Listen up, little ones
Listen for the word hope.
Reading
1 Peter 1:3–13—A Future and a Hope
Optional Reading
Jer. 29:11-14
Keys for kids
- Our salvation causes us to praise God.
- Our salvation gives us a future.
- Our salvation gives us hope.
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 much about our salvation. But here, as is often true 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. Calvin calls it a hope fixed on the incorruptible kingdom of God. But the hope is not just for the future. Grudem comments that 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) but 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 contain various trials that cause distress and grief. The believer lives by faith in what will be in order 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 notes, 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 96a, 119t
Prayer
- Praise God for His wonderful salvation in Jesus that gives you a future and a hope
- Give thanks for something from last Lord’s Day’s sermons.
- Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.