Resurrection and Hope April 3, 2016 Rev. Dave Benedict With I AM the Resurrection and the Life still ringing in our ears from last week s Easter worship, and, with the images of these baptisms still vivid in our mind s eye, that phrase from our text in1 Peter, In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead couldn t be more appropriate to guide our worship this morning. Resurrection and hope. It s a connection we simply cannot miss, not if we want to live as Resurrection People, which is a synonym for Christian. We said it last week. Or, rather, the Apostle Paul said it; If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. It all hangs on the resurrection. And we gathered, almost 1,000 of us, right here at The Covenant, millions and millions of us around the world, we all gathered last week to proclaim our conviction that Jesus has been raised from His grave, and our faith is not in vain. Jesus Christ s resurrection authenticates His every audacious I AM claim, His every promise, His every act as the work of God in human flesh. His resurrection changes everything we know or think we know about
our world. And the resurrection has a direct connection to hope that we simply cannot afford to miss. Some of us have come here this morning feeling hopeful about our lives, and others, more than we might think, have come here feeling pretty hopeless, from a mild apprehension about the future to an oppressive sense that nothing is right in our world nor ever will be. You might be here this morning for one reason, alone. To hear words of hope. And, I know, there are people in the room whose circumstances do feel pretty hopeless, but, even so, they hold the conviction that, regardless of their circumstances, regardless of the attempts of the Enemy to derail them, they will be hopeful because Jesus lives. That s the place I m shooting for in this morning s lesson. That we all might leave hopeful, because Jesus lives. Let s begin by looking to our text, and let s examine what the Apostle Peter calls a living hope. Please turn in your Bibles to the New Testament book of 1 Peter, toward the back of your Bibles. If you are using a pew Bible, that will be on page 1886. 1 Peter, chapter 1, beginning with verse 3. Peter, the apostle who wrote this text, needs no introduction if you are at all familiar with the story of
Jesus. Peter the exuberant, headstrong leader of the band of 12, always the first through the door, first to step on his own foot, or his own tongue, the first to get it. He was the disciple who first declared to Jesus, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Peter was all in with Jesus; every hope he had for life was tied into his proclamation that Jesus was the Christ, Israel s long-awaited Messiah. Peter had it all figured out, just how Jesus would transform the world, and it didn t include Jesus dying. Which is why, in Matthew 16, immediately following his You are the Christ proclamation, when Jesus spoke of going to Jerusalem to die, Peter abruptly took Jesus aside and spoke sharply to Him, This cannot happen. Peter had hopes, expectations for the future. Very specific, very worthy, very passionate hopes. And given what he had seen in Jesus, these weren t pie-inthe-sky hopes; these were money-in-the-bank hopes. Flash forward to the events following their last Passover meal together when Jesus and His disciples went to the garden at Gethsemane and Judas showed up with the Temple police. Peter knew what was up, that the Jewish leaders wanted to kill Jesus, that if Jesus was arrested He would be killed. Peter couldn t let that happen, not to the Messiah. So this fisherman leapt out with his
sword to defend Jesus, swinging wildly (I don t think he was aiming for that man s ear). Nonetheless, Jesus was arrested and Peter s high, high hopes crashed into the bitterest kind of hopelessness, where he couldn t even bring himself to acknowledge that he knew Jesus. Powerful, passionate expectations for the future. Hope. From there to a complete loss of hope. Deepest despair. All in one night. Peter knew everything about hope and hopelessness that we do. He lived them. But something happened that changed Peter s experience of hope and led him to write of a different kind of hope, a living hope. What happened? It was the resurrection. The resurrection changes everything, redefines everything; first and foremost of which is hope. For human beings, hope is inextricably connected to our circumstances. If, as we look into the future, we believe that things will get better, we have hope. If circumstances are such that it seems unlikely or impossible for things to get better, we feel hopeless. As I said, across the room this morning, our expectations for the future probably represent the entire spectrum from hope to hopeless. And we need hope. Let s be sure we ve said that. People need hope. We always have, always will. The late Emil Brunner once said, What oxygen is for the lungs, such is hope for the meaning of human life.
