1 Peter Chapter 1

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Thanks. Thanks very much to Dylan and the team. Great to be able to lift our voice in song and sing those praises to the Lord. If you've got your Bible there, if you could take that out and open up to 1 Peter. It's in the New Testament towards the back, towards the end. We're starting a new sermon series today that's going to be taking us through these two letters that Peter wrote. And over the coming weeks, we're going to work our way through a chapter at a time. So if you want to read ahead, chapter 2 of 1 Peter for next Sunday, you'll get a little bit of a head start on where we're going for next week. But we're going to be in chapter 1 of 1 Peter today. So if you've got your Bible there, that'd be great to have that, whether that's a paper one or an app. It's good to have the Word open in front of you. Let's just quickly ask the Lord to speak through His Word. Lord, we do just thank you for the way in which you do speak to us. And Father, we thank you for these letters that Peter wrote. Lord, he wrote to believers that were scattered around the region. And yet, Lord, you in your grace have protected these letters. Even though they weren't written to us, you've protected them, Lord, that they're written for us. And we just want to thank you, Father, for what it is that we can learn about you, our God, today as we open this Word together. And Lord, what we can learn about what it means to be obedient disciples of Jesus. So lead us, Lord, we pray by your Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. So if you've got your Bible there, 1 Peter chapter 1, we're just going to work our way through in little bits, and we'll make some comment along the way. So let's have a look how he starts the letter. He says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. To God's elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood. Grace and peace be yours in abundance. It's a nice Christian greeting there. Peter's writing this letter to some Christian communities, some believers who are facing some very real challenges. He describes them in verse 1 as God's elect. They've been chosen by God, but they're exiles. They're scattered throughout the region. He names a bunch of the cities there. These are all places that we know today that are in and around modern-day Turkey. So this is a long way from Jerusalem. If you've been with us over the last term or so, maybe before that, as we've gone through the Old Testament books of Ezra and Daniel, you might recognize some familiar language here in 1 Peter, because once again we find God's chosen people being described as exiles. Now, here in the New Testament, it doesn't necessarily mean that these New Testament believers had been physically driven out of their homes like the people of God in Ezra's day, but it doesn't mean that they were not where they wanted to be. They were far from Jerusalem. Peter's describing something not so much about the location of where they are, but about their identity. He's pointing out that as exiles, they're living in the Roman Empire under Roman rule. But as believers in Jesus, as followers of Christ, their ultimate allegiance belongs to him, to Jesus, the one true King. And so these believers that Peter's writing to, they're living in this world, but they can no longer belong to it in quite the same way. That's what it means to be an exile. They've got this kind of dual citizenship tension going on. They're citizens of Rome, but they're also citizens of the kingdom of heaven. And as we saw when we went through Daniel and Ezra, this kind of tension can be challenging. On the one hand, there can be the temptation to withdraw from the world around us, to kind of pull back and exclude ourselves from society, to just kind of stick with and mingle with the people who think and believe the same things as we do. That's one temptation in that tension. The other temptation is to become so involved and enmeshed in the culture of the day that we begin to lose our distinctiveness as followers of Jesus. And so somehow we've got to kind of navigate and find a middle way. Because the Bible says, as Aussie Christians in our culture today, we're instructed to participate in our community, to love our neighbours, to work, to study, to raise families, to serve others and be involved in the world that God has placed us in. But at the same time, we're called to live differently, to live lives that are increasingly shaped by Jesus, rather than simply adopting the attitudes and values of the culture around us. What we're going to discover over the coming weeks as we dig into these letters, Peter wants Christians to be so firmly grounded in Jesus. That the way in which they live is noticeably different. Different enough that people might even begin to ask them about the reason for the hope that they have. Before we explore that, a couple of quick comments about who's writing this. This is the apostle Peter. He says that there in the beginning. This is Simon Peter. We know that that was his name when Jesus was with him. And Simon Peter, he witnessed extraordinary miracles while he was traveling along as a disciple of Jesus. Peter's the one who boldly declared that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. It was Peter who promised that he'd never abandon Jesus, only to deny him three times before his crucifixion. Peter knew what it was like to fail. He knew what it was like to be afraid. He knew what it was like to have all of your hopes seemingly come crashing down. But he also knew what it was to encounter the risen Jesus, to be forgiven and restored and given a new purpose. And so when Peter writes about the hope that we now have through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, he's not just explaining some sort of theoretical theological concept. He's writing as someone whose life has been radically transformed by this encounter with the risen Jesus. And that's where he begins in his letter. So as we