one28 PodcastFaith in the Fire
Jonathan Sarr
1 Peter 1:6-9
2009-11-08
one28 Wednesday worship
No audio is available for this message.
In the summer of AD 64 the
great city of Rome was burned, and the notorious Emperor Nero blamed Christians
for this atrocity. What followed
was a relentless and merciless period of persecution for believers in the city
that soon had a ripple effect to the far reaches of the Roman Empire. Well within the bounds of the Empire
were the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, located
in Asia Minor, or modern day Turkey.
The Christians of the churches in these provinces were the stated
audience of Peter’s letter, and many believe the time to have been the dawn of
this period of tremendous persecution and suffering that would eventually claim
the lives of Peter, Paul and likely many of those who first read this
letter.
And many of us think this is
merely filler for history books.
Yesterday at our staff
meeting, Alicia Martin shared a recent story from Voice of the Martyrs.
On Sept. 21, 2009, Pastor
Manuel was shot and killed by The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
guerrillas in San Jose del Guaviare, Colombia, according to The Voice of the
Martyrs contacts.
FARC guerrillas made
an appointment with Pastor Manuel and his family. “He thought they were going
to authorize him to have a church officially, which he had discuss[ed] and
asked [for] before,” said VOM contacts. “One of them came in [the house] with
the pastor’s wife, Gloria, and his daughter while the pastor was outside. He
was shot five times.”
A FARC guerrilla who
was in the house with the rest of the family yelled “Make sure that dog stays
dead,” referring to the pastor. The guerrillas then shot the pastor again, this
time in the neck. Following the shooting, Pastor Manuel’s wife ran outside and
cleaned his face. With the help of her children, she dragged his body under a
tree. “She ran and got her Bible and, shaking with tears, preached to all those
who got near,” VOM contacts said. “[Her] 10-year-old son said ‘mum, don’t
worry, dad died for Christ and now he is with Christ.’”
Pastor Manuel and
his wife had been pastoring a church in Chopal village, south of San Jose del
Guaviare for about eight years. They faced numerous challenges, and many
churches in the area had been closed by FARC guerrillas. Pastor Manuel decided
to open the church regardless of the threats and risks. In April, the pastor
was part of an evangelistic event at which three FARC guerrillas and seven
members of the paramilitary militia accepted Christ. Praise God for this
family’s faith.
This is happening every
day. And we’re fine, so long as
it’s happening to someone else. The
world hated the Christians of the first century and it hates us today. The enemy’s disdain for the children of
God has not changed because God has not changed, and the devil’s destruction is
more imminent now than it was when Peter wrote this letter.
How is it possible then, that
so many professing Christians are leading easy, comfortable lives? What is to be our response to
affliction like this when it comes?
What is the greatest way for us to impact the world for Christ in the
face of such adversity?
Let’s read together 1 Peter
1, starting in verse 1. We will
read all the way through to verse nine before we focus on verses 6-9 this
morning. READ 1:1-9.
1.
The Proof of
Faith (v. 6a)
In this you rejoice,
“In this” points back to the promises of verses
3-5. Impacting a dying world while
dying ourselves requires that we frequently look back to the promises of God and look forward to our inheritance in Christ. Only by consistent focus on the next
life can we be of any significant use in this life.
To have an inheritance that is “imperishable,
undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for [us]” is cause for rejoicing. It sounds like Peter is telling them
nothing new, nothing that they have not heard. Instead, his statements are indicative, that is to say, this
is the way it is, and this is they way they think and act, demonstrating their
love for Christ.
These people are joyful, and their joy is a mark of
salvation. Only the believer can
have true and consistent joy in the midst of difficult trials. True joy is Spirit-given, and the
possession of consistent joy amid various trials is a mark of salvation.
Among Peter’s readers, then, we have a number who were
genuinely joyful in spite of very, very difficult circumstances, and they did
not rejoice or delight in their trials, but rather in the promises of God.
