Well it's a question that all of us ask. You won't live in a fallen world without asking this question: "What in the world is going on?" Maybe you've asked that after a long week of work, and you realize you're not able to pay your bills. Maybe you've asked that question in a moment of unexpected physical sickness. Maybe you've asked that when you've lost a loved one, faced a relationship disappointment, studied long hours for a test at the university that you ended up failing. What in the world is going on?
How Should I Respond?
Maybe there's a corollary question: "And how in the world should I respond to it?" We want to look, this evening, particularly at verses 3 through 9 of First Peter, chapter 1. If you remember, Peter is writing to people who are suffering, he's writing to people who are being hammered. And although there is comfort in this letter of Peter, there's much more here than just comfort. This little letter is a call to action, it's marching orders. And so Peter does two things in the beginning of this letter.
First of all, he roots everything he's going to say to these people in their identity in Christ. You see that in the first couple verses; we looked at that a couple weeks ago. And then he wants to root everything that he's going to say to these people about how to live under trial in a clear sense of what it is that God is doing in the here and now. I think for many of us, we have a fairly clear sense of salvation past (our forgiveness in Christ), a fairly clear sense of salvation future (the hope that we have in Him).
But we have confusion about the here and now. Perhaps you have more of a gap in the middle of your Gospel than you actually understand that you have. And that is the focus of this passage. Now, let me say something to you about verses 3 through 9, the kind of passage that it is. What you have before you is a plot summary. The Word of God is a narrative; maybe it would be better to say that your Bible is a theologically annotated narrative. In case you hadn't noticed, it is not arranged by topic. And, so like a good story, a good novelist will embed into his story plot summaries; because a good novelist knows that as you're reading the story, you lose sight of the plot in the details.
And so maybe it will be two old guys looking back at their life, and they repeat the whole plot for you, or somebody with a dream sequence and the whole plot is repeated for you. Well, the Bible is dotted with plot summaries. This is a big picture passage. This passage really summarizes all that God has done for us with a particular focus on the here and now. It's got the typical construction that the summaries have. It's a "then - then - now"; 'then' of the past, 'then' of the future, and then the focus on the 'here and now.' Now, there you go, you know where we're going.
Look at verse 3: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. (1 Peter 1:3-4, ESV) That's Peter's summary of everything that's happened up to this point in the lives of these believers. Think about this, this is not just a statement of what Christ did on the Cross, but it's a summary of everything God was doing from the time of the Fall all the way up to the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What was God working on? God was working on delivering to you and me the one thing that we could not achieve or earn or deserve, the one thing that we could not give to ourselves: new life! When you read the Old Testament, you're not just reading the dusty details of the saints of old; you are literally reading your spiritual biography. Every situation, every location, every king, every judge, every movement of that Biblical history was marching toward this point in time when Jesus would come, and He would provide new life.
Amen! Now it's a humbling thing to think that apart from Christ we are spiritually dead. We're not just morally impure; we're not just lost; we're not just ignorant. We are unable to respond to the truth of God, to respond to God, because of the deadness of our spirit. And so God sends His Son to live and to die and to rise again so He can impart to us spiritual life. You have no spiritual hope apart from that regeneration. And so, every move you make toward God, you are only able to make because He has breathed new life into your soul.
And Peter tells us why He did that. He says it is "according to His great mercy." He didn't do it - I'm sorry, this will humble you - because He saw something special in you, because there's something particularly noble in you, because there's a certain strength in you, or a certain weakness in you. His sole purpose was not found inside of you; it was found inside of Him: "according to his great mercy." The fact that God would ever give new life to people such as us is an argument for His mercy. And how does He do it?
Raised to New Life
By the power of the resurrection of Jesus. You are raised to new life. Your spirit is resurrected to life by this same power that Jesus was resurrected from the grave. And apart from that resurrection, we would be dead - dead in our sins without hope. What a biography! And then, having talked about the 'then' of the past, Peter looks at the 'then' of the future. And he says this: ...to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in this last time.
(1 Peter 1:4-5, ESV) God has put away for you a spiritual trust fund that nothing can touch. You may not be rich right now. You may not be rich in friends. You may not be rich in experiences. You may not be rich in wealth. You may not be rich in gifts. But you are marching toward unbelievable, for us incalculable, riches in Christ. You have an inheritance. That inheritance can't perish. That inheritance can't be corrupted, that inheritance won't fade away, it is guarded by God. Brothers and sisters, no matter what you're facing today, your life is unshakably marching toward glory.
