Turn back with me this morning
in your Bibles to 1 Peter and that third chapter. 1 Peter chapter 3. A dear friend of mine, Pastor Scott Richardson, said a long time ago, there are some questions not
worth answering. And he was exactly right. God's people are under no obligation
to answer the foolish questions of this religious world. In the book of Proverbs, he tells
us, go from the presence of a foolish man when thou perceivest not
in him the lips of knowledge. You might remember what our Lord
said concerning the Pharisees. He said, let them alone. They be blind leaders of the
blind, and if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into
the ditch." Just let them alone. Because the precious things of
Christ and His glorious gospel are not to be set before the
profane of this world. They are not to be debated, nor
are they to be disputed with all the unbelieving masses of
false religion. As a matter of fact, our Lord
again gave this sobering statement. concerning this very thing. He
said, Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast
ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under
their feet, and turn again and rend you. Of course, our pearls here, and
this which is holy, is the treasure of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul, writing in Philippians
chapter 3, gave this warning. He said, beware of dogs, beware
of evil workers, Beware of the concision. All of these are warnings
against such things as this. But the Scriptures also teach
us to make judgments and to discern between those who seek to dispute
with God and those who are genuinely interested in the gospel, in
those who truly need the gospel. And so Jude describes it in this
way. He says, and of some have compassion
making a difference, discerning a difference. And so it is in
light of that very thing that the Spirit of God directs Peter
to give us a particular instruction in this fifteenth verse of I
Peter 3. He says, but sanctify the Lord
God in your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to every
man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with
meekness and fear." He says here that the Lord's people are to
sanctify the Lord God in their hearts. And that word sanctify
here means to hallow. You remember what we're taught
in the believer's prayer, which has been called the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name. And it means to declare or to
regard as holy and especially to act and to speak accordingly
of him. In Isaiah 8, he says, sanctify
the Lord of hosts himself, and let him be your fear, and let
him be your dread. In other words, every response
and every word that we are to speak to men, it is to be in
light of and in accordance of God as He is. He says to these in this epistle,
regard Him as the one able to protect you, the one of whom
you are speaking and the one who is able to enable you to
speak. Sanctify the Lord God, or as
it is in the oldest manuscripts, sanctify the Lord the Christ. Regard Him or sanctify or hallow
Him as Jesus Christ the Lord. And while we are not to participate
in the debates of the foolish, he says here that God's people
are to be ready. And that means something like
prepared. We are to prepare ourselves to
be able by the Lord's help to respond, not quickly and not
just off the top of our head, but be ready to respond to the
question that is asked. And we are to remember what he
tells us in the book of Ecclesiastes. He says, Be not rash with thy
mouth, And let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before
God, for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth, therefore let
thy words be few." When we speak, we are to let our words be few. We are to remember that we are
speaking not just to men, but before God. And we are, as he
says in our verse, to speak and to respond in meekness and fear. Not in this foolish boldness,
not in this acid response that people often give. But what he
says here is that we are to speak, and what we are to speak is to
be a response to a question. I know what people say in our
day. They say, Jesus is the answer. But the problem in this day is
that men and women do not know the question. And so our Lord,
if you notice here, directs Peter to tell the Lord's people that
they are to speak most especially in response to a question. And we can discern oftentimes
whether we are to respond by the question itself. Is it simply
a foolish religious question? Is it such things as have been
discussed and debated by men down to the very foolishness
of how many angels could sit on the point of a pen Absolutely not. But what he says
is that we are to answer a question that will be asked at some time
or another by men concerning God and us. Hold your place right there and
turn back to Proverbs chapter 22. Proverbs chapter 22. Now, I know that we are to preach,
we are to make every effort to declare the gospel, to spread
the gospel, but I am inclined to believe, just as the Apostle
is saying here, that the average believer will, in this very way,
be called upon by God to respond to somebody's question. It may be their family. It may
be their co-worker. It may be their friend. It may
be anybody. But look down here in Proverbs
chapter 22 and verse 17. He says, Bow down thine ear,
and hear the words of the wise, and apply thine heart unto my
knowledge. For it is a pleasant thing, if
thou keep them within thee, they shall withal be fitted in thy
lips, that thy trust may be in the Lord. I have made known to
thee this day, even to thee, have I not written to thee excellent
things? in counsels and knowledge." What's
he talking about here? He's talking about receiving
from God and taking to our minds and heart the wisdom of God,
the knowledge of God, the counsels of God which He has written unto
us. And he says, doing that, He will
fit our lips to speak those very things that we have been taught
of God, and look at verse 21, that I might make thee know the
certainty of the words of truth, that thou mightest answer the
words of truth to them that sinned unto thee. In other words, the
answer is not to be our own ideas and notion, but the answer is
