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Dr. Paul Hartog
November 12, 2023 at 9:30 AM
1 Peter 1:1-9
1 Peter
This Is Not Our Home
1 Peter 1:1-9
Dr. Paul Hartog
Good morning. It's always nice to come and minister to different churches and seeing how God is working in your place. And we'll keep praying that God would lead the right shepherd to be with you.
As I was talking to several of you this morning, we share the same thing, which is sometimes. It's hard to be still and know that he's God. Many times for me, I know that I tend to just keep running, keeping busy, and then also trying to do my own thing instead of being still and waiting on God.
And so many times that's what causes me problems, is when I just try to do things my way. So as I sing this song, I pray that it will be an encouragement to your heart. From Psalm 46 ten.
Be still, my soul, the Lord is on thy side bear patience Leave the cross of grief or pain Leave to thy God to order and provide in every change he faithful will remain be still, my soul, thy best, thy heavenly friend through thorny ways lead to a joyful end Be still, my soul, thy God to guide the future as he has the past thy hope, thy confidence Let nothing shake all now mysterious shall be bright at last Be still, my soul the waves and wind still know his voice who ruled them while he dwelt below in you I rest, in you I find my hope. In you I trust you never let me go I place my life within your hands alone Be still, my soul. Be still, my soul.
The hour is hasting on when we shall be forever with the Lord when disappointment, grief and fear are gone sorrow for God loves purest joys restored. Be still, my soul when change and tears are past all safe and blessed we shall meet at last. In you I rest, in you I find my hope.
In you I trust you never let me go I place my life within your hands Allah Be still, my soul Be still, my soul thank you Only for that beautiful song reminder from the psalms to be still and know that he is God. It's often hard to be still when it seems like life is getting crazy or the entire world perhaps is getting crazy, it seems at sometimes. And so we have that desire to have that stillness.
And it kind of relates to the desire, one might say, of finding a home in the midst of all of the craziness sometimes of life. Three years after moving to Iowa only. And I moved to Iowa.
She's from the Chicago area. I was born here in Iowa. It's my fifth time back to Iowa.
Three years after moving back here, we were crossing this bridge here. It's the Interstate 80 bridge that crosses the Mississippi river between Iowa and Illinois. And as we are crossing the bridge, Alne said, we're home.
And isn't it a good feeling to be home? And to put that in the context, it took her a while, three years, to kind of consider Iowa to be her home, because for her, Iowa is where she visited, and Illinois was her home. And so it was kind of a change of framework at that point to speak of Iowa as home. But isn't it a good feeling to be at home, to be in the comfort of familiar surroundings and to say, if not aloud, then at least in our minds and hearts, ah, I'm home.
But instead of saying that perhaps this morning you may feel like exclaiming, like, Arg!, I don't feel at home, you may feel less and less at home in this culture, perhaps, or with a differing entertainment tastes and political climate and social values. And you may feel like, in some sense, that your value system may be marginalized. You may feel like you are a stranger in the world.
But of course, this is nothing new. In the history of Christianity. Christians have been used to living within the comforts of Christendom, which is not necessarily actually a good thing.
And we end up living in our comfort zones. And as a so called post-christian culture emerges from the ashes, we may find ourselves as strangers living within a strange land, and we may worry for the church members in our care, or perhaps our children, or perhaps our children's children. But even as the cultural buttresses, even if they were to crumble and fall, we must not lose heart, because it's not as if Christians have never found themselves in these types of situations before.
Of course, there have been times when ChristiAns have been marginalized as a minority within wider society. In the very beginning of the Christian movement, for example, and this sermon's text comes from a time period of such an era. In one Peter, Chapter one, verses one through nine, it's the epistolary opening, the letter opening of first Peter.
If you think of it as kind of like a greeting card, and it's the letter opening. Lou Barbieri calls this text the foundation for the entire book. An understanding of these verses is essential to her comprehension of the entire Epistle.
