Living Hope

All right, as we settle down, as you find your seats, we are starting a new sermon series in first Peter. All right, I thought that might help. All right, there we go. Hey, it's a good problem. Welcome, my name is Dan Song. I'm one of the pastors here at Restoration. It is good to be together. We are in the season of Easter, and in the church calendar we call it Easter Tide. Today is the second Sunday of Easter Tide, and that's why you continue to see the white cloth draped over the cross, the white garments kind of, and then the Christ candle still lit, as Jesus has risen from the grave. And as we do that, I thought it'd be neat for us in this season to begin a new sermon series looking at first Peter. This is a letter written by the Apostle Peter. And if you remember last week, actually, when the angel in the tomb tells the women about Jesus being raised from the dead, one of the things she says is, "Go tell the disciples," right? But it doesn't just leave it at the disciples, the angel decides to include Peter. So he says, "Go tell the disciples and Peter." And we, if you are familiar with the story of the gospels, Peter was in many ways just a terrible, terrible failure of a person. But the resurrection changes everything. And we'll actually dive into that. So I thought, why not for the next seven weeks look at this beautiful epistle or a letter written by this Apostle, who is an abject failure, spectacular failure, but comes to be a pillar of the faith. And so we're going to invite Wu-Soon. We just pray for him today's his day. So he is a chair of our diaconate, oversees that. He's been a faithful member of our church and him and his family. And so he's going to read the passage. If you want to turn your Bibles to first Peter, it's towards the end of the Bible. You could follow along with the Bibles provided for you underneath the chair in front of you. You could turn to page 1014. Children, if you're with us this morning, you could use that blue Bible. And there you could turn to page 1315. And we're going to read the first 12 verses of the letter. And in many ways this will serve as almost an introduction to this letter that we'll be looking at for the next seven weeks. So as you turn there, let's give attention to God's word as Wu reads this passage for us. Okay. We're reading from first Peter 1 through 12. Peter and us, Possible of Jesus Christ, to those who are exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Kepidosia, Asia, Bethemia, according to the four knowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood. May grace and peace be multiplied to you. Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Going to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again and to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Captain heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice though now for a little while. If necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so 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. 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 and filled with glory. Caining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Concerning the salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours, searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what personal time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you and the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God. This is a dense letter and so we need the Lord's help as we come to understand what He calls us to do. So let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we come before you and we thank you for your word. Whether it's dense or not, Lord, it is for us. It is food for our souls so that we might be transformed. As Lord, I pray that these seeds will be planted in our hearts, that your words not mine which transform us to become people who truly rejoice and have the hope that you call us to because you have risen from the grave. We thank you for that good news and we ask all of these things in Jesus' name. Amen. As I thought about this passage this morning, I thought one of the things that struck out to me was if you've ever been to a soccer game, you know that it is absolutely loud and contagious. Man, you went to early brother, but it's all good. No, it's good. Leave it up there. And whether you are a soccer fan or not, this aspect of the soccer game gives you chills because if you were to go to England and it happens here with the Major League Soccer, the MLS, but one of the things that happens is that they have, each of these teams has their own song that they make their own. It is their identity. It is everything to them. And here, whether you love Liverpool or you hate Liverpool, Liverpool has a song called You'll Never Walk Alone. And it's amazing because as they sing this song, they all, as you can see, they're all holding up their scarves. Some say Liverpool, others will say, actually says, "You'll never walk alone." And they sing with all their heart and might and so much power and hope that fills their lungs as they sing together. You know, whether they win a game, whether they lose a game, they sing it in funerals, they sing it at weddings, from the highs to the lows, for Liverpool fans, this song You'll Never Walk Alone gives them so much identity and hope. And I think in many ways, that's exactly what the Christians in First Peter find themselves in, whether in highs and in lows, the call that Peter writes to them in this entire letter is "Walk." And as you walk, we walk together in a world that you might not actually feel quite belong, where you might not find belonging. And the Bible here in First Peter calls them exiles. They belong, but they don't. They belong for something greater. And here, these Christians are beginning to experience a lot of suffering and persecution and hardship in their lives. And they belong for something more. And in many ways, Peter is saying, sing this song that though you might feel like exiles, though you might not feel like you belong here, you'll never walk alone. You can have hope because of who you are in your identity, but also you can live and have hope as you walk this walk of faith. So the big idea this