First Peter, chapter one. This is the word of the Lord. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace unto you and peace be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope. by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations, that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. whom, having not seen, ye love, in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow, unto whom it was revealed that not unto themselves but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, which things the angels desire to look into. Wherefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance, but as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, because it is written, be ye holy, for I am holy. And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear. For as much as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world but was manifest in these last times for you, who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. We end our reading in sacred scripture there. 1 Peter 1. along with other passages of Scripture, form the basis for the teaching of the Heidelberg Catechism in Lord's Day 17. Lord's Day 17, one brief question and answer, what doth the resurrection of Christ profit us? First, by his resurrection he has overcome death, that he might make us partakers of that righteousness which he had purchased for us by his death. Secondly, we are also, by His power, raised up to a new life. And lastly, the resurrection of Christ is a sure pledge of our blessed resurrection. Is there an aspect of the resurrection missing here in Lords Day 17? We might be inclined to describe the resurrection by spending time proving that it actually happened. In fact, there are facts in the biblical account that give to us proof. The empty tomb, the grave clothes lying exactly as they had lain on the body of Jesus when the disciples arrived. the story concocted by the soldiers, that the disciples had come and stolen away the body of Jesus, and so forth. All of these indicate to us the truth, the reality of the historical event. And we sense a need to do that today, to speak to the historicity of the resurrection, because higher criticism has taken root in so much of the broader church world. Higher critics always seek to undermine the miracles that are described in the scriptures. And to them, holding to the resurrection is absolutely foolish. How could this be? People don't rise from the dead. We all know that. The story is just a product of Jesus' followers coming up with all sorts of stories, making him into some sort of mythical, legendary figure. And that way trying to win converts to their new faith. This is not based in historical fact. So say the higher critics. We recognize the threat, and so we want to give an answer to these challenges to the resurrection, which is one of the most important truths of the entirety of the Christian faith. But that's not the approach that Lord's Day 17 takes. Lord's Day 17 has a unique perspective on the Resurrection. It doesn't spend time proving the historical event. At the time that the Catechism was published, in the year 1563, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was pretty much universally accepted by all professing Christians. The historicity simply was not questioned. It was only with the coming of the so-called Age of Enlightenment that higher critical thinking began to develop and then make inroads in the Church and become widespread. Instead, Lord's Day 17 brings the Resurrection home to us by looking at the profit of this glorious event. The authors of the Catechism didn't want the resurrection to be merely an out-there sort of teaching, something distant from God's people. They looked at the practical significance for God's people, which would have been supremely comforting to the Reformed believers living in this time of the publication of the Catechism. Death was a lot more real to the average person in the year 1563 than it is to us in the year 2024. There was far less medical technology in existence at the time. The standard of living was far lower. Life expectancy was far lower. Death was probably more on people's minds than it is today. Given that context, the authors of the Catechism were concerned to show how the resurrection has benefit for us. For that reason, it's highly beneficial and supremely comforting to the people who lived in that day. But, although it's true, probably, that death is a little bit less on our minds today, We still need to hear these things. We need the same insight that God's people have always needed. And for that reason, it's highly beneficial and supremely comforting for us today to hear these things, to meditate on the prophet of the resurrection of Jesus Christ for us. Consider with me then, Lord's Day 17, with the theme, Confessing Our Prophet from Christ's Resurrection. Confessing our prophet from Christ's resurrection. First, just following the simple lines of the question and answer in the Catechism. First, partakers of his righteousness. Second, raised to life. And third, assured we will rise. We are partakers of His righteousness, and in each of these three points, we're going to look first at what Christ has done, and then second, at how we profit from this. What Christ has done in this first point, we're going to say three things. First, He has overcome physical death. Second, He has overcome spiritual death. And third, He has united us to Himself legally. He has overcome physical death. We saw last time in question and answer 41 that the burial of Jesus Christ indicates to us that he did truly die. His life was not taken from him. No one could ever take his life away. He actively commended his spirit into his father's hands. And at that point, his earthly life expired. He gave up the ghost. For a time then, death held him. But at the resurrection, he overcame it. So how? The triune God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Out of death, he came forth, where before there wasn't a single spark of life in his body. At the resurrection, he is again made alive. And then he exits the tomb, defeating death once and for all." The word overcame that the catechism uses, he has overcome death. That's a striking word when you think about it. The imagery is of a pitched battle. A fierce struggle. On the one side is Jesus, and on the other side is death and hell and the grave. And a fierce conflict ensues, a battle. Death and the grave are trying to overcome Jesus, to hold him down, to suppress him, to destroy him. But the efforts of death to hold Jesus down are futile. He cannot be. Triune God raises him to life. Death's feeble grip on him falls away, and he triumphantly comes forth from the grave and comes forth bodily. Jesus Christ has overcome physical death. Secondly, he has also overcome Spiritual death. We recognize that death is not only physical. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they died. Right then, they died, even as God had warned them. So that death is not just going to the grave when your earthly life comes to a close. Death is also the death that is sin. When Adam fell, he instantly died because he had alienated himself from God on account of his sin. He no longer had a right standing before God. He lived apart from God. Psalter 203, that's death. To live apart from God is death. So by overcoming death, Christ didn't merely arise from the grave, he did do that, but he also overcame our spiritual foe, the great enemy that is our sin. He took our sin upon himself and paid for it. So as he laid in the grave, that sin You could think of it this way, tried to tie his body down, tried to keep him there, hold him to the floor of the grave, keep him there so that he could not depart, but tried to overcome him. But he had fully atoned for every single sin of every single one of his people, and so death had no claim on God's Son. That's why Romans 4 verse 25 says that Christ was raised for our justification, meaning on account of, because of our justification. Because He did everything He needed to do, He had fully accomplished the work of justifying by His death. Therefore, God raises Him from the grave. He's fully secured. our true life with God. One theologian has put it this way, that the resurrection is God's amen to Jesus. It is finished. He overcame not just the grave, but sin as well, and he did that for us, so that sin no longer reigns. Christ reigns as the living, resurrected King. But how? Christ's body becomes a heavenly body. We read about some of what that meant in the stories of Jesus appearing to people following his resurrection as, for example, that he is no longer bound by space and time when he's in this resurrection body and so he can appear and disappear at will. He was glorified so that this new body could not die again. It was a spiritual body and that means that it was no longer subject to weakness either as our bodies are and as his body was prior to his death. After the resurrection, Jesus' body is perfected. And so, the effects of human sin have no bearing, they have no impact on that resurrection spiritual body. What Christ has done, first of all, is overcome physical death. Secondly, he has overcome spiritual death. And then thirdly, he has united us to himself legally. All that we've considered so far with his overcoming of spiritual and physical death is important because he is our legal head. Apart from that, this really wouldn't have any impact on us. It really wouldn't have any connection or benefit for us. Being our legal head means he is our representative before our God. God views what he does and what he does not do as what we do and what we do not do. He is that legal head because God has chosen him for that specific purpose. We say that a father is the head of his home. And when we say that, we are saying he is a representative of all those who live there. He is a representative of his wife. He is a representative of his children, meaning that the decisions he makes and the things that he does have an impact on his wife and children. And we even, to a certain degree, view them in him so that this is the home of so-and-so and all who live there are in Him when we speak of the home in that way. In a similar way, we are unified with Christ so that what He does and what He earns are legally ours. That's what Christ has done. How do we profit from that? In the first place, because we are made partakers of His righteousness. That's where the catechism starts with the profit of Christ's resurrection. He's overcome death that he might make us partakers of that righteousness which he had purchased by his death." Simply put, righteousness is right standing with God. It's to stand before the perfect standard that is his law and to be perfectly in line with it. It's obvious that we do not have such righteousness of ourselves. We are not those who are perfectly aligned with the law of God. We are not law keepers. We are only law breakers. And so, for us to be in fellowship with the triune God, the holy God, we must have the righteousness of somebody else. We don't have any of our own. Thanks be to God, as Lord's Day 17 indicates to us, we do. We do have the righteousness of somebody else, and it's the righteousness of Jesus Christ Himself. As partakers of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, we are now actively experiencing its effects. The righteousness of Christ was legally secured for us by his own death. That's part of what it means that he is our legal head. We partake of that righteousness by faith, by faith in Jesus Christ. We believe that he gave himself for us. We believe that his perfect righteousness is ours for his sake. We believe that he overcame both physical and spiritual death on our behalf by his cross. In that way, we partake of his righteousness. The other thing that we can say here, as regards how we profit, is hope. And in fact, we'll look at that in each of the three points. The second element of how we profit in each case is hope. Resurrection hope. Here the hope is that God sees us in Christ. In Christ. We know that we are His. We know that He is ours. And we genuinely experience, genuinely know our right standing with God. We now live in the joy and the knowledge of aligning with God's perfect standard. Having the righteousness of Jesus Christ applied to us, because He is our