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1 Peter 4:12-19: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. 15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. 16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. 17 For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And ‘If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?’ 19 Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” 

INTRODUCTION 

Last week, Drew, Tom, Mike H., Mike T., Chris Vega and I went to Big Bear to relax, enjoy each other’s company as brothers and be refreshed as we look at this next year and what is in store for us. 

Shortly after the first day, it didn’t take us long to realize that there was a theme at work in what we were listening to and watching.  That theme was suffering for the cause of Christ.  Did I mention that this time was intended to refresh us?  It’s not the kind of topic you normally pursue when you want to prepare and strengthen each other for the work before you.  I say normally because as we discussed and reflected on what we were reading and seeing, we recognized that it is exactly what is necessary and will be necessary if we desire to give off the fragrance of Christ’s life and death as we preach and minister the Gospel to San Diego more aggressively this year. 

Even though we’re planning a “State of the Church” address next week, which will be more information and explanation of what we believe God is calling us to in 2007, this message should really be considered Part I of II since we’ve come to appreciate the need for us to be forged in a fiery furnace of suffering and affliction. 

So, here we are this morning trying to do the best job articulating what we are calling our church to for this year and we are as perplexed as you may be that what we feel the Lord wants us to understand first and foremost is the reason for suffering for His name sake before anything else. 

When we examine this topic, it is usually lumped in under the title, “The Problem of Evil and Suffering.”  I think it’s a bit silly to put them together as if they are almost one in the same.  You can talk about evil in abstraction as a philosopher, but it is difficult to speak about suffering without taking into account our own suffering and the suffering of those we know and love.  Suffering is something we all experience and it should never be handled as a philosophical topic to debate in a classroom if you are a Christian. 

To be honest, I was tempted to teach on the subject as a “how to handle” sort of message, but I realized that even that is pretty arrogant.  There are no three steps to handling suffering so that life cruises along.  To say, “this is how you handle suffering,” is almost laughable if you’ve suffered deep at any point of your life.  I guess the best I can do is to attempt to show you from God’s word what suffering does, in some ways why God allows us and even ordains our suffering, and how we can endure suffering under the shadow of the cross.  Maybe the goal should be “how to survive suffering and grow from it.” 

I can say this with confidence: if we truly plan on changing a city and not just build a nice comfortable church, we’re going to endure substantial, deep and troubling suffering.  It’s a cold thing to attempt to minister the cross when we don’t identify with the suffering of Christ.  To truly appreciate the depth of despair and brokenness that our city is filled with requires that we not sit in an ivory tower and look down upon the broken, but that we enter their place of pain and come alongside them in compassion and mercy. 

We’re going to be looking at 1 Peter 4:12-19 this morning to orient our hearts towards God’s purpose and intention for suffering. 

This is not the first time Peter mentions suffering.  Peter began this letter back in 1:6-7 speaking of suffering and its purpose.  The verses we are looking at this morning are a recapitulation on the subject.  It’s interesting the Peter begins this letter and closes the letter with a pastoral word on suffering. 

Peter is a realist telling us that suffering is definitely part of life, but he’s also suggesting that we not only survive suffering, but use it for our benefit.  A Christian who is rightly oriented to the Gospel can actually make great use and thrive under suffering so that we come out refined with purer and more Christ-like hearts. 

Peter is revisiting 1:6-7: 

1 Peter 1:6-7: “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 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.” 

STUDY 

This passage tells us two things: 

1. What is the nature of suffering?
2. How should you respond to suffering?

If we begin to understand the nature of suffering, to put suffering in a distinctively Christian worldview, what it is, we are 50-60% of the way to handling suffering. 

I.  What is the nature of suffering? 

So what is the nature of suffering?  Fire. 

Verse 12: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.”

Peter is saying, “Do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you…” 

Two words that stick out in this passage give us clarity to what the nature of suffering is. 

The word for “fiery trial” which means fiery ordeal is the Greek word purōsis.  This word sounds very familiar to the English word purified.  This is actually what it means.  If you look in Revelation 3:18 it says: “I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire (puroō).” 

