The Hope of Our Salvation

All right, so bear with me. I can't tell whether I'm better with or without my dime store glasses. So anyway, so let's read the first five verses of chapter one. Paula, can you do that? You got your Bible open there? Yeah. All right, first five verses, please. Well, you got your Bible open, but you don't have it open to the right place. I'll get it. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to God's elect of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadonia, Asia, and Bithynia, chosen in accordance with the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, with a view to obedience and to sprinkling with the blood of Jesus Christ, May more and more grace and peace be granted to you. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is in his great mercy has begotten us anew in a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven for you. who are kept by God's power through your faith for a salvation that is ready to be unveiled at the end of the world. All right, good. Thank you very much.

So per usual, let's take a look at where we were last week in just a brief review. So I'm going to state here that I said this last week, but I think this is an appropriate place to kind of summarize last week's first two verses. So I think the beginning of this book really relates to Peter the Apostle. We kind of defined what an apostle was last week.

It's addressing and encouraging the dispersion of mostly Jewish believers. There could have been Gentiles here, but I think he's speaking mostly to the Jewish believers, who were all around Asia Minor to stand firm in the persecution that they were suffering in a non-Christian world. Now that's going to be built throughout the book.

We don't see too much of that in the first few verses, but that's really a theme of the verse, of the epistle. And then secondly, this encouragement according to God's foreknowledge and really directs believers to be set apart by the Holy Spirit in response to what Christ has done at the cross of Calvary. I mean I think And Peter will return to the cross frequently throughout the epistle, and this is really good news. So as we turn now to the verses for today, the hope of our salvation is how Rogers titled this. What's the theme? If we pick one word out of the next three verses that Mike read, what is the ultimate outcome of this? But if you took one word out of those three verses, what would you choose? And that's not in the handout. I'm just raising that as a question this morning.

Yeah, Mike? Mercy. What? Mercy. Okay. Mercy would be your word. Other thoughts? I'm not sure there's a right answer here. I know. There's lots of important words here. Okay. Okay. No other volunteers in terms of this text, in terms of what you think the theme is? A living hope. Well that's a good one too. Okay. That's my last one. I see inheritance. Yeah, thank you.

That was the word I was going to say. Who said that? That was Roy. Oh, Roy. Yeah, I agree. I think that that is kind of central here. And we're going to kind of sandwich that in with what occurs before it and what occurs after it. Look at the beginning. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Have you ever seen that before? Well, I think that I can't think of a better way to start.

And I think Peter, you know, ultimately probably kind of dealt with Macaulay's notes on this in terms of understanding that this is so important. So blessed can also be translated praise. And I think Macaulay has said it pretty well here, so I just pulled this out and quoted Macaulay. Our translations use the English and blessed to translate two distinct words and ideas in Greek. One means to receive blessing, or eulogio, and the other means to merit blessing, eulogatos.

Ephesians 1.3 uses both together.

God the Father is called blessed and one who deserves and merits blessing. Believers are also called blessed. Ones who receive blessing though they did not deserve blessing. In the Bible only God is blessed in the sense of one who merits or deserves praise. But I think one thing you can kind of conclude for what Macaulay says here is that because we are called blessed, that's identification truth, isn't it?

Blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we're blessed because we're in Christ. So I think that's one way we can expand this introduction to each one of us as believers. Now, Paul uses this opening in a couple of his own epistles, and that's what I mentioned a little earlier. We've seen this before, haven't we? So let's take a look at that.

Ephesians 1.3, which is what Macaulay quoted, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places of Christ. How often do we reflect on the importance of that verse? We're blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. And where's that taking place? In heavenly places. We're heavenly citizens, aren't we? We're going to come back to that too. And also in 2 Corinthians. I love the first chapter of 2 Corinthians.

It's all about, you know, comforting one another. Blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. And you know the thing is about this verse is there's such an ability to know what we've all been through individually and how that can impact brothers and sisters in the Lord in terms of comforting them. Alright so enough on the introduction but I thought it's interesting to kind of see that this is not unique to Peter but unique to the presentation of the gospel and everything that it represents. who according to his abundant mercy, I think what was it Mike that said mercy? I can't disagree with that, how important that is. What comes to mind when we consider his abundant mercy? What comes to mind?

