Confirmation Sunday | +Steve Breedlove

Could you please pray with me? Heavenly Father, we ask you that you will indeed, as you have promised, open our hearts to receive the living word of God. I pray that my speech and my message will not be implausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that our faith may not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. In the name of Jesus, amen.

You have a Bible, please turn with me to that passage in First Peter, chapter one. If it's printed somewhere, you can grab that. If you want to use your phone, that's wonderful, as long as you silence that little thing.

I want to speak directly to those who are being confirmed, but what I say especially to them, I preach to all of us. Because this word of encouragement from the opening words of the letter of First Peter were written to Christians two thousand years ago and have stood the test of time again and again and again as the living word of God.

I have come back to this passage, come back to this book repeatedly over the course of forty years in pastoral ministry. It is a book that teaches and strengthens followers of Jesus for a journey of faith in a challenging and resistant world. And Peter's original purpose holds true. He writes to encourage us and to enable us to walk steadily with confidence, with clarity, in spite of suffering and pain and resistance.

It doesn't deny the reality of the suffering and pain, but it sees beyond it to the hope and the glory that is ours. And so the theme is suffering now will be replaced with glory in eternity. But here's the cool part: that glory bleeds back into the present day. So it becomes full circle. We're headed towards glory, but then that glory bleeds back in and transforms our experience of the pain we're in. So we don't have to deny that. Peter is not pretending, but he also is not being defined by that.

I would love to take five, six, seven weeks to walk through this letter. Someday I'm going to get to be a pastor again. So I love this letter, I love to teach it. I can only give you an appetizer, a simple framework. But what I want to share with you today—you might even want to take notes—is I'm going to give you five words on which you can hang a study of the book if you want to dig deeper later on.

It's just five simple words, five easy to remember words. And my method is simple. This was originally a very personal, direct letter to a group of people who are followers of Jesus Christ, who were sincere about living the life. And I'm going to read these first nine verses with that same tone, very personally to you, because they are living authoritative words. And I want to underscore something: everything I'm going to read is declarative reality. There are no "if" clauses in the text. They are declarations of what is. And if you soak in that and begin to let that absorb into your soul, even that will give you great strength and encouragement, because these are words that are true.

First Peter 1:1-2

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus and Galatia and Cappadocia and 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. — 1 Peter 1:1-2

Elect exiles according to God's foreknowledge. Let me ask you a question: If God knows something will happen, do you think it will? If God wills it, will it happen? What does it say God's will is? That you would be set apart and sanctified and set apart to be his children through the blood of Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. There are no "if" clauses. If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, that's what he's declared your life will be.

Now in that process, he also says you're in exile, a stranger, a peculiar people. But if you are an exile living in a country not your own, it does mean that you are also a citizen of another country with an identity and a rootedness there as well. And so you do not only live against the grain of the culture that you live in now—and that creates stress, points of difficulty and challenge as you seek to live as a member or citizenship of heaven—but it also means that you can live with the grain of who you are. And that may put you against the grain of the culture, but that's just the definition of the fact that you have a different identity.

So you can't have that blessed identity that we just declared—set apart by God to be sanctified as his children—and suddenly then, therefore, not find yourself living against the grain of a world that's not in keeping with that. But it is also an invitation to a beauty and a miracle of living with a grain as well. So this book teaches you how to live with a grain.

If you want to learn more about that, dig into John 15, the passage of what it means to abide with Christ and to live connected to Jesus Christ, to let the life of Christ flow into us. That's living with the grain. But if I jump ahead to verse 14, for instance, Peter goes on to say:

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you as holy, you also be holy in all your conduct since it is written, you shall be holy for I'm holy. — 1 Peter 1:14-16

He picks up on that theme that you are called to be the children of God. That's your identity. Your core identity is that you're a child of God, and because you're a child of God, you're to be like your father. Therefore you are to be holy because I'm holy. Therefore you shall be holy.

How'd you hear that, by the way? "You shall be holy." Is that like shaking a finger at you? "You shall be holy." What is it? It's a promise. You shall be holy. We read in the book of Colossians that Jesus's determined plan is to present us faultless and blameless before the Father at the end of time. Do you think Jesus is good for his word? Would Jesus do what he says he's gonna do?

