While We Are Waiting

Go ahead and open your Bibles to 1st Peter. We're gonna be studying the full chapter 1 this morning. I was joking with Paul on the website, he takes like eight weeks to do chapter 1 and we're gonna squeeze it into 30 minutes. So we'll do our best. But this chapter is just organized so nicely into the title of our Bible study. We're gonna have, we're gonna look at it in three sections, hope, holiness, and humility. So let's read a few verses. We'll start on verse 3 since we covered 1 and 2 last week. Verse 3 starts this way,

So Father we ask you to just open up our eyes as we have studied this week and looked through these verses. Lord please give us a new layer of insight this morning from your spirit in Jesus' name, amen. Well I want to title today's chapter while we are waiting, okay? So I'll refer to that quite a bit, that's what I see in here. I love the use of Peter's phrase born again and then I also love the final phrase that we just read, for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. We who are born again are waiting for the fullness of our salvation that's going to be brought to completion when Jesus is revealed, when he comes to snatch us away, when we are finally in heaven, when we are united with him. And while we are waiting, God wants us to enjoy hope, he wants us to grow in holiness, and he wants us to interact with humility both toward him and toward our fellow man while we're waiting. And so let's tackle our first section of hope which is going to be our longest section this morning. And I want to review some of the questions we talked about last week when we opened that people naturally look around and ask while we are waiting. We ask questions like why is life so hard and the world so hostile? How am I supposed to process the difficulties in life, the tragedies that happen to me and to other people? Where is God in those things? How am I to deal with this? And the Bible does have answers for us and it can help us make sense of that kind of pain. We're not ever going to understand fully while we are waiting, but we can engage in what we can know. Okay? And so these are some of the things that we can know. Every one of us in this room has something in common and that's you were all born into this world that is naturally hostile toward us. Okay? And I want to explain what I mean by that. And that is because Adam and Eve, our first representatives, they sinned against God in the garden. Sin was introduced into our experience forever more, not forever more, for everyone who was ever born into the world, right? And the authority and the rule over the earth that belonged to man at that point, that the authority that rightfully belonged to man, was just handed over to Satan. Just handed over to him. The serpent, the prince of this world, which we'll study when we get to chapter 5. But every person born since then, including you and me, we are born into an experience, into a system of life that's hostile toward us because it has been given over. So our natural inheritance as we are born is one of brokenness, decay, death, and separation from God. That is what we inherit as we draw our first breath. That's our inheritance. That's not what God designed for us. It's not how he created the world. It's not how he created us. But it is how it is. So Peter begins this letter by praising our merciful God, who now has offered us a new life and a living hope. And he says it's like being born again. Because it is being born again, right? And so every we are born now, as we're born again, we're born into a different inheritance. Life instead of death. We are now born into being a child of God, rather than being separated from God. Eternity in heaven, rather than an existence in hell. J.I. Packer has a great definition for the new birth, and he says it's an inner recreating of the fallen human nature by the gracious, sovereign action of the Holy Spirit. And this new inheritance ain't going anywhere, right? And Peter talks about that in the verses we just read. He says it is imperishable, it is undefiled, it's unfading, and even though we can't fully comprehend it now, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, we will fully comprehend it when we are united with Christ. And we will fully understand. And that is our hope. Before we say much more, I want to emphasize that this letter that we're reading is written to people who are born again. This isn't an evangelistic letter saying, do you want to know about Jesus? This is a letter written to people who already have that new birth and are already enjoying the hope of that inheritance. They already heard the good news that God sent his Son in human flesh to become man, to die for our sins. They believed it, they received it as forgiveness for sins, and they have been redeemed. And so if, as you're processing that this morning, if you say to yourself, huh, I wonder if I'm born again. It is something, it's the most important question we will ever ask. And it's not something that a person wants to postpone thinking about. Like I often say, when we leave here in our cars, life is unpredictable. We never know the end of our life. So asking God to forgive your sins and to enter into that new inheritance, to be born again, is something that you don't have to wait for. You don't have to wait until sometime at church when the lights dim and the altar call and walk down, and that, you do it right now. And you do it before you leave and get in your car. Do you understand what I'm saying? If you have been born again and you absolutely know it, then we're ready to go on to verse 6. So let's read that, okay? It says,

