Well, thank you all for letting me preach with you and for you tonight. I've been recovering from a cold, so I'm trying my hard not to cough. My voice went out a little bit this morning, but we can hope that tonight, after some restful time, it will sustain it. Please turn in your Bibles to 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 1 to 5. We're looking at 1 Peter, chapter 1, verses 1 to 5. As you turn in your Bibles there, hear what the word of the Lord says. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for salvation, ready be revealed in the last time. Let us pray that the Lord would bless the reading and the preaching of his word. Join me in prayer. Oh, sovereign, majestic God, We come before you tonight, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. looking to You and You alone to lead us and to guide us through Your Word. Lord, this is Your Word, and we know You have goodness, You have grace and mercy to show us through this passage. You have something good for us and help us to see Jesus in this passage. May our hearts and our lives be changed, transformed through Your Word, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. I'm sure you know the name of the church plant that I'm coming from. But do you know that living hope comes from a verse? Well, you're like, well, we're the OPC. Obviously, we would pick a church name that comes from the Bible. But which verse? Well, if you want to cheat, it's in our text here. It's here in what we're looking at. It comes from 1 Peter. But do you know what Peter means when he says, a living hope? Well, it sounds nice. It's hopeful. It's got hope in it. So we're excited to see where it's going. It sounds energetic. It talks about life. Well, we want eternal life in Jesus Christ, a living hope. It sounds like something we want. This text, when it talks about a living hope, it's actually talking to sufferers, people who are in the midst of great suffering. They are Christians, Jewish Christians, Jews who've become Christians, who've converted to Christianity, who have loved Jesus. They've been expelled from their land, and they've been brought to this area of Turkey. Turkey is also very close to modern-day Ukraine. Been close brought to Turkey, And they're suffering because they're not at home. They're without their home. They're without hope. They're like ducks out of water. They're in a place they just don't want to be. We see beginning here in verse 1, this is written to sufferers. And then Peter interrupts himself in verses 2 to 5 to talk about something, and then he gets back to suffering in verse 6. So it's as if he wants to talk about suffering, but he just can't get to suffering just right away. He wants to immediately apply some type of salve, some type of balm, something that would heal and help people who are in the midst of suffering. So he interrupts his point with verses two to five, to provide a perspective, to provide comfort through this living hope. This is a jewel. This is a jewel in the midst of suffering, but right now it's locked away, and Peter holds the key to help us unlock this. So in my first point, we see that this is written to people who suffer as exile Christians. All that they are, all that they have known has been overturned, has been upended. In verse 1, Peter calls them elect exiles. Elect means chosen, chosen before time, ones loved by God, right? Exiles, well, that's those people who are living without their home. Reminds us of Israel. Israel was told if they followed the Lord, they would stay in the land and they'd find blessing. But if they rebelled against the Lord, if they sinned and they followed the idols of the Canaanites, they would be ejected from the land and they'd be exiles. So do you remember what happens? Well, maybe you don't. What about your own heart? If it was up to you by your own obedience to keep God's blessings or to lose them because of sin, where does your heart land? It obviously lands where the Israelites went. They did not follow what the Lord had said. They were kicked out. But these Christians who are called elect exiles, they're not kicked out of the land because of disobedience. but because of obedience. They loved the Lord. They believed in His gospel, and because of that, they were ejected from their homeland. They were scattered throughout Rome, particularly Turkey. Emperor Claudius did this in 40 AD. He kicked out Jews, Jewish Christians included, out of Israel and out of other parts of Rome, and they scattered them. Now, what this meant was great suffering, social suffering, first of all, because people didn't move around like they do today. They were in the land. That piece of land was their dads, their granddads, their great granddads. They had been in the land for many, many, many generations. Where they lived was their identity, their community. So to be kicked out from that area is to be kicked out from all the friends, all the family they've ever known. It's also economic pressure, because for generations they've been farming that land, or for generations they were carpenters, or whatever they were, they had their jobs there. And suddenly, all that they've known, all that they've ever been trained in, is gone. It's a