Or, as Edmund Clowney echoes Peter's brief greeting, gives in miniature the whole message of the letter, given it the title of not our home. In thinking about that later, we could also say that this sermon is about an exhortation to exiles or apostolic advice for aliens. Because in chapter one, verses one through three, we'll notice that these Christians living in these regions of modern day Turkey, they're described as being strangers or pilgrims or exiles or aliens.
And so, as we look at this text, we begin in chapter one and verse one. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. But before we dig into the text, let's look to the Lord in prayer.
Father, we thank you that you are our Father, that we can cry out to you, Abba, as your children, and that we are members of your family if we are believers in your son Jesus Christ. And so we thank you that we do have a home in the sense that we have a family, and we have fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. And you are our Father and Father.
I pray that as we look at this text this morning, written those many centuries ago to these believers in Asia Minor and surrounding regions, that we might learn from the pen of the Apostle Peter through your spirit and be able to apply it to our lives. This week we pray in Christ's name. Amen.
So it begins by saying Peter. Now, Peter is the Greek translation of the Aramaic word Cephas, and it means simply rock or stone. His given name had been Simon or Simeon or Shimon.
You can see that in first John, rather the Gospel of John, chapter one, verse 42. And he's described here in this epistle as an apostle, which means a sent one in the official sense of an apostle, not just the broad, generic sense of a sent one, like a missionary, but the specific sense. There was quite a number of requirements for these individuals to be called apostles.
The first among them was that they needed to have seen the Risen Lord. And he's an apostle of Jesus Christ. That is, Peter's authority was not his own.
Peter was authoritative in the Church because his authority went back to Jesus Christ. And he addresses this epistle or this letter to the strangers, or some of your translations might have the pilgrims. And this time of the year, in November, we often think of pilgrims, but this is not that kind of pilgrim.
This is not an English separatist coming out of England in the 16 hundreds and coming here to the shores of North America. This is simply the idea of those who are strangers or sojourners or aliens, and even they're not that kind of an alien. Not of an alien that we may think of in fictional material with Green skin and antenna, but in the sense of someone who is in temporary residence somewhere that is not their ultimate home.
And so for Peter, these believers, their ultimate home, their citizenship is in heaven. And so they are so journeying, or they are exiling, or they are strangers in these other regions. And for the readers, the area of modern day Turkey may have been their place of residence, but it was not their true home.
They were aliens and sojourners. Edmund Clowney says he calls them the scattered people and says that they are strangers, aliens who are transients, temporary residents, travelers headed for their native land. He reminds them that their hope is anchored in their homeland.
And this is not unusual, actually, in early Christian material. Here we have a map of how this letter perhaps traveled. You can notice there are pilgrims of the dispersion, which is the idea of the scattered ones.
In fact, we get the word diaspora. So, like, Jews who are away from their homeland are part of the Jewish diaspora. And so these believers, they are scattered across modern day Turkey.
And even though Pontus and Bithynia made a dual region, they joined together, as you can see, the very top of the map there. You have Pontus and Bithynia up there. Bithynia and Pontus.
It's interesting that the ordering of verse two says Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia. So he kind of splits the region's name in half. And some scholars believe the reason for that is because he's thinking in his mind of the route that the letter is going to take after it lands.
So it lands in one area of northern Turkey, makes kind of a circular route, and comes back to the other part of northern Turkey. And we think of that word diaspora. We think, as it mentioned today, of the Jewish diaspora, those scattered from their homeland.
But James, one, one uses this language and addresses it to the Twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, and in this case, in one. Peter, all the letters recipients are scattered diaspora. It doesn't seem to be written to Jews only, but also Gentiles, because they are scattered strangers or pockets of pilgrims who are scattered away from their true homeland, which would appear to be heaven, as he talks about the heavenly hope that we have in chapter One.
And this kind of language is not unusual in early Christian literature. Here is a quote from the Epistle to Diagnetis. This letter, we don't know who wrote it.
We know who's written to, but we don't know from whom it was written. We don't know the sender. We just know the recipient.
