Homeward bound

This transcript has been automatically generated

Let’s pray as we stand.

Almighty God, we do want to praise you for the Lord Jesus Christ.

We praise you that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he chose to become poor so that through his poverty we might become rich. We praise you for his humility, therefore, his willingness to come to earth and Be born as a man, not just as a man, but to take the form of a slave.

Thank you for the perfect life he lived for us. Praise you for all that he was willing to endure— the hatred of men, physical abuse from people.

Ultimately, that he was willing to drink the cup of your wrath for us. We praise you that he was willing to be obedient to death, even death on the cross.

Thank you for the example of his suffering, therefore, and that he didn’t revile people when he was reviled or retaliate.

And we praise you too for his glorious resurrection. Thank you for vindicating him and proving to the world that he is indeed your Son, the Lord of all. We praise you that in him we have hope.

Thank you that we have a living hope and that we know it will never disappoint us. And so we praise you for the home that is waiting for us in heaven. And we pray that as we look at 1 Peter together this weekend, That you would help us to walk the road as we wait for heaven. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Please do take a seat.

Jonathan? Not quite here yet. Susan, would you come and do our reading for us? Thank you. Susan Ho is going to read to us from 1 Peter chapter 1.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for our salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that tested— so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, perishes though it is tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do— though you do not now see him, you believe in him, and you rejoice with a joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith in salvation of your souls.

Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was yours, that was to be yours, searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven— things into which angels long to look.

Good. Well, we’re going to look at that passage. 1 Peter is a great book. We’re going through it at the moment in our church. You can try and work out over the course of the weekend where you think we’ve got to in our sermons during this term, the point at which my kind of clarity on the book seems to dry up.

And I was looking forward enormously to listening to it as a church back home, and delighted to have this chance at this weekend as well to listen to what God’s got to say to us. To you as St Helen’s, to you as individuals, about living in, as Christians, in a world that is not Christian. That’s really what 1 Peter is about. And there’s an outline on your chairs if you find that helpful to follow through, with some space there as well for you to jot notes on if you find that helpful too.

Let me just say that I’m really going to assume through these talks that you’re Christians. And it may well be that you’re here this weekend and you’re not a Christian, in which case you’re kind of listening in. Let me just say it’s going to confirm one of the things you always thought about Christians. You have always thought that Christians are weirdos. That is exactly what 1 Peter says.

So that’s going to confirm all your suspicions about Christians. But I think what you’ll discover through listening to it, actually, is what it is like to be a Christian, because that is exactly what 1 Peter’s going to tell us. Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever had that experience where you’ve been in a situation and you just don’t know the right way to behave. You’re just not quite sure what is the etiquette of the situation. Perhaps you’ve had it when you’ve been on holiday.

Maybe you’ve been in France, you’ve gone to a street café, you want to order a drink, and you can’t remember how you do it. Do you sit down at one of the tables and wait for a waiter to come to you, or do you go to the bar? And you can seem to remember from French lessons at school that one of those ways was cheaper and doesn’t involve tax, but you can’t remember which way it is that you’re supposed to do it. Just near us we have a livestock market. We have a number of animals, we’ve got some sheep and some hens and so on, so we periodically visit the livestock market in Melton Mowbray.

Let me just say that should you ever go to a livestock market, particularly the one in Milton Row Bay, there are certain things you need to know. There are certain clothes that you need to wear, otherwise you will stick out and it will be very obvious to everybody you are not from a farm. You are just plain different. Believe me, the kind of things I wear are exactly that. Anyway, Peter is talking about how it is for us as Christians, and I wonder if you ever have that kind of experience.

You felt like that as a Christian, you felt strange, you felt odd. You’re in a situation where you just basically feel like a lemon.

Feeling uncomfortably different from people around you, just because you’re a Christian and they’re not. And the things that you think and believe, the values that are dear to you, the orientation of your life, it is just strange for everybody else. Now that is what Peter is about. Feeling strange, feeling odd, feeling out when everybody else appears to be in. And Peter’s word for that is exiles.

