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Pastor Skip Heitzig guides us through First and Second Peter in the series Rock Solid.
Would you do me a favor, please? Would you stand to your feet and just do something a little bit different for the
reading of God's Word just to show God that he's
in your presence and we honor him. We're going to
read First Peter chapter 1 verses 1 through 7. And I'm just going
to read it and you can just read along as
I read it to you. Peter, an apostle
of Jesus Christ, To the pilgrims of
the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect
according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification
of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood
of Jesus Christ: Grace to you and
peace be multiplied. Blessed be the God the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his
abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to
an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade
away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by
the power of God through faith for salvation ready to
be revealed in the last time. 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. Let's pray together. O
Father, it just does my heart so much good to
read what Peter said about what is ours coming in
the future, and what your plan is for us now
and then, and how that truth can be so transforming in
our present difficulty, our present trial. I pray you would
speak to us. I pray that your Word would have
its maximum impact in our lives, in Jesus' name, amen.
Please have a seat. Like most of you I live
my life by certain routines, things that I do on
Monday, things that I do on Tuesday. And I keep
schedules like you do. And there's predictable events that happen
like in your life. But every now and then life
sort of hits you by surprise. It comes crashing down
on you. You don't expect things to happen that happen.
You are going a direction, your day is planned out, but you
get a phone call from a doctor or a friend.
The news is not good, the prognosis is not good,
and you didn't see it coming. Max Lucado
uses those words in opening up a story in one
of his fine books about a parakeet named Chippie. "Chippie
the parakeet never saw it coming," he writes. "On one
second he's peacefully perched in his cage. The next he's
sucked in, washed up, and blown over. The problems began
when Chippie's owner decided to clean Chippie's cage with a
vacuum cleaner. [laughter] She removed the attachment from the end
of the hose and stuck it in the cage.
"Then the phone rang, and she turned to pick it
up. She barely said 'hello' when ssssssopp! Chippie got sucked
in. The bird owner gasped, put down the phone, turned
off the vacuum, and opened the bag. There was Chippie---still
alive, but stunned. Since the bird was covered with dust
and soot, she grabbed him and raced to the bathroom,
and turned on the faucet, and held Chippie under running
water. "And then, realizing that Chippie was
soaked and shivering, she did what any compassionate bird owner
would do---she reached for the hair dryer and blasted the pet
with hot air. Poor Chippie never knew what hit him.
A few days after the trauma, the reporter who'd initially
written about the event contacted Chippie's owner to see how
the bird was recovering. 'Well,' she replied, 'Chippie doesn't sing
much anymore, he just sits there and stares.' " [laughter]
What a description---"sucked in, washed up, and blown over." That
describes how events hit our lives and transform us when
they do. There's two words in verse 6---and verse 6 and 7 is what we're going to
look at today, First Peter, chapter 1. There's two words
in verse 6 that just don't seem to fit together---the word "rejoice" and
the word "trials." They're in the same sentence. Rejoice? Trials?
Is that even possible? Should those words even be together? I mean, there
are certain words that just---when you see them together, they
go, "Uuuuhh." They don't fit. "Airline food" is an example. [laughter]
It's never worked for me. It's disputable as to whether it
really is food or not. Of course, you could say
that with hospital food, I think, as well. "Political science" are
two words that don't fit. "Pretty ugly"---"Microsoft Works"---and there are
several other examples. [laughter] But rejoice and
trials? No, no, no. We rejoice when the trials are
over. We get happy if we can avoid our trials.
But the fact that Peter would write about these two
ideas in the same breath, these two life experiences in
the same sentence shows us it is possible in the
midst of great suffering to have great joy. There's a
couple of giveaway words that you need to notice in
verse 6. Look how he begins the sentence:
"In this you greatly rejoice." Of course, the question is: In what? And this
is where you need to have been here for the
previous studies to understand what "this" is all about. It's
what he has written about in previous verses. "In this
you greatly rejoice." And, if you recall, last week we noticed
that God has the power to save you, the power
to secure you, and the power to send you to heaven.