head. Therefore, if Christ hadn't risen, just as Paul says, 1 Corinthians 15, 19, we would be, of all men, the most miserable, the most miserable. Because He has, He did rise, our salvation comes home to our own consciences. We know that we stand before God in the perfection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And that grants us hope. No longer do we stand Abide, rather, in the utter hopelessness of attempting to stand before God in our own righteousness. The utter hopelessness, that is, because that would mean not having the slightest hope or comfort. We don't have any righteousness. And if we tried to stand before God in some self-made righteousness, we would perish. Deservingly so, we would perish for all eternity. Trying to do that is hopeless. But as Peter tells us in verse 3 of this chapter, we have been begotten unto hope, a lively or living hope. And therefore, as Peter also writes in verse 3, indeed. be God. We are partakers of Christ's righteousness. We also profit from the resurrection of Christ in that we are raised to life. What Christ has done here is twofold. He has united us to himself organically, and He has raised us by His power. He's united us to Himself organically. We already noted that He has united us to Himself legally in the first point, but now we also see He has united us organically. Here, too, without that reality, the resurrection would have very little impact for us. It would be of very little benefit, if any at all. To be united to Christ organically means to have his own life flowing through us. We have no spark of spiritual life in ourselves. We have only death. Think of Ephesians 2, with that well-known language that we are born dead. Dead in trespasses and sins. That's the reality for us by nature. 1 Peter 1 teaches the same thing. Verse 3 says, And then verse 23, Also, says this, being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. We are given life out of death, which is what we are by ourselves, dead sinners and nothing more. Because we are organically connected to Jesus Christ, we have his own life flowing through our veins, spiritually speaking. The reason that this is so is, once again, that God has chosen him for this purpose. He has chosen him to abide in this role as our head, the one whose life we receive. And then God has chosen also to give us that life on the basis of Christ's cross. In a sense, the physical life of our own bodies comes from our heads. You could have a fully functioning heart and respiratory system and a very healthy body from every other point of view. But if you don't have a head anymore, you don't have life. The body dies. Similarly, it's only by the life of our head, Jesus Christ, that we have true and ongoing spiritual life, which serves, again, to underscore the graciousness of our salvation. Nobody has life of himself or of herself. God grants this glorious rebirth, and he does it only for Jesus' sake. And according to 1 Peter 1 verse 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again. It's according to God's, to Christ's abundant mercy that we have this life. We're dead and can't do anything to change that, which means we are in a state of misery. and there's no way of escape by ourselves. But God graciously takes pity on us, and he powerfully delivers us from that misery in which we are by nature, bestowing upon us genuine life entirely apart from anything in us then. He raises us from the spiritual grave of spiritual death. gives to us instead the spiritual life of His own Son. So what Christ has done as regards raising to life is, first of all, uniting us to Himself organically. Secondly, what He has done is raised us by His power. Because He has risen, He now is given the power to raise others unto life. And that's exactly what He does, of course. It's not as though we have a certain power in ourselves to be raised to life and Christ comes along by His Spirit and just sort of stirs us up to utilize that power and then, in that way, raise ourselves unto life. No, Christ Himself comes by His Spirit and implants life into us, the regenerating and sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit who indwells our hearts and the hearts of all of God's people. That brings us to life. The fact that we are raised to life by Christ's power is also found in 1 Peter 1. Once again, verse 3, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It's by Christ's life that we have life. We're begotten by his resurrection and not by something that is in us. But then there's also the wording of verse 21. who by him do believe in God that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God." God raised Christ and in doing so, he gave to him glory. In fact, the word order in verse 21 emphasizes that because literally it says, glory he gave him. All the emphasis falls on the glory that Christ receives. And having received glory from the Father, that means that He now has the power to rule over the whole of the creation. As the one who rules, who is in full authority, who is completely in charge, as that one, He sends His Spirit to indwell our hearts, raising us to life. So how do we profit from this element? In the first place, in that we are made alive. We are given true covenantal life. To have life with God is to know Him, which points us to the life of the covenant. While we are yet dead in sin, there is no possibility of such fellowship. You cannot have a conversation with a corpse. You cannot have a relationship of any kind with a corpse, but that's exactly what it would be if God were to attempt to relate to us, attempt to, if you will, without raising us to life. He would be interacting with a corpse. But because we are made alive with the life of Jesus Christ, God can speak to us concerning himself, and we can come to know him more fully, and we do by His grace. Which is to say, there is now a truly loving relationship between God and us. And so we have hope. We see that once again. And this time, the hope is that we are no longer dead in sin. Of ourselves, yes. We are only lifeless. Only dead in sin. Nothing different than that. But we've now been brought to life by the power of the Spirit within us. And that