1 Peter 1:1-9

Let’s pray together as we come to consider this passage.

Father, we thank you for the passage before us. We thank you that it contains truth. And yet, Lord, so often we find, even as Andrew helped us to think through this morning, as we seek to walk through life, as we seek to honour you, we are assaulted by trials and difficulties which can both be confusing and can truly shake our faith.

And so we pray that as we consider this passage tonight, our faith in you would be strengthened, that the person of Jesus Christ would become clear to us and that our hearts would be lifted to you.

In Jesus’ name, amen.

Now there’s some debate over the exact details of the book of 1 Peter, when it was written, and so on. But it was written by the Apostle Peter, probably in the early 60s AD. It was written to those who had heard the words about Jesus and believed the gospel.

Now we know something about Peter, who wrote this letter. Already tonight Paul has read to us from Acts, where Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost and preached.

Peter was that gung-ho disciple, wasn’t he? He was jumping in with both feet on every occasion. When Jesus was out on the boat, walking to the disciples, who was it jumped in the water? It was Peter.

Whenever the chief priests and scribes came to arrest Jesus, who was it was going to defend him? It was Peter. He pulled out the sword and chopped off the ear of the high priest’s servant. But he was a man who loved Jesus, you know, even though he stumbled and fell. We read of the time when he denied Jesus.

Of course, the Lord came to meet him on the beach. We read of that in John 21. And of course, he confessed that he loved the Lord there. But by the time this book was written, Peter is now an older man.

And as we read this book, there’s a depth, there’s a richness. He had matured as a disciple of Christ. Even if you were to flick over to chapter 2, verse 13, 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 13, there we read:

Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution.

You know, remember the man who’s writing this is the guy who chopped off the high priest’s servant’s ear, so there definitely had been a maturing in his life. Just at the very outset, it’s worth saying the church of Jesus Christ is not the preserve of the self-righteous and perfect.

It’s the place where imperfect people are being transformed to become more like Jesus.

And so, you know, we’ve talked already a little bit about trials, which we’ll come to in this passage, but maybe you’re here tonight and you feel insufficient. You feel the burden of your own sin, your insufficiency. Well, the fact that it’s Peter writing this book should be an encouragement to us. Here was a man who jumped in with both feet, he messed up many times, he even denied that he knew Jesus, and yet he was the man that God used to encourage the church and write this book.

As for the people that the letter was written to, we don’t really know too much about them. They were Christians, they were spread across a range of places which are mentioned here, in modern-day Turkey. They were probably a mix of Jews and Gentiles. Acts chapter 2, verse 3 mentions these places.

Paul’s already read that to us tonight. The Jews who had come to Jerusalem for the Passover, many of them came from the places mentioned here. 1 Peter may suggest that those the letter was being written to were predominantly Gentiles. In verse 14 of chapter 1 here, it mentions the time of their former ignorance, which would tend to refer to those who didn’t have the knowledge of God who’d been revealed to the people of Israel. But either way, it was written to a mix of people across modern-day Turkey.

It’s a book that deals with the normal kinds of life issues that we deal with. They were people who struggled with malice, with deceit, with hypocrisy, with envy. If you were to go to chapter 2, verse 1, those things are mentioned there. It’s written to people who had to figure out how to live under Roman rule, which wasn’t always godly.

And yet we’ve already read what Peter said there. It’s written to people who were suffering unjustly. Those of us who were meeting together this week to talk about work and wisdom for work: Peter here in this book talks about slaves and their masters and suffering unjustly. We’ll not take a detour into that tonight, but that was an experience they had.

They were people who needed instruction on how wives and husbands were to live together, chapter 3. Which of us could not do with that kind of instruction? And they were people who dealt with anxiety. 1 Peter 5:7 talks about anxiety, a real-life experience for all of us at one time or another. And in verse 2, it describes the experience of these people.

It calls them elect. They were people for whom God’s salvation had been worked by God, but they were exiles.

Now, in some ways, those things are an oxymoron when you put them together, aren’t they?

You know, you’re saying in one sense, these people are chosen by God, and then on the other hand, you’re saying they’re exiles.

You know, we don’t think of exiles as being people who are especially blessed.

But these people are described as elect exiles. They were people who were living a life of faith.

Now, we’ve already talked to the boys and girls about faith. Faith is simply a trust or a belief in the message that they’d heard about Jesus.