come to this first chapter today, a big question I kind of want us to keep in our mind is, why is the Christian hope a living hope? Because Peter's going to mention that throughout this chapter. And the answer that I want us to keep coming back to is the Christian hope is a living hope because it's a joyful expectation for the future. That's based on true events in the past, and that changes everything about our present. A joyful expectation for the future based on true events in the past, that changes everything about our present. Let's unpack that together as we read more of Peter's letter. But we're going to take that middle statement there, based on true events in the past, because this is where Peter starts in verse 3. Have a look at verse 3 there. He says, The Christian hope is a living hope because it's based on true events in the past. He continues his introduction there. Verse 3: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he's given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We'll just pause there for a moment. There's that phrase, living hope, and he overflows with praise to God for Jesus. Jesus is the source of his hope. And he says there in verse 3 that it's because of God's great mercy, God has given us a new birth into this living hope, but it comes through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. That tells us something about the Christian hope. It's a living hope because it's grounded in something that has actually happened. The basis for our hope is external to us. It's objective. You can investigate the claim. Christian hope is not based on how we're feeling today or how well things might be going in our lives. It's not because of something we've achieved or because of how religious we might be. It's founded upon what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. I think it's worth recognizing that when the world talks about hope and when the Bible talks about hope, they're often talking about two very different things. In our culture, our day today, we use the word hope all the time, don't we? I hope I'll pass my exam, students might hope. I hope I get the job I've applied for or the offer on the house is accepted. I hope the weather is good next weekend if our family's going away. As we get older, some of our hopes change. Maybe we hope that the latest medical test comes back clear, or we hope that our superannuation will last, or that our adult children will make wise decisions or perhaps even return to the Lord if they've wandered away. Maybe we hope that we'll have a few more healthy years with someone we love. These are all hopes that we may have, and there's nothing wrong with any of those things. But there is a problem. See, none of those things are guaranteed. We might desire and long for those things to happen, but we don't know for certain that they will. And if we build our whole identity, our sense of security, or our reason for living on those things, on something that cannot be guaranteed, what happens to us when they don't come to pass? The things that we rely upon can come crashing down. Peter says the hope God offers to us in Jesus is different. It's not a wishful thinking. It's not power of positive thinking. It's not trying to convince ourselves that everything will somehow work out in the end. The Christian hope is a confidence and assurance in what God has promised because of what God has already done. And the event that Peter points to here, the thing that God has done, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Think about that for a moment. It's wonderful. That is what it's based on, because the Christian message doesn't begin with a list of good things we need to do to make ourselves acceptable to God. It begins with the good news of what God has done for us. Jesus came into the world. He lived the life that we couldn't live. He died on a cross for our sins, and he rose again. Because he's risen, we can be confident that sin and death don't have the final word. Our hope isn't anchored in an idea or a philosophy. It's not anchored in a list of rules and regulations. It's anchored to a person, Jesus, and to an event in history, his death and resurrection for our sins. That's wonderful, because that means that the claims of Christianity are not simply feelings we're asked to manufacture. The events can be investigated. There's evidence that can be considered. And I love that about the Christian message. It's why it truly is such good news. Salvation doesn't ultimately depend on how good we are, or how often we go to church, or how much of the Bible we know. It doesn't even depend on how religious we might appear. It depends entirely on God's great mercy for us, Peter says. Notice the language there in verse 3, as we read that earlier. He said he's given us new birth into a living hope. We sang about that before. We've been born again. That's a weird concept to think about. One of the teachers of the law came to Jesus at night and was asking him questions about the kingdom of God. And Jesus said, to enter the kingdom of God, you've got to be born again. And this guy's scratching his head. He's like, how can an adult be born again? This doesn't make sense. Jesus is talking about a spiritual birth, a rebirth, as we put our faith and hope and trust in him. God miraculously does a work in us, and we change. He transforms us by his Spirit. We become born again. And so everyone who has put their faith and hope and trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins can say, I've been born again. That's why we sang it this morning. It's something that God gives to us as a gift. Through faith in Jesus, we get brought into this relationship with God, and we become his children. The Bible talks in language of family. We get this new identity, this new future. We get a living hope, is what Peter's saying. Maybe you're here this morning and you're not yet sure about Jesus. Can I just encourage you to consider this first idea, that it's based on true events in the past. This