lot like modern-day Ukraine. The world has turned upside down. We're in the midst of something big right now. People are suffering, and everything is overturned. The world has gone crazy. Now, the difference today is there are other countries that take an interest. and in struggles in one part of the world. We could accept the refugees that came from Afghanistan. We could take refugees from the Ukraine. We have that ability. The world is a global community, and we have an interest in one another. But that's not the way things were back then. People didn't just help refugees. We have a lot of movement today around in America. You could find, you could get an IT job in Dallas and then move here to Grand Rapids and then move to Denver. You have that mobility ability, you have that ability to change homes and they didn't do that. It's not just the loss of land, but it's also a loss of identity. You see, their identity was associated with the lands that they were in. To lose their land is to lose who they were. That's part of their identity, to be a Jew. It's not just a religion, it's a sense of family and it's a connection to the promised land. So for you to be ejected from your home, from Israel, you lose your sense of identity, you lose your sense of self. And not only that, they're a second type of exile. They believed in Jesus Christ. And by believing in Jesus Christ, they are ejected from their own families, from their mom and dad, their brothers and sisters. You see, one of the worst offense you could be given is to convert from Judaism to maybe Islam or Christianity. My mom grew up in the 60s, and she decided, like a lot of kids her age, to rebel. She was raised in a Jewish home, and her form of rebellion was to play around on the edges with Christianity. She started to visit church. She started to enjoy church. And then, heaven forbid, she became a Christian. She loved it. Now, normally, this causes a great tension, and your back is turned on those people because the idea is there are so many people that suffered for you, for your sake, and you're turning your back on your family, on your religion, for everything they went through. Look at the Holocaust, and you're saying that means nothing to you by becoming a Christian. It's not just a religion, it's a sense of family, identity, connection, and you're turning your back on that. Now, most people are disowned. My mom is an exception. But there was tension around Christmas, or particularly Hanukkah and the high Jewish festivals. My grandparents struggled with their Samaritan grandchildren. We were fortunate to be able to know my grandparents. But the point is, these are exiles. They're all alone. During the most important festivals of Judaism, it'd be like our times of Fourth of July, or Thanksgiving, or Christmas, where you don't have family, you don't have those moments where you want to be with family, and you don't have those times together. And this is them, but you know what? This is us. We are also called exiles. We heard it in the reading today from Hebrews 13. where the author of the Hebrew says this, and, for here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come. What is he saying? We too, as Christians, are exiles. We are not at home. We are not comfortable here. We are not okay here. We are citizens of the world to come. Here we have no lasting city, but our city is over there in another land. Here, we are rejected. We are citizens of America. We have a voice. We have a vote. But guess what? Do people actually want to hear our voice? If we raise our hand and we say something about abortion, no, put that hand down. If we say something about marriage or family, no, put that hand down. We do not have our citizenship here. reminds me of something that happened in Australia. For five and a half years, Katie and I, as you know, were doing ministry in Australia. I was a pastor of a church just south of Sydney. And just south of our state, we were in the state of New South Wales, there's another state called Victoria. And this last summer, they put out a law. It was an anti-gay conversion therapy law. And in this law, it made it criminal for you to pray for somebody if they're struggling with same-sex attraction. Prayer is a gay conversion therapy. Or, if you preached against homosexuality, that is forbidden, because that is a gay conversion therapy. The fact of the matter is, here we have no lasting city. What we say, what we believe, even this worship service, is foreign. It is not of this world. It is of the world to come. Exiles have no hope and no future good here. Yet, God accepts those exiles. God gives them a home. You see, we are exiles, but we are also chosen, and that means something. So look back in your passage here in verse 2. This is according to the foreknowledge To foreknow is being the back of our head. It means that, oh wait, does that mean God looks down the corridor of time and knows what I'm going to do? No, it doesn't mean that. It means to be foreloved. that before you did anything wrong, before you ever had a thought to sin, before Adam and Eve sinned, God loved you. I don't mean just a general faceless group of humanity. I mean individually. Put your name here. Before the face