A Joyous Faith

a new section, you will immediately
recognize this as being one of probably the most frequently
quoted passages to you in the midst of difficulties, what we
call trials or temptations, tribulation. And I say it’s one of the most
often quoted because it’s it’s really it’s pretty simple, straightforward
advice. In essence, this frames the advice
that Job’s friends came with. And if you have friends like
Job, as most of us do, you have heard this passage quoted to
you on numerous occasions. Rejoice in your trials. And that,
in essence, frames the most frequent advice that we get from people
when we’re going through difficulty. They seem to know our situation
even better than us. They seem to know it better than
God. Job’s friends are not an anomaly. They are a regular occurrence,
are they not? I know more people like the friends
that Job had than otherwise. Advice is cheap. And when we’re
going through difficulty, that kind of cheap advice is, in a
sense, the last thing we really need. What we need is a brother
to come alongside us, to pray with us, not to try to give us
platitudes, certainly to encourage us from Scripture, even to rebuke
us has its place. But I think what stems What this faulty approach to
appealing to somebody else in the midst of their own trials
comes from, what it stems from is a misunderstanding of this
passage. I don’t want to say that those themes aren’t there
in this passage. There are a great variety of
foundational Christian themes. The trials that we’ve already
mentioned are certainly there. And some have approached this
passage from the perspective that this passage from verse
six through nine is all about trials. Some have approached
the passage from the standpoint, a more positive standpoint, that
it’s all about rejoicing and they approach it from a standpoint
of joy. I would submit to you that there
is a third Christian theme that often, as I’ve read through a
variety of sermons and heard a variety, there’s a third Christian
theme that is foundational to both of those truths that is
often overlooked. And that is the theme of faith.
Embedded in this passage is something foundational to both of those
great Christian themes. You can’t have rejoicing without
faith. You can’t rejoice through your
trials without faith. And that’s why I say the overarching
theme through verses 6 through 9 is not rejoicing or trials. It’s faith. It’s faith. There
are basically two sections to this little passage. Verses 6 and 7 form a section
and verses 8 and 9 form a section. And in each of these sections,
we find these foundational elements. Rejoicing and faith. What Peter suggests here is that
the Christian faith is such as can only be described as a joyous
faith. That is faith. There isn’t a
joyless faith. And the only faith that there
is, is a joyous, joyful faith. That’s what faith is, I believe,
is what Peter is saying here. Faith is by nature joyful. And a joyful faith leads to a
divine end, as we’ll see this morning. Read with me, if you
would read along beginning in verse six of chapter one. In
this, you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while,
if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, that the proof
of your faith being more precious than gold, which is perishable,
even though tested by fire, may be found a result in praise and
glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And though you
have not seen him, you love him. And though you do not see him
now, but believe in him, you greatly rejoice with joy, inexpressible
and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith
the salvation of your souls. There’s no doubt. You don’t need
me to sit here and articulate to you that trials and difficulty
and frustrations are going to come. If you’ve walked a week
with the Lord Jesus Christ, if you have placed your faith in
Christ and begun to live your life as a Christian, you know
that trials and difficulty don’t just go away. It’s not like when
we become a Christian, we can live these squeaky clean, trouble
free lives. It just doesn’t happen. In fact,
it brings, in my opinion, more difficulty, more trouble, more
trials, more challenges to our integrity, more challenges to
our perspectives on life, more challenges to our worldview,
more challenges to those things that we consider precious and
sacred. As we’ve already seen, we don’t
fit in. We shouldn’t fit in. We are strangers in a strange
land. We are passing through. And Peter
says that is as it should be. This word trials frequently used
word in the New Testament, and you know, what’s interesting
is more often than not, it is translated temptations. But I
don’t want you to get the idea that God is up there manipulating
the situation and sending you temptations so that he can trip
you up. Trials that come into our lives
have an element of temptation with them because we are tempted
in the way that we respond to them to sin. And we often do. We often do. But that’s not God’s
purpose. That’s not God’s design in them.