morning that I want to give us here is because Jesus is alive, we can live as hopeful exiles, because Jesus has risen from the grave, because of what we celebrated last Sunday. We can live as hopeful exiles. And that's what I want us to look at briefly. And I want to do this as we look at this introduction. I want to look at the person who writes this letter, the people that he writes it to, and lastly, the praise that Peter offers us. And so let's look at the first thing, the person. We read right away in the first portion of this first verse, it says, "Peter an apostle of Jesus Christ. Before we begin to understand what Peter says to us in this letter into the exiles, we have to understand who he was." And it comes from a life that has been shaped, deeply shaped by Jesus, his Savior. Now if you remember, Peter started as a fisherman. He would wake up early in the morning. He would smell like the sea. He would work with his hands, and he would come home exhausted day in and day out. And it's one of these days when he's fishing, right? That Jesus comes along the seashore as his Peter follow me. And at first he's weary, because he feels undone by this one who has come and called him to follow him. But eventually Peter follows this man, Jesus. He drops his nets, he leaves his boat, and for the rest of his life, he dedicates himself to following Jesus. But if you know anything about Peter, this apostle, you have to say that he was always in the middle of everything, right? He spoke too much, he was the first to speak, he was the first to act, and he found himself a bumbling fool at times. But at other times, he said amazing things, he was bold and courageous. So much so there was that one time when we went through the gospel of Mark, do you remember? Jesus asked the disciples, "Who do you say I am?" And what does Peter say? He says, "You are the Christ," right? Which is absolutely true, which must have been a God thing for him to be able to say something that was absolutely true of Jesus. And so he's bold, he's courageous, he's the first to speak, and he'll speak on behalf of everybody else. This is the kind of man he was. But at the same time, just minutes later, what does he say when Jesus predicts his death and his resurrection, what does Peter say? He says, "When everyone else falls away, I will never leave you," right? He says, "You cannot die," and what does Jesus say? He says, "Get away, get behind me Satan." So at times he's bold and courageous and he says the right things, but at other times he realizes he is absolutely a fool and he's fragile and he's broken. But the worst of it comes, as you know, the night that everything falls apart when Jesus is arrested, which leads to his eventual crucifixion. But Peter, who would earlier say, "Even if everyone falls away, I will never fall away what happens?" The moment where it gets so personal for him, the moment when it would cost him everything, right? And the moment where he had to make deep, important decisions and people say, "Aren't you with Jesus? What does he do?" Not just once, not twice, but three times he denies Jesus. And it's that third time when he hears the rooster crow that he realizes the utter failure that he is and was. That should have been the end of the story for Peter. He was disqualified. He was disgraced. He was done for. But as we celebrate it last week, the resurrection happens. The resurrection happens. Jesus rises from the grave and he begins to restore all things as he's doing today, but he's also in the business of restoring people who are abject failures. And so Jesus comes to Peter. He finds him, he seeks him out, he searches him not in a church, right? Not in a temple, but on the seashore. And Jesus cooks a meal. And whether you like the smell of fish, you know how strong the smell of fish can be when you cook it in your home. Jesus cooks this beautiful fish and he brings bread and he cooks for the disciples and he finds Peter and restores him. He asks him, do you love me? Not out to shame him or to condemn him, but to restore him. And three times Jesus asks him, do you love me? And three times from failure and denial, three times Peter is restored by saying, I love you. You know I love you. I love you. And it begins this beautiful transformation of a man who is an abject failure to become one who's restored and a pillar of the Christian faith so much so that when he church history tells us that when he went to die, he said he was unworthy to die like Jesus. And so they hang him upside down on the cross to suffer and die. And if there's anyone that understood what it means to not belong, to be a failure, to be an exile, that was Peter. That was Peter. And so this is 30 years after Jesus' resurrection. He's an older man, he's more mature, he's grown and God has worked in his life and he writes this letter to the church. And he writes it for us as well. He understood what it felt like to not belong. And so we have to ask ourselves who are these people that he's writing to, right? If we know now a little glimpse of who Peter was, well who does he write to? And that's the second point here, the people, the people. Peter writes in the latter part of verse 1 to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithnia, right? Now who are these people? Right away what we see is that Peter gives these people, these Christians and identity. What does he say? He says you are elect exiles. This is who God's people have always been from the beginning of time. They have been elect exiles. God has always called them to go somewhere that it not have been but to understand who they are. And elect basically means chosen. You're loved, you're known, you're not random, you're not overlooked. You're not barely hanging on. You were chosen by God and before you ever chose God, he chose you. Like the way Jesus pursued Peter in his failure and his shame, he sought you even before you ever sought him. You are elect. You were chosen by him but we are also exiles. Now these Christians were not in the literal sense exiles. They were forced out of their country but they were dispersed and these are most likely Gentile Christians, dispersed in all of these different areas which is now