of time, before time ever existed, God loved, put your name in there. He forloved you before knowing perfectly well what you would do. You are chosen, elect exiles. You've been set apart. It's according to the foreknowledge of God the Father and the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and the sprinkling with His blood. It's a triune work, Father, Son, and Spirit. You have been sanctified, you have been sprinkled. What does that mean? It means that you have been set apart by the work of Christ on the cross, just like if you were Jewish. On the day of atonement, Yom Kippur, where an animal was sacrificed on your behalf, though you did nothing that would merit that, all you've done is sin, you've been set apart, you've been forgiven. Now, you see, the world rejects you, but God in this moves towards you in love, where we are a forgiven people and we are taken outside and rejected in the world and brought inside the church and found a family, where we are incompatible with one group and we are accepted in another group. I had a buddy of mine. He got married right around the time he became a Christian. And we were in a Bible study together and he said, John, I'm concerned about my friends. You see, all of his friends from his former life were his groomsmen and best man. And he says, they're changing on me. They're changing. And I said, what do you mean? He goes, well, As I've gone along and as I've become a Christian, they've become more and more hostile in our friendship. And I said, I think the person who's changed is not them, but it's you. And over time, you have grown more and more in Christ, and they cannot stand it. But he also found a greater family. He lost those friends, but he found greater friendships in the church. You see, we are incompatible with one group, but we are accepted in another. So we suffer as exiles, but we also suffer, here in my second point, with a living hope. Now, how again does this suffering relate to a living hope? Well, look again in our text. It's in the context of a family. Verse 3, we see something about the Father. Verse 3 again, we see something about the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We see something, He's caused us to be born again. Verse 4, to an inheritance. All of this language is language of a family. You see, what is a living hope? It's a new life, a new family by Jesus Christ. We have died to the former way. We've been raised in Christ to a new way. Look at what it says again to verse 3. According to His great mercy, He caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The Father birthed us because of Christ. Now, in this term right here, being birthed, it's not adoption, though we have been adopted through Jesus Christ, but that we are natural-born sons and daughters. We've been born in God by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross and by His resurrection, and in that, verse 4, we share an inheritance. Now, here is the crazy thing. In that day, you don't share your inheritance. If you are the oldest child, you get the lion's share of the inheritance. You get all the goods. Jesus is the eldest son of the Father. but he does something unexpected. He liberally wants as many sons and daughters to come into the family to share in his inheritance. Nobody does this. Only Jesus Christ, the firstborn son, has an interest in all the sons and daughters of the God, of the Father, of the King. He shares liberally his inheritance. So you have to see this living hope that has been given to us through the cross, through the resurrection, is an inheritance, an inheritance of family and of land and of promise. And that land and that promise is not here in this world. It's an unshakable promise. You see in verse 4, to an inheritance that's imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you. Do you see what it's saying? It's an unshakable living hope where moth and rust cannot destroy and thief to take it away. This living hope is a better life. It's a greater hope. Here we have no family, we have no land, we have no hope, we have no future, but he gives us a better hope, a better expectation of things to come. So at the beginning of verse three, with this thought in mind, what does he say? He says, blessed be God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Exclamation point. He's praising God for this amazing truth because He moves towards us in love. Praise God for our Lord Jesus Christ and our blessed be God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has done this. He has done this out of His love, It's not just mercy, it's justice put on Christ on the cross. That's how we know this amazing love. You know what this word is a lot like? It's a lot like the Hebrew word chesed, where it does mean love, but also means mercy and grace. God has committed chesed, to love us. He's promised to love us. according to this great mercy, according to this great promise by which He loved us. And He said, I would be patient with you, long in loving kindness, right? Out of this great mercy, this ocean of grace, I'm moving towards you. He's committed. He has forgiven you. And so you have life and hope because God has only good in store and in mind for you. A love that will