Greed. Well, that's a separate, we're going to come back to that here. Mike, hold on. Says has caused us to be born again. Okay. According to his great mercy. Okay, we're going to go there too. All right. Well, first of all, abundant. You know, the Greek term is poly. And we, in science and medicine, we use poly all the time, like polyphages. Somebody's got a tremendous appetite. Polyuria, you're urinating. I mean it goes on. Poly is used all the time about an abundance of a symptom or a sign. And so this Greek term is really translated here abundant. I like the translation. You could also say great or strong or intense or large. Poly means many.

So abundant, I think Peter's getting across that this mercy is just not a little bit. This is a tremendous amount of mercy. So, you know, how do we compare mercy and grace, Mike, to what you raised? How would you distinguish mercy and grace? And I think they are distinguishable. You equated the two, but I'm going to challenge you there, okay? You have to know mercy before you can receive his grace. Other thoughts? Mercy is the idea of not getting what you deserve.

Oh, good. Grace is just unmerited. Patty, is your mic on? Once you repeat that for everybody in the field. Mercy is the idea of not getting what we deserve. And grace is God's unmerited favor, just a gift, free gift, I guess. OK. They are different in that regard. I think JF and Bea had it kind of interestingly. Maybe it's an oversimplification.

Mercy met our misery, which is our being founded in sin, and our life is full of sin, falling incredibly far short of God's glory. Grace is our guilt. I mean, that's maybe, we could spend a long time just discussing that, but let's go ahead and look a little bit further. Let's consider, I think, a couple of important verses which I think reflect both of these.

So, Titus says, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us Through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit. Washing takes care of where we came from. What's that washing? The washing is sin.

It's all the sins we've performed and will perform and it's the sin nature which we really covet here at Holly Heroes in terms of rightly dividing the Word of Truth. Alright, so mercy is right. It takes care of where we've been and where we're going in terms of the innate nature of sinful flesh that we all inhabit. Alright, well let's see.

Okay, Ephesians 2.8, but by grace you're saved. Notice there's no, we're not saved by mercy. Mercy is that we're forgiven. But by grace we're saved through faith and that not of ourselves, it's a gift. So grace is a gift. Mercy is his really understanding that we need to be saved from all the sin that we are surrounded by inherently and in the future. Mercy is what brings us comfort.

Well, OK, remember what J.M.B. said, mercy met our misery. I thought that was kind of cute. Mercy met our misery. Our misery is our sin, and sins to be, and sins in the past. But yet grace is not only a gift, but it's our guilt that's gone now. So anyway, we don't need to spend too much more time here. But here mercy has begotten us again to a living hope. And that living hope is really something that we're so excited and thrilled about.

Has begotten is an aorist act of participle, a historical fact. Roger, you want to comment on aorist tense again? You do it so well every time. Well, I like to look at it as an event. It's an event that happened. So has begotten, there was an event. Basically, Christ died on the cross. And a participle is typically a verb that's modified into more an adjective or an adverb. And so the participle is based on the verb begotten and has begotten is something that took place once and now is an ongoing benefit to follow.

Why again? And Bonnie touched on this, but let's just see if anybody, why would Peter say again? has begotten us again to a living hope. Well, that's one interpretation, but it's not perfectly accurate here. It's only used twice. By the way, genome, the second part of that is the birth, and the first part, age, I'm not doing well with the Greek, but all that aside, it's again being born. So how would you interpret again being born? Well, 1 Peter 1, 23, having, he used it again. It's only used twice in scripture. Having been born again, not of corruptible but of incorruptible through the word of God which lives and abides. So Peter is identifying with Nicodemus in terms of needing to be born again.

And I think that's really cool because he uses again here as we have gotten again to a living hope. And that living hope we're going to talk about in more detail. But ultimately, and what is this living hope, I think is what we need to really think about here. What do you think this living hope is now?

I have two potential interpretations. Well, let's wait for verse 4, because I think that's going to deal more specifically with this hope. But also consider the impact of being born again. Why is Peter mentioning being born again? Because it's impacting now our living hope. How about this afternoon? You know, the living hope that if he sees himself born again, one of his living hopes could be right now in terms of the life he's living in Christ Jesus.

And I think you may say that's working between the lines a little bit in terms of in context, but I like it anyway, because why would he say recognizing being born again? I think ultimately this hope is probably relating to the inheritance, which we thought maybe would be the central theme of these three verses.

