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Now here's today's message from Pastor Skip Heitzig. One of the most exciting things to be a part of is a birth.
Now I say that as a man, I know it's sort of not fair. Because we have all the joy and not the labor. But even Jesus spoke about labor, and he said a woman has Pain and anguish when she is about to deliver a child. And then, after the child is born, she doesn't even remember the anguish because of the joy that eclipses that. The best part of birth?
is the birth of a grandchild. It's great being a grandpa. I get all the joy and not the responsibility. Responsibility of grandparents, as my friend says, is to fill them full of sugar and hand them back to their parents. I can do that.
But second to a birth are the first steps of a child. Those first steps are pretty significant. Because now that little independent will is mobile. And those first steps will lead to other steps. A walk to school.
A walk to a friend's house. a walk down the aisle for a wedding The bottom-line truth is that birth leads to a walk. That's true physically. It's also true spiritually. And it's the point that Peter has in mind.
When he writes this, we are born spiritually, born again. And we take certain steps. There are stepping stones we walk on. Hope Inheritance and power. Let's look at First Peter chapter 1.
Today, in verse 3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again, to a living hope. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, From the dead. to an inheritance incorruptible. And undefiled.
And that does not fade away. Reserved in heaven for you. who are kept by the power of God through faith. for salvation ready to be revealed. In the last time.
You notice the wording in verse 3, begotten again, or born again, as some more modern translations will render it. We have been born again. Those are words that. Jesus spoke to a Pharisee named Nicodemus in John chapter 3. Nicodemus, unless a man is born again, he will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
The term born again has become a cliché, hasn't it? Have you ever had a conversation with somebody who says, Oh, you're one of those born-again Christians. as if there's any other kind of Christian. Or they'll say, well, you know, I'm a Christian, but I'm not one of those born-again types. I remember When I first came to Jesus Christ, I had not.
heard the term born again ever I came to faith by watching a Billy Graham crew say it I've told you on many occasions, but I don't remember him ever using those terms. He may have, but they just don't ring a bell. But I remember How I felt When I gave my life to Christ and I was trying to describe to friends and family what it was like, I was searching for some. Description of what had gone on inside of me. And I couldn't think of one.
Until the day my buddy Dino Webster said, Hey, Heitzich, have you been born again? And I said, no, stop right there. Where did you get that? He said, get what? The term born again?
Jesus said that in John chapter 3. And I had never read John chapter 3 or 1 Peter chapter 1. I said, Jesus said that? I said, that's the best description of what happened to me that I've ever found. That's exactly what happened to me.
I've been born again. It's like a burden has been lifted, and I have a whole new lease on life. The joy of discovering that. Apt. Description for an experience that I had undergone.
So I then took that term and went back to my parents. To try to describe to them my salvation experience. Mom, Dad. I've been born again. It didn't really go over too well with them.
In their minds, all they could think is, oh great, you become a Protestant. What does it mean to be born again? Does it mean to have a religious bent or a spiritual side of your personality. A better translation would be to be born from above. To be born a second time, but having a spiritual birth, a transformation that occurs on the inside and works its way out.
And so Peter uses that term here: begotten again, transformed from the inside out. Why a new birth? Why is it called that? Because a new birth. is the entrance to new life.
And when a person has new life, Saved, born again. When a person has new life, there are certain steps that person will take. And what Peter would say here is that the new birth is a step towards hope. The new birth is the step toward inheritance. And the new birth is a step toward power.
That occupies verse 3, 4, and 5. Let's look at that one verse at a time. Verse 3, and the first step. Hope. Blessed be the God and Father, he writes, of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy, has begotten us again, to a living hope.
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Now, this is called a benediction or a doxology. Where the author says Praise God or blessed be God. The father. of our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter, after giving a couple verses of introduction, is simply saying, I praise God.
for his plan in saving people. And his plan includes a changed life on earth. an inheritance in heaven and security until we get there. That's essentially what he's saying. And all of that is summed up by the phrase.
Living hope. That's a living hope. There's one thing that Christians have in abundance is hope. We have hope. And unbelievers, they don't.
They are Without hope. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 12. In those days you were living apart from Jesus Christ. You lived in this world without God and without hope. And I got to tell you something.
There's one thing the world desperately needs, and that is hope. And they ought to be able to see hope in us. I'll tell you where you really see the difference. A funeral. There's a lot of places that you can sort of put masks on and go through, and everything's cool, and you're as cool as the next person, but at a funeral, that does not happen.
And when it's a funeral of a believer, somebody who trusted in Christ, and that funeral is filled with those who knew that that person trusted in Christ. There's sorrow, but there's also hope. And so even Paul says, when we sorrow, We don't sorrow like those who have no hope. It's sorrowful, but it's hopeful. But on the other hand, the funeral of an unbeliever, that person did not know Christ, and those people know that he didn't know Christ, or they don't know Christ, there is an abject sense of hopelessness.
