1. Grace, mercy
and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word this Second
Sunday of Easter is taken from 1 Peter 1:3-9, it’s entitled, “A Living Hope,”
dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. Milton Carpenter, former treasurer of
the state of Missouri, had this advice for retired people: (1) have someone
to love; (2) keep busy; and (3) have something to look forward to. These
apply not just to senior citizens but to young and old alike. “Everything
that is done in this world,” says the Great Reformer Martin Luther, “is
done by hope” (Table Talk). Now in the spring of the year, in the
midst of our Covid-19 Pandemic, school children and teens look forward to
Summer plans and warmer weather. People suffering from cabin fever, because of
the cold weather or from our current Stay at Home Order during this
pandemic, are anxious to get out. Those with green thumbs page through seed
catalogs planning to start their gardening. It’s not too late for high school
seniors to select a college to attend in the fall or for June graduates to
start job hunting.
3. St. Peter writes of a living hope
we have in Christ Jesus our Lord in 1Peter 1:3-5 he says, “3Blessed 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, 4to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and
unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5who by God’s power are being
guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” Here, the Apostle Peter
invites the church to join in a hymn of praise for the unique blessings God has
showered on us. He speaks of a “living hope.”
4. Hopes
and predictions that cling to the belief that man is basically good fall flat. The
notion that people do wrong things because they’re not taught properly has been
around for a long time. About 150 years ago Horace Mann, a prominent educator
from Boston, prophesied that crime in our country would in time disappear. Why?
Because, he maintained, there will be more and larger schools that would be
tax-supported. It hasn’t happened. In fact, many schools have become crime ridden. Not intentionally, of course. We have nothing
but praise for patient teachers and administrators who stick it out in less
than desirable settings. A high school graduation speaker, determined to lift
the sights of the class, quoted this bit of poetry: “Believe in God—in thine
own self believe: All that thou hast
hoped for thou shalt achieve.”
5. Believe in God? Yes. Have confidence?
Yes. But the last sentence isn’t true. We hope they didn’t listen to that! But there are “living hopes.” Shortly
after the birth of Christ an old man named Simeon, “was waiting for the
consolation of Israel. . . . It had been revealed to him by the
Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ” (Lk
2:25–26). His hope was living because it came from God and not from his own
wishful thinking.
6. Look at the many people who formed a
parade coming to Jesus with the hope that he would cure their loved ones—Jairus,
whose 12-year-old daughter was dying, to name one. Even while the Savior was on
his way a woman came up from behind and touched him, and her bleeding of 12
years stopped (Lk 8:40–48). The living
hope Peter describes has as its goal an “inheritance that can never
perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven” for us. “Inheritance” conjures
up the picture of tense men and women listening closely to a lawyer read a
deceased one’s last will and testament. Often this eagerly awaited moment
disappoints and may even divide the siblings in days and years to come.
Inheritances may not always be a blessing.
7. There are several lessons to be learned
from our Lord’s best-known parable of the Prodigal Son. One of the
lesser of these is what the younger son did with his share of the inheritance,
which he asked for before his father’s death: he squandered his wealth in
wild living (Lk 15:13). So, it is with earthly inheritances. Because they
aren’t earned, the recipients, unless they are thrifty & frugal, spend the
money quickly. “Easy come, easy go.”
8. It can’t be emphasized enough that we
inherit, not earn, “the kingdom prepared for you” (Mt 25:34). Christ
followed this statement in Matthew 25 with his parable of the sheep and the
goats. We may mistakenly conclude that the works of mercy performed by the
righteous pay their way into heaven: “I was hungry and you gave me something
to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and
you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you
looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me” (Mt 25: 35–36). These
good works provide evidence that true believers who, having received God’s
mercy in Christ, are merciful to others, especially to those in need (Lk 6:36).
But the heavenly inheritance is theirs because they are members of the Father’s
family. St. Paul says in Gal. 3, “You
are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:26).
9. St. Peter also records for us this
morning of the joyous hope we have in our crucified and risen Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. Peter writes in 1 Peter
1:6-9, “6In this you rejoice, though now for
a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7so
that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes
though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and
honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8Though you have not seen
him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and
rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9obtaining
the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
10. Notice how Peter says that this
hope is accompanied by suffering and trials. Now as a Christian don’t always be troubled
because you aren’t always joyful and strong, and therefore think that your
faith is lacking. The 20th
Century Christian Apologist C.S. Lewis writes, “Most of us find it very
difficult to want ‘Heaven’ at all—except insofar as ‘Heaven’ means meeting
again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have
not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world.”
(C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity [New York: Macmillan, 1943,
1945, 1952] 104).
11.
The purpose of the pain that we
experience as Christians is to purify our faith. St. Peter says in our text, “Of
greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire.” So
precious a metal can be dissolved, or it’s seldom found in a pure state and
therefore needs refinement. In either case, the faith God gives won’t be
dissolved but needs purification.
12. Already in this life we enjoy a taste of
“inexpressible and glorious joy,” which is to say, there are no adequate
words to describe it. As the proverb puts it, “Each heart knows its own
bitterness, and no one else can share its joy” (Prov 14:10). Even before
his crucifixion, our Lord Jesus assures his disciples, “You will grieve, but
your grief will turn to joy. . . . Now is the time of your
grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away
your joy. . . . Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be
complete” (Jn 16:20, 22, 24). We pray for many things. Have we ever asked
God for joy?
13. This Easter season as we celebrate the
resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, we have great joy. Peter reminds us today of eternity we have
with Jesus. This is the most distinctive feature of our Christian faith. It
trusts in what Christ has done for us, and not in what we might do or not do
for ourselves or for God for that matter.
It is faith in Jesus. He’s the one we
trust, depend on, hope in, and love. But here’s a curious point. We have not
seen Jesus. We don’t see Him now. Yet, we have faith in Him. Our trust is in
someone we have never set eyes upon, except representatively through the cross
and sacramentally through the Lord’s Supper. “Though you have not seen Him,”
writes Peter, “you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe
in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible” (1:8). Our Lord Jesus
also made this observation: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet
have believed” (John 20:29).
14. That
is us. We haven’t seen Him, but it doesn’t matter. We’re still blessed. “Though
you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe
in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible.” It turns out we’ve hit
upon a feature of faith. The New Testament’s letter to the Hebrews sets out a
definition of faith in the very sense of the word we have been talking about. “Now
faith,” it says, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction
of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
15. Faith
must be this way. It must be so because nobody can see everything. Even Thomas,
who saw Jesus risen from the dead in such an indisputable way, couldn’t see his
conclusion. Thus, Peter ends our text with the words, “the outcome of your
faith, the salvation of your souls” (1:9). Even Thomas, who felt the marks
of the nails in Jesus’ hands, couldn’t see the outcome, the salvation of his
soul. He had to believe that. And we all must hope in and believe it, rather
than see it during this life. Nor can we
see how God’s hand will guide us through every challenge of this life, we have
to believe it by the power of the Holy Spirit. Afterwards, we see how it
happened, but in the midst of challenges and trials, we walk by faith and not
by sight. This is our living hope. Amen.
Now the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts
and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting. Amen.
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