Now before we turn to the Word
of God, I do want to just say a word about our gathering together
tonight. God willing, we will gather as
usual at 6 o'clock, and I am giving a very urgent appeal that
you make every effort to be present for the ministry of the Word
of God. There's some very practical Depressing concerns that we as
your pastors desire to have addressed from the scriptures Vital to
our life together under the lordship of Christ and so we are urging
you if you have a marginal headache or a marginal Distraction to
press through it and to make every effort to gather with us
as we worship together again this evening God willing now
we turn again this morning to first Peter chapter 1 and 1 Peter
1, and I shall read in your hearing the first four verses of 1 Peter
1. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
to the elect who are sojourners of the dispersion in Pontus,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience
and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, grace to you and
peace be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his great mercy,
begot us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible and
undefiled, and that fades not away, reserved in heaven for
you. Well, as we were reminded in
the previous hour in the adult class, we need the presence of
the spirit who indicted this word and gave it to us through
the mind and pen of the Apostle Peter. We need his presence to
help both preacher and listener that we may profit from that
word. So let us again plead for that needed help. Our Father, we have been thankful
on numerous occasions for the promise of our Lord Jesus that
if we who are evil know how to give good gifts to our children,
how much more will you, our sinless, loving, heavenly Father, delight
to give good gifts, even the gift of the Spirit, to those
of your children who ask. And so we come in our felt sense
of need, asking that your spirit may be given not to make us bark
like dogs or to laugh with gales of irrational humor. We have
asked for the Holy Spirit, not that we may have exotic feelings,
that we may fall into a trance or some mindless state of existence,
but we ask for His presence, that He will take the scales
from our eyes, the dullness from our... for your namesake. Amen. Now many of you know from your
experience in this place and in other places where an effort
is made to responsibly expound the Scriptures that often preachers
find a three-point outline helpful in trying to make clear that
portion of the Word of God that they are expounding and also
to give it some semblance of rhetorical symmetry or balance. Well, in the first century world
of Greek and Roman culture, it was also the custom to use a
three-point outline when you began a letter. And Peter, under
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, uses this morally neutral cultural
fact and begins his letter in the acceptable Greco-Roman fashion
in the first century. He begins, his first point is
to identify himself as the author and the sender of the letter,
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. Then he identifies the recipients
of the letter, in their essential designations they are the elect
sojourners or resident aliens of the dispersion, Then he identifies
them in their geographical location, naming four provinces in Asia
Minor. And then he identifies them in
their fundamental spiritual privileges. They are what they are according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father, within the orbit of the
sanctifying ministry of God the Spirit, and unto obedience and
sprinkling of the blood of God the Son. And then for his third
point of introduction, after identifying himself and then
the recipients of the letter, he gives the ordinary conveyance
of a greeting of goodwill, here saturated with these marvelous
gospel realities, grace to you and peace be multiplied. Now after using that accepted
outline and thoroughly Christianizing it and gospelizing it, Peter
begins the body of his letter in verse 3. Now since Peter was
not interested in composing a literary masterpiece to be admired by
professional literary critics, nor was he concerned to compose
an artistic letter that would be analyzed by logicians and
rhetoricians, It should not surprise us that I have not found any
two commentators of the 15 or more commentaries that I consult
in preparing these expository messages, I have found no two
commentaries agreeing as to how to outline 1 Peter. Unlike the
Book of Romans, where there's a good bit of consensus in outlining
it, commentators scratch their heads and come up with all kinds
of different outlines for 1 Peter. But one thing is clear, all of
them recognize that when he begins his letter in verse 3, the body
of the letter proper, he breaks in to this eulogy, this speaking
well of God, from verse 3 through verse 12, which forms the very
foundation of the entire epistle. Peter writes his compact, passionate
pastoral exhortation, intending not that it would be critically
analyzed, but joyfully assimilated by suffering saints. That's the
burden of his heart. He says that in chapter 5 and
verse 12. He says, I have written unto
you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of
God. Stand fast therein. This is an
intensely passionate, compact, pastoral exhortation to these
suffering saints, marking out the path of grace, the grace
of God that will be sufficient for all their trials, the grace
of God that brings the pattern of obligation to live and to
walk as pilgrims as they make their way to the celestial city. And as I've already indicated,
he begins the letter by drawing the attention of his readers
away from themselves, away from their distressing circumstances,
and fastens the eyes of their souls upon God himself and upon
the blessings of his grace. before he begins to instruct
these elect sojourners of the dispersion how they are to conduct
themselves in their earthly pilgrimage in an evil world, his desirous
of setting before them their great possessions and privileges
as those who are foreknown by God the Father, sanctified by
God the Spirit, and brought into obedience and sprinkling of the
blood of God the Son. And Peter does this because he
understands and is applying this fundamental principle of the
Christian life. And that principle is this. We
must understand and believe what we possess in Christ if we are
to embrace and do what is required of us by Christ. Now that's not just an effort
to turn out a clever turn phrase. Do you grasp the significance
of what I've just stated? Peter understands this vital
principle of the Christian life. that we must understand and believe
what we possess in Christ if we are to embrace and do what
is required of us by Christ. Perhaps you've heard people say,
God's imperatives follow God's indicatives. That's just another
way of saying the same thing. An indicative is a statement
of what is. And God desires that we understand
what is, what we are in Christ, that we might embrace and be
enabled to do what is required of us by Christ, that is, the
imperatives. Peter will have plenty of imperatives. Anyone who's uncomfortable with
divine imperatives will be very uncomfortable with the letter
of 1 Peter from verse 13 of chapter 1 to the end of the entire epistle. You'll have an irksome relationship
to 1 Peter if you don't like divine imperatives, because Peter
begins in verse 13 with imperatives. Wherefore, girding up the loins
of your mind, be sober, Set your hope perfectly on the grace that
is to be brought to you. As children of obedience, not
fashioning yourselves as he who called you is holy, be ye holy,
ye shall be holy. Imperative after imperative follows
as marching orders for pilgrims on their way to a better place.
