Hope in Suffering

Grab your message notes as we continue in our message series in 1 Peter, "Living Hope Today, Hope in Suffering." It's no small theme of the Bible that we live in a broken world. This life just isn't all that it's intended to be. And there are all sorts of things that just go wrong. Even when we try our best to prevent them, things just have a way of going sideways.

And before we get into some of the more serious issues, a friend of mine emailed me some examples of when newspapers get it wrong. These are kind of editorial bloopers, you might say. Check out this headline, "Worker suffers leg pain after Crane drops 800-pound ball on his head." That's some hard head. I mean, wow. Here's a news flash, "Bridges help people cross rivers." I did not know that. I just thought that they were pretty.

This is from the Unsolved Mysteries File. "City unsure why sewer smells." Open to suggestions. "This is encouraging. Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25." Yes. Great news. Or how about, "County to pay $250,000 to advertise lack of funds." There you go. Your tax dollars at work. I like this one. "Federal agents raid gun shop, find weapons." No way. All sorts of guns all over the place.

Perhaps in response, police arrest everyone on February 22nd and round them all up. You can hardly blame them because, I mean, the police, they have a very difficult job. They have to deal with difficult issues like the fact that homicide victims rarely talk to police. Let's face it, you know, everybody's got problems. It's gotten to the point that hospitals resort to hiring doctors. Doctors, no less. Parents keep kids home to protest school closures. Well, chill. And even starvation can lead to health hazards. I mean, who knew?

But this goes to show there's just something wrong with everything. And it's good to have a laugh because let's face it, we all have pain. We all have sorrow in our lives. And we're going to look at that a little bit today. I'm not going to delve into the why bad things happen questions so much today. If you want to get an excellent message on that, I want to recommend my brother Paul's message from just after Easter. We had a series called Frequently Asked Questions or FAQs. And Paul takes up the question, "Why does God even allow suffering and bad things?" You can order the CD or the DVD at our information desk or watch it for free at our website, tlc.org.

But today I want to focus on what Peter says about how we react to suffering. This is Peter's message in a nutshell. It's 1 Peter 4:19. It's at the top of your notes. You'll also see it on screen. Let's read this together. I want to hear you. Here we go. "So then, those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful creator and continue to do good." If you forget everything else today, this is how Peter tells us to react to suffering. To commit ourselves in trust is what he means. In trust ourselves to our faithful creator and continue to do good.

This comes as Peter's conclusion to the passage that we're going to see today, verses 12 through 19. So I invite you to open up your Bibles. 1 Peter 4 and again today verses 12 through 19. 1 Peter 4:12–19. How to react to suffering. Well the first thing Peter says is, "Be ready. Be ready." As a pastor over the years, I've observed that the burning question for most of us is not, "Why is there suffering?" The real question, "Why am I suffering?" That's what we really want to know.

I mean, suffering as an abstraction or in the lives of people that we don't know, we cope with this okay or we just tune it out. But nothing gets our attention more than when pain and suffering drops into our own lives. And in view of this, Peter begins at verse 12. "Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering as though something strange were happening to you." Why does Peter say this? Suffering, especially in the form of persecution, was new terrain for some of his audience, some of the recipients of this letter.

Peter is a Jewish Christian and so his people, they are all too familiar with suffering. But the Gentile converts, these pagans that converted to Christianity, they're used to being part of the in-crowd. They were part of the prevailing culture. Now they're on the wrong side of the line. Now they're part of some fringe cult. Now they're seen as weirdos. In fact, if you were with us last weekend, you may recall that in verse 6 of the same chapter, Peter says that when you don't join in to the debauchery and the kind of evil lifestyles of your pagan friends and neighbors, they heap abuse on you and they punish you sometimes quite severely. So don't be surprised, Peter says, when this happens.

Now I have to say that in our country and in this time, any persecution that we face is quite mild by comparison. I mean you may miss out on a promotion, might get hassled in some college class or may feel on the outs with your co-workers or your friends, but I doubt any one of us are worried about being fed to the lions or being hauled off to prison for our faith. And because we have it so easy, so much of the time, we can react to suffering with surprise too. What's going on? Our culture, I think, assumes that happiness is a right. You know, I'm just entitled to all this, but you only have to look back a couple of generations in this same country to see that this sense of entitlement has really grown.

Ask people living in the first half of the 20th century, what are your hopes and aspirations for life? Many of them will say, I hope to be able to put food on the table. I hope that I don't lose a child to disease or to war. My paternal grandfather, Fred Spurlock, he was pretty much on his own from the age 12 on. 12 years old. I have a 12-year-old son right now. I cannot imagine him having to fend for himself in life. He's a pretty capable kid, but by himself at 12, we've come a long way in our expectations of what life would just provide for us, what we expect to be there.

