Stand Firm During Seasons of Suffering

Introduction

Tonight obviously looks a little different than a normal Sunday evening worship time but I didn’t want to not have some type of lesson tonight. Suffering is something that humans have faced for thousands of years and it is something that we are undoubtedly familiar with in our lives today. It seems as though we’ve witnessed an uptick in suffering in some respects in recent years and days, though. Thinking specifically about my immediate family, friends and you all, my church family, it just seems like so many are suffering with something. Some are struggling with a health diagnosis. Others are struggling with the loss of a loved one. Many are struggling with just being sick. Some have lost a job. Many have lost a relationship. Suffering seems to be abounding and in talking with many of you in small groups or one-on-one, it seems like this is taking a toll on us because I know it is on me as well. Because of this, I prayed and prayed about what God wanted tonight to look like. Yes, our youth are having an amazing outreach time, but I prayed about what God wanted us to study and the theme of perseverance kept coming up. So, here’s what we’re going to do, and I realize that some of you aren’t going to be following along with this lesson until later in the week and that’s completely fine! But for those of you who are with us tonight, we’re going to do what we always do at FBC Salem and we’re going to look to Scripture to guide us, encourage us, convict us, and challenge us to walk through difficult seasons of life, like the season of suffering, and do so with our eyes fixed on Jesus. We’ll be in 1 Peter 5:6-11 to unpack this truth if you begin to make your way there in your copy of God’s Word - if not, you can follow along the screen here in the back.

1 Peter 5:6–11 CSB

6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, 7 casting all your cares on him, because he cares about you. 8 Be sober-minded, be alert. Your adversary the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour. 9 Resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same kind of sufferings are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world. 10 The God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, strengthen, and support you after you have suffered a little while. 11 To him be dominion forever. Amen.

We Stand Firm with Humility (6-9)

We’ve been studying the book of James during our Sunday night worship services as James has taught us a bunch about what it looks like to live a life of faith in Jesus Christ. James has reminded us in passages like James 1:5 that we don’t always know what is right and there are times where we need Godly wisdom. James 1:19 reminds us that we need to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. James 1:22 reminded us that we must do something with God’s Word and not simply listen to it. Last Sunday evening I was convicted, I’m not sure about you, but I know that I was convicted by James 2:1-13 and the failure of favoritism and showing preference to the people that look and act like us and not those who don’t. James has taught us in these opening 40 verses that we don’t quite have it all figured out, even though we think we should. We think that we know more than we really do as human beings, and our lives as Christians are no different. We look around our world and we see evil going on and we see people celebrating evil and condemning what is Godly. We see sin being platformed and Scripture being persecuted. We see Christians suffering while other people who are enemies of the cross of Jesus Christ seem to not experience that suffering and we simply wonder: WHY?

Have you been there before? Maybe you’re there now! Maybe tonight you’re one of those people who are suffering mightily and you’re at the end of your rope because you can’t see what God is doing and maybe you even feel abandoned by Him in your suffering. Friend, if this is you, I believe that our text this evening is the text that you need to meditate on in your pit. 1 Peter 5:6-7

1 Peter 5:6–7 CSB

6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, 7 casting all your cares on him, because he cares about you.

Some people don’t fully know what to do with this passage of Scripture because they view suffering in a negative lens each and every time. No one would jump up and say that they enjoy suffering, that’s insane, but the more that we grow in our understanding of Scripture, the more that we have to walk away understanding that God has a purpose for us with suffering. We don’t need to be surprised whenever hard times come. We don’t need to be surprised whenever the world promotes sin and condemns Scripture. We don’t need to be surprised whenever we find ourselves under attack. Look at what 1 Peter 4:12 tells us

1 Peter 4:12 CSB

12 Dear friends, don’t be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you, as if something unusual were happening to you.

Suffering will happen to Christians! What should we do whenever we do suffer? What do we do whenever life knocks us down or whenever anxiety strikes or whenever someone mocks us for our faith or whenever we don’t know where to turn for help? We humble ourselves and we cast our cares on our caring Savior.

