Our Living Hope in Christ - Bible Survey Part 16

We're in a series entitled, A Bible Survey, and we're almost at the end. We've been going through the books of the Bible. And today we're going to do 1 and 2 Peter. So here we go. As soon as we say the name Peter, we're talking about one of the most well-known people, of course, in all the Bible.

Let's talk about his life for a minute. Peter was a fisherman who lived on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, and he was one of the first disciples that Jesus called along with Andrew his brother. Matthew chapter 4 says, Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee. He saw two brothers. Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew, and they were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

And immediately, I love that word, immediately they left their nets and they followed him. Now Peter became one of the three inner circle disciples, if you will, along with John and James. And Jesus took Peter, John, and James to places where sometimes he didn't take all the rest of the apostles. For example, Matthew chapter 17 says that Jesus took Peter, James, and John up onto a high mountain, the Mount of Transfiguration, where Jesus was transfigured before them. And a voice came out of the bright cloud that was there on the mountain saying, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, hear him. And this explains why Peter said, 2 Peter chapter 1, he said, for we have not followed cleverly devised fables, when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter said this is no hoax, this is no con game, this is not some, you know, some kind of underground thing that we're running here. Peter goes on to say, but we were, what's the next word? Eyewitnesses to Christ's majesty. Where were they eyewitnesses to that?

On the Mount of what? Transfiguration, right. For he, that is Jesus, received honor and glory from God the Father, who said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, and we ourselves heard this utterance from heaven, Peter said, because we were with him on that holy mountain. Now listen, if you're here and you've never trusted Jesus in a real impersonal way, I'm here to tell you what Peter's saying here, and that is that this is not a hoax. This is not a game, it's not a ruse, and it's not some kind of con.

This is the real deal. Peter actually saw the Lord Jesus transformed into something that was so bright in its light he couldn't even look at it. He was up there and saw Elijah and Moses appear. He heard God speak from the crowd, and he goes on to say in 2 Peter 1, you would do well to believe this, because this is real. Amen?

And I hope you'll think about that. You would do well to believe what the Bible's telling you and me about the Lord Jesus. Well, after Jesus's resurrection, Peter became the leading apostle in the early church. Up until Acts chapter 15, he's all over the book of Acts, and then all of a sudden, after Acts 15, Peter disappears. We don't read his name again anywhere in the book of Acts, and you say, yeah, Lon, why is that? I don't know.

How am I supposed to know? All I know is that his ministry continued till 66 A.D. when Emperor Nero killed both him and Paul and were told by the church father Origen that Peter requested that Nero crucify him upside down because he did not feel worthy to be killed in the same position that the Lord Jesus had been killed. And so Nero honored that request and killed Peter by crucifying him upside down. Now, that's a short overview of Peter's life, but let's turn now to his letters, the two of them, and ask three very quick questions. Number one, to whom did he write these letters?

Well, in 1 Peter 1, verse 1, he tells us, he says, To God's elect, who reside as pilgrims in the world, scattered throughout Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. You say, thanks, Lon. I know where all that is.

No, well, wait a minute. We're going to show you a map. And as you can see, all of these places were in central, northern, and western Turkey, modern day Turkey.

And so it's possible that this is where Peter spent the last years of his ministry in this area. And by the way, pilgrims here has nothing to do with the Mayflower. We understand that, right? The pilgrims here mean believers because in 1 Peter 2, verse 11, he calls us pilgrims and aliens in this world because Philippians 3, 20, our citizenship is in heaven. Praise the Lord. We're just passing through this place.

And so that's why he used that word. Now, when, question number 2, did Peter write these letters? Well, we don't know for sure, but in 2 Peter chapter 1, Peter says, For the Lord Jesus has shown me that I will soon be laying aside my earthly dwelling, my body.

I'm going to be killed soon. And since Nero killed Peter in 66 AD, we think that 2 Peter was written very close to that date, 66, and 1 Peter was probably written just a little bit a few years before that. Finally, why did Peter write these letters? Well, even though he wrote both letters to the same group of people, the purpose of each letter is different. 2 Peter, the purpose of that letter is to urge these believers to stand strong against false teaching that is going to threaten the church even after Peter dies.

Look what he says. 2 Peter 2, verse 1, false teachers will arise among you and bring in destructive heresies. Therefore, since you know beforehand that this is going to happen, be on your guard lest you be carried away by their error and fall from your own steadfastness. Now, the purpose of 1 Peter is different. 1 Peter was written to give hope to these believers who were undergoing deep suffering for their faith. 1 Peter, chapter 1, verse 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Peter says, who in his great mercy has borne us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

In this hope, verse 6, Peter says, you rejoice even though now for a little while you may have to suffer various trials. Now, that's as far as we're going to go in treating our two letters. You guys understand what they each were written for, right? Good, okay. Because now we're going to ask our most important question and you say, isn't that a little early in the message for that? Yeah, well, I got a lot to tell you.

