1 Peter 1

Discussion Questions

1. What areas of your life would benefit from a more eternal/panoramic perspective? Is there anywhere you are stuck with a bit of nearsightedness?
2. Considering the panoramic view of the Christian life presented in 1 Peter— the hope, calling and joy based on truths presented about the past, present and future, which of these three do you want to focus on in the coming week?
3. What things should you be holding loosely? Conversely, what should you be holding with a tighter grip?

Transcript

We do study the books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. If you want a paper copy, just lift up your hand. Someone will bring one along to you. It will be good to have the text in front of you. Also, if you’re a first-time guest, so glad that you’re here to worship with us today. This is a pattern of ours. We study through books of the Bible, verse by verse generally. I’m really grateful that you’re joining us here today. Also, I want to welcome, along with Cora, all those who are worshiping with us online. May the grace of our Lord be with you wherever the Lord has planted you today.

Well, if you’ve been with us over the past several months, you know we’ve been studying the Old Testament books of First and Second Kings, and we’re continuing that study with Second Kings in our new Watershed Sunday school class that meets on Sundays at 9:30 downstairs in the parlor. So next week, hopefully not this week, but next week, if you want to join us down there at 9:30, you can worship with us at 11:00 A.M. We’re also going to post the audio of that Watershed class online. And that Watershed class, along with all of our Sunday school classes, we pray, is just another avenue for us to let the Word of Christ dwell in us richly. And I pray He’s doing that here even this morning.

So, this morning I invite you to turn in your Bibles on your device or the paper one to 1 Peter Chapter 1. 1 Peter, Chapter 1. And you and I just sang robustly, I think, one of the central themes of the Apostle Peter in this letter. “To this I hold, my hope is only Jesus.” If that statement is true – and that is a bold statement, a bold thing to claim – if that statement is true, there is comfort for every single person in this room. Every single person, every walk of life. As we’ll see in this letter from Peter, the hope of the resurrected Jesus is multi-dimensional, touching every part of the creation, every part of the human person. Peter calls it a living hope. It’s not dead. It’s alive, and it’s a hope that comforts those who might be suffering here today or watching with us online.

This past week, I was flipping through old photos of past trips, that Emily and I have been on. I don’t know if you ever do that on your phone. I’m pulling it up and I found this beautiful mountain trip that we took. I just love the mountains. Any mountain people in here? All right. What about the beach folks? I think the mountain folks might be early birds. I’m not sure. We’ll see. It kind of makes sense, as I’m thinking about it. I’m flipping through the photos, and I see this mountain trip, and the photos are just so beautiful, magnificent images of these mountains.

And then I come across this panorama. You ever see that setting on your phone? You can take a panorama shot. I was so glad that I took this panorama, because it just widened the view of the beauty and the grandeur of that mountain range. It widened the view; it changed my perspective. And I think in 1 Peter part of what the Apostle Peter does for us is something similar. In this small letter, Paul constantly widens the view. He expands the frame, if you will, of the Christian life for his readers, many of whom were suffering what he’ll call various trials, persecutions, drifting from the faith, wavering in hope. Peter opens up the landscape and says, “Don’t just look at today.” He says, “Look backwards. Look backwards to the living hope of the person that walked out of the empty tomb.” Say “Hallelujah,” if you know that’s true. Hallelujah.

The living hope we look back to, and we look forward to the day that He will return again, say “Hallelujah.” Hallelujah. The living hope that He’ll return one day, he says, “Expand that view.” Don’t just look at today. Look backwards and look forwards at the same time. Friends, we are one day closer to heaven. Tim Keller says it this way. “We may hear our hearts say, ‘it’s hopeless,’ but we should argue back.” And I think that’s a part of what Peter does for us. Many Christian traditions have a regular phrase they use to remember this kind of wider view, this bigger landscape, what they often call or what we often call the memorial acclamation. Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. Let’s say that together. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

“To this I hold, my hope is only Jesus.” I hope that’s true for you today. Let me pray for us and we’ll begin our study of 1 Peter: Father, Your word is before us. May it pierce our hearts, but also may it heal us and comfort us. May Your spirit open it to us, tune our hearts to hear it, and lead us to Your son Jesus, in whose name we all pray. Amen. 1 Peter, Chapter 1, verse 1: “Peter an apostle [that’s a sent one] of Jesus Christ to those who are elect exiles [or chosen strangers, if you will] of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia according to the foreknowledge of God, the Father and the sanctification of the spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you.”

