The following sermon was recorded during the Sunday morning gathering of Grace Community Church in Los Cruces, New Mexico. We are a group of Christians that exists to joyfully extol and magnify the true and living God, to faithfully proclaim the Christ-centered Word, to build each other up by speaking the truth in love, and to bring the good news of the gospel to our city and world, so that the land was slain may receive the full reward for his sufferings. For more information about us, please visit GCCLosCruces.com. Well, I invite you to take God's word and turn with me to 1 Peter 1 this morning. 1 Peter 1. We come again this morning to this brief letter in which Peter testifies to what he calls the true grace of God. And then he exhorts his readers to stand firm in that grace, to stand fast in that grace. The overarching purpose for which he writes this letter, according to chapter five and verse 12, is so that Christians would stand firm in the grace or in the favor of God. And so Peter, our brother, desiring that the church of the resurrected Jesus would stand fast and stand firm in the grace of God, the true grace of God, he writes a letter full of declaration and exhortation, or we might say proclamation and pleading. He proclaims the great salvation that God has promised and accomplished through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then he pleads with the believers in his day and consequently the believers of our day to live lives that are worthy of the great and gracious God who has saved us. And so to encourage the church of Jesus Christ to stand firm in the grace of God, he begins by declaring what the God of all grace has done for all those who are chosen, all those who are set apart by the spirit, and all those who are now walking in obedience and walking in the realities of the new and everlasting covenant that God established through the sacrificial substitutionary death of his son, Jesus. And so I invite you to follow along as I read verses three through nine where Peter exalts in and expounds upon the glorious salvation with which God in his great mercy has blessed his people. The prophet Isaiah foresaw a day when with joy the people of God would draw water from the wells of salvation. And I can't help but wonder if what we do every time we assemble ourselves under the word and around the word is something of what the prophet saw. The people of God drawing water with joy from the wells of salvation. First Peter chapter one, verses three through nine. Grace Community Church, this is God's word, please hear it. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice. Though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord remains forever. One of the commands that flows out from the word of God, particularly from the letter to the Hebrews, is that you and I, as believers, that we would consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Stirring one another up to love and good works. Consider that for a moment. Of all the things that we are to stir up in one another, as the Church of Jesus Christ. The first and all-empowering passion that must be aroused, stirred up, stimulated in the Christian is love. Love. And it's no wonder why. We read in the Song of Solomon that love is as strong as death. It's relentlessly persistent. It's fierce in its pursuit of its object. Solomon says that many waters cannot quench love, nor can floods drown love. Do we not see this supremely revealed and proven by our Lord Jesus Christ? We see the second person of the glorious Trinity, God the Son, wrapped in human flesh with a heart inflamed with love for his Father and love for all whom the Father had given him, enduring the assaults of Satan, the betrayal of a friend, Enduring the deserting of his friends. Enduring the hatred, mocking, scorning, spitting, abuse and violence of his enemies and all the agonies of the cross. All the while remaining as calm as a sea of glass because his heart is consumed with love for his father and love for his bride. Love is a powerful affection. It's an all-consuming passion. 200 years ago, Thomas Chalmers preached what would become a very well-known and famous sermon that he entitled, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. What a title, right? The expulsive power of a new affection. Look it up. He basically argues in that sermon that the power of a superior affection for God, the power of a heart consumed with love for God is the only thing that can drive out the love of the world in the life of the Christian. When it comes to the Christian's love for God, there are actually at least in my observation, there are three stages of it, as we see it in the overall existence of the Christian, three stages of love. First, there's the awakening of this love for God, this awakening of love that is given to us the moment God causes us to be born again, the moment he says, Arise, come to life. And he calls you by name and he gives you new life. There's the awakening of love for him. Secondly, there's the maintaining and the strengthening and the stirring up of this love throughout the course of the Christian life. We don't awaken this love. God does that through the new birth. But we, as Jew