ENGAGE
Would you all agree with me that there are a number of aspects of the kingdom of God that are completely at odds with the culture in which we live? Because of that, whenever the kingdom of God is inserted into this world in any way, conflict and tension inevitably result.
We certainly see that in the life of Jesus. When He left the glory of heaven and became a man and inserted Himself into the culture of that day, conflict and tension certainly followed Him wherever He went. Every time that He pointed out that people were not living according to the principles of His kingdom, people became resistant, resentful and angry. So they often responded by attacking Jesus, first verbally and later even physically to the point of putting Him to death.
By the time Peter wrote the letter we’ve been studying for the last 2 months about 30 years later, the same thing was now happening to His disciples. As they lived lives which were set apart, unique and distinct from the culture around them, they threatened the status quo. And to a large degree, that lifestyle was so distinct that it served to remind the people around them just how wicked and debased their culture had become. And so those Christians experienced exactly what Jesus had faced here on earth – tremendous persecution and suffering.
That persecution was led by the Roman emperor Nero, one of the most wicked men in history. His anger was directed toward the Christians who served as constant reminders of just how evil he was. He would cover Christians with pitch and burn them as human torches to light up his garden parties. Others he would feed to the lions in the arena as a public sport. Over the next couple weeks, we’ll see how Peter makes veiled references to both those practices in his letter.
Today, we see that Christianity still serves as the conscience of our society. And, not surprisingly, as the lifestyle of those who live according to the standards of the kingdom of God exposes the wickedness of this world, we can expect to face the same kind of hostility that Jesus experienced.
TENSION
But not all suffering is equal in the eyes of God. As we’ll see this morning, it is possible to suffer for the right reasons or to suffer for the wrong reasons. And those two kinds of suffering produce completely different results:
Suffering for what is right brings reward
but suffering for what is wrong brings wrath
So the question all of us must answer this morning is this:
How do I make sure that I’m suffering for what is right?
Fortunately, Peter is going to give us some clear answers to that question. Go ahead and turn with me to 1 Peter 4 and follow along as I read verses 12-19.
TRUTH
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. For it is time for judgment to begin at the household 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 the righteous is scarcely saved,
what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”
Therefore let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.
(1 Peter 4:12-19 ESV)
In verses 14 and 15, Peter summarizes the two possible reasons that could lead to suffering by Christians in that culture. In verse 14, he points out that there were those who were suffering because of their association with Jesus and who were, like Him, doing good. And those people were blessed. On the other hand, it was also possible that some people were suffering because they were doing evil. And Peter goes on to describe the judgment that they were going face as a result of suffering for doing wrong.
APPLICATION
So if it is true that…
Suffering for what is right brings reward
but suffering for what is wrong brings wrath
Then it is essential this morning that we understand…
How to make sure I’m suffering for what is right:
Peter give us three actions we can take in order to do that.
1. Anticipate suffering
In verse 12, Peter reminds his readers that they shouldn’t be surprised by the fiery trial that they are going through. Although the concept of a fiery trial includes all kinds of suffering, it is likely that Peter is influenced to use those words as he thinks about those Christians who have literally been lit on fire by Nero.
Throughout his letter, Peter has constantly been reminding those to whom he wrote that they ought to expect to be treated the same way that Jesus had been treated and experience that same kind of hostility and suffering. That was the same message that Jesus had consistently given to His disciples during His earthly ministry as well.
This idea certainly flies in the face of some churches today that teach that as long as you’re a Christian and have enough faith, God is going to spare you from trials and prosper you materially in this life. My guess is that most of these churches avoid 1 Peter altogether since, as we have seen, Peter wrote the entire letter to encourage disciples of Jesus who were already being persecuted for their faith and who could expect even greater suffering in the near future.
In fact, in verse 19, Peter makes it clear that for many Christians suffering is actually God’s will. My guess is that most of us here want to know God’s will for our lives. But we’re probably not too thrilled to find out that one of the things that the Bible specifically identifies as being God’s will is to suffer for doing good.
That idea is also reinforced in verse 17 where Peter reveals that judgment begins at the household of God. He is clearly not suggesting in any way that we are going to be judged for our sins since we have been clothed with the righteousness of Jesus though faith in Him. But we do see consistently in the Bible that whenever God does a work of purification or judgment He often begins with His people and then works outward from there.
