Sermon Tone Analysis

There have been lots of comedies in plays and movies that portray someone suddenly becoming rich as a result of an inheritance.

Contained within many of these silly stories is someone who has great expectations, yet throughout their lives never did what ought to be done.

Suddenly they are surprised when they receive nothing.

Others do all kinds of things in their lives that were a blessing to the family and sometimes end up being surprised when they are completely overlooked .

Then some do what they ought to do, with no expectations, and then find themselves totally surprised when they receive a huge inheritance.

Last week, we observed Peter laying some powerful foundational markers about salvation.

When one considers the persecution that Peter was going to be reminding his readers about, which they already were starting to experience, the appropriateness of that wonderful reminder that God had saved them and they belonged to Him regardless of what may be happening here on this earth.

I believe that we also can be encouraged to worship the Lord, while focusing upon Him and His glorious promises, rather than getting bogged down and discouraged from whatever may be happening to us from those who would oppose us.

Now think about this inheritance idea I spoke of earlier.

If the readers of Peter’s letter, and we, would consider our promised inheritance through the Lord Jesus Christ, we begin to realize that we are indeed rich.

So, today we’re going to consider several different parts that Peter points out that gives great reason to rejoice in our inheritance.

When feeling as though things and people are against you, the Christian can rejoice in the certainty of our eternal inheritance.

The Resource - 1:3a

An inheritance cannot just come out of thin air.

It doesn’t happen by wishful thinking.

It cannot come from a person who has nothing.

So what is the resource for our inheritance?

Let’s look at 1 Peter 1:3a:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ

Our inheritance comes from the One Who has the ability to provide eternal life.

If we look first of all at the titles for our Savior, we will find some interesting facts.

Peter starts off with Lord, signifying that Jesus is the sovereign ruler of all that there is and that He is fully God.

Jesus is commonly known to be the human name given to our Savior.

This is a great reminder that He is fully man; God in the flesh.

Then we have Christ given as a reminder that Jesus is the Messiah and King of Kings.

The pronoun which precedes this series of titles is also very relevant—our.

The imagery is brought to our minds immediately of the absolute inclusiveness for all peoples, regardless of ethnicity or nationality.

Just this little portion of the verse gives us great reason to rejoice.

But let’s jump back to the beginning of this section.

God is referred to as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Previously, God had been understood by the Jewish people, as well as Gentiles who became followers of God before Jesus, as the God of creation.

Uniquely to the Jews, He was recognized as the One who redeemed and rescued them out of Egypt.

This description of God by Peter was completely different, signifying the incredible importance of God the Father in providing salvation to all peoples that were chosen and would believe through Jesus Christ.

So, when you begin to get a little down with your state of affairs, knowing the solidness and eternality of our resource and source for our inheritance should cause us to rejoice.

The Rationale - 1:3b

We recognize the source as being quite capable, obviously, of being the source or resource for our eternal inheritance.

However, it begs the question of why and how this is really possible.

Read a bit further in verse 3:

who according to His great mercy

We’ve seen that God is sovereign and is totally in charge of our salvation.

Here we get a glimpse into the rationale for why He did this.

It was His great mercy.

It’s not just mercy, it’s great mercy.

Look at , where we see that God was rich in mercy.

Let me take a little time to discuss mercy and compare it briefly with grace.

We know a simplistic definition of grace is getting what we don’t deserve.

After all, we deserve the punishment of hell.

Instead, we have been given eternal life.

A simple definition of mercy is not getting what we deserve.

That would have been hell.

You see, we truly were lost.

We were enemies of God.

We actually were the walking dead, blindly headed away from God.

We were in desperate need for help.

We needed someone to have compassion on us.

Just in case you need to hear it from God’s Word, which is always best, look at what Paul writes in Ephesians.

Praise God for the fact that in spite of us, God chose to show great mercy in providing all who would believe an inheritance of eternal life.

The Result - 1:3c - 4a

We’ve seen that God has the ability to provide an eternal inheritance.

We also have seen the reasoning and the rationale for our inheritance.

So let’s look a bit more carefully at the result of our eternal inheritance.

Just what does it involve?

has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away

I have made the humorous comment, at least I thought it was, It’s easier to milk a chicken than to get certain things to happen.

Whatever the impossible situation was, fit in that description.

Well, that’s the picture of a person trying to stop being a sinner on their own.

It requires something supernatural for that change to occur in a person’s life.

Peter refers to this as God caus[ing] us to be born again.

It’s not something we can do.

Yet, this is what God’s great mercy results in the life of all who were dead in sin, which was everybody.

For many, this phrase born again sounds quite familiar, as it should.

Again, it’s not something we can orchestrate; it requires God’s supernatural work in our lives.

Listen to a conversation between Jesus and an extremely educated scholar:

John 3:1-15

In simple terms, borrowing from Jesus’ illustration from the incident in , if we look to Jesus and place our trust in Him as our Lord and Savior, we will no longer be dead spiritually, but truly born again.

We will shout out to the world, I’m rich.

The reason is that we are certain of our inheritance of eternal life.

How, you say?

We have a living hope.

I don’t have to fear death.

I don’t have to fear the grave.

I don’t have to fear if I did enough, since Jesus did it all.

I don’t have to fear paying for the guilt of all my sin, since Jesus took care of that on the cross.

When a believer dies, we receive our inheritance in totality as we are in the presence of God.

How can I be so sure?

It’s all possible and proven by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Listen to Jesus’ words to his dear friend, Martha:

Am I really promised this?

Absolutely!

As we look at the first part of verse 4, we see that we obtain an inheritance.

An inheritance is something of great value which is passed down to family members.

Our inheritance is a spiritual one which Peter states later is in heaven.

So when we, like Peter’s readers, are feeling that everything and everyone is set against us, even to the point where we lose our freedoms, our possessions, our jobs, even our lives, because of our following Jesus Christ, we must remember that our focus needs to be on the reality that we cannot lose our eternal inheritance.

What exactly do we know about the value of this eternal inheritance?

Peter tells us that it is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away.

In other words, it cannot be destroyed by anyone or anything.

It is not tainted or messed up by sin in any way.

Anything you or I might inherit from earthly family, will have potential problems.

It will also not last forever.

I love flowers and especially since my wife loves flowers.