Forged in Fire

11:00 Service Only-Children’s Church Dismissal: Kids in Kindergarten through 3rd grade can go with Mrs. Aimee to Children’s Church. You kids are going to have some fun today! So be ready to learn more about Jesus and how much God loves you.

EP: Forged in Fire Sermon EP

Opening: As I begin this sermon time, I want to jump straight into the scripture for this morning. It can be found in 2 Corinthians 4 and we will start in verse 7. While we normally read from the CEB, the Common English Bible version, this morning, I will be reading all of our passages from the NIV, the New International Version.

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:7-12, 16-18 (NIV)

7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Opening Prayer: Holy God… Amen.

I will tell you that the hardest part of preparing a sermon, for me anyways, are the moments when you go back and forth, and even sit motionless just blankly looking at the computer screen trying to decide what to preach on. That is where prayer comes in. Over the last week and a half, I have prayed so many prayers asking God to reveal His plan for this sermon. There were many times that I thought I had the topic and the scripture all figured out and then things changed, and I could tell that God was leading me in a different direction. So I would stop and pray some more. But it wasn’t until Monday morning that it all came to me.

I had been praying about the events from the Saturday and Sunday before and reflecting on many of the stories that I had heard over the last week and I will tell you that I felt an uneasiness in my heart. That is when this passage from 2 Corinthians came to my mind once again. But the part of this passage that really grabbed ahold of me were verses 8 and 9 where Paul writes these words: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”

Those words, especially when Paul said “hard pressed on every side”, just seem to stick with me. I just could not shake them. As I said, knowing a lot of the stories and the personal struggles of many of you all and others in my life, I just felt as if everything was closing in, just pressing in, around all these wonderful people that I care so deeply for. My heart was overcome with a heaviness that I just can’t explain. That’s when I started to find myself praying not for a sermon topic, but for hope—a lasting hope that speaks even through our difficulties. And that is when the topic for today became clear. Hope. Each of us needs more hope in our lives. We all face difficulties that seem to rob us of our hope in the moment and if we are not careful, could rob us of our hope for the future.

So this morning want to explore this passage and this topic of hope by giving you more knowledge than you ever wanted to know about the world of blacksmithing. I promise that that if you take this tangent with me, I will bring it back to the topic of hope. So let’s begin. Blacksmithing is the process of moving metals, like wrought iron or steel, by forging the metal, using tools to hammer, bend, and cut. Forging is the process smiths use to shape metal by heating and hammering. Blacksmiths produce objects such as gates, grilles, railings, light fixtures, furniture, sculpture, tools, agricultural implements, decorative and religious items, cooking utensils and weapons. While there are many people who work with metal such as farriers, wheelwrights, and armorers, the blacksmith had a general knowledge of how to make and repair many things, from the most complex of weapons and armor to simple things like nails or lengths of chain.1 You might have seen this in a movie, or even during a visit to Silver Dollar City, where a blacksmith was pounding metal on an anvil to make something, right?

Now I will tell you, up to about 8 months ago, blacksmithing was not even on my radar. Then I had a conversation one day with Linda Smith in the main office and she asked me if I ever watched a show called Forged in Fire on the History Channel. I admitted that while I had seen some commercials, I has not seen the show. So I went home that night, found it on the DirecTV guide and scheduled it to record an episode. I will tell you that after watching that first episode, I was hooked. I was ready to build a forge in my garage and start making knives to sell on the interwebs. Lesli, being the voice of reason that she is, reminded me that I did not know the first thing about blacksmithing and metallurgy… and that I ran a good risk of burning the house down. And you know, she was right. So, for now, I have relegated myself to just watching the show.

