1 Peter 1:3-5 Introduction
It is not unusual to find people who are suffering struggling with feeling hopeless. It is especially tempting when a person is suffering to develop a warped perspective on God.
To start feeling like because they are doing right and it is not working
God must be against them
like God doesn’t want their good
like their circumstances prove that God isn’t interested in them
Which is part of what makes the way Peter begins this letter so striking. These verses are shocking.
This was a man who knew suffering.
When Christ called him he left his home, his relatives and even his business. When he told people about Jesus he was mocked and ridiculed. When he ministered to people the needy in Christ’s name he was arrested, thrown in jail and sometimes physically beaten. He saw many of those he loved forced out of their homes and forced to flee to foreign countries because of their devotion to Christ. He even saw many of his closest friends die for following Christ. He himself ended up dying one of the most excruciating deaths imaginable, being crucified upside down.
And yet here as he begins this letter his attitude towards is completely different than most.
He’s not hopeless.
He’s triumphant.
He’s worshiping.
“Blessed be God”
That is an important line.
It states the theme.
When someone in the Scriptures bless God they are declaring that He (as someone has written) “in His infinite excellence is infinitely praiseworthy”
Peter is looking at God in the middle of his suffering and he’s saying that God’s character is worthy of praise.
And this is not perfunctory either that’s the thing.
Like hey I am a pastor so I have to start with a word of worship. Not monotone. Not some sort of abstraction.
No, the grammar of this passage...
It is one long sentence.
If you try to diagram it, it is pretty difficult because it is like Peter is adding statement upon statement, just piling them on, it is as if he is caught up in worship and he just can’t stop expressing different reasons why God is worthy of worship; he’s exploding in worship.
And I guess what I want us to think about is:
Why?
What is it that made his response in the middle of suffering so radically different than most?
Why is Peter blessing God?
What is that sustains him in the middle of suffering?
That is an important question.
How can I keep believing God is good and is doing good to me and is worthy of my worship when my life is so hard and so painful and so constantly difficult?
We are going to look at several reasons Peter gives us in these verses, actually.
One reason from the future.
One reason from the present.
And one reason from the past.
What I want to show you in the next few posts is that one of the reasons Peter is so full of worship in the middle of suffering is because his attitude towards the future is the exact opposite of many who are suffering.
What we are going to see in this passage is that it is Peter’s rock solid certainty about the future that produces white-hot worship in the present.
He is convinced that believers have reasons for an unshakeable confidence about their future good. And in verses 3-5 he helps us understand why we as believers can have an unshakeable confidence that God is committed to doing us good in the future no matter how bad things may seem in the present.