Tonight we're going to be in 1 Peter chapter 4 and as you find your place there, it's always a privilege and an honor to fill in in the pulpit and something we do not take lightly. And when you find your place in 1 Peter chapter 4, if you would, if you can, stand to honor the reading of God's Word.
1 Peter chapter 4 and verse 12 is where we'll begin, working down to verse 19. Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you as though some strange thing happened unto you, but rejoice in as much as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy. If you be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye for the Spirit of glory and of God resisteth upon you, arresteth upon you, and their part He is evil spoken of, but on your part He is glorified. And verse 15, but let none of your suffering, but let none of you suffer as a murderer or as a thief or as an evildoer or as a busybody and in other men's matters. Yet if any man suffer as he, as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in this behalf, for this time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God.
And if it first began at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel of God? Verse 18, and if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Wherefore, let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well-doing as unto a faithful creator.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for this evening that we could come in a midweek service into your house, Lord, and we come to seek you, Lord, and the truth from your word and Lord may it set out to do everything you have set to accomplish with it tonight. Lord, hide me behind the cross, give me the words to speak.
Lord, we come to hear your infallible word, the truths of it, and Lord, not the opinions of a man. But Lord, as we've heard already, may you be with the teens and the kids as well. And Lord, I pray if there's anyone here tonight in this room that doesn't know Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, that tonight would be the night of salvation for them. Lord, I pray for the Christian that may be going through a trial and suffering at a point in their life at this time, Lord, that you would be with them, that this would be encouraging to them, uplifting. And Lord, even for those that are not, Lord, we know that there's seasons of life and we too shall soon be going through a trial or a temptation or suffering ourselves. So Lord, we ask tonight that you would set out to do everything that you've set and who accomplished through us, through your word.
It's in your holy, precious Son, Jesus Christ's name I pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Well, many of you may be wondering, what's going on? You know, the last time I was up here to preach, I talked about suffering and here we are talking again about it.
And like I said before, it's just something that I've been studying. Not that you have to, you know, be worried about me. I'm not going through this great trial of suffering in my life currently. But I feel that at some point in time, there will be those inevitable moments in our lives when we face suffering.
And I'd like to continue on in looking at another passage. And I've titled tonight's message, Faith Under Fire and Trusting God in Trials. And you know, this may be the first time I'm preaching with some glasses on. As I'm getting a little older, it's harder to see some things, especially at a distance. And so, you know, it helps me see the time, helps me see the verses a little bit better.
And so we'll get moving in the text tonight. But that is not a suffering, it's just part of old age and your eyes going bad. And many of you can attest to that and say, amen, right?
Some of you are saying, shh. But as we look at this passage tonight in 1 Peter, Peter suffered greatly for his Christian faith. The words we have before us this evening were formed in the fiery furnace of Peter's trials in his life and living out his Christian faith. And Peter's own afflictions and pain are shown in the scriptures and history records it.
And God changed this faltering, stubborn, impulsive, self-confident apostle into the rock that he became through the trials and sufferings of his life. When it came time to the martyrdom of Peter, he is recorded. But first off, before he was persecuted and crucified, his wife was crucified. And I can't imagine what he had to go through sitting there watching his wife be crucified and seeing that agonizing suffering that he would have went through, that she would have went through. And he told her as she was being crucified, remember the Lord, remember the Lord.
And I can just envision him yelling out over the crowd and trying to get his voice out to where she could hear it and continue to lift that up, remember the Lord in your sufferings. And then when it came time for Peter's crucifixion, he reportedly pled that he was not worthy to suffer the same crucifixion that his Savior had. And history records that he was crucified upside down as historians have recorded it. And so suffering and glory, I would tell us tonight, are two twin truths that go together. Say that five times fast. They're two truths that go together.
They're woven together. And this should not be a surprise since suffering and glory walk hand in hand. And suffering for the Christian must be seen in the perspective of eternity like I spoke of last time.
We need to see it from God's perspective. The glory of the Lord lies ahead and it is the suffering and then it is glory. If you think about this, if there was no cross that Christ went to, there is no crown for us today. And many of us, you know, we look across the landscape of the world and we'll say Christianity too, many Christians, they want a crown but they don't want to bear the cross. They don't want to suffer for Christ's namesake.