And it's often dated about the mid second century, perhaps late second century. And this Epistle written to Diagnasis says Christians demonstrate the remarkable and admittedly unusual character of their own citizenship. They live in their own countries, but only as non residents.
They participate in Everything as citizens and endure Everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fathErland, and every fatherland is Foreign. That didn't quite fit in culture at the time.
They were scattered across the Roman Empire and even beyond, to the regions beyond Turkey toward the east, which was not under the Roman Empire, but that wasn't their true home. And so in a sense, they were citizens of the empire or of their province or the region, but in another sense, they were actually strangers and pilgrims, or as I mentioned, scattered strangers or pockets of pilgrims. And verse two goes on to describe these individuals as elect or chosen, and that could be grammatically tied to the previous material.
That is, God chose them to be scattered in all these regions, or it could be tied to the part that follows According to the Foreknowledge of God the Father. And probably it does look forward, at least in this context, as reflected in some of your translations, and how they will punctuate these verses, or may even refer to all of the entirety of the reader situation. Verses one and two, they are chosen exiles, and they are chosen diaspora and foundationally, they have been chosen According to the foreknowledge of the Father, all wrapped together in one masterful divine plan.
We could speak of the unified plan of God. And so the next phrase says, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. Now, in some contexts, that word foreknowledge is simply passive, like God looks into the future and sees what's going to happen.
And so sometimes it's referred to as passive knowledge in God. But the very same word is found in verse 20, actually. And in verse 20 it says he indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world.
And although the English translation is often translated with a different English word, it's actually the very same word in the original language. And as you could tell by that verse, in verse 20, it is clearly more than simply a passive awareness in God. It's actually tied to his gracious initiative, his activity, his overall plan and purpose.
And so back up here in verse two, this also is not divorced from God's plan and from his purpose. And in verse two, it happens in sanctification of the Spirit or through sanctification of the Spirit. And the red idea of sanctification is set apart, set apart from sin to God because he's holy.
And as we were singing, even in some of the songs we're singing this morning about beholding our God and being in awe of who God is and the greatness of God and his Holiness, and so this happens in sanctification of the Spirit. For obedience, it has a purpose. The holiness they had in position, they were now to live out in practice.
So they're holy because of Christ's righteousness. Now they are to live it out in practice. And the Word obedience here means to hear under, or to hear and place oneself under it.
Then it speaks of our responsibility of hearing the Word and placing ourselves under that word, to be submissive to the will of God. And then he adds, and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ's blood is the foundation of our forgiveness of our sins, or as other New Testament Texts refer to, the remission of our sins.
And now we notice something in these verses. We notice there is a threefold work that's going on. And using a word that comes actually from the Latin and therefore comes later in time than the first century, we can refer to this as the Trinity.
All three members of the Trinity are at work. We have in verse two, verse two, the foreknowledge of the Father. We have the sanctification through the Spirit and the blood of Jesus Christ.
They are unified in their plan, in graciously reaching out to us as sinners, and yet they each have distinctive roles in that plan of redemption. And so, for example, clearly Jesus Christ is the only one who died and shed his blood for our sins. The Father did not do that, the Spirit did not do that, but they were unified in their plan of Christ being sent to die for our sins.
And then Peter adds, grace to you and peace be multiplied. Now, in the normal Greco Roman, I guess you could say, letter writing of the time period in their language, often after the sender of the recipients, the next word would be Karain, which is the word greeting, but instead of that word Peter. And much like Paul, Peter says Charus.
And so we kind of, in our English translations, we lose the play on words here. But instead of saying greeting, he says grace, because grace is the word Karas in the original language. And then he adds peace.
And so you kind of have a play on words of the more Gentile way of starting a letter greeting, turn to grace. And then Jewish kind of greeting is shalom or peace. And he combines the two together, and he says, grace and peace be to you.
It's a common duo. And then he adds, be multiplied. That is given in abundance.
So these Christians were living as a scattered minority, a dispersion as strangers among these pagan regions of the Roman Empire. And they need to be fortified in their Christian walk. We might therefore refer to fortifying traits or veritable virtues or fortifying virtues that Peter calls them to.
