1 Peter 4:12 Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice to the degree that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. 15 If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or evildoer or as a meddler. 16 However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but glorify God as those named in that name.
17 For it is time for judgment to begin from the household of God; and if it begins from us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And, "If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?" 19 So then, those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.
Introduction: Can God Be Trusted?
Behnam Irani is a 41-year-old pastor in Iran. Two years ago Iranian police raided his house, assaulted him, and took him into custody. For the first few months he was held in solitary confinement in a very small cell. Afterward, he was moved to another small cell with other prisoners. The room was so full, the prisoners were not able to lie down to sleep, so they had to sit all day and night. He is suffering from a bleeding ulcer, and the authorities have asked for him to be beaten regularly. All his hair has turned white, and his friends fear he may lose the use of his foot, due to a severe foot injury. Why doesn't God do something? If that were you in there, and you had God's power, what would you do? Whether it be the extremes of torture at the hands of Shiite Muslim governments, or just insults and gossip about you at school or at work because of your commitment to Christ - why does God allow it to go on? Peter's answer to that question is a shock to the ears of many Christians. We have been studying verse by verse through the book of 1 Peter, and ever since chapter 2 he has been teaching us how to respond to mistreatment by the world. But now, in 4:17, he is going to explain to us why God allows all this mistreatment to happen in the first place, and for many people this is the absolute last thing they would have expected to hear.
God Judges His House
1 Peter 4:16 if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but glorify God in connection with that name. 17 For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God
The reason we are to glorify God as Christians rather than being ashamed and shying away from that name is because it is time for judgment to begin. Why are God’s people suffering for the name of Christ right now? Why is there persecution? Why do you sometimes obey God and the result is that people mistreat you? It is all because Judgment Day is already underway, and judgment begins in the household of God - the Church.
We know that Judgment Day is an end-times event - right? It will take place when Jesus returns. But Peter is saying the reason we are suffering mistreatment at the hands of the world is because there is an initial stage of the judgment that is taking place here and now, in this age. The beginnings of Judgment Day are happening right now. It has started, and since God begins with His own house on Judgment Day, we are the ones currently suffering.
"But aren’t God’s children exempt from judgment? If not, what value is there in being one of His children? And what kind of judgment is this? Is it judgment in the sense of punishment for sin? Are we suffering now for Christ because God is punishing us or disciplining us for our sins?"
What Kind of Judgment?
No, it’s not that kind of judgment. We know that for sure, because Peter made it very clear he is not talking here about suffering that comes as a result of sin. That is verse 15. He is not talking about suffering that comes from being a murderer or thief or criminal or even an annoying busybody. This is suffering for righteousness sake. Suffering for righteousness sake cannot be punishment or discipline for wrongdoing.
So if it is not judgment in the sense of punishment, what kind of judgment is it? Peter says it’s time for judgment to begin. How does Judgment Day begin?
Matthew 25:31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
The beginning point of Judgment Day is the separation of humanity into two groups: the group that will get a favorable verdict, and the group that will get an unfavorable verdict. That separation is part of the judgment, and that is the part that is actually already underway now, in this age. The Lord is separating the sheep from the goats.
How is He doing that? Persecution. Like we found last week - lots of people are eager to confess Christ when it is easy. But when association with Christ means suffering – that is what will separate the wheat from the chaff.
Fiery Test
Look back at verse 12. He refers to our suffering as a painful trial. The phrase translated painful is a word that literally means fiery. And the word trial refers to a test. Our suffering is like the fire in a furnace that tests the quality of gold. The impurities burn up, and the true gold remains. Suffering is the most effective test for faith because it reveals false faith, and at the same time not only exposes true faith, but also improves it. It refines those who are connected to Christ and makes our faith more pure. And it exposes those who are not genuinely connected to Christ.
There are people who think they are Christians, but when suffering hits they get angry at God, or start questioning God’s love or God’s wisdom or God’s fairness, and they complain and grumble and become irritable and everything in them rejects the suffering. They behave as though God is making a mistake. That is a sign of someone who does not really trust Him. If you truly trust God, in those times when He does something you do not understand, you never assume He is making a mistake.
