Classic Sermon #6058: A Glorious Inheritance

First of Peter, chapter 1, verses from 3 to 12, an epistle truly written for our times, although it was written almost 2000 years ago and the Lord has put it in my heart to share with you some ideas from this first epistle of the Apostle Peter. Let's look in verses from 3 to 12, and the word of the Lord says there:

“…blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who, according to his great mercy, caused us to be reborn for a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, for an incorruptible, uncontaminated and unfading inheritance, reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith to achieve salvation, is ready to be manifested in the last time….”

Brethren, I want to speak to you today about a glorious hope, the glorious hope to which God has called every believer. Each one of us has been called to a wonderful inheritance in Christ Jesus, each one of us today has reasons to celebrate and to rejoice and to feel privileged and to be able to look at life situations through a filter of hope, of joy. of joy, of gratitude before the Lord. And this passage, I would say is almost like a compendium, a manual, a summary of some of the greatest and most fundamental truths of the Gospel that we have embraced.

And I want to take a few minutes to break down and explore this passage and may the Lord help us to extract from you some of the very profound teaching that this passage holds. Look at the beginning, Peter begins with a praise to God, what Peter is going to expose moves him to start with a praise and he wants to establish a tonality of praise through what he is going to declare here.

He says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a declaration of blessing to God. I see two things here, number 1, praise is an integral part of the believer's life. If anyone in this world has reason to praise, and to celebrate, it is the son or daughter of God. And praise, brothers, must be an integral part of our life. Praise and adoration of God and blessing God's name and God's person and pointing out God's attributes should be something that is not too far from our mouth continuously.

I rejoiced while participating in the adoration and felt that spirit of praise and that joy that you and I feel in being here gathered in this place and feeling the company of one another and above all the presence of the spirit of God and being able to praise him freely , and to be able to sprout in a spontaneous song and to be able to say to the Lord things that natural language, or the poems that are already written or the signs already elaborated cannot declare to God. And we can flow as a being in praise and adoration to the name of our God, bless that God who has given so many things and so many blessings to us.

The church of Jesus Christ and the churches in particular must promote the spirit of praise in the people, they must facilitate that spirit. And we as individual believers must consciously cultivate the spirit of praise and explore worship because worship is an art, worship is something that does flow spontaneously when the spirit of God moves us, but also the more informed we are biblically, about the role that worship plays in our spiritual life the richer, deeper, more powerful our worship will be.

That is why we take time as a church to adore the Lord and to be filled with praise and to minister before the Lord. Over the years I have been believing more and more brothers, that praise is not a prelude, praise is not an addition, praise is not something we do in a hurry so that what really matters comes, which is supposedly the sermon or whatever. No, praise demands its own space in the life of the people of God and praise does things that no sermon or anything else can do, praise expresses that feeling of the spirit and touches the heartstrings and touches the emotions and touches the body, and touches the brain and all parts of the individual come together in an expression of worship to the Lord. And God rejoices in that praise of his people.

And that's why we take time to praise the Lord. In our daily devotional time, in the privacy of our home, we must take time to glorify God and exalt his name. So the first thing that captivates me in this passage is Peter beginning with a blessing to God, with an expression of praise to the Lord.

The other thing that captivates me about this is that Peter says, blessed God and he could stay there and not say, blessed God that according to his great mercy he made us reborn. But no, Peter personalizes the person of God and Peter gives a little more character and specificity to God and says, blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He qualifies, modifies the person of God and emphasizes it from the perspective of his paternity over Christ Jesus.