But, there is something very flawed in the way we experience hope in this world. Because, wherever there is hope in our lives, there is also dashed hope, false hope, futile hope; all of which contribute to feeling hopeless. It s always been this way. An ancient grave stone in Greece translates, I ve entered port. Fortune and Hope, adieu! Make game of others, for I ve done with you. Why do hope and hopelessness weave themselves together in and out our lives, so that we rarely experience one without the other? Why is hope so hard to hold on to? Biblically, the answer is plain. Because we live in a fallen world. A world damaged by our sin. A world that doesn t match up with God s intentions for us. A world under the power of God s enemy who sets about to frustrate what is good. A world characterized by disease, aging, and death. We continue to believe there is hope because something deep within us remembers that God intended better things for us. But that hope is frustrated, time and again, by each new thing that shows up on our doorstep an accident, a frightening medical diagnosis, a lost job and, once again, hope is dashed and we feel stupid for having hoped at all. That s the nature of hope in a fallen world. Hope itself is flawed. We need a different kind of hope.
Peter tells us of a living hope that is made possible by Christ s resurrection. If we re going to break out of this vicious cycle of hope and hopelessness that is inescapable in our fallen world, we have to let go of everything we think we know about hope and hopelessness; we have to let His resurrection redefine what it means to hope. Libraries have been filled with thoughts about this, so I hope it is something you will keep thinking about and exploring after today, but for this morning, I want to make just two points to help us renew our minds on the subject of hope. 1. It is the resurrection that makes real hope possible. We re accustomed to thinking about the resurrection religiously. By that, I mean that we re used to the idea of resurrection as a central feature of our religion; Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontus Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. On the third day He rose again. The Apostles Creed. The resurrection is a central feature of our faith. But for it to impact our lives, we also have to think about the resurrection as something that actually happened in time and space, something that forces us to think differently about everything we thought we knew.
The Laws of Nature those observations we ve made about the way things are, going back as far as recorded history the Laws of Nature are very clear in this regard: Dead people stay dead. Whatever else modern science and technology have opened up for us about the nature of things out there, this one thing is constant: Dead people stay dead. For a human being to have been dead not just barely alive and then revived, near death; no, dead and then to rise up from death; this defies everything else we know to be true. It means there is something else, beyond what we can see or measure, at work around us. The resurrection, by definition, redefines what is real. There is something more going on around us than our circumstances and the passage of time. This is huge. What are your circumstances? Are you struggling with your health? Are you aging? There is something more going on around you than what you are experiencing, out of your sight but just as real. Are you struggling financially? Are you stuck in a dead-end job? Have your lost your job? There is something more going on around you than what you are experiencing, out of your sight but just as real.
Are you struggling with a relationship? Estranged from a child, on the verge of divorce, alone and isolated from family or friends? There is something more going on around you than what you are experiencing, out of your sight but just as real. Please don t misunderstand me and assume I m suggesting your pain, your concern for the future isn t real. Of course it is real and it is personal. You feel it. But the key point for Christian people to remember is that our present circumstances are not the last word in our lives. There is something more going around us than the troubles we experience, something just as real, that will have the last word; a word of real hope. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11 This is not just religious talk, not wishful thinking. This is what is going on out of our sight. God is at work, and our circumstances are not all there is for us. It is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, something that happened in time and space, that makes it possible to think this way. The resurrection acts as our guarantee that the words in the Bible are not just words. The resurrection makes hope possible. 2. Because of the resurrection, hope is redefined.
Because of the resurrection, hope means something very different than the way we are accustomed to thinking about it. Have you ever tried to define hope? Even though we all have a pretty good idea what it means, it s not easy to actually define. Here s how Merriam-Webster.com defines hope: to want something to happen or be true and think that it could happen or be true. Not a bad try, although this could also be a definition for wishful thinking. As we ve said, though, the universal human experience of hope revolves around wanting a change in our circumstances, a change for the better. What we are experiencing falls short of what we desire for ourselves or for others sometimes excruciatingly short. To imagine a change for the better, and to dare believe this change will happen. That s what it means to hope, for most of us. And to be hope-less is to give up believing this change can or will happen. It means we stuck with something less, often far less, than we desire for ourselves or for others. But, because of the resurrection, Peter tells us, believers are born into a different kind of hope; a living hope. Here s how this living hope is different. A. A living hope shifts our focus to a larger picture.
