It is good to see you this morning. There could not have been a more perfect song chosen for the text that I want us to be in together. This is not unusual for me, by the way. Other than when I was 11 years old, I had trusted Christ, and over the period of about six months, my entire family in Nova Scotia, Canada, My mom, my dad, and five siblings, we all came to faith in Christ. We waited till the ice came off the rivers. We all got baptized the same day. And the seven of us and four others became the charter members of Antigonish Baptist Church. First time I ever joined a church. And my wife and I, when we first got married, we lived here in Greenville. Together we joined a church here in the area. And other than that, we've never joined a church like you come for members to join a church. Every other time we've joined a church, I've had to preach first, and then somehow they voted on me, and I came as the pastor. So this is not all that unusual for me, but I am feeling the pressure a little bit. So you pray for me as I preach this morning. Take your Bibles and turn with me, if you would, to 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 1. You noticed in the text actually that we read together in Acts chapter 26 when Paul was beginning to make his defense. He says this in verse six, and now I stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, to which our 12 tribes hope to attain as they earnestly worship night and day. And for this hope I'm accused by Jews, O king, why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? And so you find Paul standing, giving his defense, and he's on trial because of his hope. Let me ask you a question this morning. If this world was to put you on trial for your faith, would they put you on trial because of your hope? And we use that word in many interesting ways, don't we? But for most of us, it's almost a trite expression, right? There's something that's a little less than tangible, something that I can't quite grasp. And someone asks you about that, and you want it to happen, and you say, I what? I hope so, right? I can't quite prove it, I can't make it happen, so there's just this something in me that's a little esoteric. I hope so, right? That is not how the scriptures use the word hope. In fact, if it's used there, it's actually Paul using it in his defense as he talks about the Jews, and he says he's got this hope that he's on trial for, and they worship night and day, almost a sense of their striving in what they're doing because they hope so. That's not, Paul is in a sense saying, that's not who I am, that's not how I'm living. I have what he's now going to describe for us, Peter is in 1 Peter chapter one as we sang about, a living hope, an active hope. I've been working really hard to try and get myself in shape. And I'm here to acknowledge this morning, pear is a shape. So anyway, but I get on my elliptical every night and I try to do about five to six miles in my elliptical and then I started doing pushups. And so once a week I do what I call a ladder. So I start and I do 30, 25, 20, 15, 10, five. And I cannot tell you if I remember a time that somewhere through the process of that ladder, I wasn't rationalizing with myself. Yeah, you don't have to do all of them today. You've done it, yeah, I get down to 10, and it's like, I can't feel my arms. I'm not sure I can do 10, and you know, I'm doing this on a tile floor. I'd hate to lose my teeth, and you know, all kinds of things go through my mind. You know, have you ever faced something where you've got a goal in sight and you're trying to get there? I ask you this question, what is it that keeps you going? What is it that motivates you to the end? What is it that keeps you striving? I go through all kinds of things to try and motivate myself to finish that ladder of pushups. But I ask you this question in much more consequential terms. Believer, what is it that keeps you going in life? And unfortunately, I think we build for ourselves human systems of motivation that we try to use to somehow stimulate us to keep living for God. I believe that that is the root source of the health and wealth gospel. There's gotta be something else that somehow benefits me in this life and that's what'll keep me going. And all of those things, all of those things are fraught with failure. All of them are putting God on trial for something in addition to the gospel. God, okay, you did the gospel thing, yeah, that's great, thank you very much, but there's gotta be something else now that motivates me. I could get a bigger house, I could have better shape, I could have a bigger check, I could retire more early. Whatever that might be, and I've gotta find something else to stimulate me to live for God. Now, we may not go to those extremes, but what is it? And so today, the title of my message is about restoring hope, because I feel like at times we lose it, or we lose sight of it. You'll notice the T is intentionally the cross. That's what we sang about. That's what Paul is going to encourage us with in this passage of Scripture. And I think we'll see that in a unique sense in this passage. So follow along as I read 1 Peter 1. I think you know pretty well the first verses, and maybe just to give you those, to set the context, to give you our thinking, who is Peter writing to? He is writing to those of the diaspora, Christian diaspora, those who have been scattered. in the reading of this passage actually understand that he says to them that you are the scattered ones according to the election of God. The election here is that they have faced persecution and trial that has caused them to be dispersed. Or if you'll think about it on the other side, they've had to flee. They've had to abandon their life. They've had to leave the stuff they had. They've had to leave all of the other things that maybe we'd find to motivate us, the sources of hope in our life, the tangible things that