It fills that room. Yeah. One research group from New York. made a statement. In an article I read, most Americans are unhappy with their lives.
Can you imagine Americans? All of the creature comforts that we have, and yet to make the statement that most Americans are unhappy with their lives and the Article went on to describe especially their job, their work. They don't have the sense of purpose in what they do. I think it was Henry David Thoreau who once wrote: Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. That might even describe some of you.
It starts when we're young. And you start asking questions like: so, what is the purpose of life? Where is this all going? Listen to a letter from a 17-year-old girl to a magazine. Here's just a snippet of it.
I'm 17 years old, and I'm pessimistic about my future. The whole world is so messed up. Just look at the news. Our whole generation needs help. We have nothing to grasp, no one to believe in, no one to trust in but ourselves.
Now that girl is desperately looking for hope. She can't find him. She does not know why she's living on this earth. Without Christ. Without hope.
I want you to see this through the lens of Peter for a moment. Peter was a fisherman. He had a pretty routine life in Capernaum. He'd get up early in the morning, go fishing on the lake. Come back midday, hang out, go back out in the afternoon, the evening when it was dusk, go fishing, come back home, have a meal probably with his family, go to bed.
Get up the next day, go fishing. I know some of you guys are thinking, come on, that's like heaven. Not when it's your job, it's not. Anything can become monotonous and can become routine, and life is filled with that kind of monotony, is it not? Just routine.
If you're a business person, you get up early, go to work, come home tired. Have a meal with your family, go to bed, get up, go to work, and that just happens. You have two days off a week, maybe two weeks off a year for vacation, maybe. And that's just a whole life, or if you're a housewife. And you put the dirty clothes in the laundry and wash it and fold it and cook and change diapers and.
Do it every single day. You're listening to Connect with Skip-Heitzig weekend edition. As we reach the end of 2025, generous support from friends like you is vital to keep Connect with Skip-Heitzig strong and sharing God's unchanging truth around the world. Your year-end gift helps more people hear the gospel and find lasting hope in Jesus. And to thank you for your generosity, we'll send you the Daily God Journal, Pastor Skip's new year-long prayer journal, together with the digital devotional, the Daily God Book.
These resources will guide you through scripture day by day, helping you align your heart with God and experience His peace. Request yours when you give a year-end gift of $50 or more at connectwithgift.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. Let's return now to today's message. And perhaps Peter, living as a fisherman on the shores of Galilee, fishing every day, having his little life. Day in and day out was thinking Is this all there is to life?
It was sort of boring, it was sort of monotonous, it was sort of hopeless. Until one day, When a man named Jesus walked into his life, And he said, Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men. And something was birthed inside of Peter. called Hope.
Now he had a cause, now he had a purpose greater than himself. That elevated his life, elevated his thinking. Life wasn't monotonous anymore. It was exciting. He was filled with hope.
By the way. It's not just the people who work day in and day out that feel that monotony. Did you know that? The wealthiest, most powerful people in the world. Also Feel that sense of boredom?
Solomon is the best example I know. He wrote a whole book on it. He opens up the book. This is how he starts it: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Means futility, means emptiness.
He writes: What profit has a man from all of his labor which he toils under the sun? Did you know that America has The greatest number of artificial amusements of any country on earth. And yet, our per capita boredom rate is the highest in the world. We are a bored culture. How many times, parents, have you heard teenagers who go, I'm bored.
It's boring here.
So they think if they move there, it won't be boring. I grew up around Los Angeles. They said it there. It's life. But Jesus walked into Peter's life one day, and hope was born.
It was awesome. But then something happened in Peter's life that caused Peter's hope to die. What do you think that would be? When Jesus died. When Jesus died, hope died in Peter's mind.
Because Jesus made a whole bunch of promises.
Now he's dead. Remember the two disciples on the road to Emmaus? They were talking, they didn't know it to Jesus, who was alive, they didn't know it, and they were talking to one another. And this stranger, Jesus, says, What are you guys talking about? Oh, we're talking about this guy named Jesus.
And this is what they said. We had hoped. That he would be the one. What are they saying? Our hope is dead.
Whatever hope we had died when he died. When he died, The cord of our hope was cut.
So Peter had hope, his hope died. But then something happened. to revive Peter's hope and keep it alive forever. What was that? The resurrection.
That's what he says in verse 1. Blessed be the verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy, has begotten us again to a living hope through what? The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The dead.
Boy, that would do it, right? When the guy you hoped in died and he got back up, Your hope would go ballistic. Hope would make its debut. Because that means that all those promises he ever made were true. And boy, did he make a lot of promises.
Here's a few of them. I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live. That's a big promise. Here's another one.
I'm the way. The truth And the life. Big promise. Another one, he who hears my word and believes in him who sent me has. everlasting life.
