Hope That Can Endure Any Suffering (Morning)
Download MP3If you have a bible, I ask you to turn to first Peter chapter one. It was about ten years ago at one of our common meals. Someone came up to me and they said, someone's child just fell off the jungle gym or the monkey bars, fell, hurt themselves and is screaming. And I I mean, at first of was like, I hope this kid's okay, but my immediately, right afterwards, my thought was this, why will parents not watch their kids? I mean, do they expect staff to just be watching all the children at all the times?
Joel Brooks:And as I'm having this thought, someone comes running up to me and they say, Joel, your daughter Caroline just fell off the jungle gym and she has hurt herself. And so, I went to where she was at, and she she said she was really hurting, and I said the equivalent of, just rub some dirt in it, I'm sure it's okay, because, I mean, there's no bones sticking out or anything. So I thought, okay, you know, yes, she's hurt, she could shake this off, she'll be fine. And then, I told her what I've often told my kids at times, you know, pain is always going to come to us, and when it comes, you just got to treat it like a friend. You can either push it over, you just embrace it.
Joel Brooks:Just so you know, my kids, they're going to be in therapy, all of them. So will yours. You just get to determine as a parent what type of therapy your kids need. And, all of them, it's going to do something to do with pain because that was the mantra, it's like, just pain is a friend, just embrace it because it's going to come to you. Well, two days of of Georgia saying she was hurting, you know, and still, she's fine.
Joel Brooks:One night though, after midnight, she screamed out loud, Pain is not my friend. And so, we thought we probably should take her to the hospital, and she had two broken wrists. I think that there's a lot of people who are like, you go, Georgia. We resonate with that because pain isn't really our friend, is it, when it comes? We know it's inevitable.
Joel Brooks:I mean, going through life, you're going to experience pain. No one walks through life unscathed. Is it our friend? What are we supposed to do when pain comes? What are we supposed to learn from it?
Joel Brooks:That's what this passage in first Peter is about. So, we're going to begin reading in verse three, we'll go to verse nine. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. In this, you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 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.
Joel Brooks:Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. This is the word of the Lord. To God. You would pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Father, we do pray that you would come and you would speak that the words that we just read, they would not merely be black ink on white pages. Lord, through your spirit, they would come alive. You would write them on our hearts. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us.
Joel Brooks:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. As you just noticed, Peter, he packs a whole lot in these seven verses. I mean, they're just crammed, full of theologically rich truths. And yet, we actually didn't even read the entire sentence.
Joel Brooks:Verses three through 12 are just one sentence in the Greek here. You've got to remember, Peter was a fisherman, he was not an English major, so he didn't know you should probably, you know, do a little period now and then and allow people to breathe. And he was likely dictating this too to a man named Sylvanas, who we'll meet at the end of this letter. And I'm sure, you know, poor Sylvanas is just writing down these these rapid thoughts from Peter as as fast as he can, and just saying, alright, let's let's slow down here a little. All these things, mean, they are profound, deep truths just coming at us rapid fire.
Joel Brooks:I'll I'll try to slow down as best I can, but these verses are packed. It does there's a flow to it all though. Peter is writing these churches that they're being severely persecuted, and he tells them they do have a lot to rejoice over because they have well, they have been given a hope and an inheritance that death cannot touch. They have a hope that death can't touch because it's a living hope. They have an inheritance that death cannot touch, well, because it's in heaven being guarded for them.
Joel Brooks:And he says, because they have those two things, they can rejoice in the midst of any trial that comes their way. And so, what I want us to do is I wanna look at how we can rejoice in the trials that do come our way. Let's look at verse six. In verse six, Peter, he talks about being grieved as we go through various trials. Verse seven, he says that we are being tested by fire.
Joel Brooks:In chapter four, he'll continue that theme. He's going to say, beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you. So Peter here, he's he's talking about as we just walk through life, we shouldn't be surprised when we have to walk through the furnace, these fiery trials. And he's obviously thinking, and the backdrop of all of this is the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel chapter three, where King Nebuchadnezzar, he threw those three men into a fiery furnace because they refused to bow down to the golden image. And, if you remember in that story, Nebuchadnezzar actually heated up the furnace seven times hotter than normal, kind of like the emperor Nero was ramping up the persecutions way more than any other time in history.
