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God willing we will look at 1st and 2nd Peter and the letter from Jude.
There is a close correlation between them.
Peter, of course, was the disciple of Jesus, the fisherman and Jude was the eventual convert, the half-brother of Jesus.
We’ll look more at Jude when we come to 2nd Peter.
We know something of the background to Peter and Jude’s letters:
It was a shaky time for Christians in the Roman Empire.
In A.D. 68 Emperor Nero saw himself surrounded by political enemies and took the easy way out: suicide.
In the next year three emperors, in rapid succession, took his place but couldn’t hold the job.
So in A.D. 69 troops proclaimed the military leader Vespasian as emperor—and saw that he stayed there.
Vespasian hated Jews, and he counted Christians among them.
Prior to becoming emperor his goal had been to trample Judea and erase it from existence.
As emperor he sent his oldest son, Titus, to finish the job.
Titus put Jerusalem under siege for three months.
Then he tightened the noose.
Troops leveled buildings to the ground.
The temple became a crumble of stones.
Jerusalem fell.
Jews (and Christians) became Roman captives.
Aftershocks vibrated throughout the Roman Empire, blending with the general persecution against “atheists” (people who refused to worship Roman gods) that Nero had begun.
Christians everywhere suffered.
They were driven from their homes, deported to the outer borders of the empire, forbidden to worship openly and, worse yet, splintered by their own internal doctrinal disputes.
Early Christians were subject to many kinds of isolation.
Though their faith originated in Judaism, the Jews rejected them because Christians saw Jesus as Messiah.
Romans would eventually use Christians as scapegoats, blaming them for all sorts of political woes.
And pagans saw Christians as atheists because they insisted on worshiping only one God.
In this setting, Peter offers beleaguered first-century Christians (and us) a different kind of belonging.
And this has to do with a future hope that goes beyond all that we experience in this life.
In November of 2000, baseball player Darryl Strawberry, plagued by drug addictions, jail time, and cancer, stood before a judge in Tampa, Florida in the USA and said:
“I’m an addict.
I go out and use drugs.
I figure the drugs may kill me.”
He continued, “Life hasn’t been worth living for me, that’s the honest truth...I basically wanted to die.
At the time, I would rather just go ahead and kill myself.
I couldn’t kill myself because of the fact of my five children.
I started to look at them and that wouldn’t be fair to them for me to kill myself that way.”
This is a desperate, hopeless statement from a man who is famous and has it all but that is no guarantee that he would be spared the pain and suffering of life.
The fact is that we all go through certain “dark nights of the soul” when life is potholed with pain.
Another such man was Simon Peter; he had such a night.
The friend whom he deserted in the garden and also denied three times had been crucified, and his own heart shattered.
He must have been thinking and reflecting back at those days as he picked up his pen and began his letter with the words that we read at the beginning.
We will look particularly at verse 3:
We can see four great truths from this verse:
A Great Mercy.
Peter cannot help himself – in the same kind of way we find Paul rejoicing – here is Peter rejoicing and blessing God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ – why?
Because of His great mercy.
Mercy is not a frequent word in people’s vocabulary.
So what does it mean?
Mercy is compassionate treatment for those who don’t deserve it or who can’t afford it.
There are many instances in the Gospels of mercy, for instance:
In fact we find in Matthew 20 two other blind men who asked for mercy and received it.
A father whose son was an epileptic was also cured when asking for mercy in Matt 17.
The Canaanite woman in Matthew 15 found mercy when she cried, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David!”
Luke 18:13 (NKJV) — 13 And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’
So, whether it was for healing or for forgiveness mercy was given to the one who was humbly asking and crying out for it.
He shows mercy to us by alleviating our pain and not condemning us for our sin.
And that is why Peter starts straight off with mercy – because he had experienced it first-hand when Jesus extended it to him.
Let us recall what happened.
Peter had denied Jesus three times and the One He had denied had just cooked breakfast for them.
Peter is feeling very self-consious and no doubt beating himself up over all that had happened.
I’ve added this here because I want you to know that even if you or I fail He does not fail us and remains faithful to us through it all and He desires to draw us back to Him.
Paul speaks of this same mercy in a sister verse that we heard about at Anne’s baptism a couple of weeks ago:
So we find that we did nothing to deserve mercy but this mercy saved us.
And so we find that Peter goes on to say:
2. A New Birth.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again.”
A painter on a Paris sidewalk set up his easel, opened his paints, and started to paint a picture called “Life.”
He noticed pigeons in the park, tulips blooming along the Champs-Elysees, and the bustle of people on the street.
But he messed up his painting.
His colours weren’t true and his perspective was poor.
Looking at his work with disfavour, he threw it away.
He took another canvas and started “Life” all over again.
Jesus allows us to do that through the new birth.
When we came to Jesus we were changed.
We were given a second chance at life.
A brand-new life.
Or as this ‘begotten us again’ means: We are given new birth.
We have been radically changed.
We are new creations.
And every day is a new day with new mercies as made clear in:
We fail every day.
But we can always find mercy in God and His promise is sure:
It is as if we had never sinned when we come to Him.
This is one of the most amazing truths we can ever discover.
So, we have found mercy and new life, what now?
Well we have been given what Peter calls ‘a living hope’.
There are benefits now that we have new birth.
Some people go through life moping around.
Some by groping for answers.
Some by coping as well as they can.
The Christian, though, responds by hoping, and not just empty positivism – you know, the kind that pretends that everything is going to be alright when everything is all wrong.
But the Christians hope is a long-lasting optimism grounded in God’s promises.
Christians can be optimistic about the here and now; and about the ‘in the end’, the future.
This is one of the reasons I have a promise put into the bulletin each week.
And there are so many promises to choose from such as the fact that He is always with us and will not desert us.
And if you are finding things particularly tough there is no better chapter than Romans 8 to turn to telling us that we are no longer under judgement and what the result of that is.
The promises found here strengthen us in God – and takes away our reliance upon ourselves.
So let me read some of that chapter:
When things are tough we can turn to:
Is God for us or against us?
Have we not accepted Jesus into our lives?
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