The Bible Breakdown

1 Peter 1: A Living Hope

• Brandon Cannon • Episode 646

Share episode
Speaker 1:

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown podcast with your host, pastor Brandon, today. 1 Peter, chapter 1. And today's title is A Living Hope. A Living Hope. I cannot wait to get into this book of the Bible. And so, if you want to get your Bibles out with me and want to turn to 1 Peter, chapter 1, while you're doing that, if you're new here, make sure you go to the YouTube channel and you like, share and subscribe to the YouTube channel. Also, leave us a five-star review on the podcast it really helps us out and make sure you're joining the rest of us at the Bible Breakdown Discussion on Facebook.

Speaker 1:

The more we dig, the more we find, and they're doing an amazing job, as that team is continuing to grow and develop and they're awesome, so make sure you're going there. Like I said, I want you to open up with me to 1 Peter, chapter 1. And while you're doing that, as always before we jump into a book of the Bible, I want to give you a little bit of an overview and a way for you to kind of orient yourself with what we call real space. Just put ourselves back during the time that the Bible was written, because the Bible wasn't written to us. It was written for us. What I mean by that is is when first Peter was written, the Holy Spirit inspired the apostle Peter to write it to a specific group of people. However, the Holy Spirit knew that this was going to continue on, so it was written for our benefit, but it was written to a particular group of people, so putting ourself in there, it's like reading the other half of the letter so we're able to understand, and so you're getting that ready. I want to tell you about a resource real fast, and I like to do these resources. I don't do near as much as I should, but if you're looking at this on YouTube, you can see this on YouTube, you can see this, but if you're listening to it on the podcast, this is a really thick Bible and it is called the NIV Cultural Background Study Bible. Now, because, like I was saying, what we want to do is put ourselves back in the context in which the Bible was written, so that we understand things. There's so many things that we don't understand about the Bible that it is not because the Bible is hard, it's because the context has now shifted. You know, words shift even within just a few years. Imagine 2,000 years. You know customs and different things, and so the NIV Cultural Background Study Bible is really really good at giving you some cultural context to kind of put you back in there. So it's a really really good resource, highly recommended.

Speaker 1:

That being said, let's talk about some of the things going on around 1 Peter Now. First of all, let's do the who, what, the where, the when all that good stuff and the theme, the overall theme of 1 Peter, as he is writing to the church at the time, is Christ is our living hope, same as the title today Christ is our living hope. The key verse that we're going to be saying at the end of every chapter, which is also kind of a memory verse for us, is going to come out of the very first chapter, and I think of this as the overall scripture that could sum up the entire book. And this one is going to be 1 Peter 1, verses 3 and 4, and it says All praise to God and it is by his great mercy that we have been born again. Now we live with great expectation. Another translation says a living hope, and we have a priceless inheritance, and so the apostle Peter is reminding them to look at what lies ahead and we're going to find out why in just a second. So who wrote it?

Speaker 1:

It is very widely understood that it is truly written by the apostle Peter. Now, this is the Peter right, the one who was called by Jesus to leave his boat, come follow him. He followed Jesus for three and a half years, was kind of the spokesman, front runner of the different disciples. He's the one who denied Jesus three times and then also he is the one who came back to Jesus and in Acts, chapter two, he was the one to stand up as a spokesman for the disciples and spread the gospel. 5,000 people were saved. It just kept going and kept going and really the first half of the book of Acts is a story of what was going on with Peter. Well, after about the first half it transitions over to Paul and there's reasons for that. And if you want to hear more about that, go back and look at where we have talked about Acts and you can understand why it transitioned to Paul.

Speaker 1:

But many people have asked well, what happened to Peter after about the halfway through? Did he die then? No, he didn't actually die at that point. What happened to Peter after that is he began to go out and spread the gospel. One of the main places he went to was the city of Rome. If you think about it, that's exactly what Peter would do. He was the guy who was willing to stand up in front of everybody and tell them exactly what he thought about, what they had done to Jesus, you know, after the Holy Spirit came. Well, he's going right to the epicenter. You know, the largest city of the time. I mean, he's going right to the place and he starts spreading the gospel.

