Our Beliefs : Sermons : Sermon Archive - 2005 : April 3, 2005
Something Better Is Coming
Easter 2
Our culture is obsessed with game shows. You can watch The Price Is Right in the morning, Jeopardy and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? in the afternoon, Wheel of Fortune in the evening, and others are popping up all the time. Why? Because each game has prizes that you can win if you are lucky enough and if you play the game just right and if you are smart enough. But if you make a wrong answer or wrong move at a critical stage in the game, you can go home with nothing but regret and disappointment. Everyone hopes, of course, that they come home rich.
Christians also are hoping for a prize -- eternal life. But unlike those many who go home disappointed from a game show, our hope cannot end in disappointment because our hope is a living hope in heaven, and heaven is a certainty. So Peter tells us why you can rejoice in your living hope this morning: because Something Better Is Coming. We know that something better is coming because that hope is based on a living Savior, and therefore it is shown in a living faith.
Are you disappointed with what you hoped your life would be? Maybe you're caught in a dead-end job because there's nothing else available. Maybe you've always wanted to live in some warmer climate or retire to a place where you can look out your door and see the glorious wonders of God's creation, like the mountains or the pristine wilderness. But instead, here you still are. Maybe you are floundering in your life, just trying to stay above water, but the water keeps rising, and you're getting tired. Then you have something in common with the people the Apostle Peter is writing to. They were Christians who lived in Asia Minor (where Paul did much of his missionary work; modern day Turkey) who were under persecution for their faith. Emperor Nero had blamed the Christians for the burning of Rome, and they were suffering as a result. People not only looked down on Christians, but even saw them as a menace. Their lives were tough already, and it looked like they were only going to get tougher.
But you wouldn't get the idea that the people Peter was writing to were going through any difficulties at all by reading the introduction of his letter. He says, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Can you catch the flavor of Peter's words? He is overjoyed. And he tells his fellow Christians to rejoice with him. How can they when their lives are so difficult? They have been given new birth from their deadness to sin and servitude to the devil. They have been given a hope that no one else has. Christians don't just have an uncertain hope in this world while they might undergo sufferings; Christians have a living hope because it is based on a living Savior.
The living hope that Peter is talking about is unlike any worldly hopes. A family that has a son or brother serving in Iraq or Afghanistan hopes and prays that he comes home safely and soon. But they can't be sure that their hope will be realized until he's back in their living room. A cancer victim goes through tests and hopes her cancer has not returned, but there are no guarantees. The living hope of a Christian is completely different because of the basis of our hope -- our living Savior Jesus. Why is that so? Remember who you are by nature -- a sinner deserving God's wrath for every sin of greed or selfishness, every unkind word or thought, as well as every time you've had an opportunity to give someone help or encouragement, but failed to do so and instead thought only of yourself. For those sins, God demands an accounting. As a just God, he must punish such slaps in his face. He doesn't mess around either; he punishes them with death. It's like we are tied up against a wall and God is a knife thrower. And for every sin we committed, we've given God a knife. As the blindfold goes over our eyes, we can hope all we want that God will miss, but such a hope is ridiculous because God's aim is perfect -- he always hits his target. And if he aims to kill, as he says he does, then the one he's throwing at will certainly die. We have no hope.
But then we hear him throw and we feel no pain, no death. We might think that our sins were no big deal, that God didn't think they were so bad after all. But then the mystery is revealed as our blindfold is taken off. The knives hit their target -- every one of them. They hit Christ, who willingly placed his cross in front of us to take every painful blow from his own Father, even though he had done nothing wrong. He died our death for us, so that we could live, not only live a meaningful life on earth, but live forever in heaven. Does that sound too good to be true? It's not. The resurrection proves it. If Jesus didn't rise, it would have showed that God didn't accept his sacrifice, or that there was still more that had to be done by us. But by raising Jesus from the dead, he showed that our sins are completely forgiven. In God's eyes, we are innocent of any wrongdoing. Heaven is ours simply by believing it, as Jesus himself said, "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved."
