The Saint’s Response to Salvation

But the passage for the next three
to four weeks is there as well. We find ourselves closing out
chapter one and just like so much of what we have seen thus
far, it is intricately related to that which proceeded. As we
began to just kind of review last week and we’re going to
review again today, we saw that Peter was looking out upon people
that may be prone to begin to take their salvation and all
the blessings of God for granted. Even as we spoke last week, we
acknowledged that the people of the first century were not
unlike ourselves. They were prone to the same sinful
weaknesses as ourselves. And even the grand subjects that
we have already reviewed in chapter one were not enough for those
first century Christians. And even as grand as they are
for us, They fade. The significance of it fades
and we find ourselves taking those great themes for granted. I want to go back and I want
to review all of what Peter has said about salvation. And then we’ll pick up here this
week. If you go back all the way to
chapter one, verse one, Peter introduced what we called some
unmistakable features of the church. We saw that Peter was
introducing a church that was seen from the world’s perspective
as aliens. They didn’t belong there. They
didn’t fit in. They shouldn’t. Seen from the
gospel’s perspective, they were scattered. And that was as it
should be. It wasn’t that Peter was looking
for a grand regathering. It was as it should be. They
were scattered like so many seeds, gospel seeds to grow the church. They were scattered, and not
only that, Peter says that from God’s perspective, they were
chosen. Peter introduced that great and deep, somewhat controversial
concept. But he tells them up front that
God had a sovereign act standing behind their salvation. God chose them in eternity past. From there, beginning in verse
3, Peter now, having introduced the subtle nuances of salvation,
delves into it explicitly and deeply. The blessings of new
birth in Christ. And in verse 3, he points out
that God, in granting us new life, was first of all motivated
by mercy. There wasn’t anything in and
of ourselves that prompted God to move upon us. that made him
look upon us and say, boy, in him, I’ve got a good deal. I’ve
got to save him. I’ve got to save her and put
her gifts to work for our church. God was motivated by nothing
other than mercy. In saving us and granting us
new life, not only was God motivated by mercy, but he restored to
us hope. And we will spend some time talking
about hope this morning. But we saw that it was a living
hope. It wasn’t just a one time promise meant to prop us up and
make us feel better and then set us about in motion for our
Christian life. It was an ongoing living hope
that was living and growing more and more every day. The third
blessing of new birth in Christ, not only mercy and hope, but
a promised inheritance. A promised inheritance. And this
inheritance is one of the grandest sections of all the grand section
we’ve looked at. He says that that he has caused
us to be born again to obtain an inheritance. Verse four, which
is imperishable, undefiled, will not fade away, reserved in heaven
for you who are protected by the power of God. For a salvation
ready to be revealed in the last time. And having mentioned that little
word salvation, Peter now clarifies for this whole chapter what his
purpose is about. It’s about extolling the nature
of salvation and the glories of salvation and the love for
the salvation that we ought to have and our response to it,
as we’ll see in a moment. You can’t talk about salvation
without talking about faith. And that’s what Peter begins
to talk about in verses six through nine. Sometimes people look at
this and they begin to take as so many people do, you know,
with the twiddling thumbs and the biting of the fingernails.
They take it as being a passage about trials. It’s not about
trials. Trials are there. But as we saw this passage, is
not so much about trials as it is about faith. It’s a passage
about faith. Verses 6-9. This faith, this
Christian faith, is a joyous kind of faith. It’s inherently
joyful. And it is a faith which carries
us first and foremost through trials to glory. The focus isn’t
on the trials. The focus is on the faith. It
carries us through trials to glory. And secondly, it carries
us through obscurity to salvation. Again, Peter’s grand theme. Look
at verse eight, though you have not seen him, you love him. And
remember, as we said, this is all written in the context of
Peter’s mind. Peter had walked with Christ. He had ministered with Him for
three years. He saw Him face to face. He saw
the miracles. He saw all the mighty deeds that
Christ did. And he still turned his back
on the Lord Jesus Christ. He still denied Him three times.
I believe that this is another mark of Peter’s amazement at
the people that he was called to minister to. They had not
seen him, yet they loved him. And they do not see him now,
and yet they believe in him. And I believe that astounded
Peter. That overwhelmed Peter’s heart. And he said that in that you
greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining
as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.