That isn’t inherent in the trial itself. It is part of the difficulty
of life into which we’re born. It’s just part of it. repeatedly, as I said, throughout
the New Testament. And the majority of those times,
this little word, perosmos, is translated tempted. Your trials, folks, are not meant
to trip you up. They are not meant to stumble
you. They are not meant to cause you a collapse of Christian faith. They are meant, if anything,
to strengthen you, to embolden you, to gird you up, to purify
you in a variety of ways, as we will see here this morning.
I’ve entitled the message, A Joyous Faith, and I may even mislead
you in that, because as I’ve already indicated, I’m not suggesting
that there is faith and then there’s a joyous faith, a better
kind of faith, a higher kind of faith. There’s not this faith
that you start with as a new muddling, puddling Christian,
and then someday when you learn and grow, you get this joyous
faith. Faith in Christ is by nature
a joyous faith. And what I want to look at this
morning is the anatomy. What makes up this joyous faith? What are the elements of it?
And what is the end? What does it produce? What good
is a joyous faith? It’s glorious. First of all,
Christian faith is a joyous faith which carries us through trials
to glory. It carries us through trials
to glory. And now that you have that penciled in, back with me. Go back to chapter 6, where Peter
says, in this you greatly rejoice. In what? Peter points, in a sense, backwards. He doesn’t define it explicitly,
but if you study the passage, you can see clearly that Peter
looks back on those grand themes that we just studied in verse
three through five. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his great mercy
and immediately were liberated from the thought of ever contributing
to our own salvation. We’re free of that. It’s only
by God’s mercy that we’re saved. who, according to his great mercy,
has caused us to be born again to a living hope. We didn’t bring
ourselves back to life. We didn’t do spiritual CPR on
ourselves. God brought us to life. And in
that, Peter says, we rejoice. And not only that, he’s caused
us to be born again to a living hope, to obtain an inheritance
which is imperishable, undefined, undefiled and will not fade away. We have something in heaven that
one day we are going to lay hold of that is untainted, perfectly
pure and will never be taken from us. It’s there and in a
sense it is already our heavenly possession. We own it. Peter says, you greatly rejoice. In that and not only that, not
only in the fact that you’ve been made alive, not only in
the fact that you have this inheritance, but look at the end. You are
protected by the power of God through faith. It’s not that
you’ve got to hang on to God, it’s that God is hanging on to
you. You are protected by the power of God. No wonder Peter
begins this epistle and he can’t even continue without saying,
I know that you greatly rejoice in all of God’s abundant blessings
for you. He awakened you out of the deadness
and sin. He gave you an inheritance and
He’s hanging on to you and He will not let go. In this, you
greatly rejoice. All of your rebirth. Your hope,
the inheritance, the faith, the imminence of the end that is
coming, all of that shapes for the Christian a great cause of
rejoicing. That’s why we’re here this morning,
right? We are here to praise God for
all that He has done. Note this, when Peter says, in
this you greatly rejoice, it is not in the imperative. Peter
is not saying, you know, people, he’s not wagging his finger at
his beloved flock and saying, you know what, people, you should
be rejoicing. You should be happy. He’s saying
he’s observing them, he’s looking out over the landscape of Christianity
and he observes that as they conduct their lives, they can’t
help but rejoice and praise God and thank God for all he’s done.
And that’s why I say faith by nature is joyful. You can’t place
your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and all that He’s done
for you, a deadened, hell-bound sinner, suddenly awakened and
in love with the Savior and destined to serve Him in worship forever.