to be with the words of truth that God has taught us. And we are to be able and ready
to give an answer, an answer to every man who asks this question. And that's why Paul says, when
he writes to the Colossians, let your speech be always with
grace. Grace. Seasoned with salt, that
ye may know how ye ought to answer every man. Now, what is the question? What is the question that he
says we are to be ready to give an answer to? Well, if you look
back at our verse, it says, but sanctify the Lord God in your
hearts and be ready always to give an answer to every man that
asks you a reason of the hope that is in you. Not all these foolish questions
that men and women ask about whether or not you believe in
the rapture or the pre-trib rapture or whatever it is that men and
women debate on their way to hell. That's not the question. He said, you are to be ready
to give an answer to every man that asks of you, what is your
reason for the hope that is within you? In other words, what is
your hope of salvation? What reason do you and I have
of having any hope of being favored by God. What reason or basis
do we have of having any hope of eternal life, any hope of
heaven, any hope of being saved, and finally entering accepted
into the presence of God Himself? You know, most everybody has
some kind of hope. I don't really believe that you
could even live in this life if you do not entertain in you
some kind of hope. Some say their hope is one thing
and some say their hope is the other thing. But most men and
women by nature entertain some hope in themselves, or they would
think it's a hope, that they will be accepted by God on the
basis of who they are or what they've done. And so the Apostle says that
God's people are to be ready to give reason of the hope that
is within you. Now, what is hope? Well, I suppose if I were to
give you one word whereby to define hope, it would be expectancy. What do you expect with regard
to your soul? What do you expect when you stand
before God? What do you expect to receive
at God's hand when the judgment of God makes manifest everything
and everybody because all things are naked in His sight? What do you expect? Well, false religions almost
all have various kinds and definitions of what they say they have hope
in. But I'd submit to you this morning
that it is really nothing more than a wish. Do you know the
difference in a wish and a hope? Well, a wish is something that
maybe you would like to receive, or a wish is something that you
would like to happen, but you really don't have any basis upon
which to hope that it will happen. We sit around and we wish for
a lot of things, but we don't really expect them to be. You
might sit around and wish all week long for a million dollars,
but you don't really expect to get it, do you? But you see, a hope, a hope is
based on much more. And God says when He spoke to
the people of Israel through the prophet Jeremiah, He said,
Now therefore go to and speak to the men of Judah, and to the
inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the Lord, Behold,
I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you,
return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways
and your doings good.' And they said, there is no hope, but we will
walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination
of his evil heart." Now, with all the wishes that
men and women have in our day, I think it is obvious that our
day and our world is characterized by hopelessness. Hopelessness. And that is because a genuine
hope has to be founded in a solid promise. It's not just what you
say. It's not just what I say. It's not just what somebody thinks. It has to be founded in a solid
promise, and that promise has to come from one who is able
to perform it. In other words, it has to come
from God. David, in his day, heard, as
people do in every day, as the Lord's people do in every day,
every age, questions like this, Wherefore should the heathen
say, Where is now their God? Did he have an answer? Did he
have an answer that's based on the truth of God? Did he have
an answer whereby to respond to those who ask this question? This is his answer. He said,
our God is in the heavens. and he hath done whatsoever he
hath pleased." Our God's in the heavens. He's
not accountable to men. He's not passed around or kicked
around on the earth. Our God is in the heavens, and
He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased. And whatever is going
on in this world right now, it's what our God has pleased. You see, the hope of God's people
is in God himself. Every so often, especially in
the Psalms, The psalmist cries out and he says, For in thee,
O Lord, do I hope thou wilt hear me, O Lord my God. In thee. He says again, speaking
to his own self, I guess you might say, Why art thou cast
down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted within
me? hope thou in God. For I shall yet praise Him who
is the help of my countenance and my God." As a matter of fact,
and you might as well face up to this, Outside of God and His
grace, there is no hope. We sang that song in the beginning,
A Mighty Fortress is Our God. The man that wrote that said
something like this, he said, the gospel is good news But I've
concluded that it's the only good news there is in this world. When Paul wrote to the Ephesians,
he reminded them of the state that they were in without Christ. He said, at that time, you were
without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel
and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and
without God in this world." If we are without God, we are
without hope. And there is no hope outside
of Him. He says, So are the pasts of
all that forget God, and the hypocrite's hope shall perish." What was that? The hypocrite. That's the play actor. That's
like those Pharisees were, who had a great outward pretense
of being pious and of holding on to the Word of God. assembling
to worship God and acting out in their moral character things
that men applauded and praised. But Christ called them hypocrites. Did they go to church? Yes, they
did. Did they read the Bible? Yes,
they did. Did they do all these things?
