And for our Old Testament reading, please turn to the book of Psalms and to Psalm number 33. And the reading will be verses 12 through 22. Psalm 33, verses 12 through 22. Listen to this. This is the very word of God. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage. The Lord looks down from heaven. He sees all the children of man. From where he sits enthroned, he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth. He who fashions the hearts of them all and observes all their deeds.
The king is not saved by his great army. A warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a false hope for salvation, and by its great strength it cannot rescue. Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love that he may deliver their soul from death and keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and shield. For our heart is glad in him because we trust in his holy name. Let your steadfast love, oh Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in you.
And now for our New Testament reading, please turn to the first letter of the Apostle Peter. We’ll take a one week break from our series through Luke. And on this Easter Sunday, we’ll have a message particularly focused on resurrection. And our text comes from First Peter chapter one, and it will be verses three through five. First Peter one, three through five.
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, 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 to be revealed, ready to be revealed in the last time. That’s the reading of God’s word.
Let’s pray for His blessing upon His word to us. Father, we’ve read that a war horse is a false hope for salvation. Those who put their hopes in other things will find that their hopes were not just, were not well founded. But we thank you that we have great hope in Christ Jesus and particularly in his resurrection. And so we pray you’d remind us of these things, speak to our hearts, words of comfort and hope and joy as we reflect on Christ’s resurrection and what it means for us. We pray all these things in his name. Amen.
I was raised in a Christian home. I was brought up in the church, and those are wonderful privileges and blessings for which I’m very, very thankful to this day, and actually increasingly thankful as I grow older. And my parents always saw to it that even if we were traveling, on the Lord’s Day, we found an assembly of God’s people to meet with. My father was very insistent on that. So insistent, in fact, that even on a fairly recent family vacation, where my family and I, and my sister, and her husband, and their whole family, and my mom and dad were gathered together. We were vacationing, and the vacation spanned over a Lord’s Day.
And in that assembly, there’s 12 of us, three generations, 12 individuals. And among us, we had not one, but two teaching elders, pastors, and one ruling elder. And I was thinking, you know, we could just have a worship service right here as a family with us. And my dad said, no. No, let’s go find a church to gather with and to worship. And that’s what we did.
And I’m very thankful for that heritage. Although I was raised in the church and knew and understood the basics of the gospel, even from an early age, coming around of Easter Sunday, once again, is a reminder to me that for much of my childhood, if someone had asked me, why is Easter so important?
Why is Christ’s resurrection so important? What does it mean for you? I don’t think I would have been able to articulate a coherent answer. I don’t think I would have been able readily to explain in clear terms why the resurrection of the Lord Jesus was so important for me and for my faith.
What are the things, what are the great things that Christians hold out hope for? We hold out hope for the forgiveness of sins and much of our service already has been sort of centered on that as we confessed our sins to the Lord and we heard words of assurance.
So we hope in that we have our faith. But Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians in chapter 15, if Christ is not raised, then our faith is futile. If Christ is not raised, we are still in our sins and this forgiveness of sins that we cherish and that we thank God for and in which we place such all our hope. We have no forgiveness of sins if Christ isn’t raised. That’s how important the resurrection is.
Now, Peter wrote his letters, this one in particular, he wrote to Christians who are suffering. He wrote to Christians who were suffering because of their faith, Christians who were suffering because they were Christians. And he wrote to encourage them. They needed encouragement. They desperately needed it. And he didn’t encourage them by saying, oh, cheer up. Better days are coming. He didn’t encourage them with anything that this present age had to offer. He reminded them of their hope. He reminded them of their great hope that they have in Christ Jesus, specifically the hope of the resurrection. That’s how he encouraged these brothers and sisters who were suffering.
And what we see in these few short verses from Peter’s letter is that God is to be praised. because he has secured a glorious, eternal inheritance for all who trust in Christ. God is to be praised because he has secured a glorious, eternal inheritance for all who trust in Christ. These are the three points we’ll look at and consider together this morning. First of all, salvation is all of grace. Secondly, Christ’s resurrection guarantees our inheritance. And then finally, the blessings of salvation culminate in the age to come. So firstly, salvation is all of grace.
