“Rejoicing and Suffering”–(Part I)
(1 Peter 1:3-9)
Series: Strength Through Adversity
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
Henderson’s First Baptist Church, Henderson
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Take your Bibles and join me in 1Peter, chapter 1 (page 814; YouVersion).
Last week we began a short series of messages in 1Peter. We studied together verses 1 and 2 and did something of an overview of this brief letter of five chapters. Remember that Peter is writing to Christians to whom he refers to in verse 1 as, “pilgrims,” or sojourners, or temporary residents.
The Christians to whom Peter was writing were scattered among the area of modern Turkey and they were “pilgrims” or “sojourners” both socially and spiritually. They were socially ostracized from the Romans in those Roman provinces listed in verse 1 and they were also spiritual pilgrims in the sense that this world was not there home. This is how you and I should feel as we sojourn through the world. We’re just passing through. This world is not our home.
And Peter talks about salvation in verse 2 and then he elaborates on this salvation in verses 3 and following.
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Please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
4 to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,
5 who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
6 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials,
7 that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ,
8 whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,
9 receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls.
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Pray.
Introduction:
The title of my message is, “Rejoicing and Suffering.” Admittedly, we don’t think of those two words as belonging together–rejoicing and suffering. We think of them usually as mutually exclusive terms, incompatible terms, the one canceling out the other; a bit like an oxymoron is the bringing together of two words with opposite meanings. For example: the phrase, the “Same difference…Clearly confused…Random order…Open secret…or, “Act naturally.” These are two words with opposite meanings.
So we have, “Rejoicing and Suffering.” Unbelievers may feel that these terms simply cannot go together. Joy is supposed to be the absence of suffering. For the Christian, however, the two terms actually do go together. For the Christian, joy is not the absence of suffering, but rather, joy is the very means by which the Christian endures suffering. The Gospel makes possible a rejoicing through suffering. We’re going to be talking about that truth as we explore these verses and continue our series of messages entitled, “Strength Through Adversity.”
Last time in verse 2 we read about salvation. To be “saved” is to be rescued from the penalty of our sin. We are separated from God because of our sin and the only way we may have peace and fellowship with God is through salvation.
So verse 2 is talking about salvation and you see all three Persons of the Trinity in verse 2, one God in three Persons: “Elect according to the foreknowledge of GodtheFather, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of JesusChrist.” Father, Son, Spirit; our salvation is a Trinitarian salvation.
Then Peter goes on to elaborate on this salvation. In fact, what we have in verses 3-12 is actually one long sentence in the original Greek. Talk about a run-on sentence! My English teacher would not be pleased. But you can do this sort of thing in Greek, verses 3-12 all about salvation and Peter is praising God for this salvation. That’s why the first word there in verse 3 is “Blessed.” Peter praises God for this salvation.
Now initially I thought I’d tackle at least verses 3-9 this morning as there are two main truths about salvation that emerge from verses 3-9 and so I thought, “Well, that’s probably about as much as time will permit me to preach,” but as I got into the study and the nuts and bolts of sermon preparation I realized I wouldn’t be able to do that much. These verses are so rich that I thought we’d better slow down a bit and do something of a “Part One” and “Part Two,” and so I want to look at verses 3-5 this morning–part one–and then next week, Lord willing, we’ll look at verses 6-9–part two–okay? Everybody good with that? As if you had any say in it, right?!
In verses 3-9 there are two main, overarching truths about salvation, two truths about salvation that emerge from the text, two main truths about salvation. So we’ll deal with the first one this morning. First:
I. Salvation is a Gift that lasts for Eternity (3-5)
Salvation is a God-given gift that lasts forever. That’s verses 3-5 and then what Peter does is he gives us three aspects of this salvation. So under this first main heading note with me three descriptive words about this salvation. First:
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It is a Sovereign Salvation (3)
What we mean by sovereign here is that God is the one who gives it, God is the one who makes it happen. It is God-given to a people who do not deserve it and are incapable of earning it. Look again at verse 3:
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
By show of hands, how many of you would say, “I am saved?” I raise mine with you. Well, If we asked how or why this salvation has been granted to us, the answer is, “according to God’s abundant mercy.” See that in verse 3? According to His abundant mercy. Mercy is not getting what we deserve. The opposite of mercy is grace. Grace is God’s unmerited favor to those deserving only His wrath. So mercy is not receiving God’s wrath, which is what we deserve. The point is, none of us deserves salvation and, furthermore, we are incapable of earning it.
