This New Life New Birth Lesson 1 1 Peter 1:3-9 042818 Introduction 1

This New Life New Birth Lesson 1 1 Peter 1:3-9 042818

Introduction 1 Last Sunday, on Easter, we looked at how the resurrection of Jesus Christ changed Peter’s life. Today we are beginning a new teaching series entitled, “This New Life” which is aimed at discovering how the resurrection of Jesus changes our lives. 2 The Bible sums up that that change with the word “new.” Paul tells us in Romans 6 that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. Romans 6:4 3 But this “new life” is not simply a moral reformation, turning over a new leaf or becoming religious … but rather a whole new paradigm for living … an entirely new way of living your life. 4 And who would be more qualified to explain it to us than Peter … and he does so in his first letter which will be the focus of study for the next six weeks. We won’t be going through every verse in the book but rather looking the portions that describe the nature of this new life we have through Christ’s resurrection. 5 So, over the next few weeks we will see that new life begins with a new birth and that new birth produces a new identity, new ethic, new hope, new freedom and a new calling. Our prayer with the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3 is that we may know Christ in the power of His resurrection (Phil 3:10). 6 Not long after Peter’s encounter with the resurrected Jesus on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, he became one of the prominent leaders in the early church and subsequently was arrested and put in jail for proclaiming the gospel along with the other Apostles. But Acts 4 says … during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. 20 “Go … and tell the people the full message of this new life.” Acts 5:19-20 7 So today we are going to look at four things about this new life. 1 New life comes to us through a birth 2 New life is made available to us through the resurrection 3 New life changes us by changing our hope 4 New life grows in us through trials

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3 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. 1 Peter 1:3-9

1 New life comes to us through a birth 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 … 1 Peter 1:3 1 One of the things that we often have to be reminded of is the incredible amount of transformation that takes place inwardly when we first believe in Christ. a Peter says it is so radical it is like a new birth or being born a second time. But not born from life to life, rather born from death to life. • See when you are physically born you born from life to life. You go from living inside the womb to living outside the womb. • On the other hand, spiritual birth involves a moving not from one place of life to another place of life but from a place of death to a place of life … from spiritual death to spiritual life. b Prior to that moment, and although very much physically alive, you and I were spiritually dead or dead to God because of sin. Ephesians 2:1 says… … you were dead in your transgressions and sins. Ephesians 2:1 c And therefore we needed another birth to be made spiritually alive to God. We needed a second birth or what Peter calls a new birth. Jesus said it like this in John 3 … You must be born again. John 3:7b

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3 Now when some people hear that they think of a particular kind or type or version of Christianity. a You know you have your Catholic Christianity, your Protestant Christianity and your born-again Christianity. b Some people believe that “born again” refers to a type of Christianity for people who have had all kinds of trouble in their lives and need some kind of deep emotional experience. c But Peter is saying being born again is not a type of Christianity. Being born again or the new birth is Christianity. 4 Without the new birth there is no Christian in the Biblical sense. You may have a cultural Christian but you do not have an authentic Christian in the Biblical sense of the word without the new birth. a This is why, in John chapter three, Jesus says to the very moral and religious man, Nicodemus … I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. You must be born again. John 3:3,7b b In other words, you can’t enter the kingdom of God unless you experience a second birth. 5 And again, this second birth, is more transformative than we could ever imagine. a The new birth is not fundamentally an outward behavioral change but rather an inward heart transformation that takes place the second we genuinely believe the gospel. • Religion is outward conformity to a set of moral rules • True Christianity is an inward transformation that completely changes the way that we live. b And this inward transformation becomes the source of power for outward change. c And to be quite frank everyone in the room has a significant amount of unbelief when it comes to truly realizing the inward transforming power of the new birth. • I think one day, when our redemption is complete, we will look back in amazement and almost shake our heads and say I just didn’t see how transformative the new birth was. • And I think the reason that we struggle with this is that we are much more aware of our outward fallenness than we are our inward new identity given to us through the new birth. This New Life / New Birth / Lesson 1 / 1 Peter 1.3-9 3

