A LIVING HOPE

I Peter 1:3-12

Dr. Wm. J. Maxwell

First Presbyterian Church, Newport, RI

 

 

Hope – it’s such an important asset for living fully. Who can live without some sense of hope abiding in him or her? And yet most of us know all too well what it’s like to get our hopes up, only to have them come crashing down.

 

A few years ago, Speedy Morris was the head coach of the Men’s Basketball team at LaSalle University. One morning, he was shaving when his wife told him he was wanted on the phone. “It’s Sports Illustrated,” she said. Morris got so excited at the possibility of national recognition that he hurried his shave and cut himself. Then he ran out of the bathroom, not wanting the caller to have to wait too long. But he lost his balance, and fell all the way downstairs!

 

By time he reached the phone, he was bleeding, limping, and out of breath. But he got there in time, as he gasped out the words: “Sports Illustrated?” And that’s when he heard the caller reply: “Yes it is, and for only 75 cents an issue, you can get a year’s subscription …” [i]

 

Ouch!!!!! Yes, there are the times - for all of us - when our hopes can come to nothing.

 

On a far more serious note, when the apostle Peter wrote this letter, he was writing to Christians who were suffering for their faith in Jesus Christ. Nothing had come in the way of a devious emperor’s legislation, but it was serious enough: insults, slander, accusations, beatings, social rejection and more.

 

These Christians needed hope and encouragement, and not the kind that is so easily dashed. So do we, as the way of life can often be hard and challenging. In addition, Christians in this country are often looked at with suspicion and are ridiculed as fools, while other believers in the world are facing the threat of death and martyrdom for their devotion to Christ.

                                                                                     

What we all need is a vital, vibrant, living hope, one that can sustain us during the hard, challenging times that we all face. We also need a sense of confident expectation that, not only will God see us through the tough times, He will also fulfill His redemptive plan in bringing forth a place and time when we will enjoy the full benefits of His love and mercy.That is whyit is good to hear Peter say this:

 

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 – kept in heaven for you …

 

Here it is that we Christians have good reason to have a “living hope.” In the lines following his doxology of praise to God the Father, the apostle Peter tells us exactly why this is.

 

 

I

WE CAN HAVE A LIVING HOPE BECAUSE OF GOD’S GREAT MERCY.

                              

 

“In His great mercy,

He has given us new birth …”

God’s character toward a rebellious, sinful humanity could be one only of righteous indignation and judgement. With all the facts in plain view and fully presented in a celestial courtroom of infinite truth and clarity, God could easily look upon us and say, “Guilty,” and we would know with absolute certainty that the verdict would be just and fair.

 

When all our words, actions and motives are brought into the light, not one of us could expect any other verdict, if it were not for the mercy of God expressed so fully in Jesus Christ, and welcomed and received by us in faith and in trust.

 

Writing to Christians, Paul spoke of God’s marvelous mercy in the second chapter of his letter to the Ephesians. In a paraphrased version, Paul says this to them and to Christians today:

 

It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us.

 

Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did this all on his own, with no help from us! … Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.

     

Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. [ii]                                                                                 

 

Here, we are reminded that God’s mercy reaches out to us in Christ, renewing cold, resistant, stony hearts, bringing life to them, and leading them to embrace Jesus Christ. When this happens, life not only appears different, it is different!

 

Alfred Ackley gave this very testimony in response to a Jewish student’s questioning. This Presbyterian Minister was asked the question, “Why should I worship a dead Jew?” He answered back in saying, “He lives! I tell you, He is not dead, but lives here and now! Jesus Christ is more alive today than ever before. I can prove it by my own experience, as well as the testimony of countless thousands.” [iii]

 

Ackley not only said this and preached this,but he also wrote of this in a hymn:

 

I serve a risen Savior, He’s in the world today;

I know that He is living, whatever men may say;

I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer,

and just the time I need Him He’s always near.

 

He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today!

He walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way.

He lives, He lives, salvation to impart!

You ask me how I know He lives?

He lives within my heart.

 

For those, like Alfred Ackley, who have come to know personally God’s great mercy in Jesus Christ and the sweet yet strong fellowship of His presence, there is a hope that is living and enduring!