So that’s my first heading this morning, that Christians are exiles. And the first— I’ve got 3 things to say about it. And the first thing is, we’ll just turn over to chapter 4, verse 4, where Peter is talking about Christians living amongst the non-Christians that they used to live amongst. Verse 4: with respect to your behaviour, the things that you’re no longer joining in with, they, non-Christians, are surprised when you Christians do not join in with them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you. Being a Christian means we don’t join in.

We are different from the worldview, the behaviour, the attitudes, and so on, that we breathe in all around us like passive smokers, that are there all around, and we’re just different from it. And I want to suggest that that gap is going to get worse. As time goes on, Christians are going to feel more strange, not less. There have been a whole load of statistics this past year about church attendance. Now, I know you have to be careful with statistics.

You can put your head in a fridge and your feet in the oven, and on average, statistically speaking, you’ll be perfectly comfortable. But look at this graph. Here, the headline is church attendance is declining, but the truth is it is dramatically declining amongst the under-20s, that red segment at the top of the graph.

So 39% of churches in the UK have got nobody attending under 11, half of them have got nobody at all in the younger teens, and majority have got nobody in that 15 to 19 age group. Now, if you add to that the fact that 3 out of every 4 Christians in the UK became Christians as children or young people, then that statistic is truly shocking, isn’t it?

Or take another section of society here, not thinking about children and young people, but thinking about cohabiting couples in the UK. There’s been a marked rise. Maybe now a quarter of over-16s in the UK are cohabiting. But the point I’m making is that that sector of society is largely absent from our churches. 5 million couples and their children in this category are not in church.

Or take one more example. If young people are voting with their feet and if cohabiting couples are hardly represented, what about single-parent families? 13% in the UK, but it’s a far, far lower percentage isn’t it, in the UK church.

And my point is simply this, that an increasing majority of UK society is not hearing the gospel, knows nothing of Christian morality, obviously is gonna think that Christianity and Christians are just plain weird. I mean, no wonder being a Christian feels strange.

But the second reason why Peter calls these Christians exiles is that they were exiles, literally. See, Peter’s writing about 30 years after Jesus, and Claudius is the emperor in Rome. And Claudius comes up with this clever wheeze of how he’s going to spread Roman culture around the world. A policy of colonisation. And the 5 places that get mentioned in chapter 1, verse 1— Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia— are places where he did this.

And what he would do is he would deport a whole group of people who weren’t Roman citizens, and sometimes he’d send unwanted, like Jews or maybe groups of Christians, and he’d send them off into this new territory And they’d arrive there not citizens of Rome where they’ve come from, nor citizens of the new place where they are sent to. And the word that we’ve got here in chapter 1, verse 1, where Peter says he’s writing to exiles, that word exiles is the legal term for people like that. People who are sent to start a new Roman outpost somewhere. And we think that some of Peter’s readers probably were those. They really were then exiles, literally.

And so in the places that they were, in these places Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, those places, they really are on the margins of society without home or house or family.

But there’s a third reason why Peter calls them strangers or exiles, and that is that all Christians are exiles. Peter is writing from Rome. Just turn over to chapter 5, verse 12 and 13. Verse 12 we looked at briefly last night. We saw the reason why Peter is writing.

He’s going to tell us, he says, the true grace of God. Can you see that in verse 12? He’s going to exhort and declare that this is the true grace of God, so we stand firm in it. But look at the next verse, verse 13, where he’s sending greetings to the Christians who are scattered in those 5 places in modern Turkey, and he’s sending greetings from the Christians who are in Rome. But he calls the church in verse 13 not she who is in Rome, but she who is in Babylon.

You see that there? Now, you experts in Old Testament history, what does Babylon represent? Well, of course, it is the place where God’s people are taken the end of the Old Testament, as exiles.

Israel dragged out of Jerusalem, plopped down in an alien culture far from home and longing to get back. And Peter is now saying the Christians who are in Rome are just like that. In Rome, centuries later, but they are exiles, just like those people at the end of the Old Testament in Babylon.

But not only that, not only those he’s within Rome. Come back again to chapter 1, verse 1.

