Joys in Trials

Scripture Reading

Could we please turn in your Bibles with me to 1 Peter 1. This morning we'll be looking at verses 6-9 together. I've got to say, one of the things I love about singing the Psalms is they're not just all happy ditties. They're not just all encouraging songs that are nothing but sugar and no substance. But sometimes there are dirges. because life isn't always puppy dogs and rainbows. And today, we come to a passage that helps us, instructs us for what's going on in our lives, even when there's difficulties.

So let's go ahead and turn to 1 Peter 1, verses six through nine. If you're using the Pew Bibles, you'll find that on page 1,075. 1 Peter 1, beginning at verse six. Hear now God's perfect word. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials. that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom, having not seen, you love. Though now you do not see him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory. receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls. That sends this portion of the reading of God's perfect word.

Prayer for Illumination

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We pray now that your Holy Spirit would please help us. Lord, we pray that you would take these sayings that we are having read And pray that now you indeed would be our teacher. Lord, we pray that you would please guide our hearts into truth. Turn our eyes unto you. Show us what's real. We pray these things in Jesus's name, amen. I gotta tell ya, I like shortcuts. I like to try to think about ways, and it never works very well, but how can I make this job easier? What corners can I cut? How can I go to the gym and do the least amount of work and get the most amount of gain?

Sermon

And this is something that I think is baked into our American culture. We like all the good stuff, but we don't like the pain that sometimes it takes to get there. One of the reasons why the only sport our boys have ever played was wrestling is because there was one lesson I wanted them to learn from wrestling. Hard things aren't bad things. Hard things aren't bad things. And indeed, in our lives, what we find here in 1 Peter is that even the hard things that we suffer in this life have a purpose.

They have a meaning. God is shaping you, molding you, changing you, sanctifying you, turning you more and more into the type of person He has destined you to be. And so, what I hope you'll walk away from this morning is that your suffering and your trials have a purpose. Your suffering and your trials have a purpose. And there's gonna be four points to this sermon. The first one's gonna be the longest point. And that is that your trials do have a purpose. But a second point is that you can have joy even in your trials.

Thirdly, we'll see from 1 Peter 1, six through nine, that you can have hope today, even though you're going through trials. And lastly, I'm going to encourage you to long to see Jesus, long to see Jesus. So first, your suffering has a purpose. Let's go ahead and look at verses six through seven together.

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

This idea of a refining fire is all throughout the Old Testament. We find it in the Psalms. We find it in Psalm 66, verse 10, where God speaks of His people being put through a refining fire. We find it in Proverbs 17, verse 3, that the refining of the Lord is good for us. We find the refining in Isaiah 48, 10, where God again says He is refining His people, even as they're in the midst of wars. And in Zechariah chapter 13 verse 9, again the Lord says He is refining His people as through a fire. This is an overarching biblical picture of what God does in our lives.

During COVID, we all watched, I think, a little bit more TV or YouTube or whatever than normal. But one of the things I came to love was watching these people who would have these backyard foundries. And they would essentially take some type of container, and they would put heat-absorbing or resistant bricks inside of it. And they would put a little pot, and then they would put different things that they found inside that pot, and then just blast it with propane for half an hour to two hours and just see how pure was the stuff that it was said it was supposed to be.

And this is what God, the picture of what God is doing in your life. As he brings a fire and the pressure and the heat into your life, what happens is the stuff that's really valuable sinks to the bottom. There's a whole bunch of stuff that just burns away. And at the top is the dross. The top is the other alloys that are just added into it.

And in a day and age where Peter is writing, where currency is hard currency, right? A gold coin was supposed to be gold and a silver coin was supposed to be silver and a copper coin was supposed to be copper. How did they know whether this was a counterfeit coin or a genuine coin?

They put it to the fire. And they would see this lead start to come off of it. This other type of impurity start to come out of it. Has somebody essentially tried to pass off something genuine even though it's less valuable? What's the only way you have to tell in the ancient world of Rome? You put it in the fire. You refine it and you see, is this really real gold?

You see, that's what the Lord is doing in your life. Even as you go through the fires and the griefs and the trials of this life, and notice there's a word there that I don't really like, various, right? We wish this was just one trial, but it seems like the Lord sometimes gives us trial, and then we think, okay, we're good, and then later on, he tries our faith more, and we find out, oh man, there's even more dross than I really realized, but what he's doing every time is he's skimming off the impurities, taking out those things that shouldn't be there, removing everything that you might be Very precious gold.