This word in 1 Peter 4 means a refiner’s fire, a purifying fire, a fire that causes something to come out pure.  If you speak to a silversmith they will tell you that the way they know that the silver they are working with has been purified is when they can see the reflection of their face clearly on the silver.  This is what it means for you and me.  God refines us by putting us again and again in His refining fire until He can see His face in us. 

The second word that is important in this verse is the word “test” when it says that this fiery trial is coming upon you to test you.  It means to prove, to test to see what you really are made of.  It comes from a root word that means to poke or probe.  If you want to see what something is, you touch it and poke it to see what it’s made of. 

Think about a refiner’s fire: when you put a large chunk of metal into a refiner’s fire, you know that if it is raw ore that the metal chunk is mixed with the pure and the impure, the worthy and the worthless, the pure metal and the dross.  You know that the metal is mixed with all these impurities if it hasn’t been purified.  The raw ore is one solid rock which you can’t tell where the pure ends and the impure begins as long as it stays in its unheated, un-tampered state.  It is so intertwined with the impure that its value is diminished when it hasn’t been refined, and you really don’t know what its worth until you put it in the fire.  Some metals are so filled with impurities that there is almost nothing left after the fire. Some come out of the fire with very little change since they are filled with pure silver or metal. 

In normal temperature and atmospheric conditions, the dross and the metal can coexist and it’s not easy to see which is which.  Why do you put the metal in the fire?  Because the heat of the fire creates a condition in which those two things can no longer be joined together.

The pure can handle the fire, but the impure can not.  The true can handle the fire, but the false can not.  The fire, the trial, separates them from one another so that the Refiner can keep what is worthy and discard what is unworthy. 

What does all this talk of fire, silver and dross have to do with us spiritually?  It has to do with our faith.  Look again at 1 Peter 1:6-7. 

1 Peter 1:6-7: “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 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.” 

Your faith is of greater worth than gold.  Your faith is going to be refined and tested by fire.  Spiritually, a trial or a trouble is that which shows you what you really trust.

It shows you what your faith is made of, pure metal or dross.  It shows you three things: 

1-Suffering shows us what we really trust 

You and I have a divided hearts, but we don’t know it until we go through the Refiner’s fire. 

Just like with a piece of ore, you can’t tell the difference between the good and pure or the worthless dross, so it is with our hearts.  We possess in our hearts a mixture of allegiances, things in which we trust.  We have no idea what these things are, and we have no idea how impotent and worthless they are, until we go through the fire. 

We won’t see how little or how much we put our functional trust in Jesus, the pure, or in the idols, the impure, until we are plunged in a fire. 

A fire is any trouble or suffering that divides those blended allegiances.  The suffering is the condition by which our allegiances can no longer be held together intact, but are separated and we see what our faith is really made of. 

You can’t refine silver without fire, in the same way you can not learn to grow in deep and profound trust in God without trouble and suffering. 

Unless you suffer, you really don’t know what you trust.  We all start off our Christian life telling ourselves and others that we trust in God and live for and worship God.  However, the truth is that there are many things, along with God, in which we trust.  We have no idea what they are until we suffer. 

We have no idea of how divided our allegiance is to God until those things are threatened, removed, or destroyed through suffering.  When we say we believe in God alone and yet shake our fist at Him because we’ve lost this relationship or that job, this lover or that reputation, we are demonstrating how divided our trust is. 

At the point when you are ready to give it all up because you lose something you thought you really needed, you’re in the fire.  You’re not in the fire until you see certain things that you thought were just nice affections threatened and all of a sudden you realize how much you’re living for them.  You can’t and won’t understand that unless you are in the fire of suffering. 

A trial is whenever a separation is made between your allegiance to God and your allegiance to other things, and you no longer can live the same way. 

Just like metal ore, in normal atmospheric conditions, the pure and impure can exist together, but in the furnace they can’t.  When things are going well, when circumstances are in your favor, when you are in effect living in normal atmospheric temperature and conditions, your allegiances can stay intact—God and other things— and you have no idea how much these things have a hold on your heart until the fire comes. 

What is the fire?  The fire is the suffering that brings you to a place when those things look like they are slipping out of your grasp.  The fire is whenever there is fork in the road between God and other allegiances and you have to choose.  Then you’re in the fire. 

