I have to admit to each of us that the theme we’re going to be looking at today is repeated by Jesus, Paul, James, and now, Peter. We’re going to need to work hard to receive them as if for the first time, or we might be prone to close our minds and not let them have the effect intended.

We often repeat words at the communion table…but could we ever forget the meaning of those words in the effort ‘to remember’ on a weekly basis. My attitude: I need to hear them over and over again.

Could we ever tire of hearing these words again and again…from Psalm 103:8-14? The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. ⁹He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. ¹⁰He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. ¹¹For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; ¹²as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. ¹³As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. ¹⁴For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. (ESV)

The words we hear so often in the New Testament? The encouragement to rejoice in the midst of trials or hardships. Here we go, from the apostle Peter: 1 Peter 1:6–9 (ESV) In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, ⁷so 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. ⁸Though 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, ⁹obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Any thinking person can look around and see that life is bombarded with all kinds of trials and temptations. There are all kinds of trials, such as …sickness, disease, suffering, sorrows, ridicule, abuse, loss, disappointment, criticism, loneliness, and emptiness.

There are also all kinds of temptations such as …greed, selfishness, hoarding, drunkenness, deceit, strife, immorality, indulgence, backbiting, whispering, revellings, drugs, anger, gluttony, envy, jealousy, and uncleanness.

The list of trials and temptations in the world are as unlimited as acts of behavior. For every act there can be the sin of too much or the sin of too little, the sins of commission or the sins of omission. Life is filled with trials and temptations.

Someone asked C.S. Lewis, “Why do the righteous suffer?” His reply: “Why not? They’re the only ones who can take it.”

Peter introduces the problem of suffering for the first time in the 6^th verse of the first chapter. Suffering proves to be the theme of his epistle. Peter informs us that suffering is indeed a part of the normal Christian experience.

Peter comes to the actual situation in life in which his readers found themselves. Their Christianity had already made them unpopular, but now they were facing almost certain persecution.

Soon the storm was going to break and life was going to be an agonizing thing. In the face of that threatening situation Peter in effect reminds them of reasons why they can stand anything that may come upon them.

• Because of what they are able to look forward to. At the end there is for them the magnificent inheritance, eternal life with God. We have taken it to mean in the time when the world as we know it will come to an end; but the Greek can mean when the worst comes to the worst. It is then, when things have reached their limit, that the saving power of Christ will be displayed.

For the Christian persecution and trouble are not the end; beyond lies the glory; and in the hope of that glory he can endure anything that life brings to him.

It sometimes happens that a man has to undergo a painful operation or course of treatment; but he gladly accepts the pain and the discomfort because of the renewed health and strength which lie beyond.

It is one of the basic facts of life that a man can endure anything so long as he has something to look forward to—and the Christian can look forward to the ultimate joy.

2. If they remember that every trial is, in fact, a test. Before gold is pure it has to be tested in the fire. The trials which come to a man test his faith and out of them that faith can emerge stronger than ever it was before.

The rigors which the athlete has to undergo are not meant to make him collapse but to make him able to develop more strength and staying-power. In this world trials are not meant to take the strength out of us, but to put the strength into us.

In this connection there is something most suggestive in the language Peter uses. He says that the Christian for the moment may well have to undergo various trials. The Greek is poikilos, which literally means many-colored (variety, different forms).

Peter uses that word only one other time and it is to describe the grace of God (1 Peter 4:10).

Our troubles may be many-colored, but so is the grace of God; there is no ‘color’ in the human situation which that grace cannot match. There is a grace to match every trial and there is no trial without its grace.

The problem has vexed philosophers since they first asked questions: Why does an all-powerful, good God permit suffering? To which most people add: “And if someone has to suffer, why me?”

Instead of answering these questions on the philosophical level, Christians face suffering by adopting a new set of responses:

Confidence that God knows, plans, and directs our lives for the good. It’s hard to calculate sometimes, but God always provides his love and strength for us. God leads us toward a better future.

Perseverance when facing grief, anger, sorrow, and pain. Christians believe in expressing grief, but we should never give in to bitterness and despair.

Courage because with Jesus as Brother and Savior, we need not be afraid. He who suffered for us will not abandon us. Jesus carries us through everything.

(3) At the end of it, when Jesus Christ appears, they will receive from him praise and glory and honor. Again and again in this life we make our biggest efforts and do our best work, not for pay or profit, but in order to see the light in someone’s eyes and to hear his word of praise.

These things mean more than anything else in the world. The Christian knows that, if he endures, he will in the end hear the Master’s “Well done!”

Here is the recipe for endurance when life is hard and faith is difficult. We can stand up to things because of the greatness to which we can look forward, because every trial is another test to strengthen and to purify our faith, and because at the end of it Jesus Christ is waiting to say, “Well done!” to all his faithful servants.