not reject you, like the world rejects you. And this is what's really important because it's a life that's conditioned on the Son. He says we have this because Jesus Christ was raised. Look again at your text. He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Nobody in this world can take this from you because it's conditioned on Jesus and his resurrection. You can't lose it, it is unshaken. That is amazing. One time I went to Russia for a mission work and I got to go to Russian orphanages and we were giving the gospel to Russians And what's difficult is when you go to an orphanage, in Russia, it's just an organizational thing. The people who lead it are not there to be a foster parent or a house parent or a house mom. They're there just to administrate. So kids, they grow up without a sense of family. They're not put in family groups. They don't really have toys, and they don't know what it's like to be loved, not even to be hugged. Just rest on that for a second. They don't even know what it's like to be hugged. But when one of those kids finds out that they're about to be adopted, they'll see the world changes. You see, their world changes now. They begin to expect and to imagine what this life could be like. I get a mom and dad. I get my own bed. I get my own pillow and blanket. I get to have toys. And your mind can't even imagine the immense blessings that you're about to get. Here, we are shaken and suffer. But there, because of Christ, we have this confident expectation of hope, of family, of future. And where we are right now, we just can't even contain all the beauty that that means for us. We're like these Russian orphans, just on the cusp and anticipation of so many great things to come. So then, if we have this living hope, how does this help us now? This is my third and final point. How does this help us now? We're in the midst of still struggling. The world is still turned upside down with COVID. We're now seeing wars and rumors of war with Ukraine. We just saw things blow up in Afghanistan and go terrible. What's our hope? A couple of months ago, Pastor Dale and I were talking about a Gospel Coalition article about these 14-year-old girls, Christian girls, who are being taken out of their Christian families and being forced into Muslim families, being forced into what's called child marriages or child bride marriages. The idea is that these little girls will produce the next generation of Muslims. So what hope do they have? Well, look at verse 5. This is kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. He powerfully guards this life, this hope, this confident expectation and future-focused life that we don't really get fully here. But he sustains and nourishes it through what? Look at the text. being kept through, being guarded through faith. He sustains and nourishes our faith. And he promises, says, for our faith, for our salvation, ready to be revealed. He promises to deliver us from this present evil age. Israel was attacked, but who was there? God always said, I would be there with you. He is with them, these elect exiles, and He's promising that He will bring them back to their land, but that's not a promise of this earthly land. It's the same thing with us. There's a promise for salvation ready to be revealed. It means we haven't yet been delivered from this present evil age, but He's right on the cusp. So for those Afghani girls who have been taken out of their Christian families, there is something that will not be taken from them. It's this faith. Regardless of what happens to these girls, their faith is going to be sustained and nourished. God promises to be with them and for them. Now, in the back of your head, you're saying, but what they're going through is unjust. And you're right. And God is not turning a blind eye to the injustice of what they're going through. He has just wrath for the very things they're going through. He's not turning a blind eye. He's not saying it's okay. But in the midst of all the wrongness that we see in this world, God is sustaining their faith that can't be robbed from them. He'll judge the wrongdoers and He'll grip His people buy their faith until He brings them home. So let me just give you a couple of practical applications as I close. Just a couple. As we are exiles, we are not only suffering, but we are ducks out of water. Not only ducks, But every day we are being shaken. We turn on the news. We see the world is going down the tubes. We get this gnawing sense that things are only getting worse. We see the polarization of our politics between Republican and Democrat. We don't like what's happening. But we have a message of hope. We have the gospel. We have what we've seen here in verses 3 to 5. What that should mean for us If we have that hope, and if we have this faith, it means that we know that there's a whole ocean of people out there who don't have it. This should give us a burning zeal, a burning passion, because we have sustained faith, and out there they don't. There are neighbors, there are coworkers, there are classmates who don't yet know Jesus, but you have this living hope. and you have the opportunity and the blessing to share of it. My encouragement is, look to your hearts, pray