And so too many Christians today want that crown and do not want to bear a cross. Can I say this? I've never seen a golf course. We have golfers here tonight, I know there's probably a few of you that golf. I have never golfed. I've gone to the driving range to see how far I can hit the ball and that's about the extent of it. I played baseball so I would love to see how far I could crush it.
But the technical terms and all those sort of things and the technicality that comes with putting it and driving it and different things, I have no clue on any of that. But have you ever seen a golf course that did not have hazards? They have them built in.
It's part of the game. And golfers will attest to going across the country to some of the most hazardous golf courses because of the challenge that is laid before them and they accept that challenge. They welcome those trials. They welcome those challenges.
But in the West, can I say that many in the West, they want their life to be easy and their hobbies to be hard? What does it mean for us to face a fiery trial? Why would a loving God allow His children to experience such trials? And how are Christians supposed to face animosity and hostility?
And I would say, could it be that suffering rather than being a sign of God's absence is actually a mark of our union with Christ? And so this portion of Scripture that Peter has written before us here tonight, Peter expands upon a special kind of persecution, a fiery trial, if you will, that is about to overtake the church. And he gives us four instructions in these verses tonight, and there are four points tonight.
Verses expect suffering, secondly is rejoice in suffering, thirdly, examine your life, and fourthly, commit yourself to God. And so Peter likely wrote 1 Peter in the era timeframe of when Rome was about ready to burn. Narrow had just set flames to Rome.
He had burnt the city down or close to that timeframe. They believe that Peter was writing this. And so the persecution of Christianity was at its height.
It would continue on for several other emperors after Narrow, and it would continue for about 200 years until Constantine. And the major recurring theme of the followers of Christ should respond to unjust suffering. And so here in 1 Peter, the word suffering is used 16 times.
Out of the 94 times, it's used in the entire Bible. And so it's the theme, it's the utmost word that is elevated here is the suffering of the Christian. And I would say today as Christians, there's hostility that is growing, and maybe not so much here in the West, but around the world, it's been, it's always been. There's always been a hostility towards Christianity. And the temperature is starting to get turned up here in America, yet it's because of the message that we have. It is the exclusivity of the gospel.
It is because of our Savior. Therefore, to endure the present hostilities as well as anything that we face in the future, viewers need to take note of this passage tonight and the instructions how to endure trials. And we pick up in verse 12, you see there it says, Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial, which is to try you as though some strange thing happened unto you. And we see Peter starts off with beloved. And this is the Greek term agrapeitas, and it means one who is very special or is a special relationship with another. In secular Greek, if you go back to secular Greek writings, mostly it's used of children with whom they receive all the affection and love from their parents. And that is the same terminology for us.
It's a term of endearment. It could be translated as the divine loved ones, the divine loved ones. And so do you know that if you're here tonight that you are a child of God, that you are beloved? And I believe that if God has a refrigerator, and He may, may not, I don't know, we'll find out when we get to heaven, but He would have a picture of you on His refrigerator.
And it would be big enough to have all of our pictures on it, right? And this is the same word that God the Father uses of God the Son. In His baptism and in His transfiguration, Matthew 3.17, He said, This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And on the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17.5, He said, This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And so here God is reinforcing and reassuring us of His unfailing love. And this is to help us not to doubt God's love. And oftentimes, we heard the last time I was up here preaching about suffering, we sometimes feel like, Where's God at in it?
Did He leave me? You know, I then sometimes, and this is wrong thought process. Early on as a Christian, I thought, Okay, I read my Bible, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. Why am I going through this? Anybody ever felt that way before?
And we all probably have done that. But the thing is, is that that's a wrong mindset. The suffering and persecution of trials, they will come and this, He tells us in His Word, He'll never leave us, He'll never forsake us. And so the next phrase that we see after beloved is, Think it not strange. And this is the Greek word, senidzo, and it lets us know that the gospel of Christ will be offensive to many, and will produce sufferings.