You have no idea how much you need to be needed by someone else, until you feel as if you’re not needed.  Or, you have no idea how much your career means to you until your career or job is threatened. 

There are a couple kinds of fires.

1. Is when you end a relationship or refuse to be dishonest at work and your relationship or work suffers because you chose to follow Christ.
2. Is when your relationship or career looks like it may be lost and you feel like you’re slipping and in that moment trusting and obeying God feels like fire, like suffering.   

Don’t you see on one hand trusting and obeying God causes the suffering and on the other hand trusting and obeying God becomes hard because you’re so committed to this other allegiance that you feel like you’re suffering.  In both cases you’re in the fire. 

Until the fire of circumstances comes, it’s easy to live in peace and with divided loyalties.  But when the fire breaks in and heats your heart, you can no longer trust in the dross or you’ll be ruined.

A fiery trial is any situation in which obedience to God will cost you something very dear.  You know you’re in the fire when you can almost hear God’s voice telling you “Now we’ll see why you’ve trusted in me.” “Do you trust in me because you want me, or do you trust in me to get what you really want?”

Whenever it’s difficult and costly to obey God, whenever it seems like suicide to obey God, whenever it seems like trusting in God is going to lead to more loss, you’re in the fire.  Finally these two loyalties which were living together are divided. 

It’s only in those situations that you can discover what your true trust is.  When someone chooses to follow that loyalty over God, you can never know whether or not they are truly a Christian.  Experientially, they lose their assurance.  If you choose this or that thing over God, if you choose this or that loyalty over God when you’re in the fire, you will loose your assurance whether you’re a Christian or not.  This is what is so damaging about sin; it destroys your assurance.  This is why we need to suffer: because it forces us to see what we really believe and trust.  It can lead to a greater assurance because you follow Christ through the fire, or you can lose your assurance because your trust is fickle and dependent upon circumstance.

What is most important to see, is that when the fire comes it is of utmost importance to take the road that says, “Jesus Only!” 

2- Suffering shows us the impotence and inadequacy of those things in which we trust. 

The fire shows us the inadequacy of the dross because the metal can take the heat and the dross can’t.  In the same way, the fire shows us the inadequacy of our false trusts. 

Listen to this great passage in Jeremiah 2:27-28.  Listen to what God is saying: 

Jeremiah 2:27-28: “who say to a tree, 'You are my father,' and to a stone, 'You gave me birth.' For they have turned their back to me, and not their face. But in the time of their trouble they say, 'Arise and save us!' 28 But where are your gods that you made for yourself? Let them arise, if they can save you, in your time of trouble; for as many as your cities are your gods, O Judah.” 

What’s the point?  Here’s God and here’s a relationship.  Here’s God and here’s pleasure.  Here’s God and here’s status.  Here’s God and here’s your sex life.  Here’s God and here’s money.  Here’s God and here’s intellectual respectability.  If you trust in God, at some point you’re going to have to make a decision between the two.  At that point, you are in the fire. 

When you’re tempted to say that a relationship, pleasure, status, sex, money, respect or anything else is so important to you that you’ll choose them, those are your gods according to Jeremiah. 

How can you tell whether or not these other gods are adequate or not?  How can you tell if they’re going to take you through?  Jeremiah shows us that it’s not when you’re on vacation on some tropical island in the warm sun drinking Mai Tais that you can tell whether or not these false idols or trusts will take you through life; it’s when you’re in the fire. 

The truth is that when you’re facing the troubles of life, any other functional trust or idol will disintegrate on you.  In the middle of the suffering, you find that if you’ve placed your trust in anything other that Christ, it will fail you.   

3-Suffering teaches you to fully rely on God, the Pure.   

The truth is that when you’re facing the troubles of life, any other functional trust or idol will disintegrate on you.  In the middle of the suffering, you find that if you’ve placed your trust in anything other that Christ, it will fail you.   

This is what Jeremiah was saying.  He was saying that when the time of trouble comes—a loss of job, a loss of a friend, the loss of money, the loss of power, the loss of your reputation, the loss of your material possessions, or the loss of a great pleasure—when trouble comes you have no other choice but to rely on God and cry out like those Jeremiah was speaking of and say, “arise and save us!”  You see, our hearts are fickle. 