You can’t place your faith in Him without rejoicing. You can’t
do it. But Peter acknowledges that this
rejoicing is done not only in view of God’s work, not only
in view of the fact that God awakened us and God gave us an
inheritance and God has called us to Himself. And He will not let us go, not
only in light of all that, but in the midst of trials. And in that sense, Job’s friends
are, in a sense, correct. We are to rejoice in the midst
of trials. That’s true. Christian faith,
being what it is, should carry us through. We are to be rejoicing,
not just in our trials, but also in our trials. But may I clarify,
we don’t rejoice that we have just broken our ankle. We don’t
rejoice that we have just lost our job. We don’t rejoice that
we are reaping the persecutions of the world. That’s not at all
what Peter is saying. And that is a grand misunderstanding
with all of Job’s friends out there. It’s not the trial in
itself in which we are supposed to rejoice. We are supposed to
rejoice as if we are sailing through those trials, not in
and of them. Look again at verse 6. In this,
you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary,
you have been distressed by various trials, trials and scripture. I mean, it’s so much a part of
scripture. As I said before, you don’t even
need me to articulate this. But trials should not. They must
not. They cannot really diminish a
rejoicing. If your joy has been sapped,
if the trials that you’re facing have caused your faith not to
be characterized by joy, then I would submit to you, you need
to examine your faith. It’s not that you need to bring
yourself up and pump yourself up into some kind of joyous feeling. That’s not at all what Peter’s
saying. What he’s saying is examine your faith. If you’ve been distressed by
various trials. Paul said the same thing, writing
to the Romans in Romans 5, he said, not only this, but we also
exult in our tribulations. You say, well, there, see, Paul
clarified it. Whenever trouble comes our way,
we’re supposed to rejoice in it. Oh, thank you, God, for sending
me this termination of my job. That’s not it. That’s not it
at all. We rejoice in our tribulations, knowing the tribulation itself
brings about perseverance, perseverance, proven character, proven character,
hope. In other words, the tribulation, the trial itself has a divine
purpose. And God wants to exact that upon
us. He wants to purify us. He wants to make us more Christlike.
You know the passage. This is the other one that Job’s
friends come to you with. James 1. Consider it all joy,
my brethren. Don’t they do that to you? Oh,
you’ve got to consider it joy. I know that you’re about to have
this surgery. And I know that the diagnosis is very grim. Consider
it joy, brother. Consider it all joy, my brethren,
when you encounter various trials. That’s not it’s not the trial
itself that we’re supposed to rejoice in. James tells us specifically
right there what we’re supposed to rejoice in. Consider it all
joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that
the testing of your faith produces endurance. This is just a test
and I’m not going to give up because I’ve laid hold of Christ
and God has hold of me and he’s not going to let go and I have
an inheritance. I was once a dead and sinner,
but God has me now. And let endurance have its perfect
result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. These first century Christians
were facing difficulty that we may never face. It’s certainly
possible, as talking with a brother this past week, it’s certainly
possible that the fires of persecution will again be stoked. that we
may face persecution in our lifetime for our principles? We face it
on a small scale from time to time with, as I said, our perspectives
on life, our worldview, our principles, the things that we hold dear,
our values. We don’t face anything like the
first century Christians were. And they were only beginning
to taste them here and now. But Christians were being put
to death for their faith. You’ve got to suffer that last
week. The situation being what it was,
Peter was overwhelmed, he was rejoicing himself at observing
that they were rejoicing in the midst of these trials, their
faith wasn’t being diminished. This trial that they were facing
wasn’t the inner wrestling so much with the evil tendencies
and sin, but with the undeserved, as it were, pressure and suffering
from without. The pure persecutions that they
were facing. Now, those persecutions could have led them to despair
of their faith, but it didn’t. And there’s a paradox here with
Christianity, isn’t there? And I hope that you’ve experienced
those seasons of your life where some non-Christian saw in your
life an uncanny joy, an uncanny ability to deal with the difficulties
of life, where someone saw in you faith, faith itself, rejoicing
faith, joyous faith. And it is a paradox. The idea
of suffering as being necessary to man’s lot in life was part
of Jewish culture. They just kind of took it as
being part of life in the wisdom literature. But the joy is found not in the
trials, but in the midst of them. The Christian exalts likewise.
