How can we continue with Christian joy in a world of suffering and pain? Peter in this joyful opening of a letter to suffering Christians gives us some pointers.

Sermon am – 1 Peter 1:3-9

Aim: Genuine faith rejoices in our imperishable inheritance despite the sufferings of this life.

Joy – really?

I love this passage, it just oozes joy and enthusiasm. It’s such a great celebration of the great resurrection truths and the difference it should make to our hearts. In fact the first verse of our passage:

“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,” (1 peter 1:3)

was one I often quoted to myself as an encouragement during the Covid pandemic.

But you might be sitting there and thinking, ‘Really?’ How can you be joyful when life faces us with so many struggles?

Certainly, as Christians we should not ignore the difficulties and struggles of life. Some of the Psalms are a great model of how to cry out to God when life seems tough and the whole focus on the crucifixion of Christ faces the reality of suffering head on. Christianity is not simply an, ‘Always look on the bright side of life!’ religion.

1 Peter is a letter written to people who are suffering. We do not know the details, but the letter suggests that the Christians Peter is writing to are struggling with being small groups of isolated Christians who are often ill-treated by others because of their Christian faith. Compared with our lives today, their life was tough. From the perspective of the pagans around them, being a Christian made things worse. They had little from a worldly point of view to rejoice in and Peter knows that. In verse 6 he acknowledges their struggles:

“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.” (1 Peter 1:6)

So how can we rejoice when we are suffering?

The answer lies in what you rejoice in and how that compares to the suffering. Peter’s claim is not that we should ignore the suffering or that it is wrong to experience the emotions of grief and sadness that it may bring, but that even the depths of the suffering in this life cannot compare with the joy we have in Christ.

The Zip-Wire of Joy

For my wife’s 40th birthday, we as a family did ‘Go Ape’ at Leeds Castle. This involved climbing around increasingly ‘High Wires’ and going on a massively long zip-wire, which crossed high over a valley. I don’t like heights, but it was my wife’s birthday, so I gave it ago. At points it was terrifying, but it was also fun – even the zip-wire!

Now there are three things that you want to know about a zip-wire in order to be confident using it. You want to know that it is secured to the ground at the start, that it is secured to the ground at the end and that it is not going to snap in the middle! If any of those things fail, then the zip-wire turns from a thrill to a tragedy.

In the same way if we are to have joy in the Christian life, then we need to have confidence in its start point, its end point and the wire running between them and those are what Peter focusses on in this passage.

Joy in Life  – vs. 3

The start point is the resurrection. Peter had himself known Jesus, gone through the tragedy and pain of seeing him crucified, before experiencing the utter joy of meeting the risen Jesus and seeing death defeated. For Peter, the resurrection was a transformational moment, it changed his life utterly.

Now, many years later, he writes with confidence to these struggling Christians to remind them of the new birth they have experienced when they came to believe in the reality of the resurrection.

Many would have previously been pagans, believing in a world controlled by fickle gods, with death being the gateway into a rather bleak view of any afterlife. Life was tough and then you die, was their hopeless outlook.

Today, many in our world have the same outlook. They are distracted by momentary pleasures and short term goals to improve their lives through more money, better relationships or fun activities, but they have nothing to look forward to  in the long term except the onset of old age and death itself. Hope is dead.

When you grasp that the resurrection actually happened, that the God of Jesus can and has raised the dead and he did so to create a way to life and salvation for all who trust in him, then hope comes alive and life is transformed.

It is a new birth. The resurrection is not an intellectual fact to debate over, but a reality that should seep into our hearts and change the way we think, feel and love. It brings inexpressible and glorious joy. The resurrection is the secure start point of the Christian life.

Joy in Hope –  vs. 4

But start points are not enough. If I went on the zip-wire across the valley with a secure start point, but a broken end-point, then the zip would become a plummet.