that men in our day preach that are to be done in order to be
saved, such as doing things? Yes, they did. But he said, the hypocrite's
hope shall perish. In Proverbs again, it says, when
a wicked man die, who's that? Every person outside of Christ.
When a wicked man dieth, his expectation shall perish, and
the hope of unjust men perisheth." That's pretty plain. You see,
the believer's hope is in God's free and sovereign grace. It's in what He gives. It's in what he does. It's not
in what we do, or what we are, or what we accomplish, or any
of the things that are set forth by men as necessary if they're
going to have hope. Hope's not in belonging to a
religious organization. Hope's not in a decision that
men or women make, hopes not in a ritual, or a ceremony, or
a baptism, or in ourselves, or our works, or our feelings, or
anything else, no matter how sincere, no matter how convinced
we are of it. If you stop and think about it,
a person can get into an airplane And they can climb in that airplane
to 30,000 feet. And they can have to their backs
strapped a parachute pack. And they can be forced to leave
that plane and jump out into the open air and come down to
the ground. And they can do all these things with what they think is hope. They can put that parachute pack
on. They can strap it to them. They can make sure it's adjusted
just right. They can grip that ripcord in
their hand. But when they jump out, and there's no parachute in that
pack, What they thought was a hope, an expectancy, grounded on something
that would take care of them, it becomes a wish. And their
expectancy perishes when they perish. And every one of us are kind
of walking, we're flying along. in a plane that we know is most
definitely itself going to crash one of these days. But is there any parachute in
our pack? Is there any real ground of hope? Any real basis for expectancy? He says, the eyes of the wicked
shall fail And they shall not escape, and their hope shall
be as the giving up of the ghost." What does that mean? It'll die.
It'll die. There's no hope in what we don't
do, and there can't be any hope in what we haven't done. He says
what the hope of the hypocrite is, though he hath gain, when
God takes away his soul. What will it be then? But he says this, Now our Lord
Jesus Christ Himself, and God even our Father, which hath loved
us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through
grace." Now, I don't think in a lot of
ways I'm getting any smarter as I get older. Seems like to me that the things
I try to do now, and the things I try to figure out now, the
things I try to remember now, I get less and less able to do
them. But there's one thing I'm growing
more convinced of with every day, and that is the only hope
for me is the grace of God. And that's what Paul says to
the Lord's people. to those who believe on Christ.
He said He's given to us everlasting consolation and good hope through
grace. I promise you this. You can never,
ever, ever, apart from God and apart from the promises of His
Word, ever have any true hope apart from His grace. What is that? That's everything
God does. That's in everything God is. You see, our hope is in the grace
of God and the mercy of God. He says, Behold, the eye of the
Lord is upon them that fear Him, upon them that hope in His mercy. If I were to hope in any of you
for mercy, I might get it and I might not. He says, let Israel hope in the
Lord, for in the Lord there is mercy, and with Him, plenteous
redemption. You say, how do you know that?
