The Purpose of Trials

What is God's purpose as He tests us? First, to test the strength of our faith that we might know where our strength is or isn't. Secondly, to humble us lest we think more confidently of our spiritual strength than we should. Thirdly, to wean us away from worldly things.

Fourthly, to call us to a heavenly hope so that we live in the above and not in the below. If God is good and all-powerful, and He is, why do you and I—why does anyone—suffer? Bottom line, if God really loves us, why does He allow us to go through trials? Well, as John MacArthur is going to show you today, trials can actually be good for you. That's right. Hard times can be a blessing from God.

How? Find out as John continues his series on Grace to You that's looking at the New Testament beginning to end. It's a collection of landmark sermons from John's first five decades of pulpit but no son without a cross.

It just goes with territory. We're going to have trials. Psalm 23 says, There's a great illustration of this in 2 Chronicles 32-31. You don't need to look it up. I'll quote that portion of it. It relates to Hezekiah, who was king. And of Hezekiah, it says this.

Listen. That he might know all that was in his heart. That who might know? Well, not God. God didn't need to know by testing what was in Hezekiah's heart. He knew by omniscience, right? Does God have to test you to find out what's in your heart?

No. God doesn't have to test any of us to find out what's in our heart. God tests us so we can find out. In other words, He assists us in doing that spiritual inventory.

He assists us in self-examination. I need to know and you need to know the strength of our faith. And so God brings trials into our lives to demonstrate to us the strength or weakness of our faith. If you're right now going through a severe trial, it is revealing to you the strength or weakness of your faith, isn't it? If you're shaking your fist at God, if you're wondering why it's happening, if you're fretting all the time and worrying, if you're in anxiety from morning till night, there's a good indication that you have a weak faith. So in one sense, then, we ought to be thankful for trials because they assist us in the inventory of our own faith.

That's very helpful. I always want to know where my faith is so that it can be stronger. For the stronger my faith is, the more likely I am to be useful to God.

When Habakkuk was going through one situation in the devastating promise that the Chaldeans were going to come and wipe out his people, in spite of everything, he said, even if the fig tree doesn't blossom and the fruit is not in the vines and the labor of the olive fails and the fields yield no food and the flocks are cut off from the fold, there's no herd in the stalls. In other words, if everything that I know of as normative in life ceases, yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength and He will make my faith. He will make my feet like mountain goats' feet and make me walk upon my high places.

And then at the end, he says, to the chief singer on my stringed instruments, this is praise, sing it. In the midst of an absolutely unsolvable mystery is trust never wavered. He learned through that the strength of his faith. And so, one of the purposes of testing is to reveal to you and to me the strength of our faith so that we can move along the path to greater strength. So trials come as a test of the strength of our faith. Secondly, we must recognize that trials come to humble us. They come to remind us not to think more confidently of our spiritual strength than we should.

It's closely connected to the first one, but a little different. I think perhaps as graphically as anywhere in Scripture. In the wonderful testimony of Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, you know it. He says in verse 7, and lest I should be exalted above measure. In other words, lest I should think more highly of myself than I ought to think because of the abundance of the revelations and to be caught up into the third heaven and all of the things that Paul was able to do in the power of the Spirit, miracles and signs and wonders and mighty deeds and revelations coming out of him from God.

And through all of these things, he could well have been exalted in his own mind. So lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh to buffet me, to just beat me up all the time, lest I should be exalted above measure. And we must realize that God allows trials in our lives, especially when we are blessed in places of spiritual service to keep us humble, lest we think more confidently of our spiritual strength than we should and start to feel that we're invincible.

There's a third reason as I thought these things through, and these are really my own reflections, trying to look at it from the biblical and the personal viewpoint. I believe the Lord brings trials in our life also to wean us from worldly things, to wean us away from worldly things. Have you found that maybe the older you've gotten and the more things you've accumulated, the more furniture or cars or houses or bank accounts or whatever, the more success you may have had, the more worldly things you've done, you've been here, you've been there, you've traveled, you've seen this, you've seen that. Have you noticed that as that has gone on in your life, those things tend to have less and less significance? There was a time when you thought that they were the most desirable things in life and now you no longer feel that because they have not been able to deal with the real issues of life. They don't really solve deep problems, great anxieties, hurts, and when trials come into your life and you reach out for all those worldly things and they make no difference and they mean absolutely nothing, that trial is weaning you off of those things. Because it is demonstrating their utter inability to solve any problem or to provide for you any real resource in a time of stress, we need to be weaned away. Philip, you know, in John 6, he comes to Jesus and he says, well, how are we going to get bread to feed these people?