we grasp, they've had to leave it all. And as we come to the book of 1 Peter, he is writing to these believers who he has known, in fact, who he has pastored, and he's writing to them because they are now equivocating on the gospel. Should we keep living for Christ? This persecution is real, and it costs us. Many of them, it seems in the context of this book, are thinking through thoughts like, maybe I'll just go covert Christian. Maybe this is a time that I could just be secret agent Christian. I could live off the radar. I'll still be a Christian, but I'll live off the radar rather than living out my faith. And he's writing to them to challenge them in their thinking, and he says this, verse three, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy, has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, and that does not fade away, reserved for you in heaven, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be re-revealed in the last time. In this, you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, You have been grieved by various trials that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Of this salvation, the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. To them it was revealed that, not to themselves, but to us they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Things which angels desire to look into. A living hope. There's a song you're very familiar with and I want to Look at that song just for a second, because I want us to see how often we actually do sing of these things, but maybe somehow we miss it. We don't connect the dots. So, In Christ Alone, it's a song we know well. Listen to the words of this song quickly. In Christ alone my, what's the next word? In Christ alone my hope, is found. He is my light, my strength, my song. Speaking of this hope that I live with, this cornerstone, this solid ground firm through the fiercest drought and storm, what heights of love, what depths of peace, when fears are still, when strivings cease, my comforter, my all in all. Here in the love of Christ I stand. Christ alone who took on flesh, fullness of God and helpless babe, this gift of love and righteousness scorned by the ones he came to save. Till on that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied, for every sin on him was laid. Here in the death of Christ I live. There in the ground his body lay. Light of the world by darkness slain. Then, bursting forth in glorious day, up from the grave he rose again, and as he stands in victory, sin's curse has lost its grip on me, for I am his, and he is mine. Bought with the precious blood of Christ. No guilt in life. No fear in death. This is the power of Christ in me from life's first cry to final breath. Jesus commands my destiny. No power of hell, no scheme of man can ever pluck me from his hand till he returns or calls me home here. In the power of Christ, I'll stand. So notice the layout of this song. There are three consequential truths that are rooted in one colossal truth. Notice that he says at the end of each stanza, one, two, and four, here in the love of Christ, I stand. A statement based out of the fact that Jesus is my hope. Stanza two, here in the death of Christ, I live. The end of stanza four, here in the power of Christ I stand. And what is it that is in the middle that makes all of that true or makes all of that possible? Notice stanza three starts, there in the ground his body lay, his death. And bursting forth in glorious day, up from the grave he rose again, his resurrection. And as he stands in victory, his ascension, since curse has lost its grip on me, And the last colossal truth is this, bought with the precious blood of Christ. Friends, we have a living hope because we have a living Savior. Colossal truth is the gospel, the death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and exaltation of Jesus Christ, and it is that that we must tune our hearts to and we must constantly turn our eyes to if we are to live with victory in a world that isn't just hopeless. It is hope-sapping. With the ever-reaching encroachment of secular humanism, We are living in a culture that is sapping hope. It'll suck the hope out of us. as we are overwhelmed with consumerism and commercialism, and we tend to have to live in that world, and as we live there, we begin to see the proximate goals in life of those all around us who are living for the short term, who are living for this life as though it is its own reward. We begin to live with their priorities, and we begin to sense their values, and so I begin to have proximate goals, begin to set my hopes on tangible things rather than that which is next. And as I begin to live there, and I begin to see those things not come to fruition, I begin to have the hope sapped out of me. We are living in a casualty-creating world. And if we're not careful, living in that world will leave us living hopeless. Thus, as we look at this passage of Scripture, I want us to see that Peter is intentionally writing of a living hope. An active hope, a hope that should be doing something in us. We're gonna look at this in both services today. We'll come back to it in the equipped service. And I hope if we have some time that I'll be able to take if you wanna offer them some questions, but more than that, I would rather have testimonies. You say, wow, here's how the gospel has stimulated me to keep on living for Christ. So be thinking about that, be praying about that. I want us to see really two simple truths. As we consider the hope, for our hope, that second hope being our future hope. What keeps me living now actively in light of that future hope? And I want us to contemplate a biblical perspective for living in light of God's salvation. A biblical perspective for living in light of God's salvation. And as we see that, I want us to see in verses three through five, the believer's living hope. The believer's living hope. It's living, it's