Turn with me to 1 Peter and the first chapter. Our text this evening will be particularly in verse four, but we'll be reading the first five verses of 1 Peter. As we prepare to look at God's word together, let's ask his blessing on us, let's pray. Almighty God, with gratitude we bow before you, grateful that you have given us your word, that you are the God who speaks to us and tells us in our own tongues that which you are, and that which you have given, that which you have done, and that which you require of us. And you reveal in your word in this passage this evening the glory that you have prepared. So, Father, we give you thanks. Again, we give you praise that you have done this for us through the one-time offering of your own son. For such love, oh Lord, we cannot comprehend. We give you our thanks and our praise and ask that your name would be exalted in all things. For it is in Christ's name we ask, amen. Our text is in 1 Peter 1, which might be confusing to some because Peter is speaking of us in terms that come from the Old Testament. And when you begin to use those terms, then there are those who become confused. You'll find it, for example, when you speak of baptism, and particularly infant baptism, and you draw your reasoning from God's dealing with his people in the Old Testament, and they say, well, we're New Testament. That's the old book. What about the new book? Or when someone's preaching through the book of Leviticus, and they make it sound like it's something for Christians. Now wait a minute, that was them in priesthood or someone speaks in Hebrews and talks like the book of Hebrews is saying this was for us and this is how it's fulfilled in us. And after you talk with some for a while, the question is raised, is that replacement theology? Has the church replaced Israel? And one of the answers I have often given is that will depend on how you define replaced. When a caterpillar goes into its cocoon and comes out a butterfly, did the butterfly replace the caterpillar? The caterpillar and the butterfly are still the same living entity, but now instead of crawling along and eating leaves, they go forth in colorful, glorious wings and fly from flower to flower, but it's still the same creature. Or to use Paul's example from Romans 11, you have the one vine. And from that, God has pruned off the unbelieving branches of the Jews and grafted into that same vine, the branches of the Gentiles and is grafting believing Jews back into that vine. So it's still the same vine, but it looks a whole lot different at this point. And so when we look at the word of God and you have the first part, which we looked at earlier in terms of us being the diaspora, where Peter takes the terms of shame for the Jews under the judgment of God. They've been scattered throughout the world and says, oh, child of God, you are now the diaspora of God, not scattered by judgment, but scattered amongst the nations as a people to be gathered to him, a term of grace and of glory. And there's some head scratching. But he continues that theme. We'll begin reading now at the first verse of 1 Peter 1. This is God's Word. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the diaspora in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father and the sanctification of the Spirit, for the obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood May grace and peace be multiplied to you. 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 now being guarded through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. We have an inheritance. That was always a theme and a cry among the people of Israel. They had been given an inheritance. You recall when they came into the promised land and Joshua had them divide out and by the lot they got their family area and that was theirs and that was their inheritance and it was going to be theirs. And every family had their family place. And if circumstances arose where financially they couldn't continue to make it, they could sell it. But then at the year of the Jubilee, every 50th year, it would all go back to the original family. So they would have that inheritance. They were in that sense nailed to the land by God as that being their inheritance. But the chief part of their inheritance Was it simply that it was that place that their family had always raised, but that was the place God had given them. That was the place where God had said he would be their God and they would be his people. That was the place where God had allowed them to build his temple, to worship him, the one place in the whole world where his sacrifices were going to be accepted. The one place in the whole world where the great high priest could come out and say at the end of the gift of atonement, the Lord bless you and keep you. And pronounce God's favor upon the people from that sacrifice. And they looked for that inheritance. There they were in the presence of God. There they were his people. There they were free to worship him, to be amongst others who also worshiped him. And then they went into exile. But even in exile, they said, we've got an inheritance promised. We're looking toward that time, not simply to get back to that place geographically, but to be back there as God's people. You have, for example, Micah in chapter four, as he's speaking of the return that God would bring his people and gather them. Micah 