It’s through that obscurity to salvation that Peter wanted to
remind his readers. The passage is about faith. And
as we’ve said, once Peter is on to a subject, he’s not easily
going to let it go. The whole passage from verse
one to the very end of chapter one is all about salvation. It’s all about it. And so is
verse 10. And this is where we found ourselves
last week. Peter began to talk about God,
who is a God of communion, a God of communication, a God that
desires to reveal Himself and to commune with His people from
the very word go. As soon as Adam and Eve were
cast out of the garden, even before that, He was communing
with them. But God was a God of communion and he called Moses
to the top of the mountain and he communicated to Moses some
things to communicate to his people. God is a God of communication,
and what he tells us is that for us, there was a prophecy. There was a revelation, there
was a message for us, and it says that the prophets prophesied
this message and they dug into it trying to figure it out. And
they found out, verse 12, it was revealed to them that they
were not serving themselves, but you. Not only those first
century Christians, but us down to this day. And as long as there
are Christians on the earth until Christ comes, it’s for us. And
by saying so, Peter wanted to encourage our hearts to remind
us of the grandness of salvation and all the elements of it. This
message, God’s revelation, was a message of salvation by grace.
Not only that, it was a message of suffering and glory. He told
us the prophets did about a Savior who was going to come and was
going to suffer, but was also going to be glorified. And it was a message of gospel
mysteries. Not only did the prophets dig into these things, applying
all the weapons of learning that they had at their disposal, but
the angels themselves are stupefied to look at a salvation by grace. As we noted last week, the angels
don’t need to be saved and they see what a sinful, wretched people
we are. And they look out and they see
God magnanimously treating us with grace time after time after
time. And they are amazed. They long
to look into those things. They long to consider those things. They give God glory every time
they do. See, that’s essentially what
Peter’s message to us. We lose our amazement. We lose
our awe. We lose that stupefied gaze at
God, that amazement at God that He would have mercy upon us,
because in time we begin to think, well, God, you’ve got a pretty
good deal. And you know what? Peter isn’t done
yet with salvation. Peter has told us all about salvation
in one of the fullest doctrinal accounts in all of Peter’s writing,
if not all of Scripture, about the nature of salvation. Just
now in verses 10-12, he has encouraged us at the greatness of salvation,
reminding us that prophets sought it, angels sought it, and that
we too ought to have a holy and joyful view of salvation. But
he’s not done. And what he begins to do in verse
13 is to encourage our hearts with the saints response to salvation. If that is salvation and we own
that faith and we’ve heard that prophecy that angels long to
look into and that we now with new eyes appreciate. What is
our response? What should be our response?
Read along with me in verse 13. Therefore, gird your minds for
action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the
grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not
be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in ignorance,
but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also
in all your behavior. because it is written, you shall
be holy for I am holy. And if you address his father,
the one who impartially judges according to each man’s work,
conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay upon earth,
knowing that you are not redeemed with perishable things like silver
or gold from your futile way of life, inherited from your
forefathers, but with precious blood as of a lamb, unblemished
and spotless, the blood of Christ. For he was foreknown before the
foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times
for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who
raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith
and hope are in God. Since you have, in obedience
to the truth, purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren,
fervently love one another from the heart. For you have been
born again, not of a seed which is perishable, but imperishable,
that is, through the living and abiding word of God. For all
flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass,
the grass withers and the flower falls off. But the word of the
Lord abides forever. And this is the word which was
preached to you. That last section. Verses 22
through 25 calls us to a born again affection. We’ll look at
that in a couple of weeks. But we are called to a new kind
of life, a new kind of love for one another that is brought on
by the fact that we have placed our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
that we have new life, that ought to look different and be different.