It’s also those he’s writing to, because he says he’s writing to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion, who are in these 5 places in Asia Minor. Now, when he says of the dispersion, you might think he’s talking about Claudius and his cunning plan to spread all things Roman and He’s saying, you poor guys in Pontus, etc., you know, you are of that dispersion, Claudius’s dispersion, that nasty, ruthless Roman dictator who’s dispersed you. But actually, that’s not what he means. The word dispersion here is the word that is used at the end, for the end of the Old Testament, that exile to Babylon. That was the dispersion, Jews living outside Palestine.

So Peter is saying to those who are dispersed by Claudius, you as well are linked to those exiles from the end of the Old Testament, those exiled people of God. So in other words, all Christians are— the ones in Rome are like they’re in Babylon, the ones who are in verse 1, they’re like those of the dispersion. You are all linked to the exiled people of God. All Christians in this world are like Israel in exile in Babylon at the end of the Old Testament. All God’s people are exiles of the dispersion.

So, however we do or don’t feel in our culture, the fact is, theologically, we are exiles. Far from the place, in other words, that we truly belong. Far from the heavenly country that God’s got ready for us.

So what we’ve got here then is a letter from exile in Rome to exiles of the dispersion.

So just follow this through. See, in chapter 1, verse 1, he says he’s writing to exiles. Look at chapter 1, verse 17, and the end of that verse, he describes their life as Christians as a time of exile. Can you see that phrase at the end of verse 17? Or chapter 2, verse 11, he calls them sojourners and exiles, or another translation, aliens and strangers.

When we become Christians, you see, God alienates us from this world. We have different desires, different hopes from this world. And our longing is, or in the words of that hymn, our holy longing is to get back home, to the heavenly home that God’s got ready for us.

Now, we know exactly what exile felt like for Israel.

So we’ve got some of the things that they wrote when they were in exile in Babylon. Listen to this, it’s a modern translation of Psalm 137.

Alongside Babylon’s rivers, far from home, we sat on the banks. We cried and cried, remembering the good old days back in Jerusalem. We stacked up our unplayed harps as our guards sarcastically demanded, sing us one of your happy Zion songs. Oh, how could we ever sing in this wasteland?

Now, if we’re gonna get into the feel of 1 Peter, we’ve got to get into the feel of that, that way of thinking, believing that we’re like a foreigner. You know, that feeling of being outside a French street café and, you know, jiggling from foot to foot, not quite sure the way to behave, feeling that you’re in the livestock market in Melton Mowbray, feeling, I wish I had, you know, a peaked cap and a barber and all of that. Believing we’re in exile and on the margins, far from home, and every bit of us longing to get back home. And believe me, the next things that we’re going to see this morning aren’t going to mean half as much until we get that feel of how exiled we are. So it’s a very good question to ask ourselves at the beginning of the weekend: how at home do I feel in this world?

Or actually is the case that I’m so like the world all around me, I’ve so breathed in passively the smoke all around me that I don’t feel strange at all. I feel completely normal in this world. I don’t know what you’re talking about, Nigel. I don’t feel like an exile or odd at all. I feel really at home, comfortable here.

There was a mid-1960s Jim Reeves song, This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through. It was terribly corny, and if you don’t know it, believe me, the tune is even more corny than the words. But it is a true sentiment, you know, this world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through. Christians are exiles.

Second way, come back again to chapter 1, verse 1, and see the second word that Peter uses to describe them. Christians are elect. That means chosen. The elect are the select. God picked me out.

Day before yesterday, I was going around the supermarket selecting all kinds of things. There were loads of other things to buy on the shelves that I chose not to buy. But as I was pushing my trolley around, I selected this, selected that, walked past some more, selected that, put them in, and so on. The ones that were in my trolley as I got to the checkout were the ones that had been personally chosen by me to be bought and then to be brought back home.

Now, so it is with scattered, seemingly insignificant Christians chosen by God, feeling on the margins of the Roman Empire, feeling on the margins of God’s purpose, but actually at the very centre of God’s plan. Picked out personally by him and put in his supermarket trolley. I mean, that’s what God did for Israel in the Old Testament. He selected them off the shelf of the world, paid good money to buy them so he could bring them home. And when he got them there, to their home, to the Promised Land, he gave to each family of the nation a plot of land, an allotment of land.

