The Christian Hope

Minister:
Date: PM
Text: I Peter 1:3-5
Psalters: 263, 363, 71, 117
Sacrament of Baptism
  1. Its identity. Hope is the spiritual virtue whereby our spiritually regenerated life surges upward and forward.
    1. Hope deals with the future; the expectation of something good whose coming is certain, which we long to have.
      1. The object of all hope is in the future (cf. Rom. 8:24,25); we hope for that which is yet to come.
      2. Hope is built on confidence that God will fulfill His promises.
      3. And hope strongly desires its object.
    2. It is this hope which makes one a pilgrim and a stranger in this world.
      1. We are strangers to those without hope, and it makes them strangers to us.
      2. It makes us pilgrims, i.e., one travelling and not staying fixed here.
    3. We experience a constant tension between our desire for this life and for that to come!
  2. The object.
    1. The hope of the Christian is a ?lively? hope, i.e., a living hope, a hope of life.
      1. It is to experience perfect life: knowing God and fellowshipping with Him.
      2. It is knowing perfectly His smile of love and reconciliation.
    2. An inheritance reserved in heaven.
      1. That it is an ?inheritance? emphasizes that it is a gift unearned, given without obligation by the Father.
      2. It is in ?heaven,? the place of eternal pleasure.
    3. The source of this hope is regeneration (and the nature of the new life given in this spiritual rebirth).
      1. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ begat us again.
      2. God, as Father, also begets His elect people, making them His children when He gives His life to them.
      3. By virtue of this life we not only are made God?s children, but also we are born unto a life in heaven (now our home).
    4. The Holy Spirit leads us to think of the future.
      1. The same power which begets us unto this hope also preserves us in that hope: divine power!
      2. The greatest display of divine power was the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
      3. The answer to our despair is the resurrection of Jesus Whose life resides within us by regeneration!
  3. The author is our Father Who performed this act of greatest mercy.
    1. It is nothing less than God?s fervent desire to bless us miserable sinners.
    2. Therefore we praise and bless Him: ?Blessed ??