There is never a promise in the Scriptures that God’s people will escape tribulation. In fact, it appears from what Peter writes here and what we see elsewhere in Scripture that it is often true that believers often experience the same exact tribulation as unbelievers. But the crucial difference is that for the believer that judgment is an act of God’s love that serves to test, refine and purify, but for the unbeliever it is an act of God’s wrath that serves to condemn and punish.
Notice in verse 12 that the purpose of fiery trials for a disciple of Jesus is to “test you.” The word “test” there is the same one Peter used back in chapter 1:
In this you 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)
The idea in both passages is that God uses trials in the life of His children to prove the genuineness of their faith, never for the purpose of condemnation or punishment.
So if we’re consistently living a holy, set apart, unique distinct life, we ought to expect to suffer even when we do good. That means if we’re not experiencing any suffering as a result of being a disciple of Jesus, we probably need to honestly evaluate whether or not we’re really living our lives in a manner in which other people will even know that we’re Christians.
How to make sure I’m suffering for what is right:
2. Ask the right questions:
1) What is the source of my suffering?
There are a number of reasons that we might face suffering in this world:
o We can suffer merely because we live in a world that has been poisoned by sin. While Peter doesn’t specifically address that kind of suffering this passage, I think for the most part, we ought to deal with that kind of suffering the same way we deal with the second kind of suffering…
o We can suffer as a result of our identification with Jesus. That is the kind of suffering that Peter has been addressing throughout his letter. And he addresses that kind of suffering again in verses 13-14 and gives a command to rejoice – literally to “keep on rejoicing” – when we suffer because of our identification with Jesus. That kind of suffering results in blessing. Perhaps Peter here was thinking of the words he had heard Jesus speak many years earlier:
“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.
(Luke 6:22-23 ESV)
We don’t have time to explore the idea in detail, but Peter conveys the idea here that there is a sense in which our eternal reward is going to be proportionate to the degree to which we suffer as a result of our identification with Jesus here on this earth.
But unfortunately that idea flies in the face of our culture in which we are driven to seek instant gratification. As a result, there is a great temptation to live as a “secret Christian” here on earth in order to avoid the opposition and hostility that comes with being identified with Jesus. But remember the first part of our main theme this morning:
Suffering for what is right brings reward
Trying to live as a “secret Christian” might make life a bit easier right now, but the problem is that it will actually result in fewer eternal rewards in the future.
o We can also suffer because we experience the consequences of our own sin. Peter refers to that kind of suffering in verse 15.
The list of sins that Peter includes in verse 15 is really interesting. The first two are pretty obvious – murder and stealing. The third term – evildoer – is kind of a catch-all term that Peter has already used three times previously in his letter to describe any kind of wrongdoing.
But Peter uses a very unusual word to describe the fourth sin – that of being a “meddler”. It is possible that Peter even made up the underlying Greek word since it is not found elsewhere in the New Testament or in Greek literature. It is a compound word that literally means something like “the overseer of another’s matters”.
Peter is essentially saying here “Don’t suffer as a result of sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.” In the context of his letter Peter seems to be primarily addressing those who were being political agitators and who were trying to change the culture through involvement in the political process rather than by attempting to change people’s hearts.
Peter makes it clear here that if anyone is suffering because of those kinds of sins in their lives, they should expect judgment rather than blessing. In other words…
suffering for what is wrong brings wrath
So when trials come into my life, the first thing I need to do is to determine why I’m suffering. Is it just because I live in a world that’s tainted by sin or because of my faith in Jesus? In that case, I can rejoice in my suffering, knowing that is going to result in eternal rewards. But if my suffering is merely the result of my own sin, then I need to confess and repent of that sin, so that I don’t suffer for doing wrong and experience God’s wrath.
2. Ask the right questions:
2) How can this trial lead me into deeper fellowship with Jesus?
I already mentioned the command to “keep on rejoicing” in verse 13, and at that point I focused on our future rewards as a reason for to rejoice in our trials. But there is also a present blessing that comes with our suffering that is expressed by the phrase “as you share Christ’s sufferings”. The verb “share” there is the same word that is often translated “fellowship” and which literally means “joint participation”.
When we go through suffering that occurs because we have done something right, there is a sense in which we jointly participate in the suffering that Jesus endured on our behalf. So when we suffer for our faith, we need to use that experience to help us understand more deeply the extent to which Jesus suffered on our behalf. And as we do that, we not only get to know Jesus better but we enter into a much deeper level of intimate fellowship with Him.