Not only that, but we are called to a Christ bought reverence
in verses 17 through 21. Christ is the one who paid the
price. And because of that, we are to
conduct ourselves in fear, not cowering in the corner as those
who do not know Christ, not cowering from a God, a mean, austere,
cruel God. But reverence, worship, we are
to live worshipful lives in view of the fact that Christ paid
our penalty with his own blood. We are called not only to a Christ-bought
reverence and a born-again affection, but to a God-like holiness. Now, in recent times, there have
been those false prophets, false teachers who have gone about
saying that we are to be like gods, little gods running around. It’s not at all what I’m implying
there, but we are called to a God-like holiness. That’s exactly what
the text says. You know what? Even the most
godly believer is not the standard. That’s what so often happens
in Christian circles. You know, somebody begins to
live a certain way. They begin to follow God with
a great enthusiasm. And suddenly they become the
localized standard for the church. They’re not the standard. They
never were. Like the Holy One who called
you, He’s the standard. Be holy in all yourselves. You
shall be holy. for I am holy.” And we’ll look
at that in a couple of weeks. But what I want to look at this
morning is the saints’ response to salvation that we see in verse
13 alone. The response of a grace-filled
confidence. That’s where we want to begin
this morning. We’ll look in weeks to come at these four equipping
graces. of a hope-filled Christian life.
But this morning, we just want to pause with this one. A grace-filled
confidence. One Puritan said, in beginning
to consider this, he said, the great error of man’s mind and
the sense of all his errors of life is the diverting of the
soul from God and turning downward to inferior confidences and comforts. And this incorrect choice is
the very root of all of our miseries. Therefore, the main end of the
Word of God is to untie the hearts of men from the world and reduce
them to God as their only rest and solid comfort. And Peter
says, first and foremost, that the Christians response to salvation
is to be a grace filled confidence. And he mentions hope. Fix your
hope. He doesn’t imply, and I shudder
to equip here, he doesn’t imply that it’s broken and that we
need to repair it when he says fix your hope. But what he says
is place it upon a firm, objective feature and do not let it be
moved. Place it there and leave it there. But you know what? We’re troubled.
We’re troubled because we don’t even know what hope is. You know,
as long as we’ve got an inning left and even though the score
is 22 to 5, there’s hope. That’s our modern understanding
of hope. Even though the game is completely out of hand and
yet we see what we call a ray of hope. Somebody who makes a
good play. That’s our concept of hope. Our concept of hope is rooted
in wishfulness. I hope that I get thus and such
for my birthday. I hope that thus and such happens. And in that sense, until we get
away from all that, until we completely set aside our current
understanding of what hope is, we won’t even be able to understand
what Peter’s saying here. What is hope? One person said that hope is
the settled confidence in the soul that looks to the fulfillment
of a promise. And when you have God making
the promise, that begins to give you a picture of what hope is. One person defined it in these
terms. He said, hope is that species of trust which gives
the mind a firm persuasion that all promises and expectations
shall be fully realized. If God has made a promise, you’re
not going to get an inkling or a percentage of that promise.
He’s going to come through fully and completely. Christian hope
is firmly grounded in God’s infallible promises. And therefore, that
hope, it is a fervent yearning, a confident
expectation. It’s a patient waiting. You’re
not just hoping that the bus comes by. You know that every
day at 420, the bus comes. That’s the kind of waiting, even
more confident, far than that. This hope, this biblical hope,
was a hope that God originally promised to Israel. Romans 15,
12 says it this way, Isaiah says, then shall come there shall come
a root of Jesse and he who arises to rule of the Gentiles in the
Gentiles. Pardon me, in him, the Gentiles
hope not only to Israel, but to the Gentiles. Sadly, though, Those who do not
know the Lord Jesus Christ, those who do not have a relationship
with God through Christ are identified in Ephesians 2.12 as those having
no hope. They walk about seeing no future. They believe in nothing after
death. literally could be prepared to
cash it in at a moment’s notice and in their opinion lose nothing. That hopelessness speaks as those,
as one person said, of those who have no firmly anchored conviction. They just drift from thought
to thought and from belief to belief with no anchor at all
for their soul. One described them this way.
He said they are as mariners without a compass guide, adrift
in a rudderless ship during a starless night on a stormy sea far from
harbor. And what a graphic image that
is of those who do not know Christ. But for the believer, the core
and focus of a believer’s life is God and specifically, particularly
the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our hope. We don’t hope
that he’s coming or wish that he’s coming. Our firm confidence
in the future is squarely in the Lord Jesus Christ. No wonder
scripture calls this hope the hope of the glory of God. It
is the hope of righteousness. It is the hope of salvation.
It is the hope of eternal life. Titus 1, 2. All of which point
to the eternal state of glorification with Jesus Christ. Hope itself
is communicated to us through the gospel. That’s where we first
heard of it. It is a gift of God. It is part
of that gift package of faith. When we first come to Christ,
and it is a direct result of His calling us. That’s hope. Hope is the settled
confidence in the soul that looks toward the fulfillment of a promise.