not in the trial itself, but in the fact that God is faithful
and gracious and God will bring them through. One pastor said it like this,
men forget pain more easily than they forget the joy. Isn’t that
true of childbirth for you men, I suppose, and women who’ve been
privileged to be in that room with so much pain and agony And
then all of a sudden, the child comes and all the pain is immediately
forgotten. That’s the Christian in the midst
of trial. All the pain is forgotten and
there’s this precious child. Peter says that trials are going
to come. One commentator said it this
way in observing this verse. He said, even in the midst of
heaviness itself, such is this joy that it can maintain itself
in the midst of sorrow. And that’s the paradox. How can
you be so incredibly heartbroken and incredibly joyful at the
same time? If it isn’t divine. He goes on
and says, this oil of gladness still swims above and it cannot
be drowned out by all the floods of affliction. Yea, it is the
most sweet in the greatest distress. Don’t you know that? Haven’t
you found that to be true? That in the midst of the greatest
heartbreaks life can dish out, there is a joy. There is a joy
that sustains you and undergirds you and carries you through those
difficulties. I want to look at trials just
for a moment, lest I undo what I’ve already said, that it isn’t
necessarily a passage about trials, but trials are here. It is a
passage that contains a discussion of trials, and I want to spend
a moment and just look at trials. Peter does say a great deal about
trials. Look at verse 6. In this you
greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while Trials
are temporary. Even if you have a lifelong debilitating
illness, it’s temporary. It’s not going to carry forth
into eternity. It’s not going to carry forth into heaven. If
you have a lifelong debilitating illness here and now, it’s not
going to greet you in heaven in your new body. It’s just not. It’s temporary. They have a limited lifespan.
I want to take you to a passage
to a man who knew trials. Turn, if you would, to 2 Corinthians
chapter 4. 2 Corinthians chapter 4, Paul talks
just a little bit about trials. 2 Corinthians 4, Paul says, but
we have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the passing greatness
of the power will be of God and not from ourselves. We are afflicted
in every way, but not crushed. Perplexed, but not despairing.
Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, but not destroyed. Do you see what carries Paul
through that? Always at the other end of that
is Christ. Christ isn’t the one afflicting
him. Christ isn’t the one breaking
him. Christ isn’t the one perplexing
him. And he will not be taken off course. Always carrying about,
verse 10, in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of
Jesus may also be manifested in our body. For we who live
are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake.
Paul says, you know, Life, difficulties, they go hand in hand. Trials
are part of life, but they’re temporary. Those things are temporary. Unless we have an eternal focus,
they do begin to take on a more permanent effect in our lives. Look at verse 16 in that same
passage. Therefore, we do not lose heart. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to give in to this
temptation to succumb to the difficulties of trials. I’m not
going to do it, Paul says. Therefore, we do not lose heart.
But though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed
day by day. For momentary light affliction
is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all
comparison. Momentary light affliction. You’re
talking about the Apostle Paul who was stoned and shipwrecked
and beaten times without number. Momentary light affliction. And
then you compare that to what we’re going through and what
takes us off course and what threatens our own faith. Silly. Momentary light affliction is
producing in us an eternal weight of glory. Do you get that? Paul
has this eternal focus in which he’s got his eyes fixed on and
he’s not going to be moved. Not by any earthly difficulty. No matter how great, no matter
how severe, he’s not going to be moved. While we look not at
the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.
For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things
which are not seen are eternal. I’m laying hold of that, aren’t
you? If we lay hold of Christ and of eternal things, isn’t
that enough to carry us through to the other side? Isn’t that
enough to carry us through any earthly difficulty? I tell you,
it is. Not only are trials temporary,
they are necessary. Enter Job’s friends. Right. That’s where they come. Oh, brother,
you need this. I don’t know why, but somehow you need this. It
is divine counsel, it is God given. What it isn’t, what isn’t
given is the interpretation thereof, which is where Job’s friends
so often come in. Look at the passage again. And
this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while,
if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials. Note, it is
the it is impossible Not only is it difficult, it is impossible
to be the interpreter for the reasons behind other people’s
trials. And to the degree that you have
ever gone to somebody and tried to interpret their difficulties
for them. You’ve wronged your brother. To the degree that somebody
is coming to you and said, you know why you’re going through
this. You know, if you get pulled over on the highway doing 95
miles an hour and you get a ticket, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist
to figure out where your trial came from. But most trials of life, most
trials of life aren’t like that. Most trials of life, they seem
so undeserved. They seem so random. It seems
as if it’s been sifted through God’s fingers. And it has. And
only God knows. Don’t go playing Job’s friends.
with your brother. Pray for them. Appeal to God
for them. Pray that God would give them
strength. But don’t go waltzing in and interpret and try to pretend
that you know all the secrets of the universe as to why they’re
experiencing the particular difficulty they have. It’s wrong. God is the one that
determines for us what is necessary. God, and I love that image. God
shifts it through his fingers to us. He shakes it down to us
and whatever we need, that’s what God gives. They’re necessary.
