The unseen yet hoped for Jes..

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to church. If you have your Bibles, and I know that you do, please open them up to first Peter. Peter chapter one. Once again, the Lord is extending his grace and we can come again and study this glorious letter that he has given us through the ministry of the apostle Peter this morning, we are going to continue in this section that is found in verses six through nine.

But this morning we're going to be reading actually from verse 1 to verse 12. I want us to get the immediate context of what Apostle Peter is saying and the information that he's providing to us in verse 10 through 12. And that will help us to understand what he is saying in verses 6 through 9. So please pay special attention to the transition of the thought of the Apostle as we read and get into verse 10. This is the Word of God.

I'm reading from the English Standard Version. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect, exiles of the dispersion in Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ, and for sprinkling with his blood. May grace and peace be multiplied to you. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable and defiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, that is tested by fire, might be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Verse 10. Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. Amen beloved. This is the word of God as I said. This morning we're going to continue focusing our attention in our study here in verse 6 through verse 9 and something that we have said already is that the apostle is addressing the topic of rejoicing in the midst of tribulations and those tribulations and sovereignly governed by God and His providence. And the purpose of those tribulations, of those trials, is the testing of the genuineness of the faith of those who profess to be in Jesus Christ.

Last time when we came together we said that The reason why God tests in His sovereign decree and in His ruling providence and power, the reason why He allows His saints to enter into tribulations and trials and difficulties, is because He wants to purify the Church. He wants to distinguish and separate the true gold, the genuine faith, from those who are not true gold or who do not have true faith. And among those who are true golems, who have real faith, He wants to purify them and to bring the work that He started to completion. The purpose for which we have been chosen is to be holy and blameless and to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. And the remnant of our flesh and the remnant of our sin has to be purified in this process of walking towards glory.

And the Lord uses trials and tribulations to accomplish that purpose in the midst of the church and with each one of his saints. But beloved, something that I've been trying to press, not only in your minds, but I hope that in your hearts, is the implicit teaching that the apostle has here in the first section of the chapter, moving into the second section of the chapter in verse six through nine. And something that I said that the way that I presented to you and if there is something that you will get from this passage as we have now had three different sermons and three different messages here in this passage is this. that the Apostle beloved is moving this first section that he has given us this gospel truth from verse 1 to verse 5 he has spoken about the election that we have according to the foreknowledge of God the Father that we have been begotten through the resurrection of Jesus Christ according to the great mercy of God the Father that we have been resurrected that we have been given life unto a living hope and that living hope contains an inheritance that is kept in heaven for us, and that the Lord is keeping us and protecting us by His power, through His faith. All of this truth, beloved, all of this truth corresponds to the foundation of the practical application that the Apostle is going to give us now here in verse 6.

He says, in this you rejoice. The rejoicement of the believers was found upon that truth that was communicated to them, beloved. Something that I said to you is that truth, gospel truth, is only connected with gospel experience and gospel life with a supernatural connection. And that supernatural connection happens in the power of the Holy Spirit. Because the truth of the living God that is contained in the gospel is only applied to a person who is dead in his trespasses only through the power of the Holy Spirit.

So when we receive the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the power of God unto salvation, we are not only receiving a message that abides in your head. It's a message that is meant to go, and it goes down into your heart, into your soul. It transforms you entirely. And therefore, the life that you live now in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a supernatural life. You do not live your life in the flesh, as in your former passions of disobedience, as Peter would say in chapter 1.

But rather, you are living now your life in the power of the Holy Spirit, and you live that life by faith. The apostle is assuming that, and we have to see it in the text and in how he progresses with his argument. Because these people are going through tribulations, these people are going through trials, yet he says to them that they rejoice. This cannot happen in the secular world. This cannot happen in the flesh.

It's only the Christian, the one that has the ability and the power to live in rejoicement, in gladness, in the midst of tribulations, and in the midst of persecution, and in the midst of difficulties, and in the midst of sorrow and distress. You cannot produce that, beloved. I cannot produce that. I cannot live with peace and rejoicement in the midst of difficulties. This is a fruit of the Spirit in each one of us.