There are things in this life that we will face and not be able to handle ourselves. In places like China and the Middle East, there are millions of believers who live each day under the threat of persecution and life and death suffering for their lives. It is estimated that over 200 million Christians live under this constant threat every single day. Persecution by form of prison time, murder, torture, economic exclusion, and many other forms of persecution. A few years ago there was a pastor visiting an underground church in China and the preacher of the congregation was preaching a relatively straightforward message as far as the American could tell since he didn’t understand Mandarin very well… but there wasn’t anything that really stood out. After the sermon the American asked his friend if the pastor was a good preacher. The Chinese man immediately said that the preacher was phenomenal, not because he was a great speaker or anything like that… but because he had spent many years in prison for Jesus Christ. This man humbled himself and followed Jesus even though it meant going to prison for his faith and for this congregation in China, that meant that he was a great pastor who lived faithfully in the fire of suffering.

The suffering and persecution being talked about in 1 Peter isn’t like the suffering in China. There likely weren’t Christians being killed for their faith at this point in time in this region. There weren’t Christians losing their lives so much as there were Christians losing out in their society. See, that’s like the persecution that we face often times. We can’t do certain things as Christians because they go against God’s Word. We can’t say certain things because they definitely go against God’s Word. We get picked on on social media platforms because we stand on God’s Word. We experience suffering for our faith and that causes problems in our lives and to this point, Peter shares to humble ourselves and lay our concerns and anxieties and cares at the foot of the cross because Jesus cares for us.

As we humble ourselves and trust in the Lord to provide for us, Peter tells us that we must be alert because we have an enemy who wants to get us to give into sinful temptation. If you are saved, Satan cannot unsave you. He has limited power in the first place as we see in Job 1, but if you’re a Christian, that power is even less! A demon cannot indwell you as you are saved and sealed with the Holy Spirit! So, if Satan can’t capture your soul, what will he attempt to do? He will attempt to isolate you and ruin your witness so that you don’t tell others about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He will try to get you and I to give into sin. He will lie to us about our standing before God. He will oppose God’s will and God’s people. We look around our world and we see a godless society growing more and more hostile to Scripture and the things of God and we wonder why! The answer is because of sin, sure, and we know that the enemy loves to get more and more people swept away by the things that sin promises but never delivers on.

We look on social media and we see sin being celebrated. We see kids struggling with sexual identity in grade school and we are being told to celebrate that because its normal. We look on television and we are bombarded by things that are worldly and these things are truly devouring people to our left and right. What is our hope to stand firm in a world that is being swept away? Look at 1 Peter 5:9

1 Peter 5:9 CSB

9 Resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same kind of sufferings are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world.

Do you want to know how to resist the devil? It’s counterintuitive, I know, but if you really want to walk the walk and succeed in the battle of the mind, we have to realize something. We can’t do this by ourselves. If we’re fighting a one versus one fight, ourselves versus the things of this world, we will lose every single time because of our fallen sinful nature that does the things that we shouldn’t do as Paul shares in Romans 7:14-25. How do we stand firm? By humbling ourselves and remembering how small we really are and how desperately we need God’s presence, power, and protection! God is stronger than our enemy. God’s grace sustains us in our times of weakness and suffering. To borrow from Spurgeon, When the waves of suffering are crashing upon us at their peak, all they do is throw us upon the rock of Ages. Our suffering as a Christian pushes us to Jesus. He strengthens us as we trust in Him and as we hold fast to our faith in Him. This requires us to stay humble and trust that God will fight the battle as we trust in Him and that He has already won the war.

We Stand Firm with Stability (10-11)

The entire book of 1 Peter is about the idea that we are exiles in this world. God’s people have historically been a wandering people. Abraham wandered. Moses and the Israelites wandered. Even after the Israelites got into the promised land, they were sent into exile because they failed to worship and trust in God alone. We look around our world today and we know that this sinful, fallen world isn’t our home… we’re just wandering through. What do we crave? Stability. Roots. Protection. Hope. Shelter. Where can we find those things? In God alone according to 1 Peter 5:10. See, all this world can do is kill us. That’s quite the pill to swallow there… but think this through with me. We are created for eternity. As believers, we know that we are in Christ and that the end is written. He has saved, sealed, and secured our salvation once and for all. We obey and follow Him daily, and as we suffer in this thing called life, what is the worst that can happen to us? He can only do what he is permitted to do as the book of Job illustrates. Look at 1 Peter 4:19

1 Peter 4:19 CSB

19 So then, let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust themselves to a faithful Creator while doing what is good.