hope that Peter's describing, it's not reserved for people who've managed to get their lives together. It's not reserved for people who have got it all worked out. Who never sin or muck up. No, it's for people like Peter who failed Jesus terribly. But we discover his forgiveness and restoration in his death and resurrection for our sin, and that is a gift that God offers to everyone, everyone who would believe. Peter goes on in verses 10 to 12. You can read that during the week if you'd like. But he reminds his readers in verses 10 to 12 that this salvation is something that the Old Testament prophets were looking forward to. They're actually waiting for God's promised one to come and bring this salvation to them. And they spoke in the Old Testament about the sufferings of Christ and the glory that would follow. And even though these people back in the Old Testament, hundreds of years before Jesus, couldn't see exactly how it would all unfold, there's promises there that were made by God that he would do it. It's amazing. We've got this extraordinary privilege, I think, in our modern day. We live on this side of the cross and the empty tomb, and so we know that Jesus has come. We've got the eyewitness accounts. We've got the historical records. We can investigate, reason, and figure it out. We can become confident because of what's happened in the past. We can be confident in what he's promised to do, and that takes us to the second reason our hope is a living hope. That's a joyful expectation for the future. We keep reading from verse 4. He says at the end of verse 3, we've been given new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. But it's into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. Peter says to the readers of this letter that through Jesus, those who put their faith in Jesus, they've been born into an inheritance, one that can never perish, spoil or fade. It's been kept, guarded, protected by God in heaven for us, even while we ourselves, those who have faith in Jesus, are being shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. He's talking about when Jesus comes back again, because Jesus rose and we're told that he ascended into heaven, but he promised that he would return and take us to be with him. And so that's an extraordinary promise. And because of what Jesus has already done, we can be confident about what God says he will do. And this is what Peter describes in this future as an inheritance. You think about an inheritance. Often we think about money or property or perhaps some sort of treasured possession that's passed down through a family. Sometimes those things can be very precious to us, particularly when they remind us of somebody we love. But even the most precious possessions in this world, they're only temporary. Think about something that you desperately wanted when you were younger. Maybe it was a particular toy or a new bike, maybe the latest phone or your first car. At the time, you might have thought it was the best thing in the world. But where is it now? Maybe it's broken. Maybe it's sitting in a cupboard somewhere gathering dust. Maybe it's long since been thrown away. This is the nature of the things that we treasure in this world. They eventually wear out. They become obsolete and lose their value. Even the most precious possessions we own won't last forever. Peter says that the inheritance that God has prepared for us is different. It can never perish, spoil or fade. It's not going to get older. It's not going to deteriorate. It's not slowly losing its value. What's this inheritance he's talking about? It's the fullness of the salvation of God that he's promised to us in Jesus. It's eternal life with him. It's the fulfillment of his kingdom, the restoration of all things when Christ returns. One of my favorite passages in Scripture is in Revelation 21, we're given this wonderful picture of what that future might look like. John was given a vision by God, and this is what he records. He says, I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Look, God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.' He who was seated on the throne said, 'I'm making everything new.' And then he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. Friends, that's what we're looking forward to if our hope is in Jesus, God dwelling with his people. No more death, no more mourning, no more crying or pain, God making all things new. This is not just simply an escape from this broken world, but it's a restoration of God's promised creation, where sin and death are no more and we'll dwell with him forever. It's a beautiful, beautiful inheritance that we have in store for us. And Peter says in verse 4 of this first chapter of his letter that our inheritance is being kept for us. It's being guarded by God. And then he says in verse 5 something remarkable. He says, We're being shielded by God, by God's power through faith. In other words, God is keeping our inheritance for us in heaven until Jesus comes back again. But in the meantime, he's keeping us by his power for that inheritance. He's got it all in his hand. It's a wonderful, wonderful assurance. I think we need that. We need to be reminded of that. I do. Sometimes our faith feels strong. There are seasons of life when we're confident, when we're growing, when we're excited about what God is doing. But then there are other times when our faith feels weak, when life is difficult, when we're exhausted, when our prayers seem unanswered. Maybe when we're struggling to see what it is God is doing. Peter reminds us that our hope doesn't ultimately rest on the strength of our grip onto God. But it rests on the faithfulness and power of the great God who holds on to us. That doesn't mean faith is unnecessary. Peter explicitly says that God shields us through faith. But it does mean our confidence is not in ourselves, but it's in him. That's why we can have this joyful expectation for the future, because we know what God has promised, and we know that he's faithful