Because all true hope is grounded on the Word of God. That's right. It's grounded in the truth, in
the Scriptures that God has given. In Psalm 119, the psalmist says,
Remember the Word unto thy servant, and upon which thou hast caused
me to hope." How does God cause His people to hope? To have a
genuine expectancy of good and blessing? By His Word. You can't walk around this earth,
even as believers, and stay out of the Scripture, stay out of
the Word of God, and expect to have any real sense of hope. He says again, my soul faints
for thy salvation, but I hope in thy Word. I wait for the Lord. My soul
doth wait in His Word. I do hope. As a matter of fact,
this is about the clearest statement of all. Paul writing to the Romans
in chapter 15, he says, for whatsoever things were written aforetime
were written for our learning that we through patience and
comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. You have hope? You see, our hope is in God's
choice. Our hope is in His decision,
in His will, in His work, and not ours. But if we can only speak one
word, If we could only speak one word
as the reason for our hope, it would be Christ. You say, I'm not very good at
explaining things. I'm not very good at answering
questions. Can you say Christ? I know what they'll say. They'll
ask all the foolish, stupid questions that men and women have asked
for generations when you say, just Christ. No,
but I mean, what reason do you have What reason do you have
by what you do, or by what you say, or by what you know, or
by what you are adjoined to? What reason do you have for a
hope, Christ? There was a man that they considered
an ignorant and unlearned man. And some religious people, they
ask him, you know, to give a count, to give an answer, why he should
have hope or why he should be received into the church. He kept answering them the same
thing. He said, I'm just a sinner, nothing
at all. But Jesus Christ is my all in
all. That's my hope. That's our hope. In Joel, the prophet said, the
Lord also shall roar out of Zion and utter His voice from Jerusalem. That's the church. And the heavens
and the earth shall shake, but the Lord will be the hope of
His people and the strength of the children of Israel. What's our hope? Look down at
verse 18. For Christ also hath once suffered
for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God,
being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit. When he writes to Timothy, Paul
identifies himself. He says, Paul, an apostle of
Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord
Jesus Christ, who is our hope? You see, we only hope in God
as we hope in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Paul in Romans
5 says, therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have peace through that blood
that He shed on the cross, by whom also we have access by faith
into this grace wherein we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory
of God. We have hope. And he said it's not that hope
that makes us ashamed. We have reason for hope in that
he loved us and gave himself for us. in that He died for our
sins and put them away. We have hope because He was made
sin for us and we are made the righteousness of God in Him. We have hope because our hope
and all our hope is in He who is God the Son, who took upon Himself every requirement
that was necessary to save us. That we, being justified by His
grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal
life. I want you to listen, or you
can turn back and look at the third verse of 1 Peter 1. First
chapter of 1 Peter 1. He says, Bless be the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant
mercy hath begotten us again, brought us to life unto a lively
or living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now think about this. It says
God has begotten us or brought us
forth to a living hope. How? By the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead. That not only means that because
our sins were laid on Christ and He stood before the justice
of God to bear them in His own body on that tree, the fact that
God has raised Him from the dead, He was delivered for our offenses
and raised again because of our justification. We have hope. But the truth is, our living
hope is in the one who raised from the dead. Any experience
of hope in our hearts and our minds and our conscience is because
of the Living One who put away our sins so completely that the
just God of heaven and earth raised Him from the dead because
they were no more. We have hope. We have hope because God has
given us faith. It's the gift of God. And the
Spirit of God has done a work in our hearts, enabling us to
believe the gospel, to believe what we didn't believe, to believe
what we couldn't believe so long before. You know, faith and hope are
inseparably joined. If you have faith, you have hope. If you have hope, you have faith. Because faith rests in the One
who is our hope. Faith rests not in what I'm going
to do or have done, but in what He's done. Faith rests in not
what I pledge that I'm going to do or resolve that I'm going
to do. Faith rests in what God says. So Paul says, now the God of
hope fill you with all joy and peace
in believing that ye may abound in hope through
the power of the Holy Ghost. Wherever you find the Spirit
