SPEAKER_00: Providence family, it is a joy uh to see you today.
SPEAKER_00: Happy Easter.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're a guest with us, we are thrilled that you have joined us, and we pray this time is going to be encouraging to you.
SPEAKER_00: And uh so I want to pray for us.
SPEAKER_00: Would you join me?
SPEAKER_00: Father in heaven, we bow before you and we believe that this is the day that you've made, and we want to rejoice and be glad in it.
SPEAKER_00: We ask, God, that you would do great things in our life.
SPEAKER_00: As we open your word now, we pray that you would open up our heart.
SPEAKER_00: We pray that the words of my mouth and all the meditations of our hearts that they would be pleasing to you.
SPEAKER_00: And specifically, Lord, I ask that you would instill upon our hearts hope.
SPEAKER_00: And not only a kind of hope, but the kind of hope that is made possible by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for those who are going through divorce and breakup, who are going through diagnoses that are frightening, who are experiencing grief and bereavement and loss and disappointment and anxiety and depression and financial strain and relational strain and emotional strain and chronic pain.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, that you would do a miracle in our lives today, and that you would give us hope.
SPEAKER_00: And that hope would be a propellant that these trials would actually create within us not a sourness, but a sweetness.
SPEAKER_00: And so I ask for your help.
SPEAKER_00: Would you speak through weakness and bring all glory to Jesus Christ, we pray in his name?
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 1.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you uh are either new with us or perhaps you just don't have it with you, but if you don't have a Bible, there's lots of Bibles in the chairs in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and if you don't have one of your own, we would love for you to take that home as a gift.
SPEAKER_00: That's why they're there.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you don't have one, please take it.
SPEAKER_00: Um if um if for just whatever reason, either you can't find 1 Peter or you don't want to hold the Bible in your hand, all the verses that I'm gonna be speaking about are gonna be on the screen in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be able to put ourselves in front of the Word of God and allow it to speak to our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: That's our hope today.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we all know that there's a big difference in watching a game, like a basketball game, when you already know the outcome.
SPEAKER_00: Like if you have a favorite team, and if you're watching a and you know that they win by one, and they win by one at the buzzer, and you're watching it with a friend who loves your team as well, but they don't know the outcome of the game, you watch that game completely different, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: Every time there's a turnover, they fret.
SPEAKER_00: Every single um um shift in terms of momentum, uh, foul trouble, turnovers, misshots, bad shots, they feel every one of them, and yet you watch the game completely different.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason is because you have an assured conviction of triumph.
SPEAKER_00: You have what the Bible calls hope.
SPEAKER_00: You see, we define hope sometimes as wishy-washy, it's wishful thinking, it's an optimistic outlook, but the Bible defines hope very differently.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the Bible defines hope is an assured conviction of God's triumph in our life.
SPEAKER_00: And what you find in history and in the Bible and in our own lives is that hope, this kind of hope, it is a powerful thing in our life.
SPEAKER_00: You find an individual and you can take almost everything from that person, whether it's their family or their health, their wealth, their home, but if they're allowed to retain hope, you'll find that they will press on.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter and his first readers, they were experiencing the loss of everything in their life that was a temporary hope.
SPEAKER_00: These followers of Christ, they were suffering for their faith in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: They were being persecuted, scattered around the whole Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: They were going to other countries, away from their home, and therefore many of them were separated sometimes from their own family members, their home, where they did their life, their neighborhood, their school, their place of worship, their work, their financial stream.
SPEAKER_00: They were running for their life, and Peter cared so deeply for them that he wants to write them a letter.
SPEAKER_00: Throughout the letter, he keeps talking about the trials that we're experiencing.
SPEAKER_00: But it's interesting, he begins his letter to them not with despair, but with praise.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Blessed be.
SPEAKER_00: Why would he do that?
SPEAKER_00: Because Peter knew and experienced an assured conviction of God's triumph in his life and in theirs.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he had hope.