But undergirding and supporting all of the imperatives and giving
flavor and a sweet fragrance of gospel motivation to those
imperatives are the indicatives of verses 3 through 12. in this
amazing paragraph in which Peter sets before us some of the major
dimensions of what we are and what we possess in Christ before
he sets before us in very specific ways what is required of us by
Christ. And as Peter does this, you'll
notice that he does not approach this matter in the cold, calculating
manner of someone simply determined to lay out in an analytical way
a list of the privileges of a believer in Christ. As Peter is meditating
upon those truths that he desires to convey to these elect sojourners
of the dispersion, As he turns over in his own mind and his
own spirit what he wants to convey to them of their privileges in
Christ, of what they are by the grace of Christ, he does not
begin with explanation and say, God, who is the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, has, according to his mercy, begotten us again
unto a living hope. He does not take the posture
of mere explanation, but as his own spirit feels the friction
of the truth, and remember who Peter is, This intense, volatile
man made what he was made by God's sovereign disposition in
his mother's womb, fashioned and shaped by the grace of Christ
as we traced out the operations of that grace in many major epochs
of his life. With the psalmist Peter could
say, while I was musing, the fire burned. And as the fire
burned within his own breast, As he meditates upon the truths
that he wants to convey to these elect sojourners, already in
the midst of suffering, already feeling oppression and opposition,
and even more to come, think it not strange concerning the
fiery trial which is to try you, he breaks out in eulogy, and
the first word in the body of his epistle is, Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He breaks out in this
eulogy, this blessing of God. To bless God, as you've been
told many times, is not to give anything to God, to confer anything
upon God, but it is to speak well of God. It is to recognize
that in God which is worthy of our praise, that which is worthy
of all His creatures to speak well of Him. And if you have
a New King James Version or the old ASB, you'll notice that the
word be is in italics. There is no verb in Peter's eulogy. He breaks out saying, blessed
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And some suggest
that we ought to think of the verb to be being supplied in
the indicative. Some say, no, it ought to be
an imperative. Let God be praised. Some say
it ought to be an optive. May God be praised. I'm satisfied
that the Holy Ghost gave us blessed the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ. It's an exact parallel linguistically
with Paul's eulogy in Ephesians 1 in verse 3 and in 2nd Corinthians
1 in verse 3, showing that this was not some strange and abnormal
way of expressing this passionate desire to speak well of God. And as he speaks well of God,
it is evident that the central concern that has precipitated
this eulogy in his own heart, and now comes through his pen,
is that Peter has been contemplating some of the major dimensions
of the great salvation that he, along with these elect sojourners
of the dispersion there in Asia Minor, possess in common. For as his eulogy begins, you
will notice he says, this is the God who has begotten us again
unto a living hope. So let us consider together,
as time permits, verses 3 and 4 of this tremendous eulogy and
plead with God that before we are done, something not only
of Peter's understanding, but of the fire and of the passion
of true devotion to God will be kindled within our own hearts. And first of all, we're directed
to the author of this great salvation. The author of this great salvation. All of the blessings of every
facet and every particular aspect of this salvation is to be directed
to God himself and to God alone because he is its sole author. Blessed the God. But you'll notice
is not God in some nebulous, undefined category, but he eulogizes
that God who is to be identified as the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ. And when we read our English
translations, we are tempted to think that Lord Jesus Christ
are three parts of his full, formal identification. but to
sense the nuance of the original, we might render it, blessed the
God and Father of the Lord of us, who is Jesus Christ. Is that just to be taken as,
well, a convenient way of saying God? You can call Him the God
and Father of the Lord Jesus. You can call Him God, the Creator
of heaven and earth. You can call Him God who fills
heaven and earth. No, Peter had a very distinct
purpose in saying, the God whom I eulogize, The God concerning
whom I cannot but speak well, the God upon whom I cannot but
heap praises in the contemplation of His salvation, is the God
who is to be identified as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Now, what's the significance
of that construction? Well, first of all, it is a precise
statement of the relationship of these two persons within the
Trinity. Trinitarian theology has already
confronted us in the greeting of this letter. Peter writes
to those elect sojourners as those who have come within the
orbit of the distinct foreknowledge of God the Father, verse 2, within
the realm of the sanctifying operations of God the Spirit,
and into a relationship of obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ, God the Son. You see, the doctrine of the
Trinity does not come to us formally expounded on the pages of the
New Testament. It is just found strewn there
in the religious consciousness of the New Covenant community.
And so as Peter begins his eulogy, his speaking well of God, he
has no problem identifying this God as the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, thereby giving us a precise statement
of the relationship of these two persons in the Trinity, particularly
as God has moved out in grace for the salvation of sinners.