tells us, are to keep ourselves in the love of God. We are to maintain that love. We are to grow in our understanding of that love and we are to be strengthened by that love. And then thirdly, finally, there's the perfection and the consummation of this love the moment we cross the finish line of the Christian race and enter into the presence of the God who first awakened this love in us and by his grace maintained this love in us. The consummation of this love. As I think about it this morning, we're in this second period, this second stage of love, where after the initial awakening of this love and before the consummation of this love, we're in this place where we, by our God-given command, we are to stir up this love in one another. And that's exactly what Peter does here at the very outset of his letter. He fixes the attention of his first readers, those in the northern region of Asia Minor who were suffering various degrees of persecution because of their love and their loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. He fixes their attention on the breathtaking beauty of the great salvation that God in his mercy has set into motion. It's the theme of this first section of the letter, salvation. We see it in verse five, we see it in verse nine, and we see it in verse 10 where Peter says, concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them, he says, that they were serving not themselves, but you in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. In other words, Peter is saying to the redeemed community, the grace that is yours, the salvation that is yours, These are things that have completely captivated angels. And yet you are the recipients. You are the beneficiaries of this grace and of this salvation. What is Peter doing? He is stimulating their affections. He is stirring up their love because it's love that will empower and embolden them to live the way he's going to call them to live. in the face of a hostile environment. He's laying the foundation upon which he's going to call them to build their lives. And this foundation is the great salvation that God the Father has set into motion. What is it that stirs the people of God into action and into obedience? What is it that moves and motivates the true church of Jesus Christ to walk in the fear of God and in holiness throughout the time of their exile in this world. What is it? What is it that inspires the Christian to stand firm in the grace of God? Chapter five, verse 12. What is it? Friends, it's love. It's love. Love awakened by the new birth and sustained by the captivating wonder of our great salvation as expounded and unfolded in the word of God. And so Peter exalts in and expounds upon this glorious salvation. I mentioned last week that if we are to liken salvation to a beautiful diamond, a most glorious diamond, it would have a seemingly endless amount of facets or cuts to it. And it seems as though every page of Holy Scripture describes one of these facets in its beauty. And Peter here in verses 3, 4, and 5 fixes the attention of his readers on five of those facets. In verse three, he mentions the source of this great salvation, the source of this great salvation. In a burst of biblically informed praise, Peter says, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's the source of it all. And then he goes on and he calls our attention to the motive behind this great salvation. The motive behind this great salvation. He says in verse three that our salvation and really our entire Christian existence is owing to the great mercy of God the Father. He says, according to his great or abundant mercy. It's all according to his mercy. We spent a time last Sunday exploring the contours of this great mercy. And we saw from scripture that mercy is that staggering attribute in God that moves him to humble himself and bring relief to those wallowing in their own self-inflicted misery. We were the ones who were hostile to God. We were the ones that wanted absolutely nothing to do with God. And thus, we were the ones who were completely cut off from the life of God and all manner of hope. Because of our attachment to Adam, we were dead in sin and we were in bondage to sin. But because of our love for sin, we were too stubborn and sick and depraved to want to break free from our sin. And so there we were, created to be joyful image bearers of the living God, but now wallowing in our filth, swollen with conceit, blinded by pride, cut off from the living God. Far worse than a defiled leper would be in ancient Israel. We were far worse. Our sin contaminated, like a leper, everything we touched. We enjoyed the good gifts of creation, but we refused to give honor and thanks to the Creator, Romans 1. We had no reverence for His holiness. We had no respect for His justice. We had no fear of His wrath. We had no admiration of his greatness, and we had no regard for his word or his will, and worst of all, we had no love for the one in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, his beloved son. We despised his son in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and beauty are found. We despised him, the one who is the radiance of the glory of God. He was despised