For reasons that escape me now, I Peter was the first book of the Bible I decided to preach through as a 22-year-old in my first pastorate. I had graduated with a college degree in history with zero preparation for leading a church or preparing and delivering sermons.

It would be interesting to know why any first-time pastor chooses a particular book as his first to preach through.

My guess is it had to do with all the fascinating concepts the Apostle Peter addresses in the opening chapter: our chosenness, our inheritance, our living hope, secure faith, continuing love. But, just as likely, it was the solidness of Peter’s tributes to the precious blood of Jesus and word of God in this first chapter.

The problem in preaching verse by verse over an extended period is that we tend to lose the big picture. A pastor friend once spent two years preaching through I John. I thought then and think now that must have been excruciating to his members. How they must have longed for a sermon from the life of Jesus or one of the famous Old Testament stories. Surely, the pastor filled out their diet with some variety now and then, but I seem to recall he didn’t.

Google a destination on the internet and you’ll find the map has a feature allowing you to zoom in and zoom out. You can locate the street address, but you can also back off and see where you’re going in relation to other cities and states.

It’s good to do that in Bible study sometime. Let’s do that just now with the first chapter of I Peter.

Peter to his weary audience: “You’re having a tough time of it just now. The world is coming at you from every side. You are being persecuted and harassed for no other reason than that you are following Jesus, the best thing that ever happened to you.”

“You’re wondering where is God, why this is happening, why you of all people, what good can possibly come from all this, and what God wants you to do now.”

Briefly, here is Peter’s response.

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These are a loaded three verses. To my knowledge, there’s nothing quite like them in the New Testament, informing us that prophets and angels did their work without understanding the big picture.

“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care,

“Trying to find out the time and circumstances in which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

“It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from Heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.”

One of the bedrock principles of a great segment of Bible scholars states that in order to understand a prophecy, a student should go back and try to learn what the prophet who announced it understood it to mean.

As if he was the ultimate authority on his prophecy.

This principle–clearly erroneous, according to this passage from the Apostle Peter–has given rise to the undermining of some of the great doctrines of the Christian faith.

The plain fact is, Peter says, the prophets said more than they knew. They were the instruments of “The Spirit of Christ within them.”

God knew what He was doing; the prophets often didn’t.

Nor did the angels. That one may be the greatest surprise of all.

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“Though you have not seen Him, you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (I Peter 1:8-9)

A few years ago, a group of scientists were given the most prestigious award in the world, the Nobel Prize for science, for discovering that all around us, all around them, and throughout every cubic foot of the universe is reverberating tiny echoes of the original Big Bang, Creation itself. They called it something like a “humming,” which everyone heard to the point that they had quit questioning it.

You see the same wallpaper every day and eventually you quit noticing it. When the scientists decided to analyze the mysterious hum, they found echoes of the Beginning.

Faith is like that. It’s everywhere, everyone uses it, lives by it, orders their lives by it and around it, but rarely give it a thought.

The funny thing is how some dispute that they believe in faith or use it in any way. As they do so, they draw their breath by faith, stand on their spot of terrain by faith, and plan their next act by faith.

Defining faith is a little tricky. Everyone tries his hand at it.

The writer of Hebrews–whoever he or she was–introduces the well-beloved 11th chapter, the Faith Chapter in our New Testament, with a definition:

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Heb. 11:1 NIV)

Some kid said it’s believing what you know isn’t true.

Here’s my definition:

“Faith is a conviction that a certain thing is true and real and solid on the basis of evidence even though some evidence is still missing.”

We are all celestial Sherlock Holmeses in a way–studying the evidence, coming to conclusions on the basis of that evidence, but all the while wishing we had the missing parts of the puzzle. Divine sleuths.

The disciple of Jesus Christ goes forward by faith. The Jew, the Taoist, the Muslim all live by faith. The Hindu, the Buddhist, the animist, and the voodoo practitioner get up every morning and go forth by faith.

The atheist lives by faith. The skeptic and agnostic are faith practitioners, just as much as Oral Roberts or Jerry Falwell or Billy Graham or Mother Teresa ever were.

This is true for the simple reason that we on this planet have tons of evidence for belief and a great deal for unbelief. We find loads of evidence for confidence our house will still be standing on the ground it occupies this morning and likewise reason to fear it won’t. Ask any Haitian about that.

The insurance company, the Fortune 500 conglomerate, and the bakery that opened in the strip mall near my house, all roll the dice and take their chances.

We live by faith every day. Get used to it.

Faith is only as good as its object. Here is where the disciple of Jesus Christ shines.