The show, Forged in Fire, pits four blacksmiths against each other in three rounds of times competition. The first round is normally 3 hours long and, in that time frame, they have to produce a fully hardened blade (I will tell you that that means in a moment). Then they are judged by a panel of three judges and one person is eliminated. In the second round, they work on the fit and finish (put handles on their blades and sharpening them) before being tested in a series of often brutal tests that test the hardness and durability of their blade and the sharpness of their blade. From there the final two are tasked with making a weapon from history back at their home forges and then they come back to the show to have them tested. In this clip that I am about to show, the smiths were challenged in the first two rounds to make a blade out of reclaimed bike parts, like the chain and the sprockets. From there they were tested in ways that no normal knife would ever be tested… they were tested in a bicycle frame chop and an inner-tube slice. Let’s take a look:

Video: FIF-Bicycle Tests (History Channel; 1.50 min) – Add screen mask to EP then remove once video is done

I don’t know about you, but I have never had the desire to bang a knife against a bike frame before, but in this episode they did it to prove the hardness of the blade—how well it will take the punishment and stay true to form. For Tony, his blade edge took some chips and had a few rolls, but came back in the inner tube slice and performed perfectly. The knife did what the knife was supposed to do. But something he said in the off camera comments got me thinking. He said that if his grain structure was too big, his blade could break. You see part of forging process is to heat the blade so that it is malleable, so you can move it. When you heat the steel, the grain structure inside the blade increases allowing for that movement but it also make it more brittle when it cools. It is during this process that a smith will super heat the metal and then use a hammer or specialized tools to begin working the metal into the desired shape. On the show they begin by using the hydraulic press and the power hammer, called Big Blue, as you will see in this clip.

Video: FIF-Hydraulic Press (History Channel; .50 Min) – Add screen mask to EP then remove once video is done

They heat the metal to temp, use the press until it starts to cool, heat the metal to temp again, use the press again and repeat until they get their desire look. Then they heat the metal again, use the power hammer, heat the metal again, use the power hammer again, and repeat this process until they are ready for smaller metal movement and that is when they move to the personal hammer and the anvil to heat and hammer the metal until the final shape is present and ready for the heat-treat. The heat-treat is what makes the blade hard which should keep it from serious damage. The heat-treat happens when the smith heats the blade until it is glowing red, removes it from the forge and instantly “quenches”, or dips, the blade in oil thus cooling the blade quickly which draws the grain of the metal tight together. It is in that tightness that the blade becomes stronger, or hardened, as they say. The way to check if the blade is hardened is to run a file down the cutting edge and if it skates off the end it is hard. Then it is off to fit and finish and when the smith is done, they have a beautiful and yet functional blade.

So now the big question is why do I tell you all of this? Why go through all this information about the forging process? The first reason is that I think many times our lives can mimic the steel that a smith might use. We experience the stress of the heated moments of life. We feel the pressure closing in around us. We know the pain that comes with every blow we endure, and we wonder when it is all going to end. We hear those words of the Apostle Paul, “we are hard pressed on every side, perplexed, persecuted, struck-down” and are waiting for the buts to happen, “but not crushed, but not in despair, but not abandoned, but not destroyed.” As we find ourselves living in the hardships of life, it becomes so difficult to see past those moments to find any hope. The second reason that I tell you about blacksmithing is because I think there are some lessons we can learn from it – like a modern day parable. It will help us see that the hope that we cannot see in the moment is already there.

What Is Hope: I keep using that word, hope. Hope is a word that we use around the church a lot and the Bible talks a lot about hope and how, as followers of Christ, we are to be people of hope. Paul, the same guy who wrote our passage from 2 Corinthians, wrote this about living with hope in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 (NIV): Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of humanity, who have no hope.

He is talking about the very real pain of losing someone and how we are still to have hope through it. Isaiah 40:31 (NIV), my favorite passage in the whole of scripture says, this: but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

I love that image of renewed strength and soaring with the eagles, but it all starts with hope… hope in the Lord. Peter writes in 1 Peter 1:3 (NIV): Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,

Peter tells us that our hope, our living hope, comes from the very resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And there are many, many, more passages on hope and how and why we can be people of hope. But the question remains, what is hope?

Miriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines hope two ways: first, to cherish a desire with anticipation (to want something to happen or be true); and secondly, to expect with confidence (to trust). I love that – to trust. For us as followers of Christ we are to live in this trust – trust that God, as Paul writes in Romans 8:28 (NIV):

…works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Pastor and author Chuck Swindoll, in the preface of his book, Hope Again, writes these words: “Hope is a wonderful gift from God, a source of strength and courage in the face of life’s harshest trails.