4, he says, many nations will come and say, come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of our God of Jacob, that he may teach us about his ways that we may walk in his paths. For from Zion will go forth the law, even the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he will judge between many peoples and render decisions for the mighty distant nations. Then they will hammer their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they train for war. Each of them will sit under his own vine and under his fig tree, but no one will make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken this." And they read these verses, and they looked at that hope, and then the one came claiming to be the Messiah, And after he was gone, Rome still ruled. And they still were scattered throughout the nations. They wanted that inheritance. And now Peter says, we have the inheritance. We have the inheritance from God. We have the core of that as the butterfly came from the caterpillar. So from that terms of earthly promise of that one piece of dirt and one that geographical place, we're promised the world. And we're promised in greater and far more glorious terms. So in verse three, he tells us how it comes to us. In verse five, he tells us how we come to it. In verse six and following talks about the blessings. This morning, we look at verse four because there he describes our inheritance and inheritance that so far outshines the hopes, the expectations of Israel. He says, you have an inheritance promised. And it's a glorious one to that which is reserved for you and for which you are kept in heaven for you the last days. That's where we're heading. You have to know where we're going because you need to know your destination. In fact, you need to know more than your destination. You need to know what it's like so that you're prepared. If you're going to be taking a trip to move to Miami, you'll pack things differently from when you move to Montreal. When we moved from North Carolina to Arizona, we gave away our firewood-making implements, axes and wedges and whatever else. When we moved to Iowa, we wish we had them back. When we moved here, we brought a jacket each, and that was about it. What's going to be like? Here's a call from Peter. to the saints scattered among the heathen throughout the land suffering, saying, look to heaven, look to glory, lift up your eyes and see where you are going so you'll know the direction there. He says, this is what's reserved for you. And this is that designated for you, waiting for you there. Reservations that cannot and will not be canceled, there from which you will not ever be dispersed for who you'll be gathered as God's people. Now, we hear the, again, the objection. Well, if you focus on heaven, you're no good on the earth. You're useless there. Well, look what Peter does. It's bogus. It's made by people who really can't comprehend spiritual things anyway. What does Peter say in his letter? Look at that inherits. Then he goes on to talk about how you live a holy life. Now, how it affects you morally and practically in the way you behave yourself in this earth. Then he talks about how you go on and deal with a godly life in the marriage and how you go on and deal with holy citizenship in a land among the heathen rulers of the earth and so forth. It has a tremendous effect. Israel had enjoyed the inheritance and the land, the days of David and particularly of Solomon. They had the temple, they had the priesthood, they had the worship. The land was theirs, a land that was subject to wars and to famines and ultimately to conquering and destruction. God judged them for their wickedness. That inheritance was marred. It was under the curse of God on this world because of sin. It suffered from the nature of all things on this earth. As Jeff pointed out this morning, after the first two chapters of Genesis, sin affects everything until you get to the very last chapter. And so that kingdom With a godly ruler, with his law going forth, with all the worship still became more and more corrupted. Eventually, it too was cursed and fell into dismay, into disownership. What about our inheritance? What about our inheritance? The one they had so counted on and looked for and desired, realizing the core of it, that it would be being with God in this land and worshiping him. What is ours? Well, Peter describes it for us in verse four. He says, it's an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Now before you can even touch those terms, you have to deal with three underlying issues. The first is, our inheritance is both a place and a condition. It is a place. You realize that there were two people on earth that never died. Translated into heaven, Christ had a glorified body. He went somewhere. There's a place. But it's also a condition. We are made suitable for the environment that is in our inheritance. We are not a fish out of water there. We are transformed in the inner man. All of our thoughts, our desires, our interests, there'll be no more inadvertent sins, much less any deliberate sins. There'll be no more ignorance and foolishness among us. We will love the Lord as we ought. When we arrive at that inheritance, we don't have any danger of forfeiting. There'll be no corruption there to bring it about. It's a change in location and in our condition. And we will be in holy splendor