and we esteemed him not. Were we to have been present while he walked this earth, we would have been among those who hurled their insults upon him, covered him with spit, laughed at him and celebrated his death because it meant that we could continue as the many gods of our lives, this strange man having come supposedly from heaven to expose our sin. we would have been those celebrating his death. To use the language of the Apostle Paul, we were children of wrath, deserving of wrath and the fiercest outpouring of divine fury. Because of our boastful arrogance and our blatant idolatry, we were utterly offensive to a holy God and a holy heaven and we deserved to have the life taken from us and the arm of omnipotence cast us as far away from his goodness as possible to experience the greatest possible pain and torment forever. But God, two of the most important words in all of the Bible. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. Ephesians 2, 1 Peter 1, trace all of this glorious salvation back to the mercy of God. As Peter says, it's all according to the Father's mercy. The motive behind this great salvation is God's abundant, sovereign, Romans 9, sovereign mercy. It's rich, it's overflowing, and it's that mercy that brought us relief from our self-inflicted misery. Sandstorms, in his commentary on 1 Peter, said, mercy is the response of the divine heart to us when the results of our sin and corruption are seen. We are pitiable, pathetic, helpless to extricate ourselves from the condition into which sin has plunged us. Mercy is the response of God's heart. Well, thirdly, as we saw last week, Peter underscores for his readers the entrance into this great salvation, the entrance into this great salvation. According to his great mercy, Peter says, he has caused us to be born again. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He made us alive. He brought about the new birth. He is the one responsible for our regeneration, our new birth. Again and again and again, we are told in the Bible that man is utterly unable to change his sinful nature. He may try by religion and he may try by morality, but every attempt to raise himself from his spiritual death and depravity is entirely vain and futile. We are reminded of Jesus's words to Nicodemus in John chapter three, that apart from the new birth, no one can see or enter the kingdom of God. This is the entrance to it all. This is the doorway. This is the gate into this great salvation. As far as our experience is concerned, it all begins here with the new birth. It all begins here. And Peter says unashamedly that God the Father is the one who brought about this new birth. If you skip down to verse 23 in chapter one, Peter will say, you have been born again. And Peter uses a passive verb to stress the reality that we were not the active agents or the active participants in bringing about the new birth. You have been born again. The new birth happened to you while you were passive, nothing in you brought it about. We were entirely passive in the matter. He says, you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God. God brought it about through his word. That's why Peter bursts forth with this expression of praise here at the beginning of his letter. He's not talking theology in a cold-hearted fashion. He begins this theologically rich exposition of the grace of God with praise. I mean, in the first five verses, look at the deep doctrines we've already come across. Election. the work of the Trinity, the Father foreknowing us, the Spirit sanctifying us, the Son sprinkling us with his blood. In these first five verses, we come across the reality of the new birth, regeneration, the living hope, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, the atonement, the resurrection, our inheritance, the nature of it, the location of it, heaven, our preservation until we reach that great day. All in five verses, rich theology, but expressed in praise to God. Biblically informed praise is what we're after. He says that he caused us to be born again to a living hope. a living hope, or more literally in the Greek, a hope that is alive. A hope that is alive. The same word is used in both the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Luke when they describe that Jesus is alive again. Same word, hope that is alive. In his introduction to the book of Acts, Luke says, Jesus presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs. That same word alive is the word here. He caused us to be born again to a hope, into a hope that is alive. It's not dead. It's not vain. It's not futile. It's not empty. It's alive. Our hope is alive because Jesus is alive. Our hope lives because Jesus lives. As Karen Jobe said in her amazingly helpful commentary on 1 Peter, Christian hope is ever living because Christ, the ground of that hope, is ever living. The present reality of the Christian's life is defined and determined by the reality of the past, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and is guaranteed into the future because Christ lives forevermore. We have hope, and this hope is alive. Well, this stands in stark contrast to the dead hopes of many in our world today. Paul alluded to those