Sermon Transcript
life to a time where your hopes were dashed and your dreams were crushed. Okay, a time when your hopes were dashed and your dreams were crushed. Maybe, actually, maybe if you could think back to the first time, this might be really hard for some of us who are older. You know, how do you go all the way back to the first time? But what would come to your mind?
What happened at that point in time? For me, I think back to my junior high years. When I had these athletic aspirations. And so I went out for the basketball team, but I was cut from the basketball team. They didn’t want me on that team.
And a couple months later, I went out for the baseball team and I was cut from that team too. They didn’t want me on that team either. And so I could remember the feeling of, you know, I’m a loser, a failure, and all the rest of the things that you feel at a moment like that. I think that actually Coach Smith, who was a part of both of these cuts— I don’t have any animosity in my heart about that, but anyway, so, you know, I think that he felt bad for me because he offered me a role on the baseball team. He said, Dave, we would like you to be our scorekeeper.
And I said, well, you know, can I get a letter? He said, yeah, you can. So I— Ahwahnee Junior High School, now called Ahwahnee Middle School. So I took him up on the offer and I became the scorekeeper for the next couple of years. Maybe it was out of pity he did that for me, I don’t know.
But the girls didn’t know that I didn’t have any athletic ability in my body. I just wore the A instead. It didn’t matter. Whatever, you know. But, you know, when you think back to that moment when your hopes were dashed and your dreams were crushed, how did you get through it?
How did you, you know, ultimately get on the other side of that? Maybe right now you’re dealing with one of those circumstances. We had somebody come into the worship service that had been just driving by a few times and decided to make it over here this morning and came and He was in need of huge amounts of hope, he told us on the way out. Maybe you’re there right now. Of course, the Easter story is connected to hope, and so we’re going to talk about hope this morning.
But I hope that, you know, the hope that we talk about can connect with us. It’s just not, you know, that’s just the Easter story, but that it really does connect with the circumstances that we find ourselves in this morning. It might have to do with family problems that you have, maybe school problems, work problems, finance problems, health problems. There are lots of things in life that can rob us of our hope, can deplete us of hope. So most of us that are sitting here this morning, whether today or sometime in the future, are going to need an infusion of hope.
We’re going to need something to help us recover from something that has ripped hope out of our lives. And I find help in this Easter story. And we’re going to look at it this morning through the eyes of Peter. All right, Peter. Now, some of us know a little bit more about Peter than maybe others, but I’m just going to give you kind of a quick glance at Peter.
Some of you know that Peter was a fisherman by trade, and he was fishing one day. This stranger came by and saw something potential, some kind of potential in Peter. And so this stranger said to Peter, come follow me. And I will make you fishers of men. That must have, you know, sounded pretty neat to Peter in some way because he decided to take this stranger up on this offer.
And of course, the stranger turned out to be Jesus. And over the next couple of years, Jesus began to train Peter to fish for people that could be caught and come to life Instead of fishing for fish that you catch and they die. And so here’s Peter on a new mission, you might say, and a couple of years into this 3-plus-year relationship that Peter had with Jesus, a couple of years in, Jesus asked a question of his disciples. He said, who do the people say I am? Now when I look at this question that Jesus asked, I sometimes think about it in light of the game show on television called the Family Feud where they always have a question, you know, and they’re looking for top 4 answers on the board or whatever it would be.
In this case, the disciples said, well, people are saying you’re John the Baptist, maybe you’re Elijah, maybe you’re Jeremiah, maybe you’re one of the prophets. Those were the top 4 answers that people were giving with regard to Jesus. So Jesus looked at his apostles and he said, well, who do you say I am? And Peter was the first one to speak up, Matthew chapter 16, verse 16. And Peter said, well, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
In other words, what Peter had been hoping for before Jesus invited him to join his team has actually come to be true. He was hoping like all the other Jewish people, they were hoping for a Messiah to come, a Savior to come, somebody that would give them life in this kingdom that they were living in where the Romans were taking life away. And so Peter has come to this place now where he believes Jesus is that Messiah. Jesus in turn replied, Matthew 16:18, and he said to Peter, I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. Now that’s an incredible statement, isn’t it?
Peter, I just want you to know you’re right, and I’m going to do something significant in and through you. You’re going to be a part of building my church. Now, if we were drawing, you know, Peter’s experience with hope from the day that Jesus called him to be on his team to now this moment where Peter has made this profound statement and Jesus says, you’re right, And I’m going to do something really special through you to launch an organization called the church, and it’s going to impact the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you’re Peter, you’re probably, you know, if you’re graphing this thing, you’re thinking, man, this is good. I like this.