Yet, as Peter makes clear, the resurrection shows us that our end point is secure. We have an inheritance, a place in God’s eternal home that will always be there:

untouched by death

unstained by evil

unimpaired by time

These days we insist on guarantees. We want to be confident that if we buy something, that it won’t break straight away or fail us. The Bank of England guarantees, the banking system, so that if the banks fail we can know that our savings – up to a certain amount – won’t disappear.

Security is important, but the recent pandemic and the war in Ukraine have made us feel less secure. Where can we find a confident guarantee?

The answer comes from Jesus. Why? He proved his utter commitment and love for us dying for us and demonstrated his power over death by rising again. In Jesus, our hope is totally and utterly secure. In him, we can find true joy.

Joy with Faith – vs. 7-8

Finally, there comes the wire itself. You can have a secure start point and a fixed end point, but if the wire goes snap, then you go splat!

What is the wire in our illustration? How are we held through time between the fixed points of the resurrection and our eternal home in heaven? How can we be held with confidence above the trials and tribulations of this life? It is with a genuine faith.

Peter says, such a faith is of greater worth than gold. This is obvious. You can’t take gold with you when you die, but genuine faith in Christ is what brings us to the fixed point of that eternal inheritance.

Yet, the illustration has another aspect to it. Gold is refined by fire. When you heat gold up and skim the rubbish off the top, the true gold remains, the rubbish disappears. The same is true of faith, when we are faced with the trials and suffering of life.

In the parable of the sower, Jesus speaks of the seed that falls on shallow ground as illustrating those whose faith is not genuine. When the suffering and persecution come along, their faith wilts. It was not genuine. Similarly, he speaks of the seed that falls amongst the weeds as illustrating a faith that is not genuine. When the worries of this life come along, the faith is choked.

True faith perseveres through these struggles, keeping you fixed to the resurrection and to the hope of our eternal inheritance. When this is the case, suffering creates a deeper confidence that our faith is genuine, that the wire will hold. Our struggles may be tough, but they have a positive purpose in refining and strengthening our faith. When that happens we discover a deeper joy!

When I went on the zip wire across the valley near Leeds Castle, the initial moments were terrifying – the ground was a long way down. But as I whizzed through the air, I became more confident that the start and end points would hold and the wire would not snap. Terror turned to pleasure.

In the same way, as Christians as we zip through life, we need to focus again and again on the great fixed points of the resurrection and our eternal inheritance and rejoice in the genuine faith that God has given us to keep us moving towards the ultimate goal, the salvation of our souls!

The resurrection was an event that changed the world, but how?

Seismic Events Change Things

Have you ever come across a big pond or lake. The water is completely calm and flat.

Then you throw a stone in the lake. Where the stone lands, there is a big splash, but then ripples spread out from the splash point and the whole lake is changed.

In the same way an earthquake or seismic event happens in one place, but the vibrations from the event spread out and soon the whole landscape is changed!

Sometimes there are moments or events in history, that happen in one place, but their effects spread out and change the whole world.

Recently, the outbreak of Covid in Wuhan in China, was such an event. The disease spread out from there and changed the whole world!

Of course, earthquakes and diseases are terrible events, that change the world for the worse – at least in the short term. Yet, today we remember an event that transformed the world for the better.

In our reading today, Matthew tells us about an earthquake, when the angel comes down and rolls the stone away from the tomb. What Matthew is hinting at is that something had happened that was going to change the whole world!

So how does the resurrection change things. What was the world like before the resurrection and what is it like after the resurrection?

Before:

I want to consider things from the perspective of ordinary people and especially those who followed Jesus. There are three things we can say about them, that is true for many of us when we have not fully understood the implications of the Resurrection.

Fear:

The first is a life ultimately ruled by fear. In the first century, this is how the Roman’s ruled. Basically, it was do as I say or else we will kill you. The Romans were bullies and the ultimate means of bullying people was to crucify them.

So, when Jesus was crucified by the Romans as ‘the King of the Jews’, they were saying, this is what happens to anyone who does not do what we say. They controlled people with fear and there did not seem to be anyway to stand up against them.