This is the Lord's desire for you. This is why he's bringing you things in your life. He's trying to get you to this place where you actually are holy. See, when God saved you, he declared you were holy. He said, you're mine. He claimed you as your own, he did the initial work of sanctifying when he called you, but in your life we're going through this process of sanctification too.

Where he's taking other things that you might love and enjoy that could be even idols in your heart and he's scraping them away. taking the dross away, showing you more and more that your hope and your joy and your love is supposed to be in Him alone.

See, this idea of holiness, sometimes we get it mixed up. We think holiness is, oh, I'll become more holy if I just do more prayer, if I just do more outreach, if I just do more mercy ministry, if I just do more, do more, do more. But holiness isn't the amount of things that you heap up, but the quality of the faith that resides in you. What the Lord is doing here is showing us that we have one hope, one faith, one love. It's Him taking everything away, putting us through those various trials, so we only have one thing left that gives us ultimate joy, and it's God Himself. I gotta tell you, God doesn't do this to us.

I'm not giving you the sermon because I want you to become masochist, you know, somebody who's got a mental disorder that just wants to hurt yourself. I'm not telling you you should sit there and go in your prayer closet and pray, God, bring on the trials. I said, no, no, we're not. And don't ever end my tongue. Okay, you go through a trial, just be a stoic, right? Get a stiff upper lip and just buck through it.

No. No, you know what it's like to go through trials, and I don't think anybody in their right mind wants to go through these trials. Nobody wakes up in the morning and during their devotion says, Lord, you know what? I'd really like to become a widow today. Can you give me that trial? No. No, nobody prays to the Lord, God, I really don't want to struggle with this materialism anymore, so can you please just make the wiring in my house faulty and make everything burn away? Nobody prays like that.

We don't want death, we don't want when cancer comes knocking at our door. Nobody asks God to make them get into a car accident because they want to be more sanctified. We don't ask the Lord for job loss. We certainly didn't ask the Lord for 10% inflation, so that way our money would become less valuable and we would struggle.

But this is a reality of the things that he's done in our lives. And I'm gonna give you four different examples from the Old Testament that I think show us that God has a purpose, even though the people really wrestled with the trials they were in. When we come to the Old Testament, we come to somebody like Job. And we come to a man who's righteous, who loves the Lord, who's following after his ways, who's trying to care for his family, who loves his children.

And I don't think Job woke up in the morning and said, Lord, you know what I want you to do? I want you to make my wife tell me to curse God and die. God, I want you to take all my children, just let all of them die in one day. God, you know what? I really want to be sanctified, so what I really want you to do is I want you to take all my money and let it be stolen by the Chaldeans. No!

No, that's not how it goes in the book of Job, and yet we find in Job some of the most heartwarming pictures of what it means, even going through the depths of trials, that though I may die, yet I will see my, you've got my Redeemer face to face. He knows his Redeemer lives, yet my heart faints within me, he says. You see, he has a hope that he's going to see his Redeemer. He knows his Redeemer lives, even though his heart is fainting within him. God is putting him through this trial so he might see that God himself is good and does care for him. We find the same thing in Joseph's life, don't we? I don't think Joseph, when he was telling his brothers the dream that he got about the stars bowing down and the sun and moon bowing down, I don't think he thought, you know what?

When my dad sends me into the field, I hope they try to assassinate me. And when that doesn't work, I hope that they'll sell me into slavery. And I don't think when he went to Potiphar's house, he said, Lord, I'm not sanctified enough yet, so you know what I want you to do? I want you to let this lady make false accusations against me. And God, I haven't learned enough patience yet, and so Lord, will you please just let that baker and that cupbearer, let them forget me, Lord, and let me just stay here in prison a number of more years?

No, Joseph, I'm sure, didn't want any of that to happen. But at the end of the day, when he's talking to his brothers, he's able to tell them, you meant this for evil, but God purposed it for good. Because Joseph was strengthened in his love for the Lord and his knowing that God had a plan through even his suffering.

We could say the same thing for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, couldn't we? I doubt they woke up one day and went, you know, we really want to see if our faith is genuine. I just hope. I hope that the king makes a giant golden statue of himself and that he's going to throw us into a fire. Because you know what? Then everybody will believe that the Lord is God and our faith will really be...