Joel Brooks:And, when King Nebuchadnezzar, he he did that and they threw Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego in, he he then went and got as close as he could to look into the furnace because he wanted to see these men burned to a crisp. We all know the story. When he looked, they weren't being burned by the fire. You actually read that there was another man in there with them, one who had the appearance of the son of the gods, and it likely was the son of God. It likely was the Son of God there in the midst preserving their bodies.
Joel Brooks:You got to see that as the backdrop here. At some point in our lives, we're all going to go through the fiery furnace, and the question is this, will we have Jesus with us? Will he come with us or not? No matter how wealthy we are, healthy we are, no matter how educated we are, every one of us will walk through the furnace, but the only way we will be preserved is if we hold on to Jesus and know that we're not going to go through it alone. Now, everything up to verse six, Peter's given us a reason to rejoice.
Joel Brooks:I mean, how can he not rejoice at the the hope we have, the mercy we receive, the new life we've been given, this inheritance that doesn't ever perish. I mean, He's given us lots of reasons to rejoice, and that's the in this part. The in this, you rejoice. Now, where rejoice actually means much jump. It's a jumping for joy.
Joel Brooks:I mean, I did college ministry for a number of years, and we actually had jumpers during the worship service. They're just they're just jumping for joy. I'll take an amen or maybe a raised hand, but next time we're singing Living Hope, I wouldn't mind if you guys started jumping. But the very next breath after he says, we jump for joy, he says, we're grieved by various trials. The Christian life isn't one in which we oscillate between joy and grief.
Joel Brooks:The Christian life is unique. It's it's one in which we experience both at the same time. We experience both grief and joy together. There's four things that Peter teaches us here about the griefs and joys of our trials, and we're gonna look at each of these. The first thing he teaches us is that they're necessary, then he teaches us they are for testing, then that they will result in praise and glory, and finally, they will result in our inexpressible joy.
Joel Brooks:So first, we see trials are necessary. In this, you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you've been grieved by various trials. That word various, it means multi layered or multi colored, which means trials, they come to us in all different shapes and sizes. It's not a one size fits all trial. So a trial can come to us as a health problem, or a lost job, or being stuck in a job that we don't like.
Joel Brooks:A trial can come to us in the form of infertility, or perhaps having a wayward child. It could come as loneliness or panic attacks, or perhaps lack of provision, not knowing, you know, how we'll be able to pay the bills. For those here, it would come as outright persecution. And we read that they're many layered that means sometimes they're stacked on each other. And you've experienced that, haven't you?
Joel Brooks:It's not just one trial, it's just like, oh my gosh, how can thing after thing after thing after thing keep hitting? My children, they love to say when that happens, they're like, I can't even. I'm like, you can't do that to trials. You don't get to say, Time out, can't even deal with it, and walk off. No.
Joel Brooks:They just come, they just stack on one and they weigh you down. They get heavier and heavier with each one. Trials also come as temptations. The word trial and temptation are the same word. Just the context depends on how you would translate it.
Joel Brooks:And so, a trial can come as a temptation to lust or a desire to lash out at someone who has spoken unkindly to you, or to be tempted to be greedy or to lose one's patience. All of those temptations are trials, all different shapes, all different sizes. And Peter tells us they're necessary. Let that word necessary just sink in. These trials are not accidents, they're not random, they're not detours or distractions in your life, they're not inconveniences, they're not harmful.
Joel Brooks:What they are is necessary. God is saying that we cannot become who He wants us to become apart from going through the furnace. This is why when you read through the New Testament, when you read through Acts, you read through Paul's letters, even though he is writing to Christians, when Paul writes to Christians, he never once asked God to change their circumstances. He's writing to all these Christians being severely persecuted, and never once does he ask God, would you get them out of the persecution? Would you change the circumstance?
