A Living Hope

Turn to 1 Peter if you want. I'm going to read the first few verses and I'm going to leave you standing while I read the Word of God and then I'll allow you to sit down when I begin preaching. So it's an attempt to show reference for God's Word. I'll read the first five verses. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 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 is 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. You may be seated. As we review this epistle that Peter wrote to a number of believers in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, Peter is going to repeat himself a lot when it comes to his themes.

So Peter has some things he says a lot. So we are not going to need to review all the same things. So for example, in this verse 3 that we are on, it says, According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again. And we're not going to talk about what it means for him to have caused us to be born again in great detail. We did that a lot last week, actually.

And so there's going to be times that we're not going to look at every word in as much detail as we have in the past. But where I want to start this week is just the very first word. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It would take us all day if we did a word search on the word blessed in Scripture. when we look up, bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.

When we look at all the times that we are talking about blessing in Scripture, it would take a long time. And suffice to say, this is human beings being told to acknowledge God's greatness. To acknowledge who He is. As I just read in the confession, we add nothing to God. When we use the phrase, give Him glory, We actually can't add anything to God. We simply proclaim His glory that we are now seeing.

And so when it says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Peter is proclaiming the blessedness of God. That God is indeed happy. It's a simple word that we misuse sometimes. But it really means God's happy. He's pleased. He's self-sufficiently pleased all the time. and he has been for all eternity.

And he is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, Peter says, according to his great mercy, so he's referring to the mercy of God the Father, who has caused us to be born again to a living hope. Mercy is another word that's found throughout Scripture. Spurgeon said just this week in mourning, and evening. So providentially I encountered this.

Spurgeon said, this was from Monday, so if you want to look it up, it was the 17th of August morning. A very good passage on God's mercy. But just one part of it I want to read. Because Peter called it great mercy here in verse 3. Spurgeon said, meditate a little on this mercy of the Lord. It is great mercy.

There is nothing little in God. His mercy is like himself. It is infinite. You cannot measure it. His mercy is so great that it forgives great sins to great sinners after great lengths of time, then gives great favors and great privileges, and raises us up to great enjoyments in the great heaven of the great God. And so Spurgeon has his way with words, and so I'll quote him every sermon is my goal, I think.

But God's mercy is great. And I'm not going to go into great detail about why his mercy is so great to us as such deplorable sinners, as Jason just prayed for us and acknowledged our wretchedness. My goal today is to be an encouraging preacher to you today. My goal is to focus on the phrase that we're going to see later about the living hope. Because I think I've sufficiently told everyone they're sinners for the last few weeks.

I think I do that on a regular basis anyway. And so I don't want to harp on some of those things that certainly could be taken out of this text and taught from there. I want to focus today on really what Peter's ultimate goal, I think, in this letter was. I think it was twofold, but one of the things Peter wanted to do was encourage believers who were dealing with trials, afflictions, and suffering in this life.

And he wanted to encourage them to remain steadfast and to remain holy. But the remaining steadfast part is the result of the hope that they have laid up for them in heaven. If all you had was hope in this life alone, if all you had was a promise that if you just put enough money in the box you'd get ten times back or if you just pray enough your knee will feel better or I could help if I could promise you I could make you live a hundred years I don know who would want to live a hundred years in this body Like, I don't know.

Most people, once they hit a certain age, it stops being fun. But if I could promise you all of the best things this world has to offer, it would fall infinitely short of what God has already given us in Jesus Christ, let alone what he's promised will happen with certainty. And so that's what my encouragement will be today. That's what my sermon will be, hopefully encouragement.

So mercy though, getting back to the word mercy, mercy is not getting what you deserve. Getting what you deserve, now that's justice. And so we want to be careful that we understand the different terms in scripture. we live in a time where the word justice is being thrown around a lot in the United States, in fact probably worldwide and it's being very confused.

A lot of people think that it's justice to actually give people mercy. And when you confuse the two you completely destroy the fabric of society and you misrepresent what the gospel is when you confuse those two things. So we want to make sure we understand that justice is when somebody gives you what you deserve. So you've broken a law, you deserve punishment for it.

You deserve either jail or a fine or sometimes something else. Mercy is when somebody says, hey, you deserve punishment for your crimes and I'm going to let you go free. Mercy is when you've stolen something and the person says, I'm not going to make you pay it back. Justice is when you get what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. there's a story that I'm going to tell you that I don't remember the lady's name.