It is the great characterization, if you will, of the Christian
life that the man lives in hope. That even though all around him
is crashing away, His confidence is not in the future, but in
the Christ who is eternal. Any man can put up with difficulties
and struggles. Isn’t that the confounding part
when we come across someone who is experiencing an extraordinary
struggle? The death of a loved one or perhaps
the loss of a job or something far worse? A terminable disease? And yet they handle it with grace
and dignity. The problem is they don’t know
Christ. That confounds us. That troubles
our faith. You know what? Anybody can tough
it up. Anybody can stiffen their upper
lip and get through it. Anybody can comfort themselves
with platitudes and say, oh, you know, well, this is the hand
that I’ve been dealt. Anybody. can endure those kinds
of present struggles, but none can do it with joy. Not the joy
that God gives, except the Christian. None can welcome those things
and embrace them as gifts from the loving God that they are,
but a Christian. There is a distinction, a subtle
distinction between faith and hope. They are related. But they
are different. Faith relates to all things,
bad as well as good. We are called to faith. Faith
in God, regardless of what’s going on. Hope has only to do
with the good things. Our Heavenly Father. We look
past all the bad things. We look past all those things.
We fix our eyes on the author and finisher of our faith and
we’ve laid hold on Him and we will not be moved. We will not
be moved. Genuine hope, real hope is the
Christians attitude, if you will, towards the future. That’s what we said a moment
ago, faith and hope are different. Faith involves trusting God in
the here and now. Hope is a future faith. Hope
is faith that has rested its anchor in the future. With that backdrop of what hope
is, we are called now to the grace of a hope, a hope-filled
Christian life. And Peter wants to give us four
equipping graces of that hope. How do we lay hold of that hope? How do we cultivate that hope? First of all, he tells us that
if we’re going to have that kind of settled confidence in the
soul, we’re going to need to be mentally focused, mentally
focused. A lot of times in sports, you
hear about guys talking about how they’re in the zone, right? Anybody who’s ever given me an
announcement on a Sunday morning knows it. You give me an announcement
on a Sunday morning, you might as well have just crumpled it
up on a piece of paper and thrown it away. Because before I preach,
there’s only one thing in my skull. There’s not a lot of room
in there anyway. Peter says here, gird up your
minds for action. It literally brings forth the
imagery of girding up the loins. We’ve talked about this in the
past as we’ve worked our way through the Gospels. The current
or modern day imagery would be like, roll up your sleeves, get
ready. Put on your PF flyers. There,
I just dated myself. Peter is telling his people that
they’ve got to be ready in an instant for the most strenuous
mental endeavor. The Christian life is a thinking
exercise. And we’ve got to be mentally
sharp. We’ve got to be mentally focused.
We’ve got to be ready for the game called the Christian life. We cannot be content or content,
rather, as one said, with a flabby and unexamined faith. We must
set about to think things out and to think them through. The
same kind of imagery is given in Luke 12 when we worked through
that. Be dressed in readiness. Have
your loins girded. In that day, they had the long
flowing gowns. They also had a belt about their
waist. And what they would do is gather
up the gown, tuck it in the waistband and be prepared for a sprint.
That’s what Peter says. But he uses this imagery of the
mind. And therefore, he calls us to
cut off all these wandering, aimless, loose thoughts. This
random kind of trivial thought life that really characterizes
far too many of us far too much of the time. Trivial. Thoughts that lead nowhere. You
know, when I know it’s time to wake up, When I’m having those
goofy kind, you know, you’re kind of half in half out and
you’re having those goofy dreams that make no sense. They just
irritate me. And as soon as I realize I’m
having one, that’s it. I’m up and I’m done. This word here expresses the
activity of the Christian mind and the concentrated energy that
we need for this exercise called the Christian life. You can’t
just go muddle through the Christian life, kind of thinking and letting
your mind wander to whatever it will. Peter uses this metaphor
or uses this image metaphorically. And in doing so, what he says
is pull in all those random thoughts. Pull in all that nonsensical
thinking, all that trivial thinking. and focus in on God’s Word and
focus in on spiritual things and on truths and realities and
not all the speculations and foolishness that’s out there. Discipline your thoughts is essentially
what Peter says. Prioritize your life according
to God’s priorities. Girding the mind brings the mindset
one into a compact frame, cutting off loose and flowing thoughts
and speculations. What it suggests here is that
there is a whole lot in this life. And, you know, in many
cases, these men were writing before there even was a TV. So
imagine what they would write today when all of our minds are
flooded with all this stuff, not to mention then the radio
and the billboards and the nonsense that people talk about at work.
