I'm really happy to be here with you this morning, and as Pastor Thomas prayed, kind of the point of my sermon this morning has to do with rejoicing in the midst of suffering. And we're going to be in 1 Peter 1, if you want to look that up in your Bibles. I'll read here in a minute. 1 Peter 1, verses 3 through 9. But by way of introduction, I want to talk to you first about insurance. So I imagine that everybody in here, almost everybody has insurance, maybe a lot of it. Nowadays, you can insure just about anything, not just your house and your car. If you're so inclined, you can insure your pets. You can insure different body parts. Some NFL quarterbacks insure their throwing arms. You can even insure your mustache, true story. I might be tempted to do that if I could grow a decent one. Insurance is designed to protect us, and it guarantees our well-being despite the setbacks that we may experience in our lives. So think about your car insurance. A couple years ago, my father-in-law had a car accident right in front of our house. We were having a family dinner, I think it was somebody's birthday, and it was in the evening, it was dark, and he left the house to go back to his house. They lived just like a mile and a half away. He pulled out of the parking lot and we didn't see it, but we heard the screeches, the tires skidding, and the crash, boom, loud noise, and we all ran outside. And there was my father-in-law with his beloved Range Rover. He's got one of those Range Rover SUVs, I think it's called an Evoque. And if you could see, he's got it polished. I mean, he's proud of this car and he drives it around and he loves it. And it was crumpled there in the middle of the street. So the first thing we wanted to know was, was everybody okay? And once we realized that there was no injuries, I went to talk to my father-in-law. And knowing that he loves his car, I expected him to be very upset. But he was, in the midst of that situation, remarkably calm. And I remember he said to me, I'm not worried about it because the insurance will take care of it. Isn't that interesting? The insurance offered him a certain guarantee that gave him a sense of peace in the midst of a very difficult and trying circumstance. Now imagine that you could have an insurance policy that would guarantee happiness in your life. What would the terms of that policy be? What would it have to guarantee? Your job, your health, a happy family, even just a constant flow of pleasant experiences in your life. Now, I'm not an insurance salesman, but if I were, could I sell you a policy like that? Does such a policy exist? Obviously not. But I can talk to you this morning about another guarantee, a guarantee that offers true and lasting hope and joy. And it's a guarantee that doesn't promise us perpetually comfortable living in the here and now. It's a guarantee for the future. And trusting in this guarantee or in this promise leads to a different but a very real way to enjoy life here in the present. So that's what 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 3 through 9 is about. Let's read the passage together. 1 Peter 1 verses 3 through 9 says this, 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've 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. May the Lord add his blessing to his word this morning. That's a really dense passage, isn't it? We're going to spend some time on it together, unpacking it. And right there at the beginning, just to start off, you see that Peter starts his letter by worshiping God. He says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, right there at the beginning of verse 3. So he sits down to write, and it's as if the first thing that comes out is praise. And I think he wants his readers to praise God with him, because right after that he goes on to explain to them a real significant reason that they have to be happy in God. So have you ever wondered why your pastors read a verse from the Bible, like we did this morning, right at the beginning of the service? Is that your cue to sit down and be quiet? No, hopefully we're all seated and we're quiet by the time that call to worship, that text is read. This morning we heard a verse from Deuteronomy 4.29. The reason why we do that in our services is because a lot of times we come in and we're not exactly ready to worship God. So if you're like me, praise and worship doesn't necessarily just flow out spontaneously, constantly. I'll admit that a lot of times I'm slow and dull, and I show up on Sunday morning and I'm not quite ready to worship. And so I need to be reminded of one of the many reasons that I have to be happy in God. And we were reminded this morning, reminded of the truth that God wants to be found, that He's findable, and He invites us into His presence, and from that we worshiped Him. So that's, I think, what Peter is doing, is he's reminding his readers why they should worship God. He gives them a really specific reason. He tells his readers that they have a living hope Now, if you've read the Bible much, you know that a lot