That's why we depend, our life as Christians depends on our relationship with Christ through the Holy Spirit, beloved. This is foundational. That's why the apostle is saying, in this you rejoice. because the truth that is given to us defines completely the life that we live in the gospel. How are the saints, beloved, how are we as a church going to love God with all our might, all our strength, and all our soul?

How are we going to love our neighbor as we love ourselves if it's not through the power of the Holy Spirit? The loving God with all your might and loving your neighbor as yourself is Lerah. It's a commandment that has to be applied to our souls by the power of the Living God as it's contained in the Gospel through His Spirit so that we can love God with all of our might and we can love our brothers and sisters as we love ourselves. How are we going to have the peace that Philippians 4 speaks? The peace of God that surpasses all our understanding.

We cannot have that peace that takes our mind captive into obedience to Jesus Christ. that destroys anxiety, that takes us from anxiety to present everything in prayer before our Lord. We cannot do those things. So, the truth that is given to us as Christians depends entirely on the power of the Holy Spirit to apply those things through our lives into those things that we permanently, on a daily basis, do and live as Christians, beloved. Just think about the example that the Apostle Paul gives in Galatians, that he says that if someone among you is caught in a transgression or in sin, that those of you who claim to be spiritual, you are to come and to restore your brother and sister in love.

How are we going to do those things? If every time that something happens, what comes into our mind is judgment and things like this in our flesh, We only do those things in the power of the Holy Spirit. We have a remnant of sin in us, and in order to overcome that sin, we have to live a life of dependence with God Himself, in union with Christ, through the power of His Holy Spirit. So, as Paul says, we may walk according to the call that we have been called, this calling by which we have been called Beloved. Gospel truth is only connected with gospel life through the power, supernatural power of the Holy Spirit.

And why am I pressing all of these things, beloved? Why am I pressing this reality of truth connected with experience and life only through the power of the Holy Spirit? Because just as we cannot have a love for God as we should and love as our brothers and sisters and our neighbors as we should, just as it's difficult for us to have the peace of God that surpasses all of our understanding, or just as it's difficult for us to live in humility and to forgive our brothers and sisters and to restore them apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, The faith that Peter explains and speaks about here in this section of the first chapter is a supernatural faith, just as peace and love and joy are fruits of the Spirit, The faith that is tested is also a faith, beloved, that is supernatural. It's a faith that is not of us, that's not abiding in our minds. It's a faith that has been given by the Holy Spirit, beloved.

And this is crucial and this is important. Why? Because the apostle is saying that this faith, or that the genuineness of this faith, is tested. And that the genuineness of this faith is tested by various trials. And in various trials you can put whatever happens to you or to the saints.

The genuineness of the faith is tested by trials. And those trials, beloved, produce sorrow. and sorrow and distress is an emotional reality in the life of the Christian. We are not made of iron. We have emotions.

And when we are put through trials and difficulties, then these trials and difficulties produce Sorrow, and it's the type of sorrow that sometimes tells us that we cannot continue, that we don't want to continue, that we want to hide and go to a place and we don't want to know anything about the world, what's going on. It's that type of distress. And the Apostle Peter knows that, that tribulations and difficulties are a reality for the Christian or will be a reality for the Christian. He said that we are grieved by various trials. James will say in chapter one, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.

The doctrine or the teaching or the theology of suffering is very clear, beloved. In the New Testament, the same Lord Jesus Christ says that in Him, in Christ, we have peace. But in this world... we will have tribulations. And then when he's speaking to his disciples, he says, unless you take your cross and come after me, you cannot be my disciple.

Unless you take your cross and come after me, you cannot be my disciple. The apostle Paul will say in Acts that through many tribulations, we have to enter the kingdom of God. And the same apostle will say, that is being granted to you, not only to believe, but also to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ. He's being granted to us not only to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, but also to suffer for the name of Christ, beloved. This is a reality.

And as I have this text in front of me, I feel That I don't have the ability to convey all of the reality that is contained here just because by the providence of God, we live in a place where suffering seems to be away from our reality. But I don't want us that the providence and the grace and the mercy of God providentially given to us in the environment in which we live, take us and separate us from the teaching that the Bible and the Holy Spirit has given us about suffering. Because suffering will come, beloved. Because distress and sorrow will come at some point in our lives as Christians and as believers. And the Apostle knows that.