And I look at that phrase, though now for a little while, while you are waiting, you've been grieved by various trials. And so before we go any further and talk about these trials, I want to give you one more perspective about this waiting period that we have. Because it came into my mind, and so maybe someone will really grip this picture. And the picture I want to talk about is that of a Jewish cultural engagement that was common in Peter's day, very unlike our engagement process in our day. But in that day, boys and girls were often betrothed or engaged to one another at a very young age. The parents were involved in making these choices. And there could be quite a little time that passed in their life between the betrothal and the actual time when the bridegroom would come after having prepared a place for he and his bride to live. The bridegroom would come back and pick up the bride, and they would enjoy their seven-day festival, and off they would go to their new home. There could be a long waiting period. Sometimes years would go by, and we could think about that and say, huh, I wonder what that intended bride would do while she was waiting for her intended bridegroom to come. Would she forget about him? Would she, you know, we have those kind of questions. In the same way, we can look at that and say, when we're born again, it is as though we have been, right now, betrothed to Christ. He has given us a down payment that he's coming back for us. It is the Holy Spirit that he has marked us with and put in our hearts, right? It's a promise. I'm the bridegroom. I will be coming back for you. And he will return and gather us, and we will enjoy that wedding feast of the lamb. But until the full revelation of Jesus Christ, we wait. And we can ask ourselves, what do we do while we're waiting? Do we forget about that bridegroom that we are intended to, that we're waiting for? Do we just figure out how to manage life in this hostile world, or let's into the world that kind of pumps us up with, you know what, if you were smarter, if you were, you know, this and that, and you could handle, you know, these kind of things. No, God's plan is that once we are born again and we are intended for him that we should grow in our faith, okay? That's what he intends for us. So, toward that end of growing while we are waiting, God in his sovereignty chose to put to use something that he already had on hand. I'm a master repurposer. If I start a project, I hate going to the store and, like, buying something. I'm like, what do I have? Let's look through the garage. I have a project. What can I already use? And I feel like God's the master repurposer. We need to grow in our faith. And so, he looks around, what do I have that I can use? Oh, that's right, this hostile world that's completely, you know, I'll use that. And that's what God uses to grow our faith because that is where our trials come from. And so, Peter writes that we're rejoicing in our inheritance. We have the full rights of sonship, but until that inheritance is revealed, there's a couple of key words and phrases that we just read that I want us to point out, trials so that faith result in praise and glory and honor. While we are rejoicing in an amazing salvation that God gave us, we suffer trials. It says various kinds of trials. You know that. You've suffered trials. You've suffered tragedies. Some of you are suffering them right now. And when someone is suffering a tragedy, it's not super helpful for us to come up to them and say, well, praise God, at least we're all going to heaven. That's not the flavor of rejoicing that Peter is, you know, telling us about here because grief in trials is real and difficulties are real. They were real for these believers scattered across Asia. They're real for us. But you know what? Joy in Christ is real as well. And even joy from the basement of disappointment, from just the pit of suffering, it is a real thing. And I know that from my own life. I also know it because I watch a Johnny Erickson Tata YouTube every once in a while. And that will convince you that joy is a possibility in the midst of trials and suffering. So rejoicing and joy are not our natural response when our faith is being stretched and improved while we wait, okay? Difficulties and trials are the fire that will improve our faith. What is our natural response? It's fear and panic. That is our natural response when something... Nobody enters into a trauma in life and immediately says, hey, this is going to make me a sturdier Christian. Yay! No, that is not a natural response at all for us. Our natural response is panic and fear, and the Lord knows that. But trust and rejoicing that God is sovereign and He holds even the trials in His hand is a possibility of a