When I heard the story, she was some famous lady. But it was a story of a lady that had hired a man to draw a portrait of her. And she wasn't the easiest on the eyes in the story. And she looks at the guy who's about to draw her portrait, and she says, make sure this portrait does me justice. And he says, Madam, you don't want justice, you want mercy. And it illustrates the point.

It illustrates the point. We want mercy. We don't want justice. Now, we want justice in this life. We want to have a justice system that works properly. But when we're talking about the eternal plan of God, we don't want God's justice.

God doesn't owe us anything except for hell. And that's part of the reason why, as Brother Jason prayed, again that our trials that we faced this week some of you faced trials that maybe you thought you'd never have to face or maybe you thought oh another one I texted a friend about some stuff and he said wouldn't it be nice if there was a grace period sometimes where you just knew nothing bad was going to happen you know but if you actually are able to look at your trials with that eternal perspective to say you know what right now I deserve to be in eternal torment in hell being punished for the sins that I've committed against the Holy God and instead I'm suffering whatever trial is in this world where at least I'm assuming in this room we still have a lot of comfort that is above what 99% of people who've ever lived never experienced you just think for a moment, we freaked out when we got in here because the thermostat we haven't figured out the thermostat yet and I think it's going down now there's no way it's as hot as it was because I'd be drenched in sweat if it was and we're like freaking out about it Jesus never had air conditioning just that simple fact alone that air conditioning is such an entitlement in our minds, we can't live without it and so we're a little bit spoiled couple verses to prove mercy to you though Titus 3.5 is a good place to go to remind ourselves of the mercy of God remember I want you to turn in your Bibles when I reference verses unless I say it really fast but I want you to encounter the word of God yourself I'm not a performer I'm not an entertainer I'm just a guy who hopefully by the unction of the Holy Spirit is actually delivering to you the message of God by preaching his word to you the way that he's commanded that we ought in Titus 3.5 Paul writes he saved us not because of works done by us in righteousness but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit so there's a commentary on Peter saying he's caused us to be born again but it's according to God's mercy that he saved us and so it's important that we know that mercy is that tender love of God that pities the sinner forbears to execute justice, provides a substitute, sends the spirit to quicken the dead, and grants faith unto salvation. When we talk about mercy, it's a serious term.

And in some ways, God's love and mercy are the root of all the good things that we get from Him in some sense of those words. And when you look at the Old Testament and the King James, I'm pretty sure whenever it almost every time it says mercy, that was God's steadfast love being translated as mercy. And now in a lot of our newer translations, it's translated steadfast love.

These terms are intertwined. And part of that's because God's simple. And we can talk about what that means another time. But God isn't made up of all these little parts. God isn't like one quarter love, one quarter mercy, one quarter grace, one quarter goodness. that's not how God is God is one and so like Spurgeon said God his mercy is like himself it infinite God mercy and love and grace these are all perfectly intertwined together They're all one with Him.

An Old Testament verse about mercy, Micah 6.8. It's going to take people a minute to find Micah, I think. it's not one of the ones we turn to as often. But in Micah 6.8, there's a verse that a lot of people maybe even have memorized. It says, He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does Yahweh require of you, but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.

And in the King James Version, which a lot of people would know. It says, He showed you what is good, but what does Yahweh require of you but to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. It's God's command to us that we be like Him. God's merciful. God has been merciful to every sinner in this room who can say that they've been born again, that they believe the gospel, that Christ died and rose again for their sins and ascended into heaven. and like the unforgiving servant that we read about in the Gospels, we ought to be the opposite of him and we ought to be like God and be merciful to others.

You have been given not just a postponement of your sentence of death and condemnation you deserve, but you've actually been completely freed from it and we ought to be merciful to others. So God wants us to be merciful. And God also loves justice. And he wants us to do justice. So I'll just briefly make a political comment here. When we work in our society to help make good laws, when we try to do justice in our society, it's because we love our neighbor.

I don't want you to be stolen from, so I like laws about stealing. I don't want you to be raped. I don't want you to have somebody cheat against you in a contract. Divorce is just a breaking of a contract. Divorce is wrong in a lot of ways. So that's why we have laws about things where we try to prohibit people from doing evil based on what God has said is right and wrong, based on the general equity of His civil law that He gave us and the moral law that's been laid out clearly in the Ten Commandments.

And so we love justice and we want justice. And so when a person commits a crime against our neighbor, we want justice executed. We want the neighbor paid restitution. We want the person to be punished appropriately. We want it to be a good deterrent to others to do the same type of thing. If you knew that crime didn't pay, a lot of people wouldn't do it.