So when a painful trial comes along, we can feel like something strange is happening to us too, like, wow, this is just totally out of the blue. Now, perhaps there's a more tactful way to put it, but this kind of naivete is the luxury of people who live in comfort and privilege, which is most of us. But whether it's from persecution or any other kind of hardship, Peter says, "Be ready. Be ready because nobody gets a pass when it comes to pain. Nobody." This is why Jesus tells us to build our lives on him. This is why he says, "Let me be your foundation. Let me be your rock for the storms in life because the storms are going to come."

This is why I hope that you will plunge headlong into this Jesus journey that we're doing in the fall because there is no better way to be ready than to develop your relationship with Jesus and with other fellow believers. And that's what we're going to be about doing. And that's why we are forming small groups all the way from Salinas to San Jose and everywhere in between because we want to make it easy for all of us to be connected in a small group to find meaningful relationships.

You want to be ready for the other shoe to drop in your life? Be about forming relationships now because that's where your support is going to come from. So many times I find myself in a counseling situation talking to someone who's going through a tough trial and one of the fundamental problems that you can't fix in a counseling session is that there's no network of support around them. So be about those things now. And René won't tell you this, but I think the book that he wrote for the series is the best one he's done. It's just, it's fabulous.

And not only that, but Kelly Welty in our video crew, they always do such a spectacular job. If you've gone through this 40, 50 day thing with us before, the videos they produce for our small group curriculum, they're spectacular. You see all sorts of places in and around our area that you don't even know they existed. This time though, when René is talking about the life and teachings of Jesus, it's going to be where they, these things actually happened. I think it's just going to be so cool. The gospels are going to open up.

In fact, I'm going to give you just a really short teaser of what awaits us. So don't blink because you might miss it. Watch this. Isn't that cool? That's our film crew doing this. This is incredible stuff. And don't miss out. I'm not promoting this by the way, because we get some sort of commission for every person we sign up into a small group. It doesn't work that way, but by the way, you can sign up for a small group starting September 15th. René doesn't receive a dime for these books. All of the proceeds go back into covering the expenses of producing this.

We have a singular agenda for this, and I hope you'll hear me on this. This is our agenda. We want to help you grow in your relationship with Jesus and with your fellow Christians here at this church. That's it. And one of the benefits of that is that you'll be ready for when the storms come into your life. I can tell you from personal experience that it's not until the storm hits that you realize what kind of foundation you have. So be about readying yourself, building that foundation now.

The second way, he says, to react to suffering is rejoice. Rejoice. I know it sounds crazy, but this is straight from Peter. Verses 13 and 14, he says, "But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you." Now, is Peter some kind of masochist? Far from him. Nor is he advocating some sort of Pollyanna attitude where, you know, "I never get sad. I'm never bummed out. I'm always just cheerful because Christians are just always so happy." He's not going there either.

We don't rejoice for our sufferings as if they're good in and of themselves, but we can rejoice in our sufferings because we know that there's so much more that God is doing. In fact, here's a couple of reasons that Peter gives. Why rejoice in suffering? Well, first of all, my sufferings will be rewarded. You get mistreated, maligned for being a Christian. You sacrifice, you give, you serve, you compromise in the name of Christ. Peter says, "You can rejoice in that now because someday you will be overjoyed when His glory is revealed." And this is an amazing promise.

He's saying that when we share in the sufferings of Christ, we will just as surely share in the glory of Christ. Along these lines, Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:17, "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." You might be thinking to yourself, "Well, what does that look like? How does it even work?" How many of you were here when former Giants pitcher Dave Gervacki spoke in this auditorium? Some of us. It was amazing because Dave was such a warm, encouraging, transparent guy. This was after his cancer and his amputation, obviously.

And in one of his books, he talks about an experience where a friend, and I don't know, I suspect this was a counselor, invited him to really imagine something that would help him gain perspective on his own sufferings. And he says, "Dave, I want you to imagine that you're in heaven, and the Lord opens up this room for you. And inside this room, there's dozens and hundreds of people that are there. And there are people that they've had cancer, some of them are fellow amputees, some are athletes, some are people that you met in churches, and these are all of the people whose lives were impacted because of your story, because of your testimony.