One of my favorite chapters, and I’m not sadistic in this,
but one of my favorite chapters in the confession is the chapter
on God’s providence. And one of my favorite paragraphs
in that chapter is this one, paragraph five, which reads,
the most wise. I mean, isn’t that a great way
to start? Let’s put God in perspective first. God’s wise, we’re not. The most wise, righteous. Do
you know that whatever you experience has been sifted through the hands
of a righteous God who is always going to do what is just and
right and good? If you know that, you’ll take
whatever God gives without grumbling, without wagging your finger,
without losing your faith, The most wise, righteous, and gracious
God oftentimes leaves for a season His own children. Now, don’t
panic. I’m not suggesting that you lose
your salvation or that God has this tendency to abandon you
for a time. Just like you, I love the little
poster of footprints in the sand where at those times when God
seemed absent, He carried us. Noble thought. That’s not what
the confession is saying at all. What it says is the most wise,
righteous and gracious God, oftentimes for a season, leaves His own
children to manifold temptations. He doesn’t leave them. He leaves
them to temptations. Manifold trials and the corruptions
of their own hearts. Why? What purpose? Why would it be necessary for
God to do that? And the confession is so clear.
to chastise them for their former sins, to reveal to them the hidden
strength of corruption. We toy with sin. We dally with
it. We play with it. We, as we used
to tell the college young people, we see how close we can get to
sin without getting burned, not how far we can stay away. And
God wants us to know how corrupt our hearts are, how prone we
are to fall and how great is the sinfulness of sin. God leaves his own children to
manifold temptations, to chastise them, to reveal to them and to
reveal to them the deceitfulness of their own hearts. Why? So
that they may be humbled. Aren’t we proud? Aren’t we just
like Peter? Don’t we think, oh, never will
I, Lord, never will I deny you. Never will I fall into that particular
sin. I’ve been in conversations before
where people, you know, they hear of somebody falling in some
particular way. Oh, well, you know, I hate to
hear that because it’s almost like setting the Lord up. It’s
challenging the Lord. It’s proud. God does this so
that we may be humbled and to raise them to a more close and
constant dependence for their support upon himself. God wants
us close to him. God wants us dependent upon him. God doesn’t want us wandering
the Christian landscape on our own, he doesn’t want us trying
to do this thing in our own power and strength. And not only that,
the confession goes on and it says, and to make them more watchful
against all future occasions of sin. I mean, haven’t you experienced? I know you have. If you’ve been
a Christian a month, you’ve experienced some victory over sin so that
now this which prior to prior to now may have been an area
of freedom now just brings you closer to temptation. And I’m
going to sacrifice that. I don’t even want to go there.
I don’t even want to go there. I’m going to be watchful. I’m
going to be watchful over my own heart. I’m going to be watchful
over my own passions. And not only that, he says, and
for all other just and holy ends, there are things that happen
to us that we don’t understand. And until we get to glory, we
will never know. But God knows God had a purpose. He just doesn’t feel inclined
or obligated to let us know. Not only are trials necessary
and temporary, thirdly, they’re distressing. They are distressing. And this is what makes Job’s
friends so unwelcome a guest when they come to your house.
Pick yourself up. What’s wrong with you? Why are
you depressed? Peter didn’t say that. In this,
you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary,
you have been distressed. I see it. I see it on your face. The Puritans use the word heaviness. It is stressed out, to put it
in the modern vernacular, maxed. I’m overwhelmed. And if you can’t
read the Psalms without coming away from David being stressed
out, maxed, heavy or distressed, I mean, he’s overwhelmed. It’s
what the Psalms are so good for, they give us perspective, real
perspective. Trials, people, are genuinely
difficult. Don’t let people come to you.
