Victory in Suffering
Notes
Transcript
Life has a way of surprising us. We tell ourselves to expect the unexpected. But when the unexpected comes, we don’t quite expect it. Of all the unexpected things, which one is coming next? One of the tougher pills to swallow in Christianity is that there is no promise of an easy life. But if we are not careful, we can begin believing that if we systematize our faith, that is do the right things in the right order, then life will go smoothly for us. But that is not what the New Testament teaches.
Peter returns to a theme that has been discussed throughout this letter: suffering. If there is anything we should understand in the book of 1 Peter, it is that Christians suffer. No one is exempt from it. The churches receiving this letter are facing some very hard times. They were driven from their homeland due to persecution and they still face it in the places they now live. While suffering is a reality for the church, there is a perspective that we should have toward it. This is the sixth or seventh time this subject has been addressed, yet every time Peter seeks to offer hope in the midst of suffering.
What I want us to see today is that followers of Christ can live with victory in suffering when they adopt these five attitudes.
Expect suffering as a Christian.
Expect suffering as a Christian.
As I said a moment ago, suffering is to be expected. Suffering is a part of living in a fallen world with broken people, broken systems, and broken communities. Christ does not call us to himself to automatically remove all suffering, but he is also in the process of making all things new. The devil doesn’t like it when we go after the things and the people he has wrapped his fingers around. He’s far more cunning than we would like to admit. Yet we are called to wage war against the darkness in an effort to bring light into a dark place. When we engage in true Christian ministry, suffering is a natural part of the Christian life.
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you;
We should not find it strange or odd when suffering comes upon us. And remember we are not talking about physical or mental ailments. The context is persecution at the hand of those who would try to halt our progress in building ministries that actually minister to our community. When we start making an impact, there are people who are not going to tolerate it. We must expect opposition.
But this fiery ordeal is for our testing Peter says. It is not a test of our salvation, by which if we fail the test the result is we discover that we are not saved. It is a testing of refinement. You do your best growing as a person under pressure, under stress, by going through stuff that is difficult or seemingly impossible. There are things about you, good qualities that you would not have if they were not refined by fire.
Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,
knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
What James is saying is that testing or trials are not to get you to doubt your salvation. It is a process of refinement by which you are made stronger and can endure more for longer periods of time. If you go back to chapter one of this letter, Peter tells his readers that the tested genuineness of their faith is more precious than gold, though tested by fire. Precious metals are heated until liquefied and all the impurities rise to the surface and can be swept away. What is left is a more pure form of the metal, thereby increasing its value. Our faith is even more valuable, but undergoes the same refining process so that we might shine more brilliantly. Gold that never goes through the fire will never reach its potential. The same is true of our faith. If we are not tested, we cannot grow in Christlikeness, so we must expect suffering as Christians.
Rejoice in your suffering.
Rejoice in your suffering.
It almost doesn’t seem to matter how long you are a Christian. Rejoicing in suffering doesn’t make a lot of sense. It sounds so counterintuitive. We associate rejoicing with happy feelings and joyous occasions. I can rejoice when someone gets the call that their cancer is in remission. I can rejoice when a new baby is born. I can rejoice when someone comes to faith in Jesus. I can rejoice when someone graduates High School. But rejoicing when someone or myself is going through something painful? How do we reconcile this in our minds?
but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation.
It isn’t that we praise God for someone’s cancer diagnosis. It isn’t that we praise God because a church member’s child drops out of High School. It is not that we praise God for tragedies that occur. We should properly mourn tragedies. The sharing in the sufferings of Christ refers in part to those things, but it more specifically relates to the activity of the church as it does missions work in its own backyard. The churches Peter is writing to were suffering at the hands of those who were insulting them, assaulting them, and standing in the way of their work. This might look like a group coming and overturning a table we set up in the community because they don’t want us offering to pray for people. It could be that someone doesn’t like the church helping a certain group so they come and vandalize our building. It could be that you are run off from a neighborhood because the people there don’t want your kind there. When we suffer for the sake of taking the gospel to the people, we should rejoice because it makes us more like our maker, our king.
When the apostles were brought before the high priest for a second time for preaching Christ in the temple, they could not be held for a crime. They were released, and 5:41 says they left the presence of the council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ. Rejoicing doesn’t mean we like it or look forward to it, but it does mean we have the same perspective, knowing that we are suffering like Christ would.
Suffer with integrity.
Suffer with integrity.
There is a qualifier here. Suffering that counts only does so if it is for the sake of righteousness. We have to be careful here. If we suffer for wrongdoing, that is our own fault and we deserve the punishment for it. But if we suffer for doing what is right by God, then we are suffering righteously.
Make sure that none of you suffers as a murderer, or thief, or evildoer, or a troublesome meddler;
It is not that this is an exhaustive list, but it seeks to draw a comparison. While we should obviously strive to not be guilty of such things, the point made here is that those who suffer for doing such things deserve the punishments they receive. A Christian is called to a life of excellence as we discussed in chapters two and three. It is not a life of perfection, but a life of blamelessness. We should strive to live in such a way that exemplifies Christlikeness, so no one can bring a charge against us, so that when we suffer for Christ’s sake, those who oppose us are put to shame.