But having joy in Christ doesn’t stop us from being
human. I think John Calvin stated
it well in his commentary on this passage:
“To explain the matter in a few words, we
may say that the faithful are not logs of wood, nor have they so divested
themselves of human feelings, but that they are affected with sorrow, fear
danger, and feel poverty as an evil, and persecutions as hard and difficult to
be borne. Hence they experience
sorrow from evils; but it is so mitigated by faith, that they cease not at the
same time to rejoice. Thus sorrow
does not prevent their joy, but, on the contrary, give place to it. Again, though joy overcomes sorrow, yet
it does not put an end to it, for it does not divest us of humanity” (32).
Just because you have joy in Christ doesn’t mean you
stop being human. The sorrow of
suffering is real, and yet it is a beautiful thing that, while understandably
grieved and burdened, Peter’s readers were able to rejoice in the promises of
God.
2.
The Probation of
Faith (v. 6b)
though now for a little while, if necessary, you
have been grieved by various trials,
A probationary period is a time of testing, and a
probation is itself a test. By
this, I mean, the testing of
faith.
If when your faith is tested, you can have consistent
joy in Christ, that faith is genuine.
If, when tested by fire, it is purer than before, then your faith is
from Him.
Their life on earth stunk. Undoubtedly possessions were taken, families were torn
apart, and many were tortured and killed for the sake of Christ. And that is painful. It is sad. It is hard.
Understandably, this results in our grief. The King James translation calls this “heaviness.” Our hearts become heavy and we can even
despair in this life.
Peter is NOT saying here that our trials are
necessary. Notice that. I think that is a thoroughly biblical
concept, and trials help to refine us, to be sure, but what is necessary, it
appears, is that we would be grieved by these trials. This is real pain and suffering we’re talking about. This hurts.
It was absolutely necessary that the wife of Pastor
Manuel and his son would be grieved…at least for a little while. It made their impact much greater to
have joy while holding close the limp course of the slaughtered husband and
father.
So why on earth would a God who loves us require our
grief amid various trials? Well,
He required if of Christ, and it should we expect to need less refining than
the One Who was already perfect and sinless?
It is necessary that our
faith be tested for a number of reasons.
Many believers today want the product and praise of our faith without
any probation. We want all of the
accompanying benefits of true, Spirit-given and Spirit-driven faith in Christ
without the accompanying difficulties that prove it to be true.
In a very powerful and
personal sermon that he delivered on November 7, 1858 (So, this Sunday, 151
years ago), Spurgeon taught on this exact verse and the manifold reasons for
suffering. He suggests several
reasons why distress is a necessary part of the Christian life:
1. To be like Christ. We must be like Christ
in His humiliation, or we shall not be like Him in His glory. Jesus – though joyful – was
distressed by His trials. His
heart was heavy and broken any number of times, and such feelings on our part
can help us to relate to Him in this sense.
2. To keep us humble. “If the Christian
did not sometimes suffer heaviness he would begin to grow too proud, and think
too much of himself, and become too great in his own esteem.” In short, it keeps us humble. Nobody who is truly brokenhearted over
his own sin or the sin of others acts arrogantly. I know that I can relate to this: suffering and my own
distress drive me to my knees and sweetness of restored fellowship with my
Father. My most precious times of
prayer come when I am most despairing and distressed.
3. To learn tough lessons. “In heaviness we
often learn lessons that we never could attain elsewhere.” I think Spurgeon says it best:
“Do
you know that God has beauties for every part of the world; and he has beauties
for every place of experience? There are views to be seen from the tops of the
Alps that you can never see elsewhere. Ay, but there are beauties to be seen in
the depths of the dell that ye could never see on the tops of the mountains;
there are glories to be seen on Pisgah, wondrous sights to be beheld when by faith
we stand on Tabor; but there are also beauties to be seen in our Gethsemanes,
and some marvelously sweet flowers are to be culled by the edge of the dens of
the leopards. Men will never become great in divinity until they become great
in suffering. "Ah!" said Luther, "affliction is the best book in
my library;" and let me add, the best leaf in the book of affliction is
that blackest of all the leaves, the leaf called heaviness, when the spirit
sinks within us, and we cannot endure as we could wish.”
He says
later, “There are none so tender as those who have been skinned
themselves. Those who have been in
the chamber of affliction know how to comfort those who are there.”
Distress by various trials also helps us to relate to
others. A Christian never suffers
needlessly. Either it is to help us directly, or it helps us as we are
better able to help someone else.