Don’t be one of those people that comes to others and, you
know, admonishes people to pick themselves up by the bootstrap.
What you’re going through isn’t that difficult. How do you know? It’s interesting, too, those
people are always the ones that are so pitiful when they’re going
through it, right? Never, never the best physicians
for themselves, but they’re a good physician for everybody else. Temptation is necessary. Temptation is temporary. Temptation
is distressing. Fourth, temptation is multicolored. Comes in technicolor. to use
that sixties word, verse six again, in this you greatly rejoice,
even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have
been distressed by various trials. You know what? They come in all
shapes and sizes, all colors, all different styles. And you
know what? You can’t predict them. You can’t plan on them.
Suddenly they’re there and they smack you in the face. They are,
as one said, diversified trials. You may have the trial of persecution.
Another one may have the trial of physical infirmity. Somebody
may have the trial of poverty. Somebody else may suffer some
other physical difficulty. Others may suffer a spiritual
difficulty, almost a spiritual depression. Somebody may suffer
social difficulties. I know you don’t know anybody
like that. for whatever purpose. They come
in all shapes and sizes. One pastor said, exile and banishment, captivity,
imprisonment, famine and nakedness, peril and persecution, slander
and reproach, rackings and tearings, fire, sores and diseases, in
themselves, in friends, in wives, in children, in goods, open enemies
and counterfeit friends. They come all different kinds
of ways. Spurgeon said it so clearly when
he said, ah, that sick chamber did the polishing. Nobody ever
looks at physical infirmity as being necessary trial of God. That’s what it is. Oftentimes,
that’s exactly what it is. And he said, ah, that sick chamber
did the polishing. Under God’s grace, that depression
of spirit, that loss, that cross, that bereavement, These softened
the natural ruggedness and made the man meek and lowly like his
Lord. Sanctified trouble has a great
tendency to breed sympathy. And sympathy. Is to the church as oil is to machinery. Did you hear what Spurgeon says?
It’d be better if everybody in the church experienced a little
trial because we’d be less apt to look down our nose like Job’s
friends and to interpret everybody else’s difficulties and to chide
them for being distressed, which is exactly what Peter acknowledges
trials bring. Finally, and just briefly, because
we’ve already touched on it a number of times, it’s purposeful. These
trials are purposeful. God has a design for them. In
this, verse six, you greatly rejoice, even though now for
a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various
trials that that the proof of your faith may be found to result in praise,
glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. There’s a purpose
to trials. The purpose is that our faith
is going to be tested and purified. You know, the imagery here. Gold
would be smelted, they would put it in a furnace and that
furnace would burn off what was called the dross, all those external
impurities in the gold. And as the gold was heated, all
those things would drop off. That’s what God is doing with
trials in your life. It’s just like a furnace. And
you know what? Sometimes it feels just like
that, doesn’t it? It is hard and it’s difficult
and it’s a it’s a it’s a process that we don’t naturally gravitate
to. And God has to put us in it.
We don’t go to the furnace on our own. God puts us in the furnace
and he does it for a purpose. The variety of trials which beset
Christians, said one, is permitted only to prove something that
persecution shows as nothing else can, whether Christians
are loyal to their convictions.” I mean, don’t you, as we course
through in Sunday School the history of the written Word of
God, don’t you rejoice in those faithful saints who even in the
face of burning at the stake, stood true to their confession
of Christ and would not be moved and would not abate, would not
recant. Do we have such a faith? Do you
have such a faith this morning? Faith, this kind of faith isn’t
this stoical endurance of difficulty, but it’s a it’s a personal affection
and devotion to the Lord. It’s a love of the Lord that
knows that the Lord has our good and that the Lord Himself is
going to give us the grace to carry through. For the Christian, this persecution,
this difficulty, this trouble, whatever it is, is not in itself
the end. It’s just not the end. Beyond
that lies God’s glory, as we’ll see in a moment. This image of the gold, I want
to park here for a moment, that burning off of the dross. Faith. If you think of it is
eternal, it’s an eternal element. It will be there in heaven with
us. It gets us to heaven and sustains us throughout eternity.
