The Gift We Would Never Ask For

1 Peter 1:3-12, The Message - What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.

I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.

You never saw him, yet you love him. You still don’t see him, yet you trust him—with laughter and singing. Because you kept on believing, you’ll get what you’re looking forward to: total salvation.

The prophets who told us this was coming asked a lot of questions about this gift of life God was preparing. The Messiah’s Spirit let them in on some of it—that the Messiah would experience suffering, followed by glory. They clamored to know who and when. All they were told was that they were serving you, you who by orders from heaven have now heard for yourselves—through the Holy Spirit—the Message of those prophecies fulfilled. Do you realize how fortunate you are? Angels would have given anything to be in on this!

 

                Peter writes to gentile Christian communities all over the Roman empire who were being persecuted for their faith.  He wants to encourage them with three important reminders.  First, he reminds them that they now have a “new and living hope.”  They have an eternal future that God has promised to those who believe.  God will heal their brokenness and make them whole.  These promises lead to the second reminder; through Jesus, they are given a new identity.  As we talked about last time, they now part of God’s chosen people.  Thirdly, they now a part of a new family, God’s family.  They are adopted sons and daughters of God.  These three reminders provide the core of the message of the entire letter.

                These reminders are important for people who are suffering.  They need to know that they are not alone, they are not forgotten, and their suffering is not in vain.  In the passage for today, Peter makes a bold claim. He tells them that there is a gift in the midst of their suffering.  Through fire, metals are purified and refined, and through suffering, faith is purified and refined.  The salvation available through Jesus is made available through Christ’s suffering. Likewise the salvation received by those in Christ is deepened and strengthened though adversity. 

                All this truth is our truth as well.  We too have been given a new and living hope, a new identity, and a new family.  Take some time to reflect on that today. 

 

Questions: What is the state of your hope right now?  Does it align with the truth of what you have been given because of Christ?  What does it really mean to you that you will be made whole and healed because of the Holy Spirit at work in you?  What value do you maintain in the fact that you are now part of the family of God?  How does all of this change how you view your difficulties, pains, and challenges?

 

Prayer:  Lord Jesus, thank you for the hope I have because of you; help that hope sink even more deeply into my soul.  Thank you for my new identity as a chosen child of God;  help me see the unique way I can live out that identity wherever I find myself.  Thank you for including me in Your family;  help me see my brothers and sisters as You see them. Help me see my trials as an opportunity for You to purify and refine my faith.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for the leaders of our local government today.

 

Song:  Living Hope - Phil Wickham

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f2FXxDVO6w

How Important is the Resurrection?

1 Corinthians 15: 12-23, CEB - So if the message that is preached says that Christ has been raised from the dead, then how can some of you say, “There’s no resurrection of the dead”? If there’s no resurrection of the dead, then Christ hasn’t been raised either. If Christ hasn’t been raised, then our preaching is useless and your faith is useless. We are found to be false witnesses about God, because we testified against God that he raised Christ, when he didn’t raise him if it’s the case that the dead aren’t raised. If the dead aren’t raised, then Christ hasn’t been raised either. If Christ hasn’t been raised, then your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins, and what’s more, those who have died in Christ are gone forever. If we have a hope in Christ only in this life, then we deserve to be pitied more than anyone else.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead. He’s the first crop of the harvest^[a] of those who have died. Since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead came through one too. In the same way that everyone dies in Adam, so also everyone will be given life in Christ. Each event will happen in the right order: Christ, the first crop of the harvest, then those who belong to Christ at his coming,

 

                The last of the five issues Paul wants to address in 1 Corinthians is some troubling ideas he has heard are being advocated in the community regarding the resurrection of Jesus.  There were those within the Corinthian church who were saying that the resurrection of Jesus is not necessary for one to be a follower of Christ.  The idea was that following Jesus’s teachings alone could achieve the desired relationship with God.  Paul vehemently rejects this idea and even labels it as dangerous. 

                I encourage you to read all of chapter 15 in order to see Paul’s full argument here, but I will simply sum it up here.  To reduce Jesus to simply a human teacher that teaches us how to achieve a proper relationship with God is to rob the Christian faith of its divine power.  Foundational to the Christian faith is the assertion that simply knowing how God wants us to live is not enough, because having that knowledge quickly illumines the fact that human beings are not capable of living out those teachings on their own.  It is an impossible undertaking to save ourselves.  We are physically and spiritually dead without God’s power.  We need the power of God – the power of God displayed in the resurrection of Jesus.  It is this power that works in us just as it did in Jesus to spiritually bring us back to life and assure us of physical life that extends into eternity. 