of times the word hope is used in the Bible in a way different from how we use it. How do we use the word hope? We say things like, I hope I get a new job. I hope I pass my test. I learned this morning that a lot of people here are gonna be 49ers fans, so we could say, I hope that Brock Purdy can lead the 49ers to a Super Bowl victory this time, right? Or if you're a Raiders fan, you say, I hope the Raiders can be relevant. A brother here is going to get upset with me, but well, the Denver Broncos, I mean, I'm a Bronco fan, and we say the exact same thing. So we use the word hope a lot of times to talk about a desire. Sometimes even wishful thinking, but that's not the sense in which Peter uses the word in this passage. When Peter uses the word hope, he's talking about assurance. He's talking about a firm confidence that we can have that comes from something real. He tells his readers that they have a living hope, and that living hope is based on, in the next verse, an inheritance. In verse four, Peter uses the word inheritance. He's telling his readers, he's reminding them they have an inheritance. Now, what is an inheritance? Well, an inheritance is basically a family gift. So you can imagine a young man, for example, that grows up in a very wealthy family. Now, when his parents pass, he's likely to inherit a lot of money, but it could be the case that that money, he didn't work for it at all. He doesn't deserve it. It's a gift. He didn't choose to be born into that family. Maybe he didn't work to help amass the family fortune. He receives a family gift from his parents, and we call that an inheritance. And it's interesting, you know, the Bible is full of language that we can understand that comes from everyday life. And in both the Old Testament and the New, we see that oftentimes God's good gifts to his people are called inheritances. In the Old Testament, the inheritance primarily was the promised land. Judges 14, promised land is called an inheritance. And it's interesting because when you think about it, the promised land was a gift to Israel. It wasn't like Israel was any better than the surrounding nations, like they had done any kind of work to deserve the promised land. God told them, you're no better than anybody else. Why did Israel receive the promised land? because God adopted Israel as his son. God freely chose to become Israel's father, and so Israel participated in the family gift, the inheritance that was the promised land. And we as Christians receive an inheritance from our Heavenly Father as well. But our inheritance as Christians is better than the Promised Land. It's not like the Promised Land in a lot of different ways. Now, the Promised Land might have been really nice. I mean, wouldn't you have liked to have maybe a parcel of land in the Mediterranean where you could sit under your fig tree and enjoy peace and prosperity? 1 Kings 4.25. That's what Israel was hoping for. That's what they were looking forward to. And they experienced it just a little bit when Solomon was king. But it wasn't usually like that for them, was it? It didn't last. That promised land, that inheritance, God expected them to maintain it by their obedience. And they couldn't pull it off. They lost it, didn't they? They got tossed out of the promised land into exile. What about our inheritance as Christians? It's interesting because Peter says in verse 4 that our inheritance is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. Why does he say that? I think it's really interesting that he uses the word undefiled because if you read the Old Testament, God tells in the book of Numbers, he tells Israel don't defile the land. and they did defile it. By their idolatry, by their disobedience, they ruined their inheritance. Peter says that your inheritance, Christian, can't be ruined. It's undefilable, imperishable, and unfading. And the reason why that is is because our inheritance as Christians, salvation, Heaven is not maintained by us. It doesn't depend on us. Who does it depend on? Exclusively on God. Peter says you have an inheritance that's being kept in heaven for you. Do you get that? We're passive. We're not keeping the inheritance. It's being kept for us by somebody else, namely by God. It doesn't break down and it's not lost because it's maintained by God and there's nobody who can maintain our inheritance any better than He can. Now I think I could quit the sermon right there. And with my family, we could bolt on down to Minden, which is what we have to do right after the service. And I think we could all be encouraged. I mean, we have this living hope and eternal inheritance, a guarantee that's better than any insurance policy that we could imagine in this life. but I think that I have to stay and explain a little bit more because there's something tricky to this. Yes, I as a Christian, as a child of God, have an inheritance from my father, but right now I'm not enjoying it fully. I don't have full possession of it yet, only partial. Why do I say that? Because Peter says it's being kept in heaven for