before the Lord. We'll no longer have to pray, forgive us our debts because we'll no longer be incurring debts. We'll be sinless and perfect. Our larger catechism has many wonderful things in it. One of the questions and answers that I truly enjoy is larger catechism number 85, death being the wages of sin. Why are not the righteous delivered from death? Seeing all their sins are forgiven in Christ. The righteous shall be delivered from death itself at the last day, and even in death they're delivered from the sting and curse of it, so that if they die, yet it is out of God's love to free them perfectly from sin and misery, and to make them capable of further communion with Christ in glory, which they enter unto. To make them capable of further communion with Christ in glory. Our prayers are uneven. Sometimes it seems as though the gates of heaven are open and we stand in the presence of the Lord and we pour out our heart. And other times it seems like the ceiling is closed in and we can't understand what God is doing and we're struggling. We're not confident that he even is hearing us. We went to fellowship with him and then we're easily distracted. We have sinners ADHD that some bright shiny something runs through the room and distracts us from thinking about him. That's going to be taken away. We're going to be changed. And here is a great mystery. We're going to be so changed that you think it'd be hard to recognize us. But it won't be. We'll be reflecting the very image of God in Christ and yet still as individuals around the throne of God. It's a change in condition as well as a location. And secondly, the inheritance takes its nature and imparts that nature to us from the Lord who himself is that inheritance. What is the glory? What is it we receive? The presence of the Lord. We are with him. We are in his presence. We rejoice with him. He is its glory. He is the central delight. He is the thing which captures our hearts and minds and activity and interests. And that really has no appeal to a carnal individual. They try to think of heaven, they can't think spiritual thoughts, and so they make it into some kind of a carnal delight. There's all kinds of good food. The golf course is such that you always get holes in one. On your Xbox game, you never run out of ammunition. All the flowers smell good and never fade, and the bees don't sting, and whatever else. But the chief delight is God is there. Not sports, not food, not entertainment, not even friends. And the world doesn't comprehend it, and sometimes we get moved the wrong way by it. We think of the glories that are there, streets of gold, the great banquet of the king, but the banquet is that we're with the king. The passage from Tom Sawyer, where Willa Douglas is explaining heaven to Huck Finn. And he starts talking about heaven. He says, now she'd got a good start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing forever and ever, so I didn't think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by considerable sight. I was glad about that because I wanted him and me to be together. Heaven's glory is not being with your family members who've gone before you. Heaven's glory is not even being there in the presence of the saints of old and the fathers of the faith. Heaven's glory is being with Christ. It's being there with him and we find delight in him and in his presence. Freedom from sin, freedom unto Christ, glorious benefits. We look forward to it. Couple of weeks, Sasha and Luke be getting married. Don't know where the honeymoon is, but I do know one thing, it probably doesn't matter a whole lot. They're not gonna come back talking about how great the food was at this restaurant or the sand here on this beach. They can go downtown Ocoee. Because the delight will be being with one another. Being with the one who is dearly loved. Knowing each other in the full sense of the word. Not only physically, but personally, individually. Spending time opening up to one another. Being there in a context of giving love unceasingly and receiving it back and the fellowship and the joy that begins in that. That's the glory of heaven. That will be with our Lord. We have a taste of it. We have a taste of it now, not in its fullness. The third thing is this. We can't really describe it in positive terms. It's in such a nature that we only can think of it in negative terms. We say what it's not. We know the essence of it, it's with God, it's rejoicing in him, it's being in his presence, but we have to get kind of vague because we contrast it with what we see here. Anything in this world is tainted. We're raised in a sin-filled world. We're raised with sin inborn in us. Our every thought from conception onward has contained sinful elements in it. We are raised in a world where nothing is unaffected by sin. We apprehend the concept, we don't comprehend it. We lay hold of it and we can't confess that our minds are all wrapped around it, we got it figured out. So it's talked about in negative terms. It's described here in three negative terms, three ways in which our presence with God in our inheritance differs from even our presence in this world with God. He says it is imperishable. Imperishable means that which is not subject to death, decay, or destruction. There's nothing in its nature that allows it to decay, deteriorate in any form or fashion. Decay is