The Believer’s Prize (Part A)

We are still supposed to bless the Lord even in the hurt locker, even when things are as bad as they get. Job said the Lord gave, the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. He can't say that without a surge of emotion if you know Jesus Christ. Now if you're in the midst of great trouble, it may not surge, it may not come out that way, but it's there. And many of you know it.

Job 13, though he slay me, yet I will trust in him. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1st Peter.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of 1st Peter chapter 1 as he begins his message, The Believer's Prize. If you have your Bibles, let's open to 1st Peter chapter 1, 1st Peter chapter 1. We are going to take verses 1 through 9. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love, though you do not see him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

I ended that as though I were going to keep on going, because I started to keep on going. As said in our introduction, Peter was every bit the theologian Paul was, just two different men, two different backgrounds, two different deliveries, both of them very real, very fierce servants of God. Keeping in mind that we are going through these two letters of Peter, we've entitled this study of the scripture, Letters from a Martyr to Be, because that is who the author is. As he is writing this letter to these persecuted Christians, he won't survive this persecution. They don't know that. He doesn't know that at the time.

The timeline is not clear to them. They are doing what they do as Christians, serving the Lord, and he is doing what he does as an apostle, as a pastor, he is encouraging the flock to keep their eyes on those things that matter. Peter points to the prize that awaits the believer. In fact, giving a title to this morning's study, The Believer's Prize. That is one of the things that stands out through this little section of scripture. It is a fantastic section of scripture. You can't rush through it.

There is so much here. This idea of a prize comes from Christ. It comes from God. John wrote about it long after Peter had given his life to the Lord, but John wrote about it because Jesus told him. He told him in the revelation, but he also told them while he walked on earth. In the revelation in chapter 22, Jesus said, Behold, I am coming quickly, and my reward is with me. Well, to die is to be with the Lord for those who are in Christ, to be with him. And so, looking at the first verse, Peter says, Blessed be God the Father and 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.

A pastor could take any one of these verses that we read this morning and do a whole topical sermon on them, each one so rich, so ready to help us to understand and to do better at life, where he says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That word translated blessed. Eulogitos in the Greek, you won't need that again, where we get our English word eulogy from. It is to speak well of someone. It is applied in the New Testament only to God, this particular Greek word.

It is reserved for him because he is unlike anyone else. And the writers of the New Testament never lost sight of that, and neither are we. As I mentioned, our word eulogy comes from this, this Greek word, to speak well of another, to speak well of God, to not badmouth God. It is very easy to do when bitterness begins to creep up on us, to well up in us. It is easy to badmouth God.

Job fought against doing it himself. In Genesis, we read of the servant of Abraham, sent to fetch a bride for his beloved Isaac. In Genesis 24, the servant said, Blessed be the Lord God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his mercy and his truth toward my master.

We can say that ourselves. Blessed be the Lord God Almighty, Lord Jesus Christ, who has not forsaken his mercy on me and his truth endures forever. These things are no less true in the midst of hardship.

Or maybe I put it this way. We are still supposed to bless the Lord even in the hurt locker, even when things are as bad as they get. Job said, The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. He can't say that without a surge of emotion if you know Jesus Christ. Now if you're in the midst of great trouble, it may not surge, it may not come out that way, but it's there.

And many of you know it. Job 13, Though he slay me, yet I will trust in him. Though he slay me, he has the right, and I have the right to love him anyway.

I have the right to trust him, to be faithful to all that he is to me. Peter shoves through the hardship in the lives of those he's writing to. He knows what they're going through.

He can't stop what they're going through. But he shoves through it with a hallelujah anyhow. Praise the Lord anyway. Blessed be God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, he said. That word God of course here, the God of Jesus Christ, it expresses the Lord Jesus Christ's attitude towards God the Father while he walked the earth. The Trinity is such, they're not three separate gods.

We don't believe that each one is a god separate from the other. They are distinct in person, but they are united inseparably. Consider a triangle.

Three points of a triangle. All distinct, each point distinct, but joined inseparably. One from the other. And so he mentions the Lord God of, here in verse 1 is where we are if I've lost you. Blessed be the Lord God of our, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Father of course expresses that place of origin for Jesus Christ as the only begotten coming from the Father, not created, self-existent, but coming from the Father has begotten us again to a living hope. Now this hope will be coupled with or joined to faith and love in verses 7 and 8. Those are pillars of our faith, very important to the individual believer, that we blend those together, faith, hope and love.

And must have the love, love based on truth incidentally, because the world has love, it's just not based on truth. We are supposed to have love that is based on the truth given to us by God. As he writes to them, he says he has begotten us again to a living hope.