And the Old Testament word for that bit of land in the Promised Land that God gave to each of Israel was the word inheritance. This bit’s gonna be yours. This is your inheritance.

So now look down to verses 3 to 5, because that is exactly the same for us. That is, that Christians are given, verse 4, an inheritance. Or if you want another word that kind of rings different sort of bells for us, an allotment. Christians have got an allotment. Lots of people in my church have got an allotment.

They grow a few fruit and veg, fight a few weeds. But this inheritance here is— this allotment is nothing like that. See, our inheritance that we’re told here that God has given to us, the people that he selected off the supermarket shelf and chosen and selected That allotment that he’s given to us, our inheritance, isn’t just a kind of plot of physical turf that has been allotted to us. It’s not something earthly like that, not something that’s subject to political forces and enemy invasion, something that Israelis and Palestinians will still be squabbling over centuries later. It’s not like that.

Something brilliant and future. It’s called, verse 3, a living hope. According to the end of verse 5, it’s all to do with a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In other words, it’s an allotment in God’s new world. A plot kept in heaven for us, it says at the end of verse 4.

That’s the new future that God gives to born-again Christians.

The problem is, I think, that we’ve all been disappointed too often in life, haven’t we? You know, so many things that we could dredge up out of our past, little things that didn’t work out quite as we had hoped. So, great day out that we’ve been planning but had to be cancelled because it— this is England, it rained. You know, a dinner party that wasn’t quite as wonderful as we thought it was gonna be. A family occasion that proves to be tense.

And we store up those kind of disappointments and are sort of ready to draw out as evidence. You know, when we next feel ourselves looking forward to something, we kind of have a little word with ourselves and say, watch out! You know what happened when you last started looking forward to something? It’s never as good as you expect. Downgrade your expectations.

And so we come to 1 Peter and we read these verses, and Peter’s kind of waxing lyrical about how wonderful this allotment is, and we think, oh yeah, sure. You’re the God who gives the glorious future, are you? Well, time will tell. We’ll see. I know you’re not going to say that, but deep down, that maybe is what we think.

And Peter knows that’s what we’re like, so I want you to see the copper-bottom guarantees that he adds to that. The first thing he says in the end of verse 4 is that God is keeping this inheritance for you. It’s an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you.

Maybe like me, you have stuff at the back of the cupboard or the fridge that is kind of special. It’s Tesco’s finest, and you’re saving it for that special occasion. Not quite special enough this week, but yes, today’s the day, and we get it out and it’s past the sell-by date. Or those raspberries that were so expensive are now a mass of mould or whatever. You know, you get to it and enormous disappointment.

Look at what verse 4 is saying. That is never going to be the case.

It’s never going to be past its sell-by date. We’re not going to get to it and then find it’s no longer quite as good as we’d hoped.

And secondly, look at verse 5. We are by God’s power being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. You see, secondly, we are being kept for it. Not just God is keeping it for us, but He’s keeping us for it. So heaven is not going to be like one of those unclaimed lottery wins.

You know those things that you read in the paper? Or those, um, what’s that programme that’s on telly at the moment where they go around looking for unclaimed will people? What are those programmes called? Come on, somebody who watches daytime telly. Where are the women?

That’s the one, yeah.

I read about it in the newspaper as well, yeah.

Exactly. It’s not like that. You know, it’s not going to be laying up there unclaimed. It’d be dreadful if it was, wouldn’t it? God’s promising us a wonderful place in heaven, but you’ll never get it.

It’s just gonna lie there unclaimed. No, it’s not gonna be like that. He’s keeping heaven for us so it doesn’t go off, and he’s keeping us for heaven so we don’t go off. And we’ll claim it. In other words, what he’s saying is that this allotment that we may think about as kind of, calm down, dear, you know, it’s only a promise.

You know, this allotment is absolutely secure. That’s what Peter’s saying.

