Be Light – Have Hope

This hymn is a very nice prayer, ‘Open up my eyes in wonder and show me who You are and fill me, with Your heart and lead me in Your love and to those around me’. That’s a good prayer to pray, and even as we turn to the Scriptures, it’s good to pray, ‘Open up my eyes’. So, we see and we hear and we understand what God wants to say. And today we’re going to read quite a long passage – 9 verses, I hope you’re up for that. It’s a lot of words, written by Peter. We read a lot of what Paul said, maybe not as much as what Peter said. But these are Peter’s words.
So, we’re going to read from 1 Peter 1:3-12. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire —may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.” Amen.
You know, these letters by Paul and by Peter, and others. They are so filled with content. When I write a letter, I ask, ‘How are you? I’m fine. What are you doing?’ But the apostles had so much that they wanted to share with the people and the churches they were writing to. And sometimes it’s almost difficult to figure out, what is he trying to say, because there is so much. And if you read commentaries by scholars of what Peter is trying to say really, in the letter 1 Peter. Most of them would say that the most important message he’s trying to bring, is encouraging the Churches to be strong in the midst of trials. But of course, he’s weaving that into a lot of content, important content. And here at the end he’s saying that, ‘Even angels, are longing to look into these things.’
That’s pretty amazing. The angels that are there sent out by God, and worshipping before His throne. They don’t have all the understanding of what’s going on in God’s mind and heart and plans are. The mystery that was revealed through Jesus Christ. And I don’t know how Peter knew that the angels wanted to know, but he met our angels. Maybe they asked him. Hey Peter what’s really going on? What is God about to do? Well, we don’t know.
But here it says also that the prophets that were really respected and honored, in the Jewish culture and religion, they saw some glimpses of what God wanted to do through Christ. They knew that God was going to do something, but they didn’t know exactly when and how, and what. But they knew that God would do something. And imagine that through Jesus Christ being revealed, we are brought into those secrets.
This text speaks a little about what has been before, what is now and what is to come. And it’s full of hope. I think we really need hope at this time. Generally, in the world, there’s not much hope really. I have lived a long time, and if I look around the world in many ways it looks worse than ever. And even in the Churches, it’s easy to lose hope. But Peter here is full of hope. And I don’t think we speak enough about hope. Even when it comes to Christian things and our hope for eternity. I think maybe it’s been a healthy reaction to just waiting for heaven to come and everything will be OK. We understand that God wants to do here and now, and He’s with us here and now. But it doesn’t mean now that now is everything there is. And we see this very clearly in this text.
You know, when you look at history, I guess you’ve all studied history to some extent in school, we usually start on one side, and work through history and know that this and this happened and this happened, and here we are now, and as Christians we are hopefully looking forward to something, that Christ will come and restore everything. But I mean there’s another way, and this is very helpful and as Christians there is a way to describe, the history with God’s history and with mankind, so to say, to describe Biblical history. And we also talk about creation, fall, redemption, and then restoration. And we divide history like that, and it’s good and it’s helpful. But I think this is a chronological, rational way of looking at history.
But there is another way of looking at it and you can kind of get a glimpse of that maybe the Biblical authors were thinking like this, and that there is a center in history, and this is Christ and His coming into this world. And when we try to understand what was before, we best understand it through Christ. If you remember the disciples that were walking to Emaus, and Jesus came and walked beside them, He started going through what we know as the Old Testament, Moses and the prophets, and explained what it said about Him.
It wasn’t obvious that it was speaking about Jesus and it was and it is. Jesus is the key to understanding the Old Testament. He was there, He was present but in the heavenly realm, and they saw glimpses of Him here and there. And we make sense and understand and hope, have hope for the future through Christ.
So, the central point in time, I would say that is Christ, and His coming, and we look back to that. And His coming and His presence makes sense to us. And in Christ, there is the heavenly realm, the heavenly world, and this earthly world meet. Heaven and earth, God and humanity, in Christ, it’s all brought together. A big secret a big mystery, the prophets and the angels were longing to understand and see. But in Christ it became reality. So, in Him we have a living hope. And you know, if you have hope and you have no hope, it makes a huge difference in how we live our lives. If you are without hope, you lose energy, you lose direction, everything looks impossible and dark and meaningless. But with hope, even if it’s difficult. You have motivation, you get energy, you can start to plan and go forward.
Jesus, of course, showed us who God is, because He is God, but He is also fully human. So, He showed us what it’s like or what it can be like, to be a human being. So, right there in the center of History, we see a fulfilled humanity. And this is what we have been called to be called, to be a part of, to enter into. It said, what we read in the beginning, it said that ‘We have new birth, into a living hope, and into an inheritance, through the resurrection of Christ’. And into all this, we have been born into the resurrection. And for a resurrection to happen, there needs to be a death first. So, through the death of Jesus and His resurrection, we’ve been called and it has been made possible for us to live a new life.
