"If Jesus Christ is worth living for, He is worth dying for."

That’s what Peter is trying to say in this epistle and in this chapter especially. It’s wonderful that it’s Peter who is saying this. Because he had so spectacularly let the Savior down, you remember. But, that was in the past. And before too long, he will be taken outside of the city of Rome and crucified upside down for his Savior.

Peter is preparing his readers for the terrible onslaught of suffering that would characterize the late 60’s of the first century. During those years, Emperor Nero would use Christians, blamed as they had been for the fires that had erupted in the city of Rome, in sporting events to entertain the masses. They would be burnt alive, and tortured and thrown to wild animals. That is the future. And Peter wants them to be ready for it.

According to Archbishop Leighton (of Glasgow), whose commentary on 1 Peter is still regarded as definitive, Peter has three things he wants to accomplish in this letter: faith, obedience and patience.

Faith, to establish them in believing;
Obedience, to direct them in doing.
Patience, to comfort them in suffering.

It was a period of time when Christians were being persecuted simply because they were Christians. They stood for something, for truth, for a way of life, and the ‘tolerant’ were tolerant of everything except conservative Christianity. There are no absolutes except you may not say that Jesus Christ is Lord. It’s a time very similar to our post-modern era. Everything is true except the statement that this is the sole truth.

As this opening chapter unfolds, it seems as though Peter wants to stop and think about some very positive things first of all. That the way to prepare us for difficult things is to remind us of what is true about us already. It comes in a five-fold way:

1. Are chosen by God
2. A Living Hope
3. An Indestructible Inheritance
4. A persistent Joy
5. A much admired salvation

They have been chosen by God the Father, set apart (sanctified) by the Holy Spirit and given over to Jesus Christ (1:2). It is though Peter is saying that the Father has been looking down the corridors of history and has set His love on these individuals, and He turns to the Holy Spirit, saying: "In My love I want this one to be Mine." And the Spirit comes into this one’s life, tapping him on the shoulder, saying: "The Father wants you." And the Spirit takes this one to Jesus and says, "This one loves You and he is asking You to be his Prophet, Priest and King." And Jesus says, "Come and meet My Father. You have come to meet Me and that is wonderful. But it was My Father’s idea!"

No wonder Peter will start in verse 3 with the word, "Blessed"! No matter what may be happening to us, no matter what circumstance we may find ourselves in, it is always appropriate to remind ourselves of our spiritual pilgrimage and that it is all the work of our sovereign Lord.

O death where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?

The resurrection of this one man signaled the resurrection of all those who are united to him. That’s why in Acts 3, when Peter speaks of Jesus as "the author of life", he uses a very rare word (archegos) that conveys the idea that Jesus is the first one who has broken into the new world of resurrection life, and by doing so has opened the way for all those who belong to him to follow.

Those of us who can remember Uri Gagarin (1^st man in space), or Roger Bannister (1sr man to run a mile under 4 minutes) think of them as pioneers. And Jesus broke the barrier of death that others might follow. And it causes us to say, "Blessed be God!" Like the two men on the Emmaus Road, when they realized that Jesus was risen, they ran back to Jerusalem and said, "our hearts (are) burning within us" (Luke 24:32).

1. We are chosen by God
2. we have a living hope

Kept! Reserved. Like a seat that has been roped off and you can’t sit there because its been kept for someone. Like finding your name at a table at a reception of some kind. This seat is for you.

But not only kept or reserved, but "shielded" (v.5). It’s a military word. Garrisoned. Peter knew how important this was because he had let the Savior down and that because Satan had assaulted him. He prowls about like a roaring lion, but God’s defensive forces are greater than his.

What is it that John Newton says:
Glorious things of Thee are spoken, Zion city of our God;
He whose word cannot be broken, Formed thee for His own abode:
On the Rock of Ages founded, What can shake thy sure repose?
With salvation’s walls surrounded, Thou mayest smile at all thy foes.

1. We are chosen by God
2. we have a living hope
3. An indestructible Inheritance

What Peter says here is the perspective of the New Testament everywhere.

Romans 5: suffering produces patient endurance, character (proven character having passed God’s tests), hope and makes not ashamed…

Romans 8: I consider the present sufferings not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed hereafter.