SPEAKER_00: And this hope was not based on their circumstances or the potential that their circumstances could change, but rather it was based on one unshakable historical event, and that is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you.
SPEAKER_00: Look what it says in verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for 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 a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
SPEAKER_00: In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have 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 honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That moment when the ground beneath the cross at Golgotha was still absorbing Jesus' blood.
SPEAKER_00: That moment when his followers and family were still absorbing their grief and loss.
SPEAKER_00: That moment when his heart began to beat, and his nerves began to fire, and his muscles began to move, and he rose from the dead never to die again, is the source that the Bible teaches of a living hope.
SPEAKER_00: And what's interesting is as people have translated these words that were first written in Greek into English, at different times, different words have been used, this word living.
SPEAKER_00: In this Bible, the ESP, it's a living hope.
SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, many, many years ago, decades ago, it was often translated as lively hope.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same word, but the emphasis was that this kind of hope that is generated by this event, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is not just a hope that sits in the corner in a rocker with a faint heartbeat that's still alive.
SPEAKER_00: But rather, this is a hope that races around almost with frenetic energy into our life.
SPEAKER_00: It races into our counseling rooms, it races into our hospital rooms, it races to gravesides.
SPEAKER_00: And when it gets there, because it's within us, what is it doing?
SPEAKER_00: It's soothing and it's comforting and it's speaking and it's reassuring because we have an assured conviction of triumph.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity, my friends, is the only religion in the world, the only worldview that provides an intellectual basis for this hope.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to show you why this morning.
SPEAKER_00: How does the resurrection of Jesus Christ that happened so long ago produce a lively hope in us today?
SPEAKER_00: The first thing I want you to see is this resurrection enables us to be born again.
SPEAKER_00: It enables us to be born again.
SPEAKER_00: And I realize some of you, you, you, this may be all new to you.
SPEAKER_00: Church may be all new to you.
SPEAKER_00: This this whole thing, even the Bible, may be all new to you.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps you've heard the term born-again Christian, and you don't even know what that means.
SPEAKER_00: I want to tell you what that means because it's critically important.
SPEAKER_00: Before I do, though, I need to tell you, and in particular those who call Providence home, I'm about to tell them something and use something that they've heard before, and I know that.
SPEAKER_00: There's one thing that I talk about frequently, and I even seek to use the same illustration frequently because this is something that we struggle with frequently.
SPEAKER_00: And that is it doesn't matter where you go in all the world, every man, every woman, and every culture around the world carries with them a false assumption that life is like a ladder.
SPEAKER_00: And ladders are meant to be climbed.
SPEAKER_00: And if we climb well enough, we will achieve.
SPEAKER_00: And if we achieve, we will be accepted.
SPEAKER_00: And we imagine that this ladder called life is something that we must climb, that our performance equals acceptance, that we climb in order to be approved of by men.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result of that, we assume that there is a ladder that literally connects heaven to earth, and those who climb it well enough in good works or good deeds or activity within religion or praying or giving or whatever is that everything you do that is good, it is helping you climb this ladder.
SPEAKER_00: What I want you to know is that this ladder does not reach heaven.
SPEAKER_00: There is no ladder that reaches heaven.
SPEAKER_00: It is up to us and our merits to be able to climb.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, there's no living hope for climbers.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because if you live on the ladder, you always have to ask, have I climbed high enough?
SPEAKER_00: There's never a sign that says, Well done, you made it.
SPEAKER_00: Now continue to be alive.
SPEAKER_00: And as such, the only comfort that's available to people on the ladder is through comparison.
SPEAKER_00: And so on the ladder we look down and we see people that we are outpacing, and we're thinking, I'm doing so good on the ladder.
SPEAKER_00: And therefore we become self-righteous and sometimes arrogant.
SPEAKER_00: But inevitably we look up and suddenly we see people who are outpacing us, and now all of a sudden we feel anxious.
