1 Peter 1:3-5 part 4

A third reason for confidence has to do with what is happening in us as we follow Christ.If you want to be confident, look backwards, forwards and inwards.v. 5Peter turns his eyes from the inheritance which of course is safe, it is in heaven to you, who might not feel quite as safe because you are here on earth and he assures you and he assures me, that not only is God keeping our inheritance, at this moment, He is presently protecting us as well.Text.“who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”Protected or guarded being a key term. The word is a military term that pictures soldiers standing guard. It’s in the present tense so you might translate it, continually being guarded.We might look back at our salvation and think that was great and look forward to our inheritance and think that is fantastic and then look at ourselves and think there is no hope.Which is why Peter reminds us that we as believers walk through life in this world with constant spiritual protection. We are continually being guarded.You might remember the Old Testament story where the King of Syria wanted to seize the prophet Elisha. Late at night, he sent horses and chariots and a great army to surround the city where Elisha lived and ordered the soldiers to capture Elisha and bring him back. When Elisha’s servant rose early in the morning and went out, behold, the Scripture says, he saw an entire army surrounded the city. You can imagine his shock. So he runs back to Elisha and he’s scared out of his wits and he says, ‘what shall we do?’ Elisha isn’t scared though. And it’s not because he is so tough, but instead because he sees something the servant doesn’t. He asks God to let the servant see what he sees. And so the Lord opens the eyes of the servant and what does he see? “Behold” the Scripture says again, “a much greater army of angels all around Elisha.”This passage in 1 Peter is one of those Lord open their eyes that they might see passages. Like that servant of Elisha when we behold all the spiritual dangers that exist in our world, we can easily become very frightened. But that’s when we need to come back to a text like this and rejoice in the fact that like Elisha, we as believers are protected.And man, I mean, notice who you are protected by. In contrast to those who contend we are protected through our own works, Peter shows us we are protected by the power of God. “Who by God’s power are being guarded . . . for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”I hope you are beginning to get a feel for just how much Peter wants to help those of you who are truly born again to be assured that your future salvation is certain.How committed is God to your future good?The one who caused you to be born again and the one who is keeping your inheritance is so interested in your salvation that He is continually protecting you so that you might enjoy that inheritance and experience that salvation. Let me show you how he does that.Back to the text.Peter does not merely say we are protected by the power of God for a salvation ready to be revealed, instead he says that we are protected by the power of God for a salvation ready to be revealed through faith. This is explaining how God’s power protects us. God’s power protects those who are born again by sustaining their faith even in the middle of suffering.That’s the point.It doesn’t protect us for our future salvation by keeping us from trials. God’s power doesn’t protect us by placing us into a perfect little bubble and not allowing us to interact with anything that might tempt us. But God’s power is at work behind the scenes, sustaining our faith in the midst of all that, God’s power protects us by keeping us in the faith.That’s the emphasis here.If as someone has written, “his power plays no role in our faith, than it seems that his power accomplishes nothing in our making it to the end – since it is precisely unbelief and failure to hope in God that causes us to fall away from God. How is God protecting us to the end if his guarding plays no role in our continuing faith. God’s power protects us because his power is the means by which our faith is sustained.”Picture it like this.You walk into a room and you see a fire burning by the wall. Someone is standing by the fire and he’s trying to quench the fire by throwing buckets of water on it, yet no matter how much water he throws on it, the fire keeps getting hotter and hotter. And you are like, what is happening. So you walk around to the back side of the wall and there’s a man there with containers of lighter fluid all around him and secretly this man is continually pouring lighter fluid into the fire.That’s how God’s power protects us.It is continually protecting us by pouring lighter fluid onto the fire of our faith, guarding us from the one thing that would cause us to lose our inheritance, unbelief, turning away from Him. And that, is a reason to be confident. And even more, it is a reason to worship.What God did when He saved us causes us to worship. What God is going to do when He saves us causes us to worship. And what God is doing as He saves us causes us to worship.Even when life gets difficult.I know that sometimes in the middle of suffering, we feel like God has forgotten us. We feel like He must not be very concerned about our good. But as we look back, as we look forward, and as we look inward, we discover that we as believers have every reason for being certain that God is actively seeking our good. No matter what our present pain. He caused us to be born again. He has given us a glorious inheritance and He’s keeping it. And He is protecting us by giving and sustaining our faith so that we might one day enjoy it.