Like other New Testament writers, Peter wants us to understand that suffering is a normal part of the Christian life. He tells us not to be surprised “at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you” (1 Peter 4:12).

Peter himself had felt it. After being flogged and warned to speak no further in the name of Jesus, he and the other apostles “went on their way … rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name” (Acts 5:41). That’s joy from the pits!

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, ⁷so that the tested genuineness of your faith. The trials that these Christians endured have a notion of necessity: they “have had to suffer.” Verse 7 especially seems to indicate that they “had” to suffer in order to prove their faith genuine. These sufferings, brought about by evil people, were allowed by God for a purpose.

Christians became the target of persecution for four main reasons:

(1) They refused to worship the emperor as a god and thus were viewed as atheists and traitors.

(2) They refused to worship at pagan temples, so business for these moneymaking enterprises dropped wherever Christianity took hold.

(3) They didn’t support the Roman ideals of self, power, and conquest, and the Romans scorned the Christian ideal of self-sacrificing service.

(4) They exposed and rejected the horrible immorality of pagan culture.

Peter made the point that no individual’s suffering escapes God’s notice and control. God uses that person’s experience according to his infinitely wise plans for that person.

Grief and suffering do not happen without cause or reason. While it may never be clear to us, God must be trusted to carry out his purposes, even in times of trial.

Peter made it clear to these suffering believers that even as they grieved now (in their present existence), it was only for a little while compared to the glorious eternity awaiting them. Because of this they could rejoice, even as they suffered grief.

Peter pointed out that grief and joy can be simultaneous in the Christian life. Grief is the natural response to the difficulties in this fallen world, but faith looks forward to an eternity with God and rejoices.

When we are faced with some trial or temptation, we draw nearer to God. We cry out to God more than when things go well. We even tend to clean up our lives in order to secure His help us as we go through the trial.

There is another fact that should be noted as well. When our faith is tried and proven, when we walk strongly through the trials and temptations of life, the world sees it.

Each experience of trial helps us learn something new and wonderful about our Savior. Abraham discovered new truths about the Lord on the mount where he offered his son (Gen. 22). The three Hebrew children discovered His nearness when they went through the fiery furnace (Dan. 3). Paul learned the sufficiency of His grace when he suffered with a thorn in the flesh (2 Cor. 12).

1 Peter 1:8–9 (ESV)  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, ⁹obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Peter is drawing an implicit contrast between himself and his readers. It was his great privilege to have known Jesus in the days of his flesh. His readers had not had that joy; but, although they never knew Jesus in the flesh, they love him; and although they do not see him with the bodily eye, they believe. And that belief brings to them a joy beyond speech and clad with glory, for even here and now it makes them certain of the ultimate welfare of their souls.

Four stages in man’s apprehension of Christ.

(i) The first is the stage of hope and desire, the stage of those who throughout the ages dreamed of the coming of the King. As Jesus himself said to his disciples, “Many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it” (Luke 10:23, 24). There were the days of longings and expectations which were never fully realized.

(ii) The second stage came to those who knew Christ in the flesh. That is what Peter is thinking about here. That is what he was thinking about when he said to Cornelius, “We are witnesses to all that he did, both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem” (Acts 10:39). There were those who walked with Jesus and on whose witness our knowledge of his life and the words depends.

(iii) There are those in every nation and time who see Jesus with the eye of faith. Jesus said to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe” (John 20:29). This way of seeing Jesus is possible only because he is not someone who lived and died and exists now only as a figure in a book but someone who lived and died and is alive forevermore. It has been said that “no apostle ever remembered Jesus.” That is to say, Jesus is not only a memory; he is a person whom we can meet.

(iv) There is the beatific vision. It was John’s confidence that we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:2). “Now,” said Paul, “we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1 Corinthians 13:12). If the eye of faith endures, the day will come when it will be the eye of sight, and we shall see face to face and know even as we are known.

Conclusion. A man found a cocoon of the emperor moth and took it home to watch it emerge. One day a small opening appeared, and for several hours the moth struggled but couldn’t seem to force its body past a certain point.

Deciding something was wrong, the man took scissors and snipped the remaining bit of cocoon. The moth emerged easily, its body large and swollen, the wings small and shriveled.

He expected that in a few hours the wings would spread out in their natural beauty, but they did not. Instead of developing into a creature free to fly, the moth spent its life dragging around a swollen body and shriveled wings.

The constricting cocoon and the struggle necessary to pass through the tiny opening are God’s way of forcing fluid from the body into the wings. The “merciful” snip was, in reality, cruel. Sometimes the struggle is exactly what we need.