No doubt your hopes are elevating. We might say this was perhaps one of the best days in Peter’s life. But contrast that with what may have been the worst day in Peter’s life. It was the day where Jesus was arrested and then Jesus was tried. He was tried for what he was claiming to be.
He was claiming to be God, and so they’re trying to decide whether or not in fact that claim is blasphemous and if he should be killed because of his claim. So while this trial is going on And actually there’s 6 trials in a row that take place. While all this is going on, Peter’s sitting outside in the courtyard. And in Matthew chapter 26, Matthew records this about what went on there in the courtyard. It says, all this time Peter was sitting out in the courtyard, one servant girl came up to him and said, you were with Jesus the Galilean.
In front of everybody there, he— this is Peter— He denied it. I don’t know what you’re talking about. It would be bad enough already if that was the end of the story, but that’s not the end of the story because another individual comes over to him and says, you were with this man Jesus the Nazarene. And again he denies it, but this time he swore he had never even laid eyes on Jesus. So from Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, to, I don’t know who he is.
I’ve never seen him. That’s a huge shift, wouldn’t you say? And then there was a third group of people that came over to Peter while he was out there on the courtyard. And one of them said to Peter, You gotta be one of them because your accent gives you away. Peter at that point got nervous, and again he swore, I don’t know the man.
Well, Jesus said that was actually going to happen, that Peter would deny him 3 times and then a rooster would crow. A rooster crowed. And after that, Peter went out and the text says that Peter cried and he cried and he cried and he cried. Why? Because the bottom just had dropped out of his world.
And if we were graphing his hopes now, we would say his hopes took— they took a nosedive. He’s devastated. He’s just spent the last 3+ years with a guy that turns out to be a fraud. I mean, in his mind, he doesn’t get it. What’s going on?
Now, he wasn’t the only person that was hurting at this point. If you read the gospel accounts, you know that there’s a story about a couple of guys that were on the road to Emmaus, a couple of disciples of Jesus. And they’re having a conversation. They’re processing their feelings about Jesus and what’s just happened to Jesus. Jesus at this point had been crucified.
And so they’re talking about that, and there’s this stranger that comes up and invites himself into the conversation. He basically says, so what are you guys talking about? And they replied, they said, well, about Jesus of Nazareth. He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him.
But we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it’s the 3rd day since all of this took place. In other words, these guys’ hopes were dashed too. I mean, they thought that Jesus was— what Peter thought, that Jesus was the Messiah. He was the Savior.
He was going to, you know, take Israel out of the terrible bondage situation that they were in, the oppression under Rome, that he was going to save them. But it turns out they’re saying he’s dead and it’s the 3rd day, meaning, and he still hasn’t resurrected, because they had heard evidently something about how If you kill me, in 3 days I’m going to pop out of the tomb, and it hasn’t happened. What they don’t know is the guy they’re talking to is Jesus. Now let me ask you a question. Just thinking about these experiences, can you identify with these experiences in any way?
Can you identify in the sense that you know what it’s like to have your hopes elevated, but then something rips your hopes away. You experience that, you know, wow, I’m so looking forward to what could happen here, and, and your hopes begin to grow, but then things don’t work out. You, you thought that the job offer was going to come, but it didn’t come. You thought that that guy or that girl was the person that you’ve been praying for. Your parents even thought that was the person they were praying for, but it didn’t work out.
The relationship fell apart. You had hoped that you were going to get into that college, the college of your dreams, but it didn’t work out. You hoped that the surgery was going to bring relief from pain, but it hasn’t brought relief from pain. Actually, if anything, it possibly has made things worse. You had hoped that you would get straight A’s this semester.
This would have been the semester that you got straight A’s, but you got Mrs. Abernathy. Anybody that gets Mrs. Abernathy knows it’s Probably going to be a tough go. Didn’t work out for you. You had hoped that you were going to be able to save your marriage, but it didn’t happen. We understand this, don’t we?
We understand what it’s like to put our hopes in something or someone and have our hopes just ripped right out of us.
Well, that’s where Peter was. That’s where these other disciples were at this point. But let’s fast forward for just a minute. Peter ended up writing a couple of letters, all right? 1 and 2 Peter.