And I believe that one of the things that praise should have is that specific character, person. When we praise God we must praise him for what he has done in our life, recognize the great blessings that God has given to our life. And I believe that Peter is also here already beginning to declare where his thinking is going later in this passage. He points to the person of Jesus Christ and so in his praise here to God is specifically for the provision of Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus is the foundation of our salvation and Peter is going to point out what Christ has achieved and why the people of God should be joyful and should be continually giving thanks to the Lord and he is already pointing it out, saying Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Our praise, brothers, must be based on what Christ has done, what Christ has achieved on the cross of Calvary. We are a Christ-centric people, we are a people who recognize that the blessings they have received have come from what Christ accomplished on the cross, from what Christ did on Calvary, from the sacrifice that Christ carried out. And all our blessings and everything else flows from that fact and from what we have also done with what Christ did, what we have appropriated, if we have received it, if we have made it part of our life.

And so Paul here goes into a number of additional reasons why one should bless God and for which one should be thankful to the Lord. He says then, he made us reborn, he says, according to his great mercy he made us reborn for a living hope. Let's dwell on that for a moment there. Look at the first, he says, for his great mercy. Brothers, we are saved by grace, not by works, says Paul so that no one can boast. If we had done something to achieve our salvation, we would already be over there making statues and monuments for ourselves and writing the deeds of this one or the other, and we would have taken away the glory of God long ago. But God did it in such a way that no one would glorify, but it was something free, by his mercy God in his mercy has made us saved.

Ephesians says that when we were lost and plunged into our sins Christ died for us, not even the occasion was propitious for us to be saved, we were not even looking for God but God decided to rescue us out of his great mercy. We do not deserve salvation, salvation comes by God's total initiative and by an absolute grace that God has poured out on humanity.

Blessed be God for his great mercy, and he says, that he made us reborn. Without Christ, brothers, we are dead, do you know that? Without Christ you are dead. The Bible says that sin kills but Christ gives life because the wages of sin, it says, is death plus the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. God made us reborn through Jesus Christ.

What sin and the world can give is death, even if you are a hard-working, honest, respectable person, even if you don't drink, smoke, commit adultery, gamble, lie to anyone, or do It hurt no one, even if you are the citizen of the year in this city of Boston, let me tell you, if you have not made your covenant with Christ, you have no hope, you are dead in your sins.

Now, if you have Christ Jesus even though you are imperfect, you have eternal life in what he has done through his death. In Christ Jesus we have been made alive again. That is why Paul says, he made us be reborn for a living hope.

Meditate on that for a moment, for a living hope. I would say brothers, the hope of the Christian is not like any other hope. The hope of the Christian is a unique hope. The world places its hopes in vain things, in things that disappear, in moving things like that man in the parable of Jesus Christ who built his house on the sand and when the wind came and the test came and the need came, it was shown that everything what he had done was in nothing.

The Bible says, if Jehovah does not build the house, those who build it labor in vain. Now, the son of God, the man, the woman who follows God and who places her hope in Christ Jesus is placing her on an unshakable rock. Psalm 20 says, these trust in cars, those trust in horses, but we will remember the name of Jehovah, our God. They falter and fall, but we rise and stand.

It is not that the Christian does not fall, says the Bible, that the just man falls seven times but all those times God raises him up once more. We have tests but our confidence is in a living hope, we have a hope that we are looking towards a heavenly homeland and that gives us encouragement to continue forward. It is a solid hope, it is a sure hope, it has the guarantee of God's character behind it.

Then Peter adds and says, he caused us to be reborn to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I spoke a moment ago about the death of Christ, the sacrifice on the cross has given us access to the Father, but we have said many times that if Christ had remained dead in the grave, he would not go beyond being a martyr, a spiritual man and a Great master. But what makes Christ exceptional among all other religious figures of humanity is the fact that Christ alone rose from the dead and that has given Christianity an authority and daring that no other religion can claim. to that fact. The resurrection of Christ is the foundation of our hope. That is why Paul says, it is a living hope already alluding to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The hope of the Christian is based on a historical fact of immense proportions, the resurrection of Christ. A man that God raised from the dead. Man God raised from the dead. That is why our hope is a living, dynamic, patent, continuous hope. That resurrection is the foundation of our faith.

