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Text: 1 Pt 3:15
Theme: Show your hope so you are asked about it.
Doctrine: Justification and Sanctification
Image: “I have hope” tattooed on your forehead.
Need: Christian living (preached for profession of faith of Kevin Prins)
Message: Show your hope so you are asked about it.
*Preached*
Burdett CRC- Aug 14 am, 2005
*Hope*
1 Pt 3:13-22, esp v.15
*Intro*
Peter was the rock on which Jesus built the church.
He was a man who denied his saviour three times, because of his own fear.
Eventually he was killed for his faith in Rome.
Legend has it that Peter was convinced to leave Rome because of increased persecution.
He was walking out of the city, down the road, and he was met by Christ going back into the city.
Peter asked him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “I am going into the city to be crucified a second time.”
At this, Peter turned back toward the city, in spite of the persecution, he was not going to let fear master him a second time, he went back to witness, to give a reason for the hope which lied within him.
He had been given three chances the evening Jesus was tried to tell others about his hope in Jesus, but he failed.
He is telling others to learn from his mistake.
There are three things Peter teaches us in v 15.
The first is that we have hope, the second is that we should be able to give the reason for that hope, and the third is that we should live in such a way that others ask us why we have hope.
*We have hope.
*
We have hope.
This is something that we often take for granted.
Our hope is something that we just have, and we don't put much thought into it.
But what is our hope?
Last Sunday evening we explored fully our reason for hope.
We have hope because God did not leave us dead, disobedient, and doomed, but saved us by raising us with Christ.
This salvation was given to us by his grace, through our faith.
Here we have another explanation of our hope in Christ Jesus.
Christ died for sins, once for all.
Christ is our high priest, and he sacrificed himself.
He is the true sacrifice.
All the Old Testament practices were simply a shadow of Christ's sacrifice.
We no longer have to follow the sacrificial system of the Jews because Christ has fulfilled that system.
In the Old Testament sacrificial system the offering had to be without blemish, it had to be perfect.
This was true also of Christ.
Jesus was the lamb without blemish.
He was the righteous one, given on behalf of the unrighteous, to bring us to God.
There is much here which is hard to understand.
Many commentators have made attempts to explain it, but there is no consensus as to who exactly the spirits in prison are who disobeyed in Noah's time.
But what is important is that Noah was saved.
Noah and his family.
Noah was saved because he was upright before the Lord.
God saved Noah's children because of the covenantal way God deals with his people.
The water that the ark rode upon and which Noah and his family lived upon, is linked to the water of baptism.
The water of baptism is a sign and seal that God will deal with us the same way he dealt with Noah's family.
God brought them into new fellowship with him, and gave them a new covenant.
He promised that never again would he send a flood to destroy the earth.
When we are baptised into the covenant family of God, we are given a new covenant.
God promises to deal with us in a different way.
We are given access to the gifts which he has entrusted to his chosen people.
We are given access to the means of grace.
As a part of the covenant family of God we are entrusted with the gospel message.
We are told that Jesus died for our sins, and was raised again to new life.
We are told that through Jesus death, our sins are paid for and we can now approach God and be reconciled to him.
Because we are a part of the covenant family of God we are taught and encouraged by the community of saints.
Then when we accept Christ as our saviour and ask the Holy Spirit to come into our hearts and renew our lives our hope is made secure.
We no longer have to wonder if we are saved.
We have a hope which surpasses all of our problems.
When I visited with Tieneke Muller before her death I was truly struck by this.
She had faith that she would be with Christ when she died.
Heb 11:1 says “faith is the assurance of things hoped for.”
This Tieneke had.
When I asked her about her life, she gave me an outline of how God had continually worked in her life, despite all of her difficulties.
She had had a very tough life, and she told me that there were times when she struggled.
There were times when she was not sure why God would allow her to suffer as she did.
There were times when she cried out to God.
But when it came right down to it, she knew she had hope.
She knew that Jesus had died for her sins.
She could say with Paul "for to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."
(Phil 1:21) She had the hope which all believers have, the hope of salvation through the blood of the cross.
*Be able to give a reason for your hope.*
That is the first thing Peter teaches us, that we have hope.
He also teaches us that we need to be able to give the reason for our hope.
This is something which is much more difficult than it seems.
Much of our fear of evangelism is that we do not know exactly how to communicate with others the hope that we have.
I hope it is not that we are ashamed of the gospel message.
I am sure the reason we are not evangelising is not because we are scared of being labelled as Jesus Freaks.
In this regard we can learn a lot from the Mormons.
They train themselves and their children to be able to give a defence of their faith.
They put a lot of time and effort into evangelism, something we as Christians are lacking.
Part of the process that I have to go through at the seminary is a deep reflection on myself as a child of God.
For one of my classes we had to present the gospel message to someone else.
I have to admit this was a huge stretch on my comfort zone.
I grew up in an area you just assumed everyone else was Christian, and you did not ask about it.
I was not used to sharing my faith with someone else.
Not to mention I did not know anyone who was not a Christian in Grand Rapids.
The only people I knew where those I went to seminary with, and the ones that I felt comfortable with, I knew were all devout Christians.
I was stuck.
I procrastinated this project until the very end of the term.
But then I had a real problem.
I was supposed to be cultivating a relationship so that I would be comfortable giving the gospel to them, but now I was in the same boat as at the beginning of the term.
I could have tried to get out of the assignment, but then I would have had to lie about my reasons for not doing it, and I was not willing to do that.
So I decided to use the excuse of the assignment to break the ice.
I went down to the local Starbucks and decide to try my luck.
I was extremely nervous, but the assignment was due at the end of the week, so I knew I had to get it done.
I walked up to a college age guy and introduced myself.
He was not Christian, though not hostile either.
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