We call them letters or epistles. Sometimes we call them books in the Bible, the books in the Bible. They’re really originally letters or epistles. Epistle, by the way, is not the wife of an apostle, okay? And so Peter writes these 2 letters.
And what’s fascinating is that he has a lot to say in these letters about hope. These letters come about 30 years after his hopes were dashed, okay? About 30 years later. And in chapter 1, in 2 places, he basically pinpoints for us how he had his hopes restored and how he’s now living 30 years later with hope. I want you just to see this because this is so applicable to our circumstances today and something that we can hold on to as well in the times of life where we so desperately need hope.
The first one’s found in 1 Peter 1:3 where it says, praise be— this is Peter writing— praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Now, what is that telling us? Well, that’s telling us that the relationship that Peter had with Jesus changed. And this relationship changed actually 30 years ago because Jesus did go on to die, but Jesus didn’t stay in the tomb.
He was resurrected from the tomb. And Peter is saying, we now are praising God because of Jesus and because of how through Jesus hope has been birthed. And I love that picture. Hope has been birthed in us, and not just any old kind of hope, like a circumstantial hope or something like that. We’re talking about a divine hope, living hope.
A living hope has been birthed in us, and this living hope was birthed in us through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That when Jesus was raised from the dead, in believing that, hope is birthed in us. Now that hope was birthed in Peter 30 years before, but he’s still living with that hope 30 years after. What was it that happened? Well, Jesus, after his death, 3 days began to make appearances.
In the book of Acts, which was written by Luke, Luke simply summarizes those appearances this way. Acts 1:3, he says, after His suffering, speaking about Jesus’ suffering, He, Jesus, presented Himself to them. Who’s the them here? It’s the apostles. It’s people like Peter who had come to believe that Jesus wasn’t the Messiah, that this was all a fraud.
But Jesus ended up presenting himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of 40 days and spoke about the kingdom of God. Over a period of 40 days, Jesus appears, he starts talking about life with God now and forever, the kingdom of God, and in doing so, he demonstrates proof, convincing proofs, that proof that he did what it was that he said he was going to do— raise from the dead. He rose from the dead. That changed everything for these apostles.
You know that the first apostle that Jesus appeared to was Peter? Did you realize that the first apostle Jesus appeared to was Peter? Why? Because Jesus was interested in Peter still being on his team. And even though he had denied him 3 times, there still was a future for Peter.
And there was a future for the other apostles. And there was a future for all of these people that were living at that time, continuing obviously to this time. And so Jesus, over a period of 40 days, appeared to— in another text tells us— to more than 500 people. I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie Risen, but it’s a great movie that in an excellent way portrays the response of the apostles to Jesus’ resurrection. It was— it’s amazing how they portray this because these guys, having seen Jesus alive, are absolutely convinced, and it changed everything, everything for them.
And that’s what Peter is getting at here. He’s getting at the fact that when we come to a place of believing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, hope is birthed in us. The resurrection of Jesus births hope in us. And as we continue to reflect on this resurrection and be changed by the this resurrection, we see life differently. We see, if nothing else, that God can do what God promises he will do.
That when God makes promises, when he says, I will never leave you and I will never forsake you and I will never put you in a circumstance that you can’t find a way out of, and when he says, I I will forgive you if you come into a relationship with me through the Son. He means it. He absolutely means it. Our God is the God by whom we escape death like Jesus did. And so Peter is saying we got to go back and we’ve got to hang on to this hope, which is exactly what Peter was doing.
He was hanging on to the living hope that was birthed in him through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But that’s only one of the events that gave him hope. The other event is found in verse 13. Go on down to verse 13, 1 Peter 1:13. He says, therefore prepare your minds for action, be self-controlled, set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.
If this is hope birthed— hope is birthed through believing in who Christ is and the fact that God raised him from the dead. If hope is birthed in that, then this is what boosts our hope, we’ll say. What boosts our hope is setting our hope on a second resurrection. If our hope is birthed through first resurrection, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our hopes are boosted through a second resurrection. And what is this second resurrection?
It’s when Jesus Christ is revealed, His children being resurrected. In fact, the Apostle Paul talks about this event this way. He says, by His power God raised the Lord from the dead, and He will raise up us also. And so here’s Peter writing to these people who are living in a less than perfect world, obviously, and he says to them, you can still live with hope because hope has been birthed in you through the resurrection of Jesus. But hope can be boosted in you if you will focus on his revelation, his coming.