The blessings that are described in this text proclaim God’s sovereign grace in redemption. And in our circles, we emphasize that. That’s a central point of Presbyterian and Reformed doctrine, that God is sovereign in his grace to sinners. And we see the sovereignty of God in salvation in several aspects, in several parts of our text this morning. First of all, these words, according to his great mercy, according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope.
Now think about what mercy is. Mercy, by definition, is something that’s not deserved. If there’s something you deserve, then it isn’t mercy, it’s something you merit. But mercy, by definition, is something that’s undeserved. And it’s according to God’s great mercy that we have these blessings, the blessing of redemption, the blessing of atonement. If you want to think about, here’s an illustration of what mercy is.
I was stopped by a police officer one morning as I was driving to seminary. fairly early in my first semester as a full-time seminary student, and I got pulled over. And something happened that I was not expecting. The police officer let me off with a warning. That never happens to me. But on this particular occasion, the guy just gave me a warning, wrote out a little. citation and handed it to me and I thanked him. I used that citation as a bookmark throughout all my years in seminary, just to remember that officer and to give thanks for him that I didn’t get a ticket when I deserved a ticket. That’s what I deserved. I deserved to receive a ticket and pay a fine and have points taken off my driver’s license. But what I got was mercy. Paul, of course, makes the case for God’s sovereign mercy in those chapters of Romans, chapters 9, 10, and 11. And he especially nails it down in chapter 9, verses 15 and 16.
He says, for God says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. So the blessings of God’s sovereign grace are expressed in this mercy that he shows for us.
And it’s according to his great mercy that he has caused us to be born again. As the passage goes on to say, so you’ve got his mercy, you’ve got the new birth. And this cause, which is God, he caused us to be born again produces an effect. And God is the cause of the new birth. His sovereignty is highlighted and amplified. The attention that the text brings to God’s sovereign mercy is amplified by the very nature of this effect. He caused us to be born again. And you remember how Nicodemus came to visit the Lord Jesus, came to him by night. He wants to hear more about what Jesus has to say, more about what Jesus’ teaching is all about.
And Jesus says to him, truly, I say to you, you must be born again. You must be born again. He doesn’t say to Nicodemus, truly, truly, I say to you, you must be a better person. Truly, truly, I say to you, you must go on a quest or pilgrimage. You, Nicodemus, must follow these steps in order to see the kingdom of heaven. No. Truly, truly, I say to you, you must be born again.
And that description, that concept can be very easily related back to our first birth, our physical birth, because every one of us here in this room has one thing in common, at least, and that’s we were all born. And another thing related to the fact that we were born is none of us had a single thing to do with the fact that we were born. You didn’t pick the time or the place or the circumstances of your birth. You did not choose your parents. You didn’t get to choose your name. You had nothing to do with any of it. And so it is with our second birth.
It was God’s doing, not ours. And that’s how scripture describes salvation. That’s how the Bible describes redemption. It’s all the work of God. What are some other ways he drives this point home for us in the word? He describes us as people who are dead. people whom he made alive.
We had nothing to do with it. You read that in Ephesians 2. And you think of Ezekiel and that vision in the valley of dry bones. The valley was full of bones and the scripture says they’re very dry. So you’ve got this death to life thing where the dead person can’t do anything to help themselves.
God has to do it. Another thing that Jesus taught, he said, no one can come unto me unless the Father who sent me, and your Bible probably says draws him. And that’s a perfectly good translation, nothing wrong with it at all. No one can come to me, Jesus said, unless the Father who sent me draws him. But that word that our Bibles usually translate, draw, that word doesn’t mean something like kind of a wooing, like, come to me.
He does say that. It’s not my point. He’s not Kind of luring, gently. That’s not the way that word is used in scripture. The word that’s used there, that no one can come unto me unless the Father who sent me draws him, that’s the same word that’s used in John 21, verse 6, when Jesus told the people to cast the net on the other side of the boat, and they’ll have a catch. And it was so full of fish that they could barely haul it in. That’s the word, haul. So next time you spend a little bit of time meditating on that verse, think of it that way.