because of what he's done in the past. That leads us to the third thing, which is it changes how we face the present. Christian hope is this joyful expectation for the future based on true events in the past that changes everything about our present. Look at verses 6 and 7 there of 1 Peter 1. He continues, In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These 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. Peter says that believers can greatly rejoice even though for a little while they've had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. It's important that we hear what Peter is actually saying here. He's not suggesting that Christians don't experience grief. He explicitly acknowledges that these believers were suffering and had suffered. Nor is he saying that we should somehow enjoy suffering or pretend that everything is okay when it's not. Christian hope doesn't mean putting on a brave face and pretending that pain isn't real. But neither does it mean that when life becomes painful, that everything is meaningless or hopeless. Peter reminds us that our suffering is not the final chapter of our story, and he uses this illustration of gold being refined. Gold is valuable, and its quality is tested by fire. Its genuineness can be demonstrated. Peter says faith, which is worth far more than gold, it's tested through the trials we experience. God can even use the difficult circumstances of our lives to test and refine our faith as we've learned to depend more deeply on him. And we've had testimony of two men that have had that experience with the Lord. This could be confronting, though. I recognise that. Some of you here this morning may even now be facing very real difficulties. Maybe you've recently received a diagnosis that you weren't expecting. Maybe you've lost your job or struggling financially. Maybe you're walking through a difficult season in your marriage or family or some relationship. Maybe you're a young person, a teenager who's finding that following Jesus means that you're standing out from your friends, and you're feeling that pressure to compromise. Maybe for those who are getting older, you're discovering that there are things that you simply can't do anymore. Your health isn't what it once was. You've lost people that you love, and you're struggling with loneliness. Sometimes we face trials that seem to go on and on. We can pray faithfully, and our circumstances don't seem to change. What do we do then? Peter isn't telling us to pretend that the pain isn't there, but he is reminding us that our circumstances don't have the final word. God does. I think that's the hope. The same God who raised Jesus from the dead is the God who is keeping us and keeping the inheritance for us that it's promised. And so sometimes faith in the midst of suffering might look like great confidence and courage, but at other times it might look like someone who can barely find the strength or the will to pray, but nevertheless cries out, Lord, help me. Friends, that's still faith. I've had the privilege as a pastor of knowing and ministering alongside Christians who've endured extraordinary suffering, people who have experienced significant loss, illness, deeply painful circumstances. And what has encouraged me so much time and again is not that they've always been cheerful or that they've never struggled. It's that even in their struggle, they continue to look to Jesus. Perhaps you know somebody like that, someone whose faith has encouraged you not just because their life has been easy, but because they've continued to trust God when life has been hard. Peter says in verses 8 and 9 that these Christians haven't seen Jesus, and yet they love him. That's what he says in verses 8 and 9. Though you've not seen him, you love him. Even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy. That's what living hope looks like. It doesn't deny the reality of suffering, but it sees suffering in light of eternity. It recognizes that however painful our circumstances might be, it's not the end of the story, because God has promised something better. It's not just something to hold on to when life is difficult. It's something that should shape the very core, the whole way we live. And in fact, this is where Peter takes us next. Having outlined what the Christian hope is, he now switches gears from verse 13 on, and he gives us three practical ways to respond to the hope in the rest of the chapter. We're going to go through them pretty quickly, but we'll start by having a look at the transition point there, verse 13. Have a look at that. He says, Therefore, with minds that are fully alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. Notice the therefore. Anytime you read a therefore in the Bible, stop and think. I always stop and think, Dave, what's it there for? What's he talking about? Oh, he's talking about the first 12 verses, everything that he's told us about the Christian hope, about the resurrection of Jesus, about our eternal inheritance, about God's power of keeping us through the trials of life. Therefore, this is how you should respond. And he says we're to set our hope on the grace that will be brought to us when Jesus Christ is revealed. He's saying keep a mind that is fully centered on Christ. Look to his return. Keep that in mind. The word that he uses there, there's a kind of a word picture in the original language that we kind of lose in our English, but the picture there is of somebody getting themselves ready for action. In the ancient world, they often wore long flowing robes, and if they needed to run or to work, they would often gather up the loose fabric and tuck it into their belt so it wouldn't get in the way. We might think of it in our modern day of like rolling up our sleeves and getting ready for work. This is the image that Peter says. We need to roll up our sleeves and get ready to work by keeping our eyes on Jesus. This sense of intentionality about where we place our hope. That's why he says we need to exercise