This paradox is not rare in the Christian life,
either. Rather, it is completely
normal. On the surface, we are
human, subject to genuine sorrow, grief, heaviness in our regular interaction
with the evils of this world.
Having faith in Christ doesn’t make the death of a child a fun
experience. Having a supernatural
joy in Him doesn’t mean that we look for trouble. To borrow from Spurgeon once again, who has illustrated this
principle so well….
Mariners tell us that there are some parts
of the sea where there is a strong current upon the surface going one way, but
that down in the depths there is a strong current running the other way. Two seas
do not meet and interfere with one another; but one stream of water on the
surface is running in one direction, and another below in an opposite
direction. Now, the Christian is like that. On the surface there is a stream of
heaviness rolling with dark waves; but down in the depths there is a strong
under-current of great rejoicing that is always flowing there.
And that joy is a mark of true faith.
And the only thing I would add is that Peter helps
keep this in perspective by reminding that this is but for a little while. Our grief will not last forever. It won’t even last for long in light of
eternity. At the most, a lifetime,
which is a precious short
time.
3.
The Praise of
Faith (v. 7)
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.
This parenthetical thought by Peter is worth our
meditation. If you read that
statement without the parenthetical portion, it goes “so that the tested
genuineness of your faith…may be found to result in praise and glory and honor
at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” The tested genuineness of our faith
brings God tremendous glory. If
you want an example, Job comes to mind, as one whose faith was tried and tested
severely, and found to be real.
God’s glory was automatic.
It’s that way with us. If,
when we are tried and tested, beaten upon and shaped we are found to be
genuine, that is the idea. That is
when God is glorified. Many metals
cannot undergo the stress of repeated heating, beating, and shaping as can
iron.
But Peter refers to a different metal here: gold. We know that gold is precious, but it’s
also pretty tough when you think about it. Not only can gold withstand tremendous heat, but with the
addition of heat, gold is actually purified. The pure gold has a higher tolerance for heat than many of
the inclusions that are burned off in the assaying process. But as tough as gold is, and as precious
as it might be, it perishes. Now
read verse 7 again: 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.
The tested genuineness of our faith is precious. Our faith is precious, to be sure; it
is a gift of God. Yet the tested
genuineness of faith glorifies Him.
And this testing process is never easy. I’m reminded again and again of the
simple principle of our existence for God’s glory alone. We exist for His purposes, and if God
should ordain our suffering for His glory’s sake, that is His prerogative and
we dare not presume upon His grace, crying foul if we have to suffer.
I like to stay in the passage as much as possible, but
let me quickly remind you: Did Job do anything wrong to earn God’s
discipline. No, but God was
glorified by his faith. What about
the blind man in John chapter nine?
John 9:2-3 And
his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that
he was born blind?" 3 Jesus
answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the
works of God might be displayed in him.”
And Christ was glorified in this man’s miraculous
healing. He was blind his whole
life up that point in order for God to be glorified in that moment. And the list goes on. This is a simple, perspective-aligning
and glorious truth: we exist for His glory alone.
And when our faith is tested and found to be truly
from Him, it will “result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of
Jesus Christ,” that is when He comes again. Our faith will prove that we belong to Him. Just like the coat that Pilgrim wore in
Pilgrim’s Progress that he was so
certain would immediately identify him as belong to the Lord, so we can know
that our tested faith identifies us as His own.
And don’t miss the context here. Peter is saying that grief amid trials
is necessary for our faith to be tested.
Not only trials, but trials that our tough enough to rip our hearts
out. Those are the trials that
reveal who we really are.
Spurgeon also wrote…
"It
would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an
affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his
hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his
arrangement of their weight and quantity.”
4.
The Practice of Faith (v.8)
8 Though you have not seen him, you love
him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy
that is inexpressible and filled with glory,
Probably none of them had
ever met Christ (“you have not seen Him”) yet that did not impact their love
for Him. Theirs was, like ours, a
relationship of faith.
Note the present tense use of
the verbs (“you love Him…you believe in Him”). This gives a sense of Christ’s being very much alive, though this was written some 30 years after the
cross. Further, a Christian’s walk
with Christ is a current, active relationship. We don’t only speak of Jesus in
the past tense, as He is as alive now as He ever has been.
