Trouble is normal. Life is not easy. That comes as no surprise, I know. The variety of trials that we are subject to on a normal basis is too great to even try to describe. And of course, trouble is not unique to Christians, but in the sovereign plan of God, our trials are necessary.

But ours is a privileged church culture, and we prefer our lives to be trouble-free. We enjoy freedom to gather in this place, week by week, publicly and without secrecy or shame. Coming to church costs us so very little that we take it for granted, and many of us could take it or leave it. Many American Christians are casual about their church attendance while our brothers and sisters in North Korea, China, and Iraq gather for mutual encouragement and worship of God at the risk of their lives. Why the disconnect? In which place is the influence of the gospel expanding?

These are not hard questions to answer, though the answers are not particularly fun to think about. History helps us to see that over the ages, God has used persecution, suffering and all sorts of trouble to grow the Church and purify the faith of her members.

In the second century, while the young Church was being sorely afflicted in the Roman Empire, the church father Tertullian wrote that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” From its birth onward, the suffering of Christians has been a necessary part of church growth. And I mean growth in number and in maturity.

A century before Tertullian’s comments, in the time of Peter’s first letter, this persecution of Christians happened under the Roman Emperor Nero. According to Foxe’s book of Martyrs, Nero…

had some [Christians] sewed up in skins of wild beasts, and then worried by dogs until they expired; and others dressed in shirts made stiff with wax, fixed to axletrees, and set on fire in his gardens, in order to illuminate them. This persecution was general throughout the whole Roman Empire; but it rather increased than diminished the spirit of Christianity. In the course of it, St. Paul and St. Peter were martyred.

And of course, it’s happening today. There are literally thousands of Christians today who can relate to sort of government-sanctioned persecution that was so familiar to Peter’s first audience.

In the last three months, tens of thousands of Christians have been driven from their homes and caused to flee cities under control of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (or ISIS). According to several news outlets, Mosul (in northern Iraq), Christians are forced to pay a significant tax, flee, or be killed.

In China government officials are cracking down on Christians who are trying to help North Koreans fleeing persecution and poverty in their own homeland. Many South Korean churches have been shut down, and when those Christians try to head north to China, their visas are denied. The Chinese Christians who try to help their Korean brothers are unable to do so.

Now, while this morning’s message is not about Christian martyrs around the world, it is about the necessity of our suffering. And if bone fide persecution has afflicted Christians from the Church’s infancy, how much more the day trials you and I experience? The same principle applies on the global, macro level and the micro, man-in-the-mirror level. The greater our suffering, the greater the opportunity to showcase the faithfulness of God.

Suffering under trails is necessary, according to Peter, as we will see in a moment. Trials are necessary for us to showcase the kindness of God. They are necessary for God to be glorified in His faithful deliverance of His people from their adversity, whether through death or some other means. Peter would have his readers - and us - understand that trials present opportunities to show off the goodness and faithfulness of God. When He grants us a supernatural ability to bear up under suffering, the world cannot understand it. It is in trials that God often grabs us by the chin and looks us in the face, gaining our finally-undivided attention.

The pattern throughout history has been that God’s people turn to Him in times of affliction, and He routinely uses affliction to drive His people to Himself and to show off His own kind goodness through their suffering. We ought to expect similar treatment to what Christians have always experienced, right?

This morning we are looking at an early passage in Peter’s first epistle. As you can see in his introduction, he is writing to scattered believers throughout Asia Minor in the Roman provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.

Persecuted Christians had scattered throughout the far reaches of the Roman Empire, taking the gospel with them. While having their homes taken from them, being persecuted in a host of ways, their testimony was a powerful evangelistic tool.

But that didn’t mean it was easy to suffer through the trials. Yet, the whole tone of Peter’s letter is surprisingly joyful and optimistic. It is very much as though Peter saw the opportunities to showcase the faithfulness of God and their love for Christ as unprecedented. These persecuted Christians had a broadened platform for ministry and influence because of their persecution, and Peter is coaching them through this opportunity.

To that end, he begins his letter with some perspective aligning encouragement. After his greeting, he starts reminding his readers that they belong to God and about what awaits them in heaven.

I want to read our passage for this morning, along with its context. So look with me again at 1 Peter 1:3-9.

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, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 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. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls (1 Peter 1:3-9).

I have divided these four verses into five different headings:

• The Cause of Our Rejoicing (v. 6a)
• The Necessity of Our Grief (v. 6b)
• The Fruit of Our Testing (v. 7)
• The Expression of Our Joy (v.8)
• The Outcome of Our Faith (v. 9)

So let’s get started in verse 6 with The Cause of Rejoicing.