I mean, you’re talking about a major overhaul in many of our
lives in order to accomplish this. There is much to deal with, said
one, in this life that makes it difficult for us to keep firm
hold of the facts on which alone a perfect hope can be built.
And unless we tighten our belt and so pull our strength into
the effort, the truths of the resurrection, which promote a
holy and lively hope, will slip away from us. We’ll just become
as trivial as the rest of the world. muddling through with
mundane, worthless thoughts just like the rest.” When Puritan exhorted this way
when he said, be thoroughly courageous, genuine, sincere, avoid loose
and unsubstantial convictions regarding spiritual and eternal
things. There shouldn’t be in any of
our lives kind of a Christian speculation. This is what I think
about angels. If you want to know about angels,
go read the Bible and know what there is to know and leave it
there. Don’t speculate about spiritual things. Remember, he continues, however
little the word of truth is revealed to you, it is God’s greatest
and best thought that it is the divine record concerning yourself
and his dear son. Settled convictions of divine
truth are of great value. They give stability, contentment
and influence. We’ve talked about euthetic counseling
before, right? Euthetic counseling isn’t an
invention of the 21st century. Euthetic is a biblical word. It means to place into the mind,
to place those truths into the mind. You know what? We ought
to be better counselors of ourselves. We ought to be better counselors
of what we are putting into our minds. so that somebody else
doesn’t have to go back and remind us of the same biblical truths
over and over and over. This grace-filled confidence
is equipped by graces, first of all, of being mentally focused. Secondly, of being spiritually
steady. Peter says, therefore, gird your
minds for action. Keep sober in spirit. This word
is often coupled, this word sober, which certainly had its root
of understanding in sobriety with regards to alcohol, an absence
of drunkenness. But this sober mindedness clearly
came to take on an additional meaning that went far beyond
just referring to a a lack of drunkenness. It meant a steadiness,
a steadfastness, a solidness, a wisdom, the way that you carried
yourself in a community of people. And it’s interesting that it’s
very often coupled with another word. Listen. So then let us
not sleep as others do. 1 Thessalonians 5, 6 and 8. Let us not sleep as others do,
but let us be alert and sober. Let us be watchful. What he calls
us to is a mental acuity that makes us watchful of the times,
watchful over others, watchful over ourselves, watchful over
evil influences. 1 Peter 4.7 The end of all things is near.
Therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose
of prayer. First Peter 5.8, be of sober
spirit, be on the alert. As I said, coupled often with
that, your adversary, the devil prowls about like a roaring lion
seeking someone to devour. Peter wants us to know. that
in addition to loose, rambling, foolish thoughts, there is the
foolishness, the spiritual dullness that makes us ready to be lion’s
food, ready to be victims of the devil himself. What he calls
us to is a restraint of our minds, a wisdom in the use of the way
we carry ourselves, a sobriety in the way that we conduct ourselves
and in our speech and in the way we think and in our judgment. You see, it’s easy for Christians
to constantly be carried away. We get carried away by fads.
Christians do. All the enthusiasms that come
along. You know, 40 days of this. What He wants us to do is maintain
the essential steadiness of the man who knows what he believes. That’s what we’re called to.