means that we can, genuinely, we can follow after God, obey His commands, live unto Him. we are truly able to put off the old man every day. He is, after all, crucified with Christ so that, as we saw last time in the Catechism, answer 43, although we didn't dwell on it at the time, the corrupt inclinations of the flesh may no more reign in us because the old man is crucified, dead, and buried with him. The old man has been crucified. No longer then are we dead in sin. There is new life in us, the life of Jesus Christ. That's the reality of sanctification now, as God progressively makes us more holy. To deny that is very serious. We may not say that we don't have any life at all in us, nor may we say that the regenerated child of God is totally depraved and then just leave it at that and not give any form of explanation and say nothing else and restrict ourselves only to that language. We can't leave it at that. Yes, it's true that we are still totally depraved according to the old man, but the new man certainly is not. We are in the second part of the catechism, not the first. Deliverance, the knowledge of that, and deliverance is not only from the guilt of sin, it is also from the power and the dominion of sin. To deny that is to slight the Spirit and to slight His work within the child of God. So let's not deny the truth, but instead give thanks to God for His gracious act of genuinely raising us to a new life. There's an implication here, an implied calling, and that calling is to live, to live out that life that has been secured for you and that you now possess. Don't despise the work of the Spirit in you, but rejoice in it, and live out of it, live unto God, walk not in darkness, but walk in light. That's our calling as those who have been given resurrection life by God's grace. Scripture makes very plain that that is true. Again, 1 Peter 1 is clear. The chapter lays the groundwork early on in the early verses already. You've been begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then, just a few verses later, exhortation in light of these things. Verse 15, as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation or conduct. Because, verse 16, it is written, be ye holy, for I am holy. And then verses 22 and 23 point to the same thing, where we read, seeing ye have purified your souls and obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently, being born again. Love one another with a pure heart fervently, meaning do good works of love toward your brethren. And do that because, verse 23 indicates, because you have been born again, because you have been given this life. Live it out. And part of that is showing love to your brothers and sisters. Scripture is clear. You have this life in you. You do. You can truly live in holiness. Now do it, God says. It is your calling and It is your response of gratitude for the life you have been given. Those with the resurrection life of Christ in them surely will live unto God. And so, another application, don't be satisfied to go on in your sin. We've noted previously in other sermons, and we note again, that our attitude ought never to be, I just can't resist that temptation. I've tried so many times and failed. It's just not worth making an effort anymore. Why bother? That's a defeatist mentality. And really, it's nothing more than an excuse to keep on sinning. Nothing more than that. It does not recognize the heinousness of sin and how fervently we ought to strive to resist against temptation. But don't stop there. We need to establish that. We need to maintain that. But that's not all. We also need to say this. If this has been true of you, stop doing this. Stop trying to resist sin on your own. You can't do it. You'll never be able to do it in your own power. Look at Christ instead. He is the one who perfectly kept the law for you, people of God. And he gave his own blood to cover all of your iniquities. That's enough to move us to gratitude so that we do truly want to resist against sin. But what's more, that same Christ whom God has raised up and to whom God gave great glory. Now indwells your heart by His Spirit. Look at Him. Find your strength to put away sin in Him, and not in self, not in your own natural abilities, your own reason, your own strength of willpower, and all the rest. If we merely look at self to find the strength to live in sanctification, we will find that the result is only death. But looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, we have grace, the strength that we need. Looking unto His Spirit within, we find true resurrection life. And that's comforting. We're not left to defeat sin in our own strength. by ourselves. We have the very resurrection life of Jesus Christ flowing within us. No power of Satan is enough to stand against King Jesus. The third way in which we profit from the resurrection of Christ is that we are assured we will rise. The resurrection of Christ is a sure pledge our blessed resurrection," says the Catechism. So what Christ has done here in the first place is He's arisen in that way, entered into His state of exaltation. Christ is no longer dead. He arose. That body that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus laid in the grave, which had no life in it, no spark of life when they did, now comes back to life. His body, which had been just like ours, is now transformed into a spiritual body, a glorious heavenly body. He rose straight up through the grave clothes, straight up through the dirt and the grass and the rock, and he arose out of the grave. to life. In rising from death, he enters his state of exaltation. Everything about the life, the ministry, the death of Jesus Christ, up to that point, was the state of humiliation, culminating in his death on the cross, suffering the wrath of God, and then being buried in a tomb. But now, at the resurrection, he is no longer in the state of humiliation. He enters into the state of exaltation. This is the first step in that state. He's glorified. He's exalted. And he is, therefore, truly worthy of all honor and of all praise. Secondly, then, what Christ has done is become a pledge. That's what the Catechism speaks of in this third