Speaker 1:

Here's one of the challenges, though, is Peter was a Galilean fisherman, which meant he didn't have some of the education that some had Now, because Rome ruled the world. He would have known how to speak, most likely just rudimentary Greek, but in order to speak to these people in Rome, he needed someone who was very fluid but also high Greek, and so he took with him a young man by the name of John Mark, and he went and he would preach Peter would preach the sermons in the city of Rome and spread the gospel, and Mark would interpret these stories. Eventually, mark would write down all these stories, and so that's why a lot of people consider Peter to be the ghost, or the one, mark was the ghost writer for Peter and we now have the gospel of Mark. And it's really interesting too, because you can see some places where the author in Mark is a lot kinder to Peter in some places, and it's probably because Peter was kind of—he wasn't lying, but he just may have— left out the part where he fell in the water when he's walking on water and some of that kind of stuff, right, but that's what Peter is doing, because he's in the city of Rome spending a lot of time spreading the gospel, and that is when this letter is written.

Speaker 1:

At about 60 to 64 AD, he is in Rome and he is writing to some of the local provinces outside the city of Rome and sharing with them what he is experiencing in Rome and what they need to know about what's going on. Well, what's going on? What is going on is they need to have hope and endurance because suffering and persecution has begun. Now, at that time, get a little closer. Probably talking between 60 and 63 AD, the people had started hearing about Jesus. They started coming to Jesus. A church had started with Priscilla and Aquila. Possibly Peter had something to do with it.

Speaker 1:

Churches started and it was starting to get into the different areas and really at that time Christianity was considered kind of a nuisance. You see, in the Roman world they had a pantheon of gods, different gods for different things, right, and so they would have had little problem with adding another god to the mix. The problem was with Christians, is they said no, there is only one God and his name is Jesus. Well, that didn't really sit well with everybody else, because that pretty much universally offended everybody, and so at this point it hasn't really gotten to violence in a kind of a universal way. There's violence in different places, yes, but mostly in the city of Rome. It's just an undergirding kind of we're not going to associate with you anymore, but they can see it starting to ramp up.

Speaker 1:

And so, as Peter is seeing this and as he sees what's coming, he is warning the surrounding areas what's starting to happen in Rome and is continuing to happen out there, and he is telling them, when persecution comes, we have to keep our eyes on the prize and remember the hope and the endurance that we have. And what he doesn't know yet. But what's going to happen is in 64 AD, while Nero is emperor, rome burns. And as Rome burns, nero blames the Christians, even though they had nothing to do with it, and by blaming them. That's when persecution really starts to fall, and we're going to get into that when we get into 2, peter. But first, now we have context. He's writing through the areas and he's saying, hey, persecution is ramping up, but I got a big idea for you. Now we can see what this is all about.

Speaker 1:

Also, it is thought by some that Peter may have dictated this to somebody else and they wrote it down because of the style of it. It was very high, very classical Greek, very, very good, and so it could have been written down by John Mark as well. Might have even been written by Luke, who wrote the gospel Luke. We're not sure, but we do know that Peter was the voice that spoke this. And so now that we got this, we're ready to go.

Speaker 1:

Let's jump into this idea of the first chapter of Peter. First Peter, chapter one you ready, here we go. Verse one says this this is the letter from Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, and I am writing to God's people who are living as foreigners in the provinces of Pontus, galatia, Cappadocia, asia and Bithynia. God, the Father, who knew you and chose you long ago, and his spirit has made you holy. As a result, you have obeyed him and have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ. May God give you more and more grace and peace. So, first of all, if you remember from our past discussions, there was a generalized Roman greeting. That was basically their way of saying what's up, and that's what you just saw in the first two verses. That is a very flowery way of Peter saying man, we are all Christians, we're excited, let's jump in. All right. So here we go, and he's going to start off with talking about that eternal hope.