Well, they're in the midst of persecution, they don't know if this thing is going to escalate, how bad it's going to be if they're going to survive or not, they don't know what's coming. And yet he writes them that God has begotten us to a living hope, not a dead hope, this thing is alive for us in Jesus. We all have a fresh start at life. That fresh start and that outlook that we get when we come to Christ is not supposed to die out as we walk with Christ and meet with things that oppose us, that threaten us, that harm us. We are supposed to keep the hope that we first received when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ because our hope goes beyond this life.

We see it that way, we understand it, we set everything, our course is set in that direction. We have a new creation in our own heart and in our own soul that comes in two phases. The first phase is here in this life, our outlook changes. The second phase is when we leave this life, we are completely changed into the image of Christ.

And so when Paul writes in Corinthians, we know this verse well, therefore if anyone is in Christ, anyone is in Christ. He is a new creation. Old things have passed away, behold all things have become new.

That word behold, that's a musical, it's where the music starts, boom, boom. All things, all things have become new. He writes here in verse 3, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The resurrection, without it there's no Christianity. That's why Satan has targeted the doctrine of the resurrection.

Paul writes this to the Corinthians on this very topic in 1 Corinthians 15. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile. You're still in your sins, he says. If Christ is not risen, you're still a sinner. You are still guilty before a holy God that will execute judgment on you personally. If your sins are still on you, that's what you get.

Nothing in return, well that's what Satan wants. Then he writes, if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable. If it's just this life, there's nothing beyond. But then he adds this right after it, but now Christ is risen from the dead. He is risen, we have more hope than whatever we're faced with in this life. And so all of that goes into, again, 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, that abundant mercy. And then in verse 4, he says to an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, the believer's prize. Heaven. A heaven that is so special, so wonderful, that what we're told about it is very limited. It's too much. It's one of those things, you've got to be there. Not you had to be there, you've got to be there.

That's where we are going. An inheritance. It's what you get at the end. It's what God is going to give to those who receive him in this life, unlike an earthly inheritance which eventually becomes useless. I mean, no matter what you inherit, whatever wealth you receive from someone who has left this life, eventually you're leaving too and you're not taking any of it with you. But this inheritance that we have is made of eternal stuff.

The right stuff. The Jews were promised a land. They received it. That promise they laid hold of.

Christians, and Christians are made up of anyone, Jew or Gentile, that believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. Christians, we are promised an inheritance in heaven. By faith we accept it, we look forward to it, we don't lose sight of it. If you lose sight of the heaven that awaits you, your strength will be diminished in this life.

Whatever you face, you will be less ready for it than if you keep your eyes on the prize. Paul said, I've been crucified with Christ, I no longer live. He says that in the Galatian letter, then Philippians you can join it. I press toward the mark for the prize for the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

I press toward the mark for the prize. This one that makes the promise is the one that could touch a leper, cleanse them of their leprosy and not himself become defiled. He could raise the dead and not himself, be in jeopardy of defilement or ritual unclean, uncleanliness. These things moved out of his way when he walked the earth and now that he sits on the throne of God, they are no less subject to him and the righteous know it. And so Peter says, what waits for us is incorruptible, it's contamination free. Satan, Christless men, my own weaknesses, these cannot ruin my salvation. My own sinful nature, my own sinful ways, my own failure, my own faithlessness, my own shortcomings in Christ, they cannot ruin my salvation.

They're not strong enough, they're not big enough. He says that it will be undefiled, purity. We've never known purity in this life. Purity has never been something we've truly experienced.

You can have pure maple syrup, but it's not purity of soul. Undefiled, unspoiled, unending, that's what awaits us. He says it does not fade away, the Greek, it's a single Greek word. We have the four words in our English to communicate that does not fade away. Amaranthus in the Greek, where we get our English word, amaranth, which is a flower that doesn't fade, that's what it means.

That's not true entirely of the flower, but you understand the meaning. You know our New Testament, it raises our sights higher than what the Jews had in the Old Testament for the messianic age, the kingdom age, the rule of Messiah in Jerusalem. As beautiful and as glorious that will be, we have something higher, the New Jerusalem. We have this place reserved for us in heaven that is incorruptible and undefiled, that does not fade away. It won't get old. When you get to heaven, it was, you know, I've been here, what, four or five billion years, and you know, I just need a change of pace.

That's not going to happen. So thorough, so wonderful will be that which God gives to us. It's unlike anything we've ever known. He says reserved, reserved in heaven for you. That Greek word for reserved is also translated guarded in other passages of scriptures. It is guarded for us.

It is reserved, and that reservation is not going to move. It's there to be received. My place is guarded by God. There's no power stronger. There's no one equal.