SPEAKER_00: Have I done enough?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I have not done enough.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result of this, people on the ladder they live their entire life bouncing back between two extremes, arrogance and anxiety, looking down on others or looking down on themselves, showing contempt for others, having contempt for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: And because each one of us don't live our life so consistently where every day is either good or bad, we kind of bounce back and forth between the two.
SPEAKER_00: Every time that we're having a good day, we look down upon others, and every time we're having a bad day, we look down on ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: This is not the source of living hope.
SPEAKER_00: One day a professional climber came to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: His name was Nicodemus.
SPEAKER_00: He was a religious man.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible calls him a Pharisee.
SPEAKER_00: We hear Pharisee and we think hypocrite, but before it was hypocrite, this was a man who was trying to be moral.
SPEAKER_00: He was trying to please God.
SPEAKER_00: He was a student of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: He cared about theology.
SPEAKER_00: He he tried to help people.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we know of him is that he was this sincere seeker.
SPEAKER_00: He had this interest in Jesus, this intrigue in Jesus, where he thought there's something about Jesus that's different than everyone else.
SPEAKER_00: And so one night, this man who's trying to climb the ladder to heaven, he feels insecure about himself, and he goes and he secures a private meeting with Jesus at night.
SPEAKER_00: His other friends who are highly skeptical of Jesus, he goes at a time that they're not going to be there with him.
SPEAKER_00: And he comes and he has this conversation and he says, You're unlike anyone I've ever seen in my life.
SPEAKER_00: We all know this.
SPEAKER_00: No one heals like you heal, teaches like you teach, authority and power over every living thing.
SPEAKER_00: We know you're from God because no one who can do these kinds of things can cannot be from God.
SPEAKER_00: You you have to have come down from Him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says something in response to this, which is stunning.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of God is heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Every one of us have an answer to this question.
SPEAKER_00: If I ask you, what do you think it takes to go to heaven?
SPEAKER_00: you have an answer.
SPEAKER_00: And what I want you to know is this if it's not born again, it's the wrong answer.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the judge over heaven, he's the judge of our lives, he is the decision maker, he is the gate to heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And at the gate, there he stands.
SPEAKER_00: And he, before getting to the gate, he says, I want you to know something.
SPEAKER_00: Unless you're born again, heaven is not your home.
SPEAKER_00: Well, this professional climber, he's like, that's impossible.
SPEAKER_00: And he speaks next what climbers on the ladder assume.
SPEAKER_00: I have to merit it somehow.
SPEAKER_00: So he says this amazing.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, What do I have to climb back into my mother's womb?
SPEAKER_00: Be born again?
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, You shouldn't be surprised at this.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, the wind blows where it wishes, and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.
SPEAKER_00: So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he says, Nicodemus, it's not impossible, but it's miraculous.
SPEAKER_00: And you don't have the power, he says, to Nicodemus and to us to do the miraculous.
SPEAKER_00: Well, then how?
SPEAKER_00: Then how are we supposed to be born again if we can't do the miraculous?
SPEAKER_00: And Peter tells us.
SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 3, according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: It begins with mercy, not with our merit, but with mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And this is absolutely imperative, and this is why.
SPEAKER_00: Because the Bible says we don't deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: It says we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: And we cannot cause it because Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1 says that we are dead in our sins and transgressions.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever seen a dead person?
SPEAKER_00: You poke them and they do nothing.
SPEAKER_00: They're unresponsive.
SPEAKER_00: And spiritually, not physically, but spiritually, when we sin, we die.
SPEAKER_00: And so God pokes us and we do nothing.
SPEAKER_00: And so we couldn't cause ourselves to be born again.
SPEAKER_00: And not only that, the Bible says we couldn't even see that we needed to be born again or that Jesus could be helpful in any way.
SPEAKER_00: It says that Satan has caused the eyes of unbelievers here on the earth to be blinded to the glory of God and the face of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This same Peter, the same guy, after spending two and a half years with Jesus, Jesus gathers his 12 disciples and he says, All right, everyone sit down.
SPEAKER_00: Quiz time.