The true Christian and the fake Christian can sometimes look exactly the same when life is easy. You would never know one of them is not really saved. And neither would they. They fully believe they are genuine believers. But when suffering comes, that suffering drives one of them away from God and the other toward God. The true Christian gets hit hard with unjust suffering that he does not understand, and he just goes running to God. It drives him to deeper prayer, and God responds and draws near to him and supplies the strength he needs and teaches him things he did not understand before, and he ends up saying with the psalmist,
Psalms 119:67 Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word. ... 71 It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.
He looks back over the suffering and sees how it brought him closer to God and thinks, “I wouldn’t trade that for the world.”
But the one whose faith is not really genuine - when suffering hits his life it drives him away from God. He gets angry. He drops out of church. He prays less, has less interest in Scripture, and when it is all said and done he has less affection for God rather than more.
And if he has any choice in the matter, he will not even go through the suffering. If it is a choice between faithfulness to God, or avoiding some suffering, he will choose to avoid the suffering, which shows that he does not really treasure association with Christ above earthly comfort. Nothing separates the wheat from the chaff like suffering.
Increased Suffering Toward the End
And so the first stage of the separation of the true from the false for Judgment Day is the suffering of God’s people. And that suffering increases as we approach closer and closer to the end. That is unique to Christianity, by the way. Other religions do not teach anything like that. But Scripture is clear - as the end approaches and Judgment Day draws near, things get rougher and rougher for God’s people. Theologians call it the “Messianic woes.” The Messiah would come and suffer and that suffering would spill over onto His people, and the closer we get to the end, the more that happens. That is part of the judgment. Every person's eternal destiny depends on how they respond to the prospect of suffering for the name of Christ.
There is an example of this in 2 Thessalonians 1. The church in Thessalonica was being persecuted, and instead of fighting back or responding in ungodly ways, they were just increasing in love and faith.
2 Thessalonians 1:4 Therefore, among God's churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. 5 All this is evidence that God's judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering.
Not all judgment is negative. There are favorable verdicts. And in this case the verdict was that these people were truly His children, and that judgment was shown to be correct when they were willing to suffer for Him. It is painful and hard on us, but it is a favorable verdict. That is how the Judgment of mankind works - it starts out rough on us, and ends rough on the wicked. And Peter wants us to understand, it is far better to suffer now than to suffer then.
It is Hard to be Saved
And someone might say, "I don't want to suffer now or then!" That is not one of the options. As God's children we are exempt from condemnation, but no one is exempt from judgment. If you are going to be saved on Judgment Day, then it is going to be hard now.
18 And, "If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?"
Contrary to Popular Belief
Few statements in the Bible are more foreign to modern evangelical thought in America than the concept that it is hard for the righteous to be saved. So many people have been taught that salvation is a piece of cake. You pray a prayer, fill out a card, come forward in an altar call, and you are in. And you are locked in forever no matter what. You get the sense from modern preaching that if a person is a Christian, and that person has the slightest intention of remaining a Christian, he will easily be able to do so. But listen to the words of Jesus.
Luke 13:24 Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.
It is hard to be saved. And toward the end it will get even harder.
Mark 13:20 If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them.
It is going to get so difficult at the end that if God let it go just a little longer, all of us would deny Him. Over and over Scripture warns us that the only way to persevere all the way to the end is to be vigilant and alert and on your guard and to put on the full armor of God and fight. If you think it is going to be easy for you to remain a believer from now until the day you die, Satan has you right where he wants you.
Acts 14:22 We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.
Do you earn your way to heaven by enduring these hardships? No. But the road that goes to heaven passes through many hardships. It is that same path Jesus walked, and there is no other path that leads to heaven.
The Suffering of Perseverance
Last week in the Q&A a few people asked about suffering that is neither direct suffering for Christ, nor suffering for evil - like when you just get sick or you lose your wallet or some other thing that happens just as much to unbelievers as to believers. My answer last week was that you can rejoice over that suffering for other reasons, but it does not really fit into the category of suffering for Christ. It does not prove you are associated with Christ, because those things happen to unbelievers too. However, let me add this - for the believer, those things are all tests, right? That is what Peter calls them in verse 12. They test your faith. They test your heart and your priorities and your affections. And passing those tests - responding to those tests in a way that honors Christ – that is hard. And so that part really is suffering for Christ. Getting cancer may not be suffering for Christ, but responding to cancer in a Christ-honoring way definitely involves suffering for Christ. So the whole ordeal of testing, even though it involves regular, common suffering that everyone experiences, for the Christian it does become suffering for Christ because you must respond to that test in a Christ-exalting way, which requires dying to self. Passing the test requires that you put your own preferences and comfort and importance aside, and regard the preferences and comforts and importance of others as greater. That is how you pass the test, and it is difficult, therefore it is suffering for Christ.