Note the phrase in verse 3, “Begotten us again.” The word “begotten” here means, “to give life.” Now if God according to His abundant mercy, “has begotten us again,” then the implication is that we needed “begetting.” This is another way of saying that we were, as Paul says in Ephesians 2, we were dead and we needed life. We are incapable of giving ourselves life. God comes to us in His sovereign way, says Peter, and according to His abundant mercy, “has begotten us again.” We have been, “Born again.” You’ll remember Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John’s Gospel, chapter 3. “Nicodemus, you may be a good and religious man, but you need to be “begotten again,” born again.
It is a sovereign salvation. God initiates it and God sees it through to completion. There is nothing we have done, but it is what our sovereign God has done “according to His abundant mercy.” Our salvation is a re-birth which implies the granting of life to those who have no life.
No person in this room planned his or her physical birth. Am I right on that?! None of us planned our physical birth. None of us planned to live. No baby plans to live or even plans the day he is born into the world. Spiritually, it is no different. We are dead in trespasses and sins and God initiates our salvation. He comes to us and “begets us again.” We–who are elect–are spiritually born because God in His sovereignty comes to us and gives us life. As He initiates this process, we participate in it like a baby who is there and is delivered on his birthday, but the only reason that baby participates in the process is because someone else initiates the process.
Our salvation is a sovereign salvation. By necessity God initiates life because we were spiritually dead. We were spiritually dead because of our sins. Our sins separated us from God.
Peter says in verse 3, God according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again, “to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” God has re-birthed us “to a living hope.” This is hope not in the sense we often use it today, a sense of uncertainty: “Will the preacher be finished by the hour? I hope so.” That’s uncertain, isn’t it? I guarantee you that’s uncertain! But in the New Testament, the word, hope, conveys the idea of certainty, a confident expectation of something that will most certainly come to pass. It’s a thing that will happen to which we look forward.
Because Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose again from the dead, He made possible a salvation that lasts for eternity. This is what Peter describes as, a “living hope.” Because God has given it, initiated it, Christians may be absolutely certain that their salvation will be forever and will culminate in future, final salvation when we our bodies will rise from the grave and when we, too, will enter into that final state of glorification. We’ll see that more fully in the verses to follow.
Right now let me just talk a moment about this phrase, “Living hope.” I like that phrase. Our hope–the certainty of our salvation is a living certainty. In other words, it’s what gets us by today as we live in this imperfect world, this fallen world. We have a living hope which is contrasted with, “hopelessness.”
I was doing some reading on the beach during our summer vacation. Like many of you I had already read Hemingway’s, The Old Man and the Sea, and thought I might enjoy more Hemingway so I downloaded this book onto my Kindle, “The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway.” I started reading it and every one of the short stories seemed to end in either tragedy or death. I told Michele, “I’m tired of reading these stories, everybody dies in the end.” And I could’t help but think that these stories must have reflected something of Hemingway himself, a man who by all accounts was successful, traveled the world, knew many people of power and position, and yet seemingly lived a life of–to quote Thoreau– “a life of quiet desperation.”
Hemingway was a heavy drinker who battled depression, especially in his later years. His father had committed suicide as had Hemingway’s brother and sister. Yet here was a man who seemed outwardly so successful. But he lived a life of hopelessness. And so, according to one biographer, on July 2, 1961, there at his palatial, summer home in Ketchum, Idaho, Hemingway rises early one morning, unlocks the basement storeroom where he had kept his guns, walks upstairs to the front entrance foyer of the home, pushes two shells into his favorite twelve-gauge shotgun, puts the end of the barrel into his mouth, pulls the trigger and ends his life. Jesus says, “What shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his soul?” (Mark 8:36).
Hardly a week goes by that we don’t read a similar kind of story in the major news, some musician, some athlete, some entertainer who seems to have everything, ending his life of quiet desperation. It is from this sense of hopelessness the Christian has been saved, “begotten again to a living hope,” a living, confident, certain, expectation that we have meaning and purpose and life!
Salvation is a gift that lasts for eternity. It is a sovereign salvation. Peter goes on to teach that not only is our salvation a sovereign salvation, but secondly:
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It is a Secure Salvation (4)
Our salvation is secure. It will stand the test of time. Look at verse 4 now as Peter refers to this living hope as, “an inheritance.” Verse 4:
4 to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,
So this living hope of verse 3 is described now as an inheritance. That is, it is something that awaits us.