active. It's something that ought to be not just focused on regularly, something I contemplate, something I turn my mind to, but as I do, it ought to be stimulating me in the way that I think, and beyond that, in the way that I decide, and I believe even beyond that, to the way that I feel and thus respond. This is truth that ought to grip our hearts. Biblically, our hearts are captured by three truths, our mind, our will, and our emotion. I had a seminary professor that always used to say, beware of anything that bypasses the brain. I like that. So in other words, if there's something out there that matters, I ought to be able to think about it, process it, determine that it is true. And so it ought to grip my mind. There's truth that I ought to come to grips with. Peter's gonna do that in this passage of scripture, as he rehearses for them the truth of the gospel. So we ought to let our minds be gripped with the truth of the gospel. But it ought to go further than that. It ought not just to fill our head. It ought to begin to pervade our being. And the way it does that, is I take that truth and I move it to my will. There's a volitional side to us, a place where I make decisions. And primarily I must make the first decision, that really is true. And if that really is true, there are other things that just aren't true. I have a little wristband on. I had the privilege of being involved in the faith journey of a guy named Micah Wilder. Micah was a Mormon missionary who was doing a mission work in Central Florida. I was a pastor, he came to my church, we got to interact, and really, I just sent him to the Word of God. I said, go read the Bible as a child. Put away the Book of Mormon, read this as a child. He went and spent the rest of his Mormon mission reading the New Testament. He came to faith in Christ. He started a ministry, seeing hundreds of young Mormons coming to faith in Christ, and the motto for their ministry is based in Mark 16, 15, and it says this, Jesus is enough. Very simple. Jesus is enough. That's why I wear this. Jesus is enough to get me to heaven, amen? But you know what? That's not all Jesus is enough for. Jesus is enough for everything. Jesus is enough for me to be satisfied. Jesus is enough for me to be happy. Jesus is enough for me to live with hope. Jesus is enough to keep me from having to run to sin. Jesus is enough to keep me from abandoning God. Jesus is enough to help me love my brother. Jesus is enough to help me overcome temptation. Jesus is enough, and that's a decision we have to make. We need to make it over and over and over and over. It must go to our will that we live with this active hope, a living, lively hope, and then it must go one other place, and that is, I believe, it must go to our emotions, to our feelings. I believe God created us to feel. God gave us the capacity to grasp things in a way that we sense is valuable, that stimulates us. Because I believe God has given us our emotions as an action engine. It is out of our feelings that we do. We typically don't do out of our will. There's something that happens when I make a choice that now impacts how I feel, and out of that I have an action engine. And here's often where our living faith, our living hope, our living for Christ breaks down. It's there that I make the decision that Jesus is enough, and I value that enough that I'm not gonna surrender it. It's gonna stimulate me to right thinking. It's gonna stimulate me to right doing. I'll look at something else that's tempting, and it's not that it's valueless. It might have value, but I know that it's contrary to what God would have in my life, and I look at it, and I say, I am not choosing that because Jesus is enough. And I turn my heart in constant and in continual affection to Christ. Jesus, I love you. And because I do, I love you more than that. And because I do, I love you more than them. And here's the big one. Because I do, I love you more than me. I love you more than my comfort. I love you more than my position. I love you more than I love people loving me. That's a big one. Often we are motivated to do things because we want people to love us and I'm able to look at Jesus and say, Jesus, I love you more than I love people loving me. So it's not a matter of just simply doing right. That used to be our motto for a long time, right? Do right, I think that's a good motto. But I think being able to look at that when I'm tempted to not do right and I'm able to say, wait a minute, this is not about just my will and my ability to say, I'm gonna do right. There's something else, and that is that Jesus is enough. And so a living hope, so what is the source of our living hope? What is the source of our living hope? You can tell I'm really good with a clicker. I want to keep you ahead. You're taking notes, that way you get to write. Well, look at verse three. If you're not there, turn there, while I turn there. 1 Peter. Chapter one, verse three. 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. Peter here is offering a praise and this source is the cause of his praise. God is to be praised for it is he who acted savingly in our behalf, calling us from the dead and making us alive in Christ. It is the infinitely holy creator of the heavens and the earth who is abundantly merciful to us in granting us spiritual life into our dead souls. It's God who is to be praised for the cross work of his son. It is God who sent his son to dwell in flesh among us, to reveal his glory to us, to accomplish his redemption for us, and to purchase our pardon in our place through the shedding of his blood, and then to powerfully demonstrate his power over death and sin through his resurrection from the dead. As I contemplate my living hope, One of the things that will establish us with the ability to live is I didn't do that. It wasn't all up to me and the reason this is important is because sometimes we quake and we shake whenever we