There's a lot of people in our society who, as long as they think they're going to get caught, they won't do the bad thing. And we're actually seeing in the United States now that there's people that now know they won't get caught. And so they'll do the bad thing. And there's whole cities where this is happening now. Where the police are quitting and people know that they can get away with whatever.

And what was always in their heart is now coming out in their actions. So justice doesn't contradict mercy, though. Because it's not my job to grant someone mercy who stole something from you. it doesn't make me merciful to grant amnesty to someone that murdered your relative that's not mercy mercy is when I'm wronged when I'm offended and I choose that I don't want to hold it against the person that I may even want to bestow gifts upon that person that's mercy and that's what God loves but the type of confusion that has been created in our society today is the problem where we've decided that mercy is me telling someone else they can have your stuff, and we call that mercy.

And when I say we, hopefully I mean everybody but people in this room, frankly. Because you know what I mean. The United States is calling that mercy. We're calling it justice to take things from you and give it to someone else. That's not justice. That's theft.

But when people attach a very beautiful, biblical word like mercy to it, or a beautiful word like justice to it, words that describe our God, you're tempted because the word means something beautiful to want to agree with what the person is saying. So that's where you have to exercise discernment. When someone says something to you, no matter what words they use, they have thoughts behind those words that actually mean something.

Or sometimes it's completely irrational. It's a different problem. But for the most part, when people speak, when guys at the Democratic National Convention and the Republic National Convention and everywhere you go, when people say words, they usually mean something. And the deception today that's most common, in my opinion, is they use words that Christians ought to love.

And they use them in ways that are twisted and perverse and wicked. And it makes you feel like you can't even disagree with them, though. How can you disagree with the statement, Black Lives Matter? You can't disagree with that statement. Because they do matter. Absolutely.

We love life here. God's the giver of life. So you can't disagree with some of the statements people make, but you have to be able to filter that from disagreeing with the ideologies that maybe those statements actually represent. I'm sure a lot of people would love for America to be made great, but they would never wear a Make America Great Again hat because they think it means something more than just they want it to be great.

Because they would oppose President Trump. being re So everyone understands these things inherently They just don all play by the right rules the fair rules Continuing with Spurgeon about mercy So one final thing about mercy. Spurgeon says, meditate a little on this mercy of the Lord. It's a tender mercy. So this is going to lead us into the living hope.

This is going to lead us into how God's mercy is meant to help you deal with your afflictions and difficulties. He says, It is tender mercy with gentle, loving touch. He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds. He is as gracious in the manner of His mercy as in the matter of it. that was Spurgeon and we're going to have to take that as objectively true because I think sometimes in our experiences we have found that the things God has sent us that were actually meant to help us sometimes hurt us a little bit and what I'm going to tell you is when that happens that's not because God injured you it's because of your own stiff neck and if anyone here has ever had a child where you tried to just take the child toward you and you grabbed their head and you were very gentle and you were just trying to pull your child toward you and that child pushed against you with a stiff neck and then you pushed a little harder because you just wanted the child to come to you even though you were still gentle I see kids nudging dads and stuff so we know But it was the stiff neck that caused you to have to push back a little harder.

It's when we fight against God, when we resist His efforts to sanctify us, when we quench the Spirit, that's when God oftentimes sends something a little bit stiffer at us, to break us, so that we will finally give up our self-will and our pride. So I pray for things from God. And a lot of times I pray like, God, please grant me this virtue, but don't teach it to me.

Like I ask them that. Because some virtues are very painful to learn. I want to learn humility. I don't want to necessarily be humiliated. I want to learn patience, but I don't want to have to wait for stuff to learn it. and so we all have these situations in our life where God is sanctifying us all the time and we should be attentive to that if somebody walks up to you and says let's pick on Jason hey Jason, what's the Lord doing in your life today? you should have an answer if that question would kind of catch you off guard then you're not meditating enough on what the Lord is doing in your life you're not examining yourself one of the reasons we do communion weekly at Covenant Bible Church, is that communion requires self-examination before the Lord.

Every single week, at a minimum, I'm encouraging people to examine themselves to see if they're of the faith, to examine their sin and pray to the Lord about it. I would say you should be doing it daily. So we should think about what the Lord's doing in our life. Now, Peter says, 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.

He says, To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. It's a long sentence. I don't know if we'll get through it all. But these things are connected. Your hope that you have in this life is connected to Jesus Christ's resurrection. Jesus Christ's resurrection is inextricably connected to your resurrection, which is your only hope.