So, as you look around, you can't rejoice much in
what you see in your trials, but if you look
ahead, you can. Now, we want to examine
your favorite subject this morning---trials. We hate trials, but we
also love them. We love them because of what they
produce. We don't love it when we're going through them,
but we love it when it's all over, the pain
stops, and we've learned lessons from it. So, the name
of my message is "Why We Hate Trials (And Why
We Love Them)." I'm going to give you five reasons,
five characteristics of trials beginning in verse 6.
Characteristic number one: trials are diverse. Look at it with me,
verse 6. "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for
a little while, if need be, you have been grieved
by various trials." If you have an old King James, it says
"manifold trials." Did you know that the word actually means:
many colored, variegated, many colored, manifold, various colors.
As many colors as are on a Pantone chart of colors---which
are, by the way, 1,114, because I checked. [laughter] As
many as colors as you have on that chart are
kinds of suffering, kind of trials that you can experience.
Have you discovered that trials come in all shades, in
all hues? Some are small, some are big, some are
short, some are very long. And Peter just sort of
sums all that up by saying, "In this you greatly
rejoice, though now for a while, if need be, you
have been grieved by various trials." Because
of what I do, I speak to people every single
week, almost every single day about some trial that they face---death
of a loved one, loss of a job, emotional heartache,
depression. It's what we do. It's part of what we
do. And as I was in the earlier years of
my ministry, I decided to keep a little journal of
trials. I mean, I just said I'm going to do
one week's worth of stuff that I am dealing with and encountering just to kind of
get an understanding, a handle on that volume.
And so I wrote a few things down that happened
in a one-week period of time a few years ago and
I kept that in a journal. First of all, it was a
Saturday evening phone call, a chaplain of a local hospital
called me to come down to the emergency room. There
was a couple from our church that was there with
their baby. By the time I got down there the
baby had died, and there was a mother holding that
little infant in her arms. She didn't see it coming,
none of us saw it coming, but it was this huge weight
and heartache. During the same week I got
a phone call that somebody in my own family had
died. During that same week I was informed and got
involved in a counseling session for a child who had
been molested by a family member. During that same week
I spoke to Christian parents whose daughter was arrested on
*** charges. During that same week I got a letter
from missionaries I had just been with in the Philippines.
They were burning houses around their house; they're lives were
threatened. During that same week a couple
in our church was going through a divorce who had
been married twenty years. During that same week a Christian
woman in our fellowship was in a serious automobile accident
and was in the hospital in stable and recovering condition.
Trials don't come in one shade; they come in a
variety of colors. Pain wears many faces.
I suppose if we were going to categorize the various
trials, we would say there are physical trials, there are
mental or emotional trials, and there are spiritual trials. The
Bible speaks about all three. First of all, there are
physical trials. We know the reality of cancer, strokes, heart
attacks, birth defects, automobile accidents. In the Bible people suffered. Job suffered;
he had a deteriorating, debilitating, long-term skin condition.
In the New Testament the great apostle Paul had what
he called a "thorn in the flesh." Most scholars believe
it to be a lingering eye disease. There was Simon
who was a ***. There are chapters written about diseases
and physical conditions that affect God's people. So, there are
physical trials. Then there are emotional trials. One
of the reasons we love the book of Psalms so
much is we think, "That is in the Bible? This
dude suffered like that? Boy, I felt that same emotional
trauma before." On one occasion David even said, "I make
my own bed to swim in my own tears." That's
an emotional trauma. Elijah the prophet, besides
being a dynamic spokesperson for God, experienced both exhaustion and depression. And
when he ran away down towards Sinai, he eventually cried
out to God and said, "It is enough, Lord! Take
away my life." So absolutely distraught that he wanted to
die. That's an emotional trial. I think that
dedicated believers are susceptible to this. I think if you
have a dedicated believer, somebody who has nose-to-the-grindstone kind of a
work ethic, and just pushes it and pushes it, they
can get exhausted. And when you are physically exhausted, you
open yourself up to all sorts of issues, including depression.