How will all these other trusts help you when you face sickness or old age? How will they help you when someone you love with all your heart dies?  They won’t because they can’t. 

Whenever your life becomes meaningless, it’s because the thing which you’ve put your functional trust in has died.  Whenever someone thinks their life is worthless, it’s because they’ve put their trust in something other than God, and that thing has died and let them down.  The ultimate they’ve lived for is no longer alive and it has been shown powerless to save them.  This is when our life feels utterly vain and worthless. 

If you’ve put your trust in God, He will never die!  He can take you and refine you through suffering.  There is only one God who can take the heat of reality, our God.  There is only one God who will never ever leave you.  If your trust is in attractiveness and health, it will leave you.  If your trust is in relationships and intimacy, they’ll be gone and you’ll be in despair. 

The only place that’s safe is with Him. 

Our reliance upon God, and trust in Him, is the only thing that can take us through suffering, and even death. 

The fiery ordeal will prove and refine your faith. 

Metaphors for Suffering in Scripture 

Scripture gives us a number of metaphors for suffering: Peter here tells us it’s like fire, Hebrews teaches us it’s like a coach and an athlete, like parents with children, in John 15 we see it’s like a vine-dresser pruning the vine. 

Think about the vine-dresser metaphor for a moment.  Jesus tells us that He is the vine, we are the branches and the Father is going to prune us.  Have you ever seen a vine-dresser prune a vine?  It’s horrific, if you’re a vine.  He comes with the cold steel and cuts away until the vine is left bleeding a bare and on the ground lays green leaves and grapes that had just begun to develop.  It seems so cruel to the untrained eye.  But, to the trained and wise eye, it is what’s best for the beauty and health of the vine. 

A good vine-dresser doesn’t take off anything that isn’t a loss to keep and a gain to lose.  A wise eye knows that the productivity, the strength and the life of the vine has been enhanced by the pruning. 

Think of what a coach does to an athlete, what a parent does to a child, what the vine-dresser does to the vine, and what the refiner does to the ore.  In every case they are given something which was put into their hands and it is their job to bring out the beauty and productivity of that thing.  They run it, they stretch it, they discipline it, they cut it, and they burn it!  To the untrained and ignorant eye it looks like they are trying to kill it, but to the wise and trained eye they know that this is they way they have to grow. 

If you are praying for growth, maturity, compassion, grace, patience, nobility, integrity, honesty, or any other quality which marks a lover of Christ, God will bring a fiery furnace to forge us.  He will bring us His pruning sheer.  He will discipline and stretch us until we are the things we pray for.  Troubles, pain, suffering, and the like are all merciful ways in which God lovingly brings out the image of His Son on you.  It is God’s mercy that he loves us in this way. 

If you’re not a parent, then you will just have to trust the Word of God this morning.  But, if you have children and have had to raise them, there really is no excuse for you.  You know this is the way things are.  You know that they only way to grow your children is by putting them through things that look irrational to their young minds.  What you ask of them and what you put them through may make no sense to them whatsoever, but you know that it is how they’re going to grow and mature into a great man or woman. 

There is no way to turn little kids into mature adults without them accusing you outwardly or inwardly that you’re cruel!  You can’t bring them up without them wondering why you’re trying to make their life so miserable.  They simply don’t understand.  If you’re a parent, you know this! 

If you don’t learn this as a parent, how in the world are you going to learn this as a child of God through His Word and through His fiery suffering? 

That’s the nature of suffering.  Now, once you understand what it is, how should you respond to it?  How do we respond so that we don’t come out of the fire bitter? 

II.  How should you respond to suffering? 

Peter teaches us three things we are to do when suffering comes our way. 

Verse 12: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you...” 

1. Don’t be surprised!

This is a command!  Peter doesn’t say, “don’t grieve.”  He calls us to rejoice, but not to be flippantly happy about.  He doesn’t want us to be a masochist that runs around looking for suffering. 