He's looking at things from a worldly viewpoint. There's no stores around here and there's not enough bread anyway. We've got a multitude here, a massive crowd. How are we going to get food for 5,000 men plus women and children? And so he says, well, Philip, you tell me, where are we going to buy bread? And it says in verse 6, and this he said to test it. We want to find out whether Philip looked to worldly resources.

And of course he did, but it wasn't any good at that point and the Lord then created a meal and very quickly weaned Philip off the worldly things and satisfied him with the spiritual things. I think about Moses, remember in chapter 11 of Hebrews verses 24 to 26. He had been raised in Pharaoh's house. He had been brought up as a prince in Egypt.

For 40 years he was educated. He was literally in line in the Pharaoh's family for prominence. He had reached the apex of Egyptian society which was at the height of the world. All the education, all the money, all the prestige, all the honor, all the success, all the comfort was there in his hands.

But he considered the reproach of Christ, the Lord's anointed, greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. See, he'd gotten his eyes off all of that and he began to be concerned about the trial of his people. And the Lord used that trial to wean him off of worldly things. Trials will do that. There's a fourth, I think, purpose in trials. I think they call us to what we could call an eternal hope. Trials in life, I don't know how they work with you, but they work this way with me. Trials in my life tend to make me want to go to heaven.

Have you noticed that? That's what I'm saying. I don't want to make it too difficult.

It's pretty simple. They call us to an eternal hope. If the most precious people in your life and if the most precious person in your life, the Lord Jesus Christ, and if the most precious possessions in your life have been laid away as treasure in heaven, you're going to have a very, very disengaged relationship with this passing world. So trials, trials tend to show us the bankruptcy of human resources and wean us off the world and sort of settle us on the heavenly hope. In Romans 8, among many Scriptures that could be noted, we just support that thought.

In Romans chapter 8 it says, the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children then heirs, heirs of God, join heirs with Christ. If so be that we suffer with Him, we may also be glorified together. And I reckon or I count that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. As I go through suffering, Paul says, I just get more and more hungry for glory. And I see the whole creation groaning and waiting for the hope to be realized, waiting for the glorious, verse 21, liberation of the children of God.

And then in verse 24 or 23 he says, we are groaning, waiting for the redemption of our body, verse 24, we are saved in hope. So we go through trials, trials give us a greater affection for that which is eternal. They help us long for the eternal city. They set our affections on things above. That's a very important spiritual thing.

They cause us to think on things divine, things heavenly. And that's what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4, 16, for which cause we faint not. For though our outward man perish, the inward man is renewed day by day. And our light affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Then he says this, 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.

How did he get that kind of attitude? Oh, it's very easy, just go back to verse 8. We're troubled on every side, we're perplexed, we're persecuted, we always bear in our body the dying of Jesus Christ. Verse 12, death works in us.

He's going through so much trouble, it's little wonder he doesn't like the world, he'd rather be in glory. So you see, trials have a very, very helpful purpose. They test the strength of our faith, they humble us lest we think more confidently of our spiritual strength than we should, they wean us off of worldly things, and they call us to a heavenly hope. Fifthly, trials also serve a very important purpose because they reveal what we really love.

They reveal what we really love. You see, if you supremely love God, you're going to say, thank you, God, for what you're accomplishing through this, help me to see that, and give you glory, though you're allowing this to happen. But if you really love self more than God, you're going to say, God, why do you do this? And you're going to be irate, and you're going to be upset, and you're going to be bitter, and you're going to be full of anxiety. You see, there's a sense in which if anything is dearer to you than God, then He has to have it. He's got to remove it. So in my own life, I just want to make sure nothing is dearer to me than the Lord because I don't want Him to remove it.