And so faith is mentioned three times in this passage, and we want to hang our thoughts on those three times that it’s mentioned tonight. It’s not an exhaustive study of this passage, but hopefully it’ll be helpful for us. And just to give you a feel for where we’re going, verse 5 talks about the faith that guards. Verse 7 talks about the faith that is tested. And verse 9 talks about the faith that has an outcome.

So, there’s a little bit of a preview of where we’re heading.

1 The faith that guards

So, first of all, let’s think about the faith that guards. If you’ve been around church any length of time, you know that faith is the starting point of life as a believer. Ephesians 2:8–9:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith.

We’re aware that we have a sin problem, and God has made a way for us to know him through what Jesus has done. And how is it applied in our lives? Is it by works? Is it by self? No, it is by faith. It is simply by turning from trusting ourselves and trusting in what Jesus has done. And of course, Hebrews 11 is that great passage which lets us see the list of many through Scripture who lived by faith.

We’ve already mentioned Noah. It mentions Abraham, it mentions Moses, it mentions many other people in that passage. And although those mentioned in that passage lived in the Old Testament, they trusted the words that God gave them, even when it seemed unlikely. And as a result, God said they were declared righteous.

They were people of faith. And that faith, it’s simply a trust, but biblical faith is not blind faith. It’s a trust in the God who has revealed himself. If you went to Hebrews 11, we’ll not take time to turn to it now, but verses 24 to 26 lay out the story of Moses, that he had wealth and prosperity on one hand as he grew up in Egypt, but at one point he had to choose.

Was he going to follow the wealth and prosperity that he had around him, or was he going to choose to be identified with the people of God?

And so he chose. By faith, he trusted God’s words more than the safety and security of the things he had around him.

And so Moses was a man who lived by faith.

So I hope you can see that faith is not just this generic alternative to the word religious.

So often, I was actually listening to the radio this morning, I can’t even remember the details, but it was along this theme. You know, faith gets talked about as if it’s just the word religion. You know, “I have faith”, or “he’s a person of faith”.

Faith is not religion. Faith is not doing religious things. Faith is an act of trust, even when it seems unlikely. If you injure yourself and you go to the physio, some of you have had this experience, and the physio gives you a list of exercises, we all have had that experience of looking at the list of exercises and thinking, well, I’m in pain and I need this fixed now. This isn’t going to fix it. But you have to demonstrate faith in your physio and go home and do those exercises, and maybe in a week’s time or in two weeks’ time or in a month’s time, you start to feel the benefit of that. But you don’t feel that initially. You have to exercise faith.

And so it’s the same in the life of a believer. Faith is that trust in the unseen.

And so, the people in the places listed in 1 Peter, they have been saved by faith.

Now, this passage goes through many things that we could think about in relation to how God has worked in their lives. Verse 3 on down, it talks about God being merciful. It talks about the fact that God is working in their lives. He is the one who has caused them to be born again. It talks about God’s generosity, that he’s caused them to be born again to a living hope, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled. But they’re saved by placing their faith, their trust, in this God who has revealed himself.

It’s not any god. I was listening to another radio programme this week, and I can’t remember the details of it, but someone was explaining what they thought God was like. And as I listened, it was clear that what they were describing was something completely contrary to Scripture.

And so, faith is not faith in some sort of generic religious being, it’s faith in the God that we find revealed in the pages of Scripture.

So, let me ask you the question, what about you?

You know, we’ve all cleaned ourselves up and we’ve come here tonight, but God knows the heart. Have you and I got a true and genuine trust, faith, in the God of Scripture? Perhaps we have an interest in things to do with God, but have we ever taken that step of saying, I’ve abandoned my hope in what I can do and placed my trust fully in what Jesus has done?

That’s what it means to become a Christian. It’s not learning all the facts about God in our head or, you know, going through a membership class. It’s placing our true and genuine faith in the God we find revealed in Scripture.

And so, these people are saved by placing their faith in God, but he hasn’t left them to meander through life until they reach the end.

We read in verse 5 that by God’s power they are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed.

So faith isn’t just the entrance through which we receive salvation. That faith, that ongoing trust, that is the life breath of someone who is a believer. It’s through faith we are guarded for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last times. That faith, that trust in God, that’s what guards us.

Now, what is this salvation ready to be revealed in the last time? Well, of course, if we’re Christians, there’s a sense in which we’ve already been saved, we’ve already been delivered. You know that salvation has been purchased for you because of what Jesus has done. If you’re a Christian, if you’ve turned from your sin and trusted in what Jesus has done, as Colossians 1:12–14 tells us, you’ve been delivered from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. But there’s also a sense in which you’re not fully saved yet. You and I still struggle with sin, don’t we?