But you can interpret this however you want. I'd like to interpret it both ways. Because he's mentioned again that he's been born again, or born anew, I think he could reflect that as how it's impacting his day-to-day life as a believer. But the more important in context interpretation, I think, is the inheritance, and we'll come to that. thoughts.

Isn't it kind of, it is like you said Nicodemus, but Jesus said to be born again. So it's being, basically it's talking about our new life in Christ. Right. Born again to eternal life. Now the inheritance, if it is something eternal, ultimately is part of being born again also. Because those who are not born again, presumably are not going to be with the Lord, right? After they leave these earthly bodies. But anyway, that's probably the better interpretation, but I still don't want to dismiss the fact that he's mentioned he's born again, born anew, and how this ultimately, this hope may be the living hope day in and day out of the Christ life, in fact, that he's learning more about.

Mike. Now, your slides, are they in the Holy Heals Bible? Well, I think all these are posted online, right? Well, you have notes that you can print out at home. They'll be on the website, yes. And Bob actually sends them out email, too, on top of that, so you can get them twice if you want. And there's no quiz after the lesson, okay? Back to the class. Everybody gets an A. I grade easily. Not on the curve here.

So why do you think Peter uses living so frequently? Look at all the verses where he uses living. So again, back to my interpretation in part, that this living hope may relate to the new life he has in Christ Jesus. And keep in mind, I've said this before, but I'll say it again, this is a different Peter we see writing this epistle than the Peter we see in the gospel account. He has grown through grace. And remember, who introduced the gospel to the church initially? It was Peter. So, God has grown him so incredibly to write an epistle which I think is one of the most important epistles we have of the Word of God, doctrinally. Alright, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. What do we make of that? Why does he mention that again? He mentioned that in verse 2, didn't he? He's saying this living hope through is by means of the resurrection of Christ. So he says this living hope comes about through the resurrection.

Well, Margaret, I'm going to quote Margaret's favorite verse here. Okay, I have four verses I'm going to read here. OK, therefore we were buried with him. I'm going to pick up this now. We were buried with him through baptism unto death, dot, dot, dot. And then we were raised from the dead by the glory of the Father to walk in newness of life. So I kind of summarized that verse, say, buried with him with baptism unto death and risen with him in newness of life. Resurrection. And then on to Margaret's favorite verse, I think, is next. Okay, there it is.

You know, we all quote Galatians 2.20 all the time. I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, not I, but Christ who lives in me.

But I don't want to put aside the grace of God, for if Tiresias comes through the law, then Christ died in vain. So again, the resurrection's everything. If there's no resurrection, we have no faith. I think the whole Bible becomes pale and vain if there's no resurrection.

And I have two more for you, but I could have given you 50 verses here. 1 Corinthians 15, and if Christ is not risen, that our preaching is empty or vain and your faith is also empty. How about that one for a strong verse? And we'll end with Romans 8-11, but since the spirit of him who raised Christ Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. I mean on and on and on. The resurrection is everything for the believer and if there's no resurrection his death was in vain. Okay, good. So I think the reason Peter's bringing this up again, this has impacted him so much and God has used him now as a vehicle to continue to remind us that the cross is the only thing we should glory in.

Reminds me of Galatians 6.14, which we ended the previous study with. I think when Peter was borne in his hands and turned to the And hope was another, like living is another word Peter likes to use a lot. Those are verses that all quote living. And those that I stated earlier, these quote hope. So living hope, he uses both of those separately, but frequently in scripture.

All right, to make you dizzy here a little bit, verse four, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you. All right, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled. Let's look at the definition. Inheritance.

Here this is not an earthly, I'm paraphrasing, you know, kind of my conclusions here. This is not an earthly bestowment of money or property or anything else, but it's the eternal blessedness in the completed kingdom, meaning The kingdom of God, the big kingdom of God, which includes a millennium, includes a new heaven and new earth, the completed kingdom of God, which is to be expected after the visible return of Christ. He needs to come back first, and then all these events that reflect eternity future are opened up. The tribulation period, the ultimate, the great white throne judgment, and ultimately the new heavens and the new earth.

That's what we're talking about. That's the inheritance. And incorruptible, that means it's not able to be corrupted. It's not going to decay. It's not perishable. There's nothing about this that makes us think that this is something that's going to fade away. Undefiled. It's not soiled. It's pure. There's no sin that can be part of this.