The Apostle Peter knows that. Then in chapter 4 he will say, do not be surprised. Chapter 4. when the fiery trials come to test you, as if something that is strange is happening to you, but rather rejoice because you're suffering for the name of Jesus Christ. He says, do not be surprised when the trials come.

So beloved, I've said to you, and in the first time that we came together, I said to you that the main substance of the main message of this letter of Peter was to offer encouragement and to support to the church. So the question that I want us to address briefly this morning is, how does the Apostle offer this support? How does the Apostle bring this comfort, this encouragement to the Church and to those who receive this letter? Not only to the churches in Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, but also to the Church of this age. How does the apostle in this section from verse 6 through verse 9 is going to offer us that encouragement?

Because if we understand this encouragement, then when trials come, we will know where we have to put our eyes. Now, the apostle, let me submit to you that the apostle will present different forms of encouragement throughout the letter, but I want to point you to two realities that are contained in verses 6 through 9 that serve as the foundation of the encouragement that the Apostle Peter offers to the Church and to those believers, to those who have faith in Christ and are going through tribulations and difficulties. The Apostle is going to present us two realities, beloved. He's going to present us two realities that are rooted in the definition of faith now. We rejoice in the midst of tribulations because tribulations or trials test the genuineness of our faith.

So the apostle is going to present us here two realities that are attached to the person of Jesus Christ, and not only attached to the person of Jesus Christ, but these two realities that you can distinguish between them, but they are very close together. They are rooted in the definition of what we know faith is. And because faith, beloved, because faith is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, faith is a fruit of the Holy Ghost, then we apprehend those realities as the source of our encouragement by the power of the Spirit in the faith that has been given to us. So before we get into the text, I want to bring you to the definition of faith that is contained in Hebrews 11 verse 1. We read it, I set the framework, and then I explain to you what Apostle is presenting to us in verse 6 through 9.

So go to Hebrews chapter 11 please. Hebrews chapter 11. Let's read the definition of what faith is. Because I'm going to submit to you that Here, in verses 6 through 9, we can see, we can perceive two realities that, as I said, are ingrained, are rooted, are fixed in the concept of faith. Now, Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1, it says, and I want you to see the two statements or the two clauses that the author of Hebrews gives us for the definition of faith.

He says, now, faith is the assurance of things hoped for. So the first clause that he gives us is that faith is the assurance of things hoped for. Then he says, the convictions, the conviction of things not seen. So faith is the certainty or the conviction of two things, things that we have not seen, or is the assurance, the certainty, the confidence of things that we hope for. This is the definition of faith.

And I'm going to submit to you that what the Apostle Peter does is that he is going to give us, or at least in this section, as I said, there are two realities that are ingrained in that definition. In this section of the chapter one of the first letter of Peter, we have something that is not seen And then we have something that we hope for. And I think, and I submit to you, that those two realities are the foundation for the encouragement in our faith when we are going through tribulations and difficulties. Go back to the text, and I'm going to present to you the first one. Go to verse 8 in the passage that we are studying.

Verse 8 in 1 Peter chapter 1, he says, Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Beloved, the apostle is saying that we have not seen Jesus Christ, but we love Him. That we have not seen Jesus Christ, but we believe in Him. That we have not seen Jesus Christ, but we rejoice with a type of joy that is inexpressible or unspeakable and is filled with glory.

And as we believe and love and we rejoice in the unseen Jesus Christ, we are obtaining the outcome of our faith. And the outcome of our faith is the salvation of your souls. But I want you to see the development of the thinking process of the Apostle. The unseen Jesus, or we believe and we love and we rejoice in the unseen Jesus Christ, And in loving, believing, and rejoicing in the unseen Jesus Christ, we are obtaining the outcome of our faith. And the outcome of our faith is the salvation of our souls.

Now, beloved, the salvation of our souls is a huge building that has been built. It is the truth. We live our lives as Christians, as believers, with the confidence and with the hope that we are saved by Jesus Christ. But the apostle is building a huge claim of truth, which is the salvation of our souls, which is the outcome of our faith in loving, believing, and rejoicing in an unseen Jesus Christ. How are we going to have conviction, beloved, that we are saved by faith if we love, believe, and trust, or rejoice in something that we have not seen?

