Blog
“The Hope of the Christian”
Categories: M. W. Bassford, Sermons
As you may or may not have heard, in a couple days, this country is going to be having an election. In some ways, all of us are looking forward to this with anticipation. It will be lovely to be done with political ads, at least for the next year or so!
However, at least judging from what I see on Facebook, at least some Christians are considering the election with great concern. They are making, or at least sharing, all these dire predictions about what will happen if the wrong guy wins. I can only conclude from this that if the wrong guy does win, they’ll have some bad moments!
I totally get that. I think it’s praiseworthy for Christians to love their country and be concerned about its future. As God says in Jeremiah 29:7, His people are to seek the welfare of the city where they are in exile.
Nonetheless, we must remember that we are in exile, and that as blessed as we are to live in the United States, this country is not our true homeland. This is not where our future lies. To help us remember that through Election Day and beyond, let’s spend this evening considering the hope of the Christian.
Throughout this lesson, we’re going to be looking at a context from 1 Peter 1, and the first lesson it teaches us is that our hope is A LIVING HOPE. Here, let’s read from 1 Peter 1:1-5. To begin with in this text, let’s consider what it means that as Christians, we have been born into this hope. Peter tells us that Christ rose from the dead so that in imitation of Him, we could be born again. One of the big differences between the old life of sin and the new life in Christ is that the new life is a hopeful life.
Think about it. If you’re outside of Christ, you don’t have much to look forward to. You get a few decades of suffering, you die, and it’s game over. In Christ, though, we look forward to eternal life with Him, a life that is incomparably better than anything any of us ever have experienced.
What’s more, we can be certain of receiving our eternal inheritance. Peter tells us that it is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, and kept in heaven for us. Nothing bad can touch it. We only can lose our inheritance by losing our hope.
In the meantime, Peter informs us that God is guarding us by His power through faith. This does not mean that Christians never suffer nor undergo trial. In fact, Peter will tell us in the very next verse that they do! It does mean, though, that throughout trial and suffering, God will safeguard what matters. In the first century, some Christians died for their faith, but God carried their souls safely through. Today, no matter how bad things get, He will do the same for us.
Second, Peter shows us that we can continue to HOPE THROUGH TRIAL. Consider 1 Peter 1:6-9. Nobody enjoys trial or suffering, but Peter wants us to understand that those things are part of the life of the Christian too. Indeed, sometimes we undergo suffering precisely because we are Christians.
Nonetheless, Peter points to two positive effects of trial. The first is that trial refines us. Suffering changes us, and the greater the suffering, the more extreme the change.
This change can be in either direction. Sometimes, Christians don’t seek the Lord in trial, and they become embittered or even fall away because of it. However, when they do seek the Lord, the trial purifies their character and makes them more like Christ. Some of the most amazing Christians I have ever known had suffered greatly in the past, and they would not have been who they were without the suffering.
The second positive effect of trial is that it glorifies God. As you’re aware, I love going on vacation to national parks and seeing God’s awe-inspiring creation. However, the most awe-inspiring works of God that I’ve ever seen in my life are when some Christian faces a soul-crushing tragedy but stands tall because they are standing on the rock of Jesus Christ. That kind of faith glorifies Him now, and it will continue to glorify Him eternally.
Because of these things, Peter says that we actually ought to rejoice in suffering, especially when the suffering is going to be terminal. Remember: some of the original recipients of this letter were going to face the sword of the executioner or the fangs of the wild beast in the arena. Even to these, Peter—who knew he would be among them soon—is saying, “Rejoice!”
Let’s look at this from our perspective. Right now, thankfully, it doesn’t look likely that most of us are going to be killed by persecution. However, if the world continues, most of us are going to have that conversation with the doctor that he starts by telling us to sit down.
In that day, worldly wisdom says to be upset, maybe even to blame God. The wisdom from above, though, says to rejoice and be thankful. This is not because we’re masochistic people who enjoy the thought of Alzheimer’s or terminal cancer. It is because we have a living hope that death cannot destroy, and in that dark hour, our hope will be all that matters.
Finally, let’s examine how we can learn HOPE FROM THE PROPHETS. This time, our reading is 1 Peter 1:10-12. At first glance, this seems like a big non sequitur. Peter was talking along about our hope and holding on to that hope through trial, then all of a sudden he’s talking about the prophets who foretold the coming of Jesus.
In reality, this isn’t a non sequitur at all. Instead, Peter is identifying one of the most important bases of our hope—the prophetic evidence for Christ. Let’s put it like this. Ever run into a skeptic who wanted to see a miracle to prove that Jesus was the Son of God? Well, the Bible is a miracle we can hold in our hands. In this, I don’t merely mean that the Bible records the evidence of miracles. Instead, it is a book that could not have been created without the intervention of God.
Let’s pick one example. Last week before the Lord’s Supper, Charlie read part of Psalm 22 for us. This reading included Psalm 22:16, where David says, “They pierced my hands and my feet.” We understand this, of course, as a prophecy of the crucifixion of Jesus.
Well, why did David say that? This was not something that happened to him personally. In fact, in his time, it didn’t happen to anybody. The ancient Israelites didn’t crucify people. In the ancient world, only the Romans commonly used that as a method of executing criminals. And yet, David, writing in a world with no crucifixion and no Romans, predicted that God’s servant would be crucified. A thousand years later, this happened to Jesus, carried out not by Jesus’ friends but by His enemies.
Here’s what this leaves us with. David, writing a millennium before Jesus, made a very specific prophecy about how Jesus would die, even though he had no cultural reason to say such a thing. Then, in the fullness of time, Jesus’ enemies kill Him in exactly that way, in their hatred ironically confirming that He was the Messiah.
Frankly, I am at a loss to explain this other than as the handiwork of God. What other explanation possibly could be offered? Nor is Psalm 22:16 the only prophecy like this. There are others, equally specific, right in the same psalm. There are many more in other psalms, and there are still more scattered throughout the Old Testament—hundreds of them in all. Jesus fulfilled all these, and because He did, we can have every confidence that God exists and that Jesus is His Son. Our hope is not foolish. It is certain.