choice for us to make. So maybe when we run across that person who is facing a trial, what we can say to them, I would offer sympathy. Remember I pointed out last week Peter never offered them any sympathy in here. Maybe it's good to offer sympathy. But after that, to be able to say to someone, can I stand with you through this trial to help you make that hard choice, that hard transition to get to where you trust the Lord and you rejoice in His provision even in the midst of that, to be available for that. Maybe that is the better answer. Well, about trials, Charles Spurgeon says, tempests or storms are our trainers. What do you think of when you think of a personal trainer? You know, like a personal gym trainer, someone who is going to help you apply the right amount of resistance to actually improve your muscle tone or someone who is going to give you, you know, that encouragement to keep going. The pain is going to be worth it. It will be worth it all, you know. So I think that's a good way to look at it. Tempests are our trainers. So I want to go back to a verse that we talked about at retreat in the fall. And some of you who are at retreat, you have this verse on your little plate that you brought home. It's from Isaiah 43.1. And it says,

Now, the next verse is not on your plate, but you might want to write it on an index card and tape it to the back of your plate because it has some real good stuff. And it says, when you pass through the waters, not if, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. Somebody here really needs that this morning. You need that message. This isn't going to sweep you away, okay? The next verse goes on to say, when you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned. The flame shall not consume you. This is a promise of God while we are waiting. These things that we go through, they won't consume us, but they will prove us. The fire proves gold to be genuine. So our faith would not be improved if we didn't first have it proved through these trials. God is sovereignly making use of this old, broken, hostile world to prove and to improve our faith. It is useful for that. So the purpose of trials is to improve our faith. The product of trials, or the outcome, is, as Peter said here, praise, glory, and honor to Jesus Christ. So we have a purpose for them, and we have a product for them. They will do something good. They will not sweep us away. Spurgeon also says that trials not only burn out the dross in our life, but they burn in the promises. And I went for a walk, and I really rolled that over, and I realized that I'd gone through a season in my life where I really hadn't been claiming the promises of God, resting on the promises. And would we test the promises of God if we didn't have need for them? No. We would just go to Disneyland or something. We would just go have fun. We wouldn't test the promises of God. Would we rest in the promises of God if we could handle everything ourselves? No, we wouldn't. So we can begin to see, actually, the usefulness. So just to kind of tie this together, if you have a heavy heart, if you're grieved with trials, I hope you can see the truth expressed in the scripture, that if you can choose to trust God through this, the waters will not overwhelm you, the fire will not consume you, and even if your first response has been and is panic and fear, welcome. We all understand that. We can make a choice to make a transition from that panic and fear to trust and to joy, and God will help us. Well, preparing for the next verses, I want to just talk about Peter's perspective that he has in life, because I think it is so wonderful and unique. I've said before, I love being in my 50s. I really feel like this is my favorite decade of life, and the reason is, it is the mountaintop. It is the perspective a person can get from this station. I can look this direction and see my 87-year-old mother and say, I get you, finally. I understand, and I like you. I liked her before, too, but I see my future. I can kind of start seeing what life is like over there, and I can look back at my 21-year-old daughter and go, I remember. I get you, too. I haven't forgotten that yet. I love this age. Now, when I turn 60, would you throw me a big birthday party, because I'll probably melt down, but Peter has the same. He was really gifted. He was given a treasure in the Lord, in that there he stood in the middle of all things, having spent that three years walking and talking with Jesus, knowing him intimately, and he writes a letter to the New Testament Christians who, maybe a few of them actually were physically with Jesus, but for the most part, we'll say they didn't know him, right? And so he writes a letter pointing this direction to the New Testament believers who didn't get the privilege that he had, and yet Peter can look at the Old Testament prophets and just absorb from them. He uses, he impresses me so much because he uses so much prophecy in his writings. It's in his heart and on his lips, and we see a couple of them just in the chapter one, but he definitely has that middle perspective. So think about that as we begin reading in verse eight. He's looking at the Christians he's writing to.