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When Katrina devastated this part of the world, two-thirds of the preachers in this land climbed into the pulpits the following Sunday to address the question on everyone’s mind: “Why suffering?”

It’s variously stated as “Why does God allow suffering?” and “Why do bad things happen to good people?” or “If God is all-loving and all-powerful, why doesn’t He end suffering?”

With the earthquake that wrought unbelievable death and suffering in Haiti, all those old questions have resurfaced.

What amazes Bible students and pastors is that the theology of Job’s friends, which the Word goes to such lengths to discredit, is still alive and well and being spread by many who claim to be Christians.

It’s what’s called in the logic classroom a “syllogism” and it looks like this:

The righteous do not suffer.

You are suffering.

Therefore, you are not righteous.

I did not hear Pat Robertson’s inflammatory comment last week in which he is said to have suggested (or actually made, I’m not sure) that Haiti’s constant poverty and suffering and now this earthquake which has taken the lives of 100,000 people is the result of an old voodoo pact the Haitians made with the devil.

If he said it and believes it, he believes in voodoo more than he should.

Anyone who believes that God is judging that sad little nation in this way ought to be ashamed of themselves. The poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, and God picks on them! What kind of tyrant do people think we worship?!

The Apostle Peter was writing to some people who were puzzled about their own suffering. Scholars are confident, to my knowledge, that the epistle was penned in the decade of the 60’s A.D. This would put it smack-dab in the middle of Nero’s time, that despot who burned Rome and blamed it on Christians.

We actually have a date for that event: July 19, A.D. 64. The fire burned for 3 days and 3 nights, was stopped, and then it broke out again. We’re told that Nero had a passion for building and needed to clear off space for his next projects. Since the buildings of much of Rome were wooden and the streets were narrow, a fire could take out much of the city, as it did.

Historians do not have a smoking gun, so to speak, identifying Nero as the culprit, but even at the time, everyone knew the name of the arsonist. We’re told that people trying to put out the fires were hindered. The historian Tacitus, who was 9 when all this happened, names names and fingers Nero.

The citizens were in an uproar. Nero quickly saw he was going to need a scapegoat, someone to pin the blame on.

He chose the Christians.

Tacitus wrote: “He falsely diverted the charge on to a set of people to whom the vulgar gave the name of Chrestians, and who were detested for the abominations they perpetrated.”

Abominations? Outsiders thought they were cannibalistic from their rituals of “eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus.”

Antisemitism was already rampant in those days, and since Christians were associated with Judaism, this made them doubly apt as targets.

So, a period of intense harassment, persecution, and torture was begun. We’re told a large number of Christians were rolled in pitch (that would be tar), hoisted onto posts, and set afire to light the city. Untold numbers of disciples of the Lord Jesus were martyred in this manner.

Peter writes to people for whom suffering is no abstraction. They encounter hostility and rejection, brutality and persecution, everywhere they go.

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“…who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.” (I Peter 1:5)

Exactly five years ago, my oncologist put me on a program to radiate my head and neck areas. A few weeks earlier, in December of 2004, the surgeon had removed cancerous tissue from under my tongue and had ordered the radiation. When I asked why, since he assured me he’d gotten all the cancer, he said, “Because the processes that gave you cancer in the first place are still at work. We want to shut them down.”

The oncologist–the cancer doctor–informed me that he spent many hours programming the computer so that certain areas would be lasered with pin-point accuracy. In former days, radiation was widely broadcast and killed every thing in its path. These days, with computers, they try to avoid taste buds and saliva glands as much as possible.

The ENT doctor had prepared me for the change. “Food will never again taste as good to you as it does right now.” He was right about that.

In the weeks of preparation and then through the months of daily radiation, I found myself praying something extremely biblical: that the Lord would be my shield.

I began reading the Psalms and highlighting every mention of the Lord as our shield. I wondered if the exact number of mentions would correspond to the number of treatments ordered. At this distance, I do not recall how many times the Psalms call God our Shield, but the numbers were not the same.

“Lord,” I prayed again and again, “be my Shield. Protect me from this radiation. Let it do what it’s supposed to do and nothing else.”

As far as we can tell five years later, the Lord answered that prayer magnificently. I’m still cancer free and have most of my taste and a good portion of my saliva. Some foods have little taste, but most do just fine, and my mouth is often dry. So I’m rarely without my water bottle, especially when preaching.

Most translations of this verse make the Greek word “phrourein” out to mean “protect” or “keep.” It’s a military term, we’re told, similar to being “garrisoned” or “guarded by a great power.”