And so kind of the theme this morning is that as strangers and pilgrims, God wants us to manifest these fortifying virtues as strangers and as pilgrims, as we consider our own station in life, our own context within our post Christian culture. One might say these three fortifying virtues are for sojourning strangers and for pockets of pilgrims, and they should be reflected in our own lives as well. And the first one here is the idea of a living hope.
A living hope. Look at verse three, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The very same phrase is found in two Corinthians, chapter eleven and verse three.
But prior to that, even all the way back to a Jewish prayer that already began with blessed be the God and Father. Of course, in the Christian rendition they're going to add of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then Peter adds, who according to his abundant mercy, earlier we saw grace and peace.
Now we add mercy into the mix. And some people differentiate between mercy and grace. And for Those who do so, they would say that mercy is God's unmerited favor towards sinners in their hopeless and helpless condition, in not giving us what we deserve.
So we deserve God's wrath, we deserve penalty. But in his mercy as believers, he does not give us what we deserve. Grace, then, is getting what we don't deserve.
That is, even in our guilt that he gives us abundant or great mercy, riches and fullness of mercy. And how has he done that? He has begotten us again. This speaks of being born again or being regenerated.
I know the word regenerated sounds like a big word, but the prefix re means again. And to generate means to be birthed. And so this is being born again.
Actually, it's a common word that we often use, especially in the English phrase being born again. But this specific verb is only found twice in the entire New Testament. Actually, it's found here in this verse and then in verse 23 in the same chapter when it says, having been born again, not of corruptible see, but incorruptible through the word of God, which lives and abides forever.
And this reminds us that God regenerates people through the use of, one might say means or through the Spirit and through the word. And so the Spirit, the Holy Spirit and the word of God are key to the foundation of our Christian lives. And Peter adds unto a living hope.
It's living. It's sure, certain and real. It's not deceptive, empty or false, like a worldly hope.
And it's eager in its confident expectation of life to come. But we could ask the question, why is it living? And it's not just because, well, it's living because it's highly emotional or because it's highly strong in how I sense it or my experience of it. It's actually not tied to that.
The very next phrase tells you why it's living. It says, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It's objectively living because the object of this faith is Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and rose again.
And so he's the living Savior, he's the risen Savior. And therefore we have a living hope because we look to a living Lord. Look at verse 21, who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God.
And then Peter adds in verse four, where this is toward this, to an inheritance, an allotment as God's children, incorruptible and undefiled, that does not fade away. So Peter says, we have an inheritance as sons of God, as heirs, we have an inheritance. And then he follows with three words.
In the original, they all begin with the same letter, and that same letter kind of like, is a negative letter in this construction, that means like not. And so we could say, in our sense, it is not susceptible to decay, it is not stained by sin and is not subject to fading away. And so therefore, this inheritance is reserved in heaven.
For you, reserve is actually a very strong military sense. It means like, it's guarded, it's defended, it's watched over, and it's watched over not by our power, but by God's power. And so it's there in heaven for us.
And in thinking of that, I'm reminded actually of quotation from C. S. Lewis, where he says, at present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door, and we cannot mingle with the splendor that we see.
We could say, based upon Peter, we're strangers and pilgrims. Lewis adds, but all the leaves of the New Testament are wrestling with the rumor that it will not always be so, I. E.
That we do have an inheritance that is reserved in heaven for us. We do have a living hope, not because we make our hope alive, but because the object of our hope is alive. God has given us new life unto a living hope by the Resurrection, the life of Jesus Christ.
One commentator writes, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks and Romans had their many Gods. They had their Gods of war, their gods of industry, their Gods of agriculture, the gods of cities, the Gods of Towns and various others. But in all of paganism's Galaxy of words, it is said there never was one called the God of hope.
But the apostle Paul believed in a living Lord, a risen savior, and therefore a God of hope. He described unbelievers as being without God and without hope in the world. But in our case, may we place our hope not in money and not in politics and not in education, not in our own skill set, not in our employment, our relationships.