modern day in Turkey. And so here are these Christians dispersed in their different areas and so when Peter says you are elect exiles, they would have actually felt very seen because there was a sense in which they were following Jesus but all the pressures around them, all the societal values, they felt like they didn't belong because Christianity and following Jesus was countercultural to their world. You know you think about the suffering that they went through and people say Peter wrote this in 62 AD. So if you know history in 64 AD, Nero caused a fire, allegedly caused a huge fire in the city and who did he decide to put all the blame on? The skate goat were Christians and so Christians were ridiculed, mocked, crucified, persecuted for their faith. So it doesn't happen overnight but over time you can imagine over those two years before Nero did that, how much ostracizing, how much shame and condemnation Christians were feeling and experiencing and this is what he's saying, you are those elect exiles, you have been chosen by God, elected and loved and known by Savior and even in the midst of suffering, he knows you. Some of you know a little bit of my story. I've shared this from the pulpit before but I know for many minorities or maybe you feel on the margins but for me as a minority growing up in America, yes I was American, I was a US citizen born in LA but I don't look American and you can't imagine some of the junior high year books of what people wrote in my year book. I mean friends of mine and I still remember and I haven't looked at it in like decade but I still it's seared in my head of the things that they wrote there. I'm making fun of my Asian descent and so while I felt like I was a US citizen, I felt like I didn't belong that I belonged to something else, something bigger and that was part of my faith story that I belonged to a God who said I belong and I'm known, I am in an elect exile and they felt that they were seeing and that is true of us today and why we can cling to this is because what he says in verse 2, it is a work of the triune God, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in sanctification of the Spirit and for obedience to Jesus Christ, you see, Father, Spirit, Son, it's because of Him. You are not random, you are caught up in the life and the work of the triune God, Father, Spirit, Son which means even in exile where you don't belong, you are secure and you're known and loved by our Savior. And I think it's that. As Peter writes about this triune God and the work that he does in our lives, guess what it leads for Peter to do. Praise, worship. And so I don't know if you even know as I'm picking on we will a little bit, but versus three through twelve, it's one long sentence. In the original Greek, it is one darn long sentence. And that's why he was even fumbling there. Because it is one long run on. But Peter is so overwhelmed by the work of the triune God, it leads him to praise who God is and that's what he begins, right? Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is a staple to begin to over flowing with praise and worship to our God who has worked in our lives, who has chosen us, who loves us. And this praise is one long sentence, can be broken up by future hope, present suffering and rejoicing in a past wonder. Now, we won't be able to get into all of the nitty gritty, but think about this. Because Peter begins to praise, right? He's thinking about the eternal hope that we have in the future. Like, versus three, he has caused us, oh no, sorry, yeah, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, a living hope. You know, we think of hope sometimes as something that's just random and we think that it's something that is fragile and we just wish it to happen. This isn't wishful thinking. This isn't fragile optimism. Rather, this is a living hope that is actually alive. It is certain. It is concrete because of what Jesus did. He is risen from the dead. And this hope points forward to what? And inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading. It is ours. And God is securing it for us. That is why we can have a hope that is actually secure, intangible, and real because of what Jesus has done in our lives. He is risen from the grave. One pastor said at this when I have this quote for you, but think about this. We feel like exiles because we are absolutely citizens of this place. We participate in all things as citizens of this place. We are neighbors and we are natives. But at the same time, we are in the most true and meaningful way. Citizens of a new world waiting to be revealed. This being kept safe right now in guard behind that barely visible, often porous veil that separates God's presence from our presence. But church, one day that veil is going to slip away. An entire creator order will be soaked with the gracious, peaceable, just presence of God. All will be well and all will burn with the love of God. That hope is certain for us. And we are waiting. And God is keeping it safe and secure and protecting it so that when Christ comes back again, that hope will actually turn to reality. But it is not just this hope, but it is also this present reality. Think at verse 6, "In this you rejoice." But what does he say? But then, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been greed by various trials. You see that tension, don't you? We rejoice now. But we also grieve. This is happening at the same time. And for us as Christians, we don't deny suffering. Christianity doesn't say just be happy or ignore the pain. Instead, it says, "Your suffering is real, but it is not ultimate." That's why we can have this living hope. Because in the midst of our suffering, we know, verse 7, that he is refining us like gold. He is purifying us. They are not forming something in you. And sometimes it takes that endurance to be able to know that in the midst of your suffering now, we can still rejoice because of the living hope we have in Christ because he has risen from the grave. And I love at the end. Verse 8, "He says, "Even though you don't see Jesus now, you love him." You believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Isn't that our story? We don't see Jesus