Even the very letter we have before us, some of the things that are being written about show that those who were Christians were struggling with some sins. But it’s through faith, through that ongoing trust in God’s Word, that God’s power continues to work in the lives of believers and to guard them for that perfect, ultimate redemption at Jesus’ return, when of course that struggle with sin will be no more. That struggle is exemplified in the life of people that we read of in Scripture. Think of David.

Remember how Samuel came and anointed David, but it was a complicated situation because Saul was the king. But Samuel came and anointed David, that he was going to be king.

And so it was this complicated situation. Did David unfailingly sail through life to the point where he was anointed king? Well, we know he didn’t.

Turn to 1 Samuel 27:1 just for a minute. I think it’s helpful to see this. I was reading this in a devotional recently and I was really struck by it. 1 Samuel 27, verse 1 says this.

Now remember, David had been anointed by Samuel. He had been given God’s word that he was going to become king. He wasn’t a proud man. But here’s what happened as Saul pursued him and was trying to kill him. 1 Samuel 27, verse 1:

Then David said in his heart, “Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than I should escape to the land of the Philistines.”

Do you see where David was? His faith, his trust in God, it was wavering, wasn’t it?

You know, he had been given this promise by God that he was going to become king, and yet here he was, and he decided in his own heart, do you know what, it’s not worth it, I’m going to be killed.

Now, if you’re a believer tonight, that is the experience that many of us have. We face times of uncertainty, our faith can shake, it can rock. And yet, we know when we read through the rest of Scripture that that wavering faith that David shows here, God steadied it. Because when you come to 2 Samuel 22, you read this in verse 1:

And David spoke to the Lord the words of this song on the day when the Lord delivered him from the hand of his enemies, from the hand of Saul. He said, “The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer.”

See what had happened? He had moments of despair, but he was hanging on in the darkness. And he came to the point— and now at the end, we’re going to sing that song, “O Lord, my rock and my redeemer”, which is from a psalm. But David was someone of faith, but that didn’t mean he soared effortlessly through life over the top of every cloud. There were days of despair, days when he was in darkness. But the life of a true believer is one of active, living trust in God.

And so, what are the lies that you and I are tempted to believe? What are the promises of Scripture that we find hard to trust?

How do we respond when we face temptation or trials? It’s our faith that guards. Our faith, our trust in the God we find in Scripture. It’s our faith that guards.

2 The faith that is tested

Secondly, let’s think about our faith that is tested.

Now, there are some great descriptions here in verses 3 and 4 of what God has done. But as we read through the rest of the book, we begin to realise that life for these believers was certainly not smooth sailing. Trials were real.

Multiple times there is mention of suffering. Chapter 2, verses 18 and 19 is just one example. Let me just read that to you. 1 Peter 2:18, it says this:

Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly.

Now, let’s be honest, if that was us, we would want something that said, and if your master is being unjust to you, well, you just hit them back and run away. That’s how we naturally think, isn’t it? And yet, what’s written here is to encourage their faith, their trust in God. And we’ll not take time to go into it tonight, but when you go right down through the rest of that passage, they’re pointed to Jesus and told of the purposes in their suffering.

But these people faced real and genuine trials, like us, who have experienced the brokenness of living in a fallen world that is not yet fully redeemed.

And so, what do we do with this? Often our default thinking goes like this. You know, I realised I was a sinner, I needed to be saved, I turned from my sin, I trusted in the Lord Jesus. You know, initially I felt that sense that my sin has been dealt with, there was a wonderful joy. You see life’s part of God’s plan, you knew that you could pray in times of difficulty. But then life is not smooth sailing and those bumps come along. But Peter helps us to see that if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, as you read in verse 7 there.

Albert Barnes, in his commentary on this passage, states this: “The meaning here is that they now endured many things which were suited to try or test their faith. These might have consisted of poverty, persecution, sickness, or the efforts of others to lead them to renounce their religion, and go back to their former state of unbelief. Any one or all of these would try them and show them whether their religion or their faith was genuine.”

You see, trials are not accidents. They’re actually part of God’s plan. The difficulties and trials in our life, they’re not accidental. When life goes wrong, we can easily become despairing.