You will not handle suffering well if you’re surprised by suffering.  If you believe the lie that you have the right to a designer life where there is no suffering, you’ll be surprised.  It’s a form of self-righteousness to demand anything else. Do you think you’ve lived such a good life that you, above all other people in this world, deserve to escape suffering when no one else does? 

Grief will never destroy you as a response to pain, but suffering will.  Weeping won’t hurt you, but surprise will.  This is why you have to understand suffering.  This is why you have to think about what I’ve been saying.  It’s like a refiner, it’s like a coach, it’s like vine-dresser, and it’s like a parent.  You have to speak to yourself and remind yourself of why God is taking you through your suffering. 

If you don’t understand, you’ll be shocked, and if you’re shocked, you’ll fall apart.  Many people mistake grief with shock.  We say the grief is too much to bear, but the truth is for many that it is very little grief and a ton of surprise.  Self-pity is a form of surprise.  Bitterness is a form of surprise.  It’s not the grief that kills you; Jesus grieved greatly but was not surprised.  He knew what was coming and laid His will at God’s feet and said, “not my will, but thy be done.”

2. Obey!

Notice that Peter says that we’re not to suffering for doing wrong.  In your suffering, you need to obey Christ. 

When you’re suffering it’s very easy to stop obeying, stop coming to church, stop listening to Christian friends, stop praying and reading the Scriptures.  It’s very tempting and very easy to fall into comfort sins.  It’s easy to turn your back on God and seek after escape sins to give you a high to overcome how bad you feel. 

How dangerous it is to wiggle around on the surgeon’s table when He’s trying to make a cut that will heal you. Obedience is to stay still. 

Spurgeon said that an ounce of sin will hurt you far more than 10,000 tons of suffering. 

Suffering, when it is expected and met with an obedient heart, will strengthen you and shape you into an incredible lover of Christ.  Shock and sin will cause you to be hardened under suffering.  It embitters you and makes you selfish. 

3- Entrust yourself to God! 

Verse 19: “Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.” 

The word “entrust” means to make a deposit.  You only make deposits in a bank that is insured.  To “entrust” yourself to God is to deposit yourself in the hands of your Creator whom you can trust.  You can be sure of Him.  He loves you and gave His Son to prove it! 

This is the only faith that has a God who suffered for you and knows not only what it is, but has experienced it far more than we could ever dare imagine.

Jesus Christ suffered socially, he was rejected, lonely, and betrayed and was cut with far deeper wounds than you and I could ever experience.  He suffered physically more than you could ever imagine.  He suffered the darkest of dark spiritual experiences as He was cut off from His Father on the cross as the Father poured out His wrath upon Him.  He has suffered far more than you and me. 

Here is a God that when you go to Him with your pain and tears in the middle of suffering can say to you, “I understand and love you.”  “I know what you’re feeling.”  “I’ve been there.”  No other religion has a God who has suffered in this way.  All other religions tell you to go to God, and when you get there they tell you that you better be good.  These false gods don’t know what you’re going through. 

If you can’t entrust yourself to Him, who can you entrust yourself to?  More false god’s?  More idols?  More dross in your life? 

Entrust your soul to Him, He is faithful and cares for you.   

One last note on refining silver or gold: when the refiner’s fire has melted the worthless dross from the pure gold, not only is the gold far more valuable to the goldsmith, but it is also incredibly flexible and malleable in his hands.  He can bend it and shape it however he chooses, into whatever beautiful piece of art which he has in his imagination.  At any point, if he decides to reheat and check its worth again, it only needs to be heated at a low temperature since it is so pure.  The super-heated refiner’s fire is not necessary when it has been purified. 

So it is with you and I.  Our Father, the master goldsmith, plunges us into His refining fire to purify us so that He can not only see His face on us, but also so that we are more easily shaped into the beautiful work of art He has specifically in mind for each of us.  This purifying fire keeps us more flexible and more easily heated from His touch.  This only comes by way of suffering, it only comes by way of His fire, and it is for His glory and for our ultimate joy.  When we see what His intentions are behind the pain, it allows us to not only entrust our souls to Him, but to even look with fondness at the time of pain because we realize it is then that our Father is so masterfully handling us with His strong sovereign hands for our good.

Share a few lines from the Piper poem on Job when Job speaks with his daughter about suffering.