And not fading away, really is ultimately the final kind of third modifier of this inheritance. And what we've learned here is not what the inheritance is, but what it's not. It's incorruptible, it's undefiled, and doesn't fade away. We have three descriptions of this inheritance. All right, so we are informed, though, that this inheritance shows no termination, no imperfection and no change as we go forward.

And you know, Peter in his, this epistle in fact, reflects I think an Old Testament quote. I didn't go back and find out where this was, but all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass and the grass withers and its flower falls away, and that's stated elsewhere in the New Testament, and I think also reflects, where's that in the Old Testament?

Anybody know where that is? Isaiah 40, verse 8. Where, Patti? Isaiah 40, verse 8. Okay, good, thank you. I should have done my homework right there. But anyway, Peter's often, which he often does, using the Old Testament to make a point. The grass withers away, but this inheritance does not. All right, where is this inheritance? Well, it's for us, right? And it's not here. Now remember, we teach this frequently at Holly Hills, but Israel's of the earth. We're heavenly people, and we are now. That's where we're positioned, that's where we're in Christ, and ultimately that eternity is where that inheritance exists. Notice to whom this is addressed. This is to and for you, for each of us and for those that Peter is writing this account. Reserved, perfect, passive, parsable. What do we make of the tense and the mood here? It's like salvation. We don't have to do anything to have this. If we're a believer, we have it.

And the other thing about this reservation too, it gives you the idea, we're living in a world of security. I mean, your computers, all the security, we walk through security to board an airplane. I guess there was a shooting at the White House yesterday again and somebody else was killed because of that. I mean, the security is all about us, isn't it? This is about as guarded as you're going to get here, scripturally. I like this security. So, yes, I mean, so this reserved is really something that's a promise that we can trust and has all the security connected to it. Yes, Roy, please.

Just in parallel to what you said there, the perfect passive mean is something that happened in the past that has enduring and lasting results, but also This verse actually points to a contrast to the majority teaching in Christendom today, that the Church and Israel are united and, you know, the Church has replaced Israel. This is just the opposite. Here we're told it's a heavenly inheritance, implicitly in the past prepared with ongoing forever results. That's a great comment, Roy, and it really complements, I think, the teaching here today and what the scripture says.

Maybe I can ask you to distinguish aorist tense and perfect tense in terms of the ongoing application and interpretation of those two tenses. Well, aorist was mentioned as a factual, but it also is It can be consistent with now, or the past, or even the future. It has to do with something that is just a principle, I guess is a good way of summing it up. It's factual, and it's time-wise mostly historic, but could be current or future, correct?

And how would that be different than the perfect tense? It has more to do, perfect has more to do with action. Okay, all right, okay. The action is completed with results that go on forever. All right, good. The aorist is more of a factual thing that you're just stating that can be now or yesterday or in the future, but it has that basis. Okay. Alright, thank you for it. So a couple of verses to substantiate our citizenship.

2 Corinthians 5.21, For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in heaven. And again, that's positional truth too.

Philippians 3.20, For our citizenship is in heaven. from which we also eagerly await the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. So anyway, I think we could exemplify that, too, in other means going forward. I think I have one other question, one five. Because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven of what you heard before and the word and truth of the gospel. So Paul restates that that's where our inheritance and our hope is. All right, let's turn now to verse five. Who are, this verse impacted me a lot as I was preparing today, personally. I'll just share that right now.

Who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed no last time. Let's look at this in more detail. Who are kept is a big Greek term. It's a present participle implying action constantly going on and here by the power of God. You know, we're kept. Again, we're not keeping ourselves.

The fact that the power of God is what is keeping us is the best security we can have because it's His power that's keeping us. But how do we know that this power is there and keeping us, you know, right up, if you will, and moving in the right direction?

Well, Peter answers it here, through faith. for salvation ready, and I interrupted the verse there because I think the last part is kind of what we're ready for, but you know the idea is this really, faith is our responsibility. The power of God is there for each and every one of us here, but if we don't believe that then we're not going to be experiencing that. So what's faith? Schofield says it well, it's believing what God's revealed, right? So for Adam and Eve it was what God had revealed in the garden, for Elijah the prophecies that are going to be there for the future, and for us in the church age we believe scripture for all that it's worth. the power of God in each and every one of us for salvation. By the way, we're talking about glorification here. We're talking about the inheritance that we're going to be getting. That's a faith that we have to demonstrate to have the comfort of knowing that the power of God is at work. Faith taps in to God's Word. It's like a faucet. You turn that thing on because of the Word of God. Yep, that's our source of truth.

