Sermon | “Spiritual Injuries and Our Hope on God’s Promises”

This sermon was preached in Spanish on September 4, 2016.

Introduction

1. The unique vision of Ambassadors of Christ Ministries: Spiritual Health.
   • What is spiritual health?
   • Why do we need to be spiritually healthy?
2. Definition of Spiritual Injuries
   • A spiritual injury is a contradiction between what I believe to be true and what actually is true.
3. How are we healed from our spiritual injuries?
   • We must identify the lies we believe and replace them with the truth.
   • We must recognize the blind spots that these injuries have created and work to minimize the way they affect our daily lives and faith journey.
4. What many people in the world, and even many people in the church, do not understand is that our spiritual injuries cloud our ability to see what God has promised in his word.
5. The longer we live with our spiritual injuries the more difficult it becomes to grow in maturity and get to a state of spiritual health.
   • So, what do we do? We must, in spite of our spiritual injuries, remember that regardless of what injuries we have suffered, God’s promises do not fade or go away.
6. Allow me to share with you what Peter is saying to us here in these opening verses. I will summarize it and then we will look at it more in depth. Peter is calling his readers to remember that
   • We must continue to grow in our understanding and confidence that, as children of God, nothing can jeopardize our standing with God.
7. How can we have confidence in this truth? We can by knowing
   • … that our spiritual injuries do not negate the promises God has made to us , as his children, regarding the security of their salvation.

We find three promises we can trust God to fulfill in our lives.

Transition Sentence: Our hope is grounded in God’s promise of grace to every sinner that turns to him.

First Promise: God’s grace redeems us to a living hope because of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead.

³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,

1. Our salvation is sure because Jesus conquered death.
   • he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, (1 Pe 1:3)
2. Our salvation is joyful because Jesus, who is our hope, is alive and seated at the right-hand of God.
   • he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, (1 Pe 1:3)
3. Our salvation is permanent because Jesus gave it to God to protect.
   • kept in heaven for you (1 Pe 1:4)

Implication:

1. What this means for us is that God’s grace is far more than we can possibly comprehend!
2. It does more than keep us from hell, it prepares us to enter heaven.
3. We should live our lives with a hope-filled expectation that what God did with Jesus he will do for us.
4. Therefore, there is no spiritual injury, no matter how terrible that can keep us from experiencing God’s grace.

Transition Sentence: The first promise tells us what God did. The second promise tells us what God is doing, right now.

Second Promise: God’s power sustains us through faith so that we can enjoy the salvation that he is keeping for us.

⁵ who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

1. Our faith must be rooted in the unchanging character of God.
   • If we do not know God we cannot trust him.
   • If we do not trust God we cannot love him.
   • If we do not love God we cannot have hope.
2. Our faith must be anchored in the unchanging truth of God’s word
   • God’s word is the only source of truth that can transform us.
   • God’s truth is the medicine that we need to heal from our spiritual injuries.

Implication:

1. The further we are from God’s word and less we trust God’s word the harder it will be for us to feel God’s sustaining power. Not because it is not available, but because we are looking to be sustained by something other than God himself.

Transition Sentence: The first promise tells us what God did in Jesus’s sacrifice.
The second promise tells us what God is doing in our lives right now.
The third promise points to what God is will do to help us persevere in our faith.

Third Promise: God’s providence works in our lives to help us see that, in spite of the trials we face, there is nothing that can annul the gift of our salvation.

⁶ In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, ⁷ so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

1. “The revelation of Jesus Christ” on the earth is what should help us see our suffering in its proper context.
2. Our suffering is not something God sends. God sends his son into our suffering so that we can know that God does not want suffering for us
   • But, God uses our suffering to turn our lives to Jesus. God says to us, “I know you will suffer because I know Jesus suffered. Therefore, don’t let your suffering get in the way of trusting me!”
3. What Peter says in verse 8 helps to explain how we should look at our suffering.
   • Our suffering reminds us of why we need a savior that calls us to a place where there is no suffering at all.
   • Without the hope of heaven we suffer in vain.

Implication:

1. When we accuse God of our suffering, we blame God of treating us worse than he treated his own son.
2. Until we see and truly embrace what it mean that Jesus came to die for our sin, we will miss the true value of our salvation.

Conclusion:

1. Spiritual Injuries are unavoidable. We all have them. This is the reality of living in a world filled with sinners.
2. The beauty of our faith in Christ is that our spiritual injuries do not make God forget what he has promised.
3. Our hope in God’s faithfulness to fulfill his promises are based on who God is. For this, we can rejoice in God.