utterly foreign to it. There's nothing in there that will have anything to have effect on it to diminish it or harm it in any way. And that's not the way it is in anything else, is it? Everything we have gets old. It gets worn out. All things fail over a period of time or they become corrupted. Our bodies, our homes, objects, nations, they're not going to last forever. We recognize that. One of the big advertising points on things is how long they last. You remember when they first started putting expiration dates on batteries for your flashlights? Guaranteed good for four years on the shelf. Wow. but they had to put an expiration date because it's gonna run down. I was curious a few weeks ago in the grocery store, I looked around, you know that even dried beans have a use-by date? Bag of Pintos, but you gotta use it within a certain number of 50 or 90 years or something. It's not guaranteed to be any good after that. Even dried beans are gonna wear out. Everything wears out. but not our inheritance. It never gets old. It springs from that which is eternal, rises from the inexhaustible, glorious fount of our Lord himself. The glories of our inheritance will never fade. Our mansions and glory will never need repair of any sort. There'll never be any issues that are there. That's why we have to be changed. Both body and soul, hearts and minds cannot take on the imperishable, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 5, 15. So in 2 Peter says, well, the whole creation is gonna be changed. He's gonna wipe out all of sin and all the effects of sin, there'll be a new heaven and a new earth that have that curse removed. And that which has begun in us in sanctification, will be made complete, not only in us, but in all of creation. Our inheritance is that it will no longer be perishable. It won't ever wear out or get old. Secondly, it's undefiled. Undefiled means that it's not spoiled or corrupted, but it also means there's nothing flawed in it. There's nothing lacking in it. There's no way it could be any better. There's not anything that you could do to add to it, to improve it in any sense. You know how it is, you have a great day, or you go out to a great meal, or you go to the beach for a wonderful time, and you really enjoyed it, and you look back and say, oh, that was great. Now, if only, if only my steak had been bigger, if only I'd had more chocolate ice cream, if only it hadn't been quite as hot, or if only we could have stayed longer. There's no if only. in eternity, our inheritance is that it's absolutely full and perfect and pure. The Puritan John Brown says, in all our enjoyments on earth, however pure and exalted of themselves, there's a mixture. There's always something wanting, something wrong, and sin, that vilest of all things, taints and pollutes them all, but in heaven there enters nothing that defile it. There is knowledge without any mixture of error, holiness without any mixture of sin, love without any mixture of malignity, highest dignities excite there, but no pride, the richest possessions and no covetousness. And we have to say, okay, then there's none of that fallenness, nothing lacking because we don't know how to describe it positively. We live in the miasma of the corrupt world, and I use that word deliberately because that's a transliteration of what Peter uses for what's lacking in heaven. Miasma means a corrupt atmosphere, onerous or disease-filled. We talk about a swampy smell that just takes your breath away. You ever watch Swamp People and they have the alligator bait? I worked for a while in a textile plant, the dye house, The main treatment chemical for dealing with the fabric to make the dye go in is a mixture with acetic acid in it, vinegar. It smelled like a pickle. And for the first week I was there, I couldn't get pickles off the mind because everything smelled like a pickle. And I would come home and Ann would say, go ahead and change clothes, take a bath. You smell like a pickle. But after a couple of weeks, I never even noticed the odor. I was accustomed to it. It was still there. We're accustomed to sin. We're accustomed to it all around us and within us. Things are tainted, things are vile, and yet we see it. It's hard to watch most any show on television. Doesn't disgust you, the sin that's there, and yet you realize how much more. They just walk right past. That stench will be gone. It'll be taken away. And the air will be sweet and pure because we also were made sweet and pure. J.C. Ryle in his book on holiness many years ago said, I do not think in the nature of things that mortal man can at all realize exceeding sinfulness of sin and the sight of the holy and perfect one with whom we have to do. We poor blind creatures, here today and gone tomorrow, born in sin, surrounded by sinners, living in a constant atmosphere of weakness and infirmity and imperfection, conform none but the most inadequate conceptions of the hideousness of evil. Fallen man, I believe, can have no just idea what a vile thing sin is in the sight of the God whose handiwork is absolutely perfect. You're offended by sin? God is offended so much more. Sin is judged because it dishonors him, not because it makes us hurt. And every sin is directed against him and his honor, and they just slide right past us. And that flaw remains in us even after our conversion. That's why we must be sanctified. We're