There's not even someone who can give him a hard time. It's written into the registry for all those who believe. This Greek word is used, and I'll try to communicate it. In each verse, I'm going to read from the Lord's Prayer in John 17. I know we call the Lord's Prayer the Our Father who is in heaven. We call that the Lord's Prayer, but truly, John 17 is the Lord's Prayer, where he is actually praying to the Father.

When he gives us what we call the Lord's Prayer, those are instructions from the Lord to give us a template on how we ought to pray. And when Jesus addressed the Father in prayer, he said, Our Father, righteous Father, holy Father, beautiful expressions. But in John 17, verse 6, He manifested your name to the men whom you have given me out of the world. They were yours.

You gave them to me. And they have kept, same Greek word, reserved or guarded, they have kept your word. And then John 17, 11, Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, I come to you, holy Father, kept, there's that word again, through your name, those whom you have given me, that they may be one as we are. That's going to get a little confusing because we're going to come to another Greek word that the translators have translated, kept, but it's a different word, but I'll try not to confuse you with that. But what I hope I'm doing is emphasizing to you that when God uses this word in Scripture, that your salvation is reserved, that it is guarded, that it is kept, that it is something we need to be assured of, and if you are assured of it, you will gain strength and momentum in serving the Lord.

But if you're wobbly on this, you're going to be like a straw tossed in the wind when the pressure is on. And even if it's not on, you may just be indifferent about serving Christ because you're really not sure, you really don't believe it, you really don't trust it, you really don't get it, and so God has compiled these thoughts in His Scripture for us so that we do get it. Peter got it, he understood it. He could not only look their persecution in the face and give them courage, he could look his own persecution in the face with courage because he believed it. But he walked with Jesus. We're going to come to a section sometime today in this section where he talks about those who did not walk with Jesus, that loved Christ just as much as Him. Back to John chapter 17 verse 12, While I was with them in the world, I kept, I reserved, I guarded them in Your name. Those whom You gave me, I kept, and none of them is lost, except the son of perdition that the Scripture might be fulfilled. Again, John 17, 15, I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, that you should keep them, that is guard them, same word translated reserved here in the New King James of 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 4.

You should keep them, guard them from the evil one. And of course, he says that this goes along with our relationship in heaven with God. So he says, in heaven. Mark chapter 10 verse 30, And in the age to come eternal life, that's what Jesus said would happen to those who follow Him. In the age to come eternal life as opposed to the judgment that will fall on those who reject Him.

Now verse 5 of 1 Peter, He says, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. Now here the translators have translated the word kept as a different Greek word, but it's a single word that I'd like on my epitaph. Put that on my tombstone. Kept. It says it all to the believer. My soul is kept by God. He never let it go. When I died, I did not take my sins with me.

They dissolved in the blood of Christ. I will not stand before Him and He will say, How come you were such a picklehead? It will be gone. We'll talk about other things. And then we'll get on with eternity.

And we should all be looking forward to that. John's gospel chapter 10 verse 28, I give them eternal life. You don't earn it. It's a gift. I give them eternal life and they shall never perish.

Neither shall anyone snatch them out of my hand. I love that. Kept means ongoing action. It's not just a one-time thing.

It's recurrent. I'm kept. I'm still there. Our salvation is kept for us and we are kept for it. This is what God promises in His Word.

Our eternity is secure so long as we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who are kept by the power of God. That is what is keeping it. That word for power, dunamis, we get our English word dynamite from that Greek word.

It is an explosive power. It is a force. A no-nonsense, fantastic force on our behalf is holding us close to God. And so, in this life, the Holy Spirit within us. Paul wrote to Timothy, he said, That good thing which was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in you. 2 Timothy 1.14. That good thing that was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in you. And so the Holy Spirit within us, this is power. The legions of angels around us.

This is power. Genesis 32.1. This is when Jacob, the recipient of so many undeserved blessings, Jacob was heading back to what was the promised land, but not yet in the possession of the Hebrews. In Genesis 32.1 we read, So Jacob went on his way and the angels of God met him. The spiritual forces around him were from God, protecting him from the spiritual forces that are not from God, that are against God, that are opposed to God. And if they can do it for Jacob, they do it for us. And then, of course, there is the power, just the power, the sheer power of God over it all. Jesus did not die on a cross so that we could ruin it because of our sins.

That's the purpose of his death on the cross, to overrule and overcome the sins. We're so glad you tuned in today to study the book of 1 Peter on Cross Reference Radio. Cross Reference Radio is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. And we're blessed to bring you God's word with each broadcast. If you'd like more information about this program or want to listen to additional teachings from Pastor Rick, please visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. We also encourage you to subscribe to our podcast so you'll never have to miss a program. Just search for Cross Reference Radio in iTunes, Google Play Music, or your favorite podcast app. We hope you'll tune in again next time to join us as we continue our study through the scriptures right here on Cross Reference Radio.