6 And just in case you think I am overstating this observation, consider how Paul describes the transformation of the new birth in Titus. 4 But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth … Titus 3:4-5a a The word rebirth there is from the Greek word palin-genesia. It is where we get the word regeneration which is the way most versions of the Bible translate it. Paul says that when we are born again, we experience a regeneration. b The same word is used in Matthew 19:28 where Jesus says that when He returns and sits on the throne He will make everything new in one massive palingenesia/regeneration of all creation. • He will make all things new. He will bring us back to the Garden of God. • All the effects of sin’s devastation will be removed. No more pain, suffering, disease or death, only perfection. c Now I want you to think of the amount of power that it will take to bring about that regeneration (palengenesia) to perfection. The same word is used to describe the new birth in Titus 3:5. d What Paul is saying is that through the new birth you have experienced a foretaste of the same power that will one day make all of creation new. • That is the power of the new birth. You could raise ten thousand people from the dead and it would come close the matching the power released when a single soul is regenerated or born again and experiences new life. • It is the power to produce a whole new life with a whole new way of living. And we have barely scratched the surface. 7 In many ways, when you become a Christian, you become a new you. You have a new identity. Your personality is not changed, your behavior is not immediately changed, but your identity is fundamentally transformed. And that identity change over time produces behavioral change or Christlikeness. a Allow me to illustrate with a familiar story from the life of Saint Augustine. • Before Augustine came to Christ, he was a very immoral, corrupt depraved kind of guy. He lived a life of debauchery.

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• Then he became a believer in Jesus and one day was walking down the street and one of his old lovers came up and threw her arms around his neck. He politely refused her. • She was so shocked by his reaction that she thought maybe he doesn’t recognize me. So she said something like, “Augustine baby, it’s me!” Augustine said, “Yes I know, but it is not me.” In other words, “I’m somebody else now, the same personality but not the same person.” • That’s the power the new life that comes through the new birth. b Do you know who you would be without the new birth. You wouldn’t be who you are now. • You would be living on a completely different paradigm. When you believed your whole inner template for life changed. • And the whole Christian life is basically the outside catching up to the inside … and we all struggle with that process … but eventually it will when Christ presents us to himself without spot or wrinkle. c So new life comes through new birth and the new birth is essential to genuine Christianity.

2 New life is made available to us through the resurrection 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 (how?) through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead … 1 Peter 1:3 1 Peter says new life through new birth is made available to us through the resurrection of Jesus. We are born again through the resurrection of Jesus. a What first struck me about this was the absence of the mention of the death of Jesus. b Throughout the New Testament our salvation or redemption or reconciliation to God is usually attributed to the atoning death of Jesus on the cross. We were saved through his death. We were redeemed by his blood. We were reconciled through his cross. 2 But when it comes to the new birth it is the resurrection that is highlighted. We are born again through the resurrection of Christ. There is a direct link between the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and our new birth and new life. a In the resurrection, dead Jesus was made alive and that resurrection life is what makes us spiritually alive to God. This New Life / New Birth / Lesson 1 / 1 Peter 1.3-9 5

b The new birth is something that happens in us when the Holy Spirit takes our spiritually dead hearts and unites us to Jesus in such a way that the life of his resurrected humanity becomes our life. Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. Romans 6:4b 3 For our sins to be forgiven Jesus must first die. For us to be made alive Jesus must first be made alive. His death is the source of our forgiveness. His resurrected life is the source of our new life. 4 In the new birth God actually imparts the very life of the resurrected Jesus into our very being to awaken us from spiritual death to spiritual life. The Holy Spirit infuses our soul with the life of the resurrected Jesus Christ. 5 And since it is the life of Christ it is eternal life. One day you will get a new body but you will never get new life … you already have it! You already have eternal life. We don’t see the fulness of it but we have it through the new birth.