self-control and think clearly. We need to deliberately fix our hope on Jesus and on the grace that is coming when he returns. Don't we know, friends, that the world around us, the culture in which we live, it's constantly inviting us to put our hope elsewhere. We're told that happiness comes from having enough money, achieving enough success, finding the perfect relationship, or living the life that we've always dreamed. And again, many of those things can be good gifts from God. Don't get me wrong. But none of those things carry the weight of our ultimate hope. And so if we're not intentional, we can easily find ourselves living as though these things matter more than Jesus. And so Peter says to us, Set your hope fully on him. Keep your eyes fixed on what truly lasts. And then he shows us what it looks like in practice. He says a response that we can make next is to be holy in all that we do. Look at verses 14 to 16. He writes this way. He says, As obedient children, there's that family language again, do not conform to the evil desires that you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do, for it is written, 'Be holy, because I am holy.' This word holy, when we hear that, we might not always think of something positive. Sometimes when we use that word holy in our culture, it describes someone who thinks that they're better than everybody else. We might say, Oh, they think they're so holy. You know, this kind of self-righteous thinking, looking down on others. This is not what Peter is talking about here. He's not talking about holiness in the sense of trying to be a goody two-shoes or someone who never has any fun, always follows the rules. That's not what he's meaning. The biblical idea of holy carries this sense of being set apart, belonging to God and being devoted to his purposes. Might have shared this story before, but when I was younger, my nan had a special pair of dressmaking scissors. The grandkids, we called them Nan's ninja scissors because they were so sharp, like a samurai sword. They were excellent scissors. But there was one very important rule about Nan's ninja scissors: you didn't use them for cutting paper or cardboard or paddle pop sticks. They were only for cutting fabric. And if you were caught using them for something else, well, look out, you were in big trouble. Why? Well, because these scissors had been set apart for a particular purpose. They were designed for cutting fabric, and using them for something else could damage them and stop them from doing what they were made to do. It's not a perfect illustration of holiness, but I think it does help us understand this idea of the biblical idea of being set apart. Peter says that through Jesus, through faith in him, we've been set apart for God. We belong to him. And because we belong to him, we're called to live in a way that reflects his character. Notice Peter doesn't say there, be holy when you come to church, or be holy when you're reading your Bible or when you're praying. He doesn't say be holy when you're baptized, or he says, be holy in all that you do. It's a comprehensive command. It includes everything. And so that means be holy when no one else is watching. Be holy when you choose to look at your phone. It includes being holy when you speak to other people, or when you speak about other people when they're not in the room. It includes how we treat our spouse or our parents or our kids, our classmates, our workmates. It includes what we do with our money and how we respond when someone hurts or disappoints us. We're to be holy in the things we choose to pursue in life, in all that we do. Holiness is not just simply about avoiding a list of bad things. It's about us increasingly reflecting the character of the God to whom we belong. And I think Peter's reference to us as God's children is another helpful image. Kids often resemble their parents, particularly when they're little. The baby photos sometimes look like the baby photos of the parents at a similar age. You can kind of see the resemblance there. Sorry to my kids, they look like me. No, they look like their mother. That's good. Sometimes the resemblance isn't just physical, though. You notice the family resemblance in the way people speak, in their mannerisms, in their sense of humour, in the way they respond to situations. And Peter says that as God's children, there should be this growing family resemblance in our lives. We need to increasingly reflect this character of our heavenly Father. If we want to look what that looks like, well, we look to Jesus. Maybe a helpful diagnostic question for us this week is, if someone looked at the way that I lived throughout the week, would they see evidence that I belong to Jesus? Not would they see evidence that I'm striving to be perfect, because none of us are. But is there evidence of a growing family resemblance? Am I increasingly becoming more like Christ? Just to be clear, we don't pursue holiness to become God's children. We pursue holiness because by grace we already belong to him. The order there is important. Peter gives us a wonderful reminder of that, verses 18 and 19. You can read that during the week. It's about the value of God purchasing us, the value that God was willing to go to in order to make us his children. It wasn't silver or gold; it was the precious blood of Jesus. That's why we want to live holy lives, because we've been redeemed and because we've been rescued at an extraordinary cost by Jesus. Holiness isn't the price we pay to be accepted by God; it's the response of people who've already been redeemed by him. There's one more response that Peter calls us to, and this is the last one, and I think this is important for us as a church family. This is to love one another deeply, and the final verses of the chapter tell us that. Look at verse 22. Peter says, Now that you've purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply from the heart. Now that we know the truth, we've put our hope in Jesus. Now that we understand the love