Now I know there’s a dozen, or probably a hundred things could be weighing down our hearts tonight. Health problems, unfulfilled dreams, financial worries, our fears of the future, worries about the children we have, worries about the children we don’t have, worries about spouse, about family— there’s a thousand things we could worry about. And in the midst of that, there are two great temptations. One temptation is, on one side, we think that God has forgotten us.

You know, here I am, over here in the corner, trying to get through this mess, and I’ve prayed about it and God mustn’t care one bit because it hasn’t changed. And the danger in that situation is we become bitter, we become tempted to doubt God. But on the other side, we can think that somehow God is punishing me. You know, God is trying to take out his anger on me in some way.

And when we start to embrace that mindset, we become inclined towards the need to clean our life up, to become self-righteous. We think we need to do certain works to get God on our side. Which one of us has not had difficult circumstances? And in your head, you kind of reason out, well, Lord, if I do this, will you take this difficult situation away?

And somehow we’re almost bargaining with God, expecting that we can kind of earn his favour. And of course, that’s a foolish way to think. Well, it’s not according to Scripture.

You know, our sins and whatever wrongs we’ve done, our only hope is because Jesus has already dealt with those.

As we think of difficulties and trials in our life, think of Job. Job 1:8 says this, when Satan was before God and God said, “Consider my servant Job.” And then what happened? His life fell apart.

Absolutely fell apart. He lost children, he lost possessions, he was at the point where his wife said to him, “Curse God and die.”

Now, of course, if we’ve fallen into sin, we will experience the consequences of that sin. But the trials we face in life, they are part of God’s plan.

Verse 7 here says, if necessary.

God knows what we can bear, and he knows where we need to grow. Step back and think for a minute. What if God is working together the tapestry of our lives to cause us to grow exactly as we need?

Some of you, I’m sure, are enthusiastic gardeners.

We make various attempts. Plants that are hardy do best in our house and garden. But various times, there are trees— we have some wee trees that were in the front in pots, and whatever’s happened, it hasn’t been a good year for them.

And so Laurie was out one evening there with the phone, one of these apps, seeking advice on what to do with these trees. You know, you put in the picture and it tells you, well, it’s missing this chemical and that chemical.

So Laurie came back in, she was delighted, she’d found out what was wrong. No idea if that is actually what’s wrong, but anyway. But those trees, what it said was, you know, there were certain chemicals missing, it needed more of this, it needed more light. There were certain conditions that those plants needed to help them to thrive and grow.

And so God knows the exact circumstances that we need in our lives.

You know, I often say I used to think I was a patient person, and then I got married, and then I had kids, and it was just like, you know, learning all the way. Still learning.

And so God puts those situations in life to help us see the reality of the sinfulness of our own hearts and to help us see where we need to continually repent that we might become more like Christ. Those trials, they’re part of God’s plan and they have a purpose. Think about this question. Is your faith, is your trust in the Lord, is it the real deal?

I’m sure all of us can think of examples of those who have claimed to be Christians and now they are nowhere spiritually, sadly.

Now, of course, if we read the parable of the sower, we read of seed which falls on the rocky ground and is choked by thorns. Not all who claim to be Christians ultimately endure to the end.

And so, don’t focus tonight on, well, I prayed a prayer when I was whatever age, and therefore I’m a Christian. Ask the question, where is my faith? Where is my trust today? Is it in the things that I can engineer? Is it in the things I do? Or have you abandoned all hope of yourself and your trust is truly in Jesus?

Peter says these Christians have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of their faith may be found to result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Do you see what’s happening? The testing of their faith is proving its genuineness.

It’s as you walk through those difficulties that the answer to “is your faith the real deal?” becomes clear.

Some of you boys and girls have maybe heard about Archimedes. He was presented with a challenge. There was a king who had ordered some crowns for himself, and he thought he had been duped. Instead of them being made from pure gold, he thought that the guy who had made them had put in some cheap silver.

Imagine it.

And so he had been duped, and he’d paid for a pure gold crown, and he hadn’t got it. But he didn’t know how to prove it.

And so Archimedes was this man who was given the challenge. He came up with an idea: he weighed what the crown weighed, and then he put it into a bath of water and measured how much volume was displaced. And he was able to come up with a way of measuring mass per unit volume, which is density. And if any of your mums and dads are into science, they’d love to explain that to you. But it was a way of testing, was that crown really made of gold? Because the density of gold and the density of silver is different.

And so he invented this way of measuring, was it the real deal?

And so the trials are, you know, the Archimedes test of our faith. They’re a way of proving, is our faith, is our trust in the Lord Jesus the real deal?