Without the resurrection, all we have is this world. All that matters in this world is right now. What we can see, touch, and feel, right now. All we have are the circumstances of our lives, which often bring us pain. It s no wonder then that hope of changing these circumstances is so important to us. It s all we have! And it s no wonder we re so devastated when our circumstances don t change, or they get worse. Why it feels so hopeless. It s all we have. But the resurrection demonstrates that time and space are only part of what is real. Eternity is also real. Right now doesn t just count for right now. Right now counts forever. (R.C. Sproul; Tabletalk) Now, we can place our hope in something other than our changing our circumstance. Now, we can place our hope in an all-wise and allpowerful God who knows better than we do what circumstances in our lives need changing. Now, we can place our hope in something that exceeds our most extravagant dreams of what life was meant to be, in something new and alive instead of something damaged and dying. Now we can place our hope in our salvation, in a new heaven and new earth coming to us, in an eternity in the presence and fellowship of Jesus.
Now, we can place our hope in something that cannot be taken away from us, that will last forever and not just until the next piece of bad news hits us. Look at how Peter describes this in verse 4. An inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you Without the resurrection, our hopes are dashed when something we dared believe might happen like a recovery from an illness or the promise of a new job doesn t happen. Because of the resurrection, our hope is built on a more solid ground. Something we can absolutely count on; an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. B. A living hope can absorb difficult circumstances. Again, without the game-changing nature of the resurrection, our circumstances are all we have. But, because the resurrection means there is more to our lives than what is happening to us right now, we can absorb difficult things with the knowledge that something better is coming. Peter puts it this way in verse 6, In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. All kinds of trials. That s the Bible s way of describing life on a fallen planet.
To absorb these trials, even rejoice in them, makes no sense unless there is something ahead for us that puts our trials in perspective. And there is something ahead that changes the way we view our circumstances, our trials. The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8:18. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. Wow. That must be some glory, then, if it is going to overshadow the trouble some of us are experiencing! But that s the deal. And even more, our present sufferings, placed in the hands of God, bring glory to Jesus, as well. Look at what Peter says in verse 7, These (sufferings) have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Rather than viewing our present circumstances as making sense only if things get better, a living hope absorbs difficult circumstances as having value of their own, a refining value that will ultimately bring glory to our Lord. And then, of course, the resurrection changes hope because it confirms God s promise that He is at work right now, making something good from these
trials we experience. Romans 8:28. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. We talked about this at length this fall, so I won t say more this morning except to remind you that our living hope doesn t require us to wait for heaven to experience God at work for us. He is at work right now in all of our circumstance, transforming them in a way only God can do. Count on it. The resurrection confirms it. I say all this with full knowledge of how painful what we go through can be. My life and the lives of people I love are full of grief, loss, and health issues right now. But I m with Peter. The resurrection changes everything, including the way we hope. So, let me bring this together with three practical suggestions regarding hope and hopelessness, brought to you by the resurrection of Jesus, our Lord. 1. Whatever you are experiencing right now, lift your eyes above your circumstances to the larger reality that God is at work outside of our sight. Lift your eyes to the larger reality. Do this consciously and regularly until it becomes the habit of your life. Because there is more going on in your life than meets your eye.
2. Find a way to give thanks, even rejoice, in the midst of your circumstances, whatever they are. This is the constant theme of Scripture, so it must be an important part of our faith development. It takes some practice, so start by picking one thing you hope will change and offer God thanks for it, change or no change. 3. Start thinking more about your eternity with God. Think more about heaven. This will help you live the abundant life you re meant to live right now. The promise of heaven is meant to reach back into our present and energize our lives, right now. Thinking about heaven is one of the ways way learn to see how God is already bringing the life of heaven to us in the midst of our life on earth. After all, don t we pray, May your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Do these three things, and both hope and hopelessness will change for you. Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. The resurrection guarantees it.