Charles Kuralt, in his travels across the United States, found what looked like a Christmas tree growing in the most unlikely place in the Rockies .

"Trees need good soil and good weather and up here there's no soil and terrible weather," Kuralt notes.  "Nothing can live up here and certainly not trees.  That's why the tree is a kind of miracle."

On a barren stretch of U.S. 50, without another tree in sight, grows this Juniper tree.  "Nobody remembers who put the first Christmas ornament on it -- some whimsical motorist of years ago.  From that day to this, the tree has been redecorated each year.  Nobody knows who does it.  But each year by Christmas Day, the tree has become a Christmas tree.

"The tree, which has no business growing here at all, has survived against all the odds."  People who live miles away in all directions know and love the tree.  "Just looking at it makes you think about how unexpected life on earth can be.  The tree is so lonely and so brave that it seems to offer courage to those who pass it -- and a message.  It is the Christmas message: that there is life and hope even in a rough world." (3)  Isaiah wrote, "The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom."[1]

Our passage today is about just that unexpected hope.  Today we begin a study of Peter’s first epistle.  And we begin in chapter one.

1 Peter 1:1-12 (ESV)
¹ Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, ² 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.

³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, ⁵ who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶ In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, ⁷ so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. ⁸ Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, ⁹ obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. ^[2]

He begins this letter with an identification of those to whom it is written.  He calls them “elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, ² 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:” These “elect exiles” or “chosen pilgrims” are those chosen “according to the foreknowledge of God.”  In the Greek text the word elect or chosen is an adjective directly modifying the noun “strangers” which means pilgrims or transients.  These were displaced people, many Jewish Christians, who were not only looking for a real home in heaven, but also somewhat homeless here on earth.  This short letter was written to the dispersed Christians who were facing the persecution begun by Nero in 64AD.  Most scholars believe this letter was written before the official persecution, when Christians were facing local hostility and the Roman Government was still marginally just in dealing with the persecution.  Peter is preparing them for the things to come as well as helping them simply cope with today by placing their hope in God.  Today we will examine the hope Peter offers that we will also be encouraged.

I.      We hope in heaven

A.   Biblical hope is full assurance

B.   Biblical hope is in God’s power

 

II.   We Hope in trials

What makes thriller series so popular on TV?  You know, the ones where the hero is caught every week in an impossible situation and seems there is no way out?  What keeps people tuning in?  It is the same in literature.  Write a series of books, each one with some resolution, but the final resolution is left open.  People tune in or keep reading because we want to know the ending.  How will good triumph over evil, or will it?  I have endured some really bad movies, hoping for an ending that had some resolution only to find it left things hopeless.  Sometimes our lives feel like that.  We wonder when God is gonna swoop in and fix things.  We wonder when we will stop hurting.  We wonder when we will laugh again and really feel it or when we will just feel happy. 

The answer is God. Peter makes it plain that Christian distress only happens if God wills it. For example, in 3:17 he says, "It is better, if God should will it so, that you suffer for doing what is right rather than for doing what is wrong." You might suffer for doing what is right; you might not. The ultimate choice is God's. "If God should will it so," we will or we won't. Or again in 4:19 he says, "Let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right."

In other words, Peter is teaching that the sovereign will of God governs all the distresses that happen to us and, therefore the design in them is not ultimately the design of evil men or the design of Satan (which are real enough!), but is a design of God.

So when Peter says in verse 6, "If necessary, you have been distressed by various trials," he means, "If God deems it necessary." [4]

So That…your faith may result in…

Now I know that this raises a painful and troubling question. We are not playing games here. We are talking about your and my real life this very day. Does God will the break up of your marriage? Does God will your cancer, your homosexual orientation, the rebellion of your child, the loss of your job, the threatening chaos in Russia and Congo and Somalia and Guinea ? I will give you my answer, which I believe to be the biblical one, based on texts like 1 Peter 3:17 and 4:19.

The answer is No, God does not will it, and Yes, he does. No, in the sense that he does not delight in pain for its own sake; he does not command sin or approve of sinning. But Yes, he does will that these things be, in the sense that he could prevent any of those things but sometimes does not, but rather guides them, because of higher designs than the destructiveness of sin or the deceitfulness of Satan or the painfulness of suffering.

When Christians suffer for doing right, sin is happening to them. But 1 Peter 3:17 says that sometimes God wills that this happen. He does not endorse or approve sinning, but he can and does will that sinful acts come about for his own holy designs. When Christ was murdered on the cross, it was sin, but God willed that it happen: "It was the will of the Lord to bruise him" (Isaiah 53:10). And by that will we are saved. [5]

III.We hope in Jesus

Samuel Taylor Coleridge said that "Hope without an object cannot live."  The ultimate object of our living hope is not heaven, not in our perfection through trials, not in us at all but our hope is in Jesus.

We become what we desire, what we want. 

The author and preacher Tony Campolo delivers a stirring sermon adapted from an elderly black pastor at his church in Philadelphia . "It's Friday, but Sunday's Comin'" is the title of the sermon, and once you know the title you know the whole sermon. In a cadence that increases in tempo and in volume, Campolo contrasts how the world looked on Friday--when the forces of evil won over the forces of good, when every friend and disciple fled in fear, when the Son of God died on a cross--with how it looked on Easter Sunday. The disciples who lived through both days, Friday and Sunday, learned that when God seems most absent he may be closest of all; when God looks most powerless he may be most powerful; when God looks most dead he may be coming back to life. They learned never to count God out.

Campolo's sermon skips one day, though. The other two days, Good Friday and Easter Sunday, are perhaps the most significant days on the entire church calendar, and yet, in a real sense, we live our lives on Saturday, the day in between. Can we trust that God can make something holy and beautiful and good out of a world that includes Bosnia and Rwanda and inner-city ghettoes in the richest nation on earth? Human history grinds on, between the time of promise and fulfillment. It's Saturday on planet Earth; will Sunday ever come?

Perhaps that is why the authors of the Gospels devoted so much more space to Jesus' last week than to the several weeks when he was making resurrection appearances. They knew that the history to follow would often resemble Saturday, the in-between day, more than Sunday, the day of rejoicing. It is a good thing to remember that in the cosmic drama, we live out our days on:

Saturday, the day with no name.[7]

Fanny Crosby was prob­ab­ly the most pro­lif­ic hymn­ist in his­to­ry. Though blind­ed by an in­com­pe­tent doc­tor at six weeks of age, she wrote over 8,000 hymns. About her blind­ness, she said:

In her life­time, Fan­ny Cros­by was one of the best known wo­men in the Unit­ed States . To this day, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of Amer­i­can hymn­als con­tain her work.[9]