Because when he comes, he’s going to resurrect believers to be with him forever. And so this is fascinating because Peter is basically saying, you know, when you’re low on hope, you need to look in both directions. You need to look back and you need to look ahead. And as you look ahead, this lifts your spirits in the circumstances. That you’re faced with right now.
For instance, when we read about the bombings in Brussels this week, it probably emotionally hit us in a variety of ways. And as the reports continue to play out here, we, you know, get another report of another American couple that was killed there in these bombings. Just in the last couple days they found that out. But anyway, as we, as we look at this, where’s the hope in that?
Well, the hope isn’t found in that. The hope is found in the realization that it’s not always going to be that way, that Jesus is going to come back and he’s going to bring life as it always was intended. Intended to be. This wasn’t his idea that we choose not to be connected to him, that we choose to do life our own way. See, that’s what happened in the garden when Adam and Eve decided to choose to do things different than God wanted them, in spite of the fact that he said, in the day that you eat from that, you’re going to die, and death is going to come into the world, and we’re going to live with the consequences of that from then on.
But Jesus is going to come back and he’s going to ultimately set things right, and there’s going to be no more death, and there’s going to be no more sorrow, and there’s going to be no more pain, and there’s going to be no more crying. And what Peter is saying here is, in the world that you are living in, there is hope. There is hope, yes, in a world that is not anything like what God intended intended this world to be. And their world, if you, if you do a further study in the book of 1 Peter, you’re going to find out that they were living in a world with bad leadership. Nero was the king.
Nero hated Christians. Nero killed Christians. It was a sport to him. They were living in a world where there was a bad job environment, you might say. It was not favorable to Christians.
They wanted to eliminate Christians. They were intent on making Christians’ lives absolutely miserable. They were living in a world where there were bad labor laws. I mean, come on, slavery was vogue. Slavery was a part of life there.
It was endorsed. Employee abuse was to be expected. They were living in a world where there were bad teachers. That’s part of the reason that Peter writes his second epistle, because people are falling into the error of following false teachers, and he wants to warn against following these false teachers. You don’t want to go to that school because of the teachers that are there and what they’re going to teach you.
They were living in a world where there are bad family conditions, bad marital relationships. That’s why in 1 Peter chapter 3, he has to write to husbands and wives and give them some insight insight into what makes marriages work, especially marriages where there’s one person who believes in God and another person who doesn’t believe in God. What do you do? Do you just end the marriage at that point? Is there a way to be married and still have a good marriage?
And so he writes about matters like that. So in other words, the environment that they were living in was— it was terrible. In some ways we can identify, in other ways no, we’re not going to identify, but we can identify with this: we need hope just as much as they needed hope. And Peter says you don’t have to live without hope. Hope is found in 2 events so that when your hopes are crushed, you can hang on to a hope that is birthed in you through believing Jesus Christ, through embracing his resurrection.
You can live with hope because of what’s happened in the past and hanging on to that, but you can also live with hope by remembering what’s yet to happen in the future.
God is going to send Christ back, and Christ is going to take his children to be with him forever. So remembering what Jesus did and remembering what Jesus will do makes it possible for us to live with hope now.
I’m just wondering if that’s something that we consciously think about, that when life is the pits, do we look back and do we remember That God has a plan. And even when it’s Friday, even when, you know, things look bleak, when our hopes are dashed, our dreams are crushed, even when it seems like God’s plan is just falling apart, when it’s Friday, we don’t have to live on Friday. We live on Sunday. We live on the resurrection day, because what looked like the end, as we talked about this at Los Altos Christian Schools this week in the chapels, what looked like the end actually was just the beginning. And we can find hope in what looked like the end because it is the beginning.
It’s the beginning of new life. And if you’ve never connected with God, the beginning of new life for you is found in Jesus Christ, coming to believe in him as your personal Savior, receiving the salvation that’s found in him, not because you earn it, not because you deserve it, but because God wants you in his family. Talked about that on Good Friday, didn’t we? God sent Christ to die on the cross because we are that important to him, because he desires a relationship with us now and forever. And coming to embrace that relationship, when we do, Hope is birthed, hope is birthed in us.
But we’ve got this hope to look forward to so that when life has you down, you can look ahead to what the Lord is yet to do. This isn’t the end of it. This is not the end of the story. In fact, the best is yet to come. We haven’t seen anything yet.
