And I invite you to open your Bible or the Bible and the pew in front of you to 1st Peter,

chapter 1.

And our text comes from two sections of that chapter, each of which deal with the new birth.

First Peter, Chapter 1, verses 3 through 5, and then verses 22 through 25.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

By as great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you who by God's power are

guarded through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth,

for a sincere love of the brethren love one another earnestly from the heart.

You have been born anew, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God.

For all flesh is like grass and all of its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls,

but the word of the Lord abides forever.

That word is the good news which was preached to you.

I'd like to begin by summing up the three messages on hope that we've had so far in this series.

So that you can see how the focus on the new birth this morning fits into the flow of things.

The first question we posed you may remember was, what is hope?

And the answer from Hebrews 6, verse 11, was that hope is a full assurance, not an uncertain

expectation.

Hope is not what my boys mean when they say I hope daddy

gets home on time for supper because he might not and that's what they mean and

that's not what the Bible means. When the Bible says, hope in God,

...