who grieve having no hope. When the Christian grieves, we grieve as those who have hope. But all the other grief in the world is a grief that has no hope at the end of the life, no light at the end of the tunnel. Proverbs 10, 28 says, the hope of the righteous brings joy. but the expectation or the hope of the wicked will perish. When the wicked dies, his hope will perish, and the expectation of wealth perishes too, Proverbs 11, seven. When the wicked dies, their hopes are dashed to pieces with them. Our hope is alive, though. I mentioned last week that hope, at least in biblical thought, is not wishful thinking. And we must not use our understanding of hope as we use it today and impose that upon the scripture. We use it as optimistic wishing, right? We say, I hope that this president wins or that this president does not win or this president is not elected, right? Or we hope that this happens. We use it as a kind of a wishful thinking. Well, biblical hope is not wishful thinking and it's not even sanctified optimism. Biblical hope, Christian hope, is this. It is the confident, patient expectation that God will do all that he has promised to do. It's not a superstitious hope built on fancies and fantasies. No, this is built upon the God who has promised. The God who said, let there be light. The God who said, All those who believe in the Son will have eternal life. Hope is a confident, patient waiting upon God to do all that he has said he will do. And Peter in his second epistle tells us what God has promised. He says in 2 Peter 3, 13, but according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. And what you need to know is that all whom the Father has caused to be born again, all of them, every single last one of them, will reach the culmination of this living hope. You see, there's not a single person who is born again that fails to enter into this living hope, this great salvation. Not a single born again child of God will fail to reach the end where they will dwell with God in the new heavens and the new earth. That's because this hope is grounded in the most significant event in the history of the universe, the resurrection of the son of God from the dead. Because he lives, we also will live. The Christian's hope has its umbilical cord planted deeply into the historical reality of the empty tomb. Well, fourthly, and here's where we're at today, Peter says that our new birth is a birth, not merely into a living hope, but it's a birth into an inheritance, an inheritance. And thus he calls our attention to the fourth heading, the hope of our great salvation. The hope of our great salvation. Look with me at the end of verse three and into verse four. He has caused us to be born again. to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead into, ice, E-I-S, this participle connecting us into the object, into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. This new birth basically has two launchers off of it, right? It's a new birth that launches us into a hope that is alive. And this new birth launches us into an eternal inheritance. Peter says that as our present possession, right now, we have hope that is alive. And as our future possession, we have a glorious inheritance. A glorious inheritance. Most of you know what an inheritance is. It's something exceedingly valuable that is passed down to you by your father or by your family. It could be property, it could be possessions, it could be finances, money, it's an inheritance. The person dies and you receive the inheritance. You remember that time in the life of Jesus where that man came up to him and said, teacher, My brother here is not dividing the inheritance, fix this. And that's when he warned him that one's life does not consist in what? The abundance of his possessions. Inheritance, it's a word that's actually rooted, deeply rooted in the Old Testament. We read in the book of Numbers of how God is dividing the various portions of land for the various tribes, and that would be their inheritance. But ultimately, the main thought in the Old Testament, as far as the inheritance was concerned, was the land of Canaan, the land flowing with milk and honey, the land that God had promised them. The inheritance was essentially the promised land. Reading from Exodus 32, Moses says, remember Abraham and Isaac and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self and said to them, I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and all this land that I have promised, I will give to your offspring and they shall inherit it forever. He's referring back to the very beginning of it all. Some of you are probably in Genesis right now if you started the New Year's reading of the Bible. Genesis 12, the Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your offspring, I will give this land. And so he builds an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. And then in Leviticus 20, 24, I have said to you, you shall inherit their land and I will give it to you to possess a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God who has separated you from the peoples. This inheritance was rich in Jewish thought. It was the land that God had promised their forefathers. Now, what