1. The Cause of Our Rejoicing (v. 6a)

In this you rejoice,

“In this” points back to the promises of verses 3-5. As I mentioned before, Peter here reminds his readers of all that they have to be thankful for despite their difficult circumstances. They have an inheritance that awaits them in heaven that no Roman soldier or citizen can take from them. He reminds them as well that God will guard and protect them against ultimate destruction.

I don’t imagine that he was telling these believers anything they didn’t already know. Rather, when their faith was being tested, he offered them encouragement in the form of reminders about all they had in Christ.

Impacting the dying world around us requires that we frequently look back to the promises of God and look forward to our inheritance in Christ. And in the midst of hard trials, they were joyful…a mark of their salvation. Only the believer can have true and consistent joy in the midst of difficult trials. True joy is Spirit-given, and the possession of consistent joy amid various trials is a mark of salvation.

Among Peter’s readers, then, we have a number who were genuinely joyful in spite of very, very difficult circumstances, and they did not rejoice or delight in their trials, but rather in the promises of God.

The formula here is to rejoice and remember. Rejoice and remember. It’s what Peter does; it’s what he ought to do. Rejoice in God, and remember His promises, like this:

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, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time (I Peter 1:3-5).

So Peter rejoices in God’s secure keeping, in his own - and his readers’ - heavenly citizenship, and remembers the nature of our inheritance. And he says, “In this you rejoice.”

2. The Necessity of Our Grief (v. 6b)

though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials,

This passage is both startling and almost parenthetical. He’s acknowledging the reality of their suffering, while also remembering that it is temporary.

As for the duration he mentions (i.e., “a little while”), this is relative. A lifetime of suffering is a blink in eternity, right? Here the duration of our suffering stands in stark contrast to the eternal nature of our inheritance. On the heels of his description of an unfading inheritance which is for all eternity, this period of trouble in life is a short one.

When times are hard, some perspective is helpful. That is what Peter is offering here. Life and its trials are temporary, and our inheritance is permanent.

But Peter doesn’t stop here; he suggests that their trial-induced grief is absolutely necessary. Now how could Peter say that? Because this is how God works, in His sovereign goodness.

Nobody asks for a reason for the hope that’s in you when you’re leading an easy life. Nobody imagines how a rich, fat, privileged person can manage to have hope. But when a person has no earthly reason to have hope, but is driven to rejoice in the goodness of God and remember what awaits him in eternity, that’s something the world can’t understand. And God want’s the world to wonder, so He allows our trials.

Christians never suffer needlessly. Our trials, however small, always have a purpose. The purpose may be to refine us, to stretch our faith, to test how much we love God, or something else. Peter says so.

In 1 Peter 3:17, he says, “For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.”

Christians can suffer for doing what’s wrong, which is justice. But they can also suffer for doing what’s right, and Peter says this is better. But it also means that it actually happens.

In 1 Peter 4:19, he says, “Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.”

Again, Peter presupposes the possibility that God - at least sometimes - wills the suffering of Christians.

Let me bring to my aid the teaching of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, to really drive this point home.

In a very powerful and personal sermon that he delivered on November 7, 1858, Spurgeon taught on this exact verse and the manifold reasons for suffering. He suggests several reasons why distress is a necessary part of the Christian life:

First, To be like Christ. We must be like Christ in His humiliation, or we shall not be like Him in His glory. Jesus – though joyful – was distressed by His trials. His heart was heavy and broken any number of times, and such feelings on our part can help us to relate to Him in this sense.

Second, “If the Christian did not sometimes suffer heaviness he would begin to grow too proud, and think too much of himself, and become too great in his own esteem.” In short, it keeps us humble. Nobody who is truly brokenhearted over his own sin or the sin of others acts arrogantly. Suffering and our own distresses drive us repentance and to the sweetness of restored fellowship with the Father. For my part, my most precious times of prayer come when I am most despairing and distressed.

Third, “In heaviness we often learn lessons that we never could attain elsewhere.” I think Spurgeon says it best:

Do you know that God has beauties for every part of the world; and he has beauties for every place of experience? There are views to be seen from the tops of the Alps that you can never see elsewhere. Ay, but there are beauties to be seen in the depths of the dell that ye could never see on the tops of the mountains; there are glories to be seen on Pisgah, wondrous sights to be beheld when by faith we stand on Tabor; but there are also beauties to be seen in our Gethsemanes, and some marvelously sweet flowers are to be culled by the edge of the dens of the leopards. Men will never become great in divinity until they become great in suffering. “Ah!” said Luther, “affliction is the best book in my library;” and let me add, the best leaf in the book of affliction is that blackest of all the leaves, the leaf called heaviness, when the spirit sinks within us, and we cannot endure as we could wish.