you, not on earth, it's in heaven. Are we there yet? Those of us who are here this morning are not. And in verse five, Peter says, it will be revealed, that inheritance, that salvation, it will be revealed on the last day. Do you see, it's future. So we have this promised inheritance, but we don't participate in it fully right now. Now let's be honest. Sometimes it's a little hard to rejoice in that. If you're like me, you want it all and you want it now. And that desire to enjoy heaven on earth, I think is one of the reasons why something called the prosperity gospel is so popular. Have you ever heard of the prosperity gospel? Probably have. We could name some names of some prosperity gospel preachers. Prosperity gospel is a message that's preached by too many people here in the United States, also where we are in Spain, also down in Latin America. And the message is basically this. If you would just believe enough, God would give you money, He'd give you health, and He'd make your life peachy right now. If you trust God enough, He'll give you all these things. And, you know, lots of people believe this. And it's attractive, and you can see why. Who doesn't want to experience heaven on earth? The problem with that message is that that's not what the Bible promises us. Even in this passage that we've read here in 1 Peter, the Bible actually promises not heaven on earth, but suffering and trials during our lives. In this passage, it's really clear that our hope is not based on something that might happen in the present, but something that's future. Our present experience is full of ups and downs, and we need to learn as believers to hope in heaven. To delight in heaven now is not natural. What I mean by that is, left to ourselves, we would try to hope in just about anything else. How does somebody get to the point where they can hope in heaven and experience true joy in the middle of suffering in this life? Well, it takes a miracle. It's not natural. And guess what? If you're a Christian, that miracle has already happened in your life. Peter's writing to believers, and he says to them, you've been born again into a living hope. He tells them that they've been born again, they've experienced the new birth. So to be born again, that's an expression that if you've been around the church for a while, you've certainly heard. What does it mean? Well, it means to start to live. but not physically. It refers to spiritual life. Think of the Gospel of John, Chapter 3, when Jesus is talking to Nicodemus. And He says to Nicodemus, He said, you, teacher of Israel, you should know this, that you have to be born again in order to see the kingdom of God, to participate in God's kingdom, to participate in that inheritance. You have to be born again. And Nicodemus, at that moment, he doesn't get it. He's like, bro, what are you saying? I have to crawl back into my mother's womb? That's not going to work. So Nicodemus is thinking about physical life and Jesus is talking about starting new spiritual life. So that being born again, that new birth occurs when a person moves from being spiritually dead to being spiritually alive. So if you were converted later in life, you might remember a time when you were not interested in the things of God. You were maybe indifferent towards Jesus, or even maybe hostile. Maybe you thought the Christian faith was a fable, or it's irrelevant, or you might have thought that the Christian faith was an obstacle to human progress. might remember a time when all that was in your heart was opposition. And you thought those Christians were a bunch of strange birds. Well, the new birth changes all of that. God supernaturally, in the new birth, changes the fundamental orientation of a person. their fundamental disposition and where there was once indifference and opposition, now there's love and faith in Jesus Christ. The Bible talks about this in different ways. In the Old Testament, in Ezekiel, it talks about the heart of stone, the non-believing heart, being replaced with a heart of flesh, a believing heart. or in the New Testament, in Ephesians chapter 1, about the eyes of the heart being opened, being illuminated, to see the truth that was right there in front of you, in creation, in the scriptures, to see the glory of the gospel, but to perceive it for what it really is, and to finally embrace it, and to depend on it. In the new birth, God makes us into something that we could never have become on our own. And that is people who worship God despite all the difficulties of their lives. People who quit trying to find hope in their present circumstances and learn to hope in heaven. The new birth makes us into strange birds, really, as Christians. God changes us dramatically. It's what enables us. The new birth is what enables us to receive and to appreciate salvation. Now, how is this even possible? Why does the new birth happen? What does Peter say? You know, we could think that it has to do with us. If I could just get myself into spiritual shape, then maybe I'd get born again. Sometimes that's the