Friend who is struggling tonight, this is God’s call for you. Trust in Him. Do what is good. Understand that God is doing a billion different things in your life right now and that you and I are aware of maybe 3 of them. Trust that He is working all things for His glory and your good. How do we square that up with suffering? Think about what a fire does. A fire consumes things and as it consumes, it leaves things looking different when its done. One French Christian put it like this, “Suffering can bend and break us. But it can also break us open to become the persons God intended us to be. It depends on what we do with the pain. If we offer it back to God, He will use it to do great things in and through us, because suffering is fertile ground where new life can grow.” Look with me at 1 Peter 5:10. If you’re a Christian, if you have been saved by grace through faith in Christ, if you have been born again, this is a promise for you! God has called you to His glory. Full stop here: If God has called you to His eternal glory… He’s going to get you to His eternal glory! Yes, we’re going to suffer as this verse tells us, but God promises to restore, establish, strengthen, and support us along the way.

How do we stand firm in our suffering? By trusting in the promises of Scripture that suffering doesn’t exist outside of the hand and will of our God. That’s hard to understand, friends, but it’s Scripture. Once you’re in Christ, you’re in Christ. This doesn’t mean that you get a “get out of suffering free” card to play when life gets hard… but it does mean that you get a snake crushing savior to come to your aid whenever the snake gets too close. He’s with you. He is for you. He will use all the negative things in this world to bring about something good even when it seems like nothing good could possibly come out of our current situation. That’s how good and powerful our God is. That’s what our text concludes with - our God has this dominion. He has absolute power. If He has saved you, He has sealed you. He’s got you.

Where is the Hope in Suffering?

Suffering is Not Eternal

Suffering is a direct result of sin and we know that sin has been defeated by the sinless sacrifice of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This means that one day suffering will be no more. It doesn’t get the last laugh. Even if suffering seems to be winning the day, Christ has won the war. Suffering can hurt us, it can even kill us, but it cannot devour us if we are in Christ today. It is not an eternal threat and this has to give us hope today. In the darkness of the night, there is a light.

God is with you in your Suffering

While we are in the darkness, we know as Christians that the light of the world is with us. We’re not alone in our suffering because the good shepherd of Psalm 23 promises to walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death. He promises to never leave nor forsake us. He promises to be there for us to cast our cares to. He not only created us, but He sustains us. This means that He’s still good and trustworthy whenever our circumstances try to tell us the opposite. He’s with us and He will use the suffering that we face to do something good.

Suffering has a Purpose

This is hard to see in the moment - if not impossible… but it’s true. Your suffering has a purpose in one of several ways: 1) God will use your suffering to sanctify you, meaning to get you to look more like Jesus who also suffered. 2) God will use your suffering to get you to trust more and more in Him and His power and not in your own. 3) God will use your suffering to help someone else in their suffering down the line. 4) God will use your suffering to demonstrate His power as you shine a light into the darkness around you. Either which way, your suffering is not purposeless. This might not make it go away, but it does help give you hope in the middle of your struggle to know that God is working something good out of something seemingly bad

You have a High Priest Who Suffered too

This is the big one. Whatever we go through, Jesus has a trump card when it comes to suffering. The greatest injustice in the history of the world was whenever the sinless Creator died for sinful creation. He suffered deeper than we ever will, yet we read in Hebrews 4 that because of Jesus’ sacrifice and suffering, He can sympathize with us in our suffering too. In your pit, Jesus knows what you’re going through. He hears you when you cry out. He will answer you in 1 of 3 ways (Yes, No, or Not Yet) and He will heal you of your suffering in 1 of 3 ways. He will perform a miracle and heal you of your suffering immediately. He will heal you over time possibly through common grace like medicine or relationships being mended… Or, we know this for sure, He will heal you in eternity to come as there will be no more suffering. Either way, friend, we win. We can stand firm in seasons of suffering not because of our own strength or power… but because of His calling and power in our lives. Because of His grace. Humble yourself. Trust in Jesus. Cast your cares on Him. Stand on your faith, not your feelings. Rejoice in knowing that Christ has saved you and will strengthen you.