does this have to do with Peter and the Church of Jesus Christ? Friends, everything. Peter, as we've already seen before, he takes Old Testament realities and he unashamedly applies those realities to the Church of Jesus Christ. As one author has said, Peter understood the inheritance no longer in terms of a land promised to Israel, but in terms of the end-time hope that lies before believers. This hope is still physical, for we learn from 2 Peter that it will be realized in a new heaven and a new earth, but it transcends and leaves behind the land of Palestine. You see, the focus from the Old Testament shifting over into the New Testament is not so much this real estate in Palestine. The focus shifts to a new creation, a new heaven, and a new earth where righteousness will dwell in all of its glory. Jesus said in his opening sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the land of Canaan No, he didn't say that, did he? Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. The earth. We find echoes of that in the Psalms as well. And everyone, Jesus says in Matthew 19, 29, everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for my namesake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. He used inheritance to describe the kingdom of God, to describe eternal life, to describe the new heaven, the new earth. inheriting the earth, this would have been exceedingly precious to these first readers. Many of them, as we will see throughout the unfolding of this letter, were suffering various forms of alienation, persecution, abuse, violence from the world around them, ridicule, because of their love and loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ, many of them, like the writer to the Hebrews says, of them, would have had their lands and their goods and their houses plundered and taken from them. They would have forfeited their inheritances, especially if they were inheriting property, possessions from families who were not believers. They were essentially forfeiting their earthly inheritance in order to be attached, savingly attached to Jesus Christ, which would have made an unrepentant father very angry, especially coming from the Jewish faith. It would essentially be a punishment upon the child to embrace the Lord Jesus Christ and thus cut off what the Father would have given to him had he continued as a Jew. Not believing, not repenting toward God, not believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. In Matthew 25, the final judgment, Jesus will say to those on his right, his church, he will say, come. You who are blessed by my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. This inheritance is life, it's a kingdom, it's a new earth. When you put it all together, it's a future with God. It's a future with God. And then Peter mentions three adjectives to describe this inheritance. Look at them with me. In the Greek, each of them actually begins with a, which is a negative way of talking. In other words, it's as though Peter is describing this inheritance by what it's not. By what it's not. Isn't that sometimes an easier way to describe heaven? It's not going to be this. It's not going to be that. We can't quite tell you all that it's going to be, but it's not going to be that. It's not going to be that. It's not going to be that. That's what Peter's doing here. First of all, he says this inheritance, this future inheritance is imperishable. Imperishable. It's a word that means freedom from death, freedom from decay. It's actually used of God in Romans chapter one verse 23 when we read about the immortal God. The word immortal is the word imperishable in the Greek. It's used in first Corinthians chapter nine verse 12 to describe that crown, that imperishable crown that will be placed upon the heads of those who persevere to the end. He says, the gladiators, the Olympians in Rome, they labor for a wreath that perishes, but we for an imperishable crown, a crown that will never be subject to death or decay. This inheritance is imperishable. In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 52, the word is used to describe the glorified bodies of believers. The body, the world around us, according to Romans 8, is subject to decay, subject to futility, subject to being broken down. But Paul says the new bodies that we will receive in glory will be imperishable, not subject to death, not subject to decay, not subject to being broken down. This inheritance. What a cheerful reality for these people hearing this. Many of them have bid farewell to all earthly possessions. Many of them have lost their inheritance due to their loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. And now here's Peter saying, oh yes, you've lost lands because he heard Jesus. Jesus is the one who said, yes, in this life, for my sake, you will lose lands, you will lose houses, you will lose farms, you will lose your family, but you will gain it back a hundredfold, right? In your future inheritance. Next. In 1 Peter 1.23, it's the word of God that Peter describes as being imperishable. The word of the Lord remains forever. The word of God abides and endures for all time. And so this inheritance is imperishable. Next, he says