Peter 1

Auto-generated from the audio — may contain errors.

0:00 For this new year, we're going to be going through the book of Genesis again. We'll go through Genesis until we start lunch until after Wednesday, then we'll click back into the first year. But because it's New Year's Day, and I didn't want to start this morning after being a Genesis, and then we don't have to get to talk about creation again. So we'll start that next week.

0:31 So this week was a free week, and because I'm remembering my dad this weekend, I wanted to think about a passage that he told me once was in favor. I don't know if it's true or not. It was my freshman year of college, summer after my freshman year of college, and maybe like spring break, summer in my freshman year of college, and I was as he can be, ironically, and most of all, my freshman year of college, which, you know,

1:02 was a question I may be prone to that. And I can vividly remember him sitting down on the couch and walking through the first chapter of the first year, which was untearful instead for my dad. I can't remember him walking through a text any other time in my life, actually. I mean, I grew up here in the priest every weekend, but I can't remember him ever sitting down saying, look at this passage. And maybe that's why I stick with you so much. And he told me that it was one of his favorites for a student, but we'll go through the whole chapter because we don't want to take the whole time.

1:38 But I just want to look out versus like three, two, maybe seven, we'll see. And I remember that Peter is one of the 12, and he's probably the oldest. If you haven't heard that before, they think he was the oldest because he and Jesus had to pay the temple tax, so it doesn't look like the other one's kids. With my dimension, he and Jesus were the only ones who were over 21, which was the threshold for having to pay the temple tax.

2:12 And it's also like Peter always speaks first because you had a group of disciples. You have one who was a little bit older who spoke for the rest. And so like when Peter says, you are Christ and Jesus says, upon the rock, I'll build my church. That's why we think he's talking about that concession, not necessarily the person of Jesus, of Peter because Peter's speaking for everyone. It's why Peter gets out and walks on the water because Peter's the one to go first. And then if it works for him, the rest of the disciples would go.

2:42 So Peter developed into a real leader of this person in the 1st century. And remember, as I experienced with Cornelius and he and Paul had us to bait back and forth, but we don't have nearly as many letters from Peter as we do from Paul. And it's probably because Peter was covered in much smaller reasons. He had a lot more of people's responsibility. Paul was this kind of rogue guy out in Asia minor walking around and starting church and involving a bunch of letters. Peter was dealing with the mechanism of the church and trying to hold it together in Jerusalem and Antioch.

3:15 So it's telling us a little bit different than Paul and you're writing some specific purposes. But these verses here are really interesting for lots of reasons. But let's turn to verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You know, there's not much about specifically naming the Trinity in our scriptures, but you can see that Paul and Peter had a real sense that there was something going on that God was interacting with us in different persons.

3:50 And you can see it there, God the Father and 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 in the dead. To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unsaid in, kept in heaven for you, who by God, power of being guarded through safe or salvation, ready to be rejected the last time. And this you will join.

4:20 So now for a little while, if necessary, you have been greeted by various trials so that the tested greatness of your faith more precious than goals, that are actually those who tested by fire may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor as a revelation of Jesus Christ. The second part there is the reason Dad walked me through that passage. That part says, in it you were joined. So now for a little while, if necessary, you have been greeted by various trials.

4:51 They're coming to purify your faith. I listened back to our Christmas Eve message this week. And Bob is so faithful to get that recorded and posted with Albert and it's up there. And one of the things we talked about at Christmas Eve was like how all of the complexities of lies are going on. Things that seem at contradiction, that famous phrase, Mary Pott of all these things in her heart,

5:24 is all Mary could do to Pottam in her heart because she had the promise of the Savior of the world in terms, and she couldn't even find a room. She had the host of angels announcing the birth of her son, and she was compelled at nine months to walk for three days because some moment and prayer wanted to get to more practice. That our lives are complex and confusing and confounding, and yet also beautiful, it's time.