In fact, some of them are there because they were introduced to Jesus through you telling what Jesus has done in your life. And Dave imagines this, and it's a very happy thought. And then he says, "Now, I want you to imagine that God says, 'Now, I'm going to give you a choice. I want you to see another room. And in this room, there's very few people. In fact, a lot of the people that were over in this room, they're missing from this.'" And Dave goes, "Well, what's going on with this room?" And the Lord says to him, "Well, that has to do with the choice I'm going to give you. See, I could turn time back. I could send you back, and you never get cancer. You never lose your arm. In fact, you end up having a successful career as a major league pitcher. You retire in wealth and comfort. You live to a ripe old age. But the second room, these will be the lives that are touched from that option, from that life."

Dave says, "I'm glad I wasn't actually given a choice like that, but the illustration, the exercise gave me perspective." He says, "I wouldn't have chosen many of the hardships that have befallen me. And it wasn't that I was always the most stellar example of faith enduring them. But God is faithful. And even now, I can see how He has chosen to use the difficult circumstances in my life for His glory and my benefit. I can honestly say today that I am grateful to have played some small part in it." Bottom line is this, God doesn't waste our pain. In fact, He promises to use our sufferings for His glory and for our good, and we can rejoice in that fact.

The second thing is that my faith will be deepened in the midst of suffering. I mean, tough faith doesn't develop in a comfortable heart. It's actually in the tough times, the sufferings of life that we connect with God with a level of intimacy that we never would any other way. And this is especially true when we're suffering for our faith. And so Peter says in verse 14, when this happens, "You're blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you." The power of God is uniquely evident in our lives when we suffer.

This is why Peter begins his entire letter on this theme of rejoicing in our sufferings, right out of the gate in chapter 1. He says, "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These come so that your faith of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may be proved genuine, and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." This is so contrary to the way that we think, isn't it? And yet it's in these tough times that the things that matter most, the things in fact that matter for all eternity are being proven and refined in our lives.

So to sum up, tough times are going to come. Peter says, "Be ready and rejoice in the things that you can rejoice in." Rejoice in the promises of God. Rejoice in His faithfulness. The third way to react in sufferings is recognize the source. Recognize the source of your suffering. Now why does this matter? It matters because some sufferings are inevitable. Not a whole lot you can do. On the other hand, some suffering is optional. It is avoidable. And Peter knows that people are going to read into his words and they're going to want to cast all of their sufferings through some sort of martyr complex.

I remember a guy telling me that he was being persecuted for his faith. I said, "Really? What's going on?" He says, "Well, the United States government, they are persecuting me for being a Christian." I say, "Wow, really? How is this happening?" He says, "Well, I haven't paid taxes for 20 years. I don't believe in that. And so now, man, the IRS, they are persecuting me like you cannot believe." I'm like, "That's not persecution. That's called prosecution. All right, there is a difference." And aware of this tendency to make all of our sufferings heroic, Peter adds this little caveat at verse 15.

He says, "If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or a thief or any other kind of criminal or even as a meddler." I love how Peter starts with kind of these no-duh things like don't suffer for being a murderer, a thief, a tax evader, or especially a meddler, right? I imagine this wizened pastor, Peter, writing, thinking of people he knows that they just, they can't help but stick their nose into other people's business. And when it blows up in their face, man, I'm just suffering for Jesus. That's it. Nobody appreciates all the helpful advice that I try to offer. I mean, it's just my cross to bear. They didn't listen to Jesus either.

And I don't want to say, "I know, Mom, it's tough." No, I'm just kidding. Oh, I'm busted now. She's here. All right, I'm moving on to verse 16, and you can pray for me. He says, "I love you, Mom. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name." The word Christian wasn't intended as a term of endearment, okay? It was coined by pagans. It was a derogatory term, you know, little Christ, Christians, freaks. Peter says, "Man, if you bear that name, praise God for it. You are blessed."

And this wasn't just theoretical for Peter. He lived this out in the book of Acts at the end of the fifth chapter, as seen as the apostles are telling other people about Jesus, telling them what they saw, what they experienced about His resurrection. And after a while, it says, "They," the religious rulers, "called the apostles in and had them flogged." That's a serious beating. "Then they ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus and let them go. The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the name." If you suffer for the name of Jesus, you can rejoice. You can count yourself worthy.

It's as if God is saying to you, "I can trust you to follow me even when people are abusing you." Or if you suffer in some general sense, you can rejoice that the power of God will work in your life in a special way. But if you suffer for something that's just kind of stupid, well, that's called consequences, okay? In fact, just so that we're real clear on this, I want to draw your attention to the little box in your notes entitled, "Three Kinds of Suffering." This is not an exhaustive list, but for our purposes today, it can be helpful to recognize the difference between, first of all, common suffering.