Peter is using a command, it is a present imperative, with the negative implications that they were not to be surprised by what they were facing or shocked by the fiery trial that is coming their way or that they are going through currently. And the idea is to stop thinking of it as being alien or foreign. And we've all been there by what we just showed of a hand survey a moment ago. We've all thought that like, this is foreign, this is alien, why am I going through this? But we need to know that it's just part of the Christian life. And sometimes it's, there's some false teachers out there with the prosperity gospel that say, hey, if you get Jesus, you get health, you get wealth, you get fame. And that is anti-gospel, it's not what we see in the scriptures. And so suffering is something that is not strange. It is not foreign to the Christian life. And throughout history, the people of God have been tormented and tortured for the cause, for standing up for Christ.
Just read Fox's book of martyrs, Fox's book of martyrs, and it'll turn your stomach at times what you read in that book. Paul admonished Timothy of this in 2 Timothy 3.12, yay, all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. And so believers should expect suffering and Jesus said in John 15, 18, he said this in John 15, 18, if the world hated you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.
And Swindle, Chuck Swindle, Charles Swindle, he said this, suffering is the common thread in all of our garments. We all go through suffering at different points and times in our walk. And Paul was a chosen apostle by the Lord Jesus Christ and the Lord warned Ananias in Acts chapter 9 verse 16, he said this, for I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake. And if you've read your Bible, you know that Paul went through it, didn't he?
He was shipwrecked, he was beaten, he was left for dead. And Paul told young Timothy in 2 Timothy 3.11, persecutions and afflictions which came unto me at Antioch and at Iconium and Lystra, what persecutions I endured, but out of them all the Lord delivered me. Can I tell you that he will deliver us out of our persecutions and trials as well? Whether it's in this life or the next, he will deliver us. And so much of what we see going on in the world system around us, we live in a day and age with a lot of lies and deception, don't we?
We turn on the news and I don't turn it on a whole lot, I usually look at some headlines and then I say, oh, that's, I got to believe the opposite of what they're trying to tell me because the deception and the lies that are being portrayed out there. But as a dedicated Christian builds his or her life on the truth and humility and holiness and the desire to glorify God, I would say that the conflict is very well illustrated throughout the scriptures why these persecutions come. And sometimes it's not because someone is religious, it's because they are righteous.
And there's a difference between those two things. You can believe, you can be a religious person and the world not persecute you, right? But if you stand up for your convictions and you want to live a righteous life, you will be frowned upon. Think of this, Cain was a religious man, yet he hated his brother, Abel, and he killed him. And why did he persecute him? It says this in 1 John 3, 12 and 13, not as Cain who was of that wicked one and slew his brother and wherefore he slew him or why did he kill him? He goes on to say, because his own works were evil and his brother's righteous.
Marvel, my brethren, if the world hateth you, marvel not. And so the Pharisees, they were religious, right? They had a lot of religious acts. They were religious, but they were far from knowing God.
And it says that they ended up, we see in the scriptures that they crucified Jesus. Matthew 10, 17, Jesus gave us this warning, says, beware of men, for they will deliver you up to the councils and they will scourge you in their synagogues. Whether it is the hostility towards the exclusive message of the gospel or the efforts that we do to evangelize those in our communities, or perhaps it's to take a stand, that I believe that there's only one man and one woman, you know, it's male and female, it is not multiple creators.
God created them male and female, created he them. And so you take a stand for those sort of things in today's culture and you're going to see some backlash come your way and some hostility towards that exclusive message and the things that we see in the scriptures. John 16, 33, Jesus said, these things have I spoken unto you that in me you might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation or troubles, but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world. And 1 Thessalonians 3, 4 says, for verily for when we were with you, we told you before we should suffer tribulation even as it come to pass and ye know. And so we see that as we're working through verse 12 here, the next phrase is this fiery trial.
And this is a portrayal here. It portrays not only a figurative thing, but a painful experience of persecution. It is also used of a melting pot.
In ancient eastern culture, they would have a melting pot and some of you that have worked in metal, you know that there's a furnace sometimes that they put the metal into and it burns off the impurities to get the pure metal that is left and it's like the dross that is burnt off of it. And so sometimes when we are put into the fiery trial, God is burning that dross off of us. He's burning the sin off of us.
He's making us more pure and more into the image of Him. Isaiah 48, 10 says, behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver. I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.
And Psalm 66, 10 says, for thou, O God, has proved us. Thou has tried us as silver is tried. And Proverbs 17, 3 says, the finding pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tries what? He tries our hearts. So many times when we're put into these situations, it is to see what's on the inside.