SPEAKER_00: Who do the people in all these crowds think that I am?
SPEAKER_00: And they give a few answers, and he goes, Okay, that's great.
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
SPEAKER_00: Now let me ask you, who do you say that I am?
SPEAKER_00: And Peter, he says, I've come to believe this, that you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Blessed are you, Peter.
SPEAKER_00: For flesh and blood.
SPEAKER_00: That's human.
SPEAKER_00: I could not reveal this to you.
SPEAKER_00: But only my Father in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: You see what he's saying?
SPEAKER_00: He's saying that there is not a human being that can preach the gospel, write the gospel, explain your need to be born again in such a compelling way they can do anything in you to see your need for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Flesh and blood cannot do this.
SPEAKER_00: I can't do this.
SPEAKER_00: Totally incapable of convincing you that Jesus is the Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I can simply show you what is here in the Bible, but there's a miracle that must take place.
SPEAKER_00: How does it take place?
SPEAKER_00: Well, in mercy, God sent his son Jesus, the Christ, to the earth.
SPEAKER_00: And in mercy, he lived without any sin.
SPEAKER_00: And in mercy, he went to a cross, and there he died for our sin.
SPEAKER_00: He was buried in a grave, and on the third day in power he rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And when he rose from the dead, he proved in that moment that he did not die for his sin.
SPEAKER_00: Because if he died for his sin, the wage of sin is death, he would have stayed dead.
SPEAKER_00: But when he rose from the dead, it was proof that he was not dying for his sin, but for ours.
SPEAKER_00: And then he extended an invitation to the world and he says, If you will admit your sin and believe upon me, in me, what I've done for you, that I came down the ladder to rescue you.
SPEAKER_00: And confess me as the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I will forgive you of your sin.
SPEAKER_00: I will give you my record of righteousness, and you will be justified.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Romans chapter 4 says.
SPEAKER_00: He says, He was delivered up for our trespasses on the cross, and he was raised for our justification.
SPEAKER_00: Now, friends, you say, but still, how does a man get born again?
SPEAKER_00: This is how.
SPEAKER_00: As you hear this news, as you hear this gospel about Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit begins to blow conviction and faith into somebody's heart, just like the wind blows into the tree, and you can't see the wind, and yet you can see the effect on the leaves and the branches.
SPEAKER_00: If you are experiencing right now a conviction of sin or a belief in Jesus Christ, it's because the Holy Spirit is working in your heart and he's causing you to be born again.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the difference in a Christian and a non-Christian is not addition.
SPEAKER_00: It's not you have two decent people and now one of those decent people is now believing in addition to what this person is.
SPEAKER_00: It's not you have two decent people and now this person is adding services and adding church and adding prayer and adding practices and adding beliefs.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says the difference between these two people is one of them has now been born again, has received a new center, a new core, a new central operating system that is governed by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: You see, what we're talking about, what we're talking about, when when he says you're born again, it's literally the life of God in the soul of man.
SPEAKER_00: He comes to live within us.
SPEAKER_00: And therefore, that which was once spiritually dead, it begins to produce fruit that was incapable of producing in and of itself.
SPEAKER_00: This is what it means to be born again.
SPEAKER_00: You say, Well, how does this produce hope?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the beautiful thing is that when we are born again, we are united to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: In Romans chapter 6, it says that if we have been united with him in his death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his, which means that just as he rose from the dead, when we die, we too will rise from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: We too will be made new.
SPEAKER_00: And because we didn't do the decisive work to save our soul by ladder climbing, our stumbling on the earth cannot undo it.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, our hope is not in superior climbing ability, but rather it is being united with Christ who descended the ladder as a humble servant who went to the cross and rose from the dead in glory.
SPEAKER_00: Have you been born again?
SPEAKER_00: The second reason that the resurrection provides hope is because the resurrection secures a coming inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: This really is a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_00: Hope is planted in our heart when we put our trust in Christ, and then that hope begins to sprout and grow bigger and bigger throughout our life.