Because in the end, what does every billionaire, every deceased former president, every deceased Nobel Prize winner, what do they all have in common? And it is that their bodies remain in the grave because they did not rise from the dead, in newness and in power of life. One could say that from Ramses to Roosevelt to Reagan, from Euclid to Edison to Einstein, they are dead and they remain so. A living hope must be grounded in a risen Lord.
Christ is a living savior, and so our hope is alive. May we as believers manifest a living hope, the power of the resurrection, grounded in the work of God Almighty. May we demonstrate then this living hope before the world and demonstrate it as a fortifying virtue.
So rather than having our hope in our knowledge, skills, or our spouse, or in our politicians or our wealth or experience, our hope is living because it's tied to a living Lord, a risen savior. The second reminder of the fortifying virtue we are to manifest is a purified faith. A purified faith.
And this begins in verse five. Who are kept? This is a military term, the idea of being kept like a garrison within a city. Believers are guarded, they're protected, they're carefully watched.
And he tells us that we are watched not by our own power. We don't keep ourselves in, as it were. We are kept by the power of God.
Throughout this entire passage, the foundation is upon the trinitarian work of God. And here God is the one who is powerful, and he is the powerful God behind it all. Not only is our inheritance reserved or watched over by God, but we ourselves are watched over and kept and guarded by God.
Our inheritance is kept in heaven, but we are reserved or kept or watched over even in the ups and downs of life on this earth, as pilgrims and as strangers and as aliens. Clowney says, that inheritance kept for us and we are kept for it. Not only is our inheritance kept for us, we are kept for our inheritance.
So it happens, by the power of God through faith. And this speaks of the human response. We continue and persevere in faith because God preserves and protects.
Clowney says, God who works for us is also at work in us, whereas Paul says, it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to do of his good pleasure. And he speaks of the fact that he has given us not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake. But God is the one who is at work.
For what? For the salvation ready to be revealed, the final and complete culmination of salvation. And so that verse there is going to wrap up verse five, ready to be revealed in the last time. That is when Christ is revealed.
And we're going to, for the moment, skip verse six. We'll come back to verse six. We're not cutting it out.
We'll come back to that, but we'll go down to verse seven for just a moment. So he's moving on from the appearing of Jesus Christ in verse seven, which reappears in verse 13 at the revelation of Jesus Christ, Earth Clown. He says there's more to come, for Christ is to come.
Let's drop down to verse seven. That the genuineness of your faith, this speaks of passing the test. It's genuine faith.
It's genuine. It's shown itself to be such. Why? Because it's proven itself being more precious than of gold that perishes.
This is persevering faith that's preserved by God. It's more valuable than perishing gold. Gold, although a long lasting precious metal, will ultimately prove valueless in the marketplace of eternity.
But faith, it is tested by fire or tried by fire. And so, of course, this is playing along the analogy of gold, that gold is a precious metal. And you put it to the fire.
You put it to the fire to get rid of all the impurities. Or, as Barbieri says, like muscles that must be exercised in order to be strengthened, our faith must be exercised if it is to grow strong. And perhaps this morning you're going through some difficult times or some trials.
And one way to look at that is it's an opportunity for our faith to grow even stronger, just like our muscles, rather, exercised in difficult hard work, such as weight training, and actually have little muscle tears in your muscles. And yet it grows stronger as it rejuvenates. So our faith, as it comes through difficult times, has an opportunity to grow even stronger with a result there in this verse that we might be found to praise, honor and glory.
Now, actually, it doesn't say in this verse, praise of whom or honor to whom or glory to whom. And it is true that in one Corinthians four, five, it does say that then each one will receive praise from God. And we know that God himself, at the judgment seat of Christ, will say such things as, well done, thou good and faithful servant.
That is, they will be praised. But I think in this context, especially with the foundational emphasis upon God's work and upon the trinity of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit, I think in this context, ultimately, all this praise, glory and honor is reflected back to God himself. We expect then, in this context, for the praise, the glory, and the honor to be Godward.
