We’re going to be in the Apostle Peter’s first letter.

1 Peter 1, verses 3 and 4. 1 Peter 1, verses 3 and 4.

And Peter writes, 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. Heaven for you.

Jessica and I celebrated our 10-year anniversary this year. We tried to. She got pregnancy sick the whole week. But the event was to celebrate the anniversary. The anniversary was to celebrate our marriage, right? But it’s funny when you think about what is the purpose of an anniversary or a birthday. I mean, I am alive every day. Do I need a birthday? I’ve been birthed. We are married every day. Every day we are married. So why do I have this thing to say, Hey, we’re married. I know we’re married. We’ve been married 10 years, right? But that’s the purpose of a birthday or anniversary. They’re special events that remind you of things that are good in your life that you probably take for granted. So when you go to a birthday party, it’s, hey, we love and cherish and value this person. Though we get to do regular life with this person every day, we don’t want everyone to neglect that, Hey, this person is here. I love a son or a daughter or a friend. And so it should be in your marriage. Marriage should be a regular fellowship of growing deeper with a husband or a wife. And you’re getting to go through the hard times and you’re getting to go through the good times and you cherish and value your spouse in everyday life. But an anniversary is a special time to really, really remember it and really be thankful for it, right? That’s what those special times are for. So it is. It is December the 1st, which means it is Advent season. And Advent is a Latin word and it means the coming. And so for centuries, the church has celebrated the Advent, the coming of Christ. Now, isn’t it true that you and I are always Christians every day and every day we should be praying and every day we should be enjoying fellowship with God and God’s people and every day we’re fighting the good fight and spiritual battle and every day we should be seeking to make Christ known. Well, yes, that’s always true in every moment, every day as Christians. Nonetheless, Christmas time, the Advent is a time to really, really, really remember it and be grateful for it so that we don’t take it for granted what the Advent means, that Christ, heaven’s darling, came to earth to us and for us. And so this December, this Advent season, I want us to consider those points, those points of the Advent. Now, the first one I want us to consider this morning, what we have because Christ showed up, is hope. You and I have, because of the Advent of Christ, a living hope.

Verse 3, Peter says, 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. So Peter is writing to what he calls them to be elect exiles. We considered, you remember Paul’s letter to the Philippians last week, and that letter was mostly like a warm-hearted, like affectionate, like, hey, I just love y’all so much. Y’all have been with me through so much, and I’m just so grateful for our fellowship we have in the gospel. That was really the heart of Philippians from Paul to the Christians in Philippi. This letter, very pointedly though, is Peter writing to a bunch of Christians, Christians who are suffering for their faith. They’re exhausted, and they’re frustrated and confused because of their suffering. So you’ve got a bunch of Christians in the province of Asia Minor, which is modern-day Turkey, and he’s writing them because they’re suffering for the gospel. And he doesn’t try to sugarcoat it. Like, it’s not that bad, guys. It’s not that bad. Like, he affirms it. He’s like, yeah, y’all are exiles. He starts the letter off that way. And that means you’re strangers. You’re strangers. You’re sojourners. You’re pilgrims. You’re unwanted foreigners, and you’ve been scattered, he says, throughout Asia Minor. And it’s not simply that they lack a homeland. Like, why don’t they just go home? Well, they can’t go home because they have a homeland that can’t be seen with the eyes. They have a homeland that’s not material right now. They can’t get there by land or by boat. It’s not that simple for them. They are exiles. But then Peter puts this adjective in front of exiles. He says, you are elect exiles. What does that mean? Well, it means that they’ve been called out by God. They’ve been chosen to a better life and a better city. God has bid them, renounce your citizenship so that you can gain it in my city, in my country. God’s invited them to have a native home with Him in the heavenly places. So it’s both an encouraging and discouraging adjective. It’s discouraging because they can’t get home now, although they would like to. And until God calls them home, whether it be by martyrdom or old age, they’re stuck in exile.

