Dr. Rodney Plunket

  There is a letter near the end of the Bible called First Peter.  It is written by a follower of Jesus named  us to look at just five verses of that letter, the five verses with which this letter begins.  Please follow along as I read.

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To the exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who have been chosen and destined by God the Father and sanctified by the Spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and to be sprinkled with his blood:

May grace and peace be yours in abundance.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Peter begins with a greeting.  In that greeting he identifies himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ.  Then he identifies where the people to whom he is writing live.  They live in five Roman provinces that today make up the major portion of the country of Turkey.

Notice the words he uses as greeting words:  “grace and peace.”  One biblical scholar says that these two terms

define in a nutshell the extent of the mighty benefits of Christ’s saving acts:  grace, the free and undeserved divine gift to the believer in bringing to pass a right relationship with God involving love, mercy, forgiveness, and power; and peace, the soul’s inward rich enjoyment of that divine bounty” (Norman Hillyer, 1 and 2 Peter, Jude, New International Biblical Commen­tary [Peabody MA.: Hendrickson, 1992], 27).

Quite a greeting isn’t it?  Makes “hello” seem pretty boring.  Christians can greet one another with “grace & peace.”

In verse (v) 3 Peter refers to God’s great mercy, a great mercy by which God has “given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”  I want to highlight just three terms:  “mercy,” “new birth” and “hope.”  First, let’s look at the word “mercy.”  A good insight into the biblical meaning of that word is provided in the very next chapter of 1 Peter.  In 1 Peter (1Pet) 2:10 we read,

Once you were not a people,

     but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy,

     but now you have received mercy.

Here Peter refers to mercy being given by God to unlikely recipients.  God gives it to people who were not even “a people,” but that mercy has not only made them “a people” it has made them “God’s people.”  Peter’s usage of the word mercy here is typical.  Mercy is used by early Christians to refer to a surprising act of salvation by God.

Now to the term “new birth.”  Peter uses it because he knows that Christians have experienced such a radical change of being through the redemptive power of Christ Jesus that it is like being reborn.  The Christian is a brand new person through Christ, alive with the power of the Holy Spirit.  And Peter refers to “new birth” again in v 23.

The word “hope” refers to the Christians’ confident anticipation of being raised from the dead––raised to a new life with God, a new life that will last forever, a new life that will be eternally blessed by the power, love, and joy of God.  Christians have a confident hope of eternal life because of what God has done in and through Jesus Christ.  They are not confident because of any personal perfection.  Another biblical writer, Paul, actually reveals that everyone continues to “fall short of the glory of the God” (Romans 3:23).  So the confident hope of Christians is grounded in Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ alone.  We should also note that this opening chapter of 1 Peter has quite a bit to say about hope.  In 1 Pet 1:13 we read, “set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed.”  And in v 21 Peter reminds his readers that their “faith and hope are set on God.”  So v 3 refers to “a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead;” in v 13 hope is connected to the second coming of Jesus, and in v 21 it is used again in a context of resurrection.  Christian hope is focused on Christ’s second coming, and it is a confident hope because grounded on His resurrection.

Human life is grim without mercy and hope.  A person who is not transformed by mercy will resort to almost anything to soften the pain of guilt and shame.  Persons who do not know real mercy often struggle to control their anger and despair.  In addition, many will desperately seek some powerful good within themselves, something that will generate enough self-admiration to quiet the inner voices that indict and condemn.  But the real answer is new birth––new birth wrought by God, new birth that forgives every sin through the sacrifice of Jesus, new birth that gives new life here and now and an eternal life in the life to come.

Without hope life is drudgery, a painful process of getting from one day to the next.  The only lasting hope is one that can take us all the way to death and beyond.  That is what Christian hope does.  And that hope is found in new birth from God.

So please hear Peter as he praises the Lord for God’s mercy, for God’s new birth, and for the living hope grounded on Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead.  Hear him and feel the power of the Good News, a power that truly transforms the whole of a person’s existence.

Now please listen again to v 4 of 1Pet 1.  There we read that God has given Christians “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.”  Because Christ was raised and ascended to the right hand of God, the Christian’s inheritance is secure.  Nothing can take it away.  Nothing can diminish it, because it will never fade.

Now my good brother, Tracy Mack, is going to come to the microphone to talk to Broadway members about a special opportunity that we will have next Sunday to share the inheritance.

I do not want anyone to leave here this morning without the inheritance that has been given to you by God.  Please don’t keep living away from the wonder and the joy of God.  Please don’t keep living without the power of Christ’s resurrection flowing through your life.

I was in a small town in Illinois this past week.  I was preaching for a small church of about forty members.  I think it was on Monday night of the meeting that I could tell that something was going on in one of my listeners, a man named Leonard.  His countenance fell about halfway though the service.  I asked him afterwards about it, and he said that he was in a lot of pain most of the time but that sometimes it would get especially bad.  That is what had happened.  He just had to live with it, he said.  I learned from the local preacher that Leonard was from one of the meanest, toughest families in that town.  I learned for Leonard that his family would have nothing to do with him now that he had become a Christian.  He did not miss one night of the meeting.  Often I could tell that he was really hurting as he sat and listened.  He told me that it had taken him over forty years to come to the truth and he was not ever going to leave it.  He candidly declared that it was often tough for him to stay the course.  The old pulls still sought to drag him down.  But he was never going to leave his Lord.  It was just too good to ever give up.

Leonard had the inheritance.  He had embraced the inheritance.  And nothing compared to the power of that.

Please receive and embrace the inheritance.  Don’t leave without it.  Please make your way to one of the people at the front or side or back of this assembly.  They are there to be used by God to proclaim the inheritance that is in heaven for you.  Please come receive it now as we stand and sing.