The NIV says we are “shielded.” I like that. It’s good to be shielded.

During the Reagan presidency, there was talk of the United States constructing some kind of giant shield-in-the-sky to protect us from nuclear weapons from various enemies. The impracticality of that ended the discussion, but there’s no question that we need a shield. The only question is what kind and where do we find it.

“The Lord is my strength and my shield.” (Ps. 28:7)

“The Lord God is a sun and a shield; the Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing does He withhold from him who walks uprightly.” (Ps. 84:11)

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Call her a “kept woman” and you’ll be in big trouble.

The term implies that some rich guy is paying big for the favor of that woman’s company, covering her rent, maybe lavishing gifts upon her.

In the early verses of this First Epistle of Peter, the apostle twice speaks of that which is “kept” by the Almighty.

“…an inheritance….kept in Heaven for you who through faith are kept by God’s power….” (I Peter 1:4-5)

Our inheritance is kept for us in Heaven. We the Lord’s disciples are kept by Him on earth.

Financial advisor Suze Orman in a radio commercial counsels people not to withdraw their money from the bank and hide it in a mattress as one person told her they were doing. “Put it in a bank where the F.D.I.C. guarantees your deposits up to a certain amount,” she urges.

We want our money to be “kept” for us and available when we need it. We recall Jesus saying, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven….” (Matthew 6:19-20)

Many a bank, when advertising its services, will emphasize the word “security.” For good reason, it turns out, since the economy of any country is so iffy.

This week, President Obama has had sitdown meetings with officials in his administration whose agencies are charged with keeping the traveling public safe. This resulted from a Christmas Day incident in which a Nigerian man tried to set off an explosive in a plane beginning its descent into Detroit. From all reports, the proper authorities knew of this man and should have banned him from travel to this country. Either they did not communicate this to one another or simply were derelict in their duties, but the president is determined that the agencies will do their jobs.

Safety is a big issue and always has been.

At the moment, I’m reading a popular novel in which a vacationing family has their small daughter abducted from under their noses. The law enforcement authorities inform the parents that the kidnaper is a serial murderer and that they should accept that the worst has happened. The father is tortured by thoughts that he should have protected his child and did not.

Your inheritance is protected in Heaven.

You are protected on earth.

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Every once in a while, we’ll hear someone say that such-and-such is the most important doctrine in the Bible or the most important event in biblical history. “Because,” they’ll say, “if that had not happened, everything would have stopped at that point.”

We can say that about Jesus’ Incarnation, His Virgin Birth, His sinless life, His death on the cross, and His resurrection. Each one is a vital aspect of God’s plan for redeeming this runaway planet. But to say that one is more important than the other is like choosing one link of a chain as superior to the others.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy, has begotten us again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, that fadeth not away, reserved in Heaven for you….”

That’s how I memorized these two verses a generation ago. Here is how the NIV says it:

“Praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade–kept in heaven for you.”

One more? Here’s Eugene Peterson’s take on the same two verses:

“What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life, and have everything to live for, including a future in Heaven–and the future starts now!” (The Message)

Okay, first a brief analysis of the contents of these two verses, then the celebration of them.

Peter begins by blessing God. He should, and so should we. It all begins in the heart of the Father, everything you and I appreciate about being disciples of Jesus.

1. God is its Source.

2. Mercy is its Cause.

3. The resurrection of Jesus is its culmination.

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(Note: In the past, my Scripture notes on this blog have tied in with the particular book of the Bible which our denomination has selected to emphasize that winter. However, in recent weeks, I’ve been so blessed by reading the epistles of First and Second Peter, I’ve decided to focus on them for a time. As any pastor can tell you, I do this more for my own benefit and edification. If, however, readers find a use for these notes, you’re certainly welcome to use them any way you please. No permission required.)

The First Epistle of Peter begins with an interesting juxtaposition of two unusual expressions:

“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect, strangers in the world….”

Think of that: you are the elect of God; you are strangers in this world.

Then, as if to underscore this paradox, the apostle continues:

“…scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, who have been chosen….”

You are dispersed and scattered, but you are chosen.

Honored royally by God, treated disdainfully by the world. That’s almost always been the case with the Lord’s faithful. It is today in many places throughout the world.

So, we are the elect? Is that what you are telling us, Peter?

Yes, but be careful here. People have gone to town on this concept and never been seen again. They have used it as a springboard into the stratosphere and are still sailing out through the wild blue yonder, no longer being grounded in reality or the clear teachings of Scripture.

Let’s not make Scripture say what it doesn’t say.

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