Joel Brooks:It's remarkable because it's the opposite of how I pray. Perhaps, it's the opposite of how you pray. Instead of asking for deliverance, Paul prays that the Ephesians would be strengthened in their inner being. So the Philippians, instead of praying that God would protect their very lives, he prays that the peace of God would guard their hearts and their minds. For the Colossians who were experiencing the same type of persecution, he prayed, Let the peace of God rule your hearts.
Joel Brooks:And to the Thessalonians, who were just being brutalized, he prayed, May the God of peace sanctify you and keep you blameless. You're like, really, Paul? That's what you're going to pray in this moment as they're being dragged from their homes, arrested, thrown in prison? You're praying for their sanctification? I mean, that's not what I would be praying for.
Joel Brooks:It's really astounding how Paul prays here. He he prays not for a change of the circumstance, but that God would do something in their hearts, giving them a resiliency, a strength, a joy, a peace in the midst of that. You pray like that? I I struggle to pray like that. Here, Peter, he's writing to people being thrown through the lions, being lit up like torches, but he doesn't ever say, Lord, would you deliver them from Nero?
Joel Brooks:Instead, he apparently sees these trials as necessary, and it's actually a pattern you're going to see in first Peter that he doesn't see the gospel as just a message we are saved by. He sees it as an example for how we're to live. Just as Jesus went to the cross for our salvation, He also went to the cross as our example to follow. But, all of us will suffer. Actually, later in verse 21, we're we'll get to it in a couple weeks, he actually says that we have been called to suffer just as Jesus was called to suffer.
Joel Brooks:In other words, our suffering is necessary. The great hymn writer John Newton, he he's the one who wrote Amazing Grace among other hymns. When he was contemplating this, he wrote this one line, Everything is necessary that God sends, and nothing is necessary that He withholds. Everything is necessary that God sends, and nothing is necessary that He withholds. It'd make a good bumper sticker.
Joel Brooks:I was driving to Atlanta the other day, and I got to see the cheesiest, worst bumper stickers. You know, in case of rapture, this car is unmanned. Who does that help? I mean, there there's just if that car crashes or there's worse things going on if you're left behind or I I saw this sticker, Jesus might love you, but everybody else thinks you're blank. Okay.
Joel Brooks:Yeah. That's going to win a lot of people to Christ. But, you know, if I saw that, everything is necessary that God sends. Nothing is necessary that He withholds. Like, I'd I'd want to just chew on that one for a while because I struggle to believe it.
Joel Brooks:I mean, when I'm in the midst of suffering, I'm right there with Georgia, maybe you are, I'm like, pain is not my friend. It's not my friend. And and I think whatever the Lord is withholding from me, that's the one thing that's necessary for my joy. But the hard truth is this, Jesus has used my trials way more than my triumphs to draw me closer to Him. My triumphs have never once revealed to me my idolatries.
Joel Brooks:They've never once revealed to me my pride, my false hopes, my false securities. But can I tell you what my trials most certainly have? Like, when the stock market is doing great, I'm not thinking of any of those things, but when the stock market dives or I have all these unexpected bills, I suddenly become aware of where I have placed my hope and security, and it's actually a certain number in the bank account. And, it's not in a father who calls me his child and that he will always care for me. When I completely bomb in a sermon, I start realizing, actually, I'm building my identity on what others think about me, not on what the Lord thinks about me.
Joel Brooks:Many years ago, was during our, I want to say, our fourth year of Redeemer, I actually had to confess something in front of the whole church, and maybe some of you all were there during this time. I had, up to that point, always said, the size of a church, the size of a ministry is never is never the evidence of God's blessing because I know some of the most ungodly ministries are the largest. I know some of the most godly ministries are the smallest. Say, it's it's not any evidence of God's blessing or not or His favor. And, I always said that, and I thought I believed it.
Joel Brooks:I really did. But, the truth was I'd only known large ministries. Everything that that the start the Lord just always grew and grew and grew. And, here we are, we're in like in year four, and for the first time, we were like 90 people year four and going down. We were starting to go down to about 70.