God Judges His Enemies
How Much More
So that is how God's judgment in this life affects us. It is a favorable verdict - God is showing us to be genuine, but it is a painful ordeal. That is His judgment on us - what about His judgment on the world? What will that be like? Would you agree it would have to be more severe than God's judgment on us?
17 ... if [the judgment] begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And, "If it is hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?"
If this is what it is like for people God is pleased with, what will it be like for people He is mad at? If God deals this roughly with His own, dear children in a favorable verdict, how do you think He will deal with His enemies in a guilty verdict? Do you think there is any chance at all that the wicked, at the final judgment, will get off easier than the righteous in this life? Will God be softer on them in condemnation than He was on us in testing? Not a chance! Their punishment will be infinitely more severe than anything any Christian ever suffered in this life.
Not Mere Annihilation
That is one of the problems with people who want to deny the doctrine of hell. Those people say, "The only thing that happens to the wicked at the Judgment is they just go out of existence. God just sort of rubs them out and they are no more." Talk about painless! Our favorable judgment involves years of suffering, and their so-called eternal judgment lasts just for a moment and it is over? Do you think that God is going to let them off that easy? Did Jesus die to save us from the wrath of God, only to put us into a position of suffering worse than the wicked will suffer on Judgment Day? That would be an absurd injustice. These people who say, “Oh, God is so loving and nice and friendly and harmless - He would never send anyone to hell” - are those people aware of how much suffering this God they are talking about allows His own children to go through? This harmless, Santa Claus god they are imagining who would never dream of actually punishing the wicked - how is it that he allows one of his own dear children, for whom Christ died, to be imprisoned and tortured and killed? Like Pastor Saeed in the prison in Iran. The beatings have been so severe that he has internal bleeding that is causing tremendous pain. They said they were going to take him to a hospital, but when he arrived it wasn’t a hospital and there were no doctors. They just beat him some more. And all he has to look forward to in the near future is years and years more of that. His kids are ages 4 and 6, and every single day they ask to see their daddy. And watching them grow up, seeing the changes in them - all the joys of parenting young children - he will miss it all. If he survives the 8-year sentence, which does not seem likely, they will be teenagers when he gets out. Richard Wurmbrand was imprisoned and tortured by the communists for 13 years. They would beat the bottoms of his feet until the flesh was torn off, then the next day again to the bone. He said there are not even words to describe the pain. They put him in solitary confinement for 3 years. And he had to deal with the knowledge that they were brutalizing his wife as well. Are we to believe that God allows that to happen to his own dear child, and the wicked get off with a slap on the wrist? And that is supposed to make us think of God as more loving? That would be a god who is both unjust and unloving. People who deny the doctrine of eternal hell because they like the idea of love more than the idea of justice, end up creating a god who is neither just nor loving.
There are only two choices: suffer testing temporarily now with God's help, or suffer wrath forever then without God. If you choose to suffer now, then this temporary suffering in this life will be the worst situation you will ever be in. For the unbeliever, this hard life is the best thing they will ever experience. The worst that will ever happen to us is the best that will ever happen to them.
Don't Join the Wicked!
So why is Peter telling us all this? Why bring up the fact that the wicked will suffer such a horrible fate? Because the temptation is always for us to join them. The reason they persecute us is because we refuse to join them. Verse 4 - they think it strange that we do not run with them into the same flood of dissipation, and so they heap abuse on us. And we can make the abuse stop at any time by simply joining them. Just distance yourself from Christ - hide your association with Him in the closet so people think you are normal, and the abuse stops. Our temptation is to disassociate ourselves from whatever it is they are mocking. And Peter is saying, “You don’t want to do that, because if you’re not associated with Christ that means you’re one of them. And you don’t want to be one of them because what’s going to happen to them is infinitely worse than any persecution that’s happening to you. The frying pan of testing is hot, but you don’t want to jump out into the fire of wrath.”