                It’s sometimes tempting to believe that we don’t need help of God and others.  But to the extent that one believes that is the extent to which that belief is not Christian belief.  At the core of the Christian faith is the conviction that we are utterly dependent on the grace, love, and power of God.  And the quintessential expression of that power is the resurrection of Jesus.  The same power shall raise us as well.

 

Question:  What are the core essential beliefs of your Christian faith?

 

Prayer:  God of all that is, thank you for sending Your son to reveal to us your character of love, grace, and power.  Show us our own need for that power to be at work in us.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Spend some time today praying for family members that you haven’t prayed for in a while.

 

Song:  Living Hope – Phil Wickham

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f2FXxDVO6w

A Living Hope

1 Peter 1:3-9

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,  and 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.  In all 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.  Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,  for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

“He has given us new birth into a living hope.” I really like the term “living hope.” Hope is something that lives in us and does stuff.  It works. It builds. It makes other things possible.  Hope is more useful when it is put to use.  That brings me to the next hopeful habit – work.

We talked about prayer and active learning as hope producing, but hope expands even more as we work.  I was sharing with my Dad a while back that work I did over 30 years ago has come full circle.  When I was 15, I got a job mowing church lawns.  It was something my Dad had helped me do and he did it with me for a while until I was ready to take it over.  Fast forward 30+ years and I was able to do the same thing with my son Paul a couple of years ago.  I couldn’t have known that would happen when I was 15, but whenever you work at something, it prepares you for something else in the future -  especially if you try to do it well.  Starting my own business at 15 installed a hope in me that I could do other things as well.  That is hope at work.

The work we do now, especially if we try to do it well, will prepare us for what’s next.  I really do believe that. I hope you will too.

 

Prayer:  God give us love and care for the work we have in front of us. May it become a “living hope” at work in our life. Amen.

 

Prayer Focus: Ask God to show you what hope-producing work you could be doing during this season of life.

 

Song:  You Make Beautiful Things - Gungor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1spkhp41ig4

As One With Authority. . .

“These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock. Rain poured down, the river flooded, a tornado hit—but nothing moved that house. It was fixed to the rock.

“But if you just use my words in Bible studies and don’t work them into your life, you are like a stupid carpenter who built his house on the sandy beach. When a storm rolled in and the waves came up, it collapsed like a house of cards.”

When Jesus concluded his address, the crowd burst into applause. They had never heard teaching like this. It was apparent that he was living everything he was saying—quite a contrast to their religion teachers! This was the best teaching they had ever heard.    Matthew 7:24-29

 

As promised, we talk about how Jesus leads us into hope.  The scripture above is a wonderful explanation of that.  Let me give you the more traditional rendering of those last couple of verses:

 

“When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching,  because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.” (v. 28-29, NIV)

 

“As one who had authority.”  You know when you encounter someone who has natural authority.  My Father-in-law was one of those people for me.  Many tales are told of his seemingly inherent authority that most people never questioned.  He was once in an airport taking a huge box with a dental chair inside through customs in order to take it to Haiti on a mission trip.  When the customs official went to stop him, he simply raised his hand toward him and said aloud, “it’s okay.”  The official let them through without inspection.  That doesn’t ever happen. I know.  But it did for my Father-in-law.  That’s just one story. Our family has dozens more.  But I won’t bore you with them.

Ok, you talked me into one more.  When Bob, (my Father-in-law) was a little kid, he was riding in a car with his mother and two aunts.  Bobby, as he was known then, decided that everyone was in the wrong seats in the car and they needed to stop.  Unbelievably, his mother stopped the car, they all got out and Bobby told them all where to sit.  This actually happened.  Bobby was “one who had authority.” 

As one who knew and revered Big Daddy (what everyone called my father-in-law after he had grandkids), I can only imagine the disciples experience of Jesus that day as he experienced His teaching.  I revered Big Daddy because he was usually right, but Jesus was ALWAYS right.  I followed Big Daddy’s advice because it was practical and down to earth.  However, no one’s instruction has ever been more down-to-earth and practical than the advice Jesus gave.  You can build a life on that kind of instruction.  Of course, that was Jesus’s teaching that very day.  You SHOULD build your life on that teaching, because Jesus teaching is a solid rock on which to stand.  If you’re going to build your hope on something, it should be that.  Hey wait. I think that’s a song.  More on that in a minute.  But right now, Jesus leads us into hope when we build our lives on His teaching.  There….my promise is kept.  See you tomorrow.

 

Prayer:  Jesus, our hope is built on you.  To the extent that it isn’t, help us rebuild the foundation.  We want to weather the storms.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for God to raise up leaders who lead “as one with authority.” 

 

Song: 2 songs today:  Phil Wickham (Living Hope)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-1fwZtKJSM

My Hope is Built

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p4OrSEPGvI