So it's early, but hold on. Okay, so at all of our campuses, at Prince William, at Bethesda, to Loudon, down in the edge, around the world, here at Tysons, you ready for our most important question? All right, here we go. One, two, three.

Yeah. You say, Lon, so what? Well, you know, as I've been telling you in all of these books that we're studying, we could spend weeks, months in some of these books for sure. So I just have to go through each week and say, Lord, what is it that you want to impress upon my heart and what is it then that you want me to try to take and impress upon the heart of our people at McLean. And this week I want to talk to you about hope. And the reason I want to talk to you about hope is because of what Peter just said. 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 3, he said, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in His great mercy has borne us again to a what? Say the next two words.

To a what? A living hope. A living hope through guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And you know, when my mom, who came to Christ at the very end of her life, when she was an unbelieving woman, she used to always say to me, You know, Lon, we just need to have hope. And I would say, Mom, hope in what? She'd say, Well, hope in hope.

And I'd say, What? Mom, that's silly. That's not real hope. That's just wishful thinking. That's just you crossing your fingers and kind of hoping in a wishful thinking way that nothing goes wrong. That's not real hope.

Friends, listen to what the Bible says though. The Bible says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in His mercy has borne us again to a what kind of hope? A living hope. Not a wishful thinking hope, not a dead hope, but a living hope through, look at this, guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Now, how cool is this? That the hope we have is a living hope guaranteed by a living Christ.

How great is that? Huh? Amen?

All right. And this hope comes from three things, the Bible says. So I want to share those with you. Number one, this living hope comes first of all by believing the promises that God gives us as His children in Christ. 2 Peter chapter 1 says, God has given us His exceedingly great and precious promises.

You say like what? Well, like Psalm 23 verse 6, Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. Like Hebrews 13 5, Jesus said, I will never leave you, nor will I ever forsake you. Like Romans 8 28, God works all things together for good to those who love Him. And hundreds more promises like this in the Bible.

Listen, with all the promises that God has given us as His children in Christ, there is no reason for any of us to ever be negative, pessimistic or cynical about our life. You know, two of my favorite characters in the Bible are Joshua and Caleb. And just in case you don't remember their story, let's go back into the Old Testament and the Israelites had come out of Egypt. They were headed for the land of Canaan, and God gave them a promise.

Here it is. Exodus 23. God says, For My angel will go before you and bring you into the land of the Canaanites, and I will send My terror ahead of you and throw into confusion all the people you encounter, and I will make them turn their backs and run from you. What a great promise. Well, the Israelites, they get to the border of Canaan.

And you know the story. I hope Moses sent 12 spies into the land. Joshua was one. Caleb was one.

There were 10 others to check out the land, and they come back. And 10 of the spies, not Joshua and Caleb, say this. They say, Well, we went into the land where you sent us, Moses, and it certainly does flow with milk and honey the way God says. But, folks, that word starts more trouble in our spiritual lives than any other single word.

But, they say, the people who live there are strong, and their cities are fortified and very large, and we are not able to go up against them because they are too strong for us. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Time out here. What did God just say to them? Didn't God say My terror will go before you, and I will put them in confusion, and they will run away, turn their backs, and run away from you? Wasn't that the promise of God? Huh?

Yes. And here they say, We're not able to do this. They're too strong for us. Somebody is not believing the promise of God. And so all the people lifted up their voices and wept and said to one another, Let's choose a new leader, and let's go back to Egypt.

And then Joshua and Caleb said, Oh, man, I love this. They said, Do not rebel against the Lord like this, and do not fear the people of the land. God said He would send His terror before us.

God said He would put them in confusion. God said He'd make them run away. They will be bred for us.

We will eat them up. Their protection has been removed from them because the Lord is with us. Man, do you hear the hope in these words and the optimism in these words and the confidence that these men had? And where did that hope come from? Friends, it came from believing the promise of God.

That's where it came from. Look, living hope does not come from knowing that we have a promise from God. Living hope comes from believing the promise that God gives us. Amen?

Amen. And I got to tell you, they pleaded with the Israelites. They said, Look, based on God's promise, if we believe it, they said, There's every reason for us to have hope. If we believe it, there's no reason for us to have despair. And, folks, may I say to you that I don't care how dark the hour may get in our life sometime, and I don't care how difficult the trial may get, you have every reason for hope as a follower of Christ too. You have no reason for despair as a follower of Christ either because you have the living promises of God just like Joshua had, just like Caleb had. And if you and I will only believe those promises, then just like Joshua and Caleb, our confidence, our hope, our optimism should always run high. Amen.