that God has for us and his great mercy, we're to love one another deeply from the heart. This is a kind of love that's sincere and genuine and deep, he says. It's not just being polite to one another or greeting someone with a smile on Sunday morning. But it's a love that's willing to stretch itself for the good of others. That's what's picked up in the original language there about that deep love. It's a stretching love, a self-sacrificing love. He uses love twice in that sentence. The first time it's like the family love. The Greek word is the Philadelphia love. But the second time, the deep love there, this is the agape love. This is the love that caused Jesus to lay down his life so that we could live. It's a costly love, a stretching love, a self-sacrificing love. A love that doesn't just seek what is comfortable or convenient for us. I think we need to think about what that means for us as a church family. I know it's easy to love people we naturally get along with, people who are like us, people who share our interests and opinions or our stage of life. But that's not really a remarkable love. We don't need Jesus to do that. The world does that. Peter's calling us to something different. He's calling us to love one another deeply from the heart. And so that may mean that we love the teenager who's just started coming along to church at our youth group or kids club, and we see them as just as much a part of the family of God here at Caboolture Baptist Church as the family that's been faithfully with us and following the Lord for the past 60 years. It means as young parents who might come to church on a Sunday and we notice that they're wrangling their kids and they're doing a great job to just try and be here and they look exhausted. Maybe it means giving some encouragement and some support to them as members of our church family. It might mean that we notice an older person sitting alone on Sunday morning. We shouldn't have to wonder. They shouldn't have to wonder about whether anyone's going to notice if they were there. Costly love means we don't simply write people off when they disappoint us, when they frustrate us, or when they disagree with us. It means we're willing to give up some of our time, some of our comfort, and sometimes even our preferences for the good of our brothers and sisters in the Lord. Because that is what a living hope looks like. We've been born again into this same family. We share the same heavenly Father, and we're looking forward to the same eternal inheritance. We're all going to be partying with Jesus forever. And so the love we show one another now is a demonstration of the new life that we've already received in Jesus. Peter reminds us that the love we're called to show is not just based on whether someone's easy to love or whether we're going to get something back in return, but it's rooted in the love that God has already shown us in Christ. We're going to finish up here. We just go to that last slide. Thank you, Hayden. The Christian hope is a living hope. It's a joyful expectation for the future based on true events in the past that changes everything about our present. We've got those responses there. Fully set our minds on Christ, pursue holiness, and love one another. Deeply. For the believers in the room this morning, maybe the question is, is the hope that you have in Jesus shaping the way that you live? Is there a response that you need to make, that God's been laying in your heart today? Don't just hear these instructions from Peter. What is it that God's saying to you, and what are you going to put into practice in response, in obedience today? Maybe for some of you, you're not yet sure what you believe. You're still kind of on the journey figuring out what this Christian hope is all about. For you, I just want to encourage you to consider where you're placing your hope in this life. We can all build our lives around something, whether we're conscious of that or not, we do. Whether it's career, relationship, finances, family, or our health, all wonderful gifts. But the reality is none of them can offer us the security that God offers to us in Jesus. Sooner or later, the things of this world will fade. And so there's a hope in God, in Christ, that's different: a living hope, a certain hope, an eternal hope. And as we've said this morning, that's not because of anything we've done, but because what Jesus has done for us through his death and resurrection on the cross. So if you want to know more about that hope, I'd be happy to talk to you after the service. Talk to Pastor Doug or Pastor Dylan if you don't want to talk to me. Talk to a friend that you came with today. That hope is for you. And it's not too late to set your hope on Jesus. So I just leave you with that this morning. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we just want to thank you so much for your love and mercy towards us. Thank you that you haven't left us in our sin, but through the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus, you made this way for us to be forgiven and restored, brought into your family. We thank you that our hope is a living hope, a hope that's based on true events in the past that gives us this joyful expectation for the future, but a hope too that changes everything about our... Help us, Lord, when life is difficult, to trust you, to know that you're keeping for us that inheritance that you've promised. Help us to live holy lives, not out of fear of rejection, but out of gratitude for the extraordinary price that you've paid to redeem us. Father, would you help us to love one another deeply from the heart. May our church family increasingly reflect your love and your grace and your holiness to the world around us. Father, I just want to pray especially too for those that don't yet know Jesus. I just pray that you'd open their hearts to understand the good news of your grace, that they can investigate and explore, discover the great hope that is found in Jesus. We pray this in his name. Amen.