And when does that happen? The next phrase says, at the revelation of Jesus Christ. That is, his appearing or his coming. One commentator says, when Jesus Christ is revealed, the gold of our faith will shine to his praise, but it has to go through the fire.
Many of you have heard, I'm sure, of Pastor Charles Spurgeon, who was the pastor of Metropolitan Church in the London area in the late 18 hundreds. But prior to him, like two pastors prior to him was a pastor named John Rippen, and he penned these words that are still sometimes sung today in a hymn, when through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, my grace. All sufficient shall be thy supply.
The flame shall not hurt thee. I only design thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine. So God is removing the dross, the impurities of our faith, and purifying our faith as gold through a fire.
And that is our second fortifying virtue is fortified faith. In our basement, we have a little safe, a little security safe, and in it we keep important documents. In fact, I was just using it this past week to get a passport out.
And we'll put the passport back in there, back this weekend. And so in that we have things like our marriage certificate and the birth certificates and different insurance issues and some retirement statements and things like that. And the purpose of such a safe is, for one thing, it's locked.
But one could actually lift up the whole safe and walk off with this little safe. It's like a suitcase. It's not a heavy safe screw to the wall or something like that.
But it's also really important because of fires. It is meant to go through the fire. The purpose is that this little safe would preserve and protect those treasures that are growing through the fire.
And in job, in the Old Testament, job, of course, had some very, very difficult times in his life, far more difficult than anything I have ever been through in my entire life. And he had it compounded in all kinds of very difficult ways. But in Job 23 ten, he declared, but he that is God knows the way that I take, and when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.
Our faith is a treasure that will survive the fiery trials of this life. And may we exercise and exhibit before others such a purified faith. May we, even in difficult times, through God's strength, persevere in faith.
May trials cause us to cast ourselves back upon God, our firm foundation. Even as we're singing this morning and our second set of songs, my faith has found a resting place, not in device nor creed I trust the ever living one. His wounds for me shall plead.
May we learn to trust him even more. And so, even if we don't feel at home, perhaps in our culture, or perhaps in our place, at work, or perhaps in our neighborhood, or among friends or among family, we can still demonstrate a purified faith as a fortifying trust. In fact, difficult times in our lives are opportunities either to turn away from God or to turn to God.
And as we turn to God in the times of difficulty, he grows and strengthens our faith. And so we have seen so far that God gives us these fortifying virtues, and that among these virtues are included a living hope and a purified faith. But also, and third, an inexpressible joy.
And now we're going to come back to verse six. I mentioned we're skipping verse six for a while, but we're coming back to it now. Verse six says, in this you greatly rejoice.
So in this, or wherein hearkens back to the inheritance kept in the heavens. From verse five we are to find great joy in our preserved inheritance. Although now for a little while, or some translations have now for a season, now for a little while, speaking of the temporariness of this life and its trials.
Because we are strangers and pilgrims on this earth, our citizenship is in heaven, and our residence here, therefore, is short lived. We are simply exiles or aliens. So now for a little while, if need be, if we find it unavoidable, you have been grieved.
One commentator says, peter moves from ecstasy, from all this description of joy, to agony within phrases of the same passage, from speaking of inexpressible joy to inexplicable sorrow. There's an implicit contrast here between the joy and the grief which can coexist actually in the very same situation. Joy can be independent.
This, of course, means that a Christian joy can be independent of specific circumstances. There's this paradox going on that joy does not always only occur when times are going well, but joy also happens when times are not going well in a Christian sense of being tied to our living hope. William Blake says, joy and woe are woven fine by various trials, a clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine runs a joy with silken twine. So often our lives, joy and grief can be intertwined together. And Peter says, through manifold trials, that is, through various trials, all kinds and types of trials.
In fact, this word is the idea of being many colored. It's used of things like leopards, it's used of marble, it's used of embroidered robes in the Greek language. And here it's a many colored, many faceted type of trial that we often face, or at least Peter's readers often faced in life.