He says later, “There are none so tender as those who have been skinned themselves. Those who have been in the chamber of affliction know how to comfort those who are there.”

The Fruit of Our Testing (v. 7)

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.

Our faith is a precious thing in the sight of God. It is so precious to Him, in fact, that He is not satisfied with it as it is right now; rather, He would refine it. And our faith is tested and made purer through trials.

Here Peter likens faith in trails to gold in fire. John Piper explains succinctly this familiar illustration:

“When gold is melted in the fire the impurities float to the top and can be removed. When the refining fire is over, the gold is even more valuable. So it is with your faith in God…. God designs to refine our faith with the fires of trial and distress. His aim is that our faith be more pure and more genuine.”

Like our faith, gold is precious, but it’s also pretty tough when you think about it. Not only can gold withstand tremendous heat, but with the addition of heat, gold is actually purified. The pure gold has a higher tolerance for heat than many of the inclusions that are burned off in the assaying process. But as tough as gold is, and as precious as it might be, it perishes. Now read verse 7 again: 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.

The tested genuineness of our faith is precious. Our faith is precious, to be sure; it is a gift of God. Yet the tested genuineness of faith glorifies Him.

And when our faith is tested and found to be truly from Him, it will “result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ,” that is when He comes again. Our faith will prove that we belong to Him. Just like the coat that Pilgrim wore in Pilgrim’s Progress that he was so certain would immediately identify him as belong to the Lord, so we can know that our tested faith identifies us as His own.

Spurgeon also wrote…

It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity.

4. The Expression of Our Joy (v.8)

8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory,

Probably none of them had ever met Christ (“you have not seen Him”) yet that did not impact their love for Him. Theirs was, like ours, a relationship of faith.

There are three powerful verbs that characterize the behavior of Peter’s audience and the practice of their faith: love, believe and rejoice. In practice, faith results in love for our Savior. When we are disciples of Christ, when we know Him, we have an intimate relationship with Him. We have a deep-seated but obvious affection for Him. If we do not, then it’s because we don’t know Him. We are consumed with His person and work, with love for Him and a desire to be like Him.

Faith also results in belief in Him. We trust that what He has said is true. We trust that He is now preparing a place for us in heaven and that He will return for us. He has promised that we will be united to Him not only in spirit but even physically. We believe that He will never leave us or forsake us. We believe that He will come again in glory and we will reign with Him for a thousand years. These, and many, many more are cause for our joy. They were a source of hope and joy for the distressed readers of Peter’s epistle.

Faith then, results in rejoicing. If we love Christ and if we believe in Him, the natural result is a rejoicing in His work of saving us and our tremendous inheritance in Him that is to come. This joy is beyond explanation: it is “inexpressible and full of glory.” A true belief and love will not result in apathetic living, or weak singing of praise; it is cause for joy and exuberant worship.

MacArthur observes the humility in this statement on the part of Peter. He is contrasting Peter’s experience with the genuineness and faithfulness that his readers are demonstrating. He is, in part, commending them for their faithfulness without ever having seen Christ and living by tremendous faith in Him. Peter could not say the same thing. After having walked with Christ for three years, he denied Him three times before Christ’s crucifixion. He may be saying, in effect, “you’re farther along than I was; you believed Him without even having seen Him. I lived with Him and failed to really believe Him.” Of course, we know what boldness, love and faith Peter demonstrated on Christ’s behalf after the Holy Spirit came, but it is an interesting contrast here.

Knowing Christ is sweet, and it ought to result in our rejoicing in Him and our remembering His promises.

5. The Outcome of Our Faith (v. 9)

9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

The product of faith is salvation, and both faith and salvation are gifts from God.

Peter expresses here again his confidence in the salvation of his readers based on their faithfulness and the spiritual fruit being borne in their lives.

He is also giving them something to look forward to. they are saved, yes, but their salvation is to be fully revealed in glory.

Conclusion

So, what about you? in the midst of refining trials, are you quick to rejoice in God and remember His promises? Are you quick to remember your eternal inheritance and what awaits you when this life of suffering is complete?

When people wonder how a good God could allow bad things to happen, what do you say?

Is it really a sign of God’s blessing when our lives are trouble-free? Or does it mean that the enemy is not threatened enough by our testimony to pay us any mind? That his energy is best spent elsewhere?

Do you believe our faith is precious, and that like precious metal, it needs refining?

Peter believed that our faith was precious, and that a pure, refined, tested faith will result in the believer’s glory.

May He grow our faith, and may He do so by refining us through trials. And when he does, may we be quick to rejoice…and remember.