02-22-09 To Obtain An Inheritance

Last week we started a study of 1^st Peter 1:3-5

but didn’t even make it half way through the first verse in the section.

Actually, I got a little side-tracked on Peter’s understanding of the mercy of God

and we spent most of our time

looking at when and where that understanding entered his life.

There’s always a doorway, you know,

some entrance our Lord finds

past our fears,

and our misconceptions,

and all our muddled thinking,

a doorway into our discovery

of some deeper understanding of the true nature of our God’s love for us.

With Peter,

and in fact with most of us

the most powerful discoveries we ever make about our God’s love for us

come through our failures,

and our weaknesses,

and through the broken areas in our lives.

The reason, I think, is obvious.

As long as we’re standing before Him

with something, anything that we think might impress Him,

or justify His blessing,

or bring credit to our account before Him

we just naturally assume there is some element of “because” to His love.

Do you think God likes me better than He likes you

because I do what I’m doing right now?

Do you think Bible teachers

are more highly favored by Him?

If so, then you have not yet begun to understand anything about His love.

I’ll certainly admit

that I’m very grateful for the projects my Lord has chosen to share with me,

and for the gifts He’s chosen to give me -

not as grateful as I am for the weaknesses He’s allowed me to have

that draw me to Him on a daily basis,

but still, I’m grateful for the gifts and the projects.

But those are all His doing

and they certainly earn me no credit or status with Him.

They simply provide me with added windows into His nature.

For you see, there is no “because” to His love -

not with me,

not with you.

And when Peter begins this third verse of his letter by saying,

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy ...,

his explosion of praise and gratitude

is simply the by-product of His discovery of His Lord’s response to him

in the face of His failure.

And here is the truly remarkable thing -

discovering God’s love for us in our failure

is the only adequate motivation

for a life of true productivity.

We are not truly prepared to succeed

until we have first seen our God’s response to us in our failure.

It’s the only thing

that has the power to keep us moving forward in our walk with the King

at those times when no one is watching,

or when those who are watching are calling us a fool or worse.

But let me get us back to Peter.

I mentioned last week

that Peter does what he does in verses 3-5

because he knows that our survival,

our strength and courage here and now

depend upon our knowing how the story ends.

And so, before he says anything to us about the hard stuff going on in our life right now,

he first takes us to the end of the book - the end of our book,

the end of our personal history with the King.

And what we see at the end of the story

is far better than anything we could ever have come up with on our own.

Let me read the passage for us once again,

and then we’ll look more closely at what he’s saying.

1PE 1:3-5 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

OK, the first thing Peter wants us to know

about the way our story ends,

or at least about the way this part of our story ends

is that what has happened to us and what will happen to us

is in no way simply the result of chance.

Both what has happened to us already

and what will happen to us in the future

is the result of God the Father’s direct intervention into our lives.

I could have said that better...

Let me put it this way.

Our story is not just the story of what happens,

it is the story of what God does.

If we ever loose sight of the truth

that with God it’s always personal

nothing will make any sense to us.

What God wants,

what He seeks is not just lots of people on His side,

what He wants

and what He seeks is you and me.

And when Peter starts talking with us

about how our story ends,

he begins by telling us that God the Father has caused us to be born again to a living hope.

It doesn’t just happen,

God Himself causes it to happen.

God Himself reaches into the life of each person who comes to Him

and sovereignly recreates our spirits,

a creative work that is every bit as significant as our physical birth.

It is the beginning of what Peter calls “a living hope”.

And before we go any farther with this

I need to let you know

that this word “hope” is used in Scripture

in a way that is radically different

from the way it is used anywhere else.

In our normal speech

we use the word “hope”

in the same way as we use the word “wish”.

I really hope it stops snowing...I really wish it would stop snowing....

I really hope I win the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes...

In normal speech

to hope for something

is to want it to happen

even though there is no clear logical certainty that it will happen.

But that is not the way this word is used by the New Testament writers.

Hope as it is used in the New Testament

whenever it is used in the context of our relationship with God

could best be defined as a future certainty.

It is something we have not yet, in the flow of time, experienced,

but something that our God has told us will take place,

and because He has said it

we accept it and trust it as an absolute fact -

a future fact, but a fact none the less.

Paul, writing to the Galatians says,

GAL 5:5 For we through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness.

He’s not talking about something on his wish list,

he’s talking about an absolute future certainty .

We will not always struggle

with expressing the righteous longings of our new spirits.