Speaker 1:

Verse 3,. All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation. We have a priceless inheritance, an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay, and through your faith, god is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see. Now pause. So once again, what he is saying is is that, don't forget, god has saved you because of your hope in Jesus Christ, and that salvation is not protected by you, it's protected by God. He's reminding them that God is holding them and God is keeping them, and that nothing that happens around them can stop it. That's amazing. Let's keep going.

Speaker 1:

Verse six so truly be glad. There is a wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. Now pause again. Remember how he is saying that the trials you're going through it's like a fire, and what it does is it actually purifies gold. Now, what he's talking about is how goldsmiths, and just smiths in general, what they would do to get impurities out of a precious metal like gold is they would put it into the fire. And by putting it into a fire, what would happen is the impurities would start to rise to the top and they would skim it off. It didn't actually destroy the gold, it purified it. And he was saying is that the persecution and the difficulties that we are going through right now, we shouldn't look at them as bad, but look at them as an opportunity for God to do great things through us. All right, let's keep going.

Speaker 1:

Verse 8, you love him, even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy. The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your own souls. This salvation was something even the prophets wanted to know more about. When they prophesied about this gracious salvation prepared for you, they wondered what time or situation the spirit of Christ within them was talking about when he told them in advance about Christ's suffering and his great glory. Afterward, they were told that their message were not for themselves but for you. And now this good news has been announced to you by those who preached in the power of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. It is all so wonderful that even the angels are eagerly watching these things happen. A pause you ever thought about that before?

Speaker 1:

Think about the fact for a moment that angels have existed since the beginning of time. We have no direct idea of when they were created, but most scholars believe. And when the Bible says in the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth. And then it says and the earth was formless and void. Right there during that time frame is when a lot of people think that it's in there, when Jesus? Well, you could say Jesus, but God, father, son, holy Spirit, created angels really long time and they didn't know the full plan of God. But when they see the plan of God and you imagine them seeing God the Father, god the Son, god the Holy Spirit, they're together. And then at some point, god the Son, the Logos of God, coming to earth and being born, they're seeing oh, this is a fulfillment of all that prophecy. And then they see him on the cross and you imagine them going. Why is he there? And then they see him rise from the dead. And all this they are seeing and they're just as amazed as we are, because only God knew his full plan. That's why I love when Ephesians says that we are the masterpiece of God and you imagine that all of heaven's angels and all of hell's demons look on us and are amazed at the work of art God makes in our life, that even the angels are amazed by what's going on.

Speaker 1:

Let's keep going Verse 13. So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. So you must live as God's obedient children. Don't slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn't know any better then, but now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God, who chose you, is holy, for the scriptures say you must be holy because I am holy, and remember verse 17, that the heavenly father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do.

Speaker 1:

You must live in reverent fear of him during your time here as temporary residents of him, during your time here as temporary residents, for you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors, and it was not paid by mere gold or silver, which loses their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now, in these last days, he is revealed for your sake, though. Through Christ, you have come to trust in God and you have placed your faith and hope in God, because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory. Wow, verse 22,. He were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, and so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply, with all your heart, for you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal living word of God. As the scriptures say, people are like grass, their beauty is like a flower in the field the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord remains forever, and that word is the good news that was preached to you. Wow, do you know one of the things that I really grapple with, and I don't have a really good explanation for this, so I'd love to hear in the comments below how you grapple with this and also on the devotion that was going to happen today. I'd love to hear that in the comments.

Speaker 1:

But I heard a philosopher one time, a Christian philosopher, say that when we give our lives to Christ, we don't inherit eternal life when we die. But he said, the moment that we are born again, at that moment we are born again and so we are born, so we don't get born into eternal life when we die. In other words, he says eternity begins the moment we receive Christ, that death becomes the transition point. At that moment and he wasn't being like weird, you know he was saying like we're going to die. He said the Bible says it's appointed unto man once to die, he said, but instead of that being a final death, and then eternity begins. He said eternity begins then. And so he's talking about how we're living in eternity right now. And that's what Jesus was saying to us through the Apostle Peter when he is saying your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal living word of God and when you think about it, we will live with God in heaven forever.