You see, God's not interested in scratching our metaphysical
itches. What are the essential, eternal,
ontological, inter-Trinitarian relationships of the Father,
Son, and the Spirit? May I say it reverently, the
Bible could care less about some of those questions. But as God
has moved in grace to constitute a community of his people in
those four Roman provinces in Asia Minor, and Peter writes
to them, his heart is caught up in this blessing of the God
who is their God and his God, and he's to be identified as
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And what does that
mean? Well, it means that the only
God who exists, is the God who is both the God of our Lord Jesus
Christ and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that's
the very terminology our Lord used, you remember, in John 20
and verse 17. In John 20 and in verse 17, we
have the record of our Lord speaking, and he says, Touch me not, for
I am not yet ascended unto thee, Father, But go to my brethren
and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and
my God and your God." Here our Lord Jesus unashamedly identifies
His relationship to God in this way. He is my Father and He is
my God. And a number of the old writers
set forth the truth in this succinct little way, and I found it helpful.
From the incarnation onward, God was the God of our Lord Jesus
Christ. It points to the great truth,
opened up in passages such as Philippians 2, expanded upon
in other dimensions in 1 Corinthians 15, that in the assumption of
a true human soul and body, the second person of the Godhead,
the eternal Word who becomes flesh, voluntarily takes a place
of subordination to his Father. He does not cease to be God. God is immutable and unchangeable,
all three persons of the Godhead. But when the Eternal Word takes
humanity to Himself, He chooses to take the form of a servant. And so throughout His life, He
continually says, I do always the things that please my Father. I don't speak my own words. I
don't do my own works. I have come down from heaven
to do the will of Him that sent me. And so in that sense, God
was his God. He loved him with all his heart,
mind, soul, and strength. He obeys him implicitly with
every fiber of his being. And yet as to his beauty, God
was his Father from all eternity. You remember in the days of his
flesh when he claimed unique sonship. The Jews understood
that claim, not as a derivation of life, but as a communion of
life in the very divine essence. They took up stones to stone
him because, he said, God was his father, making himself equal
with God. So when Peter writes, in his
opening words, about to shine the floodlight on some facets
of what these elect sojourners possess in Christ, he breaks
out in a eulogy addressed to this God, who is the God and
Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so it is a precise statement
of this relationship of these two persons in the Trinity. He
was the God of our Lord Jesus Christ from His incarnation.
He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ from eternity. But further, this is a compact
statement of the only manner in which God is now savingly
revealed to men. God's self-revelation has been
progressive. You don't look for a clear revelation
of the doctrine of the Trinity in the book of Genesis. You may
find certain foreshadowings looking back from the full light of the
New Testament. We have reason to believe that
that strange personage who comes early in the biblical record
called the angel of the Lord may well have been a pre-incarnate
manifestation of the second person of the Godhead, our Lord Jesus.
But we see that looking back from the full light of the New
Testament. But now that in the fullness of the times God has
sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, and he has
dwelt among us, and we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only
begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, by identifying
this author of this great salvation as the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, Peter is underscoring that the only manner in which
God is now revealed to us in a saving way is in the person
and in the work of his Son and in the unique relationship of
the Son to the Father and the Father to the Son. This is why
our Lord said, in words that should immediately come to mind
from our recent studies in John 17, this is life eternal, that
they may know Thee, the only true God, full stop, no, and
Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent. What is eternal life? Where is it to be found? In the
saving knowledge of God and of His Son. And there is no saving
knowledge of the one true and living God apart from the Son. That's why Jesus could say, I
am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father
except By me. Jesus could say in John 5, if
you do not honor the Son, even as you honor the Father, you
do not honor the Father. You see, there is no honoring
of God who has made his full and final revelation of himself
in Christ by taking that revelation and acting as though it never
occurred. And so when Peter eulogizes the one true and living God as
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, he is setting before
us in this compact statement the only manner in which God
is now savingly revealed to any of the sons of men. And remember
what these words would mean coming from Peter's pen. Remember the
great confession? Who do men say I am? This, that,
and the other? Who do you say that I am?" And
Peter, speaking for the others, said, You are the Christ, the
Anointed One, the long-promised Messiah. You are the Christ,
the Son of the living God. So when Peter says, All blessing,
all good speaking of God is the God who is the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ. Poured into that is all the rich
Christology of the Gospel records as it unfolds in that very confession
of Peter and the other disciples. To whom else can we go? You alone
have the words of eternal life. No wonder Peter in his preaching
could say, neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no
other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be
saved. You see, in that sense, we are
not Jehovah's witnesses. We are witnesses of Jehovah Jesus. We are not witnesses of God in
some nebulous way, but the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ. And in the use of this designation
of God, it is also a clear statement concerning the only way in which
God becomes the father of sinful men and women. What's the only
way God becomes the father of sinful men and women? Peter assumes
that these believers know that God is their father. Verse 17
of this first chapter, if you call on him as father, Assuming
they do, he assumes that when they pray, the great name they
will use again and again in addressing the deity is our Father who is
in the heavens. Well, how did God become their
Father? Well, you see, by this statement,
blessed the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, he doesn't
say blessed the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. That would be true. He is the
God and Father of the Lord Jesus. Jesus said so in John 20, 17.