The great missionary to India, E. Stanley Jones spoke of
a minister who was preparing a ten-part series called How
to Avoid a Nervous Breakdown. Before he finished the series,
you know what happened? He got one. He had a
nervous breakdown. A minister of the gospel pushing it, pushing it, pushing it---nervous
breakdown. Then there are spiritual trials. We often
don't think about those, but they are very real. That's
when we struggle over our own sin, our own guilt, where
we wrestle with doubts about God, when we wrestle with
expectations we may have of God, spiritual expectations that are
unrealistic expectations, and we feel let down when they're not realized.
John the Baptist, I think, was going through a spiritual
trial when he was in prison. And he believed in
Jesus, and he thought that Jesus was the Messiah, but
Jesus wasn't making things happen like he thought they should
happen. So he sends a messenger to Jesus, and here's
the question: "Are you really the One, or should we
look for somebody else?" Those are spiritual doubts, those are
spiritual expectations that weren't met, and those were trials. So,
trials are diverse. There are various trials. The second characteristic, and
probably the reason we hate trials the most is because
trials cause grief. Notice the wording in the text: "In
this you greatly rejoice, though now for a while, if
need be, you have been grieved." A better translation would
be "distressed"; "made heavy" is the idea.
It's like you're walking around life carrying you, your load,
your burden, and somebody puts something on you, or something
comes upon you and it's unbearable. It's weighing you down.
It's crushing you. You are grieved by it. And when things happen to
you, it grieves you. You gotta know something---grief is a normal
and healthy human expression. Anybody that tells
you, "Well, if you're a Christian, you ought to put
on a fake smile and march through life with a
brave face so that you look more spiritual," they don't
know what they're talking about. You're only making the trial
worse. The best thing to do is to be honest
and say what the Bible says, "I'm grieved."
Jeremiah the prophet said, "Why is my pain unending and
my wound grievous and incurable?" Even Solomon said, "There's a
time to laugh and there is a time to weep, mourn, grieve."
In ancient times the Hebrews when they would lose somebody
in their family or a loved one, they would have
a public period of grief that lasted thirty days.
In other words, society expected you for a month to
show emotional grief. They gave you a month break. It doesn't mean you get a month off,
but it means you can publicly grieve with the wearing
of sackcloth, ashes, the ripping of the garments. It was
a public display of grief, thirty days. The Egyptians did
it for seventy days. I had a
friend visit me from another country, and he said, "You know,
of all the things I notice in the difference between
where I live and America, is you Americans are, like,
really low on the emotional scale. I mean, it's like
at a funeral it's like the weirdest and softest, goriest
music and everybody's just, like, really quiet." He goes, "In
the country that I live in, we give full vent
to our grief and our emotions when somebody dies. There's
a wail that takes place." So, trials cause grief.
Here's the third characteristic. This is going to take you
a little bit off guard: trials can be helpful, they
can be helpful. They can be so good for you.
I know, I sound like your mom, right? "Take this
medicine. It really, really tastes bad, but it's good for
you." Sort of like that. Look at what text says,
"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a while"---look at
this phrase---"if need be." Have you ever thought about this?
Do you think Peter is actually saying that there times when
God knows you need a trial? Is that what he's saying? Uh-huh, that's
exactly what he's saying. Listen to Philip Yancey who writes a lot about suffering.
He said, "If you pinned them against the wall in
the dark, in a secret moment, many Christians would probably
admit that pain was God's one mistake. He really should have worked
a little harder and invented a much better way of
coping with the world's dangers." But Peter
by that little phrase "if need be" is indicating that
there are special times when God knows we need trials, that
they can, in fact, be the will of God. Now,
that is contrary to a modern faith theology that says
"it's never God's will for you to suffer." They have
never read the book of Peter very well if they
say that. Peter writes a lot about suffering,
but more specifically, suffering according to the will of God.
Here's two examples: First Peter chapter 3 verse 17, "For
it is better, if in the will of God, to
suffer for doing good then for doing evil." Chapter 4,
verse 19, "Let those who suffer according to the will
of God commit their souls to him in doing good."
When we suffer, we have no idea what need in
our life is being met by a sovereign God.