It is to burn off the impurities. And I love what J.C. Ryle said, trials are intended to make us think, to wean us from the world, to bring us to the Bible and to draw us to our knees. Spurgeon went on to say, and this is, I had never heard this quote by Spurgeon before. So I started studying this out for this message. And Spurgeon said, what do I not owe to the crucible of the furnace?
The bellows that have blown up the coals and the hands which thrust into me, into the heat. I bear my witness that the worst days I have ever had turned out to be my best days. He goes on to say, I can bear my personal testimony that the best piece of furniture that I have ever owned was the cross in my house.
And I do not mean a material cross. I mean the cross of affliction and trouble. He goes on to say, for us to take heed, in shunning a trial, we are seeking to avoid a blessing. You know, there could be some things that God is trying to work through these trials in our life to bring a blessing to us.
Oftentimes when we're in those seasons, we don't necessarily understand why we're going through it. But when we get onto the other side of it, we're like, oh, now I see what God was doing in that. Now what He allows me to do is take that trial, that suffering, and then I can begin to minister to others who are going through that. And many of you have done that in this church.
You've been able to go through hardships and trials, and you've been able to take those moments and then refine that after you've come out of it, and you can start to pour that into other people's lives. And Peter saw that this fire was a refining process, and 1 Peter 1 says that the trial of your faith be much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found under praise and honor and glory at the peering of Jesus Christ. And so Peter here is giving this image of this saying process. It's burning off the impurities. It's making us pure.
It's drawing us closer to Christ. And I would say, where did he draw this from? And I'd say he drew it from Job, back in Job 23, 10. But he knoweth the way that I take. When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as what?
Gold, pure. And Job went through it, didn't he? He was going through it, and Job suffered greatly, yet he came out of his sufferings pure as gold.
And so it is important for us to realize that not all of life's difficulties are sufferings or tribulations for Christ. You get that first gray hair, and as I look in the mirror every day, I'm getting more and more gray hair. I got the glasses on tonight. You wake up. You slept too long. I had a neck ache. How did I get injured sleeping? And it's like, what is going on?
It's just the aging process. You stub your toe. It's not like the devil's causing this great tribulation because you stubbed your toe. Or perhaps it's a bad financial decision that we've made at a time or two. Maybe it's an unexpected... I don't even want to bring this up. Unexpected home repairs.
Anybody been down that road before? It's like, wow, where did this come from? And then you're in there.
You're trying to figure out how to get it fixed. And those are not the fiery trials that happen. Those are just consequences of things that happen in our daily lives.
So unfortunately, there are many difficulties I would say as well that we bring upon ourselves. If we choose to live in disobedience to God's Word and live in sin, we can expect the chastening of our Lord. And the fiery trials here mentioned in 1 Peter chapter 4 and verse 12 comes because we are faithful to God and we stand up for His cause. It is because we bear the name of Christ. We bear His image. We bear the name of Christ and the lost world attacks us because of who we represent. And Jesus, again, He told us this in John 15, 20 and 21, remember the word that I said unto you, the servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they have kept my sayings, they will keep yours also. And so this word happened here at the end of verse 12.
It's important. It means to come together, to meet as one. And persecution and trials, they don't just happen in a sense of just coming together. They are part of God's plan and purpose in our lives to conform us to the image of Christ. Romans 8, 28 tells us, and we know that all things work to the good of them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.
And so that's our first step that we look at tonight. Not only are we to expect them, but our second point is that we should rejoice when we come into them. And that's not our common reaction that we talked, like I spoke of last time I was up here. But you see in verse 13 and 14, it says, but rejoice in as much as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings that when His glory shall be revealed, you may be glad with exceeding joy. If you be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye. And he goes on, for the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you, and their part He is evil spoken of, but on your part He is glorified. And you see that if you write in your Bibles, I used to just think it was wrong to highlight or write in your Bibles.
I forgot to say it was like this, you know, I couldn't do that. You should. You should mark in your Bible.
You should underline it, highlight it, and take notes, whatever you need to do. But as I look through that, you see rejoice, glad, exceeding joy, happy are ye. Four times in those two verses, this theme is coming up and joy is mentioned in one form another in these two verses. And listen to how Jesus described it in Matthew chapter 5 verse 10 through 12, blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.
Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven. And so when we think about that, if we've ever been persecuted for the cause of Christ, for the name of Christ, for taking a stand for Christ, great. I think back, if I could go back to myself in high school, and I could just throat chop myself, when I was bad mouthing this, I'll never forget, and I hope that I will be able to meet this young lady one time before we are in heaven. But this young lady's name was Melissa, and she was bold, and she took a stand for Christ, and everything that we've been taught here at Lighthouse in our Creation versus Evolution series, and we see the different theories, and we see that everything that's been laid out, and we were in biology class, and she would take a stand for Christ, and she'd start to talk about how the earth couldn't be as old as what they date in the science books because of the moon dust and the different things, and I thought, moon dust, who is she talking, like what is she talking about here, I've never heard of a such thing, and we would just make fun of her for her faith.
And if I could go back, I would, I would just punch myself in the throat. I mean, but you know, she's receiving rewards in heaven one day because she took a stand for Christ, and she wasn't ashamed to live out her faith. And so to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, so will you receive and share His glory at His revelation when He comes back. The world cannot understand how difficult circumstances can produce exceeding joy because the world has never experienced the grace that we have experienced through Jesus Christ. And so Peter goes on here to mention four privileges that we share in in our sufferings, and the first one is our sufferings means fellowship with Christ, and we see that in verse 13. And it is an honor and a privilege to suffer with Christ and be treated by the world the way it treated Him. And Paul understood this, didn't he, in Galatians chapter 6 verse 17, it says, from henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the markings of the Lord Jesus. And we talked about it earlier, Paul was shipwrecked, beaten, left for dead, and Paul could pull back his cloak, and you could see the scars on his back, and he could say, look at my trophy case. Look at my trophy case. You see my trophies? The question for us is, do we bear any marks in our body for Christ?
And I know many of you do. Many of you have, and many of you will have many more to come, but if not, why not? And so Paul desired to share the Lord's sufferings because they bring Him into a deeper and more meaningful relationship with His Savior. It reminds me of one of my favorite Bible verses in all of scripture, because I was a rebellious young little boy, it started out when I was little, my sister's here tonight, she can tell you all about it, but Acts chapter 5 verse 41, it says this, that the apostles, it says, and when they had departed from the presence of the council, rejoicings that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name. They counted it joy to suffer for Christ.
And we ask, what happened to them? You have to go back one verse to verse 40, and it says this, and to Him they agreed, and when they had called the apostles and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak the name of Jesus and let them go. They were beat for preaching Christ. They were like, hey, it was worth it. They tell them, hey, we whooped you, don't go talk about Christ anymore. Did it stop them? No, we're sitting here today.
Look at verse 42, verse 42, and daily in the temple in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. Now, this is a silly question. Who in here ever got a whooping growing up? Several of us. Raise your hand if you never got a whooping. Some of you. It shows.
No, just kidding. But I didn't grow up in a day of the age of go stand in the corner and think about it, like who, like that wasn't the generation I grew up in, man. I had a paddle with my name on it. It was broken a couple times.
I had a couple of new paddles, and one time my grandma, she whooped me, and I was so foolish, I turned around and laughed and said, ha, that didn't hurt. You've heard pastor talking about his mom calling his dad or telling his dad when he got home what he had done. There's some another level to this when grandma calls dad at work. You're thinking you're in trouble when dad gets home from work. No, dad made a special trip home on his lunch break.
So it got expedited a lot quicker. Can I tell you, in all those whoopings, I was never thankful. I was never thankful. I was a quick learner. I never told grandma again that it didn't hurt.
Like, oh, grandma hurts, don't do it, it hurts. But you would see these, but I wasn't living, I wasn't living for Christ then. When these sufferings and trials and tribulations come, we can go through these moments because of him and what he did for us. And so it brings me to another account of Adoniram Judson. He was a missionary to Burma, and if you've read about his life, you know much about this. He was a missionary to the country of Burma. He was in prison for 17 months. He was beaten.
He was shackled, chained, all that sort of stuff for these 17 months, and at the end of it, these horrible, just torturous things that they had done to him, you would think he would have thrown in the towel and come back home. And upon his release, he asked the tribal leader if he could have his permission to go in a neighboring community, a neighboring providence, and start to preach the gospel. And this is what the godless ruler said to him, denying it.
He said, my people are not fools enough to listen to anything a missionary might say, but I fear they might be impressed by your scars and turn to your religion. Do we bear any marks for Christ? And so we can take great assurance that Christ is with us in these fiery trials, these fire tribulations. Isaiah 43 2 says, when thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee and through the rivers.
Now, they shall not overflow thee. When thou walkest through the fires, thou shall not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. And we know this from Daniel chapter 3. The three Hebrew boys, Hananiah, Mishael, and Ezra, right? They were in the fiery furnace. And Daniel chapter 3 verse 25, it says that King Nebuchadnezzar and the guards are looking in.
There's four men walking about, and they are completely unharmed. And he promised to be with his followers, didn't he, at the end of the Great Commission. And Matthew 28 20, it says, teach them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even into the end of the world, amen. And so secondly, our suffering means glory in the future. What we suffer here now brings future glory. The world believes that the absence of suffering means that you must be doing things right. You must have glory in this present life. However, Christians' outlook should be different. The trials of our faith today produce future glory, as we saw earlier in 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 7.
It might be found unto the praise and honor of the glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. And so it is necessary for us to understand that God is going to replace suffering with glory. And any of you that are here tonight that have been a mother, you can relate to this. You go through the labor process, you go through the carrying the baby for nine months, maybe ten for some, I'm glad that God did not give that responsibility to man, because I am the worst person when I get a cold.
I mean, my wife is a champion, like she just keeps pushing through. But those pains of carrying that child, the pains of the labor, and then when that child is laid upon the mother's chest, all those pains are disappearing. They have gone to glory.
All they can see is the beauty of that child that they're holding in that moment. And the pain is transformed to joy. And Jesus told us that in John 16 verses 20 through 22, and we'll skip over that for time's sake tonight. But if you have writing the notes, take that down, John 16, 20 through 22. And the cross that gave Jesus the shame and pain also brought power and glory.
The thorn in Paul's flesh that he wanted to have removed also gave him power and glory. Mature people know that sometimes we need to defer things, don't we? We live in a day and age of instant gratification, like to deny self or to deny self of something is contrary to everything that's in our human nature, like we could pull out our phone, we could have food here, like DoorDash to us, we don't have to go get it, you know, you name it, like we live in this microwave society where nobody wants to wait or postpone the pleasures. We live in a very hedonistic culture where everything is, let me take it all in, let me consume it upon myself. But a wise person will know that we need to postpone those things.
We pay a price today in order to have the enjoyments in the future. A piano student may not enjoy playing endless hours of practicing the scales, they long for the day that they can play a beautiful song. As I'm trying to learn the guitar, it gets so frustrating at times, I can play like three chords and that's it. And you're like, dude, is that all you got? Yeah, I've been working on it for a while. They just don't cooperate like they used to. But you know, it's one of those things. But an athlete doesn't necessarily enjoy the training or the work that goes into it, but they do enjoy the results during the game, don't they? This year, I did another 150-mile relay race.
This year, we did a five-man team. And you're like, you're crazy. Why are you doing that? I don't know.
It's just I like to do it. But we signed up and it roughly equates out to 30 miles per person during this race, give or take a few miles per person. But essentially, the training that went into it began in November of last year. And the race was in April of this year. And it's nice when you're outside on nice spring days and it's 60 or 70 degrees. When it's a Florida swamp out there like it was tonight with 2,000% humidity, it's 20 degrees outside, nobody wants to go out in that, do they?
If it's cold out, like let me be by the fire, let me stay in my nice warm house, I do not want to go in that. But again, the work that I put into it was not enjoyable. But can I tell you that the results on race day was very enjoyable? To be able to run that, to be able to finish the race, to finish the course in a very well-timed race that we put forth, it showed in that training. And what it happened is as a team, and it kind of ties into a little bit what we need to do as Christians, is we would come alongside each other and we would encourage each other, we would build each other up, we were sending text messages, sending videos, and if you've seen some of them, it was just ridiculous. But we need to do that when we have fellow brothers and sisters in Christ that are going through trials and tribulations as the body of Christ, we need to come around them, we need to encourage them, we need to lift them up. And so Christians have something even better though.
Can I tell you to look forward to than something silly like that race that I just mentioned? Our sufferings will one day be transformed into glory. And it says, be glad with also exceeding joy. Romans 8, 17 says, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with Him that we may be also glorified together with Him. So make no mistake about it, God will deliver us out of the sufferings, whether it's in this life or the next. So the third thing our suffering does is it brings us into the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It allows the Holy Spirit to begin to minister to us. He is the spirit of glory and has the special ministry to those who are suffering for the cause of Christ.
Fourthly, our suffering enables us to glorify His name. It says that in verse 14, but on your part, He is glorified. And it reminds me of Polycarp, the bishop of the church at Smyrna, he was told to recant for his beliefs.
And this is what Polycarp said. He said, at 86 years I have served him, meaning Christ, and he never did me any injury. How can I blaspheme my King and my Savior? And because he refused to recant his faith in Christ, he was burned at the stake.
Yet he received eternal glory on the other side of that. And so that brings us to our third point tonight, examine your life, evaluate the suffering. And I love this part, it says, but let none of you suffer as murderers or as thieves or as an evildoer, as a busybody in other man's matters. So to me what that means is, hey, you can't call that suffering.
When you're doing the wrong stuff, if you're a busybody and in everybody else's business or you're doing evil, you're doing these things, you cannot say that, you cannot even equate that to suffering. All right, it goes on to say, yet if any man suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on his behalf, for the time has come that the judgment must begin at the house of God. And so this fiery trial, again, is the refining process by which God removes those impurities off of us and from us, and one day God will place a fiery judgment over the whole earth, he tells us, in 2 Peter 3, verses 7 through 16. Meanwhile, God's judgment, he tells us, begins at the household of God.
It begins with us. And 1 Peter 2, 5 says, ye also as lively stones are built up a spiritual house and holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. And so this truth ought to motivate us to be pure and to be obedient to his word and what he has for us. Peter poses the comparative question then, if judgment begins here at the household of God, how much so those that are outside?
And the answer is plain. We know in the book of Revelation, judgment concludes with Christ's final condemnation of the ungodly at the great white throne of judgment in Revelation 20, verse 11. And so listen, friends, I would tell us that are sitting here tonight that are saved, it is far better for us to go through persecutions and trials and sufferings in this life than to live in eternity away from God.
And this should motivate us. And if you're here tonight and you don't know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, you need to get that straightened out tonight. You need to be saved. When we think about this, it should motivate us to share the gospel, if we truly believe what we believe about the scriptures and what the Bible says, we should be telling our friends, our family, our co-workers, anybody we come into contact with their need for salvation. And you see there in verse 16, he says, am I ashamed or glorifying Christ? It has been said that this of the Christian, faith makes a Christian, life proves a Christian, trials confirm a Christian, and death crowns the Christian.
Say it again, faith makes a Christian, life proves a Christian, trials confirm a Christian, and death crowns a Christian. And so the statement must have reminded Peter of his own denial. You think about Peter back, he denied Christ three times.
And as the Holy Spirit's guiding him to pin this down, you think maybe he went back to that moment when he denied Christ three times? He was ashamed of him. And can I say Jesus has never been ashamed of us? Hebrews chapter 2, verse 11, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren.
Although many times in my life I feel that God would have a right reason to be ashamed of me and my actions and what I've done, I've been ashamed of myself in those moments. The Father is not ashamed to be called our God, it says in Hebrews 11, 16, wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God. And on the cross we know that Jesus, he despised the cross, and it says this in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down on the right hand of the throne of God. And so surely we can bear reproach for him and not be ashamed and take heed of the warnings of Mark 8, 38, and Mark 8, 38 says, whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me, of my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation of him, also shall my son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in glory of his father with the holy angels. And so if we seek to glorify God, then we will not be ashamed of the name of Christ. And it wasn't that Paul's motivation, as he goes to Rome in Acts 1, 16, he says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew, but then also unto the Greek.
I butchered that there at the end, sorry. But again, he's motivated by this. He is not ashamed of Christ. He went to Rome so that the gospel would reach Rome into Spain. So the question is, am I seeking to win the lost? And you see that there in verses 17 and 18, what shall the end of them be that obtain not the gospel of God? Peter describes the lost and he says that they obey not the gospel of God. Instead of being concerned about ourselves, and it's hard, I get it, when we're in our trials, we kind of inwardly focus, don't we?
Sometimes. And we need to shift that outwardly focus to those around us. And oftentimes what happens is when we start to set our sights on other things, we get rid of the woe is me. And we start to pour our lives into others. And so when we see that, when we're going through these things and we see that the trials that we are going through, yeah, it's difficult, it's hard, but we should also see the end judgment for those that are lost, that are not saved, and that should encourage us to kind of get outside of our bubble and to reach those. And it says this in 2 Thessalonians chapter 1, 7 through 10, and to you who are troubled, rest with us when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels and flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints and be admired in all them that believe. So times of persecution are times of opportunity, I will tell us, times of persecution are times of opportunity for a loving witness to those who persecute us. You ever think about that for a moment? I've thought about that with that poor young lady, Melissa, and there's many times that I thought about the people that when I wasn't a Christian that I mocked, yet they showed me grace, they never were puffed up, fired up, spitting right back at me or anything like that.
They just continued to show grace through the whole thing. In Matthew chapter 5 verse 43 through 48, it says, ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you. Anybody else find that hard? Like, Lord, I gotta go to them.
You know, you gotta be a gospel witness. I can't give back to them what they're dishing out to me. I got two nephews.
It's hilarious, man. Like, when they were little, the one would punch the other one and the other one would go back two-fisting. Like, he was just like, I'm gonna get you back twice as bad.
And previously, when I was lost, I would want to do the same thing. I would only double that up. Let me get them back two-fold. He goes on to say here, for if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same? If ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others?
Do not even the publicans so? Be therefore perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. And these verses are telling us that, hey, even the lost people can do these things. They can be friendly to their friends. They can be friendly to people that they like. Even tax collectors and pagans do that.
Can I say this tonight? It wasn't the earthquake that converted the Philippian jailer. It was the love of Paul and Silas. He was getting ready to take his life, and they were more concerned. They had just been beaten, persecuted, put in prison, and they had every right to let him probably, in their own fleshly reaction, probably would have every right to let him do it. But they were more concerned about his soul than their persecutions and trials and beatings that they had went through. And they cried out to him, Lord, or, sir, we are still here, and went on to give him the gospel.
He goes on and gets saved. And lastly tonight, commit yourselves to God. We see that in verse 19, wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well-doing as unto a faithful creator. And so when we are suffering in the will of God, we can commit ourselves into the care of God. Everything else that we do as Christians depends on this.
And when we look at this, how do we do this? How do we commit ourselves to the Lord? And it's by means of well-doing. As we return good for evil and do even better than what we had received, what we suffered, we are committing ourselves to God, and he can care for us. It says in 2 Timothy, and this is Paul speaking to young Timothy at the end of his life, at the end of Paul's life, and he says, For the which cause I also suffer these things, nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know who I have believed. I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.
He's perfectly gonna keep us. No man shall pluck him out of his hands, the Bible tells us, shall pluck us out of his hands, the Bible tells us. And Psalms 37 verse 5 through 7 says, Commit thy ways unto the Lord. Trust also in him, and he shall bring it to pass, and he shall bring forth thy righteousness as light and thy judgments as the noonday.
Rest in the Lord and patiently wait for him. Threat not thyself because him who prospers in his ways because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. And so in closing tonight, friends, in closing, listen, may we be slowly, those who are slowly to surely learn to embrace the trials and difficulties of this life and the sufferings that we may go through. May we begin to understand it from a heaven's perspective and truly loosen sin's grip on us, to keep our focus on eternity, to allow us to focus on the eternal end and where we will be. And I think of James chapter 1 verse 2, My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into diverse temptations. And Charles Spurgeon said this, They who dive in the sea of affliction bring up rare pearls.
Many times when we are in those seasons, those hardships, like I said earlier, it doesn't feel nice. But when we go through that and we come out on the other side of that storm, we can bring up rare pearls. We have wisdom that we can pass on to others to help them through the circumstances and trials of life that they are going through. And may we be those that do just that. May we be those that find joy even in the difficulties of life that come our way. May we realize suffering and glory are two things that goes hand in hand. They're the two sides of the same coin. And if we have been imprinted by God and by godly suffering, we will be transformed to eternal glory.