But he said, Blessed be God, the God and Father of our Lord,
who is Jesus the Christ. Our Lord. We've embraced him
as our God. We have embraced Him as our sovereign
Savior. We've embraced Him in all the
revelation of who He is as Jesus who saves from sin, anointed
Messiah, God's final prophet, priest, and king. He is our Father
because Jesus is our Lord, blessed, worthy of praise, ascription
of honor to the God and Father of our Lord. Jesus Christ. Now that's the author of this
great salvation. And he wants these humble slave
Christians, some of them, oppressed wives who have unconverted husbands,
some of them, Those who are in the midst of a hostile society
who think it's strange that they no longer party and carouse with
their old buddies? Chapter 4. What does he want
them to know as he breaks out in this eulogy, this ascription
of honor and praise to God? He wants them to be firmly grounded
in the reality that the God who is the author of every facet
of their salvation is this God who is the God and Father. of our Lord Jesus Christ. But then, secondly, Peter points
them to what we might call the source or the pattern of this
great salvation. The author is the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. What is the source or pattern? Look at the text. Blessed the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his
great mercy has begotten us again. It was according to his great
mercy. And the particular preposition
that Peter uses If we were to press it to its more definitive
concept, it means along the line of something, by the norm or
standard of something. So this great salvation, which
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the sole author,
is one which comes to us taking all of its dimensions and contours,
determined by the great mercy of God. It is according to his
great mercy. Well, that raises the question,
what is mercy? And the best definition I've come across, and I find
it very helpful to use as a working definition, mercy is pity expressed
in suitable action to relieve misery. Mercy is pity expressed
in suitable action to relieve misery. For example, when the
blind beggar in the gospel records hears that Jesus is coming by
and he cries out, have mercy upon me, thou son of David. What does he want? Does he want
Jesus just to take cognizance of his miserable condition and
to feel something toward him? No. He wants the Lord Jesus to
be aware of his condition, to be moved at the sight of his
condition, but to put forth his gracious power to relieve his
miserable condition of blindness. Have mercy, O son of David, turn
to me with pity, with pity that will express itself in appropriate
action to relieve my misery. And so the assumption is that
all of these designated as elect sojourners of the dispersion,
who are what they are according to God's foreknowledge and the
sanctifying work of the Spirit unto a life of obedience and
ongoing sprinkling of the blood of Jesus, that by nature they
were a miserable bunch. They were steeped in misery,
misery that needed mercy. But so deep was the misery it
needed great mercy. And so Peter says, great mercy
has determined the shape and the contours of this great salvation. Blessed the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy, This is the
same emphasis Paul gives in Ephesians 2. After describing what we are
by nature, dead, bound by the devil, bound by our sins, bound
by the course of this world, he writes in verse 4, but God,
who is rich in mercy, according to his great love wherewith he
loved us. Titus 3 and verse 5, not by works
of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy. He saved us by the washing of
regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. Surely it was reflection
upon this reality that triggered the words of Wesley in a hymn
I wish we had in our hymn book. Depth of mercy. Can there be
mercy still reserved for me? Can my God, his wrath, forbear
me, the chief of sinners, spare? depth of mercy? Can there be
mercy still reserved for me? Can my God, His wrath forbear,
me, the chief of sinners, spare? You see, mercy means nothing
to someone smug in his own sense of self-satisfaction and innocence. Blind beggars who look out with
their sightless eyes and see nothing but midnight wherever
they look, whenever they look, when they cry, Son of David,
have mercy. Mercy means something to one
in felt misery. And Peter assumes that when he
writes to these elect sojourners there in Asia Minor, the mention
of mercy will strike a deep chord within their hearts. No unfallen
angel ever pleaded for mercy. It needs no mercy. Adam, before
his tragic fall, needed no mercy. But all of the subsequent sons
and daughters of Adam are utterly without hope, apart from great
mercy. And so when Peter has pointed
us to that sole author of our great salvation, he then directs
our attention to the source or pattern of that great salvation. And then thirdly, he directs
our attention to the initiation into this great salvation, the
author of it, God and father of our Lord Jesus, the source
and pattern of it, great mercy, and how are we initiated into
it? By what means do we actually
come to begin to enjoy this great salvation? Well, Peter uses the
words, this is the God who has begotten us again. He has begotten us again. And those words, begotten us
again, are an effort to translate one word in the original And
it's found only here and in verse 23 in the New Testament. Look
at verse 23. Having been begotten again. not of corruptible seed, but
of incorruptible through the word of God, which lives and
abides." Only two places this particular word is used in the
New Testament. But it's obvious from Peter's
use of it here, and in particular in verse 23, that he's referring
to the threshold of entrance into Christian life and experience. And in that sense, it is a word
parallel to the word our Lord Jesus uses in John 3 when he
said to Nicodemus, except a man be born again, he cannot see
the kingdom of God. Except one be born of water and
of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. It is parallel
to James' use when he says in James 1.18, of his own will he
brought us forth to be a kind, by the word of truth, to be a
kind of first fruits of his creature. It is parallel to Paul's use
of the term new creation, Ephesians 2.10, we are his workmanship,
created anew in Christ Jesus. 2 Corinthians 5.17, if any man
in Christ, a new creation. Galatians 6.15, neither circumcision
or uncircumcision avails anything but a new creation. Or the term that John uses, being
born of God, 1 John 5.1. or another Pauline term, being
made alive together with Christ, Colossians 2.13. These are all
parallel terms that point us to the initiation into this great
salvation. And how are we initiated into
it? Peter assumes that no one possessed
it by nature. No one simply grew into it by
the influences of society, religious or non-religious, or that anyone
brought himself into it. No one here borned himself. You were born. You were passive. You were brought forth. Your
mother gave birth to you. And he is eulogizing God who
has begotten us again. He's not eulogizing the people