1 New life comes to us through a birth 2 New life is made available to us through the resurrection 3 New life changes us by changing our hope 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 … 1 Peter 1:3-4 1 Probably the greatest deep-seated need in human beings is hope. a As difficult as it would be, you could live stranded on an island all by yourself without love, but you could never survive there without hope. b Both psychologists and neuroscientists agree, without hope we cannot function in our humanity. Proverbs 13 says it like this: Hope deferred makes the heart sick … Proverbs 13:12a c Because hope is so essential, we unconsciously seek after it like moths seek after light. We don’t even think about it. It’s like breathing. We are all inescapably hope dependent creatures. 2 Since it is so important, we need to define it: Hope is essentially a desire or expectation for a certain outcome. And our hopes determine the whole course of our life. They explain why we doing everything that we do. Allow me to explain. a We all desire meaning in life, we desire purpose and significance. We desire security. We desire love. We desire fulfillment.

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b The question then is what will we look to in order to satisfy our desires. And whatever it is that we look to in order to fulfill our heart desires becomes our hope. That’s what we’re looking to. • Some people look to relationships, love and romance. Their hope is in finding the right person to share life with, to have security, to be loved, to be needed. • Others set their hopes on success in their career, wealth, accomplishment or social status. Their hope is to arrive at a goal to achieve significance. • Others look to their family or their children. Their hope is in their children’s happiness and future wellbeing. It’s what gives meaning to their life. And so they make incredible sacrifices to realize that hope. • Others look to more humanitarian things like fighting poverty or finding a vaccine. They hope for a better world and therefore labor to make the world a better place to live. And doing so meets their need for significance and purpose. 3 Whatever it is it’s what they set their heart on … it is their hope. The problem of course is that all of those things we hope for cannot ultimately satisfy because they are only temporary. a See all human hopes are only temporarily fulfilling. From the beginning they are destined to fade. b They are all in a sense a perishing hope, a dying hope. • Like the guy who climbs the corporate ladder driven by his desire for significance. He gets to the top rung and after a while realize it didn’t meet his need for significance. • His hope was dead before he got to the top rung because all human hopes are essentially a dying hope. 4 But when you experience the new birth Jesus Christ becomes your living hope. In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope. a The meaning, purpose, fulfillment, love, security, significance we are looking for is found in Christ. He is our treasure chest. He is our inheritance that never perishes, spoils or fades away. b Our hope is a person. Jesus is our hope and that hope will be fully realized in heaven. • The love you have always looked for in relationships will be fully realized in the face of Jesus for, as John says, we shall see him as He is. Now we see in part, then in full. This New Life / New Birth / Lesson 1 / 1 Peter 1.3-9 7

• The approval that you have always wanted from your parents or peers will be fully realized in the embrace of the Lord. • The significance you sought from your family or career or accomplishments will be fully realized in your Father’s well done good and faithful servant. Enter into my joy. c But we don’t have to wait for heaven. Right now, in the new birth, we have a foretaste of what is to come, a living hope. And that foretaste of that heavenly living hope is more powerful than any earthly human hope. 5 See, the new birth is a fundamental change in what your ultimate hope is in and that changes everything because what your hope is set on determines the course of your life. 6 It doesn’t happen overnight but as you see Jesus glory and grace more and more …as you see the beauty of the His gospel, you begin to transfer your hope from perishable things to an imperishable Savior.

1 New life comes to us through a birth 2 New life is made available to us through the resurrection 3 New life changes us by changing our hope 4 New life grows in us through trials In this (living hope) 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. 1 Here again we see a totally different paradigm/model/concept for living. We see how different living in the kingdom of God is from living in the kingdom of this world. a Notice Peter says that even though you are suffering grief in all kinds of trials you are rejoicing at the same time. In this (living hope) you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. b It doesn’t say you were rejoicing but now your suffering. Nor does it say since your rejoicing you must not be suffering. No, it says you’re rejoicing and suffering at the same time. 2 And the reason you are rejoicing while suffering is because your ultimate hope is no longer found in earthly things.