have set our hope on something we have done. You see the song that will ring through the annals of eternity in hell is I did it my way. Because everyone that did it their way is going to end up in that destiny. The gospel is God's way. A work that had to be done that we couldn't do. Jesus paid a debt he didn't owe because we owed a debt we couldn't pay. And Peter starts out with this rehearsal of the gospel in praise to God because he says God did it. God provided the way. God sent his son. God raised him from the dead. And that's why our hope is living and active and unshakable and it can't be taken away. Friend, no matter where you've been. No matter what you've done, if you are here today and you do not know that you will spend eternity in heaven, God is not saying to you, try a little harder, strive a little more, go back as Paul mentioned in his testimony in Acts 26, maybe you just need to worship a little better. If you would worship day and night, then you'd get it worked out. The Jews were striving in their soul for hope and couldn't get it. Today I say to you, look to Christ and realize That works say do, do, do and God says done, done, done. Gospel is completed and you must abandon yourself to that. Jesus did it work and I must rest in his work. I must turn from my own striving. I must turn from my own sin. I must turn from my own ways and I must turn to Christ. Oh, we hear that in the gospel, don't we? But how about you, believer? Is your life still marked with works that are about trying to somehow create your own hope? You know the gospel is necessary to satisfy the wrath of God, but you live as a believer constantly striving somehow to still try to please Him. I'm not saying that you shouldn't live trying with a heart to please God, but you're resting in your religion, and you're resting in your works, and you're trying to do this and do that, and you're carrying out some kind of spiritual barter system with God, and before long, that turns God into a spiritual vending machine. If I put in the right amount of currency and press the button, God then has to dispense this blessing on me, and I want you to know nothing will rob you of living with hope faster than a works-based religion as a believer. Remember, he is the source of our living hope. But then I want you to see that out of that, he is the security for our living hope. Oh, notice the truth that he gives us here. Peter tells us that we have a living hope because we were made an object of God's abundant mercy. It's what God did for us. We know a little passage, we say it often, his mercies are new every morning. Here we have super abundant, overflowing mercies, more than I ever needed. God saw our condition for what it really was. No one knew better your hopeless plight than God. He describes unbelievers in these terms, imagine it now, being without God in the world, What a description. Hopeless. Where do you go to somehow get to the place where in light of eternity you can live with hope when you start hopeless? Nowhere. That's why this truth is so amazing, that while we were hopeless, God fixed his eye on us and extended to us super abundant mercy. As much as we needed for everything and more. That we, in our dreadful, miserable, hopeless plight, are engaged by the God of heaven and holiness with mercy. Sin always brings misery. And God will meet us in misery with mercy. In that mercy, he engages us in a state of further hopelessness. Dead. One commentator said this, dead is dead, and that's all dead is. It's dead. Without resurrection, there is no life, and that's why he's gonna mention the resurrection here. But we're dead. And God in his mercy meets us and he meets us with the only thing that can make any difference and that is life. And he extends to us regeneration. Titus. 3, 5 through 7 says it this way, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior. That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Paul, writing to Titus, captures all the truths that Peter is trying to give to his audience here. We are hopeless and he meets us in mercy. We are lifeless and in his mercy he extends to us the opportunity of life. Thus he makes us alive by his own power. And through the resurrection of Christ we can live now in resurrection power. So look then what he says in verses four and five. What does it do now for us? Be one thing if God met us in our miserable plight and God looked at us in our sinfulness and said, okay, I'm going to give you another chance. I'll hit the restart button, how's that? See how you do the next time. Let me ask you a question. Sitting right there right now as you know yourself, if God came to you in mercy and he said to you, you know what, you blew it the first time, you're dead. Now maybe you've learned some things. I'm gonna hit the reset button and restart things for you. How many of you sitting here today, you don't need to raise your hand, would say, okay, the second time I think I could get to heaven. I will tell you this, that wouldn't give me much hope. Because you know what, I know the gospel. I know the forgiveness that God has so freely given to me. And I know how many times I've refused it and rejected it and served Alan anyway. I know how lovely Christ is. I know how worthy Christ is. I know how much I should value him and yet I found myself at times valuing other things more and making sinful choices. Oh, I praise God that he didn't just hit the reset button. Now Mr. Blake might remember this, but not many more of us would. Living in school, back in the day, every student used to get a slate. You would write on the slate, that was how you did your homework, you'd write on the slate. That came about shortly after they etched in stones with hammers and chisels. So you'd write on, I'm sorry, I had to pick on Mr. Blake. Mr. Blake played the trumpet in our wedding. Many of you might not even know he plays the trumpet, but he's not using his gifts