Concerning this salvation, he turns back to look at the Old Testament, he goes, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours, they searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which even angels long to look. So, Peter's saying, so about this opportunity, you guys had to be born again, the salvation, don't take it for granted, don't take this for granted. I stand here in this middle perspective, he says, don't take this for granted because these guys longed and searched to look for it, look for that. But they couldn't see over that hilltop, they couldn't see over that mountain. Sometimes Paul has shown us that, the mountain of prophecy, that you just can't see past when Jesus was to be revealed. But they understood that they were serving a new dispensation of grace, and that is you, so live it up, don't take this for granted. And it made me think of Simeon, I don't know why, but I just wanted to read this little passage from in Luke when Jesus, Mary and Joseph bring Jesus into the temple to be circumcised. And there's Simeon, who I feel like has a really similar heart to Peter, and he takes the child, he takes and he holds Jesus in his arms. And then he says, sovereign Lord, as you have promised, now dismiss your servant in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you've prepared in the sight of all people. A light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel. I just love his heart, and I wanted to read that. Well, as we go on, we're gonna really move to some practical application now, in these next verses, and verse 13 is my memory verse for this week. It says, therefore, preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Again, the question for this morning is, what do we do while we're waiting, okay? What do we set our hope on? In verse 13 here, we have the third time that we're reminded of this word that points to the future, revelation or revealed, verses 5, 7, and 13. The revelation of Jesus Christ, the marriage, we are betrothed to the bridegroom, right, and we have the deposit guaranteeing our future inheritance. We fully belong to the kingdom, and yet we wait, and we dwell in this hostile world, and we're waiting for that revelation. And so, what Peter is saying here is, while you wait, take this business of your minds seriously. Take this seriously. He says, the King James says, gird up the loins of your minds. And you may know, in a culture that wore long ankle length robes, to be active and do anything, you would have to hike them up, tie them up so that you suddenly had shorts, and now you can be active. And our minds should be actively engaged, not passive. So he says, prepare your minds for action. This verse is why I chose that our project, this session, should be memorizing a verse every week. If you're like me, my guess is 90% of us, if we memorize one verse every week, eight verses, for 90% of us, that's eight more verses than we were going to memorize during this session, right? So I'm the one, like Peter, that gets to kind of be the cheerleader, the coach here, and say, hey, prepare your minds for action. Let's work on our minds. Let's do something with our minds. And of course, there's a lot more complexity than just that. But, Let's read verse 14. And we're moving into the holiness section with verse 14.

And this gives us the inkling that some of these people actually were Gentiles. Because if they were all Jews, there shouldn't have been really a former ignorance, like they should have known the scriptures. But the listeners to this letter were made up of both Jew and Gentile. But it also reminds us when it says, don't be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. Don't, don't, make a clean break. If you are born again, if you are being born again, make a break with the things that are in your past, that former ignorance that you walked in. It's time to make a break with that is what he's saying. But as you are called to be holy, you also be holy in all of your conduct. And then we have a nod toward the Jewish Christians because they would have known this phrase buried in their hearts since it is written, you shall be holy for I am holy. Again, quoting the Old Testament. So this is a good time for us to ask the question, what does it mean to be holy? That's a really good question. And in its base form, holy means to be separate, to be set apart. Vine's dictionary gives us some understanding that I think really helps. When applied to God, holiness refers to his purity, his majesty, his glory, his transcendence, how above and separate from his creation he is. He is holy, right? Separated from his creation. When it is applied to men, it means for us to be set apart and separated from our original inheritance, from this world that we were born into. And the sin that prevails in the world. And it's often presented, and this is from Vine's dictionary, this phrase, often presented in a way that involves divine, here it is, demands upon the conduct of believers, or called out ones. Demands upon our conduct. Now let's be clear, we understand, right, that God does not make demands upon people's conduct so that they'll be holy, so that he'll like them. So that somehow they'll be like in his good graces, that is not the point at all. This is talking again to those who are born again, those who are in the kingdom, those who are in the family, they're his kids. They've made a choice, we've made a choice to be his kids. Well now he says, now you're in, you're in my family, be holy just as I'm holy. So now he makes demands upon our conduct. And you know, this isn't something that our culture likes us to, that our culture really doesn't want to see us make accommodations or adjustments to our lifestyle. In fact, even in Christian culture, I think you would not be surprised at all to hear the kind of philosophy. It's like, God's gonna have to take me just the way I am, right? That's neither wise nor biblical, as we can see here. That is not a biblical thinking. While we wait, God wants us to grow in our faith, to grow in our holiness. So I thought it would be wise for us to get an understanding of holiness from a woman who really endured the kinds of trials that we have talked about this morning, she passed through the water and through the fire when her young husband, who went to approach people, people group that they were trying to share the gospel with and was murdered by those people they were sharing the