Another promise. Because I live. You also will live. Huge promises. But when the guy who makes those promises dies, What do you say?
You go. Whatever. Right? But when he gets back up again? When he resurrects from the dead, When he's alive again, it means every single promise he ever made about eternal life now makes sense.
Now that makes sense. And that's what I think Peter meant when he says, We have been born again, and the step that we take is a step of hope, and it's living hope because Jesus is a living Savior. And somebody will then say: well, how do we know he actually rose from the dead? That's just what his disciples say. They wanted to keep the story alive.
Every year at Easter time, a National Geographic channel, they have some little lame documentary that says something like that. And there have been books written about the research and the proofs of the resurrection. Let me just give you three quick lines of evidence. First of all, Jesus predicted his own death and his own resurrection before it ever happened. He told his disciples over and over again: before it ever happened, I'm going to Jerusalem.
They're going to kill me. Three days after that, I'm going to get back up. They didn't get it. They went, oh, that's very nice. Until it actually happened.
And he went, wow, he literally meant that. Line of evidence number two. Eyewitness accounts. Individuals as well as groups. People saw them one-on-one.
His disciples all saw them at one time, and the Bible records a group of, get this, 500 people saw him alive at one time. And so, if you ever say, well, it was just a hallucination, did you know that hallucinations don't happen to groups? The same thing that they saw. Josephus, the Jewish historian, even writes that his own followers saw him alive after his death because of a resurrection. A British lawyer by the name of Sir Edward Clarke said, and I quote: As a lawyer, I have made a prolonged study on the evidences for the events of the first Easter day.
For me, the evidence is conclusive, and over and over again. In the high courts, I have secured a verdict on evidence not nearly as compelling as that for the resurrection. Frank Morrison was another atheist who decided to write a book showing that Jesus was a farce. And then he studied the resurrection and he got converted. And he did write a book, but the first chapter of the book he wrote was called The Book That Refused to Be Written.
It was about his conversion. and the evidence for the resurrection. An atheist Lee Strobel, who has spoken from this pulpit.
Now, a strong believer, at one time was the legal reporter for the Chicago Tribune, said, and I quote: The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the best attested to event of the ancient world. The third line of evidence is alluded to here in verse 3. The changed lives of the followers of Christ.
Okay. Before Jesus died on the cross, what was Peter doing? Denying Jesus. Denying him right before that whole crucifixion, he was, I don't know who he is, he was a coward. You open up to the book of Acts and Peter is like suddenly courageous.
He's bold. He's walking around Jerusalem preaching about Jesus in front of lots more people and at the point of his own persecution and possible death. What is it that could turn a coward? Like Peter, into a courageous preacher. The resurrection.
That's called a living hope.
So the new birth is a step toward hope and our hope. is a living hope. But keep reading, verse 4: Our hope is not just a living hope, it's a lasting hope. The second step is that the new birth is a step toward inheritance. Verse 4: to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled.
that does not fade away. Reserved in heaven. For you.
Now we know what an inheritance is. An inheritance is property or money or title. That you own upon the death of the previous holder who has made you an heir. And once that person dies, it's passed on to you if you were named an heir. Usually this is done by parents for children.
We are children of God. Jesus came from heaven to earth and died. Bequeathing heaven to you. It's your inheritance. Then he rose from the dead, and he became a joint heir with us.
Listen to the language of Paul, Romans chapter 8, verse 17.
Now, if we are children, then we are heirs. Heirs of God, Co-heirs with Christ. If indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his In His glory. For I consider that the present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in. Us.
So we're born. Step number one: hope, living hope. Step number two, lasting hope, what he calls here an eternal inheritance. Let me just say that. Only a hope that is a lasting hope is really hope.
I mean, if our hope is only like for right now, but not for later on. It's pretty hopeless. I remember when I first came to Christ, I heard a lot of these kinds of things. Oh, I'm so happy for you. What do you mean you're happy for me?
Well, what what whatever floats your boat? Whatever gets you through the life that you live, whatever gets you through today, if that works for you, that's really good. No, no, no, no. It's not just about hope now. I mean, it really begins after I die in eternity.
I have something that's an inheritance, that's incorruptible, undefiled, that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for me. That's what I have to look forward to. That's real hope. We're so glad you joined us today on Connect with Skip Heitzig. And remember, before you go, your generosity today makes a real difference.
As this year ends, your gift of $50 or more helps more people hear God's word and find lasting hope in Jesus. And to thank you, we'll send you the Daily God Journal, along with the companion digital devotional, the Daily God Book. These resources will help you start the new year aligned with God's heart and growing in faith each day. Give your year-end gift now at connectwithskiff.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. We'll see you next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's Word here on Connect with Skiff Heitzig Weekend Edition.
Make a connection. Make a connection. Shouldn't Of the crossing. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of connection communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