And all of these resurrections, there's a promised inheritance that is spoken of and repeated about plenty of times in the New Testament. so let's turn to Hebrews 9 and we're going to jump around and look at a few verses I don't apologize for making you jump around the Bible I think you should some of you ought to be convicted when I make you jump around that you haven't read a portion in a while maybe you don't even remember it's there it happens to me, I'm the same way I look stuff up sometimes and I'm like, wow, I forgot that was even in that book. And so I want us to read a lot of different pieces of scripture. I want us to understand that it's really the scripture that comments on the scripture.

It's not the preacher guy. Lord willing, I'm going to tell you truth. Lord willing, I'm a messenger of God to deliver his word. But it's the word that's the power. And the word is what comments on itself. In verse 15, we'll start there.

And I'm going to read through it. But I want you to notice a few things. I want you to notice an inheritance. And I want you to notice resurrection and hope. In verse 15, Therefore He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance. Verse 2. blood.

Now this is interesting because last week we talked about the sprinkling of blood. So here's a lot of sprinkling that no doubt Peter had in mind as well. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.

And in the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Well, praise God, there was the shedding of blood. And so there is forgiveness of sins. 23. Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rights, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

So the ceremonial law of God showed us the purification that occurred through the sprinkling of the blood, so that these things were purified. But in 24, for Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Jesus Christ is your advocate when you sin.

If anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. On our behalf. Just to remind you, you never asked Him to do it either. While we were yet sinners, He died for us. Nor was it to offer Himself repeatedly as the high priest enters the holy places every year with the blood not his own. For then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world.

Because your election was secure since the foundation of the world, before the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. and just as it is appointed for man to die once and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. So here's your promise.

Your promise is not that you're going to have health and wealth and prosperity in this life. Your promise is not that your kids are going to live. your promise is not that your kids will get saved your promise is not that grandma and grandpa are going to get healthy your promise is not that you're going to make it home tonight safely your promise is not that evil doers won't do all sorts of horrible things to you on the discern website that I read every week they have I highlight the wrong word but almost every week they have an article that reports about the Christians around the world getting murdered there's no guarantees in this life your promise is that Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of many will appear a second time no matter how long it's been no matter how difficult it is to wait he will appear a second time to save those who are eagerly awaiting him are you eagerly awaiting him today? or are you hoping he puts it off so you can finish something that you want to do or see I've known people that I think it's blasphemous that during their engagement I mentioned Christ returning and they said well I hope he waits until after my wedding I think that's blasphemy if Jesus Christ isn't your single most exciting goal if his return to take you home and take you out of this body is not your single most exciting thing that you're looking forward to, if you're not eagerly waiting for it in such a way that everything else pales in comparison, then I challenge you, I'm not going to say, well, maybe you're not saved, but I challenge you to go and review that. Read through the New Testament.

Do a search if you have to on a software or something and find all the references to Jesus coming again. We don't talk about it a lot, at least in churches I've been. but it is the focus of the New Testament. The New Testament is a historical report of what he did when he was here and then it's a non-stop commentary on here's what's going to happen, he's coming back so that believers can have hope.

Turn to Romans 8. Romans 8, verse 17. well 16 the spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God now listen and if children then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ so we'll stop there for a second there's the inheritance an heir is someone who receives an inheritance from their relative that dies we are heirs with Christ of what God has stored up for us. But it says, provided we suffer with Him in order that we also may be glorified with Him.

That's our future and our hope, is the glorification. And then Paul gives us some help that Peter is also going to do throughout his letter He going to give us some reasons to endure with much grace the affliction and the tribulation that you suffering He says, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. He says, The whole creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

The creation itself is actually longing for us to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to futility or uselessness, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

And He says, and not only the creation, but we who have the first fruits of the Spirit we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons the redemption of our bodies earlier in this chapter Paul told us we were already adopted by God we already have a standing with God and yet in the way that the New Testament describes this already and not yet thing that happens we're also waiting for that final time that we're adopted that we're finally brought close to God with glorified bodies. But now in 24, listen, for in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he sees?

But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. And so here we have that word hope again. Hope is what we have. Now a lot of us say things like, oh, I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow. And when we say that, we mean a completely different use of the term hope than what God means when he says hope in this chapter. Hope in the Bible has to do with the certain belief that something will certainly happen.