Obedience to the Gospel
So how do you make sure you are in the group that suffers now and rejoices then? How do you make sure you are forgiven, so you will never suffer God's wrath in hell?
Not Through Lawkeeping
Most people think you do that by being a good person. Obeying God's law. Live a good enough life, be a good enough person, do enough good deeds to outweigh your bad deeds, and you will skate through on Judgment Day and go to heaven. That is what human religion teaches, and it is dead wrong. No good deed can ever make up for a bad deed. If you rob a bank, but then help an old lady across the street, it is nice that you did that, but you are still guilty of bank robbery.
Not Through Mere Agreement to the Facts
Some people understand that but then go to the other extreme. They understand that you could never earn your way to heaven by good works, and so they say, "You just believe and do nothing." It has nothing to do with obedience. It is only about believing - being convinced that certain facts about Jesus are true. But that does not work either, because James 2:17 says faith without works is dead.
So then what will save you? If you cannot be saved by obeying God's law or by just agreeing to the gospel, then what will save you? The answer is in verse 17. Look at the way Peter describes the lost.
17 For it is time for judgment to begin with God's household; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God?
You see, the issue is not to obey God's law or agree to the gospel; it is to obey the gospel. With that little phrase Peter blows both wrong answers out of the water. You can never be good enough to deserve salvation - it only comes through the gospel. But nor can you be saved through just agreeing with the gospel - you have to obey it.
The Gospel is a Command
There are many today who teach that the gospel is only information about Jesus. The gospel is just the story about how God the Son took on human flesh, lived a perfect life, died in our place on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, and rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. They say that historical information is the gospel, and if you just believe that those facts are true, you are saved. They do not think there is any command included in the gospel. So those people see this language here and scratch their heads.
"Obey the gospel? How do you obey historical information?"
People like that are mystified by verses like this, or like 2 Thessalonians 1:8.
2 Thessalonians 1:8 He will punish those who ... do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
The gospel is not just, "Jesus died for your sins." The gospel is, "Jesus died for your sins, therefore repent and follow Him." The gospel can be obeyed or disobeyed because the gospel is a command.
Act 17:30 God commands all men everywhere to repent.
And it is so important that we get this, because there are many thousands of people who would hear Peter talk about the household of God vs. those who do not obey the gospel and say, “Wait a minute - what about the people who are both? They are in the family of God but they are also disobedient to the gospel.” These are the people who say, “Yes, I have trusted Jesus as my own, personal Savior, I have confessed my sins and admitted that I’ve done wrong, I invited Him into my heart and I’m trusting Him to take me to heaven, but the obedience part? The repentance part? Following His way with all my heart? No, I’m not ready for that just yet. I prayed the prayer years ago, and I know I meant it. I was as genuine as I could be. But there are certain sins that I’m just not really ready to give up at this time.” What about those people? Are they saved or lost? They are lost.
John 14:23 Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 He who does not love me will not obey my teaching.
There is no such thing as a person who is in the household of God, a true Christian, but who does not bow the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Trust the Judge
After last week's sermon, I got the feeling that some of you left with your head kind of spinning. All this information about suffering for Christ, not suffering for evil, rejoicing, and here are some principles that will help you rejoice, but if you don't rejoice it means this; if you do rejoice it means this - and on and on – it is a lot to take in. Peter has made a long, complex argument in verses 12-19. And it seems like Peter realizes that, and so when we get to the last verse in the chapter, verse 19, Peter boils it all down and just gives us the bottom line in very simple terms.
19 So then, those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator while doing good.
If you are not sure you have a handle on all these points and everything Peter said and the whole flow of thought, Peter just makes it real simple for us. Entrust yourself to God. If you do that, you cannot lose. Just entrust your soul to God and you will be in great shape.
Entrust
The word entrust means to hand a valuable over to someone else for safekeeping. In this case the valuable is yourself. When suffering comes, you need protection, so it does not destroy you. And so the question is, are you going to try to protect yourself, or are you going to turn that job over to God? It depends on who you trust more: yourself or God. Some people will not put their money in a bank. They would rather put it under their mattress or somewhere in their house. Why? Because they trust themselves to guard it more than they trust the bank. And most people are like that with their own wellbeing. They trust themselves to look after their own wellbeing more than God.