of God working in a sinner's heart, You find Him giving them
faith to believe the promises of God, which are yes and amen
in Jesus Christ, and therefore you find hope. He gives us grace to forsake
every false hope, and to trust Christ, and to plead His blood
alone, and to cease from going about to establish a righteousness
of our own, and to rest in Him. Paul wrote to the Colossians,
he said, We heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love
which you have to all the saints for the hope which is laid up
for you in heaven whereof you heard before in the word of the
truth of the gospel. Our hope is not only concerning
what we already have, of what we expect to receive. that eternal
inheritance which He has laid up in heaven for us. And so we
now live by faith in Him and expect to be rewarded of God
based on who Christ is and what He's done. And we, through the
Spirit, Paul says, wait for the hope of the righteousness which
is by faith. We live in hope of eternal life,
which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began. And to
whom God made known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery
among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Now, I can promise you this,
if you get straight off on this as some kind of a mystical hope
based on Christ being in you, Paul prayed this, that Christ
may dwell in your hearts by faith. That's how He dwells in our hearts,
by that faith which He gives that enables us to believe on
Him. This hope in Christ, this assurance
of being saved and blessed eternally because of His sacrifice and
death is not only the great hope of our soul, but it's the only
motivation needed to live to His honor in this world. Who lives for the glory of God
in this world? Those who have hope. Who seeks
to guide their lives in such a way as not to be a reproach
to Him? Those who have hope. He says,
And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself,
even as he is pure. And though we have not seen the
fulfillment of all that God has promised and given us in Christ,
we wait in hope. For we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not
hope, for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?" We've never seen Christ. We weren't
standing there when He hung there on that cross. We, if He was
here, we couldn't see anything with our natural eyes by which
to know He was God or anything out of the ordinary of man. But faith has begotten hope.
And like Paul said, we believe God that it shall be as He has
said. And you know what the amazing
thing is? When you believe God, you can't help but have hope. Oh, I know when you take your
eyes off of Him and you begin to look at yourself and examine
yourselves and try to find any reason for it, you just get filled
with despair. But believing on Christ, believing
on his glorious person and what he has accomplished in and by
his life and death. You can't help but have hope. The vilest, most wretched sinner
has to have hope because we look we look for that blessed hope
and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior,
Jesus Christ. Now, I'll say this. The good hope of God's grace
and mercy in Christ and Him crucified is the only real hope and the
only real reason for any sinner to have hope. He says, the hope of the righteous
shall be gladness, but the expectation of the wicked shall perish. And so to all the Lord's believing
people, he says, be of good courage. And he shall strengthen your
heart, all ye that hope in the Lord. What's your hope? What's your reason? What's my
reason? I have hope. Sometimes my experience
of that hope is less than other times. But that doesn't mean that my
hope ever changes. Because 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. Sanctify the Lord God in your
heart. and be ready always to give an
answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that
is in you with meekness and fear. Our Father, this morning we thank
You for Your Word. We know that so feeble is our
presentation of your word. But even that, Lord, cannot take
away from that which you have said, and said not only in one
place, but again and again and again, had we only ears to hear. We ask in this hour that you
might be pleased to reveal this glorious hope, this salvation
that is in Jesus Christ and Him alone. We pray that You might
take from every one of us every false hope, every false notion,
and grant us faith whereby to believe Your Word. Lord, You are the only reason
Your grace and Your mercy, which You have exhibited, manifested
in the Lord Jesus Christ in His death on the cross, in His death
for sin, that is the only reason that we could ever have hope. May we be enabled to confess
that. May we cast all upon our hope,
the one who died for sinners, the one who's the Savior of sinners,
the one who is the gift of your grace, the gift of righteousness. May we rest in Him. Open our
eyes, our understanding. Give us those words that you've
written, applied to our hearts and put upon our lips, that we
might be able to respond, to be ready with that reason, with
that apologetic as to why we have hope. Jesus Christ and Him
crucified. We thank you for it. And we pray
and ask everything in His name. We thank You for every blessing
and for Your people. Call them out, Lord, for Your
glory as it pleases You. For we ask it in Christ's name.
Amen.