The Apostle Paul says in First Corinthians 15, if Christ did not rise again, your faith is vain, you are still in your sins. Brothers, that is why we never allow anyone to take away from us that fundamental article of faith of our Christian life that Christ rose from the dead bodily. Don't let anyone sell you things there that it was something symbolic and that the Gospel is simply alluding to the fact that good is finally going to triumph, etc., etc. no, Christ rose from the dead, physically and that then guarantees that I too will rise from the dead one day.

And that is the basis of my hope in the resurrection, in this lies our central hope. Now, I am speaking here in poetic terms, hope, future, and Paul goes a little deeper here to describe this in a more precise way and give it a clearer nuance, what that hope consists of. He's hammering there, sculpting the shape until it's pretty accurate.

So he goes on to speak, he says here, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading inheritance reserved in heaven for us.

That too is too deep for one to extract all its teaching from it. He's talking about an inheritance here and that word is a very specific word, peronomian, in the original Greek. It has been left to us by Christ in his death. That inheritance, and the Bible speaks many times of that future hope that we have, as an inheritance. Because? Because Christ made it possible through death. One enters into the use of an inheritance through the death of the testator, right? So says Paul in Hebrew. So that's why we talk about the New Testament, the new legacy that God has left his people through the death of Christ. For me, when I think of inheritance, I think of wealth, I think of abundance, I think of something that has been freely left by the testator to those he loves. God has left us heavenly blessings because of the fact that Christ died on the cross, and that is the testament that Christ has left us for his love, for the love with which he has loved us.

So it is an inheritance first, second place, that inheritance is incorruptible, a very heavy word. That is, it is not damaged, that inheritance is not damaged, it does not rot, it does not decline in value, it does not devalue, it does not fluctuate in value, it is incorruptible, it is not damaged at any time. Time does not take away its beauty, time does not take away its intrinsic value, the world's promises and achievements are fleeting, they are deceitful, the inheritances that the world promises us are evanescent, at one moment they are, another moment they are gone, but the Christian we said a moment ago, invest in something totally solid. It is an incorruptible inheritance. What God has prepared for us does not change in value, it does not get damaged, like the other things in this world.

The word says, the world passes and its desires, but the one who does the will of God remains forever. It is incorruptible. I have a practical question for you that is an implication of what is here, what are you investing in and what am I investing the best moments and energies of my life, of our life in, what are we investing it in? In corruptible things, things that are corrupted, damaged, that at 30, 40, 50, 60 years will cease to have meaning for us, that when we are old we will lose the taste for so many things, as the psalmist says, or we are investing our energies, our time, our talent, our gifts in that eternal life that will not be corrupted, where there will be no tears, there will be no illness, there will be nothing that impoverishes the enjoyment of it because it is incorruptible. What are we investing our lives in right now? Where are we, says the word, tell the rich to invest in heavenly things where mold does not eat away, where insects do not destroy. So many people who live their lives investing and killing each other to build castles here on earth that will instantly get rid of anything in a moment destroys it. We heard about this famous artist, Christopher Reeves, the famous actor in the Superman movie, an accident, a micro second on a horse, but I was thinking about this man who was so big, so strong and so handsome, and with so much money, and with so much talent, in an instant, a second he can destroy all of that. And what are we working on, for what hope? Is our hope, is our investment truly for something incorruptible?

The Apostle Peter also says that this inheritance is not only incorruptible, but also uncontaminated. Money, the inheritances of men are all contaminated by sin. People who deal a lot with money have to go wash their hands afterwards because even the same physical touch has contamination, it has germs. And when one looks at the spiritual history of many of those dollars, you don't know where a dollar after circulating for all, how many things, how many voices are sometimes locked up in a dollar, brothers, how many times you cry, how many betrayals there can be in a dollar, how much death, how much tragedy can be enclosed in a money slip, sometimes filled with the symbol of greed, lies, betrayal, which occur so much in money. And that is the inheritance of material things, but the inheritance of the Christian, brothers, is a holy inheritance.

