Hope When We Suffer - Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. As a Christian, whatever it is that you're going through, it's never the end of your story. As a Christian, whatever it is you're going through, it is never the end of your story. Maybe I'll say it a different way the way I've said it over all the years.

The worst thing that could happen to you cannot happen to you. You know what that is? That's hope. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. What a wonderful thing it is for me to stand here every week and to look at you. I see you in a different way altogether than you ever see yourselves. I don't think this will be a surprise, but you don't all look alike. There are old people and young people. There are handsome people and less handsome people.

Tall people, we represent different ages and different races. We don't dress alike. We have different jobs. We have different backgrounds.

We have different goals and different hobbies. But we have two things in common. One is Jesus Christ.

How wonderful is that? And secondly, this. We all know what it means to suffer. Suffering is the universal language. When life hurts, we may express our anguish in different ways. But all of us know the sting of pain or disease or disaster. Joseph Parker, a great preacher from yesteryear, said this. Preach to the suffering and you will never lack a congregation.

There's a broken heart in every pew. Suffering is the common thread in all of our garments. Saint Augustine said this. There has only been one person who has ever lived on earth without sin. But there is no one who ever lived on earth without suffering.

It is common to all of us. Open your Bibles to 1 Peter. 1 Peter. We began a series on 1 Peter last time. Peter is writing an epistle of hope.

That's the theme. He wants people to have hope in the context of tremendous suffering. These people are scattered, he says, we'll see in a moment. These are people that have been thrown out of their families, thrown out of their businesses, thrown out of their towns. These are people who have been ostracized by almost everybody in their lives, in their culture. These are people that experienced riots and slander.

These are people that have suffered immeasurably. This is only about three or four years before Nero will begin the persecution of Christians. What's so amazing about this is Peter is writing this and within about three years Peter will have been executed.

According to tradition, crucified, upside down. And yet he writes this epistle of hope. And he doesn't try to pump them up with some sort of version of positive thinking. When you read the epistle all the way through over and over you sort of get this idea that what Peter is this great shepherd does is he simply in a sense puts his fingers under the chin of those who are suffering and sort of just lifts their heads skyward to see the Lord. Fifteen times he refers to suffering in this epistle. He uses eight different Greek words because of the depth of suffering.

Warren Wiersbe says that Peter wrote this epistle to encourage suffering Christians to be good witnesses to their persecutors. He wants to put their suffering and their pain in perspective. Peter has really one goal in mind. He wants to give them what they need and what we need. Hope. He wants to give them hope. I am so convinced that there is almost nothing as important in your life living in this world as hope. Without hope I believe that suffering can overwhelm you and maybe worse without hope you'll let suffering define you.

And you'll become a victim of that suffering. So Peter starts by writing this. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens scattered throughout Pontus and Galatia and Cappadocia and Asia and Bithynia.

In other words, that's Asia Minor, sort of what we'd call modern day Turkey. All of these people are being persecuted. They are suffering immeasurably. And the very first thing after he addresses them, and this is a letter that is handed from one church to another, he says this to them, who are chosen. Now whenever you're suffering that's probably not the first thought you have. He says the first thing I want to let you know as suffering believers, you're chosen. Chosen by God. His first reminder.

How? He says according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. In other words, in eternity past, God the Father chose. And then he goes on and says, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit or the Holy Spirit, the setting apart work of the Holy Spirit. When you came to Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit convicted you of your sin. And then through your faith he set you apart to God. And then he says to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood what the Son of God did for you on the cross. He starts out by saying, don't you know how special you are to God? The Father foreknew you. He chose you. The Holy Spirit at the time you came to Christ brought you to Christ. He convicted you of your sin.

And Jesus Christ himself, the Son of God, died on the cross on your behalf. What he is trying to say is, do you realize just how close and how special you are to God? You see when we suffer we don't often think that way, do we? We keep thinking, where is God?

Why am I suffering? And then he says, may grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure. You see, whenever you're suffering, what is it you need as a child of God? I need grace. I need his unmerited favor.

Because I can't see in the circumstances of my life much good at all. And I need peace. Paul calls it a peace beyond all understanding.

I need peace. And Peter starts out just in his salutation and he talks about those things. And then he gives them six reasons. Just between verse three and verse nine he gives them six reasons why they can experience hope in the midst of suffering. The first is in verse three. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By the way, that's praise. He starts out by praising God.

So the first place I'm going to start with this and remember all the suffering is I want to say blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who according to his great mercy, he didn't give us what we deserved. Gave us life when we deserved death. He said has caused us to be born again. The same words that Jesus uses the Nicodemus, you must be born again. He said God orchestrated that. And that we were born again and then these words to a living hope.

Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Wow. We have a living hope.

Amazing when you think about that. Let me define hope this way. The certain eager expectation of life to come. The certain eager expectation of the future. That's what hope is. That's what you and I can have because we're children of God.

That's what that world out there needs. Hope. In the midst of suffering. He says it is a living hope. It's not the concept of hope. It's not the abstract of hope. It's living hope.

Because Christ is alive. But also it's a hope that grows. The amount of hope that you have as a believer is directly in proportion to how mature you are in Christ. How closely you walk with him. How well you know him.

Because if you don't know him well, when you suffer you'll have very little hope. He said it's a living hope. We have, he says, a living hope.

Without Christ, I don't know how people go through certain things. I don't. In fact, in the culture in which we live, what is hope? It's wishful thinking. I hope I win the lottery. I hope. Wishful thinking.

H.L. Mencken, American newspaper man and cynic, wrote this. Hope is a pathological belief in the occurrence of the impossible.