it's undefiled. It's undefiled. This speaks to its purity. It cannot be stained. The same word is used to describe our great high priest, Jesus, in Hebrews 7, 26, as being unstained, separated from sinners. Unstained. What a glorious reality to look forward to. this inheritance that we will lay hold of. By the way, Ephesians chapter one says that the spirit of God was given to us as a guarantee of our future inheritance. until we acquire or lay hold of possession of it. Friends, you will lay hold of all that God has promised in Jesus Christ. And this inheritance is imperishable and it's undefiled. It will not be stained by sin. Friend, everything in this world is stained. Even the good things that we enjoy can be stained very quickly with sin. We can turn good things into bad things quickly because of sin. Friends, everything in heaven and everything about the new earth will be free from corruption, free from being stained, free from being soiled by sin, soiled by the flesh, soiled by impure motives, soiled by selfishness and self-centered passions. Can you imagine a world that's imperishable? Where everything in that world is imperishable? And undefiled? Without stain of sin or corruption? The third adjective that he uses here is unfading. Unfading, this refers to the freedom from the natural ravages of time. It's very similar to the first one. What's interesting about this is that there has been a direct translation into our English language from this Greek word. We call it an amaranth flower. It's an imaginary flower, but it's used to describe a flower that does not die, that does not fade, that does not wither. It's an amaranth flower. You've heard of it maybe in Greek mythology or fantasy, right? It's a flower that does not decay. Its leaf does not wither. The petals do not wither. This inheritance will not die, it will not fade, it will not break down and decay. It will always be new. Always be new. Friends, that's something that we as people in this world are attracted to. The new. And I think there's something to say about that because we are created for something that's ever new. We get something new, and a few weeks later, it's no longer new, the newness wears off. We're always in this pursuit of something new. The world pursues something new all the time, a new spouse, a new house, a new car, because the old gets old. Sadly, Christians are always on the search for a new church because they find that the newness wears off, and it does. The question for us as a church, obviously, is what do we do when the newness wears off in this church? Do we persevere? Do we continue to give ourselves to the one another verses in the Bible and humble ourselves and submit to one another out of reverence for Christ? We're always in search of something new, friends, that will be realized supremely in our inheritance, ever-living, ever pure and ever new. That will be our inheritance. One brilliant brother summarized it like this. The inheritance is untouched by death, unstained by sin, and unimpaired by time. It is compounded of immortality, purity, and beauty. Jesus taught us something of this when he said, do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. What's interesting is that when you compare that with how it's worded in Luke, there are these three components to it. Everything on earth is perishable. It can be defiled and it will fade. Moth and rust can destroy it and thieves can break in and steal. but not so the internal inheritance. Not so the eternal inheritance. And so Peter is saying to these sojourners, these exiles, alienated from the world and marginalized by society, if you only realized what you have coming to you. You would live every moment of every day for the glory and praise of our God and Father who according to his mercy has caused us to be reborn into an inheritance. An inheritance that cannot be touched by death, an inheritance that cannot be polluted by sin, an inheritance that cannot be broken down by the ravages of time. That is what lays before us and friends, It was written of the Levites that they were to have no inheritance, because God said, I will be your inheritance. That's a theme that Peter will pick up in chapter two, that we are now this holy priesthood, and I can't help but think in Peter's mind of the connection that he draws between we, the church, being this new, royal, holy priesthood, and this inheritance being God. God. I mean, really, what is the inheritance? It's God. Heaven will be heaven because God is there. Heaven, the new earth, will be abundantly glorious because God will be present there, the imperishable God, the undefiled God. and the unfading God, the one who is ever new, who offers the water of life freely to those who would come to him, this pure, rich, ever new water to satisfy the souls of his people. This inheritance is what we have to look forward to. God is our inheritance. You see in the Psalms, you think of Psalm 16 at the beginning of the cover of your bulletin, David says, indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. But just before that, he says that God is his chosen portion. God is the portion of his cup. He's basically celebrating the fact that God is his inheritance, his