And there's a day when the experience of that glory will absolutely overwhelm every dark thing you've ever faced. Praise God! But Peter said something that even is more mind-boggling than that. He says, not only is God keeping your inheritance, He's keeping you, so that you will not be lost, so that when your inheritance comes due, you have been guarded, and you're ready to receive it. Can you imagine searching for the best bank possible, investing everything you have in that bank, guaranteeing that you would have a secure inheritance, and the banker is saying to you, "We're not just concerned about your inheritance; we're concerned about you, so we're going to give you the best bodyguard possible; we're going to give the best dietitian possible; we're going to give you the best physician possible; we're going to give you the best counselor possible, so that when your inheritance comes due, you will be fit and well and ready to receive it."
That's the grace of Christ. Well, those are things worth celebrating - an identity of grace that courses way back through history, a future that is sure. Now look at verse 6. This is where Peter is really focusing: In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith - more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire - may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
(1 Peter 1:6-7, ESV) Now this ought to get your attention. When Peter searches for words to summarize what it is that is going on in the here and now, what it is that God is doing in the here and now, here's the three words he grabs a hold of: Grief, Trial, and Test. Now I would probably guess that those are not three words that excite you (that was a joke, obviously not a very good one). None of you have awakened in the morning and said, "Lord, if you love me, you'll send a few more trials my way.
My life has been way too easy." What is it about these three words that adequately grab a hold of what it is that God is so zealous to do in the here and now? Grief, Trial, and Test. Notice what he says: In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith - more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire - may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Well maybe that word 'tested' begins to break open what we need to understand about what God is doing in the here and now. When Peter used the word 'test,' he doesn't mean 'exam.' You're not given a test that you somehow need to pass. He actually is talking about tempering. He's talking about what you do with metal to refine it and to purify it. And notice what he says here, "More precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire." He's using a rich metaphor; it's the metaphor of metallurgy.
When the metallurgist mines a metal, he finds it in an ore state. Ore is not very usable because ore has imperfections in it, and those imperfections rob the ore of its strength and rob the ore of its beauty. There's jewelry in the room this evening; I don't think anyone is wearing ore. If you're a wife and you're trying to hint at your husband a nice gift for you for Christmas, you don't think of ore because ore has those imperfections in it, and those imperfections do rob it of its strength and its beauty.
The Metallurgist's White-Hot Heat
And so the metallurgists knows that he needs to add white-hot heat that liquefies that metal with a catalytic agent and boils out of it its imperfections so it can reach its highest state of strength and its highest state of beauty. Now hear this: when you come to Christ, you are an 'ore-fic' Christian. I didn't say, 'horrific.' You have ore-ism in you, and that ore-ism robs you of your strength and robs you of your beauty; it corrupts your faith. Oh, if you're honest tonight, you know you have a fickle faith.
There are some times you rise to motivating and God-glorifying belief. There are times you doubt God's love, and you doubt His wisdom, and you take your life into your own hands. That's imperfection; that robs your faith of its strength; it robs it of its beauty. God couldn't possibly be a faithful Redeemer, He couldn't be the Divine Metallurgist, and leave you in that state. So there will be moments in the grandeur of His divine love - fasten your seatbelts - where He will boil you. God will take you where you haven't intended to go in order to produce in you what you could not achieve on your own.
God will take you where you haven't intended to go in order to produce in you what you could not achieve on your own. He's a zealous Redeemer, and He will purify us. He will temper the genuineness of our faith. Now brothers and sisters, this means something important for us. We need to stop calling those moments something other than redemptive love. When we go through those trials, those unexpected and grieving things, we must stop questioning God's attentiveness and His faithfulness and His power and His love.
Those moments are sure signs of His redemptive love, and we need to begin to comfort one another and ourselves with the theology of uncomfortable grace. Yes, you want the grace of relief, and you want the grace of release, and there are moments when you will get that, but there are many moments when what you actually need is the grace of refinement. Someday, complete release will come. Someday, complete relief will come, when we reach that final destination. But hear this: this isn't a moment of destination; this is a moment of preparation.