It is belief in our awesome God. Gold, on the other hand, is perishable
and temporal. Faith is far more precious than
gold, as Peter will go on to point out. And yet gold, it says,
has to be purified, refined by fire. The logical conclusion
is how much more Necessary is it to refine your faith, which
is more precious, more precious in God’s eyes. That the proof of your faith,
God’s looking for proof, he’s heard your testimony, he’s heard
the testimony of your lips, now he wants to see the proof of
your life. That it may be that the proof
of your faith being more precious than gold, which is perishable,
even though tested by fire, may be found to result. Who is it
found by? It’s found by God, it’s not found
by men. It’s not just that we want our
faith to be seen by others, we do. It’s good. It’s good to be
a good example. But the thing that we long for
most, don’t you? Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Praise is spoken of in Scripture,
and this is an amazing thought, as being bestowed by God upon
the faithful. Well done, thou good and faithful
son. It’s true that glory and honor
belong to God, but God bestows them repeatedly in Scripture,
it says, upon men. upon faithful people who do what’s
right and receive from God the commendation. At the revelation of Jesus Christ,
it says, Peter says that there’s a day that’s going to come where
Christ will greet you and there will either be a look of disappointment
on His face as you stumble through life in your Christianity and
let your faith falter You’ll be received into glory if you
are truly a Christian. If you are a child of God, you’ll
be received into glory. But there will be those whom
Christ embraces with a joy and says, well done, thou good and
faithful child. We look forward to that day. One author said he puts us in
the crucible. That’s what you put gold into.
Into a furnace. Puts us in the crucible of Christian
suffering in which the process of sin is gradually put out of
our lives. Our faith is purified from the
slag of unbelief that somehow mingles with it so often. And
the result is the reflection of the face of Jesus Christ in
the character of the Christian. Christ’s likeness is God’s ideal
for His child. That is our standard, people.
Christ’s likeness is God’s ideal for his child. Christian suffering
is one of the potent means to that end. The hymn writers knew
it. The hymn writers, this is a regular
feature of our Christian heritage. Am I a soldier of the cross,
a follower of the lamb, and shall I fear to own his cause or blush
to speak his name? Must I be carried to the skies
on flowery beds of ease while others fought to win the prize
and sailed through bloody seas? Are we really going to assume
this morning that we’re going to live a life free of difficulty
and trial? That we’ve already achieved some
kind of perfection? That we have no cause of purification
in our lives by a holy God? Still another When through fiery
trials thy pathway shall lie, my grace all sufficient shall
be thy reply. The flame shall not hurt thee.
I only design thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.” We’re only halfway this morning,
but there’s another portion of this passage that we’ll take
up next week. that looks not just at trials,
but looks at the grand end of salvation itself. Closing this section, Spurgeon
said it this way, What? Would you choose that you
alone may fare better than all God’s saints? That God should
strew carpets for your nice feet only? to walk into your heaven
and make that way smooth for you, which all patriarchs, prophets,
evangelists, confessors, yea, Christ Himself have found rugged. Away with this self-love and
come down, you ambitious sons of Zebedee. And before you think
of sitting near the throne, be content to be called to the cross. Now is your trial. Let your Savior
see how much of His bitter portion you can pledge. Then you shall
see how much of His glory He can afford you. Just as snow
is of itself cold and yet warms and refreshes the earth, so afflictions,
though in themselves grievous, yet keep the soul of the Christian
warm and make it fruitful.” Are you well on the path? to
glory? Are you welcoming these afflictions
of being those necessary tools of God in your life? Spiritual
weaponry, as it were, to form and to shape you into Christ?
Conformity with Christ? Let’s examine our hearts. Our merciful God, we know that
we shy away try to flee and avoid all earthly difficulties and
trials. We long for those days of peace
and prosperity and ease. Nothing bothers us and nothing
difficult comes our way. But we know, Lord, that that
is not the way of Christ. We know that Life brings difficulty
and trial and Lord, we see their purpose. And we long to embrace
them. Not as trials in and of themselves,
but as a means to an end. That we might be conformed to
the image of your precious son. May you be glorified in carrying
us through for God’s glory in Jesus name. Amen. you.