So when I suffer for doing good, I need to ask God to allow me to understand how my suffering is jointly participating in Christ’s sufferings. And once I see that, I can keep on rejoicing because that suffering allows me to enter into an even deeper fellowship with Him.
2. Ask the right questions:
3) How can I glorify God through this trial?
In verse 16, we are commanded to glorify God when we suffer for bearing the name of Jesus. As we’ll see in a moment, one of the ways we do that is to trust in God’s ways, to trust that He is a faithful Creator who has our best interests at heart. That means that when we suffer, our first reaction is not to think that somehow God has dropped the ball or that He just doesn’t care about me or that He’s not capable of handling the situation in which I find myself.
But I can also give glory to God by what I say and what I do in the presence of others when I face trials. I give glory to God when I rejoice in my trials, by showing others that He is of gloriously more value than my comfort or the pleasures of this world or the approval of man.
I give God glory in my trials by the way I respond to those who mistreat me. When I return good for evil, I demonstrate in a tangible way that I am trusting completely in God to take care of the situation because He is gloriously more capable to do that than am I.
How to make sure I’m suffering for what is right:
So far we’ve seen that I do that by anticipating suffering and by asking the right questions. Let’s close with one last way to make sure we’re suffering for what is right.
3. Keep doing good and trust God for the results
Peter closes this section of his letter in verse 19 with a command to entrust our souls to God while we keep doing good. The word “entrust” is a banking terms that means to put something on deposit for safekeeping. The word “souls”, in the context of this passage, refers to our entire beings and our lives.
The idea here is that since God created us, His is more than capable of caring for His creation if we’ll just entrust our entire lives to Him. Again, that’s one of those things that easy to say, but really hard to carry out.
Recently in several of the mass shootings in this country, Christians were specifically targeted by the killers. In several cases there were reports by witnesses of victims being singled out and asked about their faith in Jesus and then being killed when they proclaimed that they were Christians. As I’ve read those reports, I’ve often wondered if I would be able to demonstrate the same courage as those people if I were in their shoes.
Hopefully, most of us will never face that kind of persecution for our faith. But all of us regularly are presented with the choice of whether to boldly proclaim our faith in Jesus and possibly suffer for doing so or to remain a “secret Christian” in order to avoid that suffering. And how we respond when given that choice will ultimately depend on whether or not we really trust that God is a faithful Creator.
But at those times, God doesn’t leave us to face those situations on our own. Look at verse 14. We are blessed when we suffer for the name of Christ because the glorious Spirit of God rests upon us. Verse 14 is God’s promise to us that if we’ll entrust our lives to Him, that in our hour of greatest trial God will not leave us alone. His Spirit will give us the courage and strength that we are not capable of producing on our own.
In verse 13, we see that there is a day coming when the glory of Christ is going to be revealed. And God has promised that when Jesus returns, if I have glorified Him in my sufferings her on earth, Jesus is going to glorify me before those who opposed me here on earth. Although good may not always be rewarded here on earth in this life, when Jesus returns, He will make all things right and reward good and pour out His wrath on evil.
INSPIRATION
We began this morning by saying that not all suffering is equal in the eyes of God.
Suffering for what is right brings reward
but suffering for what is wrong brings wrath
If we live openly and boldly as citizens of the kingdom of God in this world, we will face opposition, hostility and even persecution because that kind of life exposes the wickedness of this world and people don’t want to be confronted with that truth. But as disciples of Jesus we need to make sure that we’re suffering for the right reason – because of our identification with Jesus and not because of our own sin.
ACTION
So I want to encourage all of us here this morning to make this message really practical and put it into practice in our lives. I want you to think about whatever suffering you might be going through right now. Perhaps there are problems in your marriage relationship or with your kids or in some other relationship. Perhaps things are really difficult in your job. Maybe you’re experiencing some serious health problems. Maybe you have financial difficulties. I’ve given you some space on your sermon outline to write those things down.
Once you’ve identified those trials, I want to encourage you to pray about them this week:
1. Pray that God will help you discern the source of your suffering. Is it just because you live in a world tainted by sin? Is it because of your identification with Jesus? Or is it because of your own sin?
2. Pray that God will help you understand how you can use your trials to deepen your fellowship with Jesus.
3. Pray that God will show you how you can glorify Him through your suffering.
4. Then entrust those trials to God and keep on doing good.
Suffering for what is right brings reward
but suffering for what is wrong brings wrath
