Eternal Inheritance
11-17-24
We are in our second week of our study on the book of 1 Peter. Last week, we began our study by looking at verses 1 and 2 of chapter 1 of that book. In those verses, Peter gives us a brief introduction as to who was writing the letter and who he was writing it to. The Apostle Peter was the author and believers in a number of places in Asia Minor were the recipients.
Peter is writing this letter to believers who were facing persecution for their faith. One of the main truths that he's trying to communicate is that even in the midst of trials and tribulations, God is still worthy of worship and praise. Therefore, he follows his brief introduction with some praise to God for His wonderful salvation. Even though they were living in a hostile world, his readers had every reason to look past their temporal troubles and rejoice in their eternal inheritance.
We all have need of worship in our lives. Worship and praise of God is an integral part of our relationship with Him. If we are truly saved, we will truly want to and be engaged in regular worship of the Lord. God deserves all of the worship, honor and praise that we can possibly give to Him, simply because He is God. In the passage that we're going to look at this morning, Peter continues his worship and praise of God. Just like his original recipients, we also need encouragement to look past the temporal and rejoice in our eternal inheritance. Let's read 1 Peter 1:3-5.
Peter begins this section with a declaration of praise. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ." Normally, we think of blessing as something that comes from God and goes to us which is certainly true. There are many blessings from God that He provides for us and that we need to be thankful for and that we need to praise Him for. He has blessed us with forgiveness and salvation; He has blessed us with joy, peace and contentment; He has blessed us with guidance, protection and provision. That is just a partial list and doesn't even begin to exhaust all of the spiritual blessings God pours out on our lives.
But there is also a sense in which we bless God. Parents, for example, are blessed when their children are obedient and when they grow up to be the godly men and women they were raised to be. It is a real blessing for us that Daniel and Jess are here at church worshiping with us this morning. It's a real blessing when your spouse does something kind and loving with no other motivation than to be kind and loving. We are blessed when a friend or neighbor goes out of their way to serve or minister to us. There are many ways in life where we are blessed by others.
I think that is at least one of the ways that we bless God. He is blessed when we walk in obedience to Him. He is blessed when we love Him; He is blessed when we love others. He is blessed when we grow in Christlikeness and when we live the way that He wants us to live. He is blessed when we show grace and mercy to others through acts of kindness. He is blessed when we witness to others about the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we live our lives by seeking after God and seeking to do His will for our lives, He is blessed because that is what He intends for our lives.
With one exception, every time the gospels record that Jesus addressed God, He called Him Father or My Father. In calling God His Father, Jesus was claiming to share His nature. John 10:30; 14:9. Jesus affirmed that He and the Father possess the same divine nature; that He is fully God. The Father and the Son mutually share the same life. No one can claim to know God unless he knows Him as the one revealed in Jesus Christ.
The Lord Jesus Christ is basically His full redemptive name. All that the Bible reveals about the Savior appears in that title. Lord identifies Him as sovereign ruler. Jesus is the ruler of all that exists and was an integral part of the creation process. Jesus is His name as the incarnate Son. He is Immanuel who came to the earth in the flesh to live and die for our sins. Christ identifies Him as the anointed Messiah King. He is the one whom God anointed to be our eternal King who grants us our glorious inheritance. The Lord Jesus Christ deserves our worship and blessing because of who He is.
Peter then goes on to mention God's mercy. It is His great mercy that motivates God to give us eternal life. Eph. 2:4-5. Mercy is a characteristic of God's that focuses on the sinner's miserable, pitiful condition. God has compassion on those who are dead in their trespasses and sins. All people are in that wretched, helpless condition before they are saved. Apart from Jesus, everyone has a deceitful heart, everyone has a corrupt mind and everyone has wicked desires. Because of that, non-Christians are slaves to sin and are destined to spend eternity in hell forever separated from God. Therefore, we are in desperate need of God's mercy. It is through His mercy that He shows compassion to our lost condition and provides a remedy for it.
We could also describe mercy as God not granting us what we do deserve. Because of our sins, we deserve to die physically and spiritually and to spend eternity in hell forever separated from the Father. But because of the sacrifice of Jesus, believers are spared that punishment. In contrast to that is grace. Grace describes God giving us what we don't deserve. We don't deserve forgiveness, salvation and eternity in heaven. But God graciously provides those for us through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ.
As we regularly discuss and teach, what God does for us and through us is totally and completely apart from any merit or worthiness on our part. That's because there is no merit and there is no worthiness on our part. God grants His mercy to whomever He will out of His infinite compassion and free, abundant and limitless mercy. He chose to grant eternal life to us and it was not because of anything we could do or deserve. He deserves our praise because of His mercy.
Because of His mercy, God has caused us to be born again. Humanity's sinful nature needs changing. Of course, God knows where we're at spiritually and He knows exactly what we need to remedy that. It was only God who could do anything about our sins. Only God working through the Holy Spirit can transform the sinful human heart. In order for sinners to receive our eternal inheritance from God, we must experience His means of transformation. In other words, we need a new birth. Jesus explained the necessity of regeneration to Nicodemus, a prominent Jewish teacher. John 3:1-15.
Jesus referred here to the OT story of the bronze serpent. Back in Numbers, we're told of the time when the Israelites were getting impatient with wandering in the wilderness. They complained about it to Moses. In response, God sent fiery serpents among the people as judgment and many died after being bitten. Even though God sent the snakes as punishment, He also provided a remedy for their cure.