portion. Imagine being there. I mean, what a grace that we live when we live today. Imagine being there in the book of Numbers when direct, very specific instructions are being given to your family and to the family next to you of this land that you're gonna get and you're gonna go dwell over there with these tribes and it's just very like, okay, okay, I'm going, I'm going, I'm going. We get to live in a day where instead of God dividing portions of land to us, he is saying, I have an inheritance waiting for you in heaven. It's imperishable, it's undefiled, and it will never fade away. And that leads us to the next portion of this description. It's being kept. Do you see that? It's kept in heaven for you. It would have been no comfort to these people had he just said, you're born again to an inheritance. Because you have in this letter allusions to wives who were dealing with unsaved husbands. You have Christian slaves that are having to endure the harshness of unsaved masters. You have Christians being mocked and ridiculed because they don't run with the throng into sin anymore. And the thought could come to the mind, well, that's great, Peter, but how do I know I will reach this inheritance? And Peter says, right now, it's being kept in heaven for you. Right now, it's being kept, it's being guarded, it's being protected. A word that's used throughout the New Testament to speak of something being guarded and protected. This inheritance is being reserved for us right now. Remember, Jesus says, come into the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. It's a prepared inheritance and it's a protected inheritance. It's prepared for us and it's protected for us, preserved for us. God is this inheritance. Well, lastly, Peter calls our attention this morning to the absolute certainty of this great salvation. The absolute certainty of this great salvation. He says, now watch this, there's a double keeping here. There's a double protection here. There's a double guarding here. The inheritance is being kept in heaven for you and me. plural, that is for all of you, all of you who have been sanctified by the Spirit of God, set apart for God, all of you who have been foreknown by God and sprinkled with the blood of the everlasting covenant, this inheritance is for you, all of you. And then he describes the you in verse five, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. The inheritance is being kept and the inheritors are being kept. The inheritance is being preserved. Nothing will contaminate it. One of the questions the boys asked me this week or Micah asked me this week was, how could Satan go to heaven in the book of Job and not defile heaven? Something along those lines, right? Am I right? Okay. Why could heaven still be heaven if Satan could go there and talk to God? Well friends, this inheritance of ours is being kept in heaven, preserved from anything that can contaminate it, anything that can defile it, anything that can spoil it. But the Christian, the inheritor, is presently on this earth. being protected, guarded by the power of God, he says, through faith. Think of the attributes we've already seen so far in the epistle of Peter. The mercy of God, verse three, the power of God, verse five. Think of God's power, friends. Power to say, let there be light, and light appears. Power to say, let there be, and it is. That very power is now directed at you, toward you who believe. Paul prayed that we would know something of this immeasurable greatness of God's power that's directed to us. This power, he says, is protecting us, guarding us. Now, what is the nature of this protection, I ask? What is the nature of this preservation? Is he saying that by the almighty power of God, he will protect Christians from suffering? No, because he's going to go on in chapter two and say that to this you were called because Christ also suffered For you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps, this protection doesn't protect us or keep us from suffering. It certainly doesn't keep us from pain. It doesn't keep us from abuse. It doesn't keep us from the mockery of the world. But what it does protect us from is that in those things, we don't turn away from God and become apostates. You see, God can protect you by suffering at times. He can preserve you by suffering, by bringing about pain in your life so that you stay near, you stay close, you stay dependent, you stay humble. He can bring about suffering in your life in order to keep you near, close at hand, calling upon Him as Father, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conducting yourselves before Him with reverence and with fear. You see, friends, he can use these things to protect us, but the protection that he's speaking of is the protection of falling away, the protection of being given over to sin in such a degree that we abandon our attachment to the Lord Jesus Christ. You are being guarded by the almighty power of God. Is that not something to appeal to in times of temptation, brothers and sisters? We talked about it on Friday night at the Q&A. The question was, how can I be sure that I'm saved and not just deceived? How can I be certain that I'm truly saved