Man, you want to talk about a refining fire. Let's heat it up seven times hotter than normal so much so that the guards fall dead when they're trying to throw us into it. That'll show us a refining fire, right? No. They were thrown into that fire and their faith was shown to be genuine. But they didn't ask for it.

But the Lord knew that he was going to use it for his glory and for their good. We find it in Daniel's life as well. Would he stop praying to the Lord? I can almost guarantee you that Daniel didn't wake up one morning and say, I really hope the king makes a decree that I'm targeted to be executed by my political enemies. And yet, as he's sitting there in the bottom of the lion's den, he knows that the Lord's going to care for him.

It's exactly in these stories of the Old Testament that we find not a type of faith that happens in a vacuum, and that's where they find strength and joy, But one of the reasons why we find these stories so compelling is because it's in the heart of trials. It's in the heart of grief that they fight for joy, they fight for faith, they fight for a vision of God's glory. And it inspires us to say, we can have that same faith. And that's what Peter is saying, God is doing in your life now.

He has a purpose. In this, you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if it be that you have been grieved by various trials. And I want to stop and I want to back up. I want to encourage you though, because this is a pretty difficult part of the sermon. I need you to recognize a little clause there at the very beginning of verse six. Though now for a little while.

Some of you right now are going through extremely hard circumstances. Some of you, the trials right now are hot, blazing fires and they feel like they're overwhelming you and you just wish that the Lord would give you some relief. These trials aren't forever. Now you might cry out to the Lord that He would take this trial away from you.

We know that Paul did. He had some thorn in his flesh and he cried out to the Lord three different times that the Lord might remove this from him. And the Lord said, no. Why? Because that thorn in his flesh was there that Paul would know that God's grace was sufficient for him.

God's only going to give you this trial so long as it needs to be there for you to understand that His grace is sufficient for you. But it's not going to be there forever. This trial will not endure, will not continue on for eternity. No, it has a temporary aspect to it. But as long as it's there, The Lord is teaching you something. And one of the things he's teaching you is how to have joy. How to have joy even in the midst of your trials.

Look with me again at verses 7 and 8. Regarding these various trials, verse 7, that the genuineness of your faith being much more precious than gold that perishes. though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen, you love. Though now you do not see him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory. Did you catch that in verse eight? Did you see it, the repetition again and again? Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy, inexpressible and full of glory. You rejoice and you have joy even in the midst of these trials.

See, one of the things that we have to recognize is that the things that we enjoy most, the things that we joy in the most, are what will motivate us. The things that we enjoy most and the things that we love most are what will motivate us in our lives.

I was wrestling, just kind of scratching my head as I was translating this passage last week. It's really difficult because he says this whole idea of joy is just used again and again. It's kind of like heaping it up. It's kind of like you are overjoyed in your joy and in your glory in that joy. How do you understand that? This joy is, as one author said, it's like glory-infused, unspeakable joy. It's like glory-laden joy.

It's like joy that no matter what, the closest thing we could say, it's like golden joy that can never be taken away from you. Not your circumstances. If your circumstances can take away your joy, then what were you really loving? Whatever your circumstances weren't hindering.

Joy for the Christian is in the Lord. Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice, because your joy in the Lord is something that your circumstances cannot take away from you. If your greatest joy, if your greatest love is the Lord Jesus Christ, no one, nothing, no circumstance can take that away from you.

See, we want to think that maybe if our lives were easier, then we would read our Bible more, and we could enjoy Jesus more. Maybe if our lives weren't so chaotic, then we could spend more time in prayer, and we could enjoy Jesus more. Maybe if our children weren't just so utterly depraved, we could have a moment of silence, and we would be able to just enjoy the Lord more. Maybe if our parents would just understand that we got so many chores to do, then we could actually be quiet, get along, and enjoy the Lord.