But with all those types of heaviness, all those types of grief, all those everyday trials, also came a multicolored joy. One person has said, grief arises because of many difficulties encountered in this fallen world, but faith looks to the unseen reality beyond this present belief, beyond this present brief existence, and rejoices. And then Peter adds, whom, having not seen you love.
It's a beautiful phrasing there. So none of us sitting in this room this morning have ever seen directly Jesus Christ with our physical eyes, but even to someone who had seen him, the apostle Thomas, after the Resurrection. If you recall that account of so called doubting Thomas, that Jesus had appeared to the other apostles, the other disciples, without Thomas there, and then they had told him about it, and he was having a hard time wrapping his mind around that and putting a trusting heart in that fact of reality.
And so when Jesus appears to Thomas, he said, blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. And if we are believers here this morning, that applies to each and every one of us that we have not seen directly the risen Lord. We have not put our fingers into the nail prints in his hands or in his feet.
We have not inserted, as it were, our hand into his side. We have not seen him, and yet we are to love him, though you do not see him yet believing. So here Paul echoes this common contrast between seeing and believing.
In fact, we still have that phrase today in our language. Like, to see is to believe. Like, I won't believe it unless I see it.
But Peter actually says it's possible to believe, to trust in Christ without seeing him. And he himself had seen the incarnate and the risen Christ, but he was now gone. He was no longer on earth.
He was ascended to a place of exaltation. And so, readers, up in modern day Turkey, into these areas of Pontus of Athenia and Asia and Cappadocia, they had never seen Christ. But yet Peter says, you rejoice and you rejoice greatly with inexpressible joy and full of glory.
It's unfathomable. It cannot be fully explained to others, and it's inexpressible. We may not even be able to wrap our own minds around.
It's a joy so profound as to be beyond the power of words to express, says Wayne Grudem. And in verse nine, receiving the end of your faith, that is, receiving or obtaining? Obtaining. It's kind of this present idea, receiving more and more and more of the goal to which our faith is leading.
And when hope becomes reality and faith becomes sight, for these believers, their salvation was past. They have been born again. In verse three, it is present.
They are being kept by the power of God through faith. And now it's future, an awaited inheritance ready to be revealed in the last time at the appearance of Jesus Christ. And so God's unified plan for the redemption of believers looks backward.
It's at work currently in our lives, and it looks forward into the future. And in that sense, it's the salvation of our souls. I realize that sometimes we talk about soul winning, we talk about saving souls, but the word soul also is used of, like, the entire person sometimes.
In fact, this happens later in this book, in the first Epistle of Peter, in chapter three, and in verse 20, it says, who formerly were disobedient, when once the divine long suffering waited in the days of Noah while the Ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through the water, that is, the water of the flood. It does not mean that these eight members of Noah's family, they walk up to the Ark and they ditch their bodies and their souls enter in the ark, and eight souls are saved. It's just a way of referring to the entire person, that eight persons were saved.
And that may be true here as well, but that would definitely include the immaterial part of who we are, our souls, the salvation of our souls. And so in thinking of these scattered sojourners and these pockets of pilgrims in Pontus Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, he gives them this apostolic advice. He gives them this exhortation to exiles that they are to have not only this faith, in fact, a faith in someone they have never seen, but they're to have this inexpressible joy.
And we may be wondering, like, did anyone in early Christianity listen to this advice? Did anyone follow this advice? And there's a document that was written in the decades that followed, around the year 120 or so. And this document is written by a fellow named Polycarpus Smyrna, and he's writing to the Philippians. And in the first chapter of his letter, about a half a century later than this one, it states, and that the steadfast root of your faith, which is famed from of old, that is probably in Philippians chapter one of our Bibles until now, embeds fruit unto our Lord Jesus Christ, who endured to face even death for our sins, whom God raised, having loosed the pangs of Hades, on whom, though you saw him not, you believe with joy, inexpressible and full of glory.
It's actually a quotation, or at least an allusion to this text from first Peter. Polycarp is quoting first Peter just a couple of decades later, and he's taking that same language. And he says, though you have not seen him Philippians, you believe in him with joy, inexpressible and full of glory, unto which joy many desire to enter in.