This is completely contrary and opposite to human nature. Nobody will bet on something that they have not seen, that they have not perceived. But yet the Apostle says that we rejoice in the midst of tribulations by believing and loving and rejoicing in the unseen Jesus Christ. And by doing so, we are obtaining the outcome of our faith, which is the salvation of our souls. Now, beloved, We have to ask ourselves, where is the apostle deriving or providing the conviction or the assurance or the certainty for the believers that by loving, believing, and rejoicing in an unseen person, they are actually obtaining the outcome of their faith, which is the salvation of their souls?

What is the apostle going to do now in order to support, in order to offer strength to that claim? That all of this glorious salvation that is given to the soul of believers is founded upon a reality that we have not perceived. So then he continues in verse 10. He says, Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours Search and inquire carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicated when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. Now pay attention.

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look beloved. The Apostle knows that it is difficult for people to build these whole assumptions of life in things that we have not seen with our eyes. He knows that the Holy Spirit produces in us this faith that goes beyond our sight, that we do not walk by sight, but we walk by faith. He knows that. But what He's going to do now is that He's going to give us a more solid foundation than the fact that we have not seen Jesus Christ.

And that is that the salvation that people have received now is now founded upon the foundation of the prophetic Word that was given and promised before these people even existed. So, the Apostle is bringing into this conversation or into this section of the letter another witness or another support for that truth of the salvation of the believers. Actually, in chapter 5, the Apostle is going to do something similar. He's going to say, you have not seen him, but I have been a night... an eyewitness of the Lord, of the sufferings of the Lord.

And actually, in 2 Peter 1, the apostle will use the same analogy, saying that you have not seen him, but I am an eyewitness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he will speak of the prophetic word given to him as the foundation for the confidence of the believers. I want to show you that. So please go to 2 Peter. I want to show you what he does, what the apostle does in 2 Peter.

Go to 2 Peter 1. And I want you to see, beloved, how the apostle is going to speak to the church, and he is going to say, basically, Your understanding and your knowing of the power and of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is founded upon the prophetic word or the word of God that he was given to us. And we have seen him. You have not seen him, but we have seen him. But don't take comfort on the words of men, because the words of God are given only by inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

So go to chapter one in verse 16 and pay attention to what the apostle does here. He says, For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. But we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. Now he's going to, if you remember, he's going to tell us the story of the Mount of the Transfiguration of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here in verse 17, he says, For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was born to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.

We ourselves, that's those who were witnessing the appearing and the majesty of the Lord, we ourselves heard these very voices brought from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. Pay attention to what he's going to say now in verse 19. And we, that's those who heard him, those who saw the Lord Jesus Christ, we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed. Now he's going to give an exhortation to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Knowing this, first of all, that no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.

For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of men, but men, those who received the prophetic word from God, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." Beloved, the unseen Jesus Christ, the one that we have not seen with our physical eyes, we love. We believe and we rejoice in Him. And as we do this, we are obtaining the outcome or the end or the purpose of our faith, which is the salvation of our souls. Not because we have seen Him or not, but not because actually of the lack of the evidence that our eyes have of Him.

but it's because concerning this salvation the prophets prophesied in old and then the apostles received the revelation that this was the Christ that was coming to offer that salvation by faith so then our hope beloved is founded not upon the things that our physical senses perceive but rather is founded in a Word that has been given by God Himself. And this Word that has been given by God can only be applied to the heart of His people by the power and the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Beloved, this is huge. The Apostle is telling, or is saying, or is calling us to rejoice in the midst of our tribulations, in our knowing, in our loving, in our rejoicing in the Lord Jesus Christ, a person that we have not seen. Now, the early church, they have the expectation that the Lord was coming or they had heard from the mouth of the apostles that they had seen the Lord Jesus Christ.

They probably did not see him immediately, but the apostles and the disciples, they had seen the Lord Jesus Christ and they heard the testimony of him. but 2,000 years has passed and elapsed from that moment. And yet the reality that we have certainty in the person of Jesus Christ, not based on our possibility or not possibility of seeing Him or not, is always founded upon the prophetic word that was given to us. And this is a foundation to go through our tribulations and our trials. We have conviction of something that we have not seen.