Now, listen. You say, Well, what if God sends trouble in my life and problems into my life? Well, we've got a promise for that.

Romans 8, 28, God works all things together for good to those who love Him. We've got a promise that covers trouble. We've just got to believe it. You say, Well, I don't see how God could possibly turn this into good. Well, you don't have to. You don't have to. You're not God. You're not running the universe.

The fact that you can't see it doesn't make any difference at all. The key is God sees it. And I have to tell you, in the darkest days when my daughter Jill was younger, and I mean, we really, we really despaired for her life sometime as to whether or not she was going to make it. I'll tell you what.

My wife and I, and I can say this honestly, as bad as it was, never lost hope because of one simple thing. We would come back to Romans 8, 28, and we would challenge each other. Okay, we only have two choices here. We can believe Romans 8, 28. We can doubt it.

That's it. Those are our choices. And we agreed we're not going to doubt what God promises.

So even though we can't figure out one earthly way that all of this tragedy and all of this pain could turn out for good, we're going to trust God anyway. Well, now today there's Access Ministry. There's Breakout. There's Breakaway. There's Soaring Over Seven Summer Camp. There's Jill's House.

And our adult day program for people who've aged out of school and have disabilities. Friends, all of that happened because of Jill being in our life. Did God take Jill's life and turn it into good? Did He? We couldn't see that.

And Jill, by the way, is doing so much better in her health. We couldn't see that. But God knew it. And He promised us, look, you can't see it. Don't worry about it. I love the old country song that says don't worry about the future. God's already there.

Alright? He's already got this worked out. All you've got to do is trust Him and it will bring living hope to our lives.

Number two. Living hope, second of all, is based on God's sovereignty. Knowing God is sovereign over our life. Psalm 135 verse 6 says whatever the Lord pleases He does in the heavens, on the earth, in the seas, and in their depth. Okay, that's pretty sovereign.

I'll give Him that. But sovereignty just doesn't mean that God is sovereign over the details of the universe. It means He's sovereign over every detail of your life and my life. Look, Psalm 139 says all the days ordained for me.

Everything in my life was written in God's book before there was a one of these things in time and space. And this is why Jesus said even the very hairs of your head are numbered. There's some angel up there keeping track of them. And when one comes out, he subtracts one.

When two come out, he takes two off. For some of us, his work's not so hard anymore, you know. But look, this is why when our car breaks, when we lose our job, when we get transferred suddenly, when we miss a promotion, when we suffer a financial loss, when our children are having problems in school, when the washer breaks and the sink clogs up, or some tragedy strikes our life, we as followers of Jesus can face those things with hope. Because we know those things are not accidents and they are not coincidences and they are not random fate. They are merely part of the good and perfect plan of a sovereign God for our life and He's got it all under control. And when we believe that, it brings hope to our life. Yes? Amen.

All right. Finally, this living hope third comes from the certainty we have of heaven. Hey, let's go back to our memory verse.

Say it with me. And this is the record that God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has eternal life and he who does not have the Son of God does not have eternal life. These things I write to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may what? That you may what?

Say it again. That you may what? That you may know that you have what? Eternal life. You think God wants you to know you have eternal life after you read that verse?

Of course He does. I've met people who when I say to them, I know I'm going to heaven. They say that is the most arrogant thing I've ever heard come out of anybody's mouth in my life.

You know you're going to heaven. How arrogant. It's not arrogant.

I tell them it's not arrogant. I mean I have two reasons. One, the Bible tells me so. And two, I'm not going because of me. I'm going because of what Jesus did for me. But friends, God doesn't want it to be a secret that you're going to heaven. God wants you to know you're going to heaven and be confident you're going to heaven. To be as confident of that as you are your name. God doesn't want you to wake up on the other side of the grave in heaven and go, oh, what a surprise. No, God wants you to know right here that is your destiny as a child of God.

Absolutely. Now, what's heaven like? What's heaven like? Well, Revelation 21 says God shall wipe away every tear from our eyes and there will be no more death or grieving or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away. Thank God for that. The old order of things stinks. So God let it go.

Get it out of here, huh? You know, Friday night, two nights ago, I was at the Jill's house gala we had and there was a video that was played about a family who has two children that they've been told are both terminal. And they're just trying to capture every memory they can with these two young children.

And Jill's house, they're using Jill's house for these children. And I mean, I was sitting there just weeping like a baby. I mean, it was it was tragic. I mean, you should have seen me. It was really I was a mess.

And as I sat there as a mess, I thought to myself, you know what? Thank God, Lord, that there's heaven. Thank God that one day I'm going to be in heaven. And my wife will be there and Jill will be there and many of these other children and parents will be there. Thank God there's a place where the word disability doesn't exist, where there are no wheelchairs and there are no braces and there are no feeding tubes and there are no crutches.