part of the answer. A pledge is a solemn promise, a sure sign that the person is going to follow through on that which has been promised. The reason that the resurrection is a pledge to us, is that Christ has risen as a visible reality for us to focus our eyes of faith on, and, especially this, that union with Christ that we discussed earlier. He's our legal head, so that God looks at us as risen together with Christ, but also, and especially, He is our living head. And he who lives will one day pull his body back to himself in life. He is, after all, the first fruits from the dead, the guarantee that more will rise. If you promise me that you're going to help me out with some task, some yard work, or some job around the house, then you are a person of your word that's a somewhat strong indication to me that you're going to follow through on that and you're going to help me on the appointed at the appointed time but now imagine that you leave something valuable with me say your wallet and you say that's my guarantee to you that i'm going to come and help i need to come back to you in order to get my wallet and when i do i'll help you with the yard work then i can be very sure of you doing what you say you're going to do. That wallet becomes tangible evidence. It is a pledge of that which you have promised. How do we profit? In first place, we're assured of our own resurrections. More specifically, the resurrection of Jesus is a pledge that we too will rise. If God only promised us that we would rise again, that would already be an amazing thing in its own right. A promise from God is an amazing thing. He can't go back on a promise. He never does. But we have something even better than that in His condescension to us weak, unbelieving sinners. Jesus arose. And He is, therefore, a pledge. He already arose so that we can look back through time with the eye of faith on that moment and know that that's a promise and it is a pledge, a guarantee to us that we one day will rise as well as His children. We have an absolute guarantee that that will be. So we too will come back from the grave. Just as God raised Christ, so too he will raise those dead in Christ. They will spring to life. We will receive new glorified bodies like that of the risen Lord Jesus. 1 Peter teaches this too, in chapter 1. Verses 3 and 4 speak of the hope that we have of the resurrection life. been begotten unto a lively hope by his resurrection to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away reserved in heaven for us." It's a life that's uncorrupted, undefiled, unfading. Our souls will never die, but what's more, our bodies won't die again either. The inheritance that verse 4 speaks of is uninterrupted communion with God, a communion that we will have bodily. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a pledge, therefore, that we too will rise in our bodies. That's the implication of verse 3's ending, when it says that we are raised or begotten to living hope by Christ's own resurrection. And there's no doubt about it. Verse 4 says, our inheritance is kept, it's reserved for us. And then verse 5 adds, as we heard earlier today, that we are kept unto a salvation, ready to be revealed at the last time. It is ready to be revealed. You can almost think of it this way. There's a curtain hiding it from us, and there's a hand on the curtain, ready to pull it back, on pins and needles, as it were, to pull back that curtain and reveal the glorious salvation that awaits. Until then, we surely won't lose it, because we're kept. And that, really, is a military term. It has the imagery of a town militia that's been tasked with guarding the city against any threat or any invasion. It's in that sense that Jehovah of Hosts guards us, not letting anyone take us away until the last day when He will bodily raise us unto life in glory. What a comfort that that would have been to the saints living in Peter's day, the saints to whom he wrote this epistle. These are saints who are severely, severely persecuted Probably many of them lived in the consciousness that they could be put to death for their faith, even very, very soon. It might well happen to me. It might well happen to my friends. Those were the sorts of thoughts they would have had. But Peter reminds them. There's glory, glory to come, and God is safely and zealously guarding your salvation until the day when that final salvation is gloriously revealed. And so, once more, we have hope. Death has no sting, and the grave has no victory. We don't need to fear death. It can be a frightening prospect, it can. We don't like the idea of the severing of all of our earthly ties with family and friends, but we don't need to be terrified of death. And the reason is that death can't hold you, child of God. It couldn't hold Christ, and so it can't hold you. It's lost its sting. And so we can say with supreme confidence that life with God is secured for us. Death and sin no longer hold us in their cruel clutches so that they have the victory over us. Their grip has been broken by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because of these things, we can and we do partake of the righteousness that Christ has procured for us. We are made able to live with God so that there's hope when we come to the end of our pilgrimage. Our life with God in glory is absolutely certain. The grave has no victory over the child of God because God raised Christ and because he is a pledge through his resurrection that we too shall arise. We have amazing hope as we face death and even as we lower a loved one into the grave and we grieve. We grieve not as those who are without hope, but we grieve with the hope of life. In light of that, how could we respond in any other way than praise? That's what Peter does. Verse three begins that way. Blessed be God who has done all of this, who has begotten us unto this living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Blessed be God, which is really a way of saying, God be praised. Had Christ not arisen, we truly would be among all men the most miserable. But because he has, we have great profit and we have great hope. God be praised. Hallelujah. Christ arose. Amen.