And that something happens to be the Son of God, the beloved Son of God. We have conviction that as we love Him, as we believe in Him, as we rejoice in Him, we are obtaining the outcome of our faith, which is the salvation of our souls. Beloved, This unseen Jesus Christ, which is the substance of our faith, will be sin, because the apostle here contrasts the unseen Jesus Christ with the Christ that is going to be revealed. If you go to verse seven, he says that the tested genuineness of our faith might be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the one that we have not seen, the one that we have not touched, the one that we have not heard. That one, that person is going to be revealed.

And the Apostle says something majestic and very important, that the tested genuineness of our faith is to be found in praise and honor and glory at the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, this person that we have not seen. When he comes and we see him in the clouds, just as he was taken in the clouds and he returns in majesty and power in the clouds, and we see his glory, the tested genuineness of our faith, the faith that endures through tribulations and difficulties and goes until the end, that faith is going to be found for praise and honor and glory. The question that we have to ask ourselves is how our faith is going to be found for that honor and that praise and that glory. Why the faith, beloved, of each one of those who are in Jesus Christ will be found for the praise and honor and glory. I'm going to submit to you that the revelation or the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ brings a glory of God that is the glory of the believers.

When the glory of Jesus Christ comes and appears, that glory of Christ is glory that is given and is transferred to the believers. The purpose of our election, beloved, from eternity past, is to be conformed to the image of the Son. and the confirmation to the image of the son is in bringing us to glory. A glory that is derived from the glory of Christ himself. So the glory that Christ has in his coming and his appearing is the glory that the believers will have.

So the choosing and the election of the believers is for the praising and for the glory of God because in the glory of God we also found the glory of the believers. Let me point you to Ephesians and then I'm going to show you something in Romans to make it a little bit more clear. Go to Ephesians please. Go to Ephesians chapter 1. Ephesians chapter 1, beloved, please read from verse 11 to verse 14.

And I want you to see here with careful attention and with reverent hearts the purpose for which we have been chosen and elected. It says that in him that is in Jesus Christ, verse 11, we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will. so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. The choosing is with the purpose that we, the ones that have hope in Christ, may be for the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it.

to the praise of His glory. Beloved, the New Testament speaks of the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ or the glory and the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ as the moment in which Christians and those who have faith also receive faith also receive glory and praise and honor this is because of our eternal union with the son that is consummated in glory so the coming of the lord jesus christ it is the appearing of his glory that is judgment for those who are not in christ but it is glory for those who are in jesus christ that's why beloved The Apostle Paul will say to Titus that we are waiting for the blessed hope of the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. So he will say in Romans 5 that we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God because the glory of Christ in His appearing is also the glory and the praise of believers. Go to Romans 8.

Romans 8. Verse 18. He says, after the Apostle has explained to us and has spoken of our conditions as sons of God and heirs with Jesus Christ and that we are led by the Spirit, now he's going to speak to us about our current and our present sufferings. And in verse 18 he says, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. This glory that is coming is a glory that is going to be revealed to us.

Now verse 19, For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bandage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the fruits, the first fruits of the Spirit, groaning worldly as we wait eagerly for the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies.

For in this hope, we were saved. Now, hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Beloved, beloved, the Apostle Peter is presenting to us the reality of the unseen Jesus Christ. the unseen Jesus Christ that prophets prophesied of, and that the apostles witnessed and so, the unseen Jesus that scriptures speak of, that the unseen Jesus that the book that we have in our hands testifies of, this unseen Jesus we love, we believe, and we rejoice in Him, not because There's sufficient evidence for us to do so, but rather because the truth that is contained in this book that has been given through the prophets and through the apostles has been applied to our hearts by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Now, in loving and believing and rejoicing in this unseen Jesus Christ, we are obtaining the outcome of our faith, which is the salvation of our souls.

a present obtaining of the outcome of our faith, and our end of time obtaining of that outcome of the faith which is the salvation of our souls. And not only that, but we have the certainty, again, from the book that we have in our hands, that our faith, if it's genuine in Jesus Christ, is a faith that will be found to result in praise and honor and glory at the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. That means that independently of the trial or the tribulation that we have in the present, those who have genuine faith given by the power of the Spirit will endure until the end, and that faith When the Lord is revealed and He appears, it will be for glory and honor and praise. Why? Because, beloved, as we have said and Peter has said, God is protecting us and keeping us by His power through our faith unto a salvation that is to be revealed.

