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The Pilgrim's Living Hope: The Resurrection

July 8, 2018 Preacher: Series: The Pilgrim Letters: 1 & 2 Peter

Scripture: 1 Peter 1:3–9

Key Truth: Christ’s resurrection serves as our firm foundation which transforms us to a living hope eternally securing our salvation and grants meaning to our guaranteed suffering as elect exiles in a fallen world.  

 


Introduction:

Q: What serves as foundational to what you know and how you live in the world?  

 

“First Peter 1:3-12 opens the body of the letter by providing a theological and hermeneutical basis for the Christian life that introduces the major motifs and themes of the letter.”

Karen H. Jobes, 1 Peter

 

 

Peter’s Doxological Indicative:
Our Living Hope in Christ’s Resurrection:

1 Peter 1:3-5

“The remedy for humanity’s (exile) — the soul’s homesickness — is found only in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  Jesus, the elect and chosen one of God who voluntarily left his home and descended to an exilic-like existence on this earth, has returned to Heaven. It is through his resurrection from the dead and his ascension to Heaven that we who go by his name have been ‘born again to a living hope.’”

David R. Helm, Preaching the Word: 1&2 Peter and Jude: Sharing Christ’s Suffering

 

Q: What are the indicatives in these verses that serve as the foundation for the imperatives in future verses? What impact do these indicatives have on how you live?

 

 

The Tested Genuineness of Your Faith:
The Promise of and in Suffering:

1 Peter 1:6-9

“(Peter’s) purpose was to show that God does not thus try His people without reason, for if God afflicted us without cause, it would be too grievous to bear. Hence Peter has taken an argument for consolation from the design of God, not because the purpose always appears to us, but because we ought to be fully persuaded that it ought to be so, because it is God’s will.”

John Calvin, The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews
and the First and Second Epistles of St. Peter

 

Q: Why is suffering guaranteed for us as Christians in a fallen world? What grants any meaning to our suffering? What allows us to rejoice even in our suffering?

 

 

Application:

1 Peter 1:3-9 teaches us that Christ’s resurrection serves as our firm foundation which:
-transforms us to a living hope eternally securing our salvation
-grants meaning to our guaranteed suffering as elect exiles in a fallen world

 

“Those who are suffering persecution in Asia Minor are not dashed to the ground by their troubles. They look to the future with the sure confidence that inestimable blessing awaits them. Nor is their confidence baseless superstition. It is grounded in and secured by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Their hope, in other words, is the hope of resurrection, triumph over death; hence, whatever happens to them in this world is trivial compared to the blessing of the future resurrection.”

Thomas R. Schreiner, The New American Commentary: 1,2 Peter, Jude

 


Benediction:

1 Peter 5:6-11