The encouraging thing is they do believe at some point God is going to call them home. So the elect thing is, I’m celebrating that God has bid me die to myself and come to Him in faith. But, in the now, it’s discouraging because I have to remain what is so hard to do for them, for all Christians throughout the church age, and for us today. And that’s remain hopeful when it’s impossible to have hope of something better.

But I want us to see that if this Christmas season you and I are going to have a real hope, we cannot look to the future. Hope does look to the future, but I want you to see that Christian hope first looks to the past and then it looks to the present. Okay, here’s what we’re going to see.

Blessed be the Godfather of our Lord Jesus Christ. So here is this blessedness that Peter attributes to God. And I want to start with what is intrinsic in God’s blessedness. God is blessed whether you and I choose to bless Him or not. You can’t take away His blessedness. He is praiseworthy. And the reason why God is so praiseworthy and the reason why God is so blessed is because He is praiseworthy. It’s because God is so glorious. He’s set apart and He’s above us in every way. So He just deserves intrinsically to His nature all glory. So what I want to do for a second is point out from the psalmist and the psalmist illuminates all kinds of things that are glorious about God, but four particular things about why this God is blessed as no one else is. Psalm 72, 18, the psalmist says God has wonderfully done many things. He has many wonderful works. How often, friends, do you and I, we see a sunrise, we see a sunset, we see a beautiful landscape, we see pictures of outer space. You can study the intricacies of the complex anatomy of the human body, the ability to express and discern emotion, the ability to gain knowledge, the ability to teach knowledge. Humans are so complex and unique in how they are in the image of God and their personality. So all of creation, including the uniqueness of our consciousness as people, it all says, hey, there is a God who is wonderfully creative as no one else is. There’s a God who made all this.

Psalm 29, the psalmist says, worship God in the splendor of His holiness. So God, like no one else, is clean and He’s righteous. God is, that word holy, and we’ve talked about it, it means He’s altogether separate. He’s not like anything or anyone else. He is the antithesis of evil. He is the antithesis of what’s wicked. To come into God’s presence as a sinful person is to die. God is so holy, if I were to waltz into His presence like I had business to, the Bible says I would die. God says to Moses, Moses, you will look at my backside, but you will not look at my face. And what happened when Moses came down the mountain, the people were freaked out because Moses’ face was glowing because it said he had spoken with the Lord. He’s a holy God. Third reason, Psalm 99 says God is so powerful and strong. He’s powerful and strong over every king, every ruler, every nation, every angelic creature, every demon over Satan. The Bible says that the universe literally is upheld by Jesus. I remember reading one commentator in Bible college. He said if Jesus chose to let it go, everything would immediately revert back into dust. Jesus is holding everything together by the word of His power. He didn’t just create it. He created it. He lords over it and everything is happening as He says it will happen. He’s a strong God. And fourth, God is blessed and praiseworthy.

Psalm 31 says because He’s good. God is a good God and He loves to be good to those who obey Him and love Him. God desires to bless and keep all those who submit to His glorious perfections. So it’s a big if. If. If only we could have always seen that and keep the burning light of God’s blessedness in front of us, the term the fall of man would be a non-existent term. But it’s a real term because we really fail because we fail to live in light of the blessed, glorious, praiseworthy God who is right in front of us who only intended to do good to us and for us. That’s the story of humanity. That’s the story of the fall. But it’s not the whole story. Right? If that was the whole story, Christmas would really not be Christmas, would it? It would just be a lame time to exchange gifts before we all die.

But Peter gives us in the church a very particular reason about why we in the church would bless God past what’s obviously intrinsic to Him as a blessed God. And it’s this. God has been merciful to us. We have all failed to live in the light of the God who is there. As a great God in holiness, He must rule in holiness and justice and condemn those who don’t submit to His rule. So each of us, all the way back to Adam and Eve, we have no hope of life. Life, yours and mine, is forfeited in every sinful inclination of the heart and every misdeed of the body that’s all stacking up and it’s all crewing until the just God of the universe gives us what we justly deserve. And what do we justly deserve? What’s right for you and I to have? Eternal death.

So who could help us from this hopeless plight?