It says, it is uncontaminated, it has the holiness of the Father behind it. I would also say that it has the best values in the universe. In the inheritance that we have are enclosed the highest and noblest values of the entire universe: the love of God, for example, because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. The love that we can never measure, the grace of God that has freely given salvation, the sacrifice of self that moved Jesus Christ to strip himself of his eternal glory and assume the form of a man and a slave and a servant and ascend to a cross to a shameful death for love of a humanity that neither understood him at that moment, nor understood what he meant.

The obedience of the son to the father, all these things are there involved in that inheritance that we have, they are implied in the inheritance of salvation. It is an uncontaminated heritage and that also has practical implications that he is going to develop later in the same passage. I would say that what moves me the most, when I think of that uncontaminated heritage, tells me that I have to live up to the heritage that God has bequeathed to me.

Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 1 says: "I therefore, a prisoner in the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the vocation with which you were called..."

Brethren, we have to measure up as children of God to that inheritance, that holiness, that purity, that glorious name that we serve and each one of us must tremble before God at the possibility of bringing shame to the height of the Gospel. We have to ask the Lord, the Father, keep us from ever harming the name of Jesus Christ and this great and beautiful Gospel that we have received. We have to honor that uncontaminated heritage by living uncontaminated lives ourselves.

The Apostle Peter also says that it is an unfading inheritance, that is, it does not lose its shine. The idea there is that it does not fade in English, gold, silver, metals, you shine them. You buy a car and the first day it comes out that dazzles people and blinds them because of how shiny it is, right? But by the time that car hit the street, it immediately started gathering dust again and sometimes we didn't even make it home before we got the first scratch. And the guys are already starting to throw things on the seats and we started to scratch the wheel when we parked. Deterioration begins right away, it begins to lose its shine. You buy a ring and the jeweler makes it very shiny but after a few weeks or months you have to go back again to put paste or whatever to make it shine. Because that is the nature of the world, things are shiny at the beginning but they lose their shine little by little. All metals lose their shine over time.

Brothers, the inheritance that God has destined for us is a glorious inheritance, its brilliance never fades, its brilliance never loses its brilliance, the Shekinah glory of God never stops shining and always has its brilliance intact. The inheritance that God has given us is as beautiful and it is there waiting for us as the first day that God announced it.

And this also has a practical implication for my life. Daily life, daily life with its struggles, with its problems, with its rebuffs and disappointments, brothers, little by little we lose the brightness of the hope that God has given us, eternal life, and as if Little by little, if you don't take care of yourself, as the days go by, you kind of take it for granted. One is losing that enthusiasm and that vibration for the hope that God has declared for us. I don't know if this happens to you, it happens to me that life's struggles and problems tend to separate me a little from that, and a lot of reading, and a lot of intellect tend to take a little away from one's innocence that one needs to believe in a fairy tale as real and as beautiful as the Gospel story, it is not a story in the way that we understand stories, it is a beautiful and real and true story. But also something so wonderful and so magical that it is completely far from the reality that we live and if we take care of ourselves we can lose that brightness, that sense of the immediate and the beautiful that is the hope to which God has called us. We get so involved in the worries of the world that that hope loses its shine a little.

For this reason, brothers, I urge you in the name of the Lord with me to continually renew that interior shine of the inheritance that God has given us through daily prayer, through praise, through service to the Lord, through gathering together one another and like fathoms that gather then return to take heat from one another so that that fire continues lively. Because otherwise daily life absorbs us and don't be ashamed to admit that you need to come to God's house as often as possible, that you need to continually go to the word of God as an addict because if you don't do that continuously your spirits it will decay

How many times do you eat a day? How many times do you bathe? We do it as something natural because the nature of life is decay, the spending of things, the nutrients wear out and we need to replenish them. How many times do we put gasoline in the car in a year? Things wear out and we have to renew them, we have to renew the brightness of hope to which God has called us.

And finally brothers, I leave you with that wonderful promise there, it says, "... after incorruptible, uncontaminated, unfading, it says, that that hope we are kept by the power of God through faith for it...."