For as much as you know that it is by grace that you have been saved not of works, but by the will of God through Jesus Christ. So jump from that point from first Peter to Ephesians chapter two. He's quoting Ephesians, chapter two and verses eight and nine from our way of numbering the Bible.
And do you notice in this passage from Polycarp the continuing faith, the steadfast root of your faith, abides until now. It perseveres because God preserves it and protects it. You also notice the inexpressible joy in this passage, though you saw him not, you believe with joy, inexpressible and full of glory.
I don't know if you ever heard of a pastor named Wally Criswell, who pastored in Dallas, Texas, for decades of the 19 hundreds. But he tells a story. When he was in seminary, one Friday morning, just before midterm exam, he was sitting in his room there at the seminary and was reviewing the various textbooks he had read and all these facts that were tied to theology and that he had underlined.
And suddenly, kind of like the light went on. There was more than just a textbook about something to memorize or put on the test or discuss for the classwork, that it was something very personal, all these reminders of all of God's blessings in his life. And so he says, suddenly I felt like singing this time not from discouragement, but out of pure joy, knowing that God was with me, sensing his loving presence.
The song was, it pays to serve Jesus. It pays every day. It pays every step of the way.
Though the pathway to glory may sometimes be drear, you'll be happy each step of the way. And so he's just overcome with this joy, thinking about God's blessings. He can't express it all using his own words, so he picks up a song he knows.
He starts singing it, and he's actually down in the middle of the courtyard, surrounded by other dorm rooms, apartment rooms, looking downward. And he sings this old gospel song at the top of his lungs and doesn't think much about it. But years later, Wally Criswell was preaching in another state, and at the end of a service, a pastor approached him.
And as often happens after a service, this pastor put out his hand to shake the hand of Dr. Criswell. And he shook his hand, and with tears in his eyes, he told Pastor Criswell a story he would never forget.
Dr. Criswell, he said quietly, years ago, when I was a student in seminary, God used you to change my life. And as they're standing there shaking hands, Dr.
Criswell's trying to rack his brain to think about what event would that have been? But this pastor goes on to say, he continued, the heavy class load had worn me down. My bags were packed. My resignation letter was written.
I was heading for the door, leaving the seminary, when suddenly I heard a voice begin to sing in the courtyard. I put my suitcase down on the floor and just stood there looking out the window. And there you were, standing in the courtyard, singing at the top of your lungs.
It pays to serve Jesus. As I listened to your song, God began to prick my heart. When you finished singing, I got down on my knees beside my bed.
I renewed my promise to serve him. Minutes later, I ripped up my letter of resignation, unpacked my bags, and went back to class. I will never stop being grateful to God for using you to turn my life around during a difficult time.
Thank you for singing that song of Joy. May we be characterized by inexpressible joy that reflects God's grace, that sings his mercies and, lads, his goodness. Although we may be misunderstood, we may be misrepresented, we may be marginalized.
That is, we may be strangers and pilgrims and exiles on this earth and aliens. We can still manifest a living hope, a purified faith, and an inexpressible joy, even in the context in which we might live. And beyond that, we might be an encouragement to others through our living hope, our purified faith, and our inexpressible joy do you perhaps feel less and less at home in any context in which you live or work or minister? Don't be discouraged.
These three fortifying virtues of living hope, a purified faith and an inexpressible joy can encourage you and embolden others around you and be an encouragement to them as well. As we live the life of strangers and of pilgrims, let's look to the Lord in prayer. Father, we thank you for this text.
We pray that we would come away from this text with at least one takeaway for this week that you would have us to remember, that you might even bring it to mind as we go through this week, that you would draw our minds back perhaps during a difficult time that we are about to face. This week are a difficult context or circumstance and situation. You bring our minds back to first Peter, chapter one, and that you would encourage our hearts through your word and that through that we might be an encouragement to others.
We pray in Christ's name, amen.