faithfully. You need to get onto him about his stewardship. He played the trumpet, trumpet voluntary, in our wedding. He was 13, I was 11. If you see my wife, you'd think I got married at 11, but I really didn't. Well, they had a slate, and you'd write on the slate, and when the teacher would come by and you did your work wrong, the teacher would look at that and say, no, no, let me help you with that and give you some work. And you know what the teacher would do? She'd wipe your slate. and you got to restart. It's a second chance. You got to clean your slate. Anybody ever hear the little phrase, a clean slate? No? Yeah, see, I really am old. That's where that comes from. You know what, praise God in the gospel. He didn't come to us and look and say, you know what, I'm gonna give you a clean slate, and you get to start over. You know what Jesus did when he came? He broke the slate. And he said, from now on, through the gospel, this is not about keeping score. It's not about figuring it out. It's not about puzzling your way through. Came unto his own, his own received him not, but to as many as received him, to them gave he the right to be called the sons of God. Look at verse four. To obtain an inheritance which is imperishable. and undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven for you. Those who are protected by the power of God through faithfulness unto a salvation which is ready to be revealed in the last time. And so he turns their attention to They're living hope. Here's what God has done for you when he redeemed you. That ought to be the source of your living for him. He has not just cleaned the slate and said try again. He actually has made you his son and he has given you an inheritance which is untouched by death, imperishable. And unstained by sin, undefiled. and unfading, unimpaired by time, that he has treasured up or reserved for you in heaven. And the stock market of heaven, friends, never crashes. This inheritance that we have in him, this hope that stimulates us to live, notice it's imperishable. It is not shaken by shooters in Virginia Beach. Undefiled. It's unstained by sin. It's not as though he said it out there and that somehow all the affairs of life and all the brokenness of man and all the secular humanism and all the fallenness and corruptness that somehow over time it diminishes. Hope there's some of that left when I get there. The way we feel about our retirement. My kids hope there's some of it left when I die. I'm not living that way. and unfading, it's unimpaired by time, reserved in heaven for you. Who? Those who are protected by the power of God through faithfulness unto a salvation which is ready to be revealed in the end time. You see, our living hope is secure because of the nature of God's promises. It's untouched by death and unstained by sin and unimpaired by time because it is God that has reserved it for us. It is God who has done the work and it is God who is storing it up. It is a already prepared and an always protected inheritance. It's actually here a perfect passive, this word reserved. The perfect tense indicates that it's something that has already been accomplished and is securely abiding in heaven for the believer. And the passive indicates that our inheritance is not secure because of us, but it is secured by someone else, and here it is the power of God. There is nothing on earth like our future inheritance. No treasure, no pleasure can compare with heavenly treasure and heavenly pleasure. He's trying to say don't live for the now. Him writer said it this way, my worth is not in what I own. That's the temptation that undermines our hope. So when I begin to live for the tangible, and I begin to trade the valuable for the less valuable, and I begin to walk away from Christ. Then I want you to see that our living hope is secure because of the nature of God's power. His power is active here. It protects the believer. It secures our persevering faith, and ultimately it'll be the consummation of our salvation. Our living hope. I'm gonna stop here. We'll come back to this in the equipping service. We'll look at the other side because he's going to take us to our lasting distress. He's gonna bring us to life. I love this about the scriptures because somehow this could be a pipe dream. Oh, it all sounds so really great. But then there's this week. Now I have to live. I still have my cancer. I still have my unpaid bills. I still have my heartaches. And so we're gonna come back, and Peter actually is going to bring this truth, this colossal truth, to the consequences of everyday life, to the circumstances that we live in, and we'll look at our lasting distress. Let's take a moment, bow your head for just a second. We've taken the Lord's Supper today, a picture of the gospel, something we can tangibly touch and taste, so that we can, in another way, through our senses, understand what Jesus has done for us. As our heads are bowed and our eyes are closed, I ask you this morning to think. Think about the gospel. What has God done for you? But in this quietness, I ask you to go to that next step, your will. What does it mean? What are you facing right now? What choices are you debating? And in your will, ask yourself this, is Jesus enough? What decision should I make? Even with bowed head and heart before God, allow that to go to your feelings. That stimulate what actions you will carry out. And today say, God, I thank you. This hope is active. It's working in me. The gospel is working in me, stimulating me to live in a way that says I will choose differently because of what you've done for me. As the piano plays just for a moment, bow your head and heart before the God and say, God, thank you for the gospel. Thank you for what you've done for me. God, I choose to love Christ more. God, I choose that you are worth more. I choose a future untouched, untainted inheritance over what this life can give me. You are better.