And you need to know something, Christian, God is in
control. He is in control. He's got you covered. He
has this wired. He's been doing this a long time
before you and I ever got around here. He is
in control. He knows what he's about. A need is
being met. You're going, "Need? What need could I possibly
have that suffering would help?" Well, let me answer that for you, it's
quite simple actually: trials correct us---a course correction.
If you're a parent, you understand, you get this. Your
kids start growing up and exerting their own private will.
They don't want to do what you want them to
do. And if they get really hardened and really recalcitrant,
if you're a good parent, at some point in their life you're going
to spank that child. And if you don't spank that
child, we need to spank you, perhaps. [laughter] Because you
need to correct the course of that child. You don't
want to break the spirit, but you definitely want to
change the will, and that comes through a course correction.
Give that child a "trial." David said in
Psalm 119, "Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but
now I keep your word." There it is; he said it.
"Before I was afflicted, before I got spanked by you, God,
I went astray, but now I keep your word." Trials correct us.
C. S. Lewis eloquently said it this way: "Pain plants
the flag of truth in the fortress of a rebel
soul." So that's why it's needful, it correct us. Here's
something else it does---it humbles us. I tell you, pain does something
to just sort of get us right back down to
the ground. Even Paul the apostle was humbled by a
trial. In Second Corinthians, chapter 12, Paul indicates that he
had so many revelations from God that God needed to
keep him humble. Now just listen to this: according to
the Scripture, Paul had four personal revelations from God. God
spoke to Paul. I don't mean he
had a pizza late at night and he woke up
the next day thinking, "I think God's speaking to me." No, no. God
spoke to him. On one occasion he was taken to heaven, the third heaven,
and it was just so amazing he said, "It was
just so cool I can't even tell you how cool it
was." And I've always hated that verse of Scripture, it's,
like, "Come on. What's it like?" "Ah, I can't even
tell you, it was just so great."
But this is what he does say, "Lest I should
be exalted above measure, a thorn in the flesh, a
messenger of Satan was given to me to torment me.
For three times I asked the Lord to remove it, and
he said, 'My grace is sufficient for you, my power
is made perfect in weakness.' "It humbled him. Well, I
guess God talking to you could puff you up. I mean, you're having
lunch with a guy at Flying Star, and you take
a bite of your sandwich or your salad or your
ice cream or whatever it is---"Oh, by the way, God
has been speaking to me and I got taken to
heaven the other day." "Really?" Humble by trial. They
correct us. They humble us. Number three, they strengthen us.
When James writes about trials, he said, "The testing of
your faith produces patience." Now that's pretty needful, isn't it?
Any of you struggle with patience issues? Yeah, your prayer's sort of
like, "God give me patience---now!" Yeah, you have an issue
with patience then. [laughter] Well, you know what gives you patience?
You know what gives that kind of softening of the
character? Storms. Trials. Hardship. They're also needful
because they equip us. They equip us to deal with
other sufferers. You are never equipped to comfort a suffering
person until you become a suffering person. That's why support
groups are so big and they work, is because you
get people struggling with the same issues together, sharing their
secrets how they deal with stuff---that's powerful. Second
Corinthians 1, "The God of all comfort comforts us in
all of our troubles, so that we can be a
comfort to those who are any trouble, with the comfort
we have received from God." So bare minimum---we go through trials so that
we can help people who will go through very similar
experiences later on. And you can say, "Let me tell
you how to get through this and to do it
right," because you've been there. A. B. Simpson
wrote, "You will not have any test of faith that
will not fit you to be a blessing. I never
had a trial but when I got out of the
deep river I found some poor pilgrim on the bank that
I was able to help by that very experience." So,
trials are diverse. Trials cause grief. Trials can be needful.
That's why we should love them, because we need them. Number four,
trials reveal faith. Trials reveal faith. Let me be more direct---they
reveal what kind of faith you have. Verses 7,
"That the genuineness"---mark that word---"of your faith, being more precious
than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire."
You know how a jeweler could always tell if the gold
that was brought to him was real or fake? You know how he could tell?