SPEAKER_00: And he does so because he shows us the outcome, he shows us the final score so that we can then begin to live the rest of our days, even when we're going through all these trials, with an assured conviction of triumph at the end.
SPEAKER_00: You see.
SPEAKER_00: New birth implies family.
SPEAKER_00: If you see a baby, you say, Who does that baby belong to?
SPEAKER_00: There's a family that that baby belongs to.
SPEAKER_00: You go to the hospital today, and if you're allowed into there, there's a nursery, great big glass wall, and you can look in, you can see all the babies.
SPEAKER_00: If you stand there long enough, you see different family members, aunts and uncles and grandparents and moms and dads, and they're like, it's that one right there.
SPEAKER_00: It's the third one on the left.
SPEAKER_00: That's our baby.
SPEAKER_00: And everyone's pointing, they're like, not those, that one.
SPEAKER_00: That one's ours.
SPEAKER_00: But just imagine if the babies could do the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't, right?
SPEAKER_00: But just imagine all the babies, like they all at the same time, tilted their head up and one of them goes, hey, that family right there, that one's mine right there.
SPEAKER_00: And why am I saying that?
SPEAKER_00: This is why.
SPEAKER_00: Because the babies don't know it at the time.
SPEAKER_00: But one day, as they grow in that family, it becomes more and more apparent over time that when they were born into that family, they were going to inherit everything about that family, including everything they own.
SPEAKER_00: There's an inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: And so it is with God's family.
SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 4, we've been born again to a new and living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable.
SPEAKER_00: That means it's never gonna die, undefiled, and won't ever spoil, unfading, it won't ever dim, and it's kept in heaven for you.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't this amazing?
SPEAKER_00: We deserve separation in our sin.
SPEAKER_00: We receive an inheritance because of his grace.
SPEAKER_00: In Romans 8, it says, if we are children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: All over the Bible, there's these stories where different kids they both receive the inheritance, but sometimes those kids they behave differently.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes there's one kid who's just like a really worthy kid, and he stays close to home and he's religious, and then another one goes and he squanders everything.
SPEAKER_00: And he's living unworthy of it.
SPEAKER_00: They come back, and sometimes the older son or one of the kids is like, What?
SPEAKER_00: You mean like we got to share the same inheritance even after all the good deeds that I've done?
SPEAKER_00: So there's a sense of jealousy.
SPEAKER_00: They despise the prosperity of the child that was living so unworthily of it.
SPEAKER_00: But don't you see the miracle of Jesus and his mercy towards you and towards me?
SPEAKER_00: He does not despise your prosperity.
SPEAKER_00: He's the only son, the true son who's worthy of the inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: And yet by his grace, when we trust in him, he decides in joy to share his inheritance with us.
SPEAKER_00: And not only that, but to protect it for us.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it says in verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: He guards us.
SPEAKER_00: His power or being guarded, literally puts a garrison around us through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
SPEAKER_00: This is such a beautiful thing to me.
SPEAKER_00: I love being saved because I love being forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: But what this says is that I've not begun to experience the benefits of salvation yet.
SPEAKER_00: I've only started, I've only just begun.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine what it's going to be like when the very presence of sin is eliminated from our life in heaven?
SPEAKER_00: Not only within us, but around us, where culture will not be marked by a single strand of anything that is sinful or wrong or broken.
SPEAKER_00: See, we enjoy now a part, a small part of our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: What he's available been, what he's made available to us, but one day we'll experience all of it.
SPEAKER_00: And do you understand why this gives us hope?
SPEAKER_00: Because we see the outcome.
SPEAKER_00: We see the final score.
SPEAKER_00: And so now we can go through all of these rooms, hospital rooms, counseling rooms, courtrooms, living rooms where families are experiencing tension.
SPEAKER_00: And we have this living hope, this basis based on the resurrection, that we can have hope even in this moment because we know there is triumph at the end.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, we're told when he rose from the dead that he defeated sin and death and Satan.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't really feel like it though, has it?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've noticed, but death and sin and Satan are doing pretty good today.