It is in the best of the interest of the triune God to preserve those who have genuine faith. So when He comes and His glory is revealed for judgment, then those who are found to be just are found with a righteousness that is not fictitious and it's not fake, but it's a real righteousness that has been given to them through faith in the person of Jesus Christ. So then they will receive the glory, the praise and honor that His beloved Son has, because Jesus Christ is the heir of all things. And in Him we have been chosen and elected for an eternal purpose. And when the eternal purpose brings or comes to a consummation, The blessings that belong to Christ as the second person of the Trinity are given in fullness to us.

And the glory of God is also given to us, not only naturally that our bodies are transformed, but in the sense that we are united eternally to Him. Now, beloved, Peter is using these two realities, one that is in the past of the unseen Jesus Christ, the conviction of the unseen Jesus Christ, and the assurance of the Christ that we hope for in faith to provide, beloved, encouragement to those who are going through tribulations and to trials. Now, this speaks a lot because the question that we need to ask ourselves is, what is the response to our hearts when we think of the unseen Jesus? What is the response of your heart when you think about the coming and the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ? Is your heart dull and cold and indifferent to the things that I am saying?

Is your heart cold and passive to the fact that we have an unseen Jesus Christ who gave his life for us and upon what he accomplished, We have certainty that we will accomplish or we will obtain the outcome of our faith, which is the salvation of our souls. Was your heart cold and dull when you think about the coming and the revelation of that Lord Jesus Christ? Because those who were going through tribulations and difficulties, they were eagerly awaiting for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as I said many times, there is a sense in which, beloved, your life, if you are in Christ, is defined by something that happened in the past, and the certainty of something that is coming in the future. And both instances should, en masse, have power in the present life.

Pay attention to what John says. Go to 1 John chapter 3 and we will finish there. 1 John chapter 3. The Apostle, beloved, is speaking of the power of the hope that we have as believers, the power of the hope that we have as believers in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says in verse two, Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared.

But we know that when he appears, that is Jesus Christ, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. the unseen Jesus will be seen. The hope that we have or the conviction and the certainty that we have in the unseen Jesus will become certainty when the Lord comes and he appears. But as we hope for that, the hope in that unseen Jesus Christ that is going to be revealed has a power to do something in us. And that's contained in verse three.

He says, and everyone who thus hopes, that is in seeing Jesus Christ face to face and being just like he is, and everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. You see beloved, The reason why the New Testament and not only the Apostle Peter speaks of the gospel and what happened at the cross and Jesus Christ and the coming future and the coming kingdom of Christ as truths that should define our present life is not because these are an abstract concept or truth that is just floating in the air. This has to penetrate our minds and go into our hearts and produce something in our lives. That's why I'm pressing with much effort or to the best of my ability that the truth that we have of Christ must produce a spiritual reality in our lives. Otherwise the truth that we have is going to be cold and empty and powerless and we are not going to be that which the Bible says that we can be and we should be in Jesus Christ.

The hope of Christ of what He did and what He is going to do in His coming is sufficient for the believer when he or she is going under trials and tribulations and difficulties. That it doesn't matter what we are going through. It doesn't matter the nature of the sorrow. It doesn't matter the nature of the distress. It doesn't matter the nature of the problems and the difficulties that we may have.

That there is a An eternal reality that is bigger and goes beyond the temporal things, that we are united to the Triune God of Heaven in the person of Jesus Christ. And because of that union, we have certainty that even if the tribulation that we are going through kills us, that we're going to be resurrected in power, that our lives are hidden in Jesus Christ. And because our lives are hidden in Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ is our life. And Jesus Christ being our life, we have certainty that nothing, beloved, nothing can separate us from Jesus Christ. There is no problem, no distraction, or no distress, or no tribulation.

There is nothing that can separate us from the person of Jesus Christ. And He's so good That He not only keeps us, but He offers in Himself the source of the peace and the joy and the peace of our hearts that we need to go through that tribulation, that trial, always looking unto Jesus Christ and having certainty that even if the trial or the tribulation endures until the end of our days, that there is a better hope that is reserved and kept in heaven for us. Amen?