Not that He always does. I was thinking about this and reading back in the Pentateuch a little bit, I came to Deuteronomy chapter 13, verse 3, thou shalt not hearken to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. This would be a false prophet. For the Lord your God, look at this, tests you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

Wow. The Lord is testing you to see who you really love, whether you love Him with all your heart and all your soul. In Luke 14, 26, if any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brother and sisters, yea, in his own life also, he cannot be what? My disciple. And whosoever doesn't bear his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

Now what in the world is he saying? Is he literally saying that it's a Christian thing to hate everybody, including yourself? No, what he means by that is, if you do not love God to the degree that you willingly, if necessary, cut yourself off from father, mother, wife, children, brother, sister, and your own life, then you don't love God supremely. You're not worthy to be his disciple.

Well, what do you mean cut off? We mean by that this, that you will do the will of God first and foremost no matter what appeals those others make to you. No matter what appeal your father might make or your mother or your wife or your child or your brother or your sister or your own flesh, you will do the will of God no matter what appeals are being made because therein lies your supreme love. There's a sixth purpose in trials that really is very, very helpful and that is this. Trials teach us to value the blessing of God.

They teach us to value the blessing of God. Reason, reason teaches us to value the world. Sense, feeling tells us to value pleasure. Faith tells us to value God's word, God's word, and God's favor, God's blessing. Reason says grab what you can grab in the world and go.

Sense and feeling says find pleasure at any price. Faith says obey the word of God and be blessed. See, trials teach us the blessing of obedience. In the midst of a trial, we obey and are blessed.

That's what they are intended to teach. They show us that obedience at all costs brings the blessing of God. The psalmist says in Psalm 63, 3, and this out of personal experience, because thy loving kindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee.

God, I have seen your loving kindness and it's the best thing there is, the best thing there is. Jesus is the perfect example of this in Hebrews 5. In the days of His flesh, He offered up prayers, supplications, with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death.

Jesus going through the trial and the garden, that's what's being pictured there. And He was sweating, as it were, great drops of blood, weeping and crying out to God, deliver Him. And He was heard and that He feared. And though He were a Son and a beloved one at that, yet He learned obedience by the things He suffered. And being made perfect, He became the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey Him. Through, watch this, through suffering, He was obedient and God exalted Him.

Philippians 2 puts it another way, He was humbled, took upon Him the form of a man, offered Himself in death and God highly exalted Him. Trials come to put us through suffering that we may obey in the suffering and then receive the full blessing of God. And I would say that when you go through a trial, if you learn to obey God, you will experience the exhilaration of His blessing.

That's His promise. Let me give you two others that are purposes of suffering. Number seven, suffering comes, and this is a very, very valuable purpose, suffering comes to enable us to help others in their suffering. Sometimes when suffering comes, it may have no more purpose than to make us better able to assist others in their own suffering. I think of that in regard to the 22nd chapter of Luke where Jesus says to Peter, and the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold Satan's desire to have you that he may sift you is weak.

Satan's going to take you and shake you. And I have prayed for you that your faith fail not. Now watch this, and when you are turned around, when you come through that thing, he says, strengthen your brethren.

There you go. A wonderful purpose. That's like Jesus in Hebrews chapter 4, Hebrews chapter 2 also, who becomes a faithful, merciful high priest able to help those who come to Him because He has been through every trial we've been through, right? That's what makes him a merciful, faithful high priest. So we go through trials for the purpose of being able to help others. How wonderful, how wonderful that God allows us to learn by experience, to instruct others. And then finally, the eighth, trials come to develop enduring strength for greater usefulness. They come to develop enduring strength for greater usefulness.

Again, Thomas Manton said, while all things are quiet and comfortable, we live by sense rather than faith. But the worth of a soldier is never known in times of peace. End quote. That's right.

The worth of a soldier is never known in times of peace. God has His purpose in trial. And what it is to do is to give us greater strength. As you go through one trial, your spiritual muscles are exercised.

You're stronger for the next one. That means you can face a greater foe. That means you're more useful. You go through another trial and another trial and another trial and all those are strengthening, strengthening, strengthening until now your usefulness is on the increase. Your endurance makes you more useful. And then the more useful you are, the more used you are. And the more used you are, the more you accomplish in the power of the Spirit for the glory of God.

