Listen up, little ones
Listen for the word hope.
Reading
1 Peter 1:1-3—A Living Hope by Faith
Keys for kids
- Our salvation gives us real hope.
- Our hope is alive and growing.
- Our salvation is from God’s great mercy.
Questions
- What should salvation cause us to do?
- What is our hope in as believers?
- How can we endure tests and trials in this life?
Notes
(See Saturday for authors. )
Peter writes a lot about our salvation. But here, as often in the Bible, writing about our salvation causes Peter, and us, to bless (praise) God. The word is where we get our English word, eulogy. While we often think of that as something we say at someone’s funeral, it literally means a “good word.” When we bless God, we speak good words about Him. True salvation causes us to speak more about God and how good He is.
This salvation is described as being born again. Believers have been born again into a hope that is alive and growing, What Calvin calls a hope fixed on the incorruptible kingdom of God. But hope is not just for the future. As Grudem notes, these readers have been born anew… to obtain an inheritance in the eternal city of God away from which they now live as sojourners (v.1). Their hope lives here and now—where they live.
This here-and-now, living hope is important because here and now is sometimes hard. This here-and-now may well various trials that cause distress and grief. The believer lives by faith in what will be, to make sense of what is. The believer can endure, and even rejoice in, trials and tests because of the hope we have in Jesus coming back to take us to Himself! Until then, as Kistemaker reminds us, we are being shielded during our brief stay on this earth, for God does not permit Satan to harm us.
Swedish Method questions
Praise
Psalm 16d, 57b
Prayer
- Praise God for His wonderful salvation in Jesus.
- Pray for the hearing of God’s word preached this Sunday.
- Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.