because they made their decision for Christ. He's not eulogizing
the people because they did King Jesus a favor by nodding their
heads to Him. He's blessing the God who has
begotten them again. That is, He has initiated them
into this great salvation by nothing less than the gracious,
powerful intrusion of spiritual life. You have been begotten
again. Now I want to make an application
here and ask you this question. Could Peter assume that there
is something about you that defies all explanation? No other explanation
will wash, but that Almighty God has birthed you with his
own almighty, gracious, life-giving power. For you see, God never
brings forth a stillborn child that has no heartbeat, and has
no breathing, has no appetite. All God's newborn children are
brought forth alive and kicking. They have a heart that beats
with love for Christ. Look at verse 8. Whom having
not seen, you love. These who have been brought forth,
they have a heart that beats with love for Christ. They have
lungs that breathe with aspirations to please God. For when he calls
upon them as obedient children," he says, now, if eventually you
grow enough and you think that God holds out enough carrots,
you may decide to take Christ as more than Savior, take Him
as Lord and begin to know, he says, as obedient children. He says, you are real children
of God. You've been brought forth not
only with a heart that beats with love to Christ, but lungs
that tant and yearn to please Christ. And you've got spiritual
bellies that hunger for the Word of God. Chapter 2, as newborn
babes long yearn for the sincere milk of the Word. You see, Peter
assumes that this divine begetting is not some little chill and
thrill up and down the spine and experience at the front of
a church or in a big group meeting where you get some tingles. It
is God imparting His own gracious, life-transforming grace into
the heart and life of a sinner. This initiation, though it may
not have been dramatic in its circumstances, was all-encompassing
in its effects. And that's all that matters,
folks. Jesus said the ways of the Spirit are like the wind.
It blows where it wills. You can't say where it comes,
where it goes, but you see the effect of it. And nowhere does
the Bible say that we have a right to set up a complex of circumstances
that must attend the divine begetting, psychologically and emotionally,
or even how much truth must be known at the point of the divine
begetting, or whether we ever know precisely when the divine
begetting occurred. But that there is much about
us that defies any other explanation. but that we have been birthed
by God with graciously imparted spiritual life to be satisfied
with anything less is to do so at the peril of your souls. The
initiation they all had into this great salvation that which
caused them now to be identified as elect sojourners of the dispersion,
resident aliens whose hearts are no longer wedded to this
world, whose true homeland is in another world. Those who,
having been known and loved and marked out by the Father, brought
into the realm of the sanctifying influence of the Spirit, unto
a life of obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Christ, they
were initiated into all of this. by the divine begetting. But
then, having looked at the author of this great salvation, the
source, the initiation into it, now, fourthly, note with me the
two dominant features of this great salvation that Peter highlights. Two dominant
features. And what are they? He says that
this great and glorious God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ,
according to his great mercy, begot us again, notice, unto
a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
unto an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that fades not
away, reserved in heaven for you. We are begotten again unto
a living hope and unto a glorious inheritance. We are begotten
unto something we now possess, a living hope. We are begotten
unto something we shall yet possess, a glorious inheritance. The two
unto prepositional phrases set before us two dominant features
of this great salvation. Let's attempt to unpack them
briefly. First of all, feature number one, a living hope. Now, you kids, when you use the
word hope, how do you mostly use it? Don't you use it as sort
of a strong wish? Oh boy, I hope. We can do this
or do that, or I hope we can have, and then you mention your
favorite meal, or I hope we can go here on our vacation. What
you mean is I have a strong wish. You have no intimation yet that
mom's going to fix the meal you'd like to have. And dad hasn't
sat the family down and says, hey, kids, when we go on a vacation
next year, we've got two choices, this and that, and your hope.
No, you have no basic. You just have thought up in your
own sweet little head. It would be really nice to eat
that, have this, go there, do that. That's the way we use the
word hope. Well, as we were reminded this
morning, we must not impose the 20th century meaning of an English
word upon the significance of biblical words and how they are
used in the Bible. And when we come to the word
hope in the New Testament, That concept of hope is far more than
strong, wishful thinking or deep desire. Hope in the Bible is
nothing less than a confident, patient waiting for a divinely
promised blessing. It is a confident, patient waiting,
not for something I said might be nice if I could have, or might
be desirable for me to attain, it is a patient, confident waiting
for a divinely promised blessing." Now, Peter says, as a result
of the divine begetting, these elect sojourners of the dispersion
in Asia Minor have a hope that is suffused with life. You have been begotten again
unto a living hope. It is not a false, deceptive,
misty, delusive hope that will end in death. But it is a hope
that is suffused with life. It is in the possession of the
divine life that you have this divine hope. God has declared
that there is an infallible, indefectible connection between
the experience of the new birth and everyone who experiences
it arriving in the new heavens and the new earth. There's not
a person who's ever known the new birth! will not be resplendent
with all the glory of a glorified body and spirit in the new heavens
and the new earth. In his second epistle, Peter
underscores that truth taught many places in scripture, but
in chapter 3 of his second epistle, notice how he expresses it. Verse
13, But according to his promise, not our wishful thinking, not
our sanctified yearnings and our mystical flights of aspiration. No, but according to His promise,
we look for a new heavens and a new earth wherein dwells righteousness. His promise undergirds our looking,
and our looking is the looking of a living hope. having no new
birth, I shall know the blessedness of the new heavens and the new
earth. The God who has affected the
one will infallibly affect the other and bring all of his newborn
ones into his new heavens and into his new earth. And what
lies at the foundation of this living hope? Well, he tells us
And the emphasis has fallen in one of our hymns this morning.
