Living Hope
I Peter 1:3-9
Jim Springer and Jim Lewis were twin sons born to a fourteen-year-old girl in a small town in Ohio. After they were born, she immediately disappeared. These two boys were adopted into two different loving families and for 39 years they never met each other. But their adoptive families eventually told them they had a twin sibling somewhere.
Jim Lewis had always had a strong hope that he would someday find his twin brother. One lived in Lima, Ohio and the other in Dayton. Through the probate court, they found each other.
Try to imagine the scene. Jim Lewis drove to Dayton to meet his brother for the first time. He found the address, but he was so nervous he drove around the block three times. Finally, he stopped, walked up to the house, and knocked on the door. When Jim Springer met Jim Lewis for the first time, they just stood there staring at each other, speechless. They said it was like looking in a mirror. They looked alike, they talked alike, they discovered that they even thought and acted alike. They had never seen each other, yet they were so much alike. It was uncanny. Jim Lewis’ hope had been finally realized.
Would it sustain your hope and preserve your faith to know that after the trials of this life when you see Jesus you will have a surprising resemblance to Him? If you knew that the trials and hard things you experience could actually make you wiser, more peaceful, and more joyful, would that affect your response to those experiences? Do your responses to life’s troubles cause those watching you to have an improved opinion of Jesus? If they do, it’s because living hope produces that kind of joy and faith.
It’s this message of living hope through Jesus Christ that we proclaim at Heralds of Hope. It’s this living hope that anchors our vision to use media to make disciples of Jesus Christ to accomplish the Great Commission in our lifetime.
Turn in your copies of the Scripture to the book of First Peter and let’s think together about several ASPECTS of this living hope from First Peter 1:3 to 9.
The First ASPECT is,
The resurrection of Jesus is the source of our living hope. How important is hope in your life? We have a saying, “as long as there’s life, there’s hope.” The founder of Heralds of Hope, J. Otis Yoder, told me about a time when he was visiting Israel. He was have a conversation with a Jewish man and he mentioned this saying about hope. In response, the Jewish man said, “we Jews turn that saying around. We say, ‘as long as there’s hope, there’s life.’” I think he’s on to something. Without hope, life isn’t worth living! And this hope you and I have isn’t a “hope so” hope. No, according to Romans 5:5, it’s a settled assurance. It’s a hope that will not disappoint us in the long run! The writers of Scripture talk about this hope as though it has already been realized! It’s that sure; you can count on it.
Remember what the apostle Paul said in First Corinthians 15 in the context of his teaching about the resurrection? “Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable [the most miserable].” He went on to say, “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”
What’s the reason for all the darkness and despair in our world, why are people so miserable? They have no hope! Why over 100,000 deaths in the US in 2022 from fentanyl overdoses? No hope! Why all the gender dysphoria, eating disorders, self-harm, tattooing and disfiguring of bodies? No hope!
A Mayo Clinic study finds that nearly 70 percent of Americans are taking at least one medication, with antibiotics, antidepressants, and opioids topping the list. One in every four persons in the US are taking antidepressants. Why? At least in part because people have no hope! Obviously, there are some legitimate reasons for antidepressants, but at this rate? And many of those psychotropic drugs have horrible side effects.
Think about all the people in the world who have no real hope. If you ask them, Muslims will tell you they have no assurance of eternal life. They just hope, without any guarantee, that when they get to the end of life their good deeds will outweigh the bad and they can enter their version of paradise. Hindus believe in karma. If you have enough good deeds in your current life, you’ll be reincarnated as something or someone good. If your deeds are bad, you might come back as a mouse or a rat! Every religion that rejects Jesus as the Son of God and the Savior of the world is based on works and they have no real hope.
What the world needs is Jesus! He’s the only one who can provide living hope. And even though we know Him, you and I still have to battle with discouragement. Every day we exercise our faith and hope in Him by trusting in His promises. That living hope sustains us, it carries us through the tough times. Every day we should thank God for His abundant mercy that has transformed our lives and given us this living hope.
The Next ASPECT is,
An indestructible inheritance is the seal of our living hope. Paul wrote that our inheritance is incorruptible; it isn’t subject to decay. That’s amazing, isn’t it? The second law of thermodynamics states that, “as one goes forward in time, the net entropy (degree of disorder) of any isolated or closed system will always increase (or at least stay the same).” I can simplify that by saying, “things move from a state of order to disorder.” We observe that everything and everyone around us is in a continual process of aging, deterioration, and decay.