Hosea 1.6

It says, She conceived again and bore a daughter and the Lord said to him, Call her name No-mercy, for I will have no mercy on the house of Israel to forgive them at all. And down in eight, when she had weaned No-mercy, she conceived and bore a son and the Lord said to her, Call his name Not-my-people, for you are not my people and I’m not your God. You know who that was? It was the prophet Hosea. And during the great rebellion and sin of Israel, God said to Hosea, Hosea, I want you to go and marry Hor and I want you to name your son Not-my-people, name your daughter Not-mercy, because you’re a sinful, wicked, rebellion of people and you’ve hoarded yourself out to sin and to other gods.

No-mercy. He named his daughter No-mercy. So who could help us?

Well, that’s what’s so great about Christmas. The same God who condemned us is the God who has chosen to help us and who has been merciful to us. Peter says, God the Father caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus. The Father could have done nothing, but the Father does something. The Father sent Jesus, born as a babe, to live among, serve, and save the hopeless who had hopelessly given up their life through sinful pursuits. And Jesus wasn’t just someone from God. Jesus was God. Jesus was the life. Jesus is the life. Real, pure, good life that we lost. Jesus said, I’m the way. Jesus says, I’m the truth. Jesus says, I’m the life. And so the life, capital L, gave up his life for those of us who have no hope of life. At great length, at great cost, the Father gave his pure, perfect Son. At great cost, Jesus gave up his own life. And having laid down his life as a sacrifice for sins, Jesus gifted something to you and me. He gifted to us the hope of life.

Friends, what you and I can celebrate more than that is this, not just some hope and not just some life. The phrase could really be translated that caused us to be born again. It could be given a second birth or beget again. That’s what it means. The Jesus who died with the sins of the world on his shoulders didn’t stay there, did he? He was raised up to new life. He’s alive now. And though Jesus died for our sins, he rose up victorious over sin and over death. And in his death, he defeated death. What’s the law require? It requires death for sin. Well, death no longer has a claim on Jesus’ life because he rose victorious. He rose victorious over sin and death. Anytime the law would want to accuse Jesus, hey, what about this sin or that sin? Jesus said, any sin, I paid the full penalty to the law. I died. So Jesus has this powerful resurrected life that sin and death has no claim on, has no claim over. It’s uniquely powerful over sin and death. So the Bible tells you and I, when we place faith in Jesus Christ, our life is so identified with Jesus that sin and death can have no claim on our life either. Our life, our life is considered to be identified with the new resurrected, powerful, alive life of Jesus Christ. We’ve been birthed again. We’ve been begotten again of God through the spiritual resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul says it this way in Romans 6, verse 5. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection, like this. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we no longer could be enslaved to sin. For the one who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him for the death he died. He died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin, but what?

Rebirthed in Jesus.

Friends, we’ve been united to Jesus through the spirit. We’re begotten again of God. The Father is ours through Jesus. Let me tell you what you didn’t get for Christmas. You didn’t get salvation. Just like here’s your salvation. Here’s your random spirit. Spiritual, arbitrary life. It’s not what you got. What you got was Jesus. What you got was God. God is the gospel. To believe in the gospel is to believe God gave himself back to you. Who has life? Jesus. So if you don’t have Jesus, you don’t have life. You don’t have some spiritual life. You only have what you have in Christ, Jesus.

If you believe that the resurrected Jesus will be your living, hope. He is our living hope because God caused it. That’s it. It was the agency of the Father that willed it. It was the agency of the Son that accomplished it. And it’s the agency of the Spirit that has applied it to you and I. We didn’t do that. God said, let it be done. Jesus did it. And the Spirit’s working it out in you and I. No one birthed himself. You can’t birth yourself. So we say this Christmas season, blessed be the God and Father, of our Lord Jesus Christ, for he has been abundantly merciful to you and to me. Though God said what he said to Hosea about Israel, he says this again in Hosea chapter 223. And I will have mercy on no mercy. And I will say to not my people, you are my people. And he shall say, you are my God.