And our confidence that it’s all for real, that it’s not gonna prove to be just another little life’s disappointment? Well, it’s the resurrection of Jesus. That’s the point in history, Peter says, when our future was born. History changed and our inheritance became certain.

So Christians are Elect. God wandered around the supermarket of the world and selected you. Do you believe that? All the other tins on the shelf, it was you was the one he put in his trolley. He made you his people, and now he’ll take his people home.

He’ll make sure we get our inheritance so that we will no longer be exiles, but we’ll be back home where we belong.

So to get this picture then, these 2 words in verse 1, the people that Peter is writing to are exiles but elect. And elect means selected to be taken home.

Unbelievably privileged, even if in this world we feel strange.

So, and here comes Peter’s first application. Elect exiles, rejoice in your salvation. Look down to verse 6. In this you rejoice.

Or verses 8 and 9, though you’ve not seen him, you love him. Though you don’t see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with joy inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. You are rejoicing with joy inexpressible. That’s the big point here, that that heavenly home, that salvation that we will receive, that allotment, that inheritance that is kept for us, that we are in the process now of travelling from exile there to receive it, that we rejoice in that.

And Peter gives us 2 reasons why we do rejoice in that. Here’s the first one: because you are receiving it, verses 6 to 9. Elect exiles, as elect exiles, we rejoice in our salvation because we are receiving it. Why do Christians rejoice? Because, end of verse 8 and verse 9, we’re receiving the outcome of our faith, the salvation of our souls.

But, and there are 2 big buts here.

There’s a very famous sermon outline written by an English person rather than an American person where the sermon is all about, but so-and-so had a big but. So here is 1 Peter and here is 2 big buts. If you’re not American, just ask an American later for a translation of that. Private joke between me and everybody in America.

So here’s the first of the 2 big buts. First, we rejoice in the salvation we’re receiving even though you can’t see Jesus.

Verses 8 and 9. Now, I couldn’t work out what verse 8 was doing here. See, if you look down to it, verses 6 and 7 are all about the trials that we’re going to talk about in just a moment. And if you see, verse 9 carries on where the end of verse 7 gets to. Verse 7 ends with the glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ, and verse 9 is talking about the same point.

The outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls, looking forward to what awaits us. After the trials come the salvation, the praise, the glory, and the honour, and so on. So why is verse 8 stuck here? See, it’s all about not seeing Jesus. You haven’t seen him, but you love him.

You can’t see him now, but you believe in him. I just couldn’t understand what it was doing here, and then I read something that made it crystal clear.

When we see in the news pictures of something like the fall of Tripoli, or the ending of Saddam Hussein, or even the fall of the Berlin Wall, however long ago it was, 20 years ago, whatever, What do we always see the protesters doing? We always see this kind of thing: pulling down huge structures.

You know, the massive statue of the dictator being smashed up. People running amok through the palace compound so they can see— steal Colonel Gaddafi’s hat and run out with it and so on. Because all of those big structures, those things have been built to say the regime is mighty.

Our empire is indestructible, you know, our leader Saddam is bigger than your leader, look how big his statue is. And the Roman Empire was all about just that kind of propaganda. And it is true, isn’t it? I mean, you visit any Roman remains today, okay, they’re now ruined, but they are massive structures, aren’t they, that could hold thousands and thousands of citizens, or there are busts of powerful men. There were symbols of power everywhere.

Roman standards, eagles, magnificent civic buildings. Everywhere your eye turned in the ancient world, that was what you saw. The triumph of Roman imperialism. And it’s exactly the same in our world, isn’t it? I mean, go to London, you visit Trafalgar Square, you walk up the Mall to Buckingham Palace, anywhere you go in London, you know, The whole capital city is stuffed full of monuments to the excellent British Empire, British might and grandeur, and rest of the world take notice, we’re big.

Now what would these Christians feel? Just put yourselves back into their situation for a moment. They’re scattered, they’re seemingly insignificant, they’re feeling on the margins of the Roman Empire. They’re feeling on the margins of God’s purposes. And everywhere they looked, everything they see says to them, you’re nobodies.