No one can come to me, Jesus says, unless the Father who sent me hauls him. It’s the word that’s used in the New Testament when Christians are being hauled into the courts by their adversaries, or when Paul and Silas were hauled or dragged before the magistrates in the city of Philippi. No one can come unto me. says the Lord Jesus, unless the Father who sent me drags him. And we’re saved by grace through faith.
And that’s not of ourselves, Ephesians 2.8 says. So you see that salvation is all of grace. And these are truths that many of us embrace and love and have known and studied for a long time, but they’re also truths that are difficult in some respects.
But how do the scripture writers always respond to them? How does Peter begin this passage? He begins with praise. He leads with doxology. And that’s the same response that Paul gives after those three mighty chapters in the book of Romans where he’s talking about God’s sovereignty in redemption.
Chapter 9, chapter 10, chapter 11, when he got to the end, what did he do? How did he respond to it all? This is evidence of God’s glory, evidence of God’s sovereignty, because if I had written those passages, and I hadn’t been carried along by the Holy Spirit like Paul was, I would have gotten to the end of Romans 11, and I would have said, look, now, I know these things are hard to understand, and they may be a little bit difficult. I know these doctrines are kind of prickly, but they’re truth, so you just got to embrace them and believe them. But that’s not how Paul responded.
Paul burst into praise. of Almighty God for his sovereignty in the salvation of sinners. That’s what Jesus did, too, after proclaiming the sovereignty of God and salvation. Matthew 11, 25 and 26, at that time, Jesus declared, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you’ve hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.
Peter and Paul and Jesus himself all understood that without the intervention of Almighty God in the lives of sinners, everyone would reject Him. Everyone would perish. And God would be perfectly just to let us perish. But He didn’t, because He’s a gracious God. And the response should always be, praise be to Him alone. Salvation is all of grace.
Well, secondly, we see in this passage, Christ’s resurrection guarantees our inheritance. That’s why resurrection is so important. That’s why it’s so important for me, why it’s so important for you. You see how the text shows us the means by which we attain the new birth and the grounds for our hope. It’s resurrection. These things are ours through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s only through his resurrection that we can have the new birth. And our hope is founded upon it.
Christ’s resurrection was his victory over sin, his victory over death. victory over the devil. We sang these wonderful themes in our two hymns so far today. 1 Corinthians 15, 54. Speaking of resurrection, it says, when the perishable puts on the imperishable, Then the mortal, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Resurrection was Christ’s victory over death. And Christ has already put on the immortal. He already has his resurrection body. He appeared to his disciples in that resurrection body.
He’s already conquered our enemies and yours. And you and I share in that victory. It’s ours as well, through him. As 1 Corinthians 15 goes on to say, thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, Christ died, and he was raised. We profess these things in our creeds. And his death and his resurrection had distinct results.
Listen to Romans 4.25. It says Christ was delivered up for our trespasses and he was raised for our justification. In other words, he died to eliminate our sin problem because he paid the penalty. He suffered the penalty and the consequences of our sin, but he was raised for our justification. So through that being raised up, that our inheritance is guaranteed.
And the other thing about Christ’s resurrection that’s so important for you and for me is that the power by which Christ was raised from the dead is at work in every single person who has put their trust in Christ. Everyone who has been born again to this living hope has the same power working in them. That’s the power that caused you to be born again. That’s the power that enables you to live the Christian life day after day. And it’s the same power. that matchless, infinite power that raised Jesus from the dead.
And so Paul wrote in Romans 8.11, if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. One day you’re gonna come out of the grave just as Jesus did, triumphant. sinless, immortal, because of that same resurrection power. So Christ’s resurrection was his victory, but it was also a testimony. It was proof that his perfect life and his sacrificial death were acceptable to God, acceptable to his Father. and proof and testimony that what Jesus did by dying on the cross and being raised accomplished God’s intent.
The text that we’re looking at this morning focuses on two specific blessings of the new birth. These are things, they’re founded in Christ’s resurrection and they grow out of and they are blessings of the new birth. And they are as follows, a living hope, and an inheritance. A living hope and an inheritance. Now, you might ask, why is it described as a living hope? Some versions use the word lively. It’s a lively hope.