So again, I think if we say the power of God and dismiss the fact that we have to respond and believe that, then we're not experiencing the power of God. But when we believe that the power of God is working in us day in and day out to look at this inheritance and ultimately what salvation is he talking about? Remember the three tenses. I was saved, I'm being saved, and by the way, that power of God's working in our day-to-day salvation, and I will be saved.

But I think in context here, we're talking about glorification. This is the ultimate inheritance, is it not, to be with the Lord Jesus Christ forevermore. We're with him now positionally, but when we're out of these bodies, and ultimately in the heavenly places where we are positioned right now, that, in fact, is the inheritance to which we're speaking. Hey, Bob? Yes, Roy, please. In passing here, the word faith, of course, we know in Holly Hills very well, is actually not in a meritorious work. It's in the object of our faith that there is merit.

And that's the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, right? Right, and in this particular verse, it's the salvation encompassing those three tenses that in Christ Jesus, his work was so complete that all three of those phases are there. Just kind of thinking back in our study of 1 Corinthians on Thursday, we reviewed the fact that if you look at the church, Christ is the foundation. Paul and Apollos built on that foundation, but the foundation is the Lord Jesus Christ. And ultimately, the ministers and servants that have served that church foundation over many, many years are still serving the Lord Jesus Christ as the foundation of the church.

And Peter here is so good at saying, hey, that's our vision. We can't see it all right now, but we're going to in the last time. It's going to be revealed. So Roy, I'm going to ask you to interpret this one here in terms of verb tense, to be revealed as aorist passive. Passive, we know it's all about God. How is aorist here future? Is this an example of a fact for the future then?

That's right. Yeah. Amen. Amen. So we came back to you, Roy. Thank you for your previous explanation. This is all good. So the question we all ask is, what's going on here? Well, you have a date for us, Bob? What's that? You have a date for us? Well, some people did. Oh, I know. They've all been wrong. But I think Peter's going to say something about this in a few chapters, and we may get to this sometime in the next millennium.

But anyway, so 2 Peter 3.9, the Lord is not slack concerning his promise. as some count slackness, but is long-suffering towards us, not willing that any should perish." Back to the whole issue of salvation, which we will not discuss today. "...that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." So, you know, God's timeline is not ours, right?

So when is this going to occur? We have no idea. In fact, you know, to think about, well, we're in a ripe time. Look at all the sin that's going on. Look, the sin's been there since. Look at the flood. Look at Babel. I mean, look at all these examples of the early scripture in terms of the sin that's going on.

And we think it's worse today because we think, gee, when we were kids, we weren't concerned about this. It all has to do with, all we have to do is look at the internet and we can see sin all over the world. It's so terrible that you never got to see all that sin. No, we got to see so much more. Revelation calls it the Nicolaitans.

Well, anyway, we don't know when, and by the way, it could be another hundreds of years till ultimately Christ comes again. We don't think so because of the environment, but I can assure you that every person that's ever lived thinks the environment is how it should be, who's a believer, right? So we don't know, and we continue to live by faith. God's not slack, and He's eternal. We can't describe eternity. we just know it's, God's on a different timetable and maybe none actually and we just don't know.

But I, you know, I was ministered to by this little thing. Thy is great mercy. Mike, to your points about mercy and living hope, this I thought was appropriate through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That little cartoon really I think reflects what we were all about today. So in summary, I think Peter is well outlined the continued importance of the cross and the resurrection in terms of everything he has to say. And secondly, this living hope, based on his mercy and the extension of grace, to make the promises of the future that we're unclear of in terms of timetable, the inheritance we're all expecting eternally.

So, summary of today's lesson. Thoughts? Questions? I'm not asking you to overly personalize what I've been through, but I kept getting reminded of the power of God, the power of God who's working in all of us to sustain His truth. And we fall short of that, but by faith, if we realize that power is working, I think it lifts you up and keeps you looking down rather than looking up.

Amen. Dave, could you close us in prayer, please? Amen. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for what you've done for us and we just ask that we would trust in you and have a desire to lead others to Christ for you. We ask these things in your name. Amen. Amen. Thank you.