Chapter 1, Peter mentions grief in all kinds of trials, all kinds. These are things that we suffer just part of life. Welcome to the human race kind of stuff. The second kind is carnal suffering. Been there, done that. Carnal suffering. This is mentioned in verse 15 of today's passage. These are things that we bring upon ourselves. In fact, I love in chapter 2 when he says, "How is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong?" You know, we're not going to pin a medal on you for that one, okay? And he says, "Don't develop this martyr complex either. It's just, you know, stuff that you deserved."

And while not exclusive to this, his primary focus in today's passage is Christian suffering. There's common suffering, carnal suffering, and Christian suffering. And he says, "If you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed." According to the website persecution.org, there are currently 200 million Christians in the world right now facing some form of persecution. 200 million. That's more than perhaps any time in history, I would venture to say it is by far.

We're so used to laws in this country protecting our religious liberty, we can make the false assumption that the rest of the world, at least most of the world, has similar provisions. And yet, get this, 70% of the world's population lives in countries with high restrictions on religion. 70%. We're talking about most, if not all, the countries in North Africa, the Middle East, the stands like Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc. Most of Asia and Indonesia, high restrictions on religion.

One of the stories to make this, the news, this last week, I don't know if you caught this, but in Pakistan, a Christian girl, all of 12 years old, she has Down syndrome, she was arrested, imprisoned for blasphemy. This is a charge that is often trumped up against someone where they're trying to get the family. This girl may very well face prosecution at trial, even though she has no idea what she's even being accused from. Her name is Rimscha Masih. 250 families in her area have had to flee because of the mob mentality that has ensued around this. These people are really suffering.

Closer to home, a young pastor named Paul Flufival, Haitian pastor who works with the very agency that we work with in Haiti. His colleagues have been here in this church just a couple of years ago. Paul was taking one of his final theology exams just days ago and on his way home, walking home, he was robbed at gunpoint and when he tried to flee, he was gunned down and brutally murdered. Paul leaves behind a pregnant wife and a two-year-old son. I don't tell you this stuff to depress you, but simply as a reminder that millions of our brothers and sisters in Christ suffer greatly simply because they bear the name Christian or in the case of Paul, they serve in one of the toughest places on the planet.

So I would encourage you, I would beg you to pray for them. Pray for Rimscha and her family. Pray for her village. Pray for Paul and his dear wife and his son, his family. If you want to learn more, a couple of websites. In fact, write these down in the margins of your notes. persecution.com, persecution.org, and onewiththem.com. Onewiththem, no spaces.com, persecution.org, and .com. These websites are loaded with stories of fellow Christians who are suffering in very real ways and I think one of the best things that we can do as a church that enjoys a relative comfort, that we can learn, yeah, relative, that's an understatement, we can learn about the stories of maybe one or two of them and pray for them by name, upholding them in the way that we would hope people would do for us if we were in similar circumstances.

And I'll warn you, it can be overwhelming. I mean, you reflect on this stuff for just a little while and it's not easy. The reality is, life is hard, especially sometimes for God's children. And Peter alludes to this when he writes starting at verse 17, "For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God. And if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And if it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?" Now, what in the world does this all mean?

Well, there's a lot of history and context behind what Peter is saying. The Jewish people have a long tradition of reflecting on their sufferings because there's a lot for them to reflect on, sadly, tragically. And this was especially true during what's called the inter-testament or inter-testenary period between the ending of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament. Lots of writings about this and how do you make sense of this? I mean, there was high points in our history when God takes us out of Egypt and establishes David on his throne. And then there's the temple of Solomon, but then it just starts this slow slide into widespread dysfunction and even wickedness. And then there's exile and enslavement. And more often than not, they're being governed by some foreign country.

And it's like, what in the world happened? We are God's covenant people. How in the world did we get here? And the tradition came to the point where it's like, God has allowed us to suffer because he loves us and he knows that perhaps only in our sufferings, not perhaps, only in our sufferings will we turn to him. Will our hearts be soft before him? And this is the traditional, the conventional wisdom at the time of Peter. So he's affirming, yes, sometimes God's judgment, his discipline begins with his own house.

Now, I want us to keep in mind that our judgment, who is fully taken on the cross of Jesus, that all of our sins, all of our sufferings have been taken up in Jesus. But even so, we still toil. We still hurt. Peter says, "If it's hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?" What's he getting at? I think he's saying, "If you think the trials of life, the times when God allows your faith to be tested and refined, you think that's hard? Imagine how hard it is for those who have no faith at all. No foundation, no rock, no one that they call Savior, nor the hope that Jesus is going to wipe away every tear from their eyes and he's going to take their sufferings and he's going to turn them on their heads and turn their sufferings into glory.