It cannot be both. You cannot put your money under your mattress and put it in the bank. Either you are guarding it or the bank is - one or the other. And it is the same with your soul. Either you are protecting it or God is - not both. So turning it over to God is scary because you can not hand it over to Him without first letting go of it.
There is a very popular series of books with the title Boundaries. Those books are “How to” manuals on how to protect your own wellbeing, rather than letting God do it. Set up boundaries, and enforce them so that no one can take advantage of you or hurt you. And Peter is saying, “No, entrust your wellbeing to God’s care.”
And most Christians say, “Well, of course. I’m happy to do that. No problem whatsoever” - until suffering comes. The moment suffering comes - especially the suffering of unfair treatment, we jump in and say, “OK, God, I’m back in charge of protecting myself.”
There are so many ways we do this. Suppose you have been burned really bad in the past when you have opened yourself up to close relationships. You made yourself vulnerable, and people hurt you. And so now here you are in this church, and God’s Word is telling you to be open and genuine and humble and to invest yourself deeply in relationships with people. And you are saying, “No. I did that before and got hurt; I’m not making that same mistake again. I’m going to remain private, and I’m not going to let anyone in close in my life.” That is entrusting your wellbeing to yourself. You are taking charge of protecting yourself. Entrusting your wellbeing to God is when you say, “God, You’re calling me to make myself vulnerable again? Ok, I’ll do it. I realize I might get hurt again, but that’s Your concern, not mine. I know I’m going to be hurt from time to time. Sometimes it’s good for me; other times it isn’t. Some of it I need to endure; others I should be protected from. And God - I’ll let You sort that out. I’ll trust You with it. If I suffer, I’ll assume that’s suffering You decided I need. If I don’t, I’ll enjoy that as Your protection. It’s all in Your hands; I won’t concern myself with it.”
According to His Will
Now, remember - Peter is talking only about suffering that is God’s will. If you can avoid or escape some suffering without violating God’s Word, do it. That is not suffering that is in His will. If you sit down on a tack, you don’t have to accept the suffering as God’s will. You can get up and remove the tack without violating anything in God’s Word, so it is unnecessary suffering. Go ahead and protect yourself from that kind of suffering. But when following God’s way brings suffering, that is when instead of protecting yourself, you just entrust yourself to God and let Him worry about it.
Trust Him No Matter Where He Leads
There is nothing that will give you a more accurate picture of how much you trust God than suffering. Picture a father who sets his little 1-year-old up on the counter, steps back a couple steps, and says, “Jump!” If they have done that a bunch of times before, the kid won’t even bat an eye. He will jump right into his father’s arms without any hesitation or fear. He trusts his dad - up to a point. Picture another scene where they are walking into an area that is really scary for some reason - loud noises, or darkness, or something that really scares the child. And the father puts out his hand and says, “Come on,” but the child hesitates. It does not seem to him like his dad would be able to protect him in this situation, and so he won’t go.
As a Christian, Jesus Christ says to you, “Come on - follow Me,” but doing that means walking through some ridicule - people making fun of you and looking down on you. Are you going to hesitate like a scared child? Or do you trust Him enough to keep going? What about when you are following Him and you come to the big, dark, scary doorway marked “death,” and following Him means going through that door, and He says, “Come on. It’s OK. Don’t be afraid - I’m right here.” What about when following Him means humbling yourself and admitting you were wrong or apologizing to someone you know will use it against you? What about when following Him means letting go of some of your money that you need just to pay your bills? Do you trust Him enough to keep following Him even when He walks in some hard places?
If the answer is yes, that means you have entrusted your soul to Him. If the answer is no, then you have not entrusted your soul to Him.
Creator
And to help us with this Peter reminds us of two facts about God that make it easy to trust Him. If you find it difficult to trust God enough to follow Him into suffering, set your thoughts on this. First, He is your Creator. He says, entrust yourself to your faithful Creator. Do you think He understands the limits of what you can and cannot handle? How much stress can you take? What is the best form for it to come to do you the most good? And at what time? And from whom? Where? When? How? How often? How long? Given your background, your genetic makeup, your upbringing - all the various factors that make up who you are - what is the best form and time and amount of suffering? You could not begin to answer those questions. Why? Because you do not know enough about yourself. But He does – He is the Manufacturer. He is also the Designer, and the Engineer, and the Builder - of both your body and your soul. And if He has enough wisdom and power to be able to create you, He can be trusted with the task of taking care of your wellbeing.