message from the pulpit. You gotta get born again, as if it were something that you had to do. We've been in Carson City for the last few days in a little Airbnb in kind of the historic part of town, so we haven't seen if Carson City is covered with gyms, weight rooms, where we spent our year back in Colorado, the school year, there's gyms all over the place. We lived in one of the nicer suburbs, and there's all these big gyms, lots of money, and people walking around in spandex with their muscles popping out, even when it's snowing in Colorado. Crazy Colorado people. Well, there's this craze here in the United States, maybe more than in other places, to improve our bodies, and how we're gonna do that, we're gonna do it ourselves, we're gonna do exercises. So can you do exercises to try to improve yourself spiritually to get born again? Can you sign up for some spiritual CrossFit? Do some spiritual burpees? No, you can't. Peter tells you, if you're a Christian, why you were born again. It's not because of you. It's because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The same power by which God the Father raised his son from the dead, works in your heart so that you might be born again. Easter, Resurrection Sunday. What's the message that we typically preach? And this is a biblical message, it's a true message. We tell people that if you believe in Jesus Christ, what is true of Him will be true of you. Did He rise from the dead? Yes, He did. If you believe in Him, so will you. Why? Because you're united to Him, and His power becomes your power. That's true even from the beginning of the Christian life. It's true not just at the end. Paul says in Ephesians 2 that we were made alive in Christ Jesus. If you're believing in Jesus, you've been united to Him and it's by His power that you were born again. Did that happen when you're out and you got, like, struck by lightning somewhere? Just randomly, oh, I'm born again, light bulb came on. Not to say that sometimes people's conversions aren't sudden and drastic. Sometimes they're dramatic. Glory to God, it's absolutely amazing. The thing is, God in his sovereignty, he's the one who causes the new birth, but he uses means. Peter tells us what those means are. Peter says that his readers had had a powerful encounter with Jesus. you're thinking this sermon's going to be really long. We've been in like verse 3, we're a little in verse 4, now we go back to verse 3. Well, now we're going to jump down to verse 8. The new birth comes through a powerful encounter with Jesus Christ. And here's what he says. This is really interesting. He says to his readers that they had not seen Jesus, but yet they believed in Him. They hadn't seen Him. So these are Jewish Christians are probably spread out through the Mediterranean world and it's not like Jesus after his resurrection came popping down and appearing to people. They knew about Jesus, not because they'd seen him, but because they had heard about him. They'd heard reliable testimony. They heard the gospel. It's that simple. And it was through the gospel that they were born again. Now why do I say that? Bump down to verse 23, real quick. If you're there in 1 Peter 1 in your Bibles, maybe it's on the same page. Chapter 1, verse 23. Look at what it says. Peter says that they were born again. It's the exact same word as in verse 3. Born again by the living Word of God. You see, God's Word is powerful. God works through means. How does He create the world? There's nothing. How does He create it? He speaks by His Word. The world comes into existence. If you're a Christian today, there was nothing in your heart except for death and sin. How did faith get in there? God spoke to you through the gospel, created that faith in your heart. God's word is powerful. Through it, he created the world, he creates faith in our hearts. And by that faith in Jesus, verse nine, we receive the salvation of our souls. By the way, this is why we need to preach the gospel to people. We sang about it, talked about it this morning in missions. People don't just come to faith getting struck by lightning out in the field. Faith comes by hearing, Romans chapter 10. The reason why we need to tell people is because they need to have an encounter with Jesus. They're gonna be born again by the living Word of God. What a privilege it is to be able to tell people about Jesus. Alright, so, I've got an inheritance. I've been born again to this living hope. I have faith. God's given me faith, and I'm receiving the salvation of my soul. This is wonderful, but there's still a problem. That inheritance, that full enjoyment of that inheritance, that salvation, is still future. I believe today, but will I keep on believing? I mean, how much longer am I going to live before I die and I'm in the presence of the Lord. How much longer is it going to take for Jesus to come back? I mean, it may be years, it may be decades. That's enough time for me to fall off the train. I believe today, but will I believe tomorrow? And you know, I know that if it were up to me, I never