Right? We want to act like our joy in the Lord is dependent on whatever other circumstances are out there, but God is telling you right now, Christian, your joy is in the Lord if you are in Christ Jesus. And your circumstances don't dictate it. Actually, your joy will dictate your attitude about your circumstances. One of the things that we struggle with in our Christian lives is things like depression and anxiety, worrying about things that may come, are coming, maybe won't come, we don't know, but there's all these stressors in our lives and we focus on those stressors because it's like they put a shadow in front of the glory that is in Jesus Christ, the joy that we can have in Him. And so God is testing, testing us in these various trials, not to ruin you, but to show you the depth of the joy that you can have in Christ Jesus, that nothing, nothing in heaven or on earth, neither height, nor depth, nor width, nor breadth, nothing can separate you from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. Poverty can't do it. Cancer can't do it. Failing retirement accounts can't do it. Children apostatizing can't do it. Nothing can strip your joy from Jesus Christ. And so you trust in Him, even in these trials. You walk with Jesus. You glory in Jesus. You bask in the grace of Jesus. You praise Jesus.

Because in this, it's what Peter says here, is a joy inexpressible. People will look at you and they'll think something's wrong or something's odd about you. How can you have that type of joy with all that stuff going on in your life? It's because you've tasted and seen that the Lord is good. You can't exactly get it off your lips. You don't know how to describe it. You don't know how to get it across to them. But in your heart, you know and you believe that God is good and he loves you and he's given you his son. And so no matter what's going on in your life, you have a joy that we don't know how to describe to unbelievers.

But when we see a brother or sister in Christ and they're suffering, they're going through various trials, and we ask them what's going on, and they tell us, you know, it's been hard, but I've really been enjoying my time with the Lord lately. You're like, yes, yes, you get it. It's wonderful, isn't it? We don't know how to describe it, but it's great because it's heartfelt, it's true, genuine faith, because it's a sure hope. It's a sure hope that God has given us. And that's the third point. God has given you a sure hope even today. Look with me at verse nine.

Receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls. We go through different trials in this life where God is burning away, right, with the heat of that refining fire, burning away all the stuff in this life, all the cares that we might have, because guess what's going to happen on that last great day when the day of judgment comes? He'll burn away all those other things. And all that will be left is what's precious, your faith, your love in Him, and that will endure forever. He's giving you a hope that at the last great day, at the day of judgment, you can give your account with joy before the Lord. You can have hope. You can have hope that what he's doing is going to actually pay off in the end.

Now, I've talked a lot so far about all these grievous trials, all these things that seem like they're really hard, but I'm gonna suggest to you that God sometimes gives us trials to prove what our hope is really in, sometimes by subtraction, oftentimes it's by addition. And I think in the American church, this is very true in our lives today. Sometimes he's testing us with a type of trial that we don't even realize the heat is on us.

Jesus warns his disciples, they're gonna go out and scatter seed. Some of it's gonna fall on different types of ground, but one of the grounds that I am convinced is most dangerous for the church today is that you need to be careful, because one of the various trials you're gonna have in your life is the weeds that grow up in the soil. That the deceitfulness of wealth and the cares of this life can choke out the good plant.

You need to be asking yourself, is the Lord adding to me more and more so I can actually stop trusting in him? This is a fear. Don't take me on a theological baseball bat later and tell me, what about the perseverance of the saints? We've already talked about that.

What I'm saying is that the trial that you may face in your life may be poverty. He may be taking things away from you, but for others of you, He may have added more and more to you. This is exactly what the Proverbs says in Proverbs chapter 30, verse eight. Lord, do not make me rich that I would be tempted to forsake you, Lord, nor poor that I would be tempted to steal.

The danger of when God tests us by addition is that our hope ends up being in the material things and the wealth and the cares of this life rather than in God himself. that we end up being like that rich young ruler who came to Jesus and he said, what do I need to do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said, oh, that one's easy. He lists to him. Basically the second table of the law.

Honor your father and mother. Do not kill. Do not murder. Do not destroy. All those things. And he says, this is good, Jesus. I've done all that from my youth. That's great. What else do I need to do? And Jesus, seeing his heart, he says, you know what you need to do? Go sell everything you have and give it to the poor. And the young guy walks away with grief because he had much wealth. Because Jesus put a a finger on what his greatest enjoyment and love was, pointing the hole in what he thought was his genuine faith.

So the Lord sometimes shows us that our hope isn't in what we think it is. So we need to ask ourselves, what are we truly hoping in? What is our true love? What do we rejoice in? What do we think at the end of the day when Jesus Christ returns for it is appointed for every man to die once and after this the judgment? What will we do at the judgment day? What will your joy be in that last great day? What will your hope be? Because Jesus Christ will be revealed again. That's what verse 5 told us at the very end of it. So is your joy going to be in the Lord? Or will your joy be in your stuff? and your money, and your own security.