And that just means that it’s contrasted with a false hope. Remember our passage from the Psalms that we read. A man can’t deliver, a king can’t deliver, a war horse can’t deliver, even by its great strength. If you’re hoping, if someone’s putting their hope in such things, finite things, perishable things, their hope is false. Their hope is empty. But a living hope is one that is secured. A living hope is one that is guaranteed by God. Now, if you’ve ever done an in-depth study of 1 Peter, you know that hope is a really basic theme, a central theme in 1 Peter. And it’s also a basic element of the gospel itself.
So we’re talking about gospel hope here. You know, we use the word hope in a lot of different ways. And you even see it used in different ways in Scripture as well. But, you know, gospel hope is not the kind of hope that we’re referring to when we say something like, you know, I hope there’s a little bit of that really yummy dessert left when I finally get through the line at the fellowship meal. Or I hope my team wins the championship. These are things we desire. Things we expect, perhaps, but things we don’t have any guarantee of. Gospel hope is different. Gospel hope is a deeply seated assurance. Gospel hope is a conviction of something. We could describe it as faith directed toward the future. We have this living hope because we’ve received the new birth.
But in addition to living hope and associated with that, we also have an inheritance. And it’s not like a human inheritance. Have you ever inherited something from a relative or loved one who passed away? We have relations who leave us things in their wills. And when they die, we inherit. But there’s some things about earthly inheritances, things that they all have in common, really. Doesn’t matter whether you’re the heir of an ordinary person or whether you’re the heir of somebody like Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos. Earthly inheritances are uncertain.
They’re so uncertain that Proverbs even says that wealth can sprout wings. can fly away. The stock market can crash. You can be written out of someone’s will. Someone can disinherit you. There’s no guarantee. Earthly inheritances are uncertain. Secondly, they’re unsatisfying. I read that Bill Gates, although his net worth is maybe a couple of hundred billion dollars, he’s decided that in his will, his three children are each only going to get $1 billion. Poor things. Deprived.
But even that, if you had a billion-dollar inheritance, do you think that would really satisfy you? And I know there are people who say, oh, yeah, I could be pretty happy with a billion dollars. But why is it that oftentimes wealthy people are some of the most unhappy of all, some of the most dissatisfied? Well, if they’re trying to find their satisfaction in things and in wealth, they’re not going to.
Those things can’t satisfy. So earthly inheritances are uncertain, they’re unsatisfying, and they’re temporary. Because if not sooner, we’ve got to part with everything at death. Nothing that you inherit in this present life is going to stay with you. And in contrast with all that, here we have spelled out for us in our text today the excellence of the Christian’s divine inheritance.
How is it described? First of all, it’s imperishable, imperishable, or it can be translated incorruptible. It’s never going to go bad. Secondly, it’s undefiled. It’s an inheritance that’s pure. an inheritance that’s holy. And it’s bound up in our glorification because when we when we reach that state of glory, we’ll be in a state of sinless perfection, there won’t be any corruption whatsoever. Any defilement of any kind to our inheritance in glory.
And then finally, it’s unfading, unfading, it never gets old. Never wears out. Have you ever had a favorite pair of shoes or some other clothing article that you really loved and you wore it all the time and it’s so comfortable, but then it just wore out. Your inheritance in heaven is never going to wear out. Used to love to listen to records, these LPs. I spent hours and hours just listening to my music. Thing is, LPs wear out. Cassette tapes wear out.
Your inheritance doesn’t wear out. It’s unfading. And not only will it in itself wear out, but it will never, listen to this, think about this, your inheritance in glory will never grow less delightful with time. It will never grow less delightful with use.
Have you had a favorite food? It was all, you know, for years and years it was your favorite thing to eat, but then finally one day you said, you know, this just doesn’t do it for me anymore. I’m just grown tired of it. Or just things you used to love to do that don’t mean much to you any longer. Your inheritance in glory will never be like that. It will never grow old. It will never fade. That is the Christian’s inheritance and it is guaranteed by Christ’s resurrection. for each of us. But then finally, the blessings of salvation culminate in the age to come. Your inheritance, the text says, is kept in heaven for you.