And there's no anticonvulsant medicine and there's no cerebral palsy and there's no Down syndrome and there are no seizures. Thank God for a place, my friends, where chromosomes don't break and genes don't mutate. Praise God, there's a place like that.

And thank God there's a place where my daughter one day will be able to speak again and be able to tell us how she feels and say thank you to all the people who helped her in this world and say, Daddy, I love you. Man, if that don't bring you hope, I don't know what will. And God wants you to know that's ahead for you. That's ahead for you if you know Christ. And because of what we just read in that verse, our memory verse, friends, this is not a hope-so-hope. This is not, oh, Lord, I hope, I hope, I hope.

No, what are you kidding? This is a know-so-hope. You know Christ, you have the Son of God in your life, you have eternal life, you are going to heaven.

This is your citizenship. Philippians chapter 320, this is your home. And friends, that is living hope, huh? That is living hope.

And you say, well, how do I know that's true? What did the verse we read say, 1 Peter 1-3, it said that this is guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. You've got a living Savior who says, I'm going to be there to take you to heaven. I'm already risen from the dead, and that's what's going to happen to you too.

Man, that's living hope. So let's summarize, what we're talking about today is the hope of the gospel, Colossians chapter 1. And what is the hope of the gospel based on? Number one, it's based on believing the promises God has given us in the Bible. Number two, it's based on understanding that God is sovereign over our lives, working out his good plan. And number three, having the certainty that we are going to heaven when we die, and knowing that every bit of this is guaranteed by a living risen Christ. Now that's living hope. You can clap for that, that's worth it.

All right, wow. And I love what Peter says about this hope. Here's what he said, 1 Peter 3.15, he said, Be always ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you about the hope that's within you. I mean, it's a good thing for us to be able to give an answer about our hope in Christ, to be able to defend the gospel, preach the gospel, explain the gospel, answer objections of the gospel, that's good. But that's not what this verse is emphasizing. It's saying, be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you. Friends, the hope that we have in Christ should ooze out of our life and ooze out of our church family in such a way that people when they encounter us or when they walk through the doors of this church, they are so blown away by the hope that they see in us that they ask about it.

That's what Peter's saying. And I say, that ought to be our goal, that we, Romans 15, 13, that we abound in this hope. And that we walk around in such a way that people say, My gosh, in light of all that's going on, where's your hope coming from?

And then we're ready to answer them. We need to ooze with hope. We just need to have hope squeegeeing out of us everywhere.

Yeah? And so I want to challenge us not to be like the ten spies, for goodness sake. But let's be like Joshua. Let's be like Caleb. And let's say, man, we got no reason to be discouraged. Not with the living hope we got. Yeah?

All right. Now, there's one other thing, and that is that Peter said we need to bless God for this hope. Remember the verse?

It says bless, praise, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in His mercy has borne us again to a living hope. When was the last time we blessed God and thanked Him for this kind of hope and praised Him for giving us this kind of living hope? The Bible says we should, so that's what we're going to do right now. Stand up with me.

Come on. And let's bow our heads for a minute. And let's bless God for giving us this living hope. Thank Him for it. And let's thank Him that He did this in His mercy because we didn't deserve it. And let's thank Him that this is not a dead hope we have, but a living hope on both sides of the grave. And finally, let's thank Him that all of this is certified, authenticated, and guaranteed to us by Jesus rising from the dead. Amen. And now, let's sing about it. Put the verse up.

What does it say? My what? My hope. My hope.

Isn't that what we're talking about? My hope. Alright, I'm going to try to start us on some key that's close. And then y'all adjust and we go from there. Alright?

Ready? Here we go. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand.

All other ground is sinking sand. Amen. Amen.

You bet. Now, Father, dismiss your people today with the great blessing that you gave Aaron to pray over the people of Israel. You told him to pray like this. Yivarechech Adonai vayishmerecha. May the Lord bless you. May He keep and preserve you.

Yair Adonai panayv eylecha vychunecha. May the Lord cause His face to shine upon you. And may He be gracious to you.

Yisar Adonai panayv eylecha vyaseym lecha shalom. May the Lord turn His face and not His back towards you. And may He give you peace. Lord, peace comes from hope. And thank you that the hope we have in Christ, the hope of the gospel, is a living hope.

Living here and living on the other side of the grave. A living hope. We bless you for that tonight. And praise and thank you for your mercy in giving it to us.

May we abound in this hope. Both as a church family and as individual followers of Christ. So much so that people ask us where our hope comes from. And we can tell them it comes from the risen Christ. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. And what do God's people say? Amen. Amen.