Speaker 1:

And CS Lewis calls it the eternal now. That's what he thinks of when he thinks of eternity. Because that's really hard. If you really think about it, we live with God and there is no more time. We step out of time and space. That's what eternity is. And when we think about it, that's impossible to get our mind around because our minds are finite. But CS Lewis calls it the eternal now or the eternal present moment. If you think about it, if you think about the moment you're in. Almost as soon as you think about it it's past, so it's really hard to do. You think about it in the moment and every moment is that moment. That's what eternity feels like, so you no longer have a concept of time, and people who say, well, I don't know if I'd want to live for eternity because eventually wouldn't I get bored? Well, if you think about it, do you ever get bored in the present? No, you get bored when you experience the present for too long and you go okay, too much time has passed, but time doesn't pass anymore. You're in the moment forever. So when you feel joy, you feel joy forever. You feel love. You feel love forever. It's just, it's all. It is a moment that lasts forever, and what God's word is saying is is that before you found Christ, you didn't have that to look forward to in eternity, but now you have a living hope, a hope that will last for all of eternity. That moment when you know everything's going to be okay. It reminds me of this.

Speaker 1:

I remember one time when my wife and I had first gotten married and we were having some trouble paying our bills and we did not know what we were going to do. We were going to try to, we were trying to figure it out. It wasn't going to happen, just all of that. And as we were trying to figure it out, we were trying to figure it out. It wasn't going to happen. Just all of that. And as we were trying to figure it out, we were able to get some things worked out. I was going to work some overtime and all of this, and then we had a friend come to us and say hey, you know what? I never gave you your Christmas or your your wedding gift. I want to give you some money. And they gave us some money and it was exactly what we needed to make it, from where we had bills until I was going to get paid again.

Speaker 1:

And that moment of relief, just that hope, that sigh of the soul we're going to be okay now. That moment was wonderful, just the moment of it's going to be okay. That's what God is talking about when he's talking about a living, eternal hope. It is a sigh of the soul it's going to be okay now, but it lasts for eternity. That eternal inheritance where we are living with Christ and everything is going to be okay. That is just a glimpse of what's waiting for us in heaven, and the reason why the apostle Peter is saying this is he's saying because in this life we're going to have the opposite. In this life there's going to be moments where we don't feel like that, in the moment it's okay or in the moment everything feels all right. But he's saying if we get our minds on eternity, it tends to put everything else in perspective.

Speaker 1:

I want to ask you this question as we end this very long podcast episode. That is this what does it mean to you to know that you have an eternal hope? What would it look like today if you thought of all your 99 problems but you realized Jesus isn't one of them? Thought of all your 99 problems but you realize Jesus isn't one of them, and you took a moment and you just thought about what it will be like to be in heaven with God forever? Would that make your problems go away? They're still problems, they're still real, but put them in perspective that a hundred years from now will you even be thinking about the same thing? And you know, even a month from now would you care about what's bothering you today? But in the light of eternity, we have a living hope and I want you to think on that today and be encouraged that God is doing more than we realize and then, when all this is over, we get him forever.

Speaker 1:

Let's pray together right now, god. Thank you so much that you are our living hope that, god, we have trouble in this world. But not only have you already overcome this world, you've overcome tomorrow and every day after that. Lord, I pray as we go through this wonderful book of the Bible, you'll help us to realize that you are our living hope and that, lord, as we lean into you more, we'll see your goodness in all things. In Jesus' name, we pray, amen, amen. Well, god's word says in 1 Peter 1, I are all praise to God. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again. Now we live with great expectation and we have a priceless inheritance. This is my hope for any one of you who are struggling. You're dealing with difficulty. That 1 Peter will bring you a hope that will last forever. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for 1 Peter, chapter two.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Brandon Cannon

Host