Thanks to Bro. Lance for encouraging us this morning.

Open Bibles to 1 Peter again, chapter 1, continue series A Sojourner’s Guide to Hope.

Said since the beginning, book written to Christians going through trials. We are going through one of the greatest of our lifetimes right now.

This is week 3 of the series, we’re going to look at verses 6-9 today. So we’re still in the first paragraph after the greeting, and Peter is going to dive deep into trials.

Why I wanted to go here, Peter doesn’t waste any time. When you’re going through trials, the last thing you need is people wasting time. There’s a sense of urgency. We need to know how to think about them, navigate them while keeping the faith.

Resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same kind of sufferings are being experienced by your fellow believers throughout the world.

1 Peter 5:9

Peter doesn’t waste any time getting to the nitty gritty details about trials… so neither will I today.

1. The honest truth about trials

Maybe you’re like this: “Give it to me straight, doc.” I don’t want it sugar-coated. We’re going to start that way.

Trials are painful, not imaginary.

I know you probably don’t need to be told that, but some Christians do.

There are some Christians who never seem to struggle. I said seem for a reason.

Peter says, “you suffer grief” in verse 6. That’s reality of life in a broken world.

I love that the Bible doesn’t shy away from this. It would be tough to reconcile if it just painted a rosy picture about everything. It doesn’t. And we shouldn’t.

No one benefits when we pretend to not be suffering, not be grieving. Grief is a normal, natural, healthy, God-given reaction to suffering.

We believe that God designed us, don’t we? Every part of us, including our eyes, our tear ducts, and the connection between them and the part of our brains that process emotion.

This may be a little dark, but sometimes I’ll imagine the literally hundreds of thousands of Americans all around the country right now, crying at home at the sudden loss of their loved ones, not even able to have a funeral.

“Why would you do that?!” Because it makes me empathize with them, rather than looking at this whole thing with cold hard analytics.

Trials aren’t imaginary, and neither is the pain that goes with them.

Trials are temporary, not forever.

It’s hard to see in the middle of it, probably was for those believers in Turkey as well. But it’s true. “Sorrow may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”

See the words, “even though now for a short time”. Of course it doesn’t seem like a short time. In the darkest trials, a day can seem like an eternity.

But the truth is that eternity will actually feel like eternity, and in light of that, the suffering that we experience in this life is definitely a short time.

For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:17–18

The honest truth about trials in the Christian life: they are painful, but they are temporary.

Trials are multi-faceted, not one-dimensional

Verse 6: “you suffer grief in various trials”. All shapes and sizes, and a lot of time they come together.

The word there for various, King James says manifold, could be literally translated “multi-colored”. They come in all shapes and sizes and colors.

Now, if you’re watching this on your TV this morning, it’s showing you the color in 8-bit RGB—red, green, blue. Sorry, the nerd is coming out in me, I’ve been living in this world for the last 7 weeks. Eight bit RGB is capable of producing 16.8 million colors.

That’s a lot of colors, and that’s about how diverse our trials are. And Peter’s not just talking about the persecution these saints are going through. He’s talking about all kinds of trials.

So when I say trials this morning, you insert what you’re going through in that spot.

  1. Trials are painful, not imaginary.
  2. Trials are temporary, not eternal.
  3. Trials are multi-faceted, not one-dimensional

So far this hasn’t been too helpful or hopeful…

The new birth perspective in trials.

You may have noticed at the beginning of verse 6, he says, “You rejoice in this…” Rejoice in what? Everything that he’s said up to this point! So let’s read it and remind ourselves what he said right before this, because that was from two weeks ago. Verse 3…

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you. You are being guarded by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

And in this you rejoice…

1 Peter 1:3–5

Peter’s giving struggling saints the perspective we need to get through our trials.

Trials reveal and refine our faith.

…so that the proven character of your faith—more valuable than gold which, though perishable, is refined by fire…

1 Peter 1:7

If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you’ve heard a pastor talk about the refiner’s fire. There’s songs about it. Illustrations about the smelter seeing his reflection in the gold.

Here’s the picture in a nutshell. Refining always requires heat. Here’s a little clip of what that looks like. Gold has a melting point of 1,948°F. That’s hot. You melt down the gold, the impurities rise to the top, you skim them off, and the result is purer than it was before.

What kind of an inheritance were we given in verse 4? Imperishable. He contrasts that with gold, which he points out, is perishable. So how much more will the Father lovingly, carefully turn the heat up in our lives in order for us to be more like His Son on the other side.

Remember the work of the Spirit in our salvation last week, that He sanctifies us? Trials are one of his main tools.

You know that to be true in your own life.

King David writes about this work of refining through trials in Psalm 119. 3 verses…

Before I was afflicted I went astray,
but now I keep your word.

It was good for me to be afflicted
so that I could learn your statutes.

I know, O Lord, that your rules are righteous, and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.

Psalms 119:67, 71, 75

That’s an important verse to grab ahold of during trials. He is righteous, and even if he afflicts you, believer it’s out of His faithfulness, not his hatred.

And Job, you can’t talk about suffering without talking about Job. The whole story is about Job’s suffering. He used this same analogy as Peter:

Yet he knows the way I have taken;
when he has tested me, I will emerge as pure gold.

Job 23:10

It was true of Job, and Christian, it’ll be true of you, too. He’s using the trials to have you come out the other side looking a lot more like Jesus than you did going in.

Trials result in praise, glory and honor—ours and his.

…you suffer grief in various trials so that the proven character of your faith—more valuable than gold which, though perishable, is refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1:6–8

When I hear those words I automatically think it his, but in studying this, almost every commentator I read made a point of this: it’s actually focused toward us!

He talks about it again in chapter 5, I don’t know how long it will take us to get to chapter 5, but here’s a little preview:

And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

1 Peter 5:4

So these trials are not arbitrary or meaningless, they are producing for us something in the future, something we will enjoy for all eternity.

And yet, obviously the praise and glory and honor ultimately go to him. God then father, son, and spirit, like we looked at last week, are the ones who saved us.

My son Benjamin worked really hard at School work this week, and so I am going to get him what he wanted… A magnifying glass. If I brag on him, what a good job he did, how hard he worked, I’m bringing honor and glory to him, but on Kay as well, right? She was the one behind it, teaching him and helping him every step of the way.

It’s true now, and it’ll be true then, even more so. He is the author of our faith. He is the one who allows the trials, and the one we rely on to bring us through.

That that leads us to the last thing, in verses 8-9. We’ve seen…

  1. The honest truth about trials
  2. The new birth perspective in trials

And last but not least…

The joy in the midst of trials

Though you have not seen him, you love him; though not seeing him now, you believe in him, and you rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

1 Peter 1:8–9

Seems like a strange juxtaposition, doesn’t it? Joy and grief. And yet they exist side-by-side for believers all the time. Why?

Because we know how it ends. We know these things are temporary. We know that we’re secure.

Even though we’ve never seen him like Peter had, still we love him. And even though we can’t see him right now, still we believe in him.

And that fills us with inexpressible and glorious joy, even while we are we’re suffering grief in various trials.

Do you notice the present tense in the last part verse. It’s currently happening. We have joy, inexpressible and glorious joy, because we know that through the work of the Spirit, the trials are themselves bringing about the ongoing salvation of our souls.

The joy of the Lord is our strength.

Even though we don’t see him, we believe. (“Lord, help my unbelief.”)

You may be saying, the fire is too hot.

When God permits his children to go through the furnace, he keeps his eye on the clock and his hand on the thermostat.

Warren Weirsbe