SPEAKER_00: They're spreading all over the world.
SPEAKER_00: People are dying all over the world today.
SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, in Hebrews, the author of Hebrews, he felt the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: He says, but that's not the only thing we see.
SPEAKER_00: Notice what he says.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, at present, meaning right now, we do not see everything in subjection to him.
SPEAKER_00: He rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: He defeated all these things, but it doesn't always feel like it.
SPEAKER_00: But what else do we see?
SPEAKER_00: We see Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, in addition to us being able to see all the brokenness of the world, we see something else, and that is that we see a resurrected Christ who is the first fruits from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: He's the guarantee of what is to come.
SPEAKER_00: He rose, and one day we will rise.
SPEAKER_00: And friends, the fact is that he's allowing evil right now in a season, and this is why he could come back right now.
SPEAKER_00: He could have come back 500 years ago, but what would be the advantage to you if he did?
SPEAKER_00: You would not have been alive.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says is that in every generation in his sovereignty, he knows that there are people in all these generations until he has determined an end, that he desires many of them, all of them, to come to faith in Christ, and he knows who will.
SPEAKER_00: And so in all of these generations, as he waits, he's giving people an opportunity to hear this news, to respond in faith, to believe, to repent, and to be born again.
SPEAKER_00: But one day he will come.
SPEAKER_00: And when he comes, the day of man's decision about him will end, and the day of his decision about us will begin.
SPEAKER_00: And for those who are in Christ, who are born again, that will be a day of victory when he will make all things new, and there will be nothing that will stand in his way.
SPEAKER_00: The third reason that the resurrection provides hope is it reframes our current suffering.
SPEAKER_00: I know some of you are really going through it right now in life.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're following along, what you've seen is this is there's hope because of past mercy, there's hope because of future grace, but there's also hope right now.
SPEAKER_00: You remember Peter and his readers are going through a tremendous difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: Notice what he says.
SPEAKER_00: You have 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 honor at the revelation of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Two times in 1 Peter, he calls trials a fiery trial.
SPEAKER_00: A furnace.
SPEAKER_00: How does that happen?
SPEAKER_00: How is it that some people come out sour and some people come out sweet?
SPEAKER_00: The difference is the heart that goes into the furnace.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe a better question is how are you gonna come out sweet?
SPEAKER_00: And what the Bible teaches us here is this is that you can come out sweet so long as you remember that Jesus went into the furnace for you.
SPEAKER_00: And he did it alone.
SPEAKER_00: All of his friends abandoned him.
SPEAKER_00: And while he was on the cross, he even cried out to God as Father and said, Why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_00: Every one of us, when we're going through trial, we want somebody.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody to lean on, somebody who can empathize, somebody who can sympathize, somebody who can make a meal for us, someone who can make chicken soup, somebody that can pray for us, somebody.
SPEAKER_00: We want somebody.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus had nobody for you and me.
SPEAKER_00: In those hours, he was the loneliest man in the history of the world.
SPEAKER_00: And if you'll take that into your core, what you'll find is this he teaches us that truth to help us understand this.
SPEAKER_00: If he would go to a fiery furnace for us, now that he's risen from the dead, he will go into our furnaces with us.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, in a book called Daniel, there's three young men.
SPEAKER_00: And they love God and they won't bow down to an idol.
SPEAKER_00: So they're put before them the consequence.
SPEAKER_00: You either bow before my idol, the king says, or you go into a fiery furnace.
SPEAKER_00: And this was not a metaphor, this was real.
SPEAKER_00: And they go into the furnace.
SPEAKER_00: They say, We're not going to bow down.
SPEAKER_00: And so he throws all three men into the fiery furnace.
SPEAKER_00: And if you know the story, instead of killing them, they're standing up in the furnace.
SPEAKER_00: They're alive.
SPEAKER_00: And the king is absolutely stunned.
SPEAKER_00: He looks in and he goes, wait a minute, weren't there three?