Furthermore, this inheritance is undefiled, that is, there’s no part of it that’s tainted by sin. And it doesn’t fade away; it is eternal. Eternal, this is something hard for us to imagine. Everything that we’re familiar with has a beginning and an end. Everything we know and experience occurs in the realm of time. So, eternal is a concept we must embrace by faith.
When my dad passed away, each of his children received a small financial inheritance. My portion is gone! I spent it either to pay bills or to buy things our family needed. But my dad gave to my siblings and me something so much more valuable than money, his living hope in Jesus Christ. He had an unshakeable faith in God that carried him through the many storms and trials of his life. I have memories of the many times I saw him kneeling in prayer, morning and evening, in our living room. That spiritual inheritance will never be spent, it will never end. It is a continual source of hope and blessing.
The Holy Spirit is also part of this seal, this guarantee, of our indestructible living hope. Paul wrote about this in Ephesians 1:13 and 14. “In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.
Now, as you think about earthly inheritances, they’re not guaranteed, are they? I have heard of people who were either disinherited by their parents or threatened with disinheritance. In one of our trips to Asia I learned of a young man from a Hindu family who embraced Jesus as his Savior and Lord. His father was high caste, a wealthy landowner in western Nepal, and the son was his heir. The son was in line to receive everything his father owned.
But when this son became a follower of Christ, his father disowned him. He completely cut off the relationship and all communication with his son. The son came to Kathmandu, the capital city, in hopes of finding work. The testimony of the son was, “I’m willing to give up all that wealth, prestige, and comfort to follow Jesus.” So, an earthly inheritance isn’t a sure thing until you have it in your hands or your bank account.
In contrast, your heavenly, eternal inheritance is guaranteed, but it does have a condition. Did you know that? Look at verse 5. “[we] are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” Somehow, I grew up with the idea that I was saved by grace through faith, that’s biblical. But somewhere I got this idea that I was kept saved by doing what is right, that’s not biblical because works can save no one. The Scripture is clear on that point. What I now understand is that the same faith that you and I exercised for our initial salvation must continue to be exercised to keep us saved.
As long as you and I continue to walk by faith our inheritance is secure, it’s guaranteed. And how do we prove that we walk by faith? We have the whole epistle of James to remind us of the truth that faith without corresponding action, or obedience, is lifeless, it’s a corpse.
The Final ASPECT is,
Our sufferings develop the reality of our living hope. Suffering reminds us that life here on earth is temporary. In less than two months I will be 65 years old, and I can tell you that this living hope is more real to me than it was 20 years ago! I’ve most likely lived more than two-thirds of my life here on earth. Maybe more than that because I have no promise of tomorrow.
I understand better what Paul wrote to the Corinthian Believers, “Though our outer man is wasting away, our inner man is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” That’s I Corinthians 4:16-18.
Peter compares our sufferings to the process of refining precious metals. I’ve never worked with silver and gold, but when I was a boy, we made our own lead fishing weights. We collected wheel weights that we found along the road and other lead scraps. Then we’d melt them in an iron pot and watch the impurities come to the top. We’d skim that off and repeat the process. When the lead was pure enough, we’d pour it into a mold to make those fishing weights.
Peter says that our faith is so much more precious than gold. That’s precious because right now, you’ll need to pay about two-thousand dollars to buy just one ounce of gold. But that gold will eventually perish too. When God destroys the earth by fire in the final judgment, nothing physical will endure that fire!
For years, in our home we’ve received newsletters from Open Doors (now Global Christian Relief), Voice of the Martyrs, and other ministries that work with the persecuted church around the world. Time and time again our suffering brothers and sisters testify to their awareness of this aspect of our living hope. They don’t ask us in the free world to pray that God would restore their property, or overthrow their government, or that opposition to the Gospel would end. What do they ask us to pray? They ask us to pray that they will be FAITHFUL!!
They embrace the promise of Romans 8:39 that, “[nothing] shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” They have a LIVING HOPE that no one and nothing can take away from them! And they are so confident in that hope that they are willing to give everything, even life itself, to secure that eternal inheritance. Nothing can separate them from the love of God in Christ.
Do you have a living hope like that? Is the source of your living hope in the resurrection of Jesus? Have you accepted your indestructible inheritance as the seal of your living hope? And are the struggles and sufferings of life increasing the reality of your living hope?
Let’s ask God to help us better understand and embrace these aspects of our living hope.