now. Yet we still love him. I remember when my wife and I were dating, she lived like three hours away. She was still working or getting her masters at the university. And I remember how so many times I want to see her, but that longing and waiting created a love for her that continued to grow in an inexpressible way. Why? Because though I didn't get to see her, my love continued to grow because I loved her. And that's in some ways, in a very meniscule way. What Peter is saying, "You don't see him now, but you love him." And as we continue to love him and pursue him and follow him, and we'll see that in Paul's letter or Peter's letter towards the end of this book, as we do the things that we're called to do, it also gives us this inexpressible joy and hope that is living inside of us. By love, the last portion, verses 10 through 12, Peter zooms out and he looks to the past. And what does he say? He says, "Consourning this salvation, the prophets who prophesize about the grace that was to be yours, searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what persons or time, the spirit of Christ, in them was indicating when he predicted the suffering of the Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you, us, in the things that have now been announced to you, through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Things even angels look to, long to look into." Isn't that amazing? What is reality for us was not for the prophets or for the angels. These are things that they searched and inquired and long for. They're wondering who the Messiah would be, what he would look like, how the story would unfold the redemption. He looked and inquired deeply before us we have it. We know salvation. We know the Messiah, the suffering one. We know the one who comes and conquers death. And while they inquired, we receive what is true for us that Jesus has come, He's risen. And we get to have this living hope for the rest of our lives. And that is reason for hope. Because we have been recipients of something that even the prophets and the angels looked into and could quite never grasp and understand what we do. And what amazing hope that is for us. At the beginning, I told you about this song, you'll never walk alone, right? About the crowds, their passion, the tens of thousands of people singing this together. But here's what I didn't tell you. This song, this song didn't start in a stadium. It started as a story for a play in Budapest by a Hungarian writer. Which then was bought out by Rogers and Hammerstein. And which became Carousel, I've never seen it. You have. But in that story, there is a young woman who is sung that song. You'll never walk alone because she has lost her husband. And as she hears this song, she's grieving. She's alone trying to figure out how to move forward in her life after losing her husband. And this song is sung to her. Walk on through the wind. Walk on through the rain. And then later in the story, this song is sung again with the daughter in mind. The daughter is graduating. But she's also lost. She's also grieving. And the entire graduating class is singing this song together. But she doesn't want to sing. It's hurting. The words feel distant. It's too simple. Maybe even untrue. But then as the play goes on or that story continues, she begins to join in as a scene you'll never walk alone. And by the end, she believes it more than when she actually started. And that's a power of the song. And that's a power of this praise that Peter begins in verses three through twelve. Right? We long for something to be true, that we would have a living hope, that we could sing, and to know that we're not alone, that we are elect exiles, and even in the midst of suffering, and even in the midst of hardship, that though we might not feel like we belong, that we do not walk alone because of the living hope we have in Christ, and that's what the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is all about for you and me. So when we gather together, we don't just stand shoulder to shoulder, trying to convince ourselves of this hope. We stand as people who have been given this hope by Jesus, real living hope, because Jesus didn't just tell us to walk on, He walked into death Himself, and what did He do? He walked right out of the tomb alive for you and for me. And maybe for some of us this morning, we are not ready to sing this song and believe this worship and praise that Peter has sung for us and written for us. Maybe hope feels distant. Maybe the words feel hard to believe, like that daughter who is singing or hearing its song by her graduating class. But may I suggest this morning, listen to the song. Listen to the words that Peter says that we are a living hope because of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And hold onto that hope that you are not alone. Your suffering is not meaningless. You are being refined and our future is not certain. It is actually secure. This is what we have. So walk on. Walk on with hope in your heart and you'll never walk alone. You'll never walk alone because Jesus is risen. You'll never walk alone. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank You that You are not dead, but You are risen from the grave. And because of that amazing work, we can have a living hope in You. So Lord, I pray that we would be able to believe this, whether it's through Your Word or other singing it to us, telling it to us, Lord, I pray that we as Father, Jesus, no matter what we might be going through, sufferings, unworthiness, loss identity, Lord, I pray that You would be able to remind us of what You have done for us. As You walked out of the grave, Lord, You give us strength and courage to be able to not walk alone. So do that even as we come to the table this morning. Father, strengthen us through this food, Your body, this cup that You offer us, strengthen us. So Lord, we might be able to not only be reminded that we have You, but we have brothers and sisters where we eat and drink together to help us carry us through. So do I pray that You would use this table now, that Your Spirit would tend to it and strengthen us through it. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.