and not deceived? And we looked at the various passages in the book of 1 John, the various tests by which we can know that we have eternal life. And one of the things we talked about is how Those various things that we see there are fuel to take us into the place of prayer. Ammunition, if you will, matter for praying, content to lift up before the throne of grace. And here, if we were to pray through chapter one, verse five, it would be something along the lines of, Lord, you said that you are keeping me by your power. In the midst of this temptation, I'm leaning on your power. I'm leaning on your omnipotence, your almightiness. Guarded, he says, through faith. Now, this is interesting because we're not totally passive in this. He refers to the Christian's activity. It's the power of God guarding us, preserving us, protecting us, keeping us, but he says it's through faith. And some people read that and say, well, look, it all depends on us then. It all depends on us. We have this almighty power backing us, protecting us, preserving us, but it all depends on my faith. And for some people, they might say, Lord, that causes me to tremble. Why can't your power just keep me apart from my faith? But friends, what we need to understand is this. According to Galatians chapter five, faith is the fruit of the spirit of God. Faith is the fruit of the Spirit of God. So do we believe? Yes. Do we lay hold of? Yes. Do we tighten our grasp, tighten our grip on God and all of his promises? Yes. But who is the one maintaining and producing that fruit of faith? It's the Spirit of the living God. It's Christ, the vine. bringing his power and his nourishment through us, the branches and maintaining our faith. So we have here in Peter, God's work and our work, but ultimately we see that our work is the fruit of his work. Our work of believing, our work of laying hold of him is the fruit of his work. We are being guarded by the power of God, he says, through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. It's ready, it's prepared. Christ has, by his cross, secured and procured everything necessary to unleash the full blessedness of this great salvation upon us. It's ready to be revealed, but it will happen in the last time. It will happen in the last time. If you read a little bit further into verse nine, you see that this last time is the time when Jesus Christ is revealed, verse eight, verse seven, the revelation of Jesus Christ. You do not now see him, you believe in him, and you rejoice with joy inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. This will happen, this will reach its climax at the appearance of Jesus Christ, which means that not even if you, it's not even that you die and you go to heaven and you enter into the fullness of it. Even then, you will wait till the appointed time when the Lord Jesus is revealed and he brings us into this everlasting Canaan, this everlasting promise, this everlasting inheritance, when after the final judgment he will say to those on his right, come and inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Salvation future is what Peter is fixing our minds upon. We read in the Bible that he saved us. Second Timothy chapter one, verse nine, he saved us. Not according to works done by us in righteousness, he saved us. First Corinthians chapter 15 says that we are being saved. What we read here is that we will be saved in the last time. This is what Peter uses to fuel the fire of their obedience and their love, is future salvation. Sure, he's not opposed to drawing their minds back on all that God has done in the new birth, done, past, history. But what Peter is doing here is he's pointing people forward to an inheritance, an inheritance that will be fully unleashed upon the people of God at the revelation of Jesus Christ, this salvation, this massive eschatological deliverance, this rescue, when we will finally be delivered from the very presence of sin and enter into this inheritance that transcends death, sin, and the ravages of time. And so Peter here, in an outburst of praise, calls our attention to the source of this great salvation. He calls our attention to the motive behind it, being the mercy of God. He calls our attention and invites us into the joy of worshiping God for the entrance into this salvation, being the new birth. He points us forward to the hope of this great salvation, this eternal inheritance, imperishable, undefiled, unfading, And he ends on this note where he draws our attention to the absolute certainty of this great salvation. Everyone who is born again will reach this final and full salvation. This would have been a great, massive comfort for the people in Peter's day as it should be for us today. He has to lay this foundation of what God has done before he calls us into what we must do as the people of God. Because this is what will fuel, this is what will empower, and this is what will embolden our obedience and our response as wives, as husbands, dwelling with our wives according to knowledge, as brothers and sisters in Peter's day, as slaves under Godless masters, this is all relevant. And so may we, with anticipation, join Peter in praising God for this glorious and great salvation.