The remedy was the bronze serpent. God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole for everyone to see. When they people looked to the bronze serpent as the means He provided to deliver them, they received physical healing from the poisonous bites. The analogy is that if sinners would experience spiritual deliverance, they must recognize their condition and their sin. They can experience salvation by looking to the Son of God and trusting in Him as their Savior. We are spiritually regenerated only by faith in Jesus Christ. God deserves our praise for the work of regeneration He does in our lives.
Once we are truly regenerated, we are able to experience living hope. Hope is one of the main traits that separates followers of Jesus from the rest of the world. In fact, the unbelieving world knows only dying hope. They put their hope in government leaders; they put their hope in money and savings and retirement accounts; they put their hope in the expectation that life on this earth is somehow going to improve and get better over time; they put their hope in the advancements of science to make things better.
There is no hope in any of that. Our leaders, no matter who they are, are going to disappoint us and let us down because they are flawed, sinful people. There is no hope in finances because that could all disappear in the blink of an eye. There is nothing wrong with saving and investing and preparing for retirement, but don't put your hope for the future in filthy mammon. Society and cultures are not going to get any better, at least not until eternity begins with the new heaven and the new earth. There are plenty of really smart scientists who know a lot of interesting things, but they don't know anything and they don't do anything to actually give us hope in life.
Believers, on the other hand, have a living, undying hope that will someday come to a complete, final and glorious fulfillment. Our hope is in a leader who is perfect and sinless and knows exactly what we need and when and how we need it. Even if we have nothing here in this life on this planet, and there are plenty of people who have nothing of earthly value, we can still have hope because we have an eternal inheritance waiting for us in heaven, the perfect place.
What Peter explains is that the basis for the living hope that we have as believers is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. John 11:25-26. This is Jesus talking to Martha after her brother Lazarus died and before the Lord raised him back to life. He's trying to comfort her but He is also trying to give her a bigger picture of life. For us, we can always have hope in all things because Jesus is alive. Christ rose from the dead, forever securing the believer's living hope in heaven by finally conquering death. God deserves our praise because He is a God of life.
We have the hope of heaven because God has promised it to us and nothing and no one can or will change God's Word. Isa. 40:8. We also have that hope because nothing will ever happen to change or alter our eternal inheritance. Inheritance is wealth passed down; a legacy one receives as a member of a family. We are members of God's family and therefore He passes down to us all of His spiritual wealth and the legacy of a place in heaven.
Our children all hope that when we pass on that we will leave them some sort of financial inheritance. Daniel, don't hold your breath. Sometimes parents are able to do that for their kids. But even if there's no money, there are still legacies that we leave. Hopefully, that involves a good name. We leave an inheritance of faith and godliness; a good work ethic and lots of meaningful experiences and memories. Whatever we leave our children, it is not anything like what God leaves us.
Peter describes our eternal inheritance in three different ways in verse 4. First, he says it is imperishable. That refers to what is not corruptible, not liable to death, not subject to destruction. Our spiritual inheritance will never be subject to destruction of any sort. Then Peter goes on to say that it is undefiled. That means it is unstained or unpolluted. What we have through Jesus is flawless and perfect. Finally, the apostle says it will not fade away. Our inheritance will never lose its magnificence. None of the decaying elements of the world can afflict the kingdom of Heaven. None of the ravages of time or the evils of sin can touch the believer's inheritance because it is in a timeless, sinless, perfect realm.
Not only is our spiritual inheritance permanent, but Peter adds that it is also reserved in heaven. The moment we are saved, we have unchangeable reservations for our place in heaven that Jesus has gone to prepare for us. John 14:1-3.
Our reservations are secure because they are divinely guarded and protected by the power of God. Nothing and no one can do anything to forfeit those reservations or be severed from them. God's power is His sovereign, omnipotence that continuously protects His elect. All the details of this promise are to provide the believer with an undying hope of heaven. That hopes provides for us joy and endurance through any and all circumstances of life, whether we think they're good or bad.
Salvation means rescue or deliverance. As Peter uses that word, it denotes the full, final eternal life God has provided for us but that we are not yet fully experiencing. There are basically three aspects to God's salvation. When we first come to a saving faith in Christ, it is called justification. That's the point where we're delivered from the penalty of sin once and for all, forever. The present aspect of salvation is sanctification. The Holy Spirit is continually working in our lives to deliver us from the power of sin and to conform us to the image of Jesus. The future aspect of salvation is what is called glorification. That's when a believer dies and God completely and finally delivers him into his eternal inheritance in God's heavenly presence. The future aspect of our salvation is ready for us. That means it is complete and awaiting our arrival. God deserves our praise because of the hope He gives us for heaven.
Christians possess some of the benefits of salvation in this life. But the great fullness of redemption is yet to come. God has promised unfathomable glories in the eternal perfection of heaven. That will one day be the conscious experience of every believer. God is the source of our inheritance, we receive it because of His mercy and by the gracious means of the new birth. It remains perfect and eternally secure, a reality all believers can fix their hope on.
As our singer and musician come now, we invite you to always focus on the hope of heaven to get you through the difficulties of life. If there is some public profession or decision that you need to make this morning, come now as we stand and sing. Prayer.