3rd Sunday of Easter, April 27/30, 2017
1 Peter 1:17-21 And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear; 18 knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. 20 He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you 21 who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
When we’re starting down the road of life, while we’re still in school, life can seem pretty hopeless sometimes amidst the pressures of getting homework done on time and trying to fit in so you can avoid being teased and made fun of. And if you are made fun of, if you’re one of the kids being teased day in and day out, you wonder if it’s ever going to end. Hopelessness isn’t just reserved for the young, however. Hopelessness rears its ugly head a little further down the road of life too, when you’re stuck in a dead-end job that you don’t like or when you’re struggling in your marriage. It can seem like nothing’s ever going to get any better. Even those who are nearing the end of this life’s road still find themselves losing hope, as more and more friends and loved ones die, as we lose the ability to do the things that we used to enjoy, as we struggle more and more to hold onto what we have.
That’s why it’s good for us to run into St. Peter on the road of life. Peter’s letters are all about hope. Even though the word hope is only mentioned a few times in Peter’s letters, there’s an undercurrent of hope that you can’t get away from. And the hope that Peter offers is the best kind of hope there is, the hope that restores all hope, the hope we have because Jesus rose from the dead. As we continue this week to count our Easter blessings, today Peter points us to the wonderful truth that Jesus lives to restore my hope.
I. Through His redemption from sin.
Driving down the highway, all of a sudden you notice the state trooper behind you, lights flashing, pulling you over. As you watch the trooper out your rearview mirror, you think to yourself, “Maybe the state trooper will let me off with a warning.” But that’s kind of a false hope, isn’t it?
Many of the hopes we have are false hopes. People have hopes about their loved one who died. They want to believe that cousin Tim is in heaven. Never mind that Tim had never darkened the door of a church as an adult or ever saw a need to hear about his Savior. There were no fruits of faith in his life.
Maybe we have some false hopes about ourselves too, when it comes to God. We think to ourselves, “Maybe God will be hard on some of those other people out there, the ones that are really bad, but me, I’m special, I’m a child of God, I can do what I want. God will go easy on me. He’ll see that I’m good and just overlook everything I’ve done.”
All those false hopes wind up being dashed on the rocks of truth. The state trooper doesn’t just let you go with a warning; she comes back with a nice speeding ticket to pay. After all, the law’s the law and you were going seventeen miles over the limit. And our heavenly Father is the same kind of judge, isn’t He? He judges “without partiality… according to each one’s work” (v. 17). God isn’t going to play favorites. When you appear before heaven’s judgment seat, the law is the law. And guess what: we’ve broken it! And not just a little bit over here and a little bit over there. According to the Word of God we’ve broken the whole thing! There’s only one verdict we deserve: guilty! God ought to throw the book at us and hit us with the stiffest possible punishment: eternal death in hell.
St. Peter takes those fragile, false hopes out of our hands and smashes them on the ground so that He can restore the real hope that we have. The truth is that we couldn’t buy our way out of judgment; there was no amount of gold or silver that could pay the fine we were supposed to pay. “You were redeemed,” Peter says, “with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (v. 19). Jesus offered up His own life, His own blood, as God’s Son, to pay the fine for our sins on our behalf! And because Jesus rose from the dead, we’re absolutely sure that He is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29). Christ, our Passover Lamb, was sacrificed for us (1 Cor 5:7), and the blood of Jesus, God’s Son, cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn 1:7). God the Father, in His great love for us, has forgiven us of all our sins for the sake of His Son and has adopted us as His children through faith in Christ. And as God’s children, we are heirs—heirs of everlasting life with our Lord!
Jesus lives to restore our hope through His redemption from sin—by pointing us back to the true nature of our hope! By pointing us back to what it means to be children of God! If you’re a parent, you know how it is. There are some things you’re not going to let your kids do. You’re not going to let your kids play in the busy street or hang out too late after dark. Maybe other families let their kids do those things, but you don’t because, well, they’re your kids—and you want them to have a future.
We’re the children of God. And as God’s children, we can’t expect that He’s going to want us to behave as though we’re not. He wants us to stay on that straight and narrow path in this life, the life that trusts in Him. And yet our hope—the reason behind why we obey God—isn’t the fear of His punishment. It’s the fear and awe that we have from knowing that our Father—the impartial judge that He is—in His great love for you and me has already poured out His wrath and judgment, not on us, but on His own Son, Jesus! This hope is the lynch-pin of your life, the thing that holds everything together, the thing that keeps you between the lines on the road of this life: knowing that one day, by God’s grace, you and I are going to join our Savior and brother, Jesus, in a heavenly home.
II. Through His revelation of glory.
The trouble is, as we travel down the road of life, we forget. We lose focus and get distracted; we wind up taking our eyes off the cross of Jesus and the redemption He’s won for us. We get distracted by the inviting pleasures that this world has to offer, all the places we can stop to “take a break” from life. We’re distracted by our sufferings, our health problems, our life problems—the drama going on in our families, or at work, or in the world around us. We find ourselves in a constant rush from one thing to the next, a never ending race of “hurry up and wait.” And as the distractions keep coming, we find ourselves wrapped up more and more in this world’s way of life—the life that’s all about the here and now, where health, wealth, and happiness are all anybody cares about. Instead of being focused in the direction of heaven, we have no focus at all. Just singing along to the radio, not watching as the speedometer climbs higher and higher—just like everybody else on the highway.
And that’s when hope begins to fade. It doesn’t happen all at once, but slowly. The more the worries and cares of this life take over, the more our hope in Christ slips away. We lose that eternal perspective on life. We become like the two disciples walking to Emmaus, their hope failing because their hope was placed in the wrong things.
But that’s where Jesus comes in again. He sees how we struggle to remain focused on Him, which is why He reveals His glory to us. “He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (v. 20-21). God’s plan to redeem us was an eternity in the making—but it didn’t happen in a place where we couldn’t see it, in space or in heaven, or some remote corner of the world. Our salvation happened in a real time at a real place, on a hill called Golgotha outside Jerusalem where the Son of God offered up His life on a cross, and at a rich man’s tomb where that same Son of God rose from the dead! In fact, the entire saving work of Christ is revealed—not just on Good Friday and Easter Sunday—but throughout all the pages of Scripture from beginning to end, from Genesis to Revelation!
It was all done “for you”—so that the risen Jesus could restore your hope in Him through the good news of what He did for you. The means of grace—the Word and the Sacraments—that’s where Christ reveals the glory of His saving work to us! That’s where the Holy Spirit comes to you and enables you to recall everything God’s ever done for you in Christ! That’s where the risen Jesus Himself comes and establishes the building of Your hope—on the foundation of His death and resurrection!
When Jesus finally revealed Himself to the disciples in Emmaus and then disappeared, they turned around and went back the way they came, all the way to Jerusalem! Seeing Jesus—and now knowing what He’d done for them—had put them back on the right road. Do you want to be on the right road? Do you want to stop aimlessly wandering from one thing to another, looking for hope where there’s none to be found? Do you want to get back on the right road after being distracted onto the wrong one? Look to the risen Jesus! He lives to restore your hope! Listen to His Word! Trust in the washing He gave you in your baptism—the washing of forgiveness! Receive His body and blood under the bread and the wine—the same blood that He poured out on the cross as the unblemished Passover Lamb to pay for all of your sins!
He will restore your hope by showing you His glory—the glory of His grace. He will restore for you the hope that you will live as children of the heavenly Father, now and forever. Amen.