Peter front loads his letter with this extraordinary greeting. He actually includes the Trinity. Did you notice the foreknowledge of the Father, the work of sanctification by the Spirit for the obedience to Jesus Christ? We have the origin of our salvation. We are chosen. There’s foreknowledge involved here and there’s a lot of questions we can ask about that, but at the least we can say that God is the initiator. Ephesians tells us that before Christ, we were dead in our trespasses. We needed a miracle. The grace of God sent ahead of us to change our hearts so we might respond to Him. In faith, we see the origin of our salvation here, God the Father, we see the means of it, the sanctification of the Spirit, and we see the goal of it, obedience to Jesus Christ, set apart wholly for Him. All of that just in the greeting, grace and peace be multiplied to you.

And I love that grace and peace. That was a very common greeting, but he adds to it multiplied or some of your translations will say, have it in abundance, and I pray that’s for us today. Verse 3, and Peter here essentially breaks out into a song: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to his great mercy.” Highlight that, underline it, circle it in your paper Bible. “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’s 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.” And here, Peter is expanding our vision. He’s giving us a panoramic view. He’s looking at Heaven here.

And it’s so interesting. First of all, what do we receive? An inheritance, and he can’t really… there’s no words to even describe it. He can’t seem to find any words to describe the kind of inheritance we have, so he tells us what it’s not. It’s not going to perish, it can’t be defiled, and it’s not going to fade, and it’s being kept for you. This inheritance includes all the blessings we’ll receive when our Lord returns. But did you notice there, there’s a military word that he uses at verse 5? So, this inheritance is being kept, but we, those who are in Christ, are being guarded for that inheritance. Heaven is being kept for us, and we are being kept for Heaven. There’s truth there.

Verse 6: “In this you rejoice,” and all of these treasures that he just talks about, “you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you’ve been grieved by various trials.” I’m glad he used the term “various trials” there. There’s lots of trials that we’ll see throughout this letter, persecution perhaps, medical trials, relationship trials, emotional trials. And I love that he said “a little while,” and you could actually define that in a whole lot of ways, but at least, again, he’s giving this panoramic view. Whatever’s going on right in front of you, think with an eternal perspective. Go back to the hope of the resurrected Jesus and look forward to the hope of Heaven. He doesn’t dismiss the trials, but he places them properly in their context, and it gives us at least one of the purposes for trials.

Verse 7: “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 in honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Again, he mentions Heaven. Presence with Jesus. Verse 8: “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.” This letter is very personal, as you’ll see. He may not know these folks personally, but he’s making it very personal. Though you have not seen him, Peter actually has seen Jesus, but he knows that these believers have not yet seen Him.

Verse 10: “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully inquiring what person or time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.” And I think he’s referring here likely to the prophet Isaiah. Could also be David, could be Daniel. I think he has in mind here Isaiah 53, the one who bore our griefs, who carried our sorrows. He reaches all the way back to the Old Testament. He reminds us that they pointed to this Jesus.

“It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you.” See how personal this is? “In the things that have now been announced to you through those who have preached the good news to you, by the Holy Spirit, sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.” Even the angels, they’re not God, so they don’t have this omniscient understanding of what’s going on, and even the angels long to… The word there for “look” could actually be translated “peer.” Even angels want to look into the Old Testament to see – what has God done for these humans? What has God done? Amazing.

Well, I’d love to pause here briefly just to give us some background on this letter, to help acclimate ourselves to what’s going on behind and around the letter that Peter’s writing. The author of the letter is mentioned at the top, Peter, an apostle, a sent one. Although there’s been some debate about the authorship of this letter in some circles, there is an abundance of evidence going all the way back to the early church that gives us great confidence that these are the words of the Apostle Peter. And there’s all kinds of evidence, not the least of which is that this letter, but if you go back and you read in the Book of Acts, there are distinctive themes and writing styles that remarkably match closely to this letter here in 1 Peter.