Ultimately, the fear of being killed or even the fear of death can be something that controls us all. Of course it is not just death, but fear of all kinds of other things as well – fear of being criticised, fear of being lonely, fear of being poor. Such fears are often used to control us.

When Jesus was arrested and crucified, the disciples hid in fear of being arrested and killed themselves. The Romans and the leaders in Jerusalem, seemed to have the power of life and death. They were the ones to fear.

Deaf:

Secondly, people tend to be naturally deaf to what God is saying to them. That was certainly true of the leaders in Jerusalem who refused to listen to Jesus and had him killed in order to silence him.

But even the disciples did not hear Jesus properly. He told them again and again that he was going to die and rise again, but they did not want to hear that he was going to die. He told Peter that he would deny even knowing him, but Peter did not want to hear that he would let Jesus down. The disciples followed Jesus they learnt from him, but they were deaf to the things he said that they found difficult.

Fail:

Thirdly, people tend to fail to be the kind of people God wants them to be. Pilate failed to uphold justice and had Jesus killed even though he thought he was innocent. The Jewish leaders failed to welcome God’s son, but instead had him killed.

Even the disciples failed Jesus. Peter when Jesus was arrested, followed him to the courtyard where he was on trial, but when asked whether he was a follower of Jesus denied even knowing him. As Jesus died, Peter must have felt an utter failure.

So, when Jesus was dead and buried, the disciples had good reason to be afraid, they were deaf to what Jesus had told them would happen and they felt like they had failed Jesus big time.

But then there was a seismic event! Jesus was raised from the dead!

After:

So how was the world changed by the resurrection?

Hope:

Firstly, Fear is turned to hope.

With Jesus dead and buried it looked like the bullying power of Rome was to be feared. There was no hope of anything other than being under their power or the power of whoever was strongest.

But, when Jesus rose from the dead, that threat and that power was completely undermined. This is shown almost comically in Matthew’s gospel. The soldiers guarding the tomb are completely terrified by the angel that comes to open the tomb and reveal it is empty! The forces that killed Jesus are powerless in the face of his resurrection.

Now there is hope. The fear of death has no more sway, if the God of Jesus Christ has power over death. We may one day face death, but we can have a confident hope of life with God forever more, if we are on the side of Jesus.

Hear:

Secondly, the deaf can now hear the truth.

When the angel explains to the women what has happened, he says Jesus has risen, ‘just as he said.’

Before the resurrection, the disciples did not believe the things that Jesus said that just sounded crazy. Now, they can see that all that Jesus said was true. The resurrection proves that Jesus is right. They can now properly hear and understand his words and teaching.

Now they can go and make disciples of all nations, because only now have they come to fully trust in Jesus’s words. When we see that Jesus is the one who rose from the dead, just as he said, then we realise that we have to hear what he says and obey it.

Clan:

Thirdly, the resurrection shows us that those who fail are welcomed as part of God’s clan.

The disciples failed Jesus. If he had stayed dead, then their failure would have remained. But, he came back from the dead and the key thing he says to the women, is to tell the disciples that he will see them again. As he does so he calls, them ‘my brothers’. In other words, they are now family, they are part of the clan!

The resurrection shows us that God’s ultimate aim is to welcome back those who have failed to live for him into his family, his clan. He came to create a new people, to live out this resurrection life, to hear his words and to have hope and not fear!

Has the resurrection changed your life?

So, has the resurrection changed your life.

Do you live in fear or hope? Are you deaf to what God is saying through Jesus or are you ready to hear him?

Do you feel that you are too much of a failure for God or do you recognise that he wants to welcome you into his clan?

Have the ripples of the resurrection event on that first Easter Sunday reached your heart yet?

Maybe this Easter Sunday, you need to take notice of the radical change that the resurrection has brought about and invite God to come into your life and change you, to bring you from death to life.