Joel Brooks:And, it shook me in a way I didn't think it would shake me. It exposed pride in me I did not know was there. And so, I actually had to get up in front of the whole church because the only thing I know what to do with pride is to just confess it to everyone. And said, this is gonna sound hideous because it is, but you guys, you gotta know, I think I deserve better than this. I think I deserve better than this.
Joel Brooks:How horrible is that? Would you pray for your pastor? I would have never had to deal with those heart issues if it had only been triumphs. And so, there are certain things the Lord is gonna rip from you. There's gonna be certain trials you're gonna have to go through, and it's gonna be for your good because it's gonna expose things you would have never ever dealt with, you didn't even know were there until those other things have been ripped away.
Joel Brooks:So that's the first point. The second is we see testing. The Lord uses these trials to test us 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 the praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Peter says that our faith is more precious than gold. What he's saying is a trial that increases your faith is way more valuable than a triumph that increases your gold.
Joel Brooks:Way more. Because gold and everything that gold will buy will eventually fade away, it will eventually be burned up, but there's going to be one thing that remains, faith. And that's what God cares most about, and that's what you should care most about. Our faith is so valuable, we read that God wants to test it. This isn't like taking an exam.
Joel Brooks:I mean, I know, like, a bunch of you are in finals right now. That's not the kind of test that's happening here. This is a testing like refining. It's when you put a metal through fire, and it burns out the impurities, and it comes out stronger. God is saying, that's what I do when I bring a trial into your life.
Joel Brooks:I'm making you purer. I'm making you stronger. And, it's important for you to realize that, otherwise, when a trial comes, your first instinct is gonna think, not that God is about your purity, but that God is about your punishment. It's like that's why he's bringing in this trial. He's punishing me for something.
Joel Brooks:The reason I'm sick, the reason I I have cancer is because I've been lying to my wife. Or or the reason that, you know, all of a sudden, my business is bankrupt. Well, it's because I haven't been giving like I was supposed to. And that's just the default of the heart. We think if we're good, God gives us good things.
Joel Brooks:If we're bad, well then God punishes us. But that's not why trials come to us. And, the reason we know this is because every one of our sins has already been paid for. Every one of them has already been punished for. When Jesus went to the cross in the gospel of Luke, he said, I am going to be baptized with fire.
Joel Brooks:That's what he saw the cross as. It was a time when he would fire, would consume him. That was the ultimate furnace. And Jesus went to the cross and he was consumed by the judgment of God God for every one of our sins, past, present, future. And, what that means is when trials hit us, we never for a moment have to think, oh my gosh, this is God judging me.
Joel Brooks:No. God's already been judged for you. This is for something else entirely. Those trials have come because He loves you and He's trying to strengthen and build you, build up your faith because that's the one thing that remains. The third thing we see here, and we learn about trials, is that they are going to result in praise and glory at the honor of the revelation of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:You know, there's nothing wrong with enjoying the comforts of this life. I hope you do. I do. But we need to know that as we enjoy those comforts, the world is not gonna be impressed with Jesus because of them. The world's not impressed when they see a Christian living in some some gorgeous house or driving the latest new luxurious car or, you know, let's just let's just let's put this on steroids.
Joel Brooks:You know, it's sipping your latte on your private lot yacht. Okay? You know, just when the world sees that and then you talk about Jesus, they're not impressed. They're impressed with your lifestyle, but they're not impressed with Jesus. They're going to chalk up all that peace and happiness and joy that you're talking about, not to Jesus, but because you're living such a luxurious life of comfort.
Joel Brooks:However, if you suffer, like, I mean, if you go through a trial and pain hits you, and then through that deep, deep pain, they see you say, the Lord is enough. Jesus is all Jesus is enough that my flesh and my heart may fail. God is the strength of my heart, He's my portion forever. When they see that, that makes Jesus look glorious. Jesus receives praise and glory when that happens.
Joel Brooks:When you do that, your faith becomes praiseworthy because it's pointing to Jesus as praiseworthy. And that's what Peter's talking about here. He's saying that, yes, your very faith itself has been purified to the point where it's praiseworthy because it's pointing to Jesus as praiseworthy. You know, I've heard it said by many different people, many different times that actually, evangelism is the only thing that we get to do as Christians in this lifetime that we don't get to do in heaven. Everything else, we still get to do in heaven except evangelism, and that is wrong.