SPEAKER_00: We we threw three guys in there, right?
SPEAKER_00: Three.
SPEAKER_00: Why do I see four?
SPEAKER_00: Why is there a fourth in there?
SPEAKER_00: And the fourth, he says, we don't even know what this means, what would it look like to him?
SPEAKER_00: He says, and the fourth looks like a son of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's a portrait in the Old Testament, physically, of what the Lord was going to do by his spirit in our lives once Jesus rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: You see a promise in Isaiah, it says this.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Fear not, for I have redeemed you.
SPEAKER_00: When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.
SPEAKER_00: And when you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned.
SPEAKER_00: See, friends, if you let this truth sink into your heart that Jesus went into that furnace for you, you will find resilience in your trials.
SPEAKER_00: You will find you come out sweeter in your trials, and you will find that your faith that one day will be examined at his return will be like a piece of gold that is refined instead of destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: So this is the basis of our hope because of Jesus Christ and his resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: But what does that mean to us personally?
SPEAKER_00: Let me ask you to encourage, let me ask you and encourage you to examine your heart in three different ways.
SPEAKER_00: First, is let's identify our source of hope.
SPEAKER_00: We all have one.
SPEAKER_00: We all experience loss, and when we experience loss, our hope is what we lean on.
SPEAKER_00: So let me ask you, when you experience loss, what do you go to?
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's something that's really noble.
SPEAKER_00: It's like a family member or somebody who can pray for us.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes what we run to is really ignoble, like getting drunk or pornography, or immorality.
SPEAKER_00: We all run to something when we need a heart to be satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: Every one of us look for a tower, a strong tower that it raises up when we say, that's where I'm running right now, because that looks like a safe place to me right now.
SPEAKER_00: We all run somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: Every one of us has a hope, a source of hope.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, what I want you to know is this.
SPEAKER_00: If it's not Jesus, every one of the things that we all run to one day will be removed.
SPEAKER_00: You see, if you right now and you say, you know, like the last time you went through a really, really hard time, you comforted yourself with something, and perhaps it was, well, at least I still have my health.
SPEAKER_00: Or at least I still have my family, but don't you see that one diagnoser, one diagnosis or bad decision can remove those things from you as well?
SPEAKER_00: Where then do we run?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the Bible says in Proverbs 18 the name of the Lord is a strong tower.
SPEAKER_00: And the righteous run to it and are safe.
SPEAKER_00: Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is one stable, unshakable, immovable place.
SPEAKER_00: And I urge you to not only consider what you're hoping in, but to transfer your hope to the one source that cannot fall down.
SPEAKER_00: Second, I would encourage you to examine your life.
SPEAKER_00: The reason is because Jesus says you must be born again.
SPEAKER_00: Are you born again?
SPEAKER_00: See, the Bible describes lostness in two different dimensions.
SPEAKER_00: There's religious loss and there's irreligious lost people.
SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, the irreligious lost people, meaning people who have no desire for God, they know they're far from God.
SPEAKER_00: So this kind of thing, they can't escape examination.
SPEAKER_00: They simply say, no, I clearly am not.
SPEAKER_00: But it's really interesting, it is the religious loss.
SPEAKER_00: It's people who go to church every day, it's the Nicodemuses of the world, it's the ladder climbers of the world who are here every single week or every single Easter.
SPEAKER_00: Every time it's obligatory to be here, I'm here.
SPEAKER_00: Because it helps scale the ladder.
SPEAKER_00: And my question is not if you're in church on Easter or at any other time, or if you pray, or if you're religious, or if you're irreligious, it's are you born again?
SPEAKER_00: You say, Well, how would I know?
SPEAKER_00: Well, let's start here.
SPEAKER_00: Are you born?
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever been born?
SPEAKER_00: You say, Well, yes, I've been born.
SPEAKER_00: Well, how do you know?
SPEAKER_00: What evidence do you have that you were born?
SPEAKER_00: You say, Well, they gave my parents a certificate of birth.