Maybe you’ve had the experience of receiving an inheritance. Somebody in your family or a friend passed along to you personal property or savings and you were the one to inherit this gift when this loved one died. So your inheritance is a gift given to you by another. Someone else did the work necessary to procure the gift and once he or she died, the gift was passed along to you.
Now think of your salvation. Your salvation is a gift passed along to you when a loved one died. Our Lord Jesus Christ died. He died for you and has passed along to you an inheritance, an inheritance of salvation.
Then Peter describes the security of this salvation, of this inheritance. Look again at verse 3: “An inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that doesnotfadeaway.” That word, “incorruptible” is also translated, “imperishable.”
When you go to the grocery store and buy fruit you are buying “perishables.” In other words, you are buying things that need to be eaten fairly quickly. If you buy some fruit and put it out on the kitchen counter in a big bowl, it looks great, doesn’t it? Big bowl of luscious looking grapes and apples, but if you just leave it there and go on vacation and come back a month later, what do you have? You have a mess and it’s gross! Why? Because that fruit is perishable. It will perish. It will not keep. It will spoil.
Peter says you’re inheritance will never spoil. Through faith in Christ Jesus you have received an inheritance, a future, final salvation that will never spoil. It is incorruptible. It will keep. It is secure. It will last forever. It is a secure salvation.
Peter says that our salvation, “does not fade away” and that it is, “reserved in heaven for you.”
The Christian’s salvation is “reserved in heaven.” There’s a place there for the Christian. It belongs to you. It belongs to no one else.
Have you ever gone to a fancy theater or something and you’re looking for a seat and you look way up front and you can tell there are some seats right up there close to the stage and you’re like, “Awesome! Let’s go up there and get those seats.” So you go up there only to find this yellow tape wrapped around them with the word, “Reserved.” And now you feel kind of funny and act like you really weren’t interested in those seats, you don’t want anyone to think you actually believed they were free, you know! And so you walk back toward the back and climb the steps to the balcony. Well, you have this inheritance. You have a place reserved for you. It’s like going into that theater and walking confidently up the front aisle because you know you have a seat there. It’s roped off and it has your name on it. That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?!
Salvation is a gift that lasts for eternity. Our salvation is a sovereign salvation and our salvation is a secure salvation. Thirdly:
3) It is a Sustained Salvation (5)
In other words, God sustains our faith in Christ, He keeps us believing in Him. This is a fascinating teaching. Look again at verse 5. Peter is writing to those who are saved and he adds:
5 who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Do you remember earlier when we said that God initiates salvation and we participate in salvation? We participate by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. So Christians are those “who are kept by the power of God throughfaith for salvation.” God sustains our salvation by sustaining our faith.
Through God’s mighty power, God sees to it that we continue believing. The word “kept” there means to be guarded. It’s like God builds a fortress around our faith to guard us from the enemy of unbelief. God’s power does not work independently of our faith. God’s power works through our faith. God sustains our salvation by sustaining our faith. In fact, the verb describes something that is ongoing. God continually keeps us and guards us and sustains our faith us by His mighty power. Is this incredible or what?!
So our salvation is a sovereign, secure, and sustained salvation.
And this salvation is that which will be revealed in its fullest sense in the future. That’s what Peter means when he refers to our salvation there at the end of verse 5 as a, “salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
We will receive a salvation in the future that is salvation in its fullest and final sense. There are three tenses to salvation, past tense, present tense, and future tense. When we speak of our salvation we rightly say, “I have been saved–past tense–I am being saved–present tense–and I will be saved–future tense.” I have been saved from sin’s penalty. I am being saved from sin’s power. I will be saved from sin’s presence.” Past salvation has in view justification–being declared righteous. Present salvation has in view sanctification–daily growth in the Lord–and future salvation has in view glorification, the perfect and final state of the believer, of the Christian.
So Peter reminds us that right now we know only of past and present salvation. One day when Christ returns and when God creates a new heaven and a new earth we will enter into the future salvation, the final state of salvation–a state known as glorification–that’s what Peter means when he refers to our salvation, there at the end of verse 5, as a salvation, “ready to be revealed in the last time.”
Salvation is a gift that lasts for eternity. Now we’re going to see next time how this salvation serves as a motivator and encouragement during times of struggle. We’re going to see next time how to get through trials and difficulties by remembering our future salvation. We’re going to see that not only is salvation a gift that lasts for eternity, but salvation leads to growth during times of adversity.
Let’s conclude by reading these verses aloud together, verses 3-5:
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
4 to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,
5 who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
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Stand for prayer.
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