If you have a bad reputation in town because you treat everyone else poorly, change the way you treat people. If nobody trusts you because you go around telling everybody somebody else’s business, you are gossip and you deserve not to be trusted. If you have a reputation of not being dependable, show up and do what you said you were going to do. But if you suffer because you sacrificially love others, serve others, and share the gospel with them, take heart. You are among good company. For the King of Kings is the model of such suffering, and know that it is producing further Christlikeness in you.
You are going to suffer, so be sure to suffer with integrity.
Glorify God in suffering.
Glorify God in suffering.
Assuming you are suffering for all the right reasons, then our rejoicing in suffering glorifies God.
but if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name.
Our suffering should not be a point of shame, but should glorify God. It is so counterintuitive to the way the world works, that when people actually rejoice in suffering they become extremely peculiar people. Our society expects people to look beat down as they endure suffering. We spend a lot of time and resources trying to alleviate suffering. But then when a group of people actually embrace it, they become weird. What does that look like?
When the underground church movement grows in spite of persecution on the other side of the globe, people notice. When a pastor is wrongly imprisoned but it doesn’t stop his devotion or his mission, God is glorified. When a group of Christians is executed at the hands of another religious extremist group yet that group continues to grow, it glorifies God. When the church building is burned down in protest but the people of the church erect a tent in its place, it glorifies God. When Paul had rocks thrown at him and was beaten and left for dead outside the city walls, got up, dusted himself off, went back in and finished his job, God got all the glory. When we choose to do the hard thing not because it is easy but because it is right, God gets all the glory. My dear brothers and sisters, may we choose to suffer for the glory of God. We will not demolish strongholds without getting our hands dirty.
Let our response to suffering be such that it points others to Christ, using our suffering to magnify His name.
The next two verses provide a sobering message:
For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?
And if it is with difficulty that the righteous is saved, what will become of the godless man and the sinner?
We are called to endure suffering. In fact, it is part of the plan. God has a way of redeeming the suffering we experience at the hands of those hostile to the gospel. That suffering acts as a refining fire that as we endure shapes us into the likeness of Christ. We are grateful that our sin has been eternally judged on the cross and we no longer face the eternal consequences for them. But God is a God who desires proximity with his children, and when the church wanders off track, he will use circumstances that are going to hurt to get them back on track.
Even the children of God face temporal judgment for their actions. This church has come far in the last four years, but we have not arrived. There is still work to be done. I look forward to the work he will have us do. But if God will discipline his own children for the sake of the relationship, how much more so will he judge those who are far from him? How much does that burden us?
God will allow us to suffer to draw us back to our intended purpose. The author of Hebrews writes,
It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
Take heart. he disciplines us because he loves us. But he disciplines us to refine us. And he disciplines us so that he might be glorified in us. Your suffering has a purpose.
Trust God in suffering.
Trust God in suffering.
When we use the word faith as we discuss our Christian convictions, we really mean trust. We trust in Christ. We trust that Christ told the truth. We trust that he is the Son of God, so much so that we anchor our hope on that belief. We trust that his death on a cross, his burial in a tomb, and his resurrection from the dead accomplishes that which he said it would, that we are pardoned from sin, adopted into the family of God, and will be victorious over sin and death itself just as he is. We must also trust God in our suffering. If we know that we should expect it and it is a part of living life as a Christian, we should also trust God has a plan for it.
Therefore, those also who suffer according to the will of God shall entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.
We trust God with our eternal souls. How many of you are as sure about what happens to you when you die as you are the sun will rise tomorrow? I always find it curious that we can trust God with eternity but we struggle to trust God with right now. Perhaps it is because in eternity we won’t suffer anymore. But right now we want to be comfortable. But I have come to find out comfort is the enemy of progress. When the church gets comfortable, the church dies. I think that all too often we want comfort more than we want God, and I ask him to break me of that all the time. There is something in me that longs for more than the status quo. I so desperately want to find tangible ways to minister to our community and I know that it is incumbent upon me as the leader to lead you in doing that work.
I am about halfway through training for a certification to lead Faith & Finance courses from the Chalmer’s center, an organization that in part seeks to help churches establish meaningful poverty alleviation ministries. I mentioned a book I read last year called When Helping Hurts. That’s where the book came from. I also mentioned I was going to put something together that I needed you to say yes to before you knew what it was. At the end of March, we will be doing a two-day seminar on the book. It will consist of six segments. We will do three Saturday morning to afternoon, and the other three on Sunday afternoon. I can’t stress how important it is for you to be there. We have work to do and it is my hope that through this we will build the framework for ministries that will truly reach our community. Faith & Finance will be a means to that end. What I have learned is God has given me a set of skills that I can use to build relationships with people over a tangible need so I can build bridges to the gospel. How has God equipped you?
