To God's elect, strangers in the world, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance. Amen. (1 Peter 1:1-2)

1 Peter 1:3-9 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, ⁴ and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade-- kept in heaven for you, ⁵ who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶ In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. ⁷ These have come so that your faith-- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. ⁸ Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, ⁹ for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

You have promised us, O God, that you will never test us more than we are able to bear. So we turn to you in our weakness and ask for strength to resist and overcome the temptations so often placed in our paths by Satan and our own sinful flesh. Teach us through your holy Word to desire what is right in your eyes and cause us to live a life of daily repentance, looking to Jesus for pardon and strength; through your only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

If there’s one thing we don’t like in life, it’s inconvenience. We want our Big Mac, but don’t want to wait in line for more than a minute. We’re aware that an item is on sale at another store, but don’t want to spend the time going there to buy it. We prefer pizza to be delivered to our door, we’re learning to shop over the Internet, and we love living in an era where the customer is king. Perhaps that’s why, when some form of suffering inconveniences us, we grumble with resentment. What’s worse is that while we are inconveniently suffering, others seem to have convenient smooth sailing.

Think about the way we live and react. Sometimes it seems like things are going well, and at other times, things seem to be going badly. And we let those things dictate our feelings and our outlook on life. We allow ourselves to be tossed around by the waves of feelings instead of focusing on the facts of God’s great love for us. We need to focus our faith upon him who not only walked on water but had conquered the entire world early one Sunday morning.

When we focus on our feelings, when things are going well, we are happy and we think God is with us. If things are going badly, we become discouraged and think that God must have abandoned us. We allow ourselves to be tossed around by the waves of circumstances.

Peter, the author of this letter, was a man well acquainted with suffering. The people Peter wrote to were believers chased from their homes and challenged with the flames of persecution to jump the Christian ship. Peter didn’t, as most counselors do today, try to pump the people up with positive thinking. Instead, he gently helps them smile through the suffering by lifting up their chins to see beyond their circumstances to their celestial calling. He puts their pain in perspective by focusing on their position in Christ. Peter encourages us to replace your resentment with rejoicing. He gives Christians two reasons to rejoice. You have a permanent inheritance. And you have a developing faith.

Peter begins by helping his readers to rejoice. "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, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade-- kept in heaven for you." How was your permanent inheritance from God established? Like any other, of course. You were born into it. At your baptism you were born, a second time – this time spiritually – into God’s family to become his dear child and heir.

A troublesome son had run away from home. He refused all invitations his father sent him to come home and be forgiven. The son even went so far as to ridicule his elderly parents. He was ungrateful for all his father had given him. When his father died, he went home for the funeral with a heart as cold and stony as ever. But when the old man’s will was brought out to be read, the ungrateful son found that his father had remembered him along with the rest of the family, and left him an inheritance with the others who had not gone astray. This finally broke his heart in penitence. It was too much for him that his old father, during all those years in which he had been so wicked and rebellious, had never ceased to love him.

We often treat our heavenly Father the same way as this ungrateful son did. We are rebellious – we grumble about the setbacks and the discipline. We are ungrateful – we don’t fully appreciate all the love and mercy and gifts God has showered upon us. We are unloving – we don’t want the safety God provides for us, instead we want the pleasures of Satan and the world. But despite all that wickedness and rebelliousness in our hearts, still we know that there is a glorious, eternal inheritance waiting for us.

Peter tells us this is God’s guarantee! Peter saw the risen Lord sweep away the doubts of Thomas. Peter also heard that as blessed as Thomas and the rest were by Christ’s reassuring presence, those who would not see Jesus but would still believe in him would be likewise blessed. The inheritance of a room in God’s heavenly mansion is ours. We look forward to something we have not seen and which was promised to us by someone whom we have not met. The world calls this foolishness. We call it a miracle.

We are waiting to inherit eternal life in heaven. It will be filled with perfect pleasure and praise. There will be no suffering, no sadness, no sorrow. We have in our "living hope" the assurance that eternal life is a gift from God that shall not be taken from us. The Grim Reaper no longer can touch my joy or my life with his once-formidable scythe. His power is gone. His threats are empty. His master, Satan, can now be felled by "one little word." Though he cackled loudly that Friday afternoon thinking all souls were now his, the last laugh belongs to Christ and his people – not the vicious laughter of vengeance, but the pure laughter and joy of children saved from what seemed to be inevitable destruction. It is the joy of Christ’s redeemed.

Peter says until you claim this inheritance, you are "shielded by God’s power" in this life. "Shielded" is a military term that means that God is on guard keeping invaders out. Satan wants to get your soul, but the more powerful God and his mighty Word will keep him away.

