Supernatural Joy and Genuine Love

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. 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?

Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart with Steven Davey. Today, Steven has a sermon from 1 Peter that he's calling Supernatural Joy and Genuine Love. The reason that we as Christians can experience true joy is because of what Christ suffered for us. Trials change our perspective. Things that seem so important when times are pleasant seem completely insignificant during times of trial.

Trials actually help us focus on what's really important, and we're going to learn how next. Now as Peter is writing to these scattered believers, and I invite your attention back to his first letter, 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, 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. So far we've covered in chapter 1 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, verse 2. We're 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 future destiny, verse 3. 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. We're 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 and accurate description of the Christian that we should measure ourselves against. Now, the next four verses, 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 30 points in between. 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 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 really does. Now, Peter uses that expression to greatly rejoice as bookends, so 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, not joy. In fact, 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. 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 if we just pass the microphone down the aisle, everybody has a story of some hard experience or harsh reality, right? And 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've been distressed by various trials. That is a loaded statement. But I'm 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 a 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. They're temporary. They will be eventually replaced with an eternal way to glory beyond all comparisons. Second 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. 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? The pain and suffering is not eternal.

Unfortunately, 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 event of pain, each trial. And you ransack the New Testament, by the way, if you're older in the faith you know this. But 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 side step and let me give you several of them, okay, especially for those younger in the faith and those 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. 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 in 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. There's so much more as to why our trials are never wasted, but let me talk about one more, and that's the reality. The trials develop in the believer deeper and wiser character.

If 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? 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. One 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 parents. 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 gonna go talk to the coach. If they get a low grade, you're gonna call the teacher.

That's this generation. I mean, in my generation, and it was good for me, if I got in trouble with school, my parents assumed the teacher was always right. I mean, how corrupt is that? 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 and one for my father.

How corrupt is that? It entirely warped me. It's interesting, he writes, this helicopter parent writes, he says, here's a great illustration. One Halloween, a mom came to our door to trick or 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 misty 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. He didn't want to wake him up. That kid does not deserve candy. She's missing the whole point. Let him miss it. He'll miss it for one year. 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. It comes in every shade, every shade.

He doesn't put on a little plastic smile and, you know, fake anything. He admits they come in all shapes, sizes and colors. They are literally multicolored. 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 show them our Savior so overwhelmed with the distress as a man. Both man and God as 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 is so distressed over the Corinthian church and their failure in 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 multicolored. He has a color 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 seven. 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 who established his kingdom. In the meantime, God becomes a goldsmith. That's the analogy he now uses. The goldsmith 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 in to 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 of faith. He's going to make of your life articles of exquisite and value. And it will reflect the face of Christ. That'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 distrustful 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 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 him and you've never seen him, if you believe in him and haven't seen him, 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 him, you believe his best is for you and he's sovereignly controlling your world, that proves you really do believe in him.

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 because you are inheriting a multimillion dollar trust. And she responds to you, that's great but that doesn't matter because I love you for who you are. And suppose just before the wedding, the day before the wedding, you find out that something has happened, somebody else gets in the way or whatever and you're not getting that multimillion 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 you. That's what Peter is 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 him? I mean, if you marry him, your life, is it ever going to be wonderful?

Well, tell him the truth, it's going to get worse than it's ever been and then see if they want to love him. Here's the proving ground, we can't see him, we love him. We can't see him, but we see pressure and distress and trouble and sorrow, but we believe in him.

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. Thanks for joining us today here on Wisdom for the Heart. This is the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey, and you can learn more about us if you visit our website, which is wisdomonline.org. Once you go there, you'll be able to access the complete archive of Stephen's Bible teaching ministry. We post each day's broadcast, so if you ever miss one of these lessons, you can go to our website and keep caught up with our daily Bible teaching ministry. In addition to equipping you with these daily Bible lessons, we also have a magazine. That magazine features articles that Stephen has written to help you explore and understand important topics related to the Christian life and our faith. Stephen's son, Seth Davey, writes a daily devotional that you can use.

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