This is a story that has a true happy ever after ending for real. Hope is found in the middle here by hanging on to what Christ has done for us in the past and by hanging on to what Christ will do for us in the future. On December 17th, 1927, the crew of the Navy submarine S-4 was trolling along underneath the waters at Cape Cod Bay, not too deep. At the same time, there was a Coast Guard cutter ship that was out on exercises as well. They came across the surface at the same time that this S-4 submarine came by, and they collided.
The submarine, with its crew of 40 people, sank all the way to the bottom, about 100 feet down. In less than 5 minutes, they sank to the bottom of the ocean floor. Rescue attempts obviously began at that point in time, but back in 1927, it was pretty primitive, the rescue attempts that they were able to make. But they did their best. The first diver went down.
When he got down there, they said that he heard some tapping, that he heard some tapping on the hull of the submarine coming from the inside. So it told them there was somebody alive. They realized that the person tapping was tapping out Morse code, and he inside was saying to this person on the outside, there are 6 of us that are alive. So they intensified their efforts to do what they could to try to rescue these 6 individuals, but unfortunately things went bleak. The air support Food supply went low, and just before the whole thing looked like it was going south, one of the guys, again on the inside, tapped in Morse code this haunting question: Is there any hope?
The captain of the rescue effort said, You send back this message: Yes, there’s hope. We are doing everything possible. Unfortunately, the rescue failed and all 6 men died. Their story did not have a happy ending, but ours does. And if we ask the question today, is there, is there hope?
The answer to the question is yes, there’s hope. There’s resounding hope. God’s rescue effort succeeded. It’s found in Jesus Christ. It’s found in his resurrection from the dead.
His resurrection makes our resurrection possible so that we can live with hope now and forever. And how do we live with hope now and forever? By remembering what Jesus did and by remembering what Jesus will do. That gives hope now. And it’s not even enough to remember that.
It’s by believing, by believing what Jesus did and by believing what Jesus will do. That gives hope right now. Let’s pray.
God, we are so thankful that as we could look at a section of Scripture like this, we, we are confronted with the possibility of living with hope. And for that, we are grateful. And we are hopeful too, because we want to be people when Hopes are dashed and dreams are crushed. We want to be people who, who have hope even in the midst of challenging, difficult, terrible, even terrible circumstances. And you’ve made it possible as we hang on to you, as we hang on to Christ, as we hang on to what he has done, as we hang on to through the hope that’s been birthed in us through him.
And you’ve made it possible as we anticipate what’s to come, that the conditions that we live in today are not forever. There is a better tomorrow. There is a better future, all because of what you’ve done for us through your Son, Jesus Christ. And so as Paul, as Peter, Peter— as Peter found hope in the resurrection, may every one of us do the same.
Can I just stop just for a minute, just give you a moment to reflect on what does that mean for you right now? What do you need to say to God about that?
Maybe you just need to say, Lord, I’ve been living in Friday.
And I need to get to Sunday. I need to get to the resurrection.
If that’s how God’s working in your heart, ask him to help you do that, to hang on to hope.
Maybe you’ve not yet had hope birthed in you. Because you’ve not yet come to receive and believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior. And if you haven’t, Jesus longs— you need to know he longs for you to be in his family. In fact, you’re one of the reasons he’s not come yet. He wants you to be in his family.
He doesn’t want anybody to perish, but all to come to repentance. Through his Son. And he invites you to come into his family, to be adopted into his family through faith, through belief, by reaching out in belief and receiving the gift that’s offered— a gift of salvation, a gift of life, a gift that will change your standing with God now and forever. And if that’s the gift that you want, ask him for it today, just in the quietness of your heart. Just ask him, Lord, I want to be one of your children.
I ask that you’d birth in me hope, living hope, sure hope, a hope that will begin to live in me and live with me forever. Forgive me of my sins.
I believe that you sent Christ to die on the cross for my sins, that you raised him from the dead, and through him there’s life. I ask that you give me that life in his name. And if there’s some other matter you need to talk to the Lord about today, maybe you are still trying to figure this thing out, then just Be honest with them. Lord, I don’t know if this is true, but if it is, make it clear to me. Help me make the response that’s right.
I don’t want to miss this. Whatever it is, God hears those prayers and longs for you to be connected to him in a way that transforms your hope. Father, may that be so now and forever. For we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Well, we’re going to have our orchestra come back up to play us out of here in just a moment. But before they do, Gabe, I think you’ve got a couple of announcements. And so thanks for being a part of our worship experience this morning.
