A Living Hope through the Living Word

1 Peter 1:17-25 The promise of God’s Word is that if we call upon the name of the Lord in faith, we will be saved. 

But of course the question is then asked, how can we call upon the name of the Lord if we have never heard of him?  And how can we hear of him if no one preaches to us?  And how can someone preach to us unless the church sends preachers? 

The Bible answers that question by saying:  how beautiful are the feet of those who bring Good News!

The Good News that is preached and believed—the Good News that is the source of our salvation-- is the Living Word of Jesus, crucified and raised to give us forgiveness and eternal life. 

The Good News is that we have a living hope in a living Lord through this living Word that:  1. allows us to truly call God our Father-- and 2. empowers our love for our fellow Christians-- and 3. assures us that we will live forever.  The Bible says that:

If you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile,

            It is the great miracle and wonder of our life with God that we can truly call God, our Father-- for so he is!  Just think of it! 

The one, true and living God of the universe; the one who is from everlasting to everlasting; the one who called this world into existence by his powerful word and sustains it to this day in the same way, is your Father who 1. protects you and 2. provides for you and 3. promises to love you forever.

            God is your Father and you are his child.  But you did not begin life this way.  You began your life as a slave to sin and death.  You began your life as God’s enemy, alienated from God, with Adam’s sin (and the curse spoken upon it) rendering your life futile by death.

But Jesus Christ paid the price to set you free from sin and death, not with the things that that the world values such as gold and silver, but he paid the price to set you free and make you God’s child with his holy, precious blood.  The Bible says that:

you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

The One proclaimed by John as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world bore your sins in his body to the cross-- and the sinless Son of God died in your place under God’s wrath-- so that you can truly call God your Father and live as his child here on earth, guided by his will and filled with his love.

Our lives as God’s children are shaped and formed by this understanding that the God who is our Father is holy and righteous and powerful and so we live our lives in holy fear, standing in awe of his majesty and glory and power. 

But our lives are also shaped and formed by the love that he has poured out upon us in the blood of his Son Jesus who has always been the promise and plan for our salvation.  The Bible says that Jesus:

was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God… 

            From the very beginning, it has been God’s loving purpose to save us and reconcile us to himself through his Son Jesus Christ. 

In Revelation we hear that Jesus is the Lamb slain FROM the foundation of the world.  In this passage we hear that God’s saving purposes in Christ existed from BEFORE the foundation of the world.

1. Our salvation from sin and death-- and 2. our reconciliation and return to our heavenly Father’s family-- and 3. our justification before a holy and righteous God—has ALWAYS and ONLY been through Jesus Christ who took upon himself our flesh and died upon a cross and rose from the dead and ascended to eternal glory and honor and praise.

Jesus has done all of this for us so that our faith and hope would rest in God alone and not in ourselves.  The Bible says that:  God raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. 

God is the one who sent his Son Jesus into the world.  God is the one who punished him in our place on the cross.  God is the one who accepted his saving work and declared it justified in his resurrection.  God is the one who has given him power and glory and dominion and honor at his right hand.

God has done this in Jesus Christ so that our faith and trust and confidence and hope would rest upon God and not upon ourselves and in this way be certain and sure in this life and in the life to come.  Because of God’s work for you in Christ…

You CAN call God your Father!  You CAN know your sins are forgiven!  You CAN count on a home in heaven!  And you CAN live a life that is full of God’s love for your fellow Christians.  The Bible says that:

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart,

            God has accomplished our salvation by a living Lord through the living word, not just so that WE can be saved, not just as so that OUR life with God can be restored, but also so that our lives WITH one another-- would be filled with love FOR one another.

            That is the purpose of our purification from sin:  that our love for one another, and especially for our fellow Christians would come from a pure heart.

We know about ourselves that often times, how we think about one another and how we act with one another, comes from motives that are something other than pure.  We want something from that person and so we are kind to them.  We don’t want conflict on our board or in our meetings and so we paste on a smile that doesn’t really fool anyone.

But God wants us to love one another from a pure heart—from a heart that has been purified by the truth.  And what is that truth that purifies us and empowers our love for others? 

It is the truth that all of us are saved only because of Jesus and not something in ourselves.  It is the truth that all of us are equally the sons and daughters of God, that no matter how different we are from one another, we all share the same Savior and the same Father. 

That truth changes how we see one another in the church.  1. Now we see one another as a brother or sister.  2. We see one another standing equally in need of God’s grace and forgiveness.  3. We see one another as common confessors of the same truth of the Gospel. 

And as our vision of others changes, our own hearts are changed.  More and more there is genuineness and sincerity and earnestness in our love for one another rather than just a façade we put on to mask how we really feel. 

We see others differently and we treat others differently BECAUSE we are different people that we were before.  The Bible says that we:

have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for “All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass.  The grass withers, and the flower falls,

            We have a living faith and a living hope in a living Lord because we have been born again through the living word of God.  To say that we are born again is not a Baptist thing—it is a Bible thing.  Jesus says:  Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God….That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 

But what does it mean to be born again?  Peter says that our new birth has come through the living and abiding Word of God so that our new life is eternal while our old life will fade like the flowers of the field.  The Bible says:

The word of the Lord remains forever.”  And this word is the good news that was preached to you.  And so then…

Biblically speaking, being born again it is not a choice or decision that we make any more than our first birth was a choice or decision we made, but rather our heavenly Father has given us new spiritual life and made us his children through his living word.

And the 1. reason that God’s Word is living, 2. the reason that God’s Word has the power to raise us from death to life and make us new people, 3. the reason that God’s Word is infinitely something more than ink on paper is that the living Word  IS Jesus Christ, crucified and raised.  

It is through that living word that we are born again to a life that death will not end and when we begin to understand that our life with God comes ONLY through this living Word our perspective on God’s Word and our practice of the faith will change.

Family devotions and private bible reading will become times that we crave because we know how the Word strengthens our faith and sustains and strengthens the faith of our family.

Preaching and worship and Bible study will become a priority because we know that our heavenly Father is speaking to us, guiding our lives in the way he wants us to go and the decisions he wants us to make. 

Receiving the Sacrament will no longer be thought of as an occasional extra, but central to our life of faith because of the living words of the living Lord he speaks to us there:  given and shed for you, for the forgiveness of your sins.

These living words of the living Lord have not only caused us to be born again to a new, eternal life but they are the God-given way to sustain that living hope until we go to be with the Lord.  Amen.