And that word kept means it’s held secure. It’s held in a secure state. You know that. Keep, by the way, can be a verb. You keep something. But a keep can be a noun as well. So in a castle, the inner protected place was called the keep. And if you’re under siege and the enemy breaks through the outer wall, you go into the keep. Because it’s a place of security, you hope.
Your inheritance is kept in heaven for you. And that verb tense in the Greek is such that it suggests that this is something that’s been accomplished. This isn’t something that’s coming. This isn’t something that’s yet to be made reality. It is kept right now perfectly for you. Your inheritance is already secured in heaven. And so therefore it’s eternally secure.
That’s why Jesus taught us to store up treasure in heaven, not on earth. Don’t lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. No one can steal your inheritance. And it will never go bad. And your salvation, the text says, is ready to be revealed in the last time. That’s how verse five ends. That’s when it’s going to be revealed.
In other words, at the end of this age, we believe that Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. That’s when this age, this present age, and this whole present world will come to an end. And that’s when your salvation will be revealed in the last time, as Peter says. Or John, in his gospel, frequently uses the expression, in the last day. talking about the same thing. This world is passing away. It’s going to come to an end.
And when it does, your salvation will be revealed. Jesus said, John 640, this is the will of my father that everyone who looks on the sun and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. That’s when your salvation will be revealed. It’s ready to be revealed. but it will be revealed in the last day.
Now you might ask the question, don’t Christians already have salvation? Why are you talking about, or why does Peter here talk about a salvation that’s going to be revealed? I thought I’m saved. Well, the answer is you are saved. But the full outcome of our salvation is yet to come. It’s yet future.
Because we’re saved by grace through faith, and yet we have these bodies that we’re living in still and they decay. They’re breaking down. But we’ll be raised in bodies that will be incorruptible. We strive for holiness in this life. But even as we confessed earlier in the service, we still sin. But when we’re raised, we’ll never sin again.
And so scripture speaks of salvation in three different aspects. There’s a sense in which you are saved, you have salvation now. But there’s also a sense, and it’s very scriptural, very biblical, the language of we’re being saved. And then with today’s text as an example, there’s a sense in which we shall be saved. It’s ready to be revealed.
And then the passage tells us that we’ve been born again to a living hope. Hope is forward-looking. Just as Paul, the rhetorical question that Paul asks in Romans 8, who hopes for what he sees? Hope has to do with what we don’t yet see. So followers of Christ have many joys, many blessings in this present age. But even the blessings we enjoy now are anchored to a great extent in what we anticipate in the age to come. The full glory of redemption’s benefits is reserved for hereafter. That’s where our hope rests. Our inheritance is kept in heaven.
And until then, you are being guarded. Doesn’t that encourage you? You are being guarded. by God’s power. It’s God himself who gives new birth. He’s the one who has secured your inheritance. He’s guarding you until Christ’s whole flock takes possession of that inheritance.
And since all of this is the saving, sovereign work of God, he deserves all the praise and glory for it. God is to be praised because he secured a glorious eternal inheritance for us. So why do we celebrate Christ’s resurrection? Because through it, God Almighty has caused us to be born again. It’s resurrection power that delivers us from the eternal hell that we deserve and secures eternal life for us in glory.
Christ’s resurrection guarantees the resurrection of all who put their trust in him so that we can testify and we can state with confidence the words of that hymn that we sing sometimes. Jesus lives, and so shall I. So as we come to the Lord’s Supper, let’s reflect on the fact that we shall live. We who are trusting in Christ Jesus shall live because Christ purchased us with his own blood shed on the cross. He rose in triumph from the grave, but first he laid down his life for the sheep.
So as we come to the Lord’s table, let’s ask him to make these realities more clear to the eyes of our faith and to fill us with thanksgiving. Please pray with me. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for your resurrection. Thank you that all of our hope is in you and in your finished work. We celebrate your resurrection today. And as we come to the table, we we remember with somberness, but also with deep gratitude and with love to you, the fact that you gave up your life for us. So we thank you. We praise you. We praise you, Lord God Almighty, for sovereignly saving us from our sins. Bless us as we continue to worship now. through the sacrament we ask in Jesus’ name, amen.