Being "shielded" means that if God brought Jesus through the most painful trials and from the pit of death, certainly he can bring us through whatever we face. Our ultimate home is in heaven. And our place there is reserved under the constant, omnipotent surveillance of the almighty God. Nothing can destroy it, defile it, diminish it or displace it. Under heaven’s lock and key, we are protected by the most efficient security system available – the power of God. There is no way that we will be lost in the process of suffering, no matter how chronic or acute the pain may be. No disorder, no disease, not even death can steal away God’s protection from your life.

You have this "living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Jesus’ resurrection is God’s exclamation point to all his promises for the Christian. God is saying to us, "If I can raise my dead Son, I can do anything for you. Don’t give up on me."

Don’t allow yourself to be tossed around by the events and circumstances of life. Don’t let them destroy your hope or your faith. Instead, focus on your permanent inheritance in heaven. Your permanent inheritance will give you a better perspective on viewing your present sufferings. Don’t look so intently at your present that you can’t clearly see your future. Don’t focus so much on the houses, hospitals and funeral homes of this world that you can’t see the mansion of your future home.

Replace your resentment with rejoicing by looking to the future. But God isn’t just a God of the future; he is also a God of the present. Peter also says that you have a developing faith in this life, and that, too, will help you replace your resentment with rejoicing. The joy is for the future, but that joy is also for right now!

It shouldn’t surprise us that we are going to suffer in this world. If we are faithful to Christ in word and life, the world, that eternal enemy of Christ and the faithfully obedient servant of the devil, will be dissatisfied. And we are going to suffer for it’s dissatisfaction. We will be shunned, ridiculed and misunderstood. The devil is going to tempt us hard to fail, to falter, and to fold. And because we are sinners and we live in a sinful world we are going to feel the effects of sin – whether it is discord in the family or divorce or dementia or poor health or jealousy or gossip or nursing homes. Suffering, sadly, is a part of life.

Whenever we suffer, though, we like to whine and complain that life is so hard. It is treating us unfairly. I want you to understand, though, that whatever we may suffer, it is nothing compared to what Christ suffered. How dare we complain! Martin Luther points out in a sermon on suffering: "Why should you complain of your suffering or refuse to suffer what your sins really deserve? Indeed, you deserve much more than you receive – even eternal suffering. But God forgives you and remits the eternal punishment for the sake of Christ the Lord, desiring that you patiently endure the lesser suffering for the utter mortification of the sins inherent in your flesh and blood." (Second Sunday after Easter, 1 Peter 2:21-25, p. 259)

Peter reminds us: "for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith-- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire-- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." The world watches to see if Christians are truly different. It is in adversity that the difference ought to be most apparent. Realize that God is using present sufferings and adversity to prepare you for any difficult circumstance or dangerous events or devious temptations. He prepares you by giving you tests of faith.

No one likes tests. It can be a test to get your driver’s license or for swimming lessons or my favorite – 6 page confirmation tests that take two days to complete. We resent tests. But tests are good for two reasons. First, tests prove something. They might prove that we learned enough to pass, or that we can accomplish a task or, in the case of my confirmation tests which my students so dearly love, it can prove what is true and what the students already know. Secondly, tests improve something – us. The preparation beforehand, the perspiration during, the exhilaration afterwards all contribute to improving us so that we never have to take that test again. Now we are able to go on to bigger and better things in life.

That’s why God has Peter use the word "trial" here, which in the Greek means "test." God wants to prove that your faith is genuine – not for his sake, but for yours. And God wants to improve your faith to be able to handle bigger and better things in life. Peter says that these tests "refine." Like different settings on a furnace, God uses different trials to burn off the impurities, soften you, and temper you. He wants you to be strong and pure to meet his needs. The ultimate purpose of these fiery ordeals is that you may come out of them more purified than gold, shining in the likeness of the Lord Jesus himself. That brilliant likeness is what gives praise, glory and honor to God. It was true for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, for Job when he lost it all, and it is true for you living through any and all trials.

We all need this wake-up call for our faith – our number one priority needs always to be our relationship with our Savior, so that our reunion with him at his reappearing will be full of praise, not dread.

Lydia, our youngest daughter, doesn’t say much – she can’t even pronounce her sisters’ names – but, strangely enough, she can say the word "gerbil." Our gerbil died a few weeks ago, but she still finds empty toilet paper rolls or lettuce or gerbil food and wants to give to the gerbil. I try to explain to her that the gerbil is dead, it’s gone, it’s in "gerbil heaven." She doesn’t understand. There is no comfort in a dead gerbil. There really isn’t any "gerbil heaven." The only hope is to go buy another gerbil.

How different it is for us as Christians dealing with death, dying, or suffering of ourselves or our fellow Christians. We have a real hope – a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The other week I was in the hospital visiting two of our elderly members. Both ladies told me, "I’m tired; I’m old; and I want to go home – home to heaven." Those two ladies were demonstrating their developing faith. They had a living hope in Christ’s resurrection. They were looking forward to their permanent inheritance. They are a wonderful, living example to us of replacing resentment with rejoicing. Amen.

"You are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls." Amen.