Scripture reading this evening is found in 1 Peter, the first epistle of Peter. We're considering the text that will be used in family visitation, verses three through five. We will read 1 Peter 1, the whole chapter. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, grace unto you and peace be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations, that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen ye love, in whom though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you searching what or what manner of time the spirit of christ which was in them did signify when it testified beforehand the sufferings of christ and the glory that should follow unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the holy ghost sent down from heaven which things the angels desired to look into Wherefore, gird up the loins of your mind. Be sober and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance but as he which hath called you is holy so be ye holy in all manner of conversation because it is written be ye holy for i am holy And if he call on the Father who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear. For as much as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, 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. Seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that you love one another with a pure heart fervently. Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. That far we read in God's holy inspired word. May he bless that reading to our souls. The text that we consider this evening is found in verses three through five of that first chapter. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Beloved congregation and our Lord Jesus Christ, you and I have been begotten unto a lively hope. We have a lively hope. Jesus Christ is coming again. And when he comes, he will give us the full inheritance that he has purchased for us. But now the question for us is, do our lives show that? Do our lives show that we do have that hope? Do our lives manifest the fact that we have such a glorious inheritance even when we experience difficulties do we still rejoice in that hope when we look forward to the glories of heaven where we will be perfectly holy do we manifest our hope for that glory by living holy lives Having the hope of glory, we look forward to the day we will praise and honor God continually. Do our lives right now. Show that desire by seeking to praise and honor God day by day. The apostle in this epistle is addressing the strangers, those who don't belong in this world, those who are not citizens. We are strangers. And we are scattered throughout the world. and we are surrounded by a wicked world. Do our lives in the midst of this wicked world show the hope that God has given to us in Jesus Christ? That's what our text declares when it speaks a blessing to God, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It tells us about him. It says that he has, according to his abundant mercy, begotten us again unto a lively hope. So do we show thankfulness for that. Do we rejoice in that hope each and every day? Are we living holy lives to the praise and honor of our God? We will if we are living rightly in the hope of Christ's return. I want to take that as our theme living in the hope of Christ's return. Let's first note the glorious inheritance that God has given to us. Secondly, the merciful basis of the hope that we have. And lastly, our thankful response. The truth, beloved, of our text ought to color the whole of our lives. If you took a drop of blood and you put it in a whole pail of water, you would see that that color spread out throughout the whole bucket. And the fact that we have been purchased by the precious blood of Christ ought to color the whole of our lives. We have a glorious inheritance. Our text speaks of that in verse three. We have been begotten to that. Blessed, it says, be. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again. We have been born again. There's one birth. We have been born with an earthly birth. God has given us earthly physical life, but we also have been born from above. by the power of the Holy Spirit, we have been born again. We're speaking about regeneration. Jesus says to Nicodemus, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. And Jesus was talking about that Rebirth, that birth from above. And that tells us before that regeneration, we were dead in trespasses and sins. Before that rebirth, we had no spiritual life whatsoever. Before that rebirth, all we had was the old man of sin, And therefore, all we could do in that spiritual death was walk in rebellion against God. But God has caused us to be born again. And that in itself, the whole idea of being born again, a baby does not participate in its own birth. We are born, it's something, when we talk about being born again, that's something God does. He causes us to be born again. And when he does that, when he gives us that new life, he gives us the new man. Our regeneration is the first step in the order of salvation. The canon's third and fourth head, article 11, talks about that regeneration. It says we were in our wills, we were evil, disobedient, and stubborn. But God takes our wills when he works on our wills by his grace. When he gives us that life, he causes us to be good, obedient, and pliable. God infuses those new qualities into us so that as good trees, we are able by the grace of God to bring forth good works. That regeneration is talking about God's rescue of us. He has taken us out of the kingdom of darkness. He has brought us out of that kingdom and he has brought us into the kingdom of his dear son. He has adopted us into his family. Now God is our father. And Jesus Christ is our elder brother. I say that ought to color every part of our lives. We are born again. But it gets even better. We have that. We have been born again. We have been given spiritual life. But there's even more. Because when God causes us to be born again, he gives us the hope of a glorious inheritance to come. That's the idea of the text. When it says we have been born again, we have been begotten again, it says unto a lively hope And that word hope is not just the way we might use it today. We might say, this is something I desire. I hope that comes, but I don't know if it will. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. I want it to. That might be the way we use the word today. That's not the way that scripture uses the word hope. When scripture uses the word hope, it's speaking of a confident expectation. We are assured that something is coming. That's the idea of the word hope. Looking forward with confident expectation and assured expectation. Now hope can be used that way for the activity of hoping, but it can also speak of the thing that we are hoping for. And that's the use in the text. We have a confident expectation. What is it that we confidently expect? We have a lively hope. Well, it's described in the next verse, in verse four. We are begotten again unto a lively hope. What is that lively hope? Verse four says, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you. We have a glorious inheritance. When God regenerated us, he regenerated us unto a lively hope so that that regeneration will end one day in that inheritance. That's what we confidently expect. And the way the text describes that inheritance shows it is a glorious inheritance. It is an inheritance that can never be corrupted. Inheritances here below can rot, can be eaten by moth and rust, but not the inheritance that we receive from God. It can never be corrupted. It can never be spoiled by sin. and it will never lose its glorious character. There are things that we might inherit that get older, that break. This inheritance will never lose its character. That's what Peter means when he describes that inheritance. He says, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away. The inheritances on earth can be ruined. The inheritances on earth can be lost. They can be stolen. They can be lost through a lack of care or some misfortune. We might even pass away before an inheritance is given to us, but not the glorious inheritance that God has given to us. This inheritance that we hope for, there's no danger that it will ever pass away. In the first place, picture the Israelites God has given them an inheritance in the promised land, but in the meantime they are traveling through the wilderness. But before Israel arrives in Canaan, here's the picture, God reserves that inheritance. in Canaan. The text here talks about the real promised land in heaven reserved in heaven for you. God reserves that promised land for the Israelites. He continues to send rain upon it. He causes that land to be a land that flows with milk and honey. He makes sure that It is going to be there when his people arrive. It is reserved in heaven. Not only that, the inheritance itself, God guards it, God keeps it, but he also guards us. the Israelites, the people of God, the church, as we pass through the wilderness, God guards us. He makes absolutely sure that we will make it through the wilderness and that we will arrive at the inheritance. We have a glorious inheritance. And our regeneration is the beginning of that. We have the earnest of the Spirit already in this life. We have the beginning of that inheritance. But one day we will receive the fullness. We will receive the whole inheritance, an inheritance about which eye has not seen nor ear heard what God has prepared for us. That inheritance can never pass away. We have a lively hope We have been begotten again, that's the beginning, unto a lively hope and it's lively, it's a living hope because it has everything to do with eternal life. A life that can never be snatched away from us. How did we get it? How did we come into possession? Well, God doesn't cause us to be born again. And he doesn't give us such a glorious inheritance because of something in ourselves. The text doesn't say we have been begotten again unto a lively hope because God saw something good in you. That's not what the text proclaim. The text rather proclaims that it is according to his abundant mercy which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again. It's because of his mercy and mercy is God's loving kindness towards us, his loving care for us that sees us in our misery and according to which God sets himself to deliver us from our deepest woe and to give us the greatest good. Not just a little bit of good, but the greatest good. He delivers us from spiritual death and he gives to us spiritual life. And that's fellowship with God. That's his mercy. And he speaks not only of the fact that God has mercy towards us, but he says more than that, it's according to his abundant mercy. God's mercy comes to us not just one little drop here and one little drop there, But God's mercy to us is abundant. And the fact that it's called abundant means also it does not stop along the way. Once we have been delivered, the mercy doesn't just deliver us partway, but God's mercy sees to it that we are delivered completely. So God's mercy does not stop when we have been regenerated. God doesn't regenerate us and then say to us, now it's all up to you. You have to go the rest of the way through the wilderness and make it into the promised land by yourself. It doesn't stop with us being begotten again. God's mercy does not stop when he gives to us faith. Rather, he causes his mercy to continue so that our faith grows. His mercy does not stop with the forgiveness of only some of our sins. And then we have to pay for the rest of them ourselves. His mercy is abundant. His mercy doesn't stop with only a little bit of sanctification, only partial sanctification, but His mercy will continue. It keeps coming. His mercy will continue and continue and continue until we receive the fullness of our inheritance. Verse 5 of the text speaks of that fullness of the inheritance. We are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time when Jesus Christ returns in the clouds, then the full inheritance will be given to all of us God's people. The time is coming. That's abundant mercy, that God begins a work and continues his mercy towards us. Abundant mercy that leads God to bless us. Where does that mercy come from? Only in connection with Jesus Christ. The apostle makes that connection to our Lord Jesus Christ at the beginning of our text when he says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord Jesus and Christ. He is our Lord because he bought us. Jesus Christ represented us throughout His whole time on the earth, carried our sins as our representative. He suffered His whole life long, and especially on the cross. He paid the ransom for us. Now He is our Lord. We belong to Him, body and soul. And that goes together with the fact that he is Jesus. Children, you remember what the name Jesus means? Jehovah's salvation. He is Jesus. He comes to save us from our sins. And he will save us to the uttermost. And he is Christ. He has been anointed by the Spirit. He is the one who by the power of the Spirit carries out our salvation. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the reason for God's mercy towards us. The apostle then mentions about Jesus Christ in our being begotten. We are begotten. He has begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. By the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not to be taken all by itself, but it implies all the work of Jesus Christ. The resurrection of Jesus Christ points back to the death of Jesus Christ. There would be no resurrection unless Jesus Christ had died on the cross. So it points back to the atoning death of Jesus Christ. Jesus, who had been perfectly obedient, satisfied the justice of God on the cross. And then he rose again. He would never have risen again if he still had our sins laid upon him. If he had not made the payment for all of our sins, God would have left him in the grave. And so the resurrection points to that complete payment that God made for us through Jesus Christ on the cross. Jesus Christ, who humbled himself unto death, who was raised again from the dead, is therefore worthy to ascend up into heaven. And God did. bring him up into heaven. And God sat Jesus down at his right hand. God gave him the rule over all things, the rule of his power over the universe, the rule of his grace over the church. The resurrection points to the death of Christ, yes, the resurrection. It implies also his worthiness to ascend and to rule at God's right hand. And it points to his coming again to judge the living and the dead. Jesus Christ will appear, the risen Lord will appear as judge And to all who reject him, he will say, depart from me, ye who are cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. But to us, who are the objects of God's mercy, to us, Jesus Christ will say, come ye blessed of my father, inherit. the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. The mercy of God is ours through Jesus Christ our Lord. And therefore, The inheritance is absolutely secure. Can you imagine otherwise? Can you imagine that Jesus Christ would go through all of his life, that he would suffer for us, that he would die on the cross, and that then he would abandon his work? The inheritance is absolutely secure. How shall you and I respond to that? How shall we respond to the promise that Christ is coming again? How shall we respond to the glorious inheritance that God has prepared for us? The apostle gives an example of a right response when he speaks of rejoicing in verse six. He has told us about that glorious inheritance, and then in verse six he says, wherein ye greatly rejoice. That's striking that Peter does not say you ought to rejoice, It's true, we ought to rejoice. But he says, rather, we are rejoicing, wherein, in which inheritance you are greatly rejoicing. We have exceeding joy. We exult over that truth. We are glad. We are overjoyed. Because God will give us the final salvation that he has begun. Peter expresses that same joy at the beginning of our text. The very beginning of the text is an expression of rejoicing. When he says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when he uses that word blessed, he uses that exactly because he is rejoicing. He's rejoicing in God. He is saying God is greatly to be praised. He is greatly to be praised for who he is. God is the creator of the heavens and the earth. God is our God. We ought to rejoice in who God is, but also in all the work that God is doing to save us. He sent his son to die for us. And Jesus Christ sends forth the spirit to regenerate us and to preserve us. All the work that God is doing to save us. He is greatly to be praised for causing us to be born again. He is greatly to be praised for the inheritance that he has prepared for us in heaven. Blessed, that is, he is to be praised. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Those words express rejoicing. There's others who rejoiced in that. The apostle rejoiced in it. We are called in verse six, or we are said to be greatly rejoicing. That is what God's people do. But there's others, the prophets rejoice. You find that rejoicing in verse 10 in the context of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you." The prophets wanted to look into that salvation because they themselves rejoiced in that salvation. They were greatly interested in that truth. concerning Christ's suffering and the glory that should follow. And even the angels, Jesus says the angels in heaven rejoice over the repentance of a sinner. But in verse 12, in the context here, we read about the angels. where it says at the end of verse 12, which things the angels desire to look into. They rejoiced. But how do you and I rejoice when we think about our salvation? How do you and I react when we think about the fact that we have been begotten again unto a lively hope? The context of 1 Peter is that we still live in the midst of this world. We still face suffering. And yet, even in the midst of that persecution, And the saints in Peter's day were probably being persecuted by Caesar Nero, some of them being put to death. Yet he says this, wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations. in spite of the difficulties. There are those, of course, who preach that if you're saved, you're not going to experience difficulties. There's a so-called health and wealth gospel. Only believe, they say, and your life will be a bed of roses. But that's not what Peter declares. That's not what the word of God declares. The fact that we have been begotten again unto a lively hope does not make us immune to the difficulties and sorrows of this world. Does not take away the heaviness and the trials. The text assumes or the context assumes that we still have those trials. If need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations. We are in heaviness. We grieve. Some grieve the loss of loved ones. We experience emotional and physical and mental distress. There's a multitude of ways in which we could say we are in heaviness. That's the idea of manifold temptations. There are many, many different trials that come our way. We are in heaviness. That could be in the home because of situations in the home. It could be in the workplace. That could be in the church and in the school. It could be difficulties in our marriages, in our families, in our personal lives. It could be because of sickness and pain and grief and financial strain. There's a multitude of trials, manifold temptations. But that doesn't take away the inheritance. We still have that glorious inheritance. We still have been begotten again unto a lively hope. We will arrive at that glorious inheritance. How can we rejoice? In the first place, because it's only for a season. Ye are in heaviness, although now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness. It's for a season. At most, it will be a lifetime, but compare that to eternity. The longest of trials are only a short little span compared to eternity. But second, they are necessary. Verse 6 says, if need be, and the implication is it is necessary. God is giving to us his mercy, his abundant mercy, through those very difficulties that he sends. He is pursuing his great purposes. through those difficulties. He tries our faith. So pain might shoot through our bodies, tears may stream down our faces, but God is purifying our faith. And one day he will manifest His gracious work, He will bring it through to completion. And then our faith will be to the praise and honor and glory of God. How do we respond? Do we rejoice? And do we seek to live holy lives? When we arrive in that inheritance, we will be perfectly holy. Do we desire that? And do our lives show that? Are we seeking to live holy lives as God is holy? And are we seeking in thankfulness, all of this is in thankfulness, are we seeking to praise and honor and glorify our God here below? We have been begotten unto a lively hope. God has given us a glorious inheritance. Are we living in light of that? May God grant that. Amen.