gospel with. And of course, I'm talking about Elizabeth Elliott. This is what she says about holiness in an essay entitled, What Does It Mean to be Holy? She wrote, it means, first of all, to be set apart. As the vessels in the tabernacle were set apart, they were consecrated from ordinary vessels. For us to be holy means to will to do God's will. It means sacrifice. The offering up of my own will, which she says parenthetically, which sometimes seems to me to be an impossibility, and the acceptance of his. Does that not sound like prepare your minds for action? To will to do his will? She goes on to say, there is an active practice of holiness as we carry out for the glory of God, the ordinary duties of each day. Faithfully fulfilling the responsibilities given us. We can relate to that. She says the passive practice consists in loving acceptance of the unexpected. Be it welcome or unwelcome. Remembering that we have a wise and sovereign Lord who works in mysterious ways and is never taken by surprise. Isn't that beautiful? Verse 17 goes on to explain our motivation and our inspiration to be holy. Peter says, and if you call on him as father, by the way, who judges impartially according to each one's deeds. If you call on him, then conduct yourselves with fear. out the time of your exile. So our motivation to live in holy reverence is because our father is also our judge. And our lifestyle, our conduct, proves our faith. Well, the next is inspiration for something we may know but we forget. And it starts off saying, knowing that you were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. Knowing that, that it's like a lamb without blemish or spot. And speaking of Christ, he was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but he was made manifest in these last times for the sake of you, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. All right, very quickly we're just going to touch on the last section we had prepared for this morning, which is humility, and we just have three verses left in our lesson. And so we are reminded that we are the called out ones, we are called to be separate, to be set apart, but we're called to be separate together. We don't live in isolation from one another. God's intention is for us to fit together to make a kingdom, to form that temple that he'll go on to talk about. And chapter two expresses a lot more of this. So this is kind of opening the door for you to go on in your study. But we need to understand that this is like right here at the beginning of the letter, this is important to the Lord. When I thought of this concept that we are to be separate from the world, separate together, it reminded me of a 90s Christian group that was called Altogether Separate. So I had to go to my big, I still have a big rack of CDs, and this is how OCD I am. They are in alphabetical order. But I'm an empty nester, so. But anyway, so it's really easy to find their CD, Altogether Separate was the first one. And I just remembered, you know, my older kids really listening to this music, and anyway, the title of the group just gripped my heart. And they have a song on there, it's called It Will Be Worth It All. And I thought, oh, yeah, that's just what we're talking about here. But anyway, so we're talking about this separate together thing. Verse 22 says, having purified your souls by your obedience to truth. So we've purposefully set our hearts to become holy as he is holy. For a sincere, look at these two phrases, brotherly love. Love one another earnestly now from that pure heart. Since you've been born again, not of a perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God. All those two phrases here, love one another earnestly. And brotherly love, they pertain to choices, not feelings. You know that, right? It is a choice that we make of how we relate to one another while we are waiting. And verse 24, which is a quote from Isaiah 40, gives us a couple aspects of humility for us to think about, because we're going to spend the next couple chapters on the concept of humility. But as we look at this quote, the obvious contrast is going to be, comparison and contrast, is our humility toward God. Okay, well, let me just read it, verse 24. It says,

And so that reality of our humility toward God, how different, how separate we are from Him. But yet, also this other layer, this first word that we see in here that says, all, all flesh is like grass. We lose a grip on that. I think I do anyway. To look at that and say from the night janitor at Albertson's to Mr. Obama, you know, to the shy girl in ninth grade English, to the Dalai Lama and the Pope, all flesh is grass. God has created us the same. And it reminds us, this verse reminds us that we should not think too highly of ourselves or too lowly of ourselves. And we'll talk a lot about that in the coming chapters. And it reminds us that life is very short. Some of that grass I think Peter was talking about, it was like the wildflowers we see in our road ditches. They last for about a day or three, and then they're gone in comparison. So I just want to end with this. Those of us who are waiting, we are of the same family. And we have received a command, not just here but elsewhere in scripture, to love one another deeply and sincerely from the heart. It is a choice. It is not always easy. But it's important to God. And he has actually given us the capacity to do this. Because that mark we talked about, that deposit he gave us, that is the helper, the Holy Spirit who will help us do the things that we feel like we can't do. And that last verse says, and this word is the good news that was preached to you. Lord God, we just thank you so much as we look through this, Lord, we can't help but just praise you. Thank you, Lord, that you have revealed to us this good news and given us the opportunity to choose a new inheritance and the hope that we have in that. And Lord, as we've talked about, all these trials that we go through, we're promised this is just the way it's going to be because we're waiting for you, we're left in this hostile world. Lord, you know how difficult it is for us to process those things. But we ask for your help. Lord, help us to process the difficulties of life. Lord, help us to love one another sincerely and deeply. We just need your help. We ask you for this and we rest in your promises that if we ask that you will do that, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.