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a You don’t have a dying hope; you have a living hope. You have Christ, the hope of glory or a glorious future. Glory is coming. b Now for a little while you may be suffering … but glory is coming. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. Romans 8:18 3 And when you know that it stabilizes you. On the other hand, if you put your ultimate hope in things that perish and fade away, if you put your hope in anything more than God, suffering will inevitably ruin you. a If you put all your hope on your career and you lose your career you’re done. b If you put all your hope on your children and their lives don’t unfold as planned it wrecks you. c If put all your hope in a relationship and it doesn’t work out it devastates you. 4 If you put your ultimate hope in anything but Christ, if you build your life on anything but Christ, suffering will just devastate your life. But if you put your hope in Christ, if you build your life on Christ, then suffering will just push you deeper into your real hope and joy. a Peter says it’s like gold ore being refined into pure gold. • When gold is mined it is not found in its pure form. Usually it is found in ore or hardened rock that contains common minerals like iron and quartz. • So the ore must be broken up to separate the gold. But even then the gold is not pure so has to be heated up to remove traces of zinc, lead, and copper which is called dross. • This heating up process is repeated over and over until all the dross … all the impurities are removed and nothing but pure gold remains. b Peter says that’s what trials do. The fire doesn’t destroy you, it only reveals the dross of fading hopes and compels you to find your ultimate hope in the Living Hope himself, Christ. c Instead of the trial wrecking you, it refines you and enables you to go through the trial and come out the other side. 5 As the band comes up let me illustrate this with an old story I read recently about a lumberjack who was cutting down trees in a forest.

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a He came to the first one and noticed at the top a mother bird making a nest for her soon to be born chicks. So before chopping the tree down he took the side of his axe and started beating on the tree to rattle the mother bird so that she would build her nest somewhere else. b She fled over to another tree and so he did the same thing to that tree. If the bird was human, she would have said, why are you doing this to me? Why are you causing me this trial? Finally, the mother bird flew to a high rock and began to make her nest there and the lumberjack left her alone. 6 The moral of the story is that sometimes God rattles the tree were putting our ultimate hope in. a He rattles the tree we’re putting our hope in because every tree is coming down one day and only the rock will stand. Every source of earthly hope will fade away, only the Living Hope will last. b And therefore the trial of moving from tree to tree is only to get us to the rock, to get us to the place where our life is built on the Rock, where our hope is set on the Rock of our Salvation, Jesus Christ. c The tendency of every person is to build your nest in the trees instead of upon the Rock … especially when you’re young. • If I just get into this school, get this job, marry this person, have this house, live in this city, have this person’s approval, attain this level of success and freedom. This list goes on. • They are all trees that will be cut down or die. Don’t build your life on them. Don’t put your hope in them. Build your life on the rock, the living hope. Every other hope perishes. The living hope, Jesus Christ, does not. • Let’s celebrate that in the Lord’s Table. (Christ the Solid Rock)

How do you know you have new life? 1 Now how do you know if you truly have new life through the new birth? a To that someone might answer well you start seeing some outward change in your life. b That may be true but it is not the ultimate criteria. I have known people who said they prayed a prayer to be saved and it seemed like they experienced some moral change.

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c But later on they actually got born again and realized that their original perceived change was only an outward conforming rather than an inward transformation. It was their own self-improvement program with Jesus tacked on to it … and that they were never really born again. 2 So how do we really know? New life centers around Jesus Christ … His person, death, resurrection, second coming and all his glories. a So, when you receive new life through new birth, Jesus increasingly and joyfully becomes the center of your life. He is not an addition. He becomes the center and the whole process of that produces joy. b Peter says it like this …. 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.

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