Notice what lies at the foundation of that living hope is the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead. He has begotten us again onto
this feature number one, a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead. Now, remember, who's writing
this? Peter. Resurrection was not a philosophical
concept to Peter. Go tell the disciples and Peter. It's Peter who runs. Peter who
enters in. Peter who sees the empty tomb. Peter who is visited again and
again by the risen Christ. Peter who sees him ascend to
the right hand of the Father. So when Peter writes resurrection
of Jesus Christ, he's not writing about a religious concept. He's
writing about an empirical fact of human history. And he says
that we are begotten unto this living hope in connection with,
through, on the basis of the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead. Now, what's the connection between
the resurrection of the Lord Jesus as a historical fact in
the history of redemption and a living hope? Well, probably
two possibilities, and I would not be dogmatic about either.
Perhaps he's thinking of the resurrection as the crowning,
redemptive triumph of the Lord Jesus. So when he says we have
a living hope by the resurrection, he's focusing upon the resurrection
as that crowning, redemptive act of our Lord Jesus. Assumed
in that is he was put to death. Assumed in that, he was a true
man. You see, to say the resurrection
of Jesus the Christ, Jesus Messiah, Son of the living God, is to
subsume in that all of his previous redemptive acts. So he may be
saying, our living hope rests down on the redemptive activity
of Jesus Christ. That activity culminated in his
resurrection. Or it may be that what Peter
is saying and thinking is that the resurrection is the crowning
redemptive pattern. What is the pattern for our redemption? The pattern is what happened
to Christ. He died. He was raised. The scripture
says he was raised firstfruits of them that sleep, 1 Corinthians
15. When you gathered in the firstfruits, it was a pledge
that the full harvest was coming. Christ's resurrection as the
representative of his people was not an act complete in itself. It was complete for him to accomplish
our redemption. But the redemption he accomplished
is not complete until the grave spews me out at the last day. And I am found in the light of
1 Thessalonians chapter 4 with all of the saints of all ages,
caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air,
and so shall we ever be with the Lord. So what does Peter
say? We've been begotten again unto a living hope, a living
hope that rests down upon the redemptive activity of Christ,
culminated in His resurrection? Or is He saying, our living hope,
that this world is not all there is, that I have this deep, confident,
patient expectancy for all that God has promised in the age to
come, and it must be mine because Christ was raised firstfruits
of them that sleep. In either case, or in both cases,
for both are taught in the Scripture, there is this intimate connection
between a living hope and the resurrection of Christ. Therefore,
Paul can say, if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, our
preaching is a bunch of hogwash, let's go out and party, eat,
drink, tomorrow we die. A living hope has an umbilical
cord planted in that empty tomb. in Jerusalem. That's the first
dominant feature, a living hope, but then the second feature,
a glorious inheritance. We are not only begotten unto
a living hope, But we are begotten again unto an inheritance, incorruptible,
undefiled, that fades not away, reserved in heaven for you. A
glorious inheritance. Our present possession, a living
hope. Our future possession, a glorious
inheritance. Now, the word inheritance, what's
that mean? Well, in the Scriptures, it's used in the way we use it
sometimes. An inheritance is goods, money,
or property legally conferred upon an heir. H-E-I-R, upon an
heir. It's used that way in Mark 12,
7, Luke 12, 13. Remember the man came to Jesus
and said, hey, there's been a death in the family. There's an inheritance. I want you to sort out this matter
between my brother and me that we divide the inheritance. What
was the inheritance? It was goods, money, or property
legally conferred upon an heir. And in this case, apparently
two heirs, and one was trying to cheat the other. But remember
now, Peter's writing as a Jew. And the word inheritance for
the Jew was literally soaked, its tap roots were soaked in
the Old Testament. As the Jews were wandering through
the wilderness, what was the hope that gleamed in their eyes?
They knew the promise made to their father Abraham, that not
only would his seed be as the sand of the sea and the stars
of heaven, but there would be a land given. And the land would
be given by Yahweh, by Jehovah, God of the covenant, as an inheritance. And if you just take your concordance
this afternoon for ten minutes and look up inheritance in a
Strong's or Young's concordance, you'll find the word again and
again in the Old Testament. Canaan was the inheritance. It
was that which God was bequeathing to His people. And so that matter
of inheritance to Peter surely went beyond the mere ordinary
significance in any Greek or Roman home. He's writing as a
Jew, and the whole concept of inheritance is rich with these
Old Testament connotations. But then he wants to tell us
the characteristics of these inheritance, and some commentators,
and I believe there's something to say for it, They say he deliberately
uses words that contrast what happened with Israel's inheritance
in the land of Canaan and what will happen to the inheritance
in these alien sojourners who have no present earthly dwelling
place. But be that as it may, what he
does is he uses three adjectives All of which begin with what
we call the alpha privative. You say someone is moral, and
if they're not moral you say they're amoral or amoral. He
uses three of these. He can better describe the inheritance
by telling us what it isn't. And isn't that so often true
when we try to speak of things that transcend our present experience? It's better to say heaven is
not this and not that and not this than to try to say what
it is. And that's what Peter does. He says, we've been begotten
to an inheritance, and then he uses these three adjectives.