As we walk through those trials, they show where our faith truly is. And as we sang in that hymn just a few minutes ago, ultimately those trials point us to Jesus. Verse 7 says they will result in praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ, talking about joy in him and his coming to deliver. If you’ve ever talked to someone who’s a genuine Christian, who’s walked through deep trials, you don’t hear a glib dismissal of the difficulties, but you will hear a love for Jesus and a thankfulness for him which is deeper and more real than those of us who are perhaps a few years back up the road.

3 The faith that has an outcome

And so that leads us to our final point here, which is that faith in the life of a believer is something that has an outcome. We read in verse 9 here, the outcome of our faith is the salvation of our souls. If we are a believer, our faith is not futile, it is not hopeless, it leads to an outcome. It leads us to Jesus, doesn’t it?

That’s just what we’ve read. What we really need is him. Faith is not something we achieve. Trials are not just this testing ground to see if we’ve reached a certain level of spirituality.

No, they sharpen our focus, they prove the genuineness of our faith, and they result in hearts which worship him. Verse 7 talks about praise and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Our faith is not something we possess. It’s a trust in the Lord Jesus.

It’s about him. It’s not some sort of stoicism to help us get through life’s difficulties. It leads us to fix our eyes on Jesus. Our hope is in him because of what he has done.

Verse 8 says, you believe in him and you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.

And so the question for us tonight is, does that describe our view of Jesus Christ? If not, perhaps our vision has become a little cloudy, perhaps we’ve become distracted by the things that we have, our plans for the future, we’re looking sideways at others. Have we lost sight of who we really are?

We are lost sinners before a holy God who deserve to be cast from his presence forever, and yet he in his mercy has made a way for us to be part of his family. Does that bring us joy? If it does, it will be evident in our lives. Trials have a way of peeling away those cataracts which cloud our view of Jesus, that Jesus whom John met in Revelation.

And when he saw him, what happens? Revelation 1:17 says, when he saw him, he fell at his feet as if dead. This Jesus is the one who sees the thoughts and the intents of our heart. Today, he is what we need, more than the very breath in our body. And those trials, they lead us to Jesus, and ultimately they lead us to heaven, don’t they? Often we get a little bit too comfortable building our own little kingdoms in this earth. We have our things and our homes and the plans of what we want to do, and all those things are wonderful.

But verse 9 reminds us that for those of true faith, we obtain the outcome of our faith, the salvation of our souls. What is that salvation?

Now we’re declared righteous, sinless, even though we are sinners. We’re declared righteous.

We’re part of God’s family. We’re being kept through faith as we face the trials of this life. In one translation, we read 1 Peter 1:5, it says this:

And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see.

When Jesus returns at the end of time, he will establish a new heaven and a new earth for all who are true people of faith, true believers, those who are trusting in Christ, those who have their sins forgiven. They will be part of that kingdom where there is no more sin, no more sorrow, no more suffering. Let me ask the question, do you have a confidence that you’re part of that kingdom? Do you know the Bible would indicate to us that you can have that confidence?

You don’t need to meander through life hoping that somehow God might take pity on you. He’s already made known in Scripture that he has shown his grace in what Jesus has done, and he invites you to turn and to believe in the Lord Jesus. And as we’ve heard in so many examples we’ve mentioned tonight, that righteousness becomes ours through faith, not because we deserve it, but because of what Jesus has done.

Let me finish by reading a verse of a lovely hymn written by a man who experienced the trials of life. Horatio Spafford, you know the hymn, “When Peace Like a River”. He’d lost four of his daughters in an accident, and he sat down and wrote that hymn. Well, verse 2 says this, “Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blessed assurance control, that Christ has regarded my helpless estate, and he shed his own blood for my soul.”

Verse 4 says this, “O Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll, the trump shall resound and the Lord shall descend. Even so, it is well with my soul.”

Do you know, if you’re a true believer tonight, you may be facing life’s deepest trials, but even as you go through this passage, there’s an encouragement in this that, do you know what? Your faith, your trust in the Lord Jesus, it’s not about your ability to hang on, it’s about what he has done.

And there’s a confidence we find in Scripture that even in those moments of difficulty, God’s working, he’s using that for your good and for his glory. If you’re not a Christian tonight, you’re a little boat cast loose on a dark ocean and you have no hope.

So I urge you tonight, turn and trust in Jesus. It’s only in him that we can find hope.