So let me sum it up. What is God's purpose as He tests us? First, to test the strength of our faith that we might know where our strength is or isn't. Secondly, to humble us lest we think more confidently of our spiritual strength than we should. Thirdly, to wean us away from worldly things. Fourthly, to call us to a heavenly hope so that we live in the above and not in the below. Fifthly, to reveal what we really love. Sixthly, to teach us to value the blessing of God and to appreciate it as it comes to us out of the times of suffering. Seventh, to enable us to help others in their trial to bear one another's burdens. And eighth, to develop enduring strength for greater usefulness so that God can thrust us into greater places of ministry and effectiveness. Now aren't these all worthwhile purposes? All of these fit into the plan of God by His grace. But the question still lingers in your mind as it does in mine. Fine, they're going to come and we might say, I know they're going to come and I know all these things are God's purposes in them and He wants to accomplish all of this.

I can buy into that. But it still doesn't answer the question, how do I get through it in the middle of it? And that's where James 1, 2 to 12 really speak to the heart. First of all, it takes a joyous attitude. The first means to persevering in a trial is a joyous attitude.

My brethren count it all joy. The second is an understanding mind, knowing this, that this test is producing something. The third is a submissive will, let patience have its perfect work. In other words, let it happen because God is at work. The fourth in verses 5 to 8 is a believing heart. Ask God for what you need and ask verse 6 says, in what? In faith.

You have to have a believing heart to believe that God has a purpose and that He will supply everything you need for that trial, a believing heart. And finally, in verses 9 to 11, a humble spirit, a humble spirit. You persevere through trials with a joyous attitude, an understanding mind, a submissive will, a believing heart and a humble spirit. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John is chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, and for 53 years now he's been the teacher with Grace to You. Today he continued his series on the New Testament beginning to end with a compelling look at the purpose of trials. Well, John, you made it clear today God has a purpose for trials. He uses them to teach patience, humility, hope. And since suffering and evil often lead to spiritual growth, would it be proper to say that God causes suffering and evil?

Well, that comes across as a simple question, but the answer is complicated. In the Old Testament, God says, Have not I made the lame and the halt and the blind? In that sense, God is the author of elements of human suffering. But God does not cause evil, and much of the suffering in the world is a direct result of evil. God allows for trouble. Man is born into trouble, it says in Job, as the sparks fly upward. In other words, it's an inevitability as sparks of a fire fly up, so man is born to trouble. Trouble is all over the place. It is part of this fallen world. It is in the fabric of everything.

In fact, in Romans 8, Paul says, The whole creation groans. I think it's best to say that in the general sense, God has allowed evil as a consequence of the fall and of ongoing sin that dominates the world. It dominates the human world.

It dominates the spirit world with demons and Satan. But at the same time, God is not the author of evil. God cannot do evil.

He cannot do wrong. And he has put in motion the plan of redemption, which includes redeeming a whole humanity from human history to gather into heaven for eternal glory in a place where there will be no trouble, there will be no suffering, no pain, no sin, no wrong at all. Also, God will ultimately destroy all evil.

God has allowed it for his own glory through redemption and his own glory through judgment. Thank you, Jon. And friend, if I can make a suggestion, Jon has written a book that will be a great help when you're dealing with trials. It's called The Power of Suffering. This book will show you the path to spiritual strength and peace even in the most difficult times. To get a copy, contact us today.

Call our customer service line, 800-55-GRACE, or visit our website, gty.org. The Power of Suffering will not only help you better understand the unique and important role suffering plays in every believer's life, but it will also help prepare you to comfort and encourage others during their suffering. To get a copy of The Power of Suffering, call 800-55-GRACE, or visit gty.org. And while you're at gty.org, make sure you take advantage of the thousands of free resources that are available there. You will find helpful blog articles by Jon and our staff, there are daily devotionals, and more than 3500 of Jon's sermons, free to download in MP3 and transcript format. All of those free Bible study tools are designed to help you apply the life-changing truth of Scripture in your walk with Christ.

The website, again, gty.org. Now for Jon MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making Grace To You part of your day, and be here tomorrow when Jon looks at how to spot false teachers and keep your church pure. Jon will continue his study on the New Testament beginning to end with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace To You.