We are meditating our way through First Peter. Today we are going to think through 1 Peter 1:6-7.
“In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials 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.”
We learned in the previous few verses that our inheritance is reserved and guarded for us in heaven, and we ourselves are protected by the power of God through faith. These are the strong and encouraging promises that cause the joy he writes about in verse 6. But it’s interesting to note that this joy is present even though they are going through difficult trials.
We too are not immune to the trials of life. Some are just hardships that are embedded in life itself, and some may be coming because we are Christians and carry His reproach with us. In spite of the hardships, wherever they come from, we can still rejoice because the promises are so tremendously great.
You might be thinking, “my troubles are so difficult that I have a hard time rejoicing even though God’s promises are powerful and encouraging.” Discouragement is one of the fiery darts of the devil and the defense against those is the shield of faith. The author of a devotional I’ve been reading lately says that we must pick up our shield and use it. What that means to me is that I need to talk to myself as David recorded in Psalm 42, “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me?” Put your faith to work by grabbing the promises of God, meditating on them, and then claiming them once again for yourself. Take the promises in verses 3-5 and dwell on them until your heart begins to rejoice in the surety of God’s power to protect both our inheritance and ourselves until the final day.
In the devotional today I want to move us a little further in our meditation on 1 Peter, this time focusing on verse 5. Here are the key parts of verses 3-4 along with verse 5.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again … to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Last time we learned that a Christian has been born again to an inheritance that is kept and reserved in heaven for us. But we stopped before the end of the sentence. Verse 5 goes on to let us know that not only is our inheritance kept in heaven, but we are kept and protected by the power of God.
We need to stop and think about how much power we’re talking about here. We say God is all-powerful, omnipotent. It is that almighty power that protects us. Do you think there is anything that can overpower God so that our protection would be at risk? I don’t think so!!
How are we protected? Our passage tells us: we are protected* through faith. But it is not a faith in faith. It is faith in the unfailing promises of God who has called us and saved us. The protection through God’s power has a goal, a target. It is for a salvation that is prepared and ready to be revealed. When? In the last time. We don’t know how far away that last time is, but we do know that our salvation, just like our inheritance, is protected and guarded until that day when it is fully revealed when Christ returns.
These are promises that each one of us should take hold of by faith. They bring assurance resulting in our present joy.
*When I think of God’s protection, I think of these words from the hymn Day by Day: “The protection of His child and treasure is a charge that on Himself He laid.” Someone has to protect us and God took that responsibility upon Himself.
How would you react if you found out that someone had left a very large inheritance for you in a safe deposit box at a nearby bank? No one else can get to it but you.
That’s the scenario that is pictured for us in 1 Peter 1:4-5. Last week we saw that God has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I mentioned that it is a real hope, not a hope-so hope. The sentence continues into the next couple of verses. We have this hope, but there is a target for it. The hope God gives is leading us somewhere.
Verse 4 tells us that it is leading to an inheritance that is incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading, already set aside in heaven for us. First of all, this inheritance is incorruptible or imperishable. The inheritance cannot rust or rot or spoil. It remains whole and intact. Secondly, it is undefiled, pure, untainted with any impurities or pollutants. It has no faults in it. And third, it doesn’t fade away. It doesn’t just melt away like the snow that’s been around our house for more than a month. Let your mind ponder those three words that describe the surety of the inheritance God has provided for us through Christ.
Finally, the Bible says it is reserved in heaven for us. The word is a very strong word like “guarded” or “protected,” and it is written in a verb tense that means the guard and protection has already been placed on this inheritance and that protection is still in place to this day. In other words, when we get to heaven, someone isn’t going to have to look around and see if he can find it under a bed somewhere. The inheritance is in the vault, and it is being guarded 24/7 from the moment it was placed there. May God strengthen and encourage your heart this morning as you consider these amazing descriptions of God’s provision for our eternal salvation.
This is one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my life. And it’s not easy to apply. That’s part of why I keep coming back to it. Grace means a great deal to me, and I see many Christians struggling right here.
What I’m arguing is this: the Sabbath rest of God after creation is a picture—a type—of the kind of rest God is offering you and me today.
And I want to be clear about something right from the beginning. We’re not talking about death. We’re not talking about heaven. We’re talking about a rest that is available right now. Today is a day we can be entering God’s rest. And when tomorrow comes, it will be today again—and the same offer will still be there.
What Do We Mean by “Rest”?
Before we go further, it helps to slow down and ask what we mean by rest.
When we think of rest, we think of things like ceasing activity, relaxing, being restored, letting go of pressure. There’s even a kind of surrender involved. When you lie down for a nap, you’re letting something go. The pressure is off.
That idea—the pressure being off—is important. Because what we’re going to see is that God is offering something deeper than physical rest. He’s offering a rest that reaches into the heart.
The Warning from the Past
The passage we’re working through brings us into Hebrews 3, where the author quotes Psalm 95. And in that psalm, God is looking back to Israel in the wilderness. Those people had seen His works for forty years. And yet God says of them:
“They always go astray in their heart… As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.”
The key issue wasn’t just outward behavior. It was the heart. And specifically, it was unbelief. The author of Hebrews presses that point. He warns:
“Take care… that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God.”
Notice how those words are tied together—evil and unbelieving. Disobedience and unbelief are not really separate things. They go together. At the root, the sin-issue is that we don’t believe what God has said.