would have started believing in the first place. And if it were up to me, I wouldn't continue believing either. And so Peter, in verse five, has this really interesting expression, and he sounds a note of assurance to his readers. He basically tells them that God will not let them fall away. Look what he says in verse 5. He says that God protects us. By His power, we are being guarded for salvation ready to be revealed in the last day. We're being guarded. This word guarded is like a military term. And so Peter's saying, in strong language, you're not guarding yourself, you're being guarded. God is guarding you. He's keeping your inheritance in heaven and He's guarding you by faith, it says. I think the only thing that that can mean is that God is going to use the means for you to be saved. You're going to believe. He's going to make sure you keep on believing to the end so that you receive that inheritance that He's promised you, so that you experience that salvation. Now, God's gonna guard me. He's gonna sustain my faith. Does that mean I could just kick back in the spiritual easy chair, passive, let go, let God, He's doing all of it, I don't have to do anything? Is that what that means? I don't think so. If God uses means to cause us to be born again, He's gonna use means to sustain our faith. The means by which we're born again is the Gospel. It's hearing the Word of God. And the means by which our faith is sustained is also the Gospel, hearing the Word of God. Has anybody ever told you, oh, you shouldn't tell people it's an obligation to go to church on Sunday. That's like legalism. or it's an obligation to read your Bible in the morning every day. That's legalism, a new legalism. Don't impose that on anybody. I've had people say that to me. You ever heard that before? Or maybe you've thought that. I don't remember how I answered in the past, but if somebody said that to me today, you know what I would say to them? Is it legalism to eat breakfast? No, I love breakfast. Do y'all love breakfast? I love breakfast, and here in the United States, love breakfast. Bacon and eggs and sausage and biscuits and gravy and pancakes, and breakfast in Spain is like a croissant, and the coffee's amazing, for sure. It's a little croissant, a little pastry, and I'm like, I need something else for my blood sugar. So we've been enjoying the breakfast here in the United States. Thanks be to God for breakfast. God sustains our physical life and He does it by means. He gives us food. He provides for us. And it's the same thing with our spiritual lives. He gives us food. He sets a banquet for us in His Word. We all have Bibles. We can read them every day. It's not a legalism. It's a privilege. What a blessing it is to stay alive spiritually. So here Peter sounds a strong note of assurance. He says, if you believe in Jesus, that inheritance, verse 4, that salvation, verse 9, is secure. Why? Because it's up to God. It's not up to you. and even your faith, which is the means, God is guarding you. He's gonna make sure that you keep on believing so that you receive the fullness of that inheritance. But then there's this paradox, and we still haven't quite gotten through it yet. I think Peter encourages his readers with so much assurance because the reality is that even though I think I'm gonna be fully saved in the end in this life, sometimes it looks like God is not on my side. We're tempted to despair when we just look at our circumstances and the difficulties that we experience. You know, we mentioned the prosperity gospel earlier. It sounds great, your best life now. But that's based on bad theology. I'll give you an example of this bad theology. There were this gal, won't mention her name, but she was like, I think the best for many years, soccer player on the women's national team. She was really good, she's the team captain, and she was playing in her final match, this was last year or the year before, and like six minutes into the match, she tore her Achilles tendon. Bam! She was done. And I don't remember if it was like the finals of some championship, or the World Cup, or the American Cup, or something, whatever. They interviewed her afterwards, and she said, basically, this is proof that God does not exist. It's just that same bad theology, as if we think, well, God's all-powerful and He's all-loving, so He should order my life the way that I want, the way that I expect it to be ordered. The Bible doesn't promise that at all. The Bible's very honest and tells us that life is rough, full of trials and laments. And Peter, in the middle of those laments, wants to lead us away from despair. And he says that a Christian can have joy even while suffering. It's in verse 6, right in the middle. Verse 6, he says, This brings you great joy, although you may have to suffer for a short time in various trials. Isn't that interesting? Joy and trials in the same sentence. That's how the Bible operates. How can this possibly be? How can you have joy in the middle of trials? Peter, he gives us two reasons, two keys for having joy in the