Throughout the New Testament, Peter is the first disciple mentioned in every list of the disciples. Peter’s at the top. He was in many ways the leader or the spokesman for the disciples and the apostles as well. He often had a big mouth. But in his time with Jesus and the early church, he spoke some of the most profound truths, and some foolish words as well. Do you remember this? When Jesus asked the questions to the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”, it was Peter who spoke up and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

When many of the followers of Jesus ran away from Him in John 6, do you remember this? Jesus had just fed the 5,000 and many of them were freaked out by some of the teachings of Jesus and they ran away. And Jesus looks at the 12 disciples and He asks, “Will you run away as well?” And it was Peter who said “To who else should we go? Your words have eternal life.” It was also Peter, of course, who denied knowing Jesus, denying he knew Him three times, but it was also Peter who was restored by the resurrected Jesus at a breakfast on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus asks him the same question three times. “Peter, do you love me?” And Peter each time says, “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.” And Jesus recommissions him, and He says, “Feed my sheep and follow me. And here Peter is doing just that. He’s feeding us here this morning through his words.

This man Peter had experienced the multiplied grace and peace of Jesus personally. He saw it with his own eyes. He’s writing this as an open letter meant to be passed around from region to region. He’s likely writing from Rome to believers in the eastern section of the Roman Empire to south of the Black Sea, much of what today we call Turkey. And I’ll put up a map here on the screen so you can get a sense of the region as well as see a coin there with an image of the Roman Emperor of the time. His name was Nero. It doesn’t look like a very nice guy in the coin. In fact, he wasn’t.

The letter was written sometime in the mid-’60s AD, not the time of the Beatles, different ’60s. This was about 30 years after the resurrection of Jesus. Nero was beginning to ramp up his opposition towards all those who followed the way of Jesus, culminating in brutal acts of persecution up until his death in ’68. What’s really interesting, we know this from Acts 16, the Apostle Paul actually went to much of this region, and he brought the Gospel there except for Bithynia. Paul never reached Bithynia. So somehow, by the Spirit of God, Peter has come into relationship with folks from these regions, including Bithynia, and he’s writing to them as a pastor, with practical tools for Christian living. Peter knew he was writing to a group of believers who are living in a culture growing increasingly inhospitable to the Gospel and to the way of Christ.

This letter has so much to teach us today, and I pray the Holy Spirit would deepen our hope as we study this ancient text over the next several weeks. Well, let’s keep reading there at Verse 13. “So in light of all the treasures that this living hope has brought to us, in light of everything that the prophets have told us about who Jesus was,” Verse 13, “therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded,” and the idea there, preparing your minds for action, literally the idea is to roll up your sleeves. Let’s get to work, therefore let’s get to work. And he starts with the mind, and he says, “Be sober-minded.” In other words, be ready. Be confident in the grace of our Lord Jesus, don’t swerve left and right. Be steady, sober-minded. “Set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” There it is again. The second coming of Jesus. He mentions heaven. Again, Peter is giving us this panoramic vision of the Christian life.

Verse 14: “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance,” or it could be translated, “Don’t be shaped like the way you were before you knew God. Don’t go back to the old ways.” “But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy.” And that’s God speaking. Yahweh is speaking there in the Book of Leviticus. “And if you call on him as Father,” so we have this Father-child relationship being set up by Peter, “if you call on him as father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear,” that’s awe and reverence before God, “throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.”

And the idea, I think, that he has in mind here is likely these believers are former pagans. This is a pagan region, and he’s looking back and he’s saying “your forefathers handed down these false religions,” and he mentioned silver or gold, perhaps he’s talking about idol worship here He’s saying those things perish. But you know what doesn’t perish is what you have secured for you because of the blood of Jesus.

Verse 19: “But with the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” Verse 20: “He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God.” Now it gets real practical here. “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere, brotherly love, love one another earnestly with a pure heart. Since you have been born again, you’re a new creation, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God. All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.” Quoting there from Isaiah 40. “And this word is the good news that was preached to you.” This is the word of the Lord.

The word of God that Peter’s talking about there is the primary way in which the Holy Spirit opens our eyes, widens our view, so that we can see all the treasures of the Gospel that you and I have. I hope you see that. Hebrews, the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, tells us that the word of God is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword. It convicts and it comforts, does both. The opening of Peter’s letter this morning should be like a panorama for us, widening the frame of our limited view to see a more expansive picture of what our Lord has done on our behalf. He doesn’t dismiss our present moments, our various trials if you will, but he gives us an eternal perspective with which to look at them. So, I’d like for us to consider together a few of the ways I think Peter helps us grasp this eternal perspective. And I’m going to give you all three up front here at the start.