It’s that message being reinforced. Rome is everything. You know, who are you?

And in contrast, the Jesus that they love and they believe in, they cannot see. You know, we say he’s great, but nobody can see that. Look anywhere and you can see that Rome is great. It’s all around us.

See, isn’t Peter saying something like this? You know, yes, it doesn’t look as if Jesus is wonderful. It doesn’t look as if Jesus is powerful. It looks as if Rome is far, far more impressive. But you, Christian, have put your trust not in Rome but in Jesus.

And you rejoice in your salvation that is ready to be revealed and will be seen when it’s revealed. You rejoice even though you feel like nobodies and are just moved around at the whim of the empire. You are the subject of the apparently visible might of Rome.

So, elect exiles, you rejoice in your salvation Even though you can’t see Jesus, even though what you can see might seem to deny the might of Jesus, you rejoice in your salvation even though you can’t see him. And secondly, you rejoice in your salvation even though you’re experiencing trials. Verse 6: In this inheritance, this hope, this salvation, in this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you’ve been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ. So, you rejoice in your salvation even though you’re experiencing trials. And these trials are a big theme in 1 Peter.

He keeps talking about them. We keep coming back to them. What kind of trials are we talking about? Well, the first thing to say is that they are Well, turn over to chapter 3, verse 14. Chapter 3, verse 14.

They are for righteousness’ sake. Can you see that in 3:14? Or turn over to chapter 4, verse 13.

They are sharing in Christ’s sufferings. How? Verse 14. By being insulted for the name of Christ. Or verse 16, suffering as a Christian.

In other words, the trials we’re talking about in 1 Peter, and particularly here in these verses, are not the general hardships of life. You know, we all have trials that we go through. We’re not talking about those— illness, bereavement, pressure, stress, and so on— but specifically for the name of Christ. That’s particularly what we’re talking about here. And the second thing to say is that these Christians are not being fed to lions.

They’re not being martyred.

Partly we think that because of when we think this letter was written. In other words, it’s before all of that started happening. We’re just before Emperor Nero.

But chiefly we think that because of what the letter itself says. And as you go through the letter, what becomes clear is that The suffering because they’re Christians that they’re experiencing is largely verbal.

It’s slander, it’s malicious accusation. Let me show you some of these. Chapter 2, verse 12: Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honourable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers— Chapter 2, verse 15: This is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Put to silence their ignorance. In other words, they’re saying things that you’re going to silence.

Chapter 3, verse 9: Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling. The evil that they’re experiencing is reviling. Or chapter 3, verse 16: Do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behaviour in Christ may be put to shame. Do you see, it’s verbal abuse rather than, yeah, being set on fire as garden torches for Nero’s evening parties. Now what would it have been like then, this verbal abuse, malicious accusation that they are suffering?

Well, archaeologists have dug up a famous graffiti from the time. And this is a kind of cartoon of what they’ve dug up, and the picture is a donkey on a cross, and a man alongside it is holding up his arms to the donkey. And the slogan, if you could read the language and the graffiti, says, Alexander worships his God. Alexander is a Christian, and the idea here is that his faith in a crucified saviour is being ridiculed. The Jesus he worships is a donkey.

Now that’s the kind of words— okay, I know this is visual, but that’s the kind of slander, malicious accusation, that they’re having to listen to. Now for sure there is lying behind 1 Peter the fear that it may get worse, that the fiery trial may come, will come, but that’s not yet the situation in 1 Peter.

Yeah, it says Alexander worships his god. Yeah. So look then what Peter says here to people who are facing what is so far verbal badmouthing. Just by the way, we’ll come back to this later on in the weekend, this is perhaps very like us in the UK, isn’t it? This is exactly the situation that we’re in.

By and large, the kind of opposition that we face is the sort of verbal, at the verbal level, the sneers, the jokes, the accusations. None of us, I think, have been yet set to fire and stuck in the garden as a Roman candle.

So what is it that Peter says here then?

What he’s saying in verses 6 to 7 is basically genuine faith is tested faith. The trials that are grieving you have come so that the tested genuineness of your faith may be found to result in praise, glory, and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ. It’s almost, I think, a kind of— it separates the men from the boys.