midst of suffering. Number one, Peter says that we can have joy in the middle of our trials because they don't last for very long. He says in verse six, we may have to suffer for a short time. Ha! Somebody might say, right, a short time. What about the loss of a loved one? What about a broken family that never gets healed? What about chronic illness? Suffer for a short time. C.S. Lewis wrote something about, somebody said to him at one point, I think it was after the death of his wife, something like, well, time cures all ills, or something like that. And he said, no, it doesn't. He said, if you lose your arm, it doesn't matter how long you wait, it doesn't grow back. There are some trials that people have to endure that last their entire lives. What does Peter mean when he says suffering for a short period of time? He's comparing the here and now to eternity. And that's why I wanted to have read this morning from 2 Corinthians chapter 4 At the end of that passage, chapter 4, verses 7-18, Paul says the exact same thing that Peter is saying here. I'll read verses 17 and 18 again. 2 Corinthians 4, 17 and 18. Paul says, "...for our momentary, light suffering..." Momentary and light? Really, Paul? "...is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison..." He's comparing the here and now with eternity. Verse 18. because we're not looking at what can be seen, but what cannot be seen. For what cannot be seen is, what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. Do you see the contrast? So in the light of eternity, even our gnarliest trials last for a short time, and that's cause for encouragement and to resist despair. The second key that Peter gives us, he says that joy, we can have joy, amid trials because our trials have purpose. Our trials have purpose. They last for a relatively short period of time and they also, in the sovereignty of God, have a purpose. We don't want to say that trials are good in and of themselves. Who's going to sign up to be painfully poor? Give me cancer. Give me a broken family. No, none of that is good in and of itself. But what do the scriptures say? Romans 8.28, one of my favorite verses, God works all things for good for those who love him, for those who have been called according to his purpose. It doesn't say all things are good. but God works all things for good. Actually, this is, Pastor Thomas brought this up this morning in the, was it, yeah, you were doing justification and sanctification, talking about the catechism, and you said that even when bad things happen in our lives, God uses those for our sanctification. We don't always know how, we don't know always exactly what he's trying to accomplish, but he is accomplishing something, always. Romans 8 says all things work for good for the Christian. That gives us an amazing assurance. The author of Hebrews also says, Hebrews 5, Hebrews 12, that our suffering can be discipline from a loving Heavenly Father. probably have all had the experience of suffering, going through a trial, and you're in the midst of that drawing near to God in a way that maybe you wouldn't have if things would have just kept going as as they did before. We draw closer to God in suffering. Sometimes we sense that fatherly love and care even more in the midst of our trials. But Peter talks about something different. Peter says that our trials have a purpose. And that is that they serve to test our faith. That's in verse 7. Peter says that when our faith is tried, or when it's tested, it results in praise and glory. I'm going to think for just a second about what that means. So our faith is being tested in the middle of our trials, and that's going to somehow result in praise and glory. For who? Maybe our first thought is it would be praise and glory for God. because as I continue to trust God, even though I'm suffering, I'm saying to the world that God is worthy of my praise and my worship, not because of what He gives me, but because of who He is. God's not a cosmic vending machine, where I'll praise Him and He gives me some stuff and I'll praise Him some more and He gives me more. Think about Job. God could take everything from me and he would still be worthy of my praise. So it could very well be that what Peter's saying is our faith is tested and we're giving testimony to the world that God is still worthy of praise and glory. But it could also mean that as our faith is tested, we ourselves are shown to be worthy of praise and glory. Checking to see if you're all still awake. Pastor Thomas is about to come up here and grab me, what? We gotta explain this just a little bit. That would mean that as our faith is tested, proven to be genuine, we suffer and we keep on believing, we deserve approval. Who's approval? Not other people's approval. So the search for approval can be a really unhealthy thing. If we're trying to, at any cost, win the approval of people around us, which could lead us even to sin and to have selfish attitudes. But is it wrong to seek God's approval? Just the opposite. We should seek our Father's approval with all our