that you might have a burning zeal for the loss. The closest place anyone in this world is gonna get to heaven is right here and now. I don't mean this building, I mean these people. Here in this worship service is the closest they get to a taste of heaven. Here and now, this is God's embassy of the future and of the government to come here. And if you're visiting tonight and you're without hope, trust in Christ. He will give you this hope. He will give you this family as you suffer And if you already have this hope, know the church, it gives you a home. This is your embassy. You need to come to church to find your taste of heaven, your taste of living hope. And as I say that, there's something in the back of your head for some of us here, that there's a hurdle to that. I say this place is your home, but often, The brokenness in church makes it to feel like it's not home, that I'm foreign in this place. Now, I don't mean things have happened here, but it might be other churches you've attended and you've come here. I had a buddy of mine at the church I grew up with. He and I, we went on mission trips to Scotland, and I helped in the youth ministry, until one day I found out that he had an illicit relationship with one of the girls in the youth group. It shook my faith. I saw families leave the church. Some people never came back to any church. And so the reality is, as much as I call this place home, some of you say, but what about me? in other churches and in other circumstances, I've been hurt. I've been hurt by the fights. I've been hurt by the drift I've seen in this one church where they gave up the gospel. I've been hurt by the moral failings of people in church. How can this living hope help? You see, I'm preaching to people who, like me, have been hurt by church, and I want you to know that this is still your home. God has good things. Every Sunday, the gospel is preached, and you get your taste of heaven, even if you've been hurt inside of a church and by Christians. You still need this place. to bring that living hope, that joy, that taste of heaven even in the midst of your sorrows. It could be on Sunday, it could be weekly, during your small group meetings, your coffee times. We need to be reminded of the gospel. Let me finish this one question and then I'll close. If this is true, And we need each other. We need each other for this taste of home. For the gospel's sake, who is coming to your minds right now who is hurt and alone? I just talked about people who are hurt. I've been hurt. You've been hurt. Who's hurt and alone? Who is like a strange sheep, because they're hurt, Because they are drifting, they're all alone, someone is probably coming to mind. Maybe you write that down in your bulletin. Promise yourself you're going to pray for them. Promise yourself you're going to pursue them with the gospel. It could be a coworker who doesn't yet know the gospel. It could be a classmate. It could be your neighbor. If you have this hope, pray for these people. Pray for a gospel opportunity to share of this living hope. When you think of the church plant Living Hope, I want you to think of one thing. We are aliens aimed to a suffering world with the gospel. And I want you to partner with this church plant, that you too would be aliens, foreigners, aimed to a suffering world with the gospel. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, I thank you for the privilege it is to come to worship, to get our taste of heaven. And yet, Lord, at times we are suffering in this world. We grieve for the Ukraine. We grieve with our brothers and sisters who are suffering right now. It could be a physical illness. It could be a spiritual Struggle, it can be an emotional, mental struggle. Lord, we have people in our lives, even ourselves, that are struggling mightily. And Lord, we pray that we would share of this living, confident hope of what you have set aside that's unshakable in heaven. And Lord, would we be reminded weekly of this amazing gospel Thank you, Lord, for Jesus. Thank you for your amazing love. Thank you for the Holy Spirit who has set us apart in your love for the sprinkling with the blood. And we praise your name for it. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. We come to our final song tonight, where we get to praise the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. I'd ask that you would stand, that we would sing Jesus Strong and Kind. No one else can be my strength I should come to Him We will keep us day and night. We will always run to Jesus, Jesus strong and bright. No one else can be my shield. I should come to Him. For the Lord is good and fair. ♪ Jesus said, if I am lost, he will come to me ♪ ♪ And he showed me on that cross, he will come to me ♪ ♪ For the Lord is good and faithful, he will keep us safe ♪ is always As you receive the Lord's blessing, please note that we will rejoice with God after the benediction by singing By the Sea of Crystal. So receive the Lord's benediction. Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time now and forevermore. Amen. ♪ Broken by the battle ♪ ♪ Watching Jesus fall ♪ ♪ With the rain in hand ♪ ♪ With the well of wine ♪ ♪ How the tribulation ♪ ♪ That bled Satan's hand ♪ have a