I think it would have been a marvelous thing if God had said, if God had given us a big reset button, like, I’ll wipe the slate clean, but don’t mess up again. That would have been something to marvel at, wouldn’t it? But it would have been to no avail. Because even if God had wiped your slate clean and my slate clean, I’m still me. And that’s a problem. I’m going to mess it up almost immediately. But the abundant mercy of God hasn’t just wiped the slate clean of what I’ve done. It’s given me the power of the Spirit now to desire right. And it’s given me the power to live right as well. So the Christian life doesn’t mean less trial and trouble. It means more trial and trouble being a Christian. But there’s this gift. And the gift is the knowledge that I have the power of the living Christ in me to see me through all adversity. So you see how this living hope, it hasn’t just dealt with the past sin and shame we have. It deals with keeping us in the present by the Spirit. Now we’re preserved. Now we’re living. Now I have power. That is a living hope given to us by an abundantly merciful Father.

I’ll tell you one thing that I don’t like around Christmas time. And I don’t know the answer quite yet. I don’t love it. But you know grandparents will be grandparents.

It’s like all these gifts you get for your kids. And it’s like Christmas time and they want to rip into them. I was a kid. I get it.

But it’s like they start ripping into presents and they don’t even acknowledge what something is before they want to go on with the next thing. But you’d even say, well that was a cool toy. Don’t you want to look at that? No, it’s just like this mad rush of what else is there? No, cherish this. I’m going to buy you one thing. I’m going to buy my kids one thing. Here’s a wooden car. There. Go have fun with that. I’m just so spoiled sometimes. I feel like there’s so much stuff everywhere. I think it’s the same way with the gospel.

How guilty are we so often of not just cherishing the gospel? This message of mercy that a father who should have, could have condemned sent the pure, perfect Jesus to bleed and die for sinners like you and I. To give us a living hope. You know, I think if we dwelt on that gospel of mercy, we’d be a merciful people. Remember way back in the Beatitudes? We did the Beatitudes earlier last year. And what did we see? Jesus said in those Beatitudes, Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. So when we love that gospel truly, it comes out in the way we live towards one another, doesn’t it? We become these patient, gentle, merciful people. It doesn’t mean we turn a blind eye to what’s wrong, but we’re able because of Christ, we’re able to be merciful and love people when they don’t deserve love. So I think that should be really, really manifested here among us, shouldn’t it? There should be this atmosphere like, man, I was wrong, but I know about that gospel of mercy and I know that we can bear with one another. I tell you, and if you’re a parent you know it’s one of the hardest contexts for me to get the whole mercy thing is with my kids. I want to drop the hammer and crack that whip and it’s like, I’ve got to learn how to be merciful the way that Jesus is merciful and patient with me. So we should be a markedly merciful people if we cherish that gospel message. You cherish it. Having such a living hope for all time. And let me say just as well, if you really cherish the gospel of mercy, you want people who don’t have it to know about it. Hey, you’ve got a past? People like to say, oh, I’ve got a past. I’ve got skeletons in my closet. You know, it’s great. Jesus cleaned out the closet. Let me tell you how He cleaned out the closet. So we have a message of forgiveness and mercy that covers over a multitude of us in the Scripture saying, how bad do you want non-believers to know about a living hope they can’t have? So that becomes, I think, an acid test of do we love Christmas, you know? Is it, you know, decorations or is it, man, what a burning reminder of a God who loved us. Like, everybody needs to know about this. You know, you get a cool toy. Like, everybody’s got to see this thing. Like, no, everybody’s got to know about this gospel. So I need to do that thing. You know, I talk about sometimes we need to be good time wasters, don’t we? We need to waste time with Jesus. We need to waste time remembering who He is and who His Father is to us and is and through us. Okay?

So the living hope has secured our past and our present, but now I want us to see it does secure certain hope for the future. Verse 4 again. He says, to an inheritance

that is imperishable, it’s undefiled, and it’s unfading, and it’s kept in heaven for you. So now what is hope?