not yet glorified. We're not yet free from that. There's still sin in our service and our love. There's not a single thing we do that cannot be said there's sin present in it. Not a single thing. I was amused this morning at the illustration of the driving around and going wrong ways. I've often thought that if a police officer overly zealous were to follow you 30 minutes driving, he would find a reason to give you a ticket. There's gonna be something wrong. There are gonna be sins in your life you didn't even think about and didn't know about. So you're gonna have to offer sacrifices for unintentional sins. There are gonna be sins there that you never even noticed and didn't offend you in every way. That's why when our Lord was asked by the disciples, teach us to pray, he said, all right, forgive us our debts. And whenever we pray, that's a part of our prayer. Either implied or overtly, Lord, I come as a sinner in your sight asking again for your forgiveness because I've sinned even more since the last time I approached your throne. The day's coming when you can drop that out of your prayers. The day's coming when you reenter our inheritance when no longer will we sin, so no longer will we need more forgiveness of sins. In Christ we will worship freely and fully in an absolute bliss with no sin corrupting any of it. Nothing lacking in our prayer, nothing lacking in our love, nothing lacking in our affection toward Christ and our delight in his presence. Finally, he says unfading. That means the intense, immediate joy doesn't decline. It doesn't fade. The fullness of bliss and beauty is there. You see a bouquet of cut flowers. They look really nice, first day, two days, and then they start fading a little bit, and far too soon you throw them out. Same thing with pleasures. Same one as lights on the earth. Back in high school, I worked as a cook, short order cook, in a little burger joint. Worked indoors, it was a drive-in restaurant where the cars actually pulled up and bellhops, carhops would go out and bring the food to the car and everything. I was inside. Pay wasn't great, but you got to eat all the hot dogs and hamburgers and pizza you wanted. All the fountain drinks you wanted. Now, any teenage boy would say, that's great. Hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, french fries, Whenever, before you started work, when you had a quiet time at work, after work, no problem. That was great for the first year. And then it wasn't quite so great. And by the time I finished working there, I was getting ready to go off to college, we would send out to get some Colonel's Andrews chicken just to have something different. The delight wasn't as great as it once was. Remember that new car? Bright and shiny and smelled so nice and windshield absolutely clear and the paint is smooth and there's that first ding you see. And then before long you realize there's pits in the windshield from little bits of dirt that hit it and everything else. Everything wears out. Our enjoyment of them wears out. Not so in our inheritance. As that line in Amazing Grace tells us, when we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less joy than when we first begun. and Aunt Polly and Mark Twain and all of them are wrong. Heaven will not be a dull place. It will never grow old for us. And he says that's reserved for you. It's kept there for you. God designated it for you. You who now disperse to the earth Oppressed in this world that doesn't know God, doesn't like you, doesn't want anything to do with you, thinks you're weird, wild, and ugly. God is bringing you to this inheritance. He's got it there with your name on it. He designated it for you, who as he said in the first couple of verses here are loved and set apart and sprinkled with the blood. And he says he guarded it for you. It is kept, it is guarded. No evil can assault there. Nothing can come in and make it go away. The wicked cannot come through the gates of heaven to tear it down or take it away from us because he guards it by his own hand and by his own power. He who lives there protects it for us. and we who are kept by him, he says, we also are guarded. Israel longed for an inheritance. Their ideas were oftentimes carnal about it. They don't get it. The nation didn't get it. Child of God, your inheritance is safe. God is guarding it. It's safer than the gold in Fort Knox. Even Dr. Noe won't get in there for it. You are safe. He bodyguards you and soulguards you so that you will come in to enjoy the fullness of that inheritance because our Father will have his children there with him to enjoy his house forever. Let's pray. O Lord of hosts, how rich is your grace toward us. How marvelous your goodness that you would promise to us that which is beyond our understanding. And yet you have made us to see it and taste it sufficiently to long for it. And so, Lord, we praise your name. And even as we pray that your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, so long we, Lord, that we might obey you on earth as we shall in heaven and love you more and delight in you and exalt you and look to that day when all of the things left behind, we shall be with you. Bless us, O Lord, with the knowledge of that sweet wonder, the fullness of your grace. We ask it in the name of He who died that we might inherit, even Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.