See, our faith is gonna end. Did you know that? Your faith will end someday. Your faith is going to end someday. Someday, Jesus will return again, and you won't need faith anymore. There's a whole bunch of other things that will not end, but your faith will.

Because you will see him face to face. You will see Jesus face to face. And is no longer hoping in something not yet seen. But we will behold him as he is in his glory. And for the Christian, this is our longing. This is what verse eight is getting at. Let's look real quick at what does it mean to long with Jesus. Whom having not seen, that whom is Jesus. whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.

We long to see Jesus. Sometimes we might even be tempted to think, if I could only have seen the miracles Jesus did, then my faith will be stronger. If only I had seen Jesus hanging on the cross, then my faith would be stronger. Some people might even be tempted to think, if only I had seen Jesus at the resurrection, then my faith would be stronger.

But see, Jesus gives us something that's extremely helpful for us. When doubting Thomas came to Jesus, or when Jesus came to doubting Thomas, Jesus said, go ahead, Thomas. Put your finger in my hand. Put your hand in my side. And Thomas falls on his face and he says, my Lord and my God. And Jesus goes on beyond that and he says, hold on, you believe because you saw? More blessed are they who believe, though they do not see." You are blessed, Christian, because God has given you a faith, not in one that you have seen, but one in which you have not seen.

But we will someday see Him face to face. Revelation chapter 22, verses one through five. I'm gonna read that passage for you. Revelation chapter 22, one through five. I love this picture of heaven. We had an outreach thing yesterday and one guy came up and he just asked about heaven. He said, what's heaven gonna be like? And I thought, oh man, what a great question. This is a great little window that the Lord gives us into what heaven is like. Revelation chapter 22. verses one through five.

And he showed me a pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its streets and on either side of the river was a tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, Each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

And there shall be no more curse. But the throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it. And His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face. And His name shall be on their foreheads. There shall be no more night there. They need no lamp. nor light of the sun. For the Lord gives them light, and they shall reign forever and ever."

Do you see the hope? It's just a little window open to us, that in heaven, there's life. There's no more trial, no more mourning. But the one whom we love, who sits upon the throne now, we will see him face to face. I love getting to talk to saints in the nursing homes and those who are closer to glory than I am. I'll never forget kneeling down next to Ralph McDonald's bed, and as he and I were talking one day, he said, I just can't wait to see Jesus. I thought, what a beautiful testimony. Irenaeus, an early church father, writing in the 100s, shared that same hope. This is what he wrote. This is when an early church pastor, he said, our face shall see the face of the Lord and shall rejoice with joy unspeakable. That is to say, when it shall behold its own delight.

Does your heart delight in the Lord? Though you have not seen Him, yet do you love Him? Do you rejoice in the Lord always? If so, then the Lord, even through the various trials and circumstances, the difficulties and the griefs that you may be experiencing now, He is refining your faith, like being put in a fire that your faith might be like precious gold.

Genuine, without dross. But that is not just something that we hope will come true someday in the future, but you have that joy now. You can rejoice today. The trials you're going through, if you are in Christ Jesus, are not because he is somehow mad at you, but even if he's disciplining you, he's disciplining you as a father. showing you more and more the joy that you can have in Jesus Christ as he burns away the dross, as he purifies you. So I pray that you will have joy.

Unexpressible, unutterable, glory-infused, glory-laden, gold-like joy. Because you love Jesus with that type of enjoyment. This is exactly why our catechism starts with the very first question. What's the purpose of your life? What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Start enjoying Him today and never lose sight of that joy. Enjoy Him forever.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. Father, we thank you that we can have hope and we can have joy because we trust in you. Lord, we pray that when the light of our joy seems to be growing dim, Father, we pray that you would please strengthen us, reinvigorate us, Lord, we pray specifically for those who are in the congregation, even possibly this morning, who may be suffering various trials, who may be grieving. Lord, we pray that you would renew their joy, that they would look up to heaven, behold your glory, taste and see that you are good. Lord, please do not leave us to despair. but let our faith be tested and prove genuine. For you are the object of our faith, the object of our hope, the object of our joy. Thank you that we can enjoy you forever. In Jesus's name we pray.