It says here in the text, what the end goal is, the end result of your faith the salvation of your souls. The end goal is salvation. We often say that salvation is past (Justification), it’s present (Sanctification ongoing), and it’s future (Glorification). Christ saved us, we have been saved. We are forgiven our sins. It’s already done. We have to accept it. He has forgiven us. We are being saved right now – He is keeping us. Through faith, we are shielded by God’s power. Until the coming of the salvation, that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
So, we are facing trials and difficulties, but we are being saved from that. And then the goal for the future. It said, ‘The salvation of our souls.’ And salvation is a very rich word. It means to be rescued; it means to be forgiven; it means to be healed and restored. In the book of Revelation, it talks about all our tears will be wiped away. Pain and hurt will be healed. Salvation will be complete one day. So, salvation has happened, is happening and will happen and be completed. And therefore, we can have hope today. He has started a good work in each one of us. Maybe you feel you haven’t come a long way, maybe you’re feeling like you’re trying to get up from the floor, but He has started. And He promises that one day He will bring it to completion. And that’s why we can have hope. He has started and He will complete it.
This is hope, and it’s not hopeless. There’s a lot of hope. And especially when we face trials. He has promised to be there to protect us and keep us. But He is also using the difficulties to refine our faith. I’m not saying that He is bringing the trials, but He has the power, the ability to use the difficult things, for good in our lives. So, Peter here says that, and I know that Paul also says that, if we face trials, we should rejoice and not complain; we should rejoice. That’s not always so easy. But think about it, that even the difficulties, are use to bring something good in our lives. If we really believe that we can probably rejoice. But it’s hard to believe sometimes.
But usually, when some time has passed and we look back, we can see that some of those very difficult times, helped us to grow. So, God is working in us, even in those difficult days, and we don’t need to lose hope.
These verses talked about a lot of different things, but I think the key here is, ‘he talked about a new birth into a living hope. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. So, we have been born into a hope, a living hope. And we have been born into an inheritance that is waiting for us, and this inheritance will last forever. Does that give you hope? I hope so. It should. Because this is at the core of the Good News, the Gospel. We have hope. Even when there is no hope when we look around in the world. This gives us hope.
We don’t know exactly what the future will look like. But we can look back and know that Jesus saved us, He came here to save us. He’s with us, He’s taking us through even the most difficult times. And we have a wonderful inheritance waiting for us. And that means that we can live lives that are full of hope today. Not just sitting and waiting for what will come one day. But He is here with us. He wants us to be light, and we can because we have hope, and we have a job to do in this world. To be light, to give other people hope. To always be prepared to tell people about the hope we have.
I think it’s a good thing to ask ourselves, ‘What do I spend my life for? What is important in my life?’ We are all hoping for things; we’re all working for things; we all want different things. But is this the hope that we are talking about here? Is this important to our lives? If it is, it will affect the choices we make and the road we’re choosing. Because we have a hope of an inheritance that will never perish, spoil or fade. Let that give you hope.
He’s a good God. And there is a wonderful inheritance there for us. I really want that you all catch some of this hope. Because I think if we don’t have hope, it doesn’t matter if your life is really good, in a sense, or it’s really bad, if you don’t have hope, you won’t be able to continue, So, as Christians, we really need to be filled with this hope. We need to remind ourselves and one another, Elpida, do you agree? We’re talking a lot about Elpida today. Yes, let us be filled with hope.
We’re going to take communion together, and when we do that, we’ll have 2 stations at the front, so, you can come up and take when it’s your turn. When we take communion, there are different reasons, or different things we are reminded of. Jesus said the bread, was His Body; the cup, was His Blood, and obviously He said that just before He laid down His life on the cross. So, we always remember that He laid down His life for us. But He also said, ‘I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it anew again in the Kingdom of God.’ So, it’s a moment of looking back to what Jesus has done, but it’s also a moment to look forward, the celebration we will have, all together one day with Him; the banquet, that we are invited to. So, when we take this, it’s also a reminder of the hope that we have.
We remember His death; we remember His resurrection and we are reminded of the hope to be together one day. So, when we take this together, think about all of this; let it be a reminder. Jesus took the bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to His disciples. And He said, take it and eat, this is My Body, and then He also took the cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them and they all drank from it. This is My blood of the Covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly, I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it anew, in the Kingdom of God. So, let this bring hope to you.
Leto, would you pray.