hearts. Who doesn't want to hear, on the last day, the Father say to them, well done, good and faithful servant? I think that what Peter's getting at is that, is that as you suffer, through trials, on the last day, on the day of Jesus Christ, when your salvation is revealed, you'll hear those words from your loving Heavenly Father. Well done, good and faithful servant. And that is a motivation to rejoice in the midst of our suffering. So I'll bring it to a conclusion here. What do you do when you suffer? How do you cope? How do you try to find hope? You've got some options. You can go binge on Netflix. or something else. You can go participate in some illicit activity or abuse substances. Is that gonna help? Even non-Christians, even the world knows that that kind of stuff doesn't help. It makes the problem worse. That doesn't mean that it's not a temptation, but yeah, it makes things worse. A supposed Christian response to handling suffering is the prosperity gospel. And that promises you that God's going to take care of your problems if you believe enough, if your faith is strong enough. Is that going to work? It's not. And let me just say, are you familiar with, have you heard the phrase deconstruction? People are, evangelicals are deconstructing. We're talking about evangelicals who, as they grow up, maybe leave the faith. If you listen to their testimonies, quite a few of them grew up under prosperity gospel kind of preaching. And they grew up believing that they just trusted enough that God would make their lives the way that they wanted them to be. And they get older, and life starts to hurt, and then they start to doubt God. To the point where maybe they abandon the faith altogether. Prosperity Gospel is bad theology. We shouldn't preach it. We shouldn't believe it. And I think it's evident that that kind of promise is not in the Bible. How about this? This is a trap that I fall into. Sometimes we have the if-only mentality. We play the if-only game. Here's how that works. If only God would fix this family problem. I mean, I'm just asking for one thing. If only God would solve this financial difficulty. If only God would heal this ailment, then I could be really happy, and then I could praise God, and then I could be joyful. But He's gotta do this one little thing for me. I don't know if any of you ever thought that way. I think that's pretty common. Now is it wrong to fervently pray that God would heal us when we're sick? To fervently pray that God would heal our families, that He would resolve our financial problems? Of course it's not wrong. Do we expect God to intervene? Yeah, we do. And when He solves our problems in surprising and amazing ways, what should we do? Praise Him. Rejoice. But I imagine that many of you could tell stories about God intervening to solve a serious problem in your life. And you're praising God, and you're giving Him thanks, and the next week, bam, something else comes up. Or the next month, or the next year. Right around the corner, pow, a new trial. So those blessings, they're from the Lord. We should give Him thanks, but they're temporary. And they point to an eternal, lasting blessing, which is that inheritance, which is full salvation. And that's what Peter is trying to get us to think about. He's offering us something better. We could say this, don't take this out of context, that Peter here is preaching the true prosperity gospel. You will have your best life. Not going to get it now, but on the day of Jesus Christ, you will. He's trying to give his readers joy as he orients them to their hope in the future. And it's a little bit like my father-in-law as he stood there in front of his crumpled car. He knew it was going to take months to get that car fixed, but he had peace because he knew eventually it would get taken care of. Despite of the wrecks that we experience in our lives, as believers in Jesus Christ, we can rejoice in hope knowing that in the end, God will make it all right. We need to learn to lean in this promise, on this promise. And it's really hard, because we try to prop ourselves up with crutches and lots of different things, and we resist, I think sometimes, the need to rest on this eternal inheritance. How can we become people that learn to hope firmly in heaven? I think we need to meditate on heaven. Do you think about heaven? Where does your mind go when it's in neutral? My mind goes all over the place. It doesn't often go to that heavenly inheritance, but I think it needs to. Maybe you could say it differently. Where's your happy place? What do you think about when you're down? I think what Peter's trying to say is that our happy place, mentally, should be heaven. We need to learn to meditate on it. And we need to learn to long for that day when we're gonna see Jesus face-to-face, when he's gonna wipe away every tear from our eye, We're going to hear that commendation from the Father. Well done, good and faithful servant. May the Lord help us to look forward to that full possession of our inheritance and to worship Him for it in the present.