A panoramic view of the Christian life. It looks, number one, to the past. We have a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus. Two, we look at the present. We are called to a life of holiness by the power of the Spirit today, right now. And number three, we look to the future. We have a guarantee of an eternity with Jesus, and we look forward to that day. Last week on Resurrection Sunday, we gave our attention to that first one, the past, the living hope of the resurrection, so today I’m going to start with number two. We’re called to live a life of holiness by the power of the Spirit. Holiness isn’t a word we often use in regular conversation today. Try it out sometime. “How you doing?” “Oh, just growing in holiness.” You’re going to get some funny looks.

I think the word can seem kind of crusty or even cramped to some. But for Peter, holiness is the aim of the Christian life. Look with me again at Chapter 1, verse 2. “The foreknowledge of God the Father, and the sanctification of the Spirit, for [here’s the purpose] obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood.” One simple definition of holiness is the renewal of God’s image within us, an image that has been tarnished. It’s been distorted, it’s been twisted by sin. And the promise of our text this morning is that for all believers, that image is being renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit. We sang about it earlier.

Now when we read our Bibles, we’ll see throughout the New Testament a couple of different ways that holiness is applied to the life of the believer. First, we’ve got to start here, we have already been made holy in our union with Christ. Positionally, we stand before God as one who is holy. Our standing is in Christ. It’s settled, and I hope you hear that today. Jesus paid it all. And that’s why we’re going to come to the table a little bit later today. His righteousness is our righteousness. His holiness is our holiness. That’s true today for all those who call on the name of Jesus, and we should give thanks for that. Sin no longer has power over us. Do you hear that?

But our experience of the Christian life now as we await His return, the coming of His revelation, is still tainted by the presence of sin. We are once a new creation, that’s true, but we must joyfully put to death the old ways of living, what Peter would call in the text our former ignorance. The Holy Spirit works within us and through us to continually skim the dross, if you will, using the language of the refiner’s fire. The Holy Spirit works within us, what Peter calls sanctification, another old word. Put another way, when the image of God is being renewed in us, we begin to take on more and more of the family resemblance. I start to look more and more like Christ. You start to look more and more like Christ.

So, when we talk about something like holiness, what comes to mind for you? Well, if you grew up in the church like I did, holiness can often seem to be reduced to mere moralism, checking off the boxes of the Ten Commandments, really trying hard to follow the teachings of Christ, to gain favor with God. We call that legalism. And there’s a spectrum. There’s legalism over here and over on this other side, there’s lawlessness or licentiousness. And Bryan Chapell is helpful here. He says, “Legalism makes believers think that God accepts them on the basis of what they do. Licentiousness makes believers think that God does not care what they do. Both errors have terrible spiritual consequences.” Both do.

So, look with me for a moment. Set your eyes at verse 16. Peter quotes from Leviticus, “You shall be holy for I am holy.” Again, Yahweh is speaking here in this Book of Leviticus. And it’s interesting that Peter quotes from Leviticus. In the Levitical law, all kinds of things are made holy, all kinds of things. Utensils, tables, particular days, structures like the tabernacle, all of those things are set apart. They’re made holy. So, through the lens of the Levitical law, holiness cannot simply mean, for humans, to follow the moral law. A utensil cannot do that. My dining room table cannot live a moral life. So, to be holy can’t simply be about following rules. I think it’s something much bigger.

Listen, we can all follow moral rules for all kinds of reasons, good and bad. This morning, I opened up the refrigerator and one of my dogs came right down, sat at my feet perfectly, sitting so perfectly, and I don’t think it’s because he loves me so much. I think it’s because he wants some bit of food that I’m pulling out of the refrigerator. I can do the same thing. I can follow moral rules and ethics because it leads to a pay raise. If I’m good, it leads to a pay raise. So, the people like me, I’ll follow rules for all kinds of reasons, so I don’t rock the boat, so I don’t upset the status quo, because it makes good business sense, where in the business world, they’d say “enlightened self-interest.” I can follow rules because it serves my ambitions and my appetites.

Look, a life of holiness is not less than obeying the Word of God. Of course it includes that. It’s what he tells us to do in this text. But it goes far deeper, to the renewal of the whole person, mind, volition, heart, and affections. And if we see there at verse 12, “prepare your minds for action.” So, he starts with the mind and then he gets to the action.

A life growing in holiness is a life of deepening love for God, and love of God.

The Hebrew word we translate in English as “holy,” “kadosh,” literally means set apart.