Encouraging One Another—Today
Because of that danger, we’re told to encourage one another.
“Encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘Today.’”
That word “today” keeps coming up. It’s not abstract. It’s immediate. When should we encourage one another? Today. And when tomorrow comes? It will be today again.
This isn’t something we put off. The reason we encourage each other now is so that none of us will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. There is a real danger, even for believers, of a kind of hardening that comes from not believing God.
And God uses both His Spirit and His people to keep us. Our security isn’t some detached guarantee. It’s something God actively sustains—through His Word and through one another.
The Problem: Hearing Without Believing
The Israelites had good news proclaimed to them. God promised to meet their needs. He promised provision in the wilderness. But the word they heard did not profit them.
Why?
Because it wasn’t united with faith. They heard it—but they didn’t believe it.
And that’s where this becomes very close to home. God says, “I will meet your needs.” But we find ourselves thinking, “I’m not sure He will—not in this situation.” God says He gives peace. And yet we say, “I don’t have peace.” If God gave it and we don’t have it, where did it go? At some point, that raises a question: do we really believe Him?
If we truly believed that God has given peace, then we would live in that peace. The issue comes back again to belief.
Entering the Rest by Faith
The writer of Hebrews makes a remarkable statement:
“We who have believed enter that rest.” Not will enter. Enter. This is present reality. This rest is something believers are meant to experience now. And to help us understand it, the passage reaches all the way back to creation:
“And God rested on the seventh day from all His works.”
That rest of God becomes the model. The author connects it with the rest Israel failed to enter—and then says that rest is still available. How do we know it’s still available? Because the word “today” is still being spoken.
The door has not closed.
There Remains a Rest
This leads to one of the most important statements in the passage: “So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.”
There remains a rest—for you, right now. Not next week. Not someday. Today.
And this rest is more than stopping activity. It’s something deeper than that. It touches the heart, the inner striving, the pressure we carry.
Resting from Our Works
The passage brings us to this final idea:
“The one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.”
That’s the picture. God finished His work—and He rested.
And we are told that there is a way for us, in Christ, to enter into that same kind of rest. Not by ceasing all activity—we still live, work, make decisions, raise families—but by ceasing the inner striving, especially the inner striving to prove yourself to God somehow. The grace of God forgives all sins and declares us righteous. The striving for perfection is over!
Ceasing the pressure.
Ceasing the sense that everything depends on us.
What That Looks Like in Real Life
I’ve been trying to think through what this actually looks like.
You go through your day—running errands, making decisions, dealing with responsibilities. Nothing outward necessarily changes. But inwardly, something is different. You are at rest. You’re no longer carrying everything. You’re no longer striving in the same way. The pressure has been lifted.
That’s not easy. I can tell you from experience—it’s not easy. You face real situations, real concerns, real stress. And there’s something in you that wants to hold on—to keep worrying, to keep managing, to keep carrying it. And yet God says, in effect, “Trust Me.”
And we respond, “But if I don’t carry this, who will?” And the answer is—He will.
There’s that verse about casting your cares on Him. And I’ve come to read it this way: not just that He cares about me, but that He does the caring for me. He carries what I’ve been trying to carry.
That’s the rest being offered.
God finished His work. And in Christ, we are invited into that same kind of rest—to say, in the middle of life, “It’s in His hands.”
And the question that remains is whether we will believe Him enough to enter into it.
*Some articles on this publication or website are adapted from my recorded Bible teaching. I use transcription and editing tools (including AI-assisted editing) to convert spoken lectures into readable written form. The ideas, interpretations, and theological conclusions are my own and come directly from my teaching.
Today we’re going to continue to look at 1 Peter 1:3-5. Here are those verses:
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 through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”
I find this long sentence fascinating. We were talking about this in our men’s Bible study a couple weeks ago and we noticed that it is full of many prepositions. We joked about how we used to diagram sentences in high school. This one would be a fairly complicated sentence to diagram.
Let me break it up a little bit so that we can get at the meaning. There is a lot here. God has begotten us again. That has to do with the new birth that Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about. Look at the verse to see if you can determine the motivation for God giving us a new birth. He did that because of His abundant mercy. God is a God of tremendous mercy. Mercy is receiving something that we don’t deserve, and there is no question that we don’t deserve mercy. We are great sinners — not just before we were saved, but now as well. Sometimes we focus on a few major sins that we don’t commit very often and rate ourselves pretty highly on the obedience side. But just ask yourself, “How many times today have I failed to love God with my whole heart, soul, mind, and strength? Your whole heart. And then how many times today have you failed to love your neighbor as much as you love yourself? At least for me, the numbers are staggeringly high. All of those times we failed at this, we were not acting like God. It is ungodly not to love our neighbor as ourselves. That’s why we need a savior, isn’t it. It’s of the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed, Lamentations 3:22.
Let’s look at the next little phrase: to a living hope. The whole purpose of God’s giving us the new birth is so that we may have a living hope. There is real hope for the believer. My dad used to say, “It’s not hope-so hope.” Sometimes people ask if we are going to do something and we say, “I hope so.” That kind of hope is tentative and uncertain. This entire passage that we are studying over these weeks gives us rock solid hope, confidence that God is faithful to His promises and has guaranteed the outcome of our faith — the salvation of our souls (1 Peter 1:9).
