Praise, Glory, and Honor

Praise, Glory, and Honor
June 13, 2004 Sermon by DRW Passage 1 Peter 1.3-9

Many, if not all, of us have read or are aware of the Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. As you know, it presents forty days of readings, questioning, and studies to encourage us toward the habit of living out the five purposes God has for our life. The purposes are worship, evangelism, fellowship, discipleship, and ministry. There is now even a CHAT Bible study that covers, so far, the first seven days of the book. CHAT is an acronym standing for Check-up, Hear the Word, Act on it, Talk to others about it. All this is exciting and beneficial for the individual and the church. Today, what I would like to do is remind us of the why. Why did God present us with all things? Why did God give us His Son? Why did God give us His Word? Why did God . . . ? The questions are endless; the answer is always the same: He gives us all things for His praise, His glory, and His honor. Thus, the title for today’s message.

If you have your Bible, turn with me to 1 Peter 1. We will be looking at verses 3-9. We will be looking at three causes of joy in our lives. We will look at our inheritance, our Savior, and our challenges or trials.

Let’s pray:

Father, thank You so much for Your Word. Thank You for the opportunity given to each one of us to open this life changing book and seeing Your work in our lives. Today was ask as we open the Words that bring life, that our relationship with You would grow, our reason for living would be altered, that we would be changed people. Speak to each of us today for Your glory, honor, and praise. Amen.

1.  Rejoice in Our Inheritance

3    Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has cause us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

Our inheritance as we see from verse 3 is the most life changing experience anyone will encounter. It is our salvation. Through Jesus Christ we are born again, we become part of God’s family. If you haven’t experienced this wonderful relationship with Jesus Christ, and you would like to talk about it, see one of the church leaders or you can e-mail me if you would like to do that. My wife will have that information for you if you would like to talk with her after the service.

a.  Hope

Salvation brings to us a hope that is not known apart from God. The word hope doesn’t mean wishful thinking, that someday this might happen. In the Bible it means the assurance that it will come to pass. Such as the hope mentioned in Hebrews 11.1: faith is the assurance (proof if you would) of things hoped for, the conviction that things unseen will come to pass. This tells us that what we read in God’s Word, the Bible, will come to pass. All the promises of God are going to be fulfilled. We can see the marvelous examples of His Word being fulfilled throughout the Bible, from a coming Savior in Genesis 3 to the very day that Savior will enter Jerusalem in Daniel 9 to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The most telling evidence of the promises of God being fulfilled is in our own lives. I remember when I was in Junior High School. I was small and an easy target for gangs to take their troubles out on. I would go to school every day in the seventh grade only to go home with a little less money or a project that I had worked on so hard in shop classes taken away from me. All this happened to by the hand of the black gangs called the Crips and the Bloods. I was a white guy walking through the dividing line of both gangs. I had become a Christian in 1972 in Germany. I walked into a church on a Sunday evening, tired from a long walk, not even knowing it was a church because I had never been in one before. The pastor was giving the salvation message. I went forward to receive Christ as my Savior. The pastor there didn’t tell me to go home and read the Bible or to go to church. He just welcomed me into God’s family. Shortly after this, we moved to California when all this turmoil at school began. I dropped out of Junior High School. When it came time for High School, we had moved. I went to a safer school, graduated with high honors. The reason I bring this story up is what God did in that time. Remember, I still loved God, but didn’t know anything about Him. I didn’t pray regularly. But God was doing a work in my life that I would begin to see evidence of in High School but come to fully realize later in life. When I read Galatians 5.24-25, I can’t help but praise God for fulfilling His promises in my life. My family is from Iowa and North Carolina. Their beliefs about people who are not white are less than godly. When my family heard what was happening to me in school, they were angry at black people. When they hear my story, they are amazed that I have pastored Taiwanese churches all my life, over 22 years now. They marvel that my best friends are black, Filipino, Chinese, Taiwanese, Hispanic, and the list goes on. They wonder how it could be so when my Junior High years were so tumultuous. This is why I marvel at Galatians 5.24-25. You see, God promises that His Holy Spirit will work in our lives producing love, not bitterness, joy, not anger, peace, not turmoil, patience, not frustration, kindness, not vengeance, goodness, not hatred, and so the list goes on. God was doing what He promised in my life without me realizing it was happening. The hope that is within me, is that God will accomplish His work in me and through me. We all have this hope. God is at work in the world, we just need to see it.

Let’s read verse 4:

4      to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,

b.      Eternal Life

As we read through these verses, we see that inheritance, that salvation, provides us with something imperishable, pure, and eternal. This lets me know that my salvation is never going to be taken away from me. This fantastic gift, this inheritance, is mine because of the new birth that has caused me to become God’s child. This is my faith, my hope. If you want to read on your inheritance, read through Ephesians 1-3. You will marvel at all that God has done for us and will do through us.

Let’s read verse 5:

5      who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

c.  Protection

The third aspect of our inheritance is protection. We have a hope, we have eternal life, and we have protection during this life. It is God’s work to protect you and to bring you through this life.

Let’s look at the second cause for our rejoicing and that is our Savior.

2.  Rejoice in Our Savior

6      In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials,

7      so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;

8      and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,

9      obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.

I would like to read verse 8 at this point

8      and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,

When we come to a greater realization of what God has done for us in Christ, we cannot help but rejoice. Peter was talking to people who were close to Christ’s era but were not alive when Christ walked the earth. Peter did. They didn’t. I figure the argument he was hearing went like this: “It is easy for you to believe that God will help you through this life. You used to walk with Him and talk with Him. We never did. How can we have such faith?” His response: “You don’t need to see Him to love Him. You don’t need to see Him to believe in Him. You have the opportunity to experience what I had experience and it will produce great joy in your life. That opportunity comes through the work of the Holy Spirit in your life as He reveals Jesus Christ to you.”

For the sake of time, let us look at the third point for today:

3.  Rejoice in Our Challenges

To this point, I have been talking about good things: salvation, inheritance, hope, eternal life, Jesus. What about the hard things in this life. More and more, we are seeing that life is difficult and not always bringing us into circumstances in which it is easy to rejoice. In order for us to understand that joy doesn’t come in circumstances but in our Savior, even through trials, I would like to closely examine verses 6-9. Please walk with me through a dissection of verses 6-9.

6      In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials,

7      so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;

8      and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,

9      obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.

What does all this mean? Our lives are to bring glory to God by the way we live our lives, even in the dark times. We are to bring praise to God in our lives, as often as possible, despite the circumstances we find ourselves in because of His promises and His Son. We are to bring other people to praise God because of our lives too. We are to honor God in our daily decisions based upon the promises of His Word and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives.


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