2 Cor 4 Our light and momentary affliction are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.

Hebrews 12. It is the evidence that we are not illegitimate children but the sons of God.

George Mattheson’s Hymn: O joy that seekest me through pain, I lift my weary soul to Thee…

Why is that? Because the believer understands, to some extent, why these trials have come. They are the refiner’s fire. What emerges from them is something stronger, more genuine, more definite.

George Whitefield: "God puts burs in our bed to keep us watchful and awake."

There is a signature in the midst of pain that signals divine therapy. C. S. Lewis: "Pain is God’s megaphone to a dead world." (The Problem of Pain).

Trouble convinced Peter as to what his chief end in life was, not having fun but glorifying God in every condition, and experiencing it in heaven forever, and how increasingly he longed for that. The troubles worked eternal realities into his soul. You think of a skilful physiotherapist exercising a limb and working (in co-operation with a patient) resilience and a tensile strength back into weak muscles so that joints could bend again, and they could bear a burden and carry a man along. The therapist is pushing him to the very limits, stretching his abilities, and then some more, and then some more, giving him pain but also reward and encouragement and hope. Troubles can work the reality of glory into his heart. They help us see the celestial city brightly. They are no accident. They do not come from mere caprice. They are not sent by the divine whim. They are divinely appointed by a loving Father. God is working glory into the Christian through the troubles He must prescribe for us. John 'Rabbi' Duncan observed, "If we have not got a cross, alas! we may conclude that we have not Christ, for it is the first of his gifts."

The troubles, Peter says, result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed" (1:7) Now let's be very careful here. Our sole entitlement to the glories of heaven is through the finished work of our Savior Jesus Christ. The dying thief went to the glory of paradise the day he died only because of the redeeming love and substitutionary sacrifice of the Son of God. But there is this - hear these words of the Lord: "Where I am, there shall also my servant be; if any man serve Me, him will the Father honor" (John 12:26). The glory before us is in part the Father honoring us who have been His faithful servants. Who suffered as these apostles did for his Savior? And Jesus says to him and to all who have endured troubles bravely and meekly for the Lord, "Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven" (Matt. 5:12). Do you think that Peter, or Paul will be tucked away in a corner under the stairs of the mansion Christ has gone to prepare for him? Will there not be millions who will seek him out, wanting to bow their head in respect and say, "Thank you Peter for all you did and what you wrote. It kept me going, and gave me a reason for my life"? Peter's faithfulness brought enormous troubles into his life, but these troubles achieved for him great reward.

But we can go a step further and also say this, that our troubles are the necessary birth pains of the glories before us. We with the whole creation are groaning inwardly and longing for what Paul calls the adoption, the manifestation of God's sons for what they really are - the new humanity who now share the very glory of God the Son (Rom. 8:23). As a mother has labor pains in giving birth to her children so creation is now knowing those pangs in producing the appearance of God's sons. Glory is being achieved by these labor pains. These necessary sufferings produce the glory of the revelation of the sons of God. So you must accept the humiliations and the pains because they mean you are also going to share in the glory. Do you see why men like Peter and Paul pitied those who are strangers to cross-bearing for Jesus? He would be a stranger to the manifestation of the sons of God. Robert Murray M'Cheyne said, "I always feel in much need of God's afflicting hand."

1. We are chosen by God
2. we have a living hope
3. An indestructible Inheritance
4. A persistent joy

Not only prophets, buts angels. Those angels at Bethlehem, given an hour off to go and view this great sight! The angel who ministered to Jesus in the wilderness and in Gethsemane. Or those tens of thousands that were ready to come to Jesus help at the cross. You have something they have never known. They peer and stretch out their necks over the battlements of heaven, saying, "I wish I could understand that." Eugene Peterson (in The Message) puts it this way, "Angels would have given anything to be in on all of this."

But it’s one thing to wonder at it. Its another to be able to "praise God" for it. Is there a "praise God" in your life?

Do you live beneath your privileges? Like the man in Pilgrim’s Progress, who was shown to Christian by Interpreter, raking in the muck. And above him was Jesus holding a crown above his head, but he never lifted his eyes from the muck and he missed it.

How does Peter help us here?

He doesn’t deny the difficulties, but he draws attention to what God has done, not what man has done.