Put it in the fire, heat it up. You heat it
up to the right smelting temperature in a smelting furnace, and
you can tell if it's fake, or if it's real,
or how pure that gold is. You know how
you can tell what your faith is like? Heat it up. Put it
in the fire. See what kind of purity or impurity exists
in that person's faith. A faith that cannot be tested
is a faith that cannot be trusted. So God tests it. Tests it
to strengthen us, but also to reveal to us what
kind of faith we have. If you recall, Jesus gave a
parable, a story about different kinds of people who listened four
different ways to him. Not everybody listens to sermons or
truth the same way. Jesus said, "Some
of that seed that was sown fell upon stony places, where
it did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang
up because they had no depth of earth. But when
the sun was up they were scorched, and because they
had no root they withered away." So that sun coming
out, that scorching, that trial, that turning up the heat
reveals what kind of faith we have, where we might
be lacking. I've watched people go through
fiery trials and they just get wiped out. It just
totally consumes them. It's irrecoverable. It's like it wastes them
for their whole life. I've even walked into somebody's office,
I was so stunned by the plaque, I wrote the words down. The
plaque says, "I'm going to have a nervous breakdown." Period.
"I've earned it, I deserve it, I've worked hard for
it, and no one is going to keep me from
having it." [laughter] So there you go. "Just want to
announce to you things are going to get really bad
when I go through this fiery trial."
But I've watched other people go through fiery trials---same heat,
same experience, they feel it just as much. Christian or
not, they feel that pain, but they seem to improve because of it. They seem at
the other end to get purer because of it. So don't
look at trials as a personal attack on you. God's after your faith, not you. He's trying
to stretch and strengthen and firm up your faith. So
trials reveal faith, the genuineness of your faith. Fifth, and finally, ahh:
Trials refine us. They refine us. Verse 7, it says, "Your faith
is more precious than gold that perishes, though tested by
fire, may be found"---here's the end game---"to praise, honor, and
glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
God pouring all of these experiences into you, at the
very end when you see Jesus Christ, your life will
be that much more refined. God is not out to
burn you; he's out to bless you. But sometimes those
blessings are disguised in trials. You go, "I don't want that. I'm not taking that."
Take it. "Lord, if it's possible, let this cup pass
from me." He took the cup; he drank it, a
cup of suffering. Take it. You know, I
have a toaster at home. You probably do too, but there's one thing that just always---I
never understood about all toasters in general, is there's a
setting on all of them that will burn the toast
to an absolute crisp that no decent human being would
ever, ever, ever eat. So why is
it there? [laughter] I don't know, these are the things
that keep me up at night, okay? I'm glad God
does not have that setting on his toaster. [laughter] I'm so glad that when I get in the toaster,
God isn't going, "Ha ha ha ha! Whew! This is going to be fun! whoosh! Crispy critters." God doesn't do that.
As Warren Wiersbe says, "If God puts you in the furnace, his eye is on
the clock and his hand is on the thermostat." And
even Job who suffered so much said, "He knows the
way that I take." "He knows [God knows] the way
that I take; and when he has tested me"---listen to him---"I will come forth like gold."
"I will be refined." Now, Peter is
using the analogy of an ancient goldsmith with a smelting
furnace, and he lets liquid gold bubble up and fire
up and burn and the impurities rise to the top.
And he takes the skimmer and skims them off, and
keeps it under the fire a little more, and skims
off the impurities. And he keeps that up till it
gets really, really high-grade gold. Now I've read---I've been told
on many occasions, and read it in many books that
in ancient times the goldsmith knew that the refining process
was done when the goldsmith could lean over the pot
of boiling gold and see his reflection. When he
could see his reflection in the gold, it was done. You
see the analogy there? You know when the trials will
be done in your life? When God the Father looks
and sees his Son reflected in you. That's why we're
going to have them the rest of our lives, because
that process takes a lifetime to get us to be
like Jesus. But do you know that is God's plan?