• When we are trapped in a tunnel of misery, hope points to the light at the end of the tunnel.

• When we are overworked and exhausted, hope gives us a fresh energy.

• When we are discouraged, hope lifts our spirits.

• When we are tempted to quit, hope keeps us going.

• When we lose our way and confusion blurs the destination, hope dulls the edge of panic.

• When we struggle with a crippling disease or a lingering illness, hope helps us persevere beyond the pain.

• When we fear the worst, hope brings reminders that God is still in control.

• When we must endure the consequences of bad decisions, hope fuels our recovery.

• When we find ourselves unemployed, hope tells us we still have a future.

• When we are forced to sit back and wait, hope gives us the patience to trust.

• When we feel rejected and abandoned, hope reminds us we’re not alone …we’ll make it.

• When we say our final farewell to someone we love, hope in the life beyond gets us through grief.”

He goes on to say “Put simply, when life hurts and dreams fade, nothing helps like hope! Without it, prisoners of war languish and die. Without it, students get discouraged and drop out of school. Without it, athletic teams fall into a slump and continue to lose… fledgling writers, longing to be published, run out of determination… addicts return to their habits… marriage partners decide to divorce… inventors, artists, entrepreneurs, even preachers, lose their creativity.”4

You see church, hope isn’t merely a nice option that helps us when we feel like that steel being reduced in the hydraulic press or experiencing the rapid blows of the power hammer as the troubles of life overcome us, but, instead, hope is essential to our survival and for joy in the journey of life. Finding, and living in, hope is a significant key to the journey of life because it is a wonderful gift from God and it will become a source of strength and courage in the face of life’s severest trials. Hope will bring you joy when you think there is no joy! Hope will help you see the light in the darkness! I don’t know about you, but I need more of this hope in my life.

We Will Have Troubles: Because let’s face it, each of us either have, are currently or will encounter the pressing and the rapid blows of life. We like to think that as followers of Jesus, we are immune. But the reality is is that that is simply not the case. In fact, Jesus himself said in John 16:33b (NIV): “In this world you will have trouble.”

Just look at the life of Jesus. Here was God’s son, sent to save and redeem the world, who was beaten, crucified and died. Jesus knew what it was like to experience the pressing and hammering of life. He was not immune from hunger, sadness, anxiety, and pain. He knew our situation in a real and personal way, but through it all he had hope and it was that hope that carried him through. The entire chapter of John 16, Jesus is speaking of the pain and the loss and the confusion that is to come. Jesus says that tells them these things because he wanted his disciples, both then and now, to understand the reality of humanity and this is why he says that trouble is coming. But the part of the verse that I did not read says this (John 16:33-NIV): “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart (have hope)! I have overcome the world.”

But there was somethings else that Jesus knew about the troubles in this life. He knew that with each press or each hammer blow, we are becoming more refined. The truth is, going back to the forging metaphor we started with, if we allow the Master Blacksmith, God, to work in us when the troubles come, if we keep our trust in God, then the end product is stronger than when we first begun – we more able to withstand the things that life can throw at us. You see church, our hope becomes complete as God finishes the work in our lives. This is what Paul is talking about in Romans 5:3-5 (NIV): Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Nobody likes to endure suffering or pain or trials, but in the hands of the Master those very things can shape us into stronger and more resilient people ready to do what we were designed to do – live as people of hope ready to take at very same hope out into schools, our places of work, places we might volunteer, our neighborhoods and even share right here, to share hope with those “are hard pressed on every side, perplexed, persecuted, and struck-down” and remind them that they are “not crushed, not in despair, not abandoned, and not destroyed.”

Developing Hope: So the question then becomes, how? How do we develop this hope as we experience the troubles of life? How do we develop this hope as the fires, and the pressings and the hammerings of life come at us? Now, I know that this might sound simple, but I will tell you from personal experience that it is harder to do in the midst of the troubles of life than we think, but if we want to develop this hope then we have to change our focus – our gaze, where we are looking. We have to look past the pain of the moment. We have to look past the fire of forge, the pressing of hydraulic press and the blows from the power hammers that we find ourselves experiencing and put our trust, our hope, in the hands of the Master Smith.