See, imagine somebody who’s not a real Christian, not a real believer, not really on the journey to their heavenly home. That may be describing you for all I know, as you’re sitting here today. You’re just sort of along for the ride. Of course you go along to the weekends from St Helen’s. And then trials come.

Even if it’s just at the level of the sneering of mates at work or whatever. What will the not real Christian, but somebody who’s just along for the ride, what will somebody like that do when the sneering starts up around the water cooler? Cooler. Well, they’ll chuck in Christianity, won’t they? And they’ll opt for fitting in with their mates, because the bottom line is they want to be liked.

Whereas the person who does endure, who keeps going as a Christian, even when they’re being sneered at by their mates, even when they’re being— they’re getting it in their neck for being one, that testing by fire shows real faith. See, only the real Christian will endure tests like that. The kind of looks like a Christian but isn’t really one won’t. They’ll chuck it in.

So you’re facing a bit of verbal just because you’re a Christian.

You feel excluded from some office gossip, sort of left uncomfortably outside the edge of the group, sort of peering across and knowing you’re not part of the in-crowd. You’re not invited out with them next Saturday night. People take the mickey out of Christians, not out of you, but out of Christians in front of you, because they want to watch you squirm. Now, if you’re experiencing those kind of trials, exactly the kind of trials that Peter means, interesting, isn’t it, you’re still here this weekend? You’re still in church?

You’re still believing in Jesus? You still love him? Still rejoicing in your salvation? You’re still a Christian? You’re still clinging on?

And Peter is saying, the Lord is saying to you today, there is genuine faith in you. If you weren’t a real Christian, you’d have chucked it in.

That’s real encouragement for you. It’s not that we’re meant to enjoy the trials, but keeping growing through— keeping going through them is reassuring.

Now just put these 2 things together. Rejoice even though you can’t see Jesus and even though you’re experiencing trials. You see, put them together. What can we see all around us. Not Jesus, but trials.

Do you see why it’s tough?

The unseen Jesus, He’s far more important to us. But what seems far bigger, you know, what seems far more important in the middle of this week when we’re not sitting here with loads of other Christians, but we’re on our own and we’re feeling strange, feeling a stranger, feeling like we really are in exile, and that the desire is to fit in and to be liked and to be part of the group and to feel at home here.

You know, what seems far bigger to us is all the stuff that we’d love to make here our rather more comfortable home.

See, that is what seems bigger, even though Jesus is far more important. And what Peter is saying, elect exiles, rejoice in your salvation. Fix your eyes on Jesus. Look to the Jesus you love, because then the things of this earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.

So last bit this morning for this bit. Elect exiles, rejoice in your salvation because you’re receiving it?

Even though you don’t see Jesus, even though you’re experiencing trials. Secondly, elect exiles, rejoice in your salvation because you know the Bible’s pattern, which is suffering now and glory to come. This is verses 10 to 12. And you can see that little phrase, sufferings now and glories to come, at the end of verse 11. It’s talking about Jesus and it’s saying that was the pattern for him.

The sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. And that pattern for Jesus is the pattern for us now. Suffering now, but even though we’re in the suffering phrase, we rejoice. And we rejoice because Christians are so privileged because of this glory to come, this salvation that we rejoice in. Look at what he says here about why we are so privileged.

Verse 10, first of all: Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. 3 reasons why we are privileged. The first thing is that all of the Old Testament writers could only look forward to the salvation that we now know all about.

See, here are the people in the Old Testament writing hundreds of years before Jesus. So they had no idea who the Christ would be. They were writing about the Christ, but no idea who that was going to be. They had to be vague about when he’d come. They weren’t able to see quite how it would all fit together.

How could he be the victorious Lord? How could he be the suffering servant? They were saying things, writing things down in our Bibles that they couldn’t really understand. But us now, says Peter, we— this is a great thought— we understand the Old Testament better than the people who wrote it.