Peter describes heaven as an inheritance. Just like an inheritance on earth, our inheritance in heaven is a gift -- we did nothing to earn it and yet it is ours. But our heavenly inheritance is also different from earthly inheritances. Peter says that it can never perish, spoil or fade. In other words, it will never end. Our enemies sin, death and the devil can't do anything about it. They have no power there because they have all been defeated once and for all. Easter lilies are beautiful to behold when they are in bloom, but their beauty eventually dies. Heaven will never lose its beauty.
We know that we have a living hope and an eternal inheritance in heaven. Now the only question is whether or not we will make it there. That's why Peter says in verse four that God himself guards not only our inheritance for us until we get there, but he also shields us as well until we get to heaven. How can we not rejoice in such grace? We have a living Savior who assures us that our sins are forgiven. He has given us a living hope in our lives based on a living Savior that tells us something better is coming, and that living hope is shown in a living faith.
But often it's hard to show that living faith off when hardships come. What happens when a loved one dies? Or the doctor comes back and says we need chemotherapy for the cancer we've developed, and even then we only have an outside chance of living more than a year? What happens when it seems that we are spending ourselves completely for our fellow man, for our fellow Christians, but no one seems to care? At those times, we have to remember the hope we have as Christians. God is with us -- nothing can harm us spiritually when we rely on him. We also have to remember just how short the troubles of this life are when compared to eternity.
Does heaven still seem a long way off when troubles come? Peter has a solution. He says, "These have come so that your faith -- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire -- may be proved genuine." When it comes to your problems, do you think for a minute that God isn't aware of them? That he's on vacation and has no time for you? Of course he knows. In fact, Peter tells us here that God allows them to come into our life to strengthen our faith in our Savior God. The picture is of a man refining gold, burning off the impurities so pure gold remains. When will that purifying fire finally end? A refiner of fine metals will tell you that it will end when he can see his face reflected in the gold he's refining. Our suffering will finally end when we see God face-to-face in heaven. Until then, he's burning off our reliance on the things of this world so we can only see him. We all have different trials in life. The important thing is how we deal with them. Imagine that your life is actually a large lighted living room filled with furniture. You can see God right next to you. You can walk around the room with ease when the light is on. But what happens when the light is turned off? That's a time in our lives when nothing seems to be going our way. We get depressed. We feel unwanted, unloved. But God is still there -- you just can't see him. Let God guide you around that darkened room. When tough times come for the Christian, it is a perfect time to show just who we trust in -- not ourselves and the uncertainties of life, but in our God who never changes and whose love is always there for us.
Some scoffers might tell us that heaven is so far away that it can't affect how we live. Tell that to the woman who asked her pastor to make sure she was buried with a fork. Some of you might know the story. One final request that a woman made of her pastor when she died was to have her right hand clasping a fork when she was buried. The pastor thought she had lost her senses until she explained why. She always loved it when a waitress would tell her to keep her fork after her meal because she knew that her dessert was coming, and she looked forward to it eagerly and with great anticipation. The fork symbolized her living hope that after she died something better was coming. What a beautiful way to describe a Christian's hope of heaven while we live our lives! We might have hopes of things getting better on this earth, like a loved one coming home from the war or remaining cancer-free or getting that job or whatever. And we'd have to say, "Something better might come here on earth; but something better will come when I go to heaven." An unbeliever has no such hope. They would say, "Something better might come here on earth; and something better might come if I go to heaven." But their hope is based on a false assumption -- that they can get to heaven by someone or something other than through faith in Jesus alone. Do you see how the hope of a Christian is so different? Because of Christ's resurrection, we have a hope that affects our everyday lives, and we have a certain hope for our heavenly home. That hope is a living hope, made absolutely certain because it's based on a living Savior. So turn to that risen Savior in good and in bad times, and then live the faith he has given you. Amen.