This is exactly what Paul tells us in the last verse of our passage from 2 Corinthians, verse 18. He says: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen (the pain and the troubles of life), but on what is unseen (God), since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

King David knew this. David, the one who, scripture says, was a “Man after God’s Own Heart”, knew what it was like to hunted, to be in the heat of battle, to fear for his very life and yet in Psalm 121 (verse 1 and 2-NIV) he writes these words: I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, with the weight of the next few days pressing in on him – the trial, the whip, the crown of thorns, the cross that was to come – Jesus took a few of his disciples deep into the garden as we see in Matthew 26:38-39 (NIV), “Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.’”

And Jesus prayed the same prayer three time. You see, he knew the reality of what was to come, but, instead of focusing on the pain in the present, he chose to fix his eyes on God to get him though. And that is what we have to do – look to God and when we do we realize that that hope that we have been missing and searching for has been there all along.

Closing: I have been reading a daily devotional entitled, Soul Fuel, by Bear Grylls – you know the action adventure guy that has numerous shows where he teaches everybody from random every-day people to celebrities how to survive in the wilderness in sub-arctic temperatures with only a knife and a match and dental floss, that guy – well he wrote a devotional and Friday as I sat down at my desk to continue working on this sermon, I grabbed the book and turned page to begin a new section. Guess what the new section was called… HOPE. So I had to read, and I thought the story that he shared would be a great way to end this message. He writes this:

“In the summer of 1996, I spent a month helping out on a game farm in the northern Transvaal in South Africa, advising on how to keep poachers at bay. I decided to head north to Zimbabwe for some fun before heading home to the UK. For me back then, fun meant skydiving with good friends, with cool drinks in the evening.

Life was all good.

The flight to fifteen thousand feet was uneventful. Soon I stood in the cargo area of the plane and looked down. I took a familiar deep breath, then slid off the step. The clouds felt damp on my face as I fell through them. How I loved that feeling of falling through whiteout. At four thousand feet, I pulled the ripcord and heard the canopy open with a reassuring crack. My 130-mph free fall quickly slowed down to 25 mph, just as it always did.

But when I looked up I realized something was wrong – very wrong. Instead of a smooth rectangular shape above me, I had a very deformed-looking tangle of chute, which meant the whole parachute would be a nightmare to try to control. I pulled hard on both steering toggles to see if that would help me.

It didn’t.

I kept trying to control it, but I was burning through time and altitude fast. It wasn’t getting any better. Within seconds I was too low to use my reserve chute, and the ground was coming up fast. I flared the chute too high and too hard. This jerked my body up horizontally, then I dropped away and smashed into the desert floor, landing on my back, right on top of the tightly packed reserve chute that formed a rock-hard square shape in the middle of the pack.

I couldn't stand up; I could only roll over and moan on the dusty earth. I was biting the ground in agony.

I didn't know the extent of the damage at the time, that I had shattered three key vertebrae in my back and would go on to spend months in and out of military rehabilitation back in the UK, strapped into braces and unable to move freely. But in those first few minutes as I lay there, one thing I did know was that my life had just changed forever.

Sometimes it isn't until we get knocked down that we find which way is up. Sometimes it isn't until the sky clouds over that we notice the light. And sometimes it isn't until we lie in the gutter that we begin to see the stars.”

Church, the reality is is that in this life we will have trouble. We will feel the intense heat of the trials that we face. We will feel the weight of the world pressing down on us. We will feel hammered by the pain we experience. We know what it is like to be forged in fire. “But”, as Jesus said, “take heart (have hope)! I have overcome the world.”

Bear Grylls ends his story with these words: “The light of God has been the greatest source of hope this world has ever known. We can never be so far away that the light won't reach us. Sometimes it is good to be reminded of that. Hope will always win and the light of Christ reaches everywhere.”6

Let us pray.

Closing Prayer: Holy God

Lord’s Prayer (11:00 service only): Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.