The time will come, either at the return of the King,

or when we are freed from these corrupted physical bodies through death,

when our righteous, holy spirits are placed within new bodies

and then the hope of righteousness will be a living reality.

And when Paul wrote to the Thessalonians,

instructing them on how to defend themselves against the attacks of Satan he said,

1TH 5:8 But since we are of the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation.

That “hope of salvation” is not just something we might get,

and then again might not.

It is an absolute certainty,

something that is as certain as of God Himself

because it is based upon the promise of God to us

and God cannot lie.

The author of Hebrews said it better than anyone else.

Talking about those absolute certainties we have because of what God has told us will take place he says,

HEB 6:19-20 This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever ...

Some of the power of his words are lost to us

unless we understand the imagery he’s using here.

He talks about our hope as being “an anchor of the soul”,

but then he compares it to a “forerunner”.

When a large ship would approach a port in the Roman world

it would stop just outside the port, still in the open seas, drop its sails,

and then wait until a small boat called a “forerunner”

came out along side.

The forerunner would pull up next to the massive ship

and allow the ship’s anchor to be lowered onto its deck.

It would then take that anchor,

as the ship’s crew let out the anchor’s rope,

and it would carry the anchor into the port, into the very dock reserved for the ship,

and secure it to the shore.

Then all the crew had to do

was to follow the rope to safety.

That’s the purpose of hope for the Christian.

And that’s what our Lord has done for us -

He’s carried our hope beyond the veil,

beyond this physical life we can see around us,

and into the very presence of God Himself,

and then He anchored it there,

both sure and steadfast.

And even though we may still be pounded by the sea around us,

still outside the safety and protection of the port,

we are already absolutely anchored in the eternal security of God Himself.

He holds our anchor,

and nothing and no one can pry it out of His hands.

That’s New Testament hope.

And when Peter begins to talk about us and our future

he first reminds us of what our God has already done in our lives,

of the way in which He caused us to be reborn into a world we didn’t even know existed,

a world in which everything our spirits long for the most

will find total fulfillment.

We long for love - to be fully known and fully accepted on the basis of that knowledge.

We long for significance - to know that our existence matters, really matters.

And those are the first two things we will know

when we meet our King face to face.

We will see that He knows us absolutely,

that He always has,

and that His love for us on the basis of that knowledge has no limits and no end.

And for the first time in our existence

we will know the value He places on us,

we’ll know the delight He finds in our existence and in our presence with Him,

and that knowledge will give us a sense of significance

unlike anything we’ve ever known before.

And there’s more, of course -

so much more.

We long for a place, a life free from pain,

free from sorrow,

free from failure and regrets and fear.

We long for a place, a life in which we are truly safe,

where no one will lie to us,

or use us,

or ignore us,

or attack us,

or view us as simply a means to an end.

And all of that, too, will be ours in endless measure - all a part of our living hope.

And that isn’t where Peter ends his description of what waits for each of us who come to the King.

After telling us of this living hope,

a hope validated by Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead,

he goes on to reveal to us the reason why God has accomplished this rebirth in our lives.

He says it is...

1PE 1:4-5 to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

And here again I do hope you hear what Peter is saying.

We’ve run into this before

in the writings of the Apostle Paul.

It’s been a long time since we were there,

but I wonder if you remember those comments made by Paul

in the 2^nd chapter of Ephesians.

It’s in that remarkable passage in the first 10 verses of the 2^nd chapter,

a passage in which Paul describes where we came from,

what God has done in our lives,

and then goes on to describe why He did it.

And what we see there simply defies all human logic.

The passage begins with the truth we most want to avoid, ignore.

EPH 2:1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins...

He goes on to describe how our lives were driven by our fear and hatred

of this God we never knew.

It’s a vivid snapshot of each of us as we really are apart from our God.

But then comes the wonder of wonders,

the truth that defies all logic,

the revelation of the heart of our God.

It begins in verse 4 of that 2^nd chapter with the two words that changed everything forever...But God...

Having made it clear that we could do nothing to fix anything,

Paul then says, But God...

EPH 2:4-6 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus...

And the picture he paints of God’s response to us in our rebellion to Him

is the wonder of all wonders.

But I mention this passage in the context of our study of 1^st Peter

because of the verse that comes next,

because in the 7^th verse of Ephesians 2

Paul tells us WHY God poured out such grace and mercy and kindness on us.

