will not depart from us. This maturity happens through knowing the Lord through His Word. And as we know the Lord through His Word, our faith is strengthened. Because again, we learn to trust the Lord. But I think more importantly, we begin to see the depths of our own sin. We see the depths of our wretchedness that keeps us humble before God. And in light of our own sin, we see the glorious riches of His grace. And that keeps us reliant on His Holy Spirit. That keeps us from finding our hope in ourselves and causes us to keep our eyes fixed on heaven. And Him bringing us along in faith. Let me be clear. Exercising faith does not mean being a better Christian. But rather, exercising faith means that you know that you can't be a better Christian. You understand your great need for Christ and you understand the accomplishment of salvation for you. That is what exercising faith looks like. turning away from yourself all the more and looking to the only one who's accomplished this salvation. The temptation is that we would work, that we would try to follow the law as Peter is going to command. The temptation is that we would just wake up in the morning and say, man, if I could just do this. And sometimes that is needed. But if we've failed to understand the Gospel, if we've failed to understand that Christ has secured our salvation, then that work is in vain. Peter explains that this salvation is ready to be revealed in the last time. I think it's significant that he's using these terms, ready to be revealed in the last time, because as we think of this in-between period that we're in now, that Christ has accomplished salvation, Yet we wait for his return. Peter's saying that there's nothing else to add to this salvation. There's nothing else to prepare to make it complete. But it has been accomplished. It is ready. Ready to be revealed. And you and I, if we are in Christ, we are actually participating in that salvation now. Though it's through the dimmy, foggy glass of our sin, the sinfulness of this world, We wait for the day that it is fully revealed and the veil is lifted from our eyes and we can see Christ face to face apart from our sin. And that's what the last time means when Peter is bringing it up here, that Christ will return. Christ will return to consummate the kingdom that was inaugurated at His first coming. And how can we be sure? Because He rose from the dead. Again, because everything he said he would do was accomplished. And now we can trust that he will return. And at his return, he will come to judge the living and the dead. And all those who were found to be in Christ will be pardoned of their sin. And thus ushered into the presence of our holy God, where we will see him face to face and behold his glory. Just let that sink in for a moment. this is the day that you and i long for this is the day that we keep our eyes fixed on the day that we stand before our god and we plead the blood of christ for our righteousness we don't look to ourselves we look to him because he has accomplished this salvation and brothers and sisters this is our only hope this is what causes us to want to live for God according to his will because we have been so wooed by the love that is in Christ and the accomplishment that happened on the cross and in his resurrection and his now ruling and reigning at the right hand of the father he's going to come as king and we are heirs, co-heirs with Christ to this heavenly inheritance. And as we conclude, I want to ask you again, where is it that you're placing your hope? Because Peter is clearly showing us that there's only one place that we can place our hope and it is in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. And thus we come back to this original question that we already read and answered at the beginning of the service. But I think it's helpful now to look at it again. The question is, what is my only hope in life and in death? I'll proceed to read the answer to you. Reflect on this as I do. That you are not your own, but you belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to your faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all your sins with his precious blood, and he has set you free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over you in such a way that not a hair can fall from your head without your Father in heaven. In fact, all things must work together for your salvation because you belong to Christ. And by His Holy Spirit, He assures you of this eternal life and makes you wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him. Amen.