Well, hope is an expectant desire for a certain outcome in the future. You know the way things may be and you know the way you want things to be. You know what a good preferred future would look like. In a bad future, you don’t want to come to pass. So that’s really what it looks like to hope as a frail creature. Right? But so often it’s the case, like, I hope the car doesn’t cost that much to fix. It did. I really, really hope that, you know, I get a Christmas bonus. You didn’t. Like, I really, really hope that, like, the doctor’s got good news. He doesn’t. Right? So, so often in life, like, our hopes are dashed to pieces. And as a reminder, hope, as we speak about it as people, is really just wishing. Isn’t it? Like, I have no power to secure anything. Anything I want in the future. So hope is really hollow in human terms. And even those things that are sure, like the sun rising tomorrow or your rich uncle who said he’s leaving you a billion dollars. Like, that may be sure, but you’re not sure. You know, you may, you may die today. Like, you may not make it even to those things you think are sure in life. So nothing is sure in our world, is it? Everything seems to be very perishable. Stuff seems to sour and fall apart. Right? From our bodies to creation. We live in a defiled world. That word means immoral. People hurt people. Like, that happens all people are wicked. Right? We live in a fading world. The loss of beauty. So all around us, we just see, like, this really bad virus. What sin has done to the whole thing. And it makes hope seem very silly. Doesn’t it?

But the gift of hope given to us by the Father isn’t a hollow hope. It’s not a hollow hope at all. Remember, it’s a living hope that can give us a sure, certain future. Our hope is not based on what may come to pass. It’s based on what is. And I want you to see what Stephen says, first martyr here, in Acts chapter 7, verse 54. Now, when they heard these things, they were enraged and they ground their teeth at Him. But He, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and He saw the glory of God. And here’s what He saw. He saw Jesus standing.

So it’s what He’s doing. He saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And behold, I see the heavens, He said, open, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. So Stephen saw in a vision what you now have got to see by faith in all of our suffering. And it’s this. The resurrected Christ, ruling and reigning now. It’s not going to stop. If you could somehow say that would stop, you would lose your hope. But it’s not going to stop. Jesus is reigning and He will always reign. So the resurrected Christ, Peter said, hey, He’s up there keeping your inheritance. He’s guarding it. He’s protecting it. He’s preserving it now. And since Jesus is imperishable, it won’t quit. He’ll keep doing this until you get there. And since His resurrection, He has both done these two things. He’s accomplished that work. But remember we said in the Spirit, He’s preserving us. Right? Preserving me until I get there, but He’s preserving the place He’s preparing for me. Jesus says in John chapter 14,

let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God? Believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again. And I will take you to myself that you may be where I am also.

So you see, Jesus, yes, He’s keeping us in the now, but He says, hey, when I go, I’m going to keep a place for you. I’m going to preserve that. Nothing’s going to happen to it. So friends, as much as we see decay in this life, spiritual, physical decay, we do see it all. All around, don’t we? All around. I won’t make jokes about getting old because I know some of you are older. You don’t know nothing about getting older. Body creaking and stuff. But as much as we see physical decay and you see just a spiritual rot in yourself,

in society, it can do one of two things. It can drive you to despair and say, oh, all is hopeless. Or it will drive you to keep your eyes on what is unfading, what is imperishable, what is undefiled, and that’s what Peter’s trying to drive home to them. You can be despaired or you can let that suffering be something that drives you to see a certain future, that the nightmare will pass and the day will break and when the day breaks, we will gaze upon the face of our living hope, Jesus Christ Himself, and when we do, we will have life fully and we will have life always. So it’s this already not yet paradigm. Maybe you’ve heard that phrase before as Christians. It’s an already not yet. Already it’s true. I have the Holy Spirit. Already I’m sealed for eternity. Already Christ has prepared a place for me. That’s not going to change, but God is withholding it from me for a time because He’s cruel. No, not because He’s cruel. Because He is preparing for me, He’s preparing me for what He has prepared for me. Is that confusing? He is preparing me for what He has prepared for me.

Hope is not hope if I can’t truly have it when it’s the most difficult to have it. Hoping when all seems lost, you know what it does? It forces you to say, no, I’m going to cling to this thing no matter what or I’m going to let go of it entirely. The world and the hope of heaven are two totally different things. You can’t ride both. You can’t have both. They’re two different. The suffering, if you would cling to the hope you have in Christ, it’s too great. So you try to ride the line and it ends up swallowing you whole. It doesn’t work.