Look at them. He says, first of all, it's incorruptible. It
is imperishable. Right now, some of you who are
sports fans, you know this is called the Grapefruit League
time. Major League ball clubs are gathering at their various
places in Florida. And it's also the time when people
who have relatives up north like to show their affection and that
they're thinking about by sending Florida grapefruit and oranges.
Now, suppose you had a friend in the Mets training camp down
in Port St. Lucie, I think that they still meet there, and he
sends you a box of baseballs. Well, whatever you put on the
outside of the box, you wouldn't have to put perishable goods.
The baseballs can sit in your basement for years and they may
just get a little bit yellow. The leather will yellow a little
bit, but basically they're non-perishable. But if someone sends you a box
of grapefruit, you better not leave them there till next fall.
They are perishable. They are a commodity that is
corruptible. Now, Peter says, our inheritance
is incorruptible. It has stamped all over it non-perishable
goods. He uses the word for perishable
in verse 18 of this very letter of chapter 1, knowing that you
were redeemed, not with, here's our word without that little
letter in front that negates it, not with corruptible things,
and look what he describes as corruptible, silver and gold.
Even silver and gold are perishable and corruptible. You can grind
them up into powder and throw them to the four winds, cast
them into the depths of the sea. But our inheritance is incorruptible. And this word incorruptible in
the New Testament is used to describe God. In Romans 1.23,
He's the incorruptible, non-perishable God. the crown that awaits the
successful warrior and battler in the Christian warfare and
race, 1 Corinthians 9.25, the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians
15.32, and it also refers to the Word of God right here in
verse 23 of chapter 1. It is this incorruptible seed
of the Word of God. That's our inheritance. It is
non-corruptible. It is imperishable. No wrinkles
of time will ever be upon its brow. No seeds of death are in
it waiting to sprout and carry it down to the grave. It is an
imperishable inheritance, then it's undefiled. This is a word
used of our Lord Jesus as our great High Priest in Hebrews
7.25. He ever lives to make intercession for us, and what is he in the
very essence of his being? We are told that our great High
Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, is such a High Priest that became
us wholly guileless. Here it is, undefiled, unstained
by sin in any way. And our inheritance is said to
be not only imperishable, but undefiled. There will be nothing
of sin to stain the glory of it. And then it's called unfaithy. That's the only time this word
is used in the New Testament. You've got a sister word or a
cousin word used in chapter 5 in verse 4 about a woman's meek
and quiet spirit. And it's a cousin to this, but
this is the only time the word is used. And in seeking to get
a handle on it, I didn't realize that there is an English word
that is a transliteration of it. If you wanted to talk about
a mythical flower that never faded, you know what you would
call that flower? An amaranthine flower. And amaranth is just
a transliteration of the Greek word. And in ancient poetry,
there was a flower that never faded. And as I was trying to
think, what would it be to have a flower that never faded? My
mind began to go into gear and I said, well, suppose, it's only
a supposition, I don't think I've ever done this to my shame.
Suppose I were to get my wife a dozen long stem cut roses for
her next birthday. I do remember her birthday. She's
here to bear witness to that. And you've seen what happens
when you get beautiful flowers in the home. They sit there in
the vase or the vase, however you pronounce it. And as they
open up into their full glory, you say, oh, if I could capture
them at that point, and you come down the next morning and see,
and they hold it for a day, and then you come the next day, and
you begin to see a little bit of withering in the outer leaves.
And then you may pluck them off so that the inner leaves that
are still opening up are the thing that you cut, and you pluck
off the ones that are dying. But after a week, they've had
it. Now imagine A dozen long stem
roses that came to that peak expression of their beauty. You
came down a week later and they were right there. A month later,
precisely the same. A year later, no fading, no wilting,
precisely the same. Then you would describe it as
an unfading vase of long stem roses. That's the word Peter
uses. And he says, our inheritance is unfading. So put the three together and
what do you have? We have an inheritance that is untouched
by death or anything pertaining to it, imperishable, unstained
by evil. It is absolutely, irrevocably
undefiled and it is unimpaired by time. It is unfading. And as though that's not enough,
look what Peter does. As a capstone over all this,
he moves from using adjectives and he uses a verbal construction
in order to say, over all of these things, it is an inheritance
already and continually reserved in heaven for you. It is one
that in its fourth characteristic is permanently reserved. And the word reserved is used
in a wide spectrum of ways in the New Testament. To guard,
to watch over, to reserve, to preserve. And the tense means
it's already reserved and that reservation continues and will
never cease. It is imperishable. undefiled, unfading, and by the
gracious activity of God it is already and continues to be guarded
and preserved where? Not here, in the place where
we must say with the hymn writer, change and decay in all around
I see. But Peter says reserved in heaven,
and then notice what the text says, for the first time, he
uses a second person plural, it's reserved for you. For you! For you. First time
he addresses them that way. It's reserved for you. All of you elect sojourners of
the dispersion there in those Roman provinces. You slaves who
have unreasonable masters. You citizens seeking to live
under governments that at times it's difficult to respect. And
I'm going to tell you to honor the king. And I'm going to tell
you to render obedience to all have a right to claim that obedience
of you. You wives who have to live with
unconverted husbands with all of their unreasonable expectations,
and I'm going to call upon you nonetheless to render your duty
to them in the strength of Christ with a view that not only will
you please Christ, but you may be the instrument of seeing them
one without the word. And all of the things he addresses,
what does he want them to know? That in the midst of all these
responsibilities and duties, he wants them to know who they
are. He wants them to understand what they possess, and He tells
them that they possess from the God and Father of the Lord Jesus
Christ, according to the contours of His great mercy, a divine
begetting that has resulted in a present living hope. and has
put in their hands this glorious, unfading, undefiled, imperishable,
already and continue to be reserved inheritance in heaven, and it's
for you. Well, I've attempted to unpack
the verses in the few minutes that remain to me. What are we
to learn from all of this? Well, I hope we've learned something
along the way. And I've sought to make application, but may
I just set several very obvious principles before your mind.