That 7^th verse begins with the words In order that...

He says, EPH 2:7 in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

And in case you missed it,

Paul tells us that God has shown us such great kindness here and now

in order that in the ages to come He can go right on showing us His grace and kindness forever.

God has been good to us now

so that He will be able to continue being good to us forever.

And this is exactly the same thing Peter says to us in the 3^rd and 4^th verses of his 1^st letter.

God the Father has caused us to be born again to a living hope here and now

so that we can obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you...

I know I’m not saying this nearly as well as it needs to be said,

but what I want us to see here

is the incredible insight both Paul and Peter are giving us

into our God’s attitude toward us.

He clearly takes great pleasure in showing us kindness,

and in doing good stuff for us.

And He has structured our entire relationship with Him

in a way that gives Him the freedom and the opportunity

to pour out His kindness on us forever and ever.

And Peter’s description of this inheritance we are to receive is fascinating, too.

Oh, and before we go there,

let me point out that word “inheritance”.

You know what an inheritance is, don’t you -

it’s something of value

that a person receives when another person dies.

And in our case

the One who had to die

in order for us to gain this inheritance is God Himself.

Jesus Christ chose to die

so that we would then be able to receive this remarkable inheritance.

And it’s not like we had any legal claim to it.

Not only were we not members of the family in good standing,

but we were, in fact, children of His worst enemy,

in league with all the forces of evil.

And yet, because of His great love with which He loves us,

He seeks us out,

gently but persistently calls us to Himself,

and then, when we finally hear and respond,

He rescues us from the kingdom of darkness

and adopts us as His children

so that we can then, because of His death for us,

receive this great inheritance.

Do you think He loves us?

He dies for us,

then adopts us

so that we can receive the inheritance He has longed to give us.

And listen to the words Peter uses to describe this inheritance.

1PE 1:4 to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,

Imperishable...

It’s not even remotely like Wall Street,

or your retirement portfolio,

or even that pay check you got a few weeks ago.

And it’s undefiled.

Clean,

and holy,

and perfect,

and good in every respect.

And it will not fade away.

And it gets even better

because Peter goes on to say

that this great wealth is reserved in heaven for you who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Now let’s put this all together.

When Peter talks with us

about this story that is our lives,

this story that right now just doesn’t seem to make much sense sometimes,

this story that isn’t over yet,

he helps us by taking us to the last page

so that we know for certain how this whole thing ends.

And then he tells us

that God’s great mercy caused Him to seek us out,

call us to Himself,

and then bring us into His Kingdom

so that, because of His death for us,

we would receive from Him

an imperishable and undefiled inheritance - great wealth,

wealth that is reserved in heaven for us,

waiting for us.

And even now, here, in this physical world

He personally protects us, guarding our spirits

so that He can never loose us and we can never loose Him forever.

So what is this great treasure?

Well, to answer that question

I’m going end our time together this morning

by reading a passage from The Jesus Storybook Bible

because it will answer that question

far better

and far more simply than I ever could.

This is taken from one of Jesus’ parables.

Once upon a time, there was a man working in a field, digging. So there he is digging, but what he doesn’t know is that in that field there is a buried treasure. So Dig, Dig, dig...Klink, Klank, Klonk. UH-OH! His shovel bumps into something hard. Hello, what’s this? He picks it up, dusts it off - it’s a chest. It’s rusted and locked, but - C-R-E-E-A-K - he pries it open. What he sees inside takes his breath away: beautiful, glittering, gleaming, twinkling, sparkling, precious jewels! It’s a treasure chest!

He wants that treasure. He needs to get that treasure. He must have that treasure somehow. Even if he has to sell everything he has so he can pay for it. He quickly buries the treasure again, runs home, and sells everything he has. He takes the money from the sale and goes and buys that field. Now he owns the field - and the treasure that is buried in it! He runs back and digs up the treasure again.

Jesus said, “Coming home to God is as wonderful as finding a treasure! You might have to dig before you find it. You might have to look before you see it. You might even have to give up everything you have to get it. But being where God is - being in his kingdom - that’s more important than anything else in all the world. It’s worth anything you have to give up!”, Jesus told them.

God had a treasure, too, of course. A treasure that was lost, long, long ago. What was God’s treasure, his most important thing, the thing God loved best in all the world?

God’s treasure was his children.

It was why Jesus had to come into the world. To find God’s treasure. And pay the price to win them back. And Jesus would do it - even if it cost him everything he had.