Satan and the world and the enemy say, hey, that whole hope thing, look how much suffering that costs. Look what you can’t see, but look what you can see. Look at what pleasure you’re going to have now. Look at what comfort you can have now. Right? This is all you got. Live for it. But the hope of heaven that Christ calls us to, it calls us to renounce and condemn the world, but it also calls us to renounce and condemn ourselves.

And if my hope is in Christ, I’m going to say, no, I renounce and condemn the world and all that it has to offer me. And I renounce, condemn myself. I consider myself dead. And the more that I hope in the thing that’s so hard to hope in, you know what happens? The Bible says I’m shaped into the image of that thing I hope for. It’s shaping me to look like Christ. So the more I condemn myself and I condemn the world, the only thing I’ll have left at the end of it all is Christ. And when all it can be said that I’ll have left is Jesus, then I’m prepared for what God has prepared me for. And that’s only in just life in Christ and with Christ.

Paul says it like this in Romans.

We rejoice in suffering. Knowing that suffering does what? It produces endurance. And endurance does what? It produces character. And character produces hope. And hope does not put us to shame. Because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Friend, if you hope in Jesus, when it’s impossible to hope, you will in the end have the thing for which you hope. I’ll be clinging to Christ. It’s a certain future. It’s a certain future.

I want to encourage you, encourage us,

let the hardships of life move your eyes to the life,

death, and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus is now ruling at the right hand of God. Jesus is now victorious over whatever trials, whatever suffering is going on right now. Jesus is victorious. Cling to Christ. In the end, you will have Him. Let me say also, though, if we have such a certain future, if you really have that hope, how does that change your priorities now? You know, because if it’s true this isn’t my life, this isn’t what I’m living for, it really changes the way I think about money, doesn’t it? Like money isn’t that green good dove to get as much pleasure and comfort and convenience I can have now. Like money becomes a tool to say Lord, how can I use this to invest in the hope that I have? You know? Time. It stops being your time and it stops being, starts being like time I can invest in the place and where I’m going and what God is doing now to get more people there. Right? So all of life becomes this opportunity to further believe in and make known the hope that we have in Christ. So we’ve got to be forward-looking Christians. Forward-looking. You know that old phrase, such and such is no earthly good because he’s too heavenly-minded. I think it’s totally opposite. I think you’re only as earthly good as you are heavenly-minded for the kingdom. So let’s always look towards the future and not get stuck on the now.

So what’s Advent?

Advent is the proof of a merciful Father. It’s proof that God didn’t leave us in our sins, but He sent His beloved, precious Son to bleed and to die so that you and I could have life again and know the Father. Advent is proof of a certain future that we’ve been given all the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places Paul says, and that’s sure. It’s sure. Advent is proof we have a living hope. And that living hope is Jesus. So that’s our hope this Christmas season. Let’s pray.

Lord, really, I think the gospel and the truth of your love, it’s too wonderful for words. As much as I try to grapple and find just the right words to say it and to say thank you, Lord, it’s always so short of who you are. You are the God who is intrinsically blessed and glorious and praiseworthy.

And though, Lord, we have fallen from it, you have by grace restored it to us.

So I pray we would cling to hope. We would cling to what can’t be changed. And I say, your Son, Jesus, got up out of the grave and He offers new life freely to those who receive. I pray it wouldn’t just be some part of our life. I pray it wouldn’t be the religion we identify with. I pray that Jesus, our living hope, He would be our life. He would be what burns inside of us. He would be our one goal, our one passion, our one obsession, our one objective, just to know Him, to live in Him, to look forward to the day when we see Him face to face. And Father, we’re in your presence.

We just pray your Spirit would just take this word and this word would preserve us through all suffering.

Lord, and we trust and believe you’re not going to stop working on us. That as we abide in Jesus, Jesus is going to abide in us and because of Christ, we’ll bear much fruit.

So we love you and we just thank you for Christmas.

And that we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.