So you are going to be holy at the end of time. It's all gonna be completed if you're a follower of Jesus Christ. John says it this way in his first letter, which I love this passage:

See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God and so we are. The reason why the world doesn't know us is that it didn't know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know when he appears, we shall be like him. What glory awaits, what change, what transformation, the fulfillment of your hopes, the freedoms that you long for will be complete because we shall see him as he is and everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. — 1 John 3:1-3

So we're headed toward true north and we're invited to live in keeping with where we're gonna end up. So that we increasingly are moving toward the dawn and the light's getting brighter and brighter. That identity is core. And even if you're an exile, that's a privilege and a blessing because you're a citizen of heaven.

As you go through the letter, picking it up, he says, as a result of who you are, you are to work as agents of the Father, prophets and proclaimers of mercy and the excellence of God, givers of blessing to people who reject you, bearers of hope in a hopeless world. This word "hope" is really something we're gonna spend some time here.

Living with the Grain: Hope, Faith, and Love

Because the kind of life—this born again life, this new life—well, you'll see in a minute. Verse three:

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's imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven by you. — 1 Peter 1:3-4

God the Father, in his determination to call us to himself, has caused us to be born again. That again is a declaration of reality. Right? If you call yourself a Christian, if you come to believe that Jesus is raised from the dead, if you put your trust in him as your Savior by whom you have forgiveness of your sins and relief of your burdens, you've experienced a new birth. A new birth is a fairly definitive marker. Let me explain to you. Either you're born or you're not. Right? How many of you have been born? How do you know? Can you prove it? Do you know you're born?

I'm going to sort this out a little bit more. How many of you have given birth? How do you know? Are you sure? Can you prove it? Yeah. Being born is a fairly definitive marker. You either are or you're not. If you've given birth, either you have or you haven't. If you are born again, you either are or you're not. And if you are, you are.

You've been given a spirit-filled life, a spirit-generated life. You have—you are actually alive to God and dead to sin. Are you living that way? Are you seeking to live that way? The Spirit of God is present. What does it mean to live with a grain of who you are? That's really what this book is telling us.

And there are three words that are given to us in this first paragraph. To live with a grain means we live in hope, we live in faith, we live in love. Verse three: born again to a living hope. That hope is clearly, if you look at the text, embodied in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. So the central and the lodestar of our hope is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So that what we know is that he's the firstfruits of a harvest of which we are a part. So that what we are looking forward to is not some eternal life in some ephemeral place that's kind of fuzzy and foggy and whatever.

No, we're looking forward to a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth and a resurrected body in which we can live as the people that we are created to be for all of eternity undefiled, free, fulfilled, free of all the pain and suffering that we may be experiencing now.

I met a woman this week, I'm gonna call her Melanie, that's not her name, but she wanted me to pray with her. She recently has developed a third incurable autoimmune disease. Now, you know what autoimmune diseases are—your body attacks itself. What is meant as a protection against disease and infection becomes your enemy; your body betrays you.

The first one that she was diagnosed with several years ago was rheumatoid arthritis and that's progressed. She had another one, I don't even remember the name of it, starts with an M, which has progressed. And then just recently she was diagnosed with something called Sjögren's Syndrome. I looked it up. Salivary glands and tear ducts stop working. And as a result of that, your mouth dries out, you have difficulty swallowing and speaking. She's losing about 10 pounds a month right now. Her mouth, because it's dry, the gums break and crack and are cut at all times. Eventually, it means loss of vision. The doctors told her that the progress of her disease in three months is equivalent to the normal progress that occurs over ten to fifteen years. They said, "We've never seen it advance this fast. There is no cure."

She told me her story and apparently her tear ducts are still working because her tears were pouring out of her eyes and her face was covered with depth of pain and sorrow and fear. Honestly guys, I just gotta tell you my heart was torn up. I won't get her off my mind for a while. But I prayed, as I asked the Lord to give me words to pray. And the Lord brought me almost visually to the tomb where the body of Jesus lay dying and decaying. And the power and the principle of the life of God began to reverse that process. And what was dying and rotting and decaying became alive and supple and youthful again. And it went in the opposite direction of the norms of human life.

Dear brothers and sisters, the resurrection of Jesus Christ tells us who we are to be. The reversal of the process of death and decay. And I pray for Melanie. I know where she's headed in eternity, but I pray for a measure of significant deliverance in this life too. Would you pray for Melanie?