It is sure. When we say we hope for the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies, It's not like, ooh, we're not sure it's going to happen, but we hope for it. When we say we hope for adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies, what it means is we're looking forward to the thing that's absolutely certain. That there is no doubt. I want to be gentle with somebody who has difficulty with doubts in their Christian life. but there is no doubt in faith these things are antithetical to one another so if you're a doubting Christian you need to be getting discipled and getting counseling to help your faith to be secure and sure because God is sure and to doubt what God has said and to doubt that he will do what he has promised to do is sin against him and God has not given you that spirit He's giving you a spirit of a sound mind and love.

But the Spirit helps us in our weakness. I think there was one more. No, that was it for chapter 8 of Romans. That was enough. The idea being that we are... Oh, at the end of the chapter, sorry.

He says, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? So for anybody that thinks, okay, I do believe he's coming back, but what if somehow I'll get lost in the shuffle? He says nobody can separate us. Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine. Paul even says, he quotes Psalm 44, For your sake we're being killed all the day long. We're regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

But in all these things we're more than conquerors. I think in another version it says we're overwhelmingly conquering. that there's nothing that can separate us from Christ. And so your hope is not in your present circumstances. If something bad happens to you on the way home today, if something bad happens tomorrow, if something bad happens a week from now, if something bad happened before, that is not evidence that God has deserted you.

That's the point that Peter is trying to make and Paul makes repeatedly. Your hope is not in your present circumstances. your present circumstances if they're evidence of anything at all it may be God's discipline in your life at times it's always evidence that he's trying to sanctify you and teach you something that you are not doing the way he wants you to do it yet but it's never evidence that he's lost his love for you it's never evidence that he's changed his mind about you and it's never evidence that Jesus Christ isn't really coming back Romans 5.5 another hope reference we'll go back a step in verse 3 of chapter 5 not only that we rejoice in our sufferings again he's talking about rejoicing in suffering I'm not going to lecture you on that one today that will be next week in 1 Peter 1.6 talking about rejoicing but he says knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and he says hope does not put us to shame the NAS says hope does not disappoint us why because God love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us We have hope and our hope does not shame us Our hope does not disappoint us. Our hope is a sure hope in the truth of what God has promised.

1 Corinthians 15 now the chapter the resurrection chapter because this is where your hope is you have one hope and that is whether Jesus Christ has actually been raised from the dead or not and what this chapter is going to tell us is if Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead you have no hope and in fact everything that you do as a Christian is a waste of time Blaise Pascal was a philosopher and mathematician who came up with something they call Pascal's wager which is where he says look if I don't believe in God but he's true then that's pretty bad but if he's false then it really wouldn't hurt anything and then he said but if I do believe in God and it turns out to be true then that's great I needed to believe And he said, if I believe in God and it's false, I really didn't lose anything. And it's supposed to be this wager that says, well, you've got like a three-quarters chance of believing in God being like a good thing, and only a one-quarter chance of it being bad, so just roll with believing. And I think he probably meant well in a sense when he came up with it.

And people that tried to use it may have meant well. But according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, you're the most miserable person on earth if Jesus Christ didn't raise from the dead, that He's not really God. That your entire life is a waste of time. And particularly, any suffering that you encounter for the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and for believing in His resurrection is absolutely...

It's moronic. I mean, it's as foolish and stupid as possible to suffer for a lie. There would be no reason whatsoever for it. We have a hope. And Paul says, I preach the gospel to you that you received and by which you are being saved. He says, if you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believe in vain.

And now here he says, For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the Scriptures. Absolutely. That he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures. Everything Paul proclaims. Paul doesn't say, hey, we saw a bunch of stuff and we think it's going to be a cool religion.

Paul is saying that Jesus Christ came and he fulfilled what the Old Testament had always predicted was going to happen for the people of God it's according to the scriptures Jesus appeared to Peter or Cephas then to the twelve then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time most of whom are still alive though some have fallen asleep that means they've died then he appeared to James then to all the apostles last of all to one untimely born he appeared to me from the least of the apostles and then he talks a little more but at this point he just showed that Jesus really did raise from the dead. That there was enough people that saw it. This is undeniable.

The rumors that were started by the Roman guards are all false. But he says, so Paul is dealing with the fact that there's people who are saying there is no future resurrection, or that Jesus didn't really resurrect. And I always thought this was a weird thing, but I actually had a guy like two weeks ago tell me he doesn't think there's a future resurrection.

I was like, what? He was a non-believer. I'm like, why would a non-believer even say that word? But it was really his thought. No, this is all we have. You're going to die.