Now you may be saying, they can’t have understood it very much at all, because I don’t understand it. No, you do understand it. Better than the people who wrote it. Because we can read the Old Testament and we can see it, you know, we say, oh, that bit’s about Jesus! They wouldn’t have been able to do that.

Oh, and that bit is about him as well, and that bit as well. It’s great for us. We enjoy the salvation that they had to search out, that they were writing to tell us about. Do you think that’s amazing? Isaiah, why did he take the pen, take up his pen and write?

For you, for us. Amazing. No idea what he’s writing about, but he’s writing for us. We’re so privileged. They didn’t understand it, but we do.

And then secondly, do you see in verse 12, second half of verse 12, Peter’s saying that same Holy Spirit who enabled the Old Testament writers to write what they did, that same Holy Spirit preached it to us. He enabled the apostles in their preaching And it’s exactly the same for us. Whenever we listen to somebody telling us the Gospel, speaking about our salvation, right now actually, as I speak, if you like, you’re listening to the Holy Spirit. Sorry, I have no pretensions about my own grandeur, but this is what it’s saying. It’s the Holy Spirit telling you, through my words, more about the salvation you rejoice in.

Isn’t that an amazing thought? You’re listening to the Holy Spirit now. Who is telling you, the same Holy Spirit who told Isaiah to write, who told Peter and Paul and the rest of them to preach, is now speaking to you to tell you about the salvation you rejoice in. You know, you could have easily lived all your life, couldn’t you, and not have had the good news preached to you. But that’s not how it’s been to you.

The Holy Spirit has preached it to you.

In fact, says Peter, end of verse 12, and here’s perhaps the most amazing thought. Think about the angels in heaven for a moment. They’re jealous of you. I don’t know actually if you can be in heaven and feel jealousy, if you can be an angel and feel jealousy. But anyway, maybe that’s not the right word, but what it’s saying, end of verse 12, is that all of heaven is peering down, looking at Christians being saved, watching you as a young Christian and thinking, you lucky so-and-sos.

Again, I don’t think they’d use the word lucky, would they? But isn’t that amazing? You know, whatever you’re going through, however strange, however marginalised you feel, however stuck out at the edge of the Roman Empire, there’s another heavenly view on it all. Angels wish they could be you. They would love to be in your shoes.

Again, do angels wear shoes? I don’t know. What they wish is that they could know and experience the salvation that you’re obtaining. Elect exiles rejoice in your salvation. The Old Testament points to it.

The Holy Spirit preaches it to you. Angels long to look into it. You are obtaining it. You see how privileged you are? Elect exiles, rejoice in your salvation.

So, yeah, the pattern, the true grace of God of chapter 5, verse 12, I think that’s what this pattern is. This journey home is sufferings now, glories to come. What we see is a whole catalogue of various trials, all kinds of sufferings now. We feel exiled, we feel strange maybe as Christians in this world. We don’t see the Jesus that we believe in and that we love.

But if you’re a Christian, then you know however isolated, however odd we may feel, God selected you off the supermarket shelf. He put you in his shopping trolley to take you home. And we rejoice in what we can’t see. We rejoice in our salvation, those subsequent glories. We rejoice in the inheritance that is kept in heaven for us and that God is keeping us for.

We rejoice in that salvation that the Old Testament points to and was written all about for us, and that the Holy Spirit preached to us, and that angels wish they could experience like we are. Isn’t it wonderful? Elect exiles, rejoice in your salvation.

Let’s pray together.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he’s caused us to be born again to a living hope. Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for that salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Lord, it is just mind-boggling how privileged we are. It’s just extraordinary.

Thank you for the way this passage has just kept loading onto us privilege after privilege after privilege. We recognise that we feel odd, strange weirdos in this world. We are exiles here. But yet amazingly, you’ve selected us to take us home. We are homeward bound.

We rejoice in that salvation that is ready to be real, that we are obtaining, that— oh, it’s wonderful, and we thank you so much. Father God, for a glorious inheritance that we are born anew into. Thank you for a hope that is certain and secure. We pray, Heavenly Father, that at the start of this weekend we may be full of thanks. Our hearts may be skipping this morning at the wonderful privileges we have.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.