5:59 But he doesn't come to give us an escape from the things of life. But he lives into the things of life, or in the midst of life we might find him. He comes in order to let us live fully every piece of life that took practice from those details. And Peter says, you were joined in your struggle and time. So a lot of the way you're hoping for this year, we can anticipate we're still going to have to figure out

6:34 like Mary and Joseph at least happens. And we're still going to have to deal with Mary and Joseph at least politics. We're having no positive contact with at least. And if you think about it, they went to go visit their family, but their family couldn't put them up appropriately. Okay, then this year we're going to have to deal with politics and taxes and family probably.

7:06 And we're going to have to deal with broken relationships and healed relationships. We're going to have to figure out work. We're going to have to find big things. And in the midst of all of that, also Jesus has come. My dad walked me through that passage because I was having trouble with the complexities of life. And I looked at that they weren't there. And he said the trick is to rejoice and also deal with the complexity of life.

7:42 You lean into the complexity and you recognize the complexity isn't the end of the story. That the only things are even written. So you have sorrow and glory. You have hardships and ease. Both. And of course, he's a twin three both. Going back up a little bit there, what got me when I was really thinking of the passage this morning for us was that to begin a little bit what I mentioned to the kids.

8:12 According to a great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of the times of the dead. It's like God the father through the person of Christ finds some way to have us be born again. And you know all the way that that means. What does it take to have the existential, the kind of ontological reality that you and I are at our core and actions to things, things that there is eternity in us and death in us at the same time.

8:49 So now the cosmic mission God figured out a way to accomplish our rebirth with the person of Jesus according to the drill and he couldn't also give us something that was a little bit more firm than the hope. It's not interesting. That the unbound and infinite creator God has the leverage his will and imagine and accomplish the incarnation that could affect him the resurrection, the absence, the recreation of all things in order to give us some hope.

9:29 The person who thinks your situation is much more dire than you allow yourself to appreciate at any given moment. Like you are in more parallel than you really pause and realize. If the God of the user talks to go through all of that, what you do hope you are in danger. And also the hope of the resurrection, a key.

10:06 Some calm that all is calm. That it would be enough. That it would sustain a movement of people among all the complexities of love. Among the persecution and plenty among poverty and wealth. In every race and culture and creed, right?

10:40 Among every age and season of the world, the hope of God, the hope of the resurrection has been enough for us. It is for me then. Enough. The last thing I want to point out about this kind of thing is in verse 5.

11:13 But to go back here, it's called to be born again for a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. My God, I remember him telling me, he pointed out the hope and said he understood faith as a school and certain hope. And that sounds like a contradiction of courage, God. He said exactly. I'm certain of it. You could not take me from it. And in the end, it's just the hope I can't prove it or I don't know for sure.

11:47 But it's a hope I can do with certainty. It's everything I've built my life in. It's this hope from God. But Dad had his own child and struggles. And so how is that hope protected amongst the politics and the traumas and the families and the travel and the gay people and the work. Look at the grave. Let's see.

12:18 Letting hope and resurrection of the dead through inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfailing kept for you in heaven. He laid on those adjectives to cry and awaken our hope. But now, verse 5, who by God's power of being guarded through faith, for salvation, by the people who were built in the last time. You and I may be getting glimpses of hope and get thrown into all sorts of realities.

12:50 And we walk from birth through east evening of life towards the end. And it's hope, it's just the hope that God the Father leveraged his will accomplish the incarnation of the crucifix and the resurrection of the ascension in order to deliver out who up amongst the peril of sin death in the devil. He accomplished the leverage and his greatest strength in order to deliver to us this hope. And it's all we have, the hope of the resurrection.

13:20 Then it says that God himself guarded for us. Are you aware of your period? Have you lost your ability to hope? The politics, the taxes, the families, the work, the education, overwhelming, the fragile hope that God has delivered to you. In these moments, on do not grit your peace, press forward and will your thoughts to come from fame.

14:02 The hope of the resurrection took the prerogative and the auction of the infinite guide to get down to you. You will not get it on your own. When you find yourself without hope, the answer is to return to the God. Good Lord. What could you be doing in this moment? Why do the politics have the last word? Why do the taxes always count me? Why is the family never enough? Why is the work always understood?

14:33 Why is death always counted? Good Lord. The poor community, the hope of your salvation.