“Holy” means set apart, consecrated for God, not merely following a list, but setting apart all of who you are. Head, heart, and hands for His use, His glory, living on His terms, delighting in Him, obeying Him, honoring Him because we love Him, not to earn His favor, we already have that as His children, but to delight Him as a good father. God Himself is holy. He says that. “Be holy, for I am holy.” And He’s holy on a whole other level. As the Creator, there’s Creator, here’s the line, and there’s all the rest of creation. But in His grace and in His mercy, He enters His creation from the foundations of the world to make Himself known. And He speaks, He reveals Himself, and He calls us by His Word, the Word we’re reading here today, and He invites us to find our truest contentment and joy in Him alone. J.I. Packer says it this way. “There’s a difference between knowing God and knowing about God. When you truly know God, you have energy to serve Him, boldness to share Him, and contentment in Him.”

Our relationships, our appetites, our longings for money or sex or pleasure or power can all be renewed by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now, let me get really personal here for a minute. You might’ve come in here this morning or perhaps online, carrying the weight of a sin that you cannot shake. And even as I say that something comes to your mind, spiritually defeated, vestiges of who you once were before Christ keep rearing their head. Peter wouldn’t call us to a life of growth and holiness if it were not possible by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Let me say that again. Peter would not call us to grow in holiness if it weren’t possible by the power of the Holy Spirit. Not sinless perfection, but faithfulness. And sometimes, looked at real practically, sometimes you just start today by obeying the Word of God as it clearly says in the Scripture. I love this from Dallas Willard: “The most powerful form of spiritual warfare is obedience.” Sometimes it’s just starting there. What does the word of God clearly tell me to do? As we’ll see, as we continue to read Peter’s letter throughout the next few weeks, every area of our life should be transformed by the grace of God.

I’m going to put this up on the screen, a small list of the ways the Spirit transforms us personally, not in just rule followers, but a whole life, mind, and heart and affections, leaning towards Him. Fearful people can grow in faith. Lusting people can become pure. Deceitful people can become truthful. Greedy people can become givers. Tyrants can become servants. Angry people can become gentle. Anxious people can have peace. Prideful people can become humble. Grumbling, people can become thankful.

A life of holiness is a life set apart for the work of Spirit in and through us, meaning we’ve been given the dignity of rolling up our sleeves to train our minds and warm our hearts to love Him by remembering His goodness as we come to Him in prayer and in worship – what we’re doing here this morning. We need the holy fire of the Spirit to do that work. Pray that. Ask the Spirit to do that work within you this week and see what He does.

And lastly, number three, we have a guarantee of eternity with Jesus. A life of holiness is a foretaste of what’s to come when we’re fully renewed at the Lord’s second coming. Listen, this world offers a very different way to live. Fix your eyes on whatever is advantageous to you now or perhaps in a few years in retirement. Focus on satisfying your appetites now. Indulge yourself now. And even some secular visions that realize the dangers of overindulging can still do that with the underlying assumption that this world is all that there is. And so, the whole point there is what’s the best way to maximize me? That’s what the world has on offer. In other words, a life set apart, consecrated for myself. And there’s nothing new under the sun. The ancient sage would say, eat and drink for tomorrow we die. In other words, this world is all that there is.

But the living hope of the resurrected and returning, Jesus says, “No. There is infinitely more joy to come for those who turn to me.” When Christ returns, He won’t simply end suffering. He doesn’t just stop with ending suffering. He’ll do that, but He will bring the reward of every blessing and a thousand more that we’re not even aware of. And we wait for that day. Perfect love, restored relationships, renewed laughter, eternal happiness, seeing our loved ones again, our longings being satisfied in the presence of Jesus. Charles Spurgeon says, “Hold everything earthly with a loose hand, but grasp eternal things with a death-like grip.”

We said it at the beginning, and I’d love for us to confess it again, this memorial acclamation. Let’s say it robustly, church:

Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

We said, Amen. Amen.

Let’s pray: Let’s take a moment of silence just to thank God for this living hope and ask that His Spirit might set it ablaze in our hearts and minds, that we might live in light of it. Spirit, we ask that Your word would cut to the quick this morning. Wake me up in areas where I’ve become slack. Lift my eyes towards the joy of Heaven when I’ve only looked at the uncertain world around me or the tossing winds inside me. Come, Holy Spirit, and do Your work in us. Lord, I pray You might bring comfort to those who are in sorrow and suffering today and set our hope fully on You and Your coming again. In the name above all names, Jesus Christ, our Lord, we all say, Amen.