I cannot stop adding that touch because one sees something as beautiful as that heavenly hope, that eternal life that God has destined for us and many of us can fear many times and lose heart, and think, can I reach it? Am I worthy of reaching her? And if I get into this of the Gospel and halfway there I am not able to reach the goal.

Brothers, there is something wonderful in those words of Peter, it is a precious promise and it is that we are kept by the power of God to be able to reach that inheritance. This life is a dangerous life, this life has many hazards and many things that can happen and many negative situations that can occur. We are in a shifting world.

Last night I was watching a National Geographic program about a region of Africa and that one hour program described the life of insects and different animals and birds in a very defined area of Africa, a nature reserve. What impressed me the most is how ephemeral life is in the jungle and how exposed all these organisms are to being eaten by something larger in order to perpetuate their existence. And I would see these great lions and tigers and cheetahs lying in wait for the gazelles and the other animals and how these animals were waiting there to set sail in a moment and then unleash a race of the victim who flees for his life and the hunter who it is already prepared to jump and that all the muscles and its gaze are fixed on the prey and when it jumps on that prey and grabs its neck, and destroys it, and as it gives itself the smallest insect it eats the smallest and the largest big eats the medium and the other bigger eats the other and how ephemeral is life in the jungle.

And how ephemeral is life also in the world that we live in, prey to illness, to anything, to the sin that is in us, to our mental weakness that cannot perceive everything that is around us, but the wonderful, Brothers, it is that God has compromised his power. He says, you are kept by the power of God and that to me is a pretty sure guarantee. God has committed his power to keep me, to protect me, to take care of me, to preserve me until I reach what he has promised me. And that should give me and you, brother, sister, security and confidence. And when we leave here we must go safely, my Father is with me. Certainly good and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, in the house of Jehovah I will dwell for long days. Because? Because Jehovah is my shepherd, because Jehovah is with me, because he will not leave me or forsake me, because he will be with me every day until the end of the world.

The power of God, brothers, is not a small thing, is it? The Apostle says if God is with us, who is against us. If God has pledged his honor and power to preserve me, I need not fear. Many of us worry if we will reach the end successfully, many of us when a call is made to receive Christ as being and savior, the doubt begins, will I be able to live that Christian life? I don't want to dishonor God, I don't want to start and then stop halfway.

There are a number of things, I have this problem, I have another, I have the inconvenience, morally I am in this situation, etc., a number of things that prevent us from entering into a relationship with that Christ who calls us. I have news for you that is good news, your salvation does not depend on you, it depends on Christ Jesus. Your success in the Christian life does not depend on you, it depends on the God to whom you are going to cling and to whom you are going to cry out and the one under whom you are going to shelter. He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide under the shadow of the Almighty, says the word.

If we move under the shadow of the Lord, he has promised, he has committed himself to us. Says the word in Second Thessalonians, but faithful is the Lord who will affirm and keep you from evil, through faith, says the Apostle Paul, by his power through faith. That means that you have something to do, your part is to believe, your part is to entrust your life to the Lord, your part is to fasten the safety belt that Christ promises you and then enjoy the trip that God has for you in this life, enjoying, celebrating what the Lord has done and what he will continue to do for you. Trials will come, difficulties will come, struggles will come, times of drought and aridity will come, but the Lord will be with you at all times. I will not leave you nor forsake you.

Brothers, does this not seem to you a beautiful blessing that we have? A glorious inheritance? The greatness of the hope to which we have been called moves us to praise on this day, to bless, to trust, to work for the Lord.

Brothers, we are going to celebrate that inheritance that Christ has made possible. I leave you with the words of Paul, he says, more thanks be to God who gives us victory through Christ our Lord. So, my beloved brothers, be firm and constant, always growing in the work of the Lord, knowing that your work in the Lord is not in vain. The Lord bless us.

Classic sermon by Dr. Roberto Miranda #6058

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