In this moment, God is turning us into people that He would choose to spend eternity with. And because of that, there will be moments when your life is marked by grief: the grief of disappointment, the grief of loss, the grief of physical pain, the grief of weakness. There will be moments when you find yourself in trials and you wonder how you got there. In those moments, we need to comfort one another with the theology of uncomfortable grace because it is possible in those moments to cry out, "Where is God's grace?" and you're getting it!
But it's not the grace of release or of relief; it's the grace of refinement. Now, what's the end game? What's the purpose of this? Look at these words, the end of verse 7: "[This faith] ... may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." . God is doing all of this so you could share fully in the glory of the victory of redemption. So you would stand as empirical evidence of the power of God to radically transform a life. And ultimately, although we share in that glory, that glory is to Christ.
Now here's what this means: everything that God is now doing in your life is being done (are you hearing me?) for the glory of Another. And you will never understand the things the Redeemer brings into your life until you understand that all that He is doing is done out of His zeal for His own glory. There is no place of greater dignity and greater blessing and greater honor than that, somehow, some way, my life would point to the glory of the Redeemer; for that I was given life and breath. Why do we struggle with trial?
We Think Life Is About Our Glory
I'll tell you why: because we think life is about our glory, the glory of our good decisions that plan our life without problems, the glory of comfort, the glory of pleasure, the glory of success, the glory of acceptance, the glory of achievement. And we want to bask in all of those physical temporal created glories. We would rather have momentary glory than to be part of the larger glory of God. And so when God challenges those glories, very often we're tempted to question His faithfulness, question His goodness, question His love.
I'd ask you this evening - be honest with me for a moment - when was the last time you brought God in the court of your judgment? When was the last time you really questioned whether He was faithful, wise, good, true? When was the last time you looked over the fence, and you envied somebody else's life who seemed to be having it easier than you? That is all motivated by self-glory. You never understand what God is doing unless you understand there's a glory war being fought on the turf of your heart.
And God is zealous to deliver you and me from our obsession with our own glory so that we will be caught up in the only glory that will ever satisfy our hearts: the glory of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. And then he says this, verse 8: Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with the joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:8, ESV) "Though you have not seen Him, you love him."
Isn't it amazing that one of the most powerful acts of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ is that He plants in our hearts the love of God? Sinner human beings aren't innately motivated by love of God. The DNA of sin is selfishness, and the idol of idols is the idol of self. If there is love in your heart this evening for God, it is because you have been visited by His transforming grace. And then he says, "You rejoice with joy that is inexpressible...obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of souls."
Hear this: you can have deep and abiding joy even in the moment of trial and tests and grief because you understand that that trial is actually delivering to you the thing that your heart craves, the salvation of your souls. You're getting what you prayed for: salvation. Have you faced hardship last week, last month, last year, facing things that you would've never planned for yourself? What is the Gospel that you preach to yourself in that moment? The Gospel of a loving and zealous Redeemer who will not leave you alone until every aspect of your personhood has been fully refined into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ without weakness and without blemish?
Or is it the gospel of temporary glory where God is judged by the degree to which He makes my life comfortable? That gospel is not the Gospel. This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. May we, in those moments of trial, say to ourselves: this too is love. My Lord is delivering to me exactly what my heart has craved - the salvation of my soul. He is loving; He is faithful; He is good." Let's pray: Lord, who but You could devise such a plan where even the darkest moments of life are redeemed by You, are used by You as tools of something that is eternally good.
Oh, Your plan is not that You've forgiven us in the past, and You've guaranteed us a future, but You leave us to ourselves in this moment--no we're not left to ourselves because there is still 'oreism' in us, imperfections that rob our faith of its strength and rob it of its beauty. Oh, we demonstrated that this week in impure thoughts, in moments of jealousy and greed, in unwillingness to serve, in demanding and entitlement attitudes, in angry words that should've never been spoken, in times where we questioned Your love and Your grace, in times where we backed away from the moment of witness because we were afraid of being rejected.
Lord, there was evidence this week that we still need more of Your boiling grace. Lord, as you bring those moments to us because You love us, and You will not relent until our faith is pure--may we not question You. May we worship You; may we celebrate You with joy that's inexpressible because we know that You are delivering to us everything that You have promised. Yes, we would say we love You; but as You temper us, we will love You more. Praise you! In Jesus's name, Amen!