We’re called to that kind of stability. This kind of mental
sobriety guards men against being intoxicated, as it were, by false
prophets and false views and false teaching, against moral
and all those doctrinal foolishnesses that are out there. Modern day pastor said it this
way, metaphorically, it means not to lose spiritual control
by imbibing the world’s sinful system. That’s it. And in that
sense, it connotes the entire realm of spiritual steadfastness
and self-control, a clarity of mind and earnestness, a preparedness,
a determination for readiness and a hearty resolution to be
used by God. Do we have that? Are we really
ready to be used by God in an instant, in a moment? I said that there were four equipping
graces of a hope filled Christian life. Not only are we called
to be mentally focused and spiritually steady, but thirdly, we are called
to be thoroughly convinced. It’s a simple little word. Peter says, therefore, gird your
minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely. Tellos means to bring to an end,
to finish, to accomplish, to fulfill. And there are a whole
lot of us, me included, that aren’t completely, perfectly
hopeful. We let other things in. We let
other things rattle our confidence. We let other things, other doubts
creep into our mind. And the next thing you know,
our hearts aren’t fully and completely hoping in Christ. It means an unreserved, a full,
perfectly finished product. is called to seek earnestly to
be completed. We want to be perfect. We long
to be perfect. We want to be perfected by Christ. The main thought here is that
our hope is not to be half hearted. We’re not to continue in this. There is sin enough in the fact
that we’ve muddled along this far. But if we walk out here
today and we let our hope be half-hearted, we sin all the
more. We sin against light. We’re not
supposed to be downcast and downtrodden and doubting the very thing that
we profess to others. Peter brings us, you know, in
doing so, he brings us right back to where we started earlier,
what I read, that ours is a living hope, which means it’s alive. It’s just like the plants in
our home. It’s living and breathing and growing and changing. It’s not a static hope. Not a
dead hope. The exhortation here is exactly
the same which pervades if you read Hebrews from the beginning
to end. And really, they’re for the same reason. That because
of spiritual laziness combined with the fear, the cowering fear
of mankind, they were beginning to turn those Christians in Hebrews
back to dead works. We’ve begun to lose confidence
in Christ. And so now we’re going to pump
ourselves up by some noble deeds. Now, be thoroughly convinced,
Peter says, and fourthly and finally, the fourth equipping
grace of a hope filled Christian life, not only that we are mentally
focused and spiritually steady and thoroughly convinced, but
fourthly, we are specifically endeavoring. We have a target.
We have a goal in mind. We are locked onto that goal
and we do not want to be moved. Therefore, gird your minds for
action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the
grace. It’s a particular kind of grace. It’s all grace. Grace is all
of the same nature, but this is a specific facet of God’s
grace. It’s the grace to be brought
to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. What a glorious concept
that is. You know what? We don’t deserve
that either. We don’t deserve to see Christ face to face and
anybody who goes bounding and skipping into heaven as if God
is, you know, obligated in some way. By the
way, we’ve lived our lives to throw open the gates simply because
of what we’ve done and how we’ve lived. It’s foolishness. God
will welcome us, but it will be because of what Christ has
done, because of who Christ is. Fix your hope completely on the
grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Grace. There’s still grace here
in this passage. It is still unmerited blessing. It is the same kind that we enjoy
here and now. We didn’t deserve our salvation.
We didn’t deserve redemption. We didn’t deserve forgiveness.
We don’t deserve fellowship. We didn’t deserve God’s gracious
word. And yet, time after time, God
has lavished His graces upon us and we know it in our hearts.
We don’t deserve it. And Peter calls us to the very
end of time. And he says, when you’re standing
there, remember. You don’t deserve to be there. Alexander McLaren said it this
way, the first gifts the believing soul receives while it’s still
struggling here with darkness and light are of the same sort
as the eternal gifts that it receives when it stands before
the throne. And what he implies there is
undeserved, they’re undeserved. The apostles point here is that
just like. Our salvation. It’s all God’s grace. And I would ask you, we’re called
to a response to this great salvation that angels long to look into,
that prophets sought out and only found out that it was for
us. It’s a grand salvation. Concepts so deep, it took us
weeks to course through them. Is that your hope? Is that your
hope? Can you stand here and say that
is my hope, my only hope? Because if other things have
crept in, if other doubts have crept in, if there’s any lingering
doubts, Peter gives us the equipping graces. He tells us how we can
cultivate a hope filled Christian life. Let’s pray. O God, you are merciful. And not only are you merciful
withholding that which we did deserve, you are exceedingly
gracious, giving to us time after time. No wonder the angels long
to look at these things. They’re astounded at the goodness
of God. And Lord, we see that we are
to set our confidence on Almighty God through our relationship
because of our Lord Jesus Christ. No political forces, no armies,
no power of man. Lord, we thank you and praise
you for the reminder of what hope is. Cultivate that grace
in our hearts that we may respond as you would have us to the great
salvation that we own by Your grace. We thank You and praise
You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.