You're going to go into the ground. So while you're alive, what does it say in the Bible? Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. That's the attitude that people have. And frankly, it's the attitude I suppose I would have if I didn't believe there was eternal life. if I didn't believe there was a future resurrection where I was going to have a body capable of glorifying God for all eternity or capable of enduring eternal torment.

I would just do what I could with my body in this life. But Paul says, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead in 12, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? He says if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. so if you don't believe in a future resurrection then Christ wasn't raised it's that tied together it's one thing in the mind of God it's one thing and if Christ has not been raised then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain everything is useless everything is a waste he says we're found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God that he raised Christ whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.

And then he goes on like a little conditional statement. He says, for if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then, those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. So all your dead relatives, all the people who you are hoping to see again, who you're hoping are present with the Lord now, not bodily, but in spirit, they're just dead.

They're just gone. They're basically worm food, right? That's it. Nothing more than that. He says, If in Christ we have hope in this life only we are of all people most to be pitied So he blows away Pascal wager He blows away this idea that living a Christian life is a noble thing even if it's not true. There's nothing noble about it.

At best, it's just stupid. Let's use kind of a blunt term there. If it's not true. But then Paul says, but in fact Christ has been raised from the dead. Notice he doesn't say, but if Christ has been raised from the dead, and then kind of go on and explain the opposite if statements here. He just makes the proclamation, no, like all of these suppositions I made, and their logical consequences, forget them.

Christ has been raised from the dead. He's the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. The firstfruits were the promise of more to come. You look at the Old Testament, you look at the first verse, there's a promise. More is coming. And then he goes on to talk about Adam and Christ.

But then go down to verse 30. He says, why are we in danger every hour? Like, why? Why would I do this? Right? Why are you, hopefully, in your heart, willing to stand up for Jesus Christ one day, even if it means your life.

I'm talking to everyone. Everyone here may have to stand alone for Jesus Christ one day. The first thing some bad people are going to do if they want to start persecuting people is they're going to separate family members from each other. And they're going to separate children from parents. And the only thing you're going to remember, little children, is the verses that you've memorized, the catechism questions that you know the answers to, and you're going to hope against all hope that the Spirit of God regenerates you so that you stand firm on the Gospel if you get separated from your parents.

And I'm not trying to scare you, but I don't want to act like your life is going to be 100% easy because we're promised here that we're in danger every hour, according to Paul. He says in 32, What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts in Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. if you keep reading through chapter 15 you see that Paul's whole point is that there is no sting anymore of death there's no more fear of death and there's no fear of even suffering in this life because we have been born again to a living hope so I talked about your living hope but remember through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the So you have hope today.

You have hope. There is hope. Not that you're going to win the lottery. Not that you're going to get a raise at work. Not that your kids are going to ever behave while they live under your roof. Not that this church is going to grow and do all the things we hope the church will do.

Our true living hope is that Jesus Christ lives today. And because He lives, we can face today, we can face tomorrow. And we have certainty that He's coming again. One day God's going to wipe away every tear from every eye. And He's also going to wipe away every evil. And that's very comforting for some of us.

But I want you to remember that there was a day in your life that if He would have wiped away every evil, you'd be in hell right now. And so we wait with patience, it said in Romans. We hope for what we do not see and we wait for it with patience. Because you know what? I'm glad God hasn't wiped away every evil yet because there's people I love who I want to see saved.

There's people who are going to be at the Kentucky Derby. There's people at Planned Parenthood. There's people that hopefully will walk in the doors of this church who I hope God still plans to save. and so if I have to endure another 40 years of affliction and trial and suffering in this world which won't compare to the glory that's going to be revealed to me one day then I'm going to do it out of love for God and for my neighbor and I'm going to hope that he comes and I'm going to wait eagerly for him and I'm going to want it but I'm also going to be very grateful for every moment that he gives another sinner a chance to repent pray with me, Father in heaven we thank you that you are the cause of all good things we thank you that every good and every perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change and thus we can trust that Jesus Christ will come again because you have promised it you have decided and you will not change your mind and that perfect high priest of ours who came and made the sacrifice that only He could make, entering holy places not made with hands, will one day come again and make a new creation.

We are the first fruits of that, new creations. We have the down payment of Your Holy Spirit to encourage us to endure the difficulties that we're going to face. And as Peter said, therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful creator while doing good. May we be men and women who entrust our souls to you, Lord, because you are faithful.

Amen.