Romans 8:29 says, "We have been predestined to be in
the image of Jesus Christ." Paul said, "I labor for you, [Galatians] because I want to
see Christ formed in you." And so the
fire goes up, we come through pure, hopefully, better, more
refined. God looks at us and goes, "Boy, I see
a lot of my Son in you." Heat goes down. "Great,
life is good right now, happy. I'm having a lot of fun."
And then, you know, we hit a little bit of crustiness
and impurity---heat goes up. "Ah, man, I hate this." God says, "Oh,
but I see my Son revealed in you." There's
one final thing I want to draw your attention to.
Verse 6 he mentions "various trials." And I mentioned the
King James' word was "manifold trials," "many colored trials"---that's the idea.
There's one other usage of that term also by Peter
in this book, and I want you to see it
to compare one verse with the other. First Peter chapter 4
verse 10; "As each one has received a gift, minister
it to one another." This is chapter 4, verse 10. "As each one has
received a gift, minister it to one another as good stewards"---watch this---"of the manifold grace
of God." There are manifold trials you go through; Peter talks about
"the manifold grace of God." In other words, for every shade
of trial you go through, God has a color match.
God has a color match. "Oh, Lord, this is so
unique. This is so . . . nobody's gone through
this." "I've got a color match in my grace palette
for you." God is not like the dude in the
hardware store that has every single color except the one
you need for the job you're trying to finish. Ever
had that experience? God has the color match. Various trials,
various shades of God's grace. There was a
young woman who was having a hard time in life.
She went to her mother, she said, "Mom, life is
so hard, and I want to give up. Frankly, I
just don't want to fight. I don't want to struggle
anymore." Well, that was like a red flag to mom.
Mom took her daughter into the kitchen at her house
and did something very unique. She took three pots, filled them
with water, put them on the stove. In pot number
one she put carrots; pot number two, eggs; pot number
three, ground coffee. Turned up the heat,
twenty minutes let the heat, let the flames get to
the water and boil the water. Twenty minutes later he turned
the flame off. It cooled down. She took the pots
off of the stove and put the carrots in a bowl, eggs
on a plate, and the coffee in a cup, and said to her
daughter, "Touch those carrots. What do you notice?" She goes, "Well, they're soft." And she
said, "Crack open that egg." And she took the shell
off and noticed it was hard. And
mom said, "Now that coffee, take a sip of that
coffee." She took a sip of that coffee and she
said, "It's actually pretty good, very flavorful." And she said,
"Sweetheart, let me ask you this question: Which are you,
the carrot, the egg, or the coffee?" She goes, "Mom, explain
that to me." She said, "Well, the
carrots went in hard, strong, they came out weak, wilted, soft.
The egg went in fragile with that liquidy center, but came out stiff and hard. But
the coffee, the coffee is the only substance that actually changed
the water that it was in with a fragrance and a
taste that you just admitted to me was quite flavorful.
So which are you, the carrot, the egg, or the
coffee?" All three of those substances they experienced
the same adversity, the same heat for the same amount
of time, but they reacted differently. So how do you react in a
trial? How do I react in a trial? Does that
trial weaken us and wilt us, or do we get stiff and hard and push
people away afterwards, or will we by that experience release a fragrance and add a
flavor that is unmistakably the imprint of Christ in our
lives? You know what I think? I think
it's time to stop telling God how big our storm is and
start telling the storm how big our God is. God is
big. He is in control of this. [applause] He knows
what he's about. He has given me this trial. I
hate it, I'm grieved by it, but I'm glad, because
he's refining me, he's correcting me, he's strengthening me, he's
equipping me, and he is testing my faith so that
it would be to the honor and praise and glory
of him. Well, Father, we bow in submission
to your wisdom. When we say that God is sovereign,
we have to say that includes these times as well.
And I pray for my brothers and sisters, some of
whom I know personally are experiencing some pretty excruciating circumstances,
the loss of a loved one, a lingering disease. And, Lord, it's hard.
The shadows are hard. We don't see a whole lot in the shadows. It's
hard to know how we would ever need this, but
we fall back on that wonderful truth that God causes
all things to work together for the good of those
who love him, in Jesus' name, amen.
For more resources from Calvary Albuquerque and Skip Heitzig visit calvaryabq.org.