SPEAKER_00: Is that the greatest evidence in your life that you were born, that there was a certificate?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: What's the greatest evidence today?
SPEAKER_00: It's being alive.
SPEAKER_00: It's showing signs of physical life.
SPEAKER_00: It's breathing, it's moving, it's sitting, it's standing, right?
SPEAKER_00: Signs of life.
SPEAKER_00: And so it is with the second birth.
SPEAKER_00: To be born again of the Spirit, what you're looking for is not a date that your mom wrote in your Bible when you walked a Nisle.
SPEAKER_00: There's no hope in that.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a certificate that you were baptized.
SPEAKER_00: There's no hope in that.
SPEAKER_00: What is it?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible gives us an entire book called 1 John and many other places in the New Testament that says this is what you should be looking for.
SPEAKER_00: It's signs of spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: You see, I was baptized.
SPEAKER_00: I was baptized on Easter Sunday in 1990, 36 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to know something.
SPEAKER_00: I have zero hope in my life because I have a memory of something that happened 36 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: My hope today is not based on I was baptized 36 years ago, but that I woke up today and am showing the evidences that I see in 1 John.
SPEAKER_00: And what are those?
SPEAKER_00: I love Jesus today.
SPEAKER_00: I'm trusting in him today.
SPEAKER_00: My only hope of forgiveness today is, I say, it's Jesus and Jesus alone.
SPEAKER_00: This is where hope comes from.
SPEAKER_00: It's that what he says, here's the signs of life.
SPEAKER_00: We love Jesus today.
SPEAKER_00: We trust him today.
SPEAKER_00: We want to know his word today.
SPEAKER_00: We obey what we read today.
SPEAKER_00: We repent of our sin today.
SPEAKER_00: We love his people today.
SPEAKER_00: He even says this he says, for us to actually ask God a question.
SPEAKER_00: He says in Romans, he says, look, he goes, the Holy Spirit of God testifies, confirms with our Spirit in us if we are born again.
SPEAKER_00: So I would encourage you to do something.
SPEAKER_00: Ask him right now.
SPEAKER_00: You can say it, Holy Spirit, would you confirm in my heart right now if I am born again?
SPEAKER_00: And if there is an eerie silence, and your hope has nothing to do with living love for him and for his people today, but rather a fuzzy memory from a long time ago, then I would ask you today, would you put your trust in Christ today?
SPEAKER_00: Would you trust Christ now?
SPEAKER_00: Whether you are irreligious or religious, if you feel the wind of the Holy Spirit blowing into your life, conviction and faith, with that conviction and faith, what I urge you to do with it is to take it and look to Christ and call out to him in faith.
SPEAKER_00: Because Romans chapter 10 says this if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: So let's pray now.
SPEAKER_00: If you happen to be here today and you know that you are born again, and you know that you have trusted Christ, and you have a living hope because of his resurrection, then just take a moment right now in this time of prayer and just thank him.
SPEAKER_00: Thank him for what he's done for you, thank him for his mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And if you are here and you believe and feel convicted over what you have heard, and if you what I would ask you to do with that is to call out to him in faith.
SPEAKER_00: And you can pray a prayer on your own, but if you'd be looking for help, you could pray something like this Father in heaven, I believe.
SPEAKER_00: I believe what I've heard, I believe that I'm a sinner, I believe that I've fallen short of your glory in my own guilt.
SPEAKER_00: It testifies.
SPEAKER_00: I believe what the Bible says that my sin has created a debt that I cannot pay.
SPEAKER_00: But I believe in Jesus, I believe that he came to the earth in mercy, and I believe he lived without sin.
SPEAKER_00: I believe he died for my sin, and I believe he rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And I confess Christ is Lord of my life.
SPEAKER_00: I ask that you would forgive me, save me, cause me to be born again, give me a new center, and give me a living hope.
SPEAKER_00: I pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, in each of our lives, we ask by your spirit that you would confirm in our hearts the work that you're doing.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.