The first stands on the very face of the passage. Whatever
our circumstances may be, dear people of God, God is worthy
to be contemplated and blessed by his people. Where is Peter? He is not on a picnic in the
Mediterranean. He's in Rome. In a short while, he's going
to be martyred. But when he thinks of God and
His grace in Christ, he can't even take the role of an objective
teacher. He's caught up subjectively and
passionately in praise. Blessed the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who has begotten us again unto a living
hope. As I reflected upon Peter's temperament
and the expansiveness of these concepts, I thought if the heat
of his soul could have reached his quill, I'm sure it would
have melted on the parchment. This is no dispassionate theologian
talking about God and Christ and salvation. This is the soul
of an inflamed saint, and he invites us to join him. What
are your circumstances? Whatever they are, God is worthy
to be contemplated and blessed by his people. David is stuck
in a cave with the riffraff of Jerusalem when he writes, I will
bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually
be in my mouth. Oh, how we need to learn from
Peter. Secondly, to bless God as we
ought, we must engage our minds and our affections. You see,
Peter doesn't just say, bless God, bless God, hallelujah, bless
God, mindless, non-theological praise. No, there is a wealth
of compact theology in this eulogy. But he's not theologizing with
the white light of the mere understanding, nor is he eulogizing in an abysmal,
dark room of ignorance, just hoping to feel happy about God. There is an enlightened mind
and a burning heart, a mind flooded with truth, and a heart incandescent
with warmth and with holy passion. And that's what God wants us
to do. He's inviting these elect sojourners to join Him in eulogizing
God in the way He did, with the passionate heart and an enlightened
mind. One cannot read through these
opening verses without being struck with how deep and dense
is the range of Peter's thought. Yet in all of that, there is
the passion of real affection. And we learn from that, thirdly,
that a non-doctrinal Christianity is not Christianity, but a cheap
and delusive substitute for the real thing. A non-doctrinal Christianity
is no real Christianity, but is a cheap and delusive substitute
for the real thing. In a burst of praise, we get
the Trinity, new birth, the fact and implications of the resurrection,
and the eternal inheritance of the people of God, all in a concentrated
burst of praise. What is a Christianity that is
non-doctrinal? It's a cheap substitute. We learn
further that to know God in the saving way is to know him as
revealed in Christ. Four times in the first three
verses he says Jesus Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ. Verse
one, an apostle of Jesus Christ. Verse two, sprinkling of the
blood of Jesus Christ. Verse three, the father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Peter cannot say his name enough, not again in some mindless, subjective
Jesus-olatry. No, but he cannot think of God
and of his saving mercy without seeing Christ as the conduit
of all that mercy. And therefore, if we have the
same salvation that Peter did, we will likewise seek in all
of our reflection upon it to honor him who gave himself for
us that we might know that gracious salvation. And then finally,
If you and I are going to be prepared to be the kind of pilgrims
we ought to be, we've got to use our minds and seek under
God to know who we are by the grace of God. That's where Peter
starts. That's where we're starting.
Some would say, oh, I want to get in the section on what's
it mean to be holy as He is holy and to call on Him as Father
with a sense of His fatherly love and yet with the reality
of holy fear as Peter said, how do you fit those together and
what? No, we've got to start where Peter starts, by the guidance
of the Holy Spirit and ask God to help us to drink deeply of
the well of salvation that He sets before us in these opening
verses and then we learn also in closing That if you don't
have this Christ and this salvation, you don't have any hope. For
living hope is the result of the divine begetting. And the
divine begetting and all the blessings of that salvation are
rooted in the redemptive work of Christ. You may have some
wispy notion that all will turn out fine. Maybe the hell that's
been read about in Matthew 13 isn't real. Maybe all that I've
heard isn't real. That's my hope. No, that's your
delusive wish. not a hope. And I would ask you
to go home, my unconverted friend, boy, girl, man or woman, with
this thought. What do I have that will abide beyond the grave?
What do I have for certain that will abide beyond the grave?
What do I have worth clinging to that will go with me beyond
the grave and into death and onto judgment and on into eternity? The Christian can say, I have
a living hope. by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead. I have an inheritance, incorruptible,
undefiled, that fades not away, and it's reserved, and the reservation
is inviolable, and it's reserved in heaven for me! Blessed be God for the privilege
of being a Christian. Let's pray. Oh, our Father, we thank you,
we praise you, we worship you. With Peter, we would bless you
as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And thank
you that you have begotten us again unto a living hope by the
resurrection of your dear Son, unto this inheritance undefiled. incorruptible, that fades not
away. O God by the Spirit, write these
truths upon our hearts. Make some among us jealous to
know these blessed realities. May they leave their sins and
flee to Christ and find in Him all that you have treasured up
in your great mercy for every sinner. who will commit himself
to the Savior. Sealed in your word we pray for
your glory and our good. Amen.