There are three powerful
verbs that characterize the behavior of Peter’s audience and the practice of
their faith: love, believe and rejoice.
In practice, faith results in love for our Savior. When we are disciples of Christ, when
we know Him, we have an intimate relationship with Him. We have a deep-seated but obvious
affection for Him. If we do not,
then it’s because we don’t know Him.
We are consumed with His person and work, with love for Him and a desire
to be like Him.
Faith also results in belief
in Him. We trust that what He has
said is true. We trust that He is
now preparing a place for us in heaven and that He will return for us. He has promised that we will be united
to Him not only in spirit but even geographically at the marriage supper of the
Lamb. We believe that He will
never leave us or forsake us. We
believe that He will come again in glory and we will reign with Him for a
thousand years. These, and many,
many more are cause for our joy.
They were a source of hope and joy for the distressed readers of Peter’s
epistle.
Faith then, results in
rejoicing. If we love Christ and
if we believe in Him, the natural result is a rejoicing in His work of saving
us and our tremendous inheritance in Him that is to come. This joy is beyond explanation: it is “inexpressible and full of
glory.” A true belief and love
will not result in apathetic living, or weak singing of praise; it is cause for
joy and exuberant worship.
MacArthur observes the
humility in this statement on the part of Peter. He is contrasting Peter’s experience with the genuineness
and faithfulness that his readers are demonstrating. He is, in part, commending them for their faithfulness without
ever having seen Christ and living by tremendous faith in Him. Peter could not say the same
thing. After having walked with
Christ for three years, he denied Him three times before Christ’s
crucifixion. He may be saying, in
effect, “you’re farther along than I was; you believed Him without even having
seen Him. I lived with Him and
failed to really believe Him.” Of
course, we know what boldness, love and faith Peter demonstrated on Christ’s
behalf after the Holy Spirit came, but it is an interesting contrast here.
5.
The Product of
Faith (v. 9)
9 obtaining the
outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
The product of faith is
salvation. It is justification and
sanctification, but these are nothing without salvation.
Peter expresses here again
his unshakable confidence in the salvation of his readers based on their
faithfulness and the spiritual fruit being borne in their lives.
If our souls are saved, and
our inheritance in heaven is secure, shouldn’t that embolden us to live for
Christ?
CONCLUSION
Well, I fear that many of us
don’t care this morning. Yesterday
at our One28 staff meeting, I asked if the messages on 1 Peter had resulted in
any significant small group discussion, and the answer was honestly a bit
discouraging. None of the staff
indicated that you all had been impacted by these things or seemed interested
in talking through them in small group times, and it’s true for my small group,
too. It’s not discouraging in the
sense of my personal offense, that doesn’t matter; I’m going to preach this
series regardless. Rather, I think
that this is too far removed from our day-to-day experience for us to be able
to relate.
It might just be that we are
not thinking of our inheritance in Him.
Perhaps we are not living for Christ enough to make any waves in our
communities. Perhaps we are
perfectly contented filling up our minds and our hearts with cheap substitutes
rather than the real object of our hearts’ love. Perhaps our affections are greater for things of this world
than for him. To use Spurgeon’s
picture of the contrary currents, perhaps there are no contrary currents, and
what is on the surface is the same as what is beneath, and they are both
superficially chipper. We are
happy in the delights of this world on the outside, and that’s easy to show,
because neither is there any sorrow over sin and the evils of this world
beneath the surface.
We may not be desperate for
God to give us joy. We are not
dependent upon Him for our protection and our sustenance. We are self-sufficient and
content. A life of persecution and
discomfort exists in some other dimension from where we live. We are separated from this sort of
experience by time and space.
Let me just say this: I think
you should be very concerned if you cannot relate to the readers of Peter’s
letter on any level. If you cannot
relate in terms of their suffering and their persecution, we should all be able
to relate to them in terms of their joy and their undercurrent of happiness in
him though this world is evil.
Our faith needs testing so
that it may emerge from the test more precious than before.
1. Do you relate to Peter’s audience in any way? How?
2. In a world that hates Christ, how is it that so many
professing Christians lead comfortable lives?
3. What has been the dominant theme of your conversation
the last twenty-four hours?
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