He understood it. You see, without Christ, what hope is there? You see, pretty much if you don't have Jesus Christ, I can tell you exactly what your life is. Life stinks and then you die.

You see, that's the way it works. Where's the hope? But Peter says we've been born to a living hope. As a Christian, whatever it is that you're going through, it's never the end of your story. As a Christian, whatever it is you're going through, it is never the end of your story. Maybe I'll say it a different way the way I've said it over all the years. The worst thing that could happen to you cannot happen to you.

You know what that is? That's hope. You see, that's hope. James Gray said this, who can mind the journey of life when the road always leads us home? What a great statement.

How hopeful was that? We have a living hope. We have an ironclad reservation. We have an ironclad reservation. Notice the next verse, verse four, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you. What a reservation, reserved.

Not to be too technical, but that's a perfect passive participle in the Greek. Because it's a perfect tense, it means that in an eternity past it was reserved. And the results of that reservation go to eternity future. Reserved in heaven for you. These are people who are suffering.

Many of them are about to give their lives. And he says, look, you have an ironclad reservation. It's not like anything else, and he moves a must to you. He doesn't want to talk about us as a general group. He says, I want to talk about you.

You need to make that personal. I have a reservation reserved for me. Hold your place here and go with me to John 14 for a moment. Just the first four verses of John 14.

Jesus speaking to exactly that reservation. Concerning death, Jesus says this. Do not let your heart be troubled. What does suffering do to us? It troubles our heart. Pain screams to us.

It seems to be excruciating at times. And Jesus said, do not let your heart be troubled. He said, you believe in God, but believe also in me. And here's the reservation. In my father's house, he said, are many dwelling places.

If it were not so, I would have told you. He said, for I go and I prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself. And where I am, there you may be also.

Wow. Do you get that? I don't care what happens in your life.

I don't care how difficult your death is. There is a place that Jesus Christ has prepared for you. And on that door is your name. You see, reserved by Christ. Now, let's go back to Peter. Notice what Peter says about that. Peter says that inheritance is imperishable.

It's undefiled. It will not fade away. Nothing can change that.

What an amazing statement that is on his part. A guaranteed reservation. Life doesn't kind of work that way. I remember in the past when you would travel motels or hotels and you try to reserve a room ahead. And at that time, you want to reserve something and say like, non-smoking. Then you pull in at 1130 at night, extremely tired, and then the clerk tells you something like, oh, well, we gave that room away. I had a reservation.

Yeah, no, I'm sorry. And if you're lucky, you'll get a smoking room for the night. You ever walk into a sporting event like a Saints game and you have the row and the seat number and you stand there and look down and you see that there are people sitting in your chair. They're in your seat. You have reservations. You see how this works? Sometimes on the human level, it could be reserved, but it might not be there when you get there.

That's not this case. This is undefiled, imperishable. It can't fade away. That name on that door is yours. Jesus Christ made that reservation. He said we have an ironclad reservation. We have a living hope. In verse 5, he says we have divine protection. He says who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time. That word salvation could be also translated for a deliverance that will be revealed at that last time. The ultimate blessing is to be protected by the power of God. That's an amazing thing. Protected by the power of God.

Chuck Swindoll writes this. No matter what the calamity, no matter what the disappointment or the depth of the pain, no matter what kind of destruction occurs in our bodies at the time of our death, our souls are divinely protected by the power of our God. James Moffat said God stands between you and all that menaces your hope or threatens your eternal welfare.

You see, he's trying to tell us I am protecting you, but somehow for many of us, we never have a way of appropriating that for ourselves. What is it we need? Well, I think it's implied in this verse. We need to accept our life the way it is. We need to accept that. The mystery of hardship and suffering and misfortune. One of the things we often do as Christians that I just don't quite understand, no matter how deep the suffering, we always want to explain it.

You know, sometimes the explanations are not readily available. You see, it's a matter of whether I accept it. And the other thing is, the second step would be, do I trust God?

You see, do I trust them? In that sense, to ultimately deliver me and ultimately save me. Yes, we have a living hope.

We have an ironclad reservation. We have divine protection. And we have what we all know in verses six and seven, a developing faith. He says, in this, you greatly rejoice. What a paradoxical thing to say. These people are suffering.

They couldn't wait to hear a word from Peter. And he says, and in this suffering, you greatly rejoice. Seems like an oxymoron to us, doesn't it? He said, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials. The implication is that joy is not circumstantial. You see, that's a different kind.

That's the kind everybody has. Everybody is happy, by the way, when you're done suffering. No matter what the event is in your life, and that finally comes to an end, you're just so happy. The joy that he is talking about here, agaleo, is only in the New Testament. This word is never used by the Greeks in their own secular writing. Because this word means joy no matter what the circumstances are. And the Greeks thought, that's not possible.

You can't have joy if the circumstances are horrible. Peter said, I beg to differ. You can. You see, you can. And he says, in this, you greatly rejoice, even though now, and notice the explanation for a little while.

He qualifies it. If Peter were here today and you were explaining to him your suffering, he would say, yes, I know, my child, but it's just for a little while. And you might say, well, I don't understand that. I've been suffering for 10 years. Yes, he said, that's just a little while. See, how can he say such a thing?

He sees it in light of what? Eternity. You see, eternity is the absence of time. It is forever. But if I were using a number and I said, how does 10 years compare to 10 trillion years? You see, what percentage of 10 trillion years is 10 years?

It's not even a millisecond. But see, that's the eternal perspective. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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That's fbcnola.org. At this website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.