I mean, if I didn't have that hope, that assurance, I don't know how I'd get out of bed in the morning. I don't know how anyone does, to be honest. But there is a glorious future for God's people where our sufferings will be transformed into moments of inexpressible joy. And this is where Peter concludes. He says, "In light of all this, yes, life is hard. We live in the same broken world as everyone else. But how do you react? Well, if you do nothing else," Peter says, "Reach up and reach out. Reach up and receive God's grace, God's mercy, God's love." I mean, do you really have a better offer?

Reach up and receive what God longs to give you, hope, a future, and then in gratitude, reach out in tangible acts of love and kindness and goodness. It's here in verse 19 when he says, "So then, those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator." Reach up and continue to do good. Reach out. We all have pain. For most of us, it didn't come in the form of persecution, but that doesn't mean it hurts any less. But it doesn't have to end there.

It's amazing how healing it can be, how encouraging it can be when God takes the dark moments of our lives, our very sufferings, and He brings something out that is good and beautiful and so much more than just the thing that hurts. That thing will never be good. But God promises to bring good out of even the worst things in life. He promises, in fact, to bring beauty out of the ashes of our lives. And I'll prove it. Last summer, a little nine-year-old girl named Rachel Beckwith died in a car accident right outside of Seattle, Washington. It's a tragic, heartbreaking event, as you might imagine. Rachel's story and her legacy didn't end there. Didn't end on that highway.

In fact, it's been just over a year since the accident. And what I'm about to show you on the screen is how Rachel's family has reacted to their suffering. And they've documented this so that you can have hope in your suffering too. Watch the screen. It's six in the morning and we're about to go see some of Rachel's wells. I am Richard. I am Rachel's grandfather. I really wish Rachel could be here today. Because, first of all, Rachel would think that this is probably the neatest thing she'd ever seen in her entire life. Our community, our church, where we are from, we greatly love Rachel and continue to love her family. And I'm overwhelmed with how greatly you have honored her memory. So please receive my most deepest and heartfelt thanks. You've done us a great honor today. So thank you.

Rachel developed such a big hand from a young age that she understood and felt the pain of others on the other side of the world. To give up her birthday present so that other children can improve their lives is the most beautiful gift a person can give. There is hope in suffering. There is joy beyond the pain. Some of you here, you know exactly how her parents feel, her grandparents. You carry a similar grief. Others of you, it's some other source of pain, but it's great. You carry it with you every single day. Some, you have regrets and you saw it coming. It was like a slow fuse burning and yet it just blew up. Perhaps for others, someone is making your life miserable. Whatever the source, it doesn't really matter. It just hurts.

My prayer is that you will be reminded that there is hope, there is joy, there is meaning, that God can take the ashes of our lives and make something beautiful. So I invite you right now to reach up to Him as we come before Him in prayer. Would you pray with me? Precious Heavenly Father, I pray that you would fill us with a sense of hope and perspective today. Every person in this room walked in with some sort of pain, some sort of grief. For some, maybe they've had the blessing of seeing how you've taken that and you didn't undo what happened, but you brought amazing things out of it. They look back and they're just in awe.

Others are somewhere in the process, Lord, and I pray that you would give them a sense of hope and maybe that they would even have a sense of expectation that you are going to continue to work all things in our lives for good because this is part of our calling in Christ and that you would be glorified in the midst. I pray, Lord, that you would, in the midst of our tears, bring joy, that you would turn our mourning into dancing, not in a glib way, not in a superficial way, but in a deep way that perhaps we only understand when your spirit comes alongside us and just lifts us and carries us through.

And so, Father, I pray for hope. And Lord, I would be remiss to make the assumption that every single person in this room has entrusted themselves to their faithful Creator, who's Jesus Christ, who He bore our sufferings on the cross. He bore our pain. He bore our sin. It is by His wounds, His stripes, that we are healed. And so, Lord, I pray that for anyone who feels you calling them, touching their heart, that they would simply say, "Lord, I want you. I admit I need you." And I believe that what happened on the cross, it matters. It matters greatly. And so, even if you don't understand it all, you simply say, "I want to trust Jesus and entrust myself to Him, to His care, our hope, our future, our Lord, our prize, the name of Jesus Christ." Pray this in acknowledgement of all these things. Amen.