People of Hope

We are people of hope. We are people of hope. It's like the air we breathe, it's the light that opens our eyes. If you do not have hope you are dead even if you're alive. But when you have hope you open your eyes, you open your heart, you look out, you believe that there's a reason to get out of bed.

And the hope that we have in Christ is packed with not only the resurrection of Jesus, the lodestar, but promise after promise after promise after promise. And all the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ.

Peter again later on says, live as people of hope, be ready to give an explanation for the hope. What's the hope? I have a smile. I'm not avoiding the news. I just know there's a better story. I know how this ends. I know who really is the Lord. I know that he's actually at work. And I know he is reversing the processes of death and decay because look at me. Look at the changes that have happened in me. People of hope.

People of Faith

Second, we are people of faith.

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while if necessary, you've been grieved by various trials. — 1 Peter 1:6

You got this hope but you got some trials going on, okay? Yeah, Peter was writing under Nero's breath. Two years from now, I'm writing this letter, he was gonna be crucified upside down. You don't think he knew what pain was? He knew he was going through a little trial.

But the tested genuineness of your faith more precious than gold that perishes though it's tested by fire may be found to result in praise and honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. — 1 Peter 1:7

We live in the assurance of the hope. That's what Hebrews 11 says faith is—the conviction of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Now that doesn't mean that we don't have evidence for our faith. We have the resurrection as the cornerstone of our faith.

Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, if the resurrection didn't happen, we're idiots. What are we doing here? But we are here—two thousand years of people who have stood their life on Jesus Christ and found him to be a solid rock. The church exists because Jesus is alive from the dead. And if Jesus weren't alive from the dead, I guarantee you there would be no church here. I guarantee you.

So we have reasons to believe. We have stories of transformation. We have stories of faithful saints. We have testimonies of people who can tell you how God has changed their life.

We have miracles many of us have experienced, probably most of us at some point in our life to be believed and held onto. We have the reality that there's got to be more than human existence. We don't just eat and drink and pass it on through, make babies. We talk about love. We talk about justice. We talk about truth. We talk about goodness. There are these invisible things that prove to us that there's more to life than we can see. There is longing inside of us that don't make any sense unless there is an answer for the longing. There are events in history that have ongoing reality—they're present tense—that changed the story. That's it. Once for all upon the cross and we enter into that every week as a present tense reality, and Jesus is alive. That's faith. The conviction and the assurance of the hope.

The hope gets us out of bed, faith gives us the muscles to move through the day. And it will be tested. My dear mother-in-law, who I love dearly, her name is Sunshine by the way, which is going to sound a little bit funny because she used to say, "Honey, life is just a veil of tears." Life is a veil of tears. By nature, life is a testing. But by faith, we walk through this life with hope.

I have been following Jesus for fifty-eight years. Became a Christian at age 13—do the math. I've had plenty of fears and doubts and battles and temptations and addictions and failures that God has carried me through. And I'm here to tell you that all will be well. All things will be well and all manner of things will be well. But do not bank your faith on me. Bank your faith on the risen Jesus because I may not be here tomorrow. I'll be with him.

Finally, the faith that we live—living hope, living by faith—what we find is as we hold on to the hope and we walk by faith, you know where we end up? In the lap of Jesus. Look at what it says in verses seven and eight:

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice. — 1 Peter 1:7-8

Because what happens is the hope of the resurrected Jesus Christ that we live out by faith takes us beyond hope and resurrection as a piece of information into a person. And that person is Jesus. And the end game of it, the end game of it is a living relationship with Jesus Christ. A growing relationship with Jesus Christ. A love relationship with Jesus Christ which becomes sweeter and sweeter as we go. And if that's not your experience, then seek it. Seek it, ask for it, make that your passion. Ask Christ to deepen your love for him. And what you'll find is a love relationship, a life centered in a love relationship with Jesus then turns back around into a love relationship with the family of God and gives you love for the people who don't know him. Because you exist by the compassion of God, by the love of God and you can't keep it to yourself.

Five words: exile, hope, faith, love. And then finally, you do not see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible. You add exile to hope, to faith, to love and the outcome is joy—a life of joy. Welcome to the party.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.