II

WE CAN HAVE A LIVING HOPE

BECAUSE OF THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION

OF 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 …

                                                                                                     

Here, let’s consider Peter himself for a moment. Remember that here was a man whose life was dramatically turned around by Jesus. Peter was an intimate friend of Jesus, being part not only of the Twelve, but also of an intimate circle of three with Jesus.

 

After three years with Jesus, Peter got to the point that when Jesus said He was going to die, Peter either rebuked Jesus, or told Him that even if all the other disciples should abandon Him, he never would. But Peter did abandon Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and after the arrest of Jesus, he even denied knowing Him – and that to a servant girl!

 

Then came the resurrection of Jesus, and you would think that in retaliation, Jesus would have nothing to do at all with Peter. But that’s not the way love and mercy work. With all the appearances of the risen Lord that are noted in the New Testament, one of them included a very special, personal, one on one appearance to Peter.[iv] Now, when you have “the evidence” of a Risen Lord literally right before your very face and eyes, how can you have anything but a “living hope”!

                                                                                     

While we Christians say we live by faith and trust, this doesn’t mean that we cannot use our minds, or that there is no factual content to what we say we believe and hold to be true.

 

Some of the very best minds have looked at all the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Many have also rightly realized that there is no basis for hope if the resurrection of Jesus did not in fact occur. So it was that Lord Darling, a former Chief Justice of England, took the time to weigh all the evidence for the resurrection. In conclusion, he spoke impressively on the matter:

 

We, as Christians, are asked to take a very great deal on trust; the teachings, for example, and the miracles of Jesus. If we had to take all on trust, I, for one, should be skeptical. The crux of the problem of whether Jesus was, or was not, what He proclaimed Himself to be, must surely depend upon the truth or otherwise of the resurrection. On that greatest point we are not merely asked to have faith. In its favour as living truth there exists such overwhelming evidence, positive and negative, factual and circumstantial, that no intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring in a verdict that the resurrection story is true. [v]

 

Our hope is a “living hope” for the reason that our faith is based upon a living Lord, whose resurrection is supported by so much credible evidence.

 

                                                             

III

WE CAN HAVE A LIVING HOPE

BECAUSE OF THE PROMISES OF GOD IN JESUS CHRIST.

 

And into an inheritancethat can never perish, spoil or fade, kept in heaven for you …

 

Promises are only as good as those who make them. We have all known promises that have been made and remain partially or even totally unfulfilled, all because of the character of the one who made the promise. But God can be fully trusted to give us what He has promised in Jesus Christ.

 

Jesus proved this Himself, on a day of great mourning and sadness after Lazarus had died, as recorded for us in the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of John. That’s when Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die.” [vi] And then He proved this was so by raising Lazarus from the dead. And then He proved it again, only this time, it was with His own resurrection!

                                                                                         

Our hope is a “living hope” only so long as “God delivers,” and God always delivers because His promises in Jesus Christ are always true. On this we may surely rely!

 

In a setting with which I am all too familiar, Pastor Max Lucado once sat at the bedside of a dying friend. Cancer had taken so much of the man’s strength, but not his faith.

 

Knowing the time of the end of his earthly journey was near, Lucado shared with his friend the comforting words of the 23^rd Psalm, slowly reading verse by verse. Then he came to the consoling words of hope, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.”

 

As Lucado tells it,

 

He didn’t open his eyes, but he arched his brows. He didn’t speak, but his thin fingers curled around mine, and I wondered if the Lord was helping him set down some luggage, the fear of dying.

 

Lucado talks about the “baggage” or “luggage” we so often carry around with us in life, instead of “traveling light” and trusting God in all of the burdens in life,including the greatest burden of facing death itself.

                                                                                       

When it comes the time for our own Homecoming, I believe it will be as he describes it:

 

By that moment only one bag will remain. Not guilt. It was dropped at Calvary. Not the fear of death. It was left at the grave. The only lingering luggage will be this God-given longing for home. And when you see him, you’ll set it down. Just as a returning soldier drops his duffel when he sees his wife, you’ll drop your longing when you see your Father.

 

Those you love will shout. Those you know will applaud. But all the noise will cease when he cups your chin and says, ‘Welcome home.’ And with that scarred hand he’ll wipe every tear from your eye. And you will dwell in the house of the Lord - forever. [vii]

 

***

 

Such is the case for those with a living hope. Let us then praise the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

For 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.

 

Dear friends, let us rejoice with a living hope! For Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed!