Hello and welcome to Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. I'm your host, Scott Wiley. Just before Stephen's message today, I want to make sure you know that he has a monthly magazine called Heart to Heart. If you've not seen it, we'd like to send you an issue for you to preview it for yourself. Give us a call at 866-48 Bible or visit wisdomonline.org.
Now here's Stephen. That's exactly the expression, although just a fraction of the pain of Jesus Christ. His suffering, his separation from his Father, which we cannot even begin to understand when he was drenched with the sin of the world, 1 John 2:2. And it says, For the joy set before him, he endured the cross. Aren't you glad that he endured the cross Accepted the shame so that you and I could be born.
Again. Today, we hear a lot about profiling. profiling people and I agree we ought to be careful. And just because someone is from the Middle East has a dark complexion and a beard doesn't mean they're a terrorist. Just because they're Mm-hmm.
Working. Out in landscaping doesn't mean they don't have a green card and they're illegal. Just because they're young and black doesn't mean they're up to trouble. Just because they're white doesn't mean they're prejudiced. But frankly, this isn't a problem just in this country.
If you travel around the world, you discover it's a problem everywhere because it is a problem of the heart. The gospel Is blind to all of that. I remember 20 years ago or so visiting one of our global staff members in Japan, and we were walking around Tagoshima, and I just noticed people looking at me. I was a little taller than the average individual, but He told me, he said, look, they're recognizing that you're more than likely an American. And he said, they are assuming, they're profiling you, they assume two things about you.
One, that you have AIDS, and two, that you're carrying a gun.
So they think you're dangerous. And they're leery of you. He said they've all watched Chuck Norris on TV. And they think you're going to break something too if you get too close to them. I don't break things unless I try to fix them.
That's the way it works with with me. It has that for profiling. When Peter wrote his first letter, to the scattered believers. their communities We're beginning to develop An erroneous profile. of Christianity.
and Christians. In fact, if you read historians like Tacitus, a first-century Roman senator, it's fascinating to read. And others, they reveal how Christianity was coming to be regarded and assumed. And if you were a Christian, then you were this or that. For one thing, Christians We're being viewed as treasonous.
to the crown because they wouldn't acknowledge the divinity of Caesar. Secondly, they were profiled as atheists, if you can imagine. They were viewed as atheists because they rejected the pantheon of Greek and Roman gods. and wouldn't worship them. And instead, Tacitus wrote with cynicism, they worshipped a dead man.
They were considered bad for business. Because they wouldn't get into the temple practice. In fact, in in in Ephesus you had this one event where the goat where the where the silversmiths were losing money because Christians weren't buying the little idols. And so they viewed Christians as bad for the economy. Wherever Christianity took root, The economy dropped.
That was the profile. In addition, the Christians didn't fit the politically correct notions of morality. The correct ideals of the Roman view of ego and self and power and licentiousness. The early church is going to follow the New Testament. A model of sexual purity.
They're going to condemn adultery and they're going to condemn fornication. They're going to condemn homosexuality as being outside. The bounds of God's design, and they're going to deliver this message while their own emperor has married both a man and a woman, has had numerous escapades with married women.
So they they obviously don't fit in. Even darker elements that would be hard for us to imagine, but darker elements of their profile was being developed. And I'll give you a couple of them. One of the rumors that had begun to circulate in the first century was that Christians were cannibals. They were meeting in secret to eat Somebody's flesh and drink somebody's blood.
So they were in secret cannibalistic. They were also viewed as As hypocrites Because although they condemned their culture for sexual immorality, they were holding in private these things they called love feasts, where they were encouraged to kiss one another.
So they were obviously involved in holding secret orgies. Add to that profile, Christians were being viewed as anti-family because their religious leaders said this is going to split the family up. He demanded their loyalty over and above loyalty to parents and siblings. And so they were anti-family. Bad for family.
So Christians are actually being profiled as anti-business. an anti-family, an anti-patriotic, an anti-social, an anti-Caesar, and and and morally deviant and cannibalistic and atheistic. Tacitus writes in the first century, These words, and I quote them. These who had been given the vulgar name of Christians. were detested for the abominations they perpetrated.
In other words, they're committing all these abominations. And the founder of this sect, Christus by name. Had been executed by Pontius Pilate, and this dangerous superstition, though put down for the moment, broke out again not only in Judea, the original home of this pest. Imagine that. But it's breaking out even in Rome.
Another Roman historian adds, because of these issues, this religion was slowly prohibited by laws which were enacted and by edicts which eventually proclaimed that it was unlawful to be a Christian. Like much of our world to this day, by the way, Not here. Not yet.
Now, as Peter is writing to these scattered believers, And I invite your attention back to his first letter.
Okay. It's becoming perilous to be a Christian. This is why Peter's letter, by the way, doesn't deal with any theological heresy or error. He doesn't get on to the body, the church, the local church. He doesn't deal with any of that.
And what he does instead is merely writes a letter to encourage the believer who is facing growing public ridicule. and opposition and scorn and financial loss and physical loss and all the distress and suffering that is sort of mounting up. They're being profiled incorrectly. And tragically.
Now, I do want to say this as we continue the introduction for just a Just a few more moments here. What Peter does not do in his letter Is tell the Christians that their major mission in life is to rewrite. You know, the community-wide viewpoint. He doesn't tell them to go and straighten everybody out. He doesn't tell them to march on Nero.
He doesn't tell them to demand their rights, which are being erased. He doesn't tell them to, you know, here's how you can demand better treatment. What Peter does instead is to encourage the believers To remain faithful to Jesus Christ. And if they do any rewriting of their profile, it's going to happen one individual at a time. Those people that live next to you and work next to you and watch you and belong to your extended family, one individual at a time by means of the gospel will find out what true Christianity is all about.
Change the mind of one person at a time. By means of the gospel.
Now so far we've covered in chapter one What we could turn around now and sort of view with that perspective of what ought to be the profile. that our world sees in us as Christians. We are, verse 2 says, basically, people who ought to be marked by graciousness. We are people who should be known for this internal spirit of peace. were people that always seem to be grateful for something.
Grateful for all we have, verse 3. We're people who talk. To our founder and talk about our leader as somebody who isn't dead. But is alive. Verse 3.
We're people of certainty. about our our future Destiny, verse three, we're people who are anticipating this incredible inheritance. which comes at the revelation of Christ, verse 4. We're people who talk often of that other world. Where people who seem to be really interested in that one, interested in this one.
But we can't wait for the next one. Verse 5. This is the true An accurate description of the Christian that we should measure ourselves against.
Now the next four verses. Uh Peter's going to give us two more characteristics to add to the profile of the believer. Here's the first. We're people who rejoice in the midst of difficulty. We're people who rejoice in the midst of difficulty.
And then, secondly, we'll get to that later. We're people who follow an invisible deity. Those are the two points and I'm going to stuff about you know 30 points in between okay? Verse 6. In this you greatly rejoice.
Now, we do have to stop there for just a moment. This opening phrase, in this, ties back. To the previous description of our living. Lord, and our living hope. And the inheritance.
He says, in the Those things. You greatly Rejoice. You greatly rejoice. That's an intense Expressive term. And when you think about what he's going to talk about when he talks about trials, it really doesn't seem to fit here.
But it it it really does.
Now Peter uses that expression to greatly rejoice as bookends. That's why I wanted to cover these verses. If you see in verse 6, you could circle that and then draw a line down to verse 8. He's going to talk about greatly rejoicing in verse 6. Then, as he begins to wrap up his thoughts in verse 8, he's going to refer again to Christians who greatly.
Rejoice. They serve as sort of bookends. To his Thoughts. And let me just add here that this idea of greatly rejoicing does not exist. in secular Greek.
No secular Greek author that we know of to date has ever used. That phrase. In fact, think about it. People in the world don't talk about joy. I have such joy.
They talk about happiness. Why? Because happiness is dependent upon happenings. When happenings are good, we're happy. That joy In fact, I I think about the fact that Our world, instead of talking about joy, has been talking about happiness a long time.
The United States Declaration of Independence, ratified by Congress July 4th, 1776, said that we all have the right to pursue life, liberty, and what? The pursuit of Happiness. Which I think is rather ironically written because since that time, all of America has officially been pursuing happiness, but nobody's been able to catch it. Right? And you can't catch it.
Because what happens in life? isn't always happy. And you can never really quite hold on to it. Happiness is externally generated. Joy is internally generated.
Joy is a glad and settled. Conviction. of God's sovereign control. Galatians 5:22.
So happiness then is natural. And we experience it. Happy things happen, and we're happy. Joy. is supernatural.
And it can only come by means of our submission to the Holy Spirit. No matter what. happens. Couldn't help but think of Johnny Erickson Tata. You're familiar with this.
A quadriplegic It's impacted the lives of many people through her testimony. And uh she was interviewed A few years ago. In fact, the interview covered a little bit of what she had said or what had happened at a conference she had spoken of recently. She mentioned this in the interview. She said, after one session, a woman came up.
to me and said, Johnny, you're a very good person. You always look so together. You always look so happy in your wheelchair. I wish I had your joy. And Johnny responded.
Well, I don't do it. In fact, let me tell you how My morning went today. In fact, this is my average day. After my husband Ken leaves for work at 6 a.m., I'm alone until I hear the front door open at 7 a.m. That's when a friend has come over.
While I listened to her make coffee, I pray as I prayed this morning. And many mornings. My friend will soon give me a bath. Get me dressed, sit me up in my wheelchair, brush my hair, brush my teeth, and get me ready to go out the door. I don't have the strength to face this routine one more time.
I have no resources. I do not have a smile to take into this day, but you do. Can I have yours? That's the idea. The reason the believer's glad Contentment has to be internally produced is because of the hard realities, the harsh realities of life.
And it doesn't matter who you are. There are harsh realities in your life. And we just pass the microphone down the aisle. Everybody has a story of some hard experience or harsh reality, right?
Now, notice how realistically Peter writes about that in verse 6. Look there again. In this you greatly rejoice.
Even though now For a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials. That is a loaded statement. But I am so glad for Peter's realism. I get so tired of Christian pietism, don't you? with its fakery and its shallowness.
Here's Peter writing and down to earth.
Sort of upfront. Authentic, no pie in the sky reality. Of the Christian experience. And what he does here, if we can break down this phrase, is give us four realities about trials.
So let's just do a little sidebar. Let me give you four realities he provides here for us about trials. First, trials are not eternal. Notice, even though now for a little while. In fact, it can last a lifetime.
But just keep in mind that a lifetime compared to eternity is nothing. It's a little while, right?
So keep that in mind. Peter has already told us that our inheritance. The glory we are going to receive. is undiminishable. It's undefiled.
It's indestructible. It can never be taken away. It's going to be eternal. It's going to last forever, but trials that are going to come. Don't last forever.
Or temporary. They will be eventually replaced with an eternal way of glory beyond all comparison. 2 Corinthians 4:17. Pain one day will give way to unhindered, uninterrupted praise. Peter is just kind of fast forwarding the tape.
for the believer. for these struggling believers. He's reminding them that what they're experiencing is not going to last forever. An analogy that came to my mind when I thought about this is the joy of a mother after the birth of her baby. And uh Think of what pain.
And then what praise? Listen, I consider one of the miracles of life the fact that a woman will actually. Want a second child. It's remarkable to me that she would actually be willing to go through it all over. Again, if guys had to endure that kind of pain, We wouldn't go through it one time.
We just have pictures of kids on our refrigerator, and that's about it. In fact, I remember when Marsha was expecting the twins, we were Dallas Seminary students, and we were across the street from the seminary at Baylor Hospital, where the doctor delivered all. This particular doctor was a believer, and he delivered all Dallas Seminary. babies for free. That's why we chose them.
After praying for 10 seconds. But at any rate, we were there. And he had all these prenatal classes, and he'd go in there, and of course, never done it before. And I don't have the strongest of stomachs. And so we're in this room, and they're just describing everything.
And you know, the women are taking notes and just, you know, writing. And I'm fainting nearly. I am breaking out in a cold sweat. I remember one particular video, one night. We're watching, and I could tell I just broke out in the sweat.
And I didn't know what I was going to do, throw up or faint or whatever, and was sitting there, didn't say anything to Marcia, and she's taking notes. And just felt faint and weak. And the only thing that saved me was I looked across the room and there was another guy who had it worse than I did. And I began to focus on that guy. Forget the woman screaming on the video.
I was watching this guy, and I survived that particular session. But I was amazed. I'm amazed my wife was ever willing to go through. Any of that again after the first child. It's amazing.
How many of you, by the way, are firstborn? Raise your hand. Wow, you almost ruined it for us second born. How many of you are second born? Look at that.
Aren't you glad your mother chose? Maybe she didn't choose, I don't know, but she was willing. to take that surprise all the way to delivery. And I was born the second. Born.
Chose to view the pain of all of that as temporary and focus on the joy to come. That's exactly the expression, although just a fraction of the pain of Jesus Christ. His suffering, his separation from his Father, which we cannot even begin to understand when he was drenched with the sin of the world, 1 John 2:2. And it says, For the joy set before him, he endured the cross. Aren't you glad that he endured the cross Accepted the shame so that you and I could be born.
Again. to life eternal. Pain and suffering is not eternal. Secondly, trials are never wasteful. Peter writes, even though now for a little while, if Necessary.
Now, you need to understand that English is lacking a little bit there. This is a conditional form that assumes the reality of the condition.
So, if I could re-translate it for you and sort of put that condition in there like it's nuanced. Peter is saying this, even though now... for a little while, if necessary. And it is. And it is.
Necessary.
So Peter then is pointing to a divine purpose behind each. A than of pain. Each trial. And you ransack the New Testament, by the way. If you're older in the faith, you know this.
If you're younger in the faith, as you read through, especially the letters. Of the apostles to the church, you discover that God uses trials in our lives. For a number of reasons. And so let's just take another sidestep, but let me give you several of them, okay? Especially with those younger in the faith, and us older in the faith need the rehearsal.
For starters, trials remind believers of our dependency on Christ. They remind us of our dependency on Christ.
Okay, that child has had all it can stand of this painful environment, so he's now happy. 2 Corinthians chapter 12 is a reference you ought to write down, verses 7 to 10. Paul writes, I was given a thorn in the flesh, so I would not exalt myself. And now I would rather glory in my weaknesses.
So that the power of Christ May dwell in me. Trials. Have a way of reminding us of how weak we are. There's nothing that brings you to your knees like a trial. There's nothing that reminds you of how frail you are.
Like something of deep sorrow. Secondly, they reduce the attraction of worldly things. They reduce the attraction of worldly things. Later on in 1 Peter chapter 4, we'll take a closer look at it, but Peter talks about this very thing. There's nothing that weans us away from the world like sorrow.
and suffering. Listen, when you're going through a trial, you don't care what name brand you're wearing. Ooh. When you're suffering, you don't care what's parked in the driveway. You don't care how many spare bedrooms you have, how big your garage is, what your name is on the title, or how much money you have in the bank.
That trial just sort of clears the fog. It pulls you away. from the world that sometimes clutches us and God and His grace. brings us to our knees. Further trials.
enable us to comfort others who suffer. Paul writes that God comforts us in all our affliction.
So that we're able to comfort those who are in affliction with the comfort with which we've been comforted. Comfort is always meant by God to be passed along. Handed down.
So much more. As to why our trials are never wasted, but let me talk about one more, and that's the reality: that trials develop in the believer deeper and wiser. character. You don't sign up for it. Lord, I'd like to have deeper character, so would you bring me some suffering?
But we know as believers that it happens, don't we? In fact, James promises that in chapter 1 and verse 2, that trials. Ought to be reckoned or calculated as that which produces endurance. And endurance leads to maturity. This is one of the challenges.
I go back to the analogy of a That's the challenge your parents had with you and me. And if you have children, That's the challenge you face. You want to see your children avoid suffering and avoid pain and avoid hardship, even though you know those things will produce in them character.
So you have to let it happen. You want to protect them from hardship. Guess what? God wants to prepare them for hardship. And we as parents can often get in the way.
In fact, I was Reading one particular illustration of a psychologist by the name of Jonathan Haidt, and he had this sort of hypothetical exercise. To illustrate the problem, he said. Imagine you have a child and for five minutes you're given a script. of what that child's life will become. And you're given an eraser.
And you're given the right to erase Whatever you want. You read that your child will have a learning disability in grade school and. Reading will come easy for some kids, and for your child, it's going to be a laborious struggle. In high school, A child is going to make a circle of friends, and one of his friends will die of cancer. After high school, your child will get into a college they want to attend, and while there, get involved in a car crash and lose a leg.
A few years later, your child will finish college and get a great job, only to lose that job in an economic downturn.
Okay, you've got five minutes and an eraser. What would you edit? From their script. More than likely, he says. We would erase those things that cause Pain.
And yet from Peter's perspective, And the New Testament. Those things aren't just left in there, they are written. In there by the providence of God, Peter is effectively informing us that trials are moments that are not wasted, they are moments that are invested. by God into the life of his children.
so that they develop. Endurance. What pastor and author rather humorously referred to this problem with parenting. He says, I'm a member, he admitted, of young adults. And he says, I call us all, and I've never heard this term before, you'll probably never forget it.
I call us all helicopter parrots. We're constantly trying to swoop down into our kids' educational life, relational life, sports life to make sure no one is mistreating them. No one is disappointing them. No one is giving them a low grade or failing them so that they can experience one smooth transition and one success after another. I mean, if they get cut from the team, you're going to go talk to the coach.
If they get a low grade, you're going to call the teacher. That's this generation. I mean, in my generation, and it was good for me. If I got in trouble at school, my parents assumed the teacher was always right. I mean, how corrupt is that?
Yeah. If I got a spanking at school, they assumed the teacher was right and I deserved it. In fact, if I didn't tell my parents I got a spanking at school, And they found out. I got two spankings. One for my mother, one for my father.
How corrupt is that? entirely warped me. It's interesting. He writes. This this Helicopter parent.
Writes, he says, here's a great illustration. One Halloween, a mom came to our door to trigger treat. A mother. I asked her where her kid was.
Well, the weather's bad, she said, so I'm driving him around in the neighborhood so he doesn't have to walk in the midst of the rain.
Okay, well, now you're in my driveway. Why didn't you send him to the door?
Well, he fell asleep in the car. I didn't want to wake him up. A kid does not deserve candy. She's missing the whole point. Let him miss it.
He'll miss it for one year. And you're saying, Stephen, are you condoning a pagan? Halloween. No. I'm not.
But I am condoning free candy. Back to the point. God knows Perfectly. How to raise His children. And guess what he doesn't do?
Swoop down. and save us. From every disappointment. and every hurt and every sorrow. In fact, he knows that character is going to require hard knocks and tough times and tough breaks.
Sweat, blood, and tears. And he has not erased it. He's written it in. None of it is wasted. Third, trials are always painful.
Peter's just telling you like it is. Verse 6: You've been distressed by various trials. That word various means multicolored. Comes in every shade. Every shade.
He didn't put on a little plastic smile and and and and and you know Fake anything. He admits they come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. They are literally multi-colored. And he says, Look, here's what they do to us. They.
Distress us. They distress us. That word distress refers not only to physical pain, but emotional and mental pain. It refers to anguish. It refers to heartache.
And tears. and anxious and fearful thoughts Anybody who says, you know, if you're really following God like you ought to, you'll never feel any of that, you know, sorrow and distress.
Well, just take them to Gethsemane, would you? And showed them our Savior so overwhelmed with the distress as a man. Both man and God is a man deeply distressed. Luke 22, same word Peter uses here.
So distressed.
So overwhelmed, as it were, that the corpuscles beneath his skin burst and his sweat mixed with blood. Listen to the Apostle Paul, who. He's so distressed over the Corinthian church and their failure. and tolerating immorality in the assembly. He said, When I came to you, I came with distress.
Same word. I was in anguish. Later in the letter, Peter's going to remind the believer that for every color of trial, God's grace is Multi-colored. He has a colour that matches it. That's later.
Peter goes on to add another, in fact, the primary purpose for trials, number four, trials reveal and refine genuine faith. Notice verse 7.
So that the proof of your faith being more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire. May be found a result of praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Peter isn't getting onto these believers for being distressed. by the trials. He's just attempting to give them this longer viewpoint.
There's coming a day when Jesus will be revealed. That's a reference to the coming of Christ to establish his kingdom. And in the meantime, God becomes a goldsmith. That's the analogy he now uses. The goldsmith In in Paul's day, Would take that gold ore, put it into a smelting furnace, and heat it up, and the impurities, the cheap impurities, would rise, and he'd skim it off the top.
And then eventually pour out that ore into molds and create from that exquisite and Precious. Articles of value. I've read in ancient times the Eastern goldsmith would keep that metal in the heat and skim off those impurities until he could see his reflection. Clearly. Peter uses that analogy here to inform the believer that your faith is put into the furnace.
Not to destroy it. but to refine it. Notice, to refine it.
So that What is God going to do? He's going to pour out your life. He's going to pour out your testimony. A faith he's going to make of your life Articles of exquisite and And value. It will reflect the face.
Of Christ. What's the point?
So you want to profile a Christian? Here's what the profile should include. This is what we should be showing. to our world. We are people who rejoice in the midst of difficulty.
Why? Because we realize that trials are temporary, they're not eternal, that is. We realize that they are never wasteful. We admit they're distressful. and they're always used to refine.
and grow our genuine faith. We are people who rejoice in the midst of difficulty. Let me add one very quickly. We're people who love and follow an invisible deity. Verse 8.
Peter now commends them, by the way, with these encouraging words. And though you have not seen him, and then it's as if people. Peter encourages them, but you love him. I want to commend you for that. And though you do not see him now, but you still believe in him, and I want to commend you for that.
You still believe in him? Even though you do not see him now. You still believe in him. You greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory. In other words, you just can't describe that settled conviction that he is sovereign.
That there is sweetness even in sorrow. Because of all that it does in your life. You find joy in loving him and knowing him, and you reflect the glory of his face when you do. And Peter writes, and I'll expand verse 9. You obtain as the outcome of your faith, that is this kind of faith that loves an invisible Lord, this kind of faith that believes in a God you cannot see, as he leads you through unexplainable things.
That kind of faith gives evidence of the salvation of your soul. If you love them, And you've never seen them. If you believe in them, And haven't seen them, but what you do see all around you are trials and tribulations and. You experience difficulties and sorrow. In spite of all that, you want to follow them?
You believe his best is for you, and he's sovereignly controlling. your world, that proves you really do believe in them. Nothing else. Would explain it. Let me put it this way: if you love Jesus, Only when he gives you the good life.
That actually proves you really don't love him. You just love the good life. Imagine Being in a situation where you're falling in love with this young lady And you don't know if she loves you, but you're falling in love with her. You're becoming deeply attached to her, and you think it's probably a good time, it's appropriate, to tell her that life's going to change dramatically in a few months. Uh because you are inheriting a multi-million dollar trust.
And she responds to you, that's great, but that doesn't matter because I love you for who you are. And uh Suppose just before the wedding, The day before the wedding, You find out that That something has happened, somebody else gets in the way, or whatever, and you're not getting that. Multi-million dollar trust fund, and so you tell your bride to be, and she responds with anger. And she says, in that case, the wedding is off. What did that prove?
about her love. It proved she really loved what you would give her. And offer her She really didn't love. Yeah. That's what Peter's saying here.
In fact, the New Testament refers to the believer as the bride of Christ, Ephesians chapter 5.
So, why do you want to be married to him? I mean, why do we give the commercial to people who don't know? Man, if you marry him, your life, is it ever going to be wonderful? I'll tell him the truth. It's going to get worse than it's ever been.
And then see if they want to love them. Here's the proving ground. We can't see him. I think it's a good idea. We can't see them.
But we see pressure and distress and trouble and sorrow. But we believe in them. That's the profile of a genuine believer. who rejoices in the midst of difficulty, and who is willing to love and follow an invisible deity, and desire nothing more than to reflect the glory of his. Face.