Joel Brooks:Here in this life, we get to do one more thing. We get to worship Jesus through pain and suffering. When our heart is breaking, we have the opportunity to worship Jesus with all our heart. We get to worship Him through tears. And when we do that, that glorifies Jesus.
Joel Brooks:You're not gonna have that opportunity in heaven. I mean, make no mistake. In heaven, you will worship. How can you not worship? Because you will see Jesus as he is.
Joel Brooks:When you are face to face with Jesus, trust me, you're worshiping, but you'll never have the opportunity again to worship him through tears. It's a gift we're given in this lifetime. Don't waste it. Finally, we we see that we, in the midst of pain, in the midst of these trials, Jesus is actually deepening our joy. It's the last point Peter makes.
Joel Brooks:Verse eight. Though you have not though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not see Him, you believe in Him, and you rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory. Peter's already been talking about rejoicing, but we understand that because he's been talking about rejoicing in the living hope, rejoicing in His mercy, rejoicing in the inheritance. Yeah.
Joel Brooks:All that makes sense. But now, we don't just rejoice, we rejoice with an inexpressible and glorious joy, not through all of those happy things, but through trials. So the joy gets ramped up as we go through trials. What do you think he means by this inexpressible joy? I've shared this before, but I think we we kind of as humans, we intrinsically, we get this because often, our most deepest joys we ever experience in life, we don't laugh, we actually cry.
Joel Brooks:Have you noticed that? I'm not talking about just like things that are funny. I mean, one of my girls, she actually she she believed that her superpower in life was wiggling. And and so she would go around and she would just go, wiggle power, wiggle power, wiggle power. Like, how can you not laugh at that?
Joel Brooks:I mean, it's just it's the most hilarious thing, and we're we're just dying laughing. But that wasn't my deepest joys. Actually, I felt the deepest joy I felt was through our youngest child, Georgia, once again. She was born with complications, she she nearly died, and I say, you know, I'm just we're we're all holding her breath because she wasn't breathing for minutes. When she finally let out a cry, I cried.
Joel Brooks:Like and I just I mean, I could not stop crying. And it wasn't it wasn't tears of pain or suffering, it was tears of joy. Like that my child's actually alive. I think, intrinsically, know that tears and joy, they're they're they're not as far apart as you think. Pain and and rejoicing, they're not as far as you think, that sometimes, the deepest joys we experience in life actually come through the deepest pains in life.
Joel Brooks:When we walk through the furnace and we experience those deep deep pains, in us, this inexpressible joy begins to arise. Now, make no mistake, it's still pain. But the deeper the pain, the deeper the joy that's underneath it. It's a joy you can't put into words. You don't say, I'm reject you can't do that.
Joel Brooks:It's it's deeper than that. It's what Paul might later call a peace that surpasses all understanding, meaning you can't explain the peace, you can't express the joy, but it's just so deep, it undergirds everything else. It's a joy that can only come when everything else has been stripped away, and maybe for the first time, you're finally experiencing that life and joy truly flow flow from Jesus Himself, and you never needed anything else. When all you have left is Jesus, as He begins loosening your hands of all the other things you've been gripping on, He loosens your hands of those things. In that moment, you begin to realize, okay, Jesus, you're my inheritance.
Joel Brooks:For the first time, maybe you actually can understand Psalm sixteen eleven, it's in Thy presence is fullness of joy, in Thy right hand are pleasures forevermore. All I've needed all along is You, Jesus. That's what He is offering us as believers if we don't go to the furnace alone. Don't go to the furnace alone. Jesus has made the offer that He will go there right with you if you ask Him.
Joel Brooks:Let's pray to Him. Jesus, you don't leave us alone. You've gone to the ultimate furnace for us, and you were consumed by the judgment fire of God for us so that any trial that comes our way, we can find this joy and this peace we did not think possible, and we know that it is only preparing us for glory. Lord, for those who don't know you and you alone as the sole source of life, as their treasure, within this moment, you reveal that to them. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen.