Faithful
The other thing about God that Peter wants us to focus on is His faithfulness. He calls Him our faithful Creator. God has made promises to us.
• He has promised never to leave you or forsake you (Heb.13:5).
• He has promised never to let you be tempted beyond your ability (1 Cor.10:13).
• He has promised to provide you with everything you need to do His will - money, food, clothing, shelter, friends, guidance - everything you need (Mt.6:33).
• He has promised comfort, healing, protection, joy, guidance, and restoration of the years the locusts have eaten (Ps.23:4, Hos.6:1, Ps.121:7-8, Ps.89:15-16, Isa.30:21, Joel 2:25).
• He has promised to satisfy your appetites and desires with good things (Ps.37:4, Isa.55:2, Ps.63:5).
• He has promised to treat us with the compassion and tenderness that a father has with his little child (Ps.103:13-14).
• He has promised to repay us whenever we are generous with far more than we gave (Lk.6:38).
• He has promised to listen to us attentively and care about what we are saying (Ps.10:17).
• He has promised to sustain us (Isa.46:4), and to make us like Him (1 Jn.3:2-3).
• He has promised to wipe away every tear and thrill us with His presence where we will enjoy eternal pleasures at His right hand and drink forever from His river of delights (Rev.21:4, Ps.16:11, 36:7-8).
And that is the tip of the iceberg of His great and precious promises. He has promised so many things, and He is faithful. He has never once fallen even slightly short in fulfilling any promise He has made - ever. Never once has He ever had to say, "Give me another chance - I won't let you down again." He is utterly faithful and reliable.
He is your Creator, and He is faithful, which means He has the knowledge and the power and the ability and the willingness to follow through on what He has promised. He can handle the task of guarding your wellbeing. You can trust Him.
Continue to Do Good
So entrust yourself to Him, and continue to do good. Literally it is entrust your soul to your faithful Creator in doing good. The point of that construction is the entrusting must be in connection with doing good. You can never separate trusting God and doing good. We do not ever look at what God commands and throw up our hands and say, “I can’t obey that. I’m just going to have to trust God. I’ll live the way I want, and trust God for the outcome.” That is not trusting.
The trusting heart says, "I'll follow You wherever it leads. And if I get confused or frustrated or tired or weak, I will not grow weary in welldoing. I won't give up."
Beloved, when you run into opposition while obeying God, don’t let that stop you. Don’t give in to discouragement. Don’t give in to self-pity. Don’t falter. Persevere. Persevere all the way to the end, and He will make it worth your while. If you are running into opposition, continue to do good. If no one is supporting you, continue to do good. If no one appreciates you, stay on that path. If everyone turns against you - if they beat you, torture you, even threaten to kill you - entrust your soul to your faithful Creator and continue to do good. The fiery, painful ordeal you are suffering is light and momentary compared to what is coming. It is designed to show God's favorable verdict on you. And when you are confused and perplexed and afraid and you feel lost and alone or you are tempted to panic - just entrust your wellbeing to your faithful Creator, and continue to do what is good.
Benediction: Matthew 16:24-27 24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.
1:25 Questions
1. Is there some area where you are slow to obey God or follow His guidance because you are trying to protect yourself from suffering?
2. Entrusting your soul to God requires knowledge about God (believing He is all powerful and only does good things), and a heart that treasures His will above comfort, and even above life itself. Which of these needs most improvement in your life, and what could you do to make progress in that area?
Appendix: Do You Trust God?
Whenever a person does something you don’t understand, if it is a person you don’t trust, then all options are on the table as explanations - including the possibility that he has bad motives. If someone I trust does the exact same thing, there are a lot of those negative things that are not on the table. I do not even consider them. I say, “I don’t know why he did that,” but it does not even occur to me that he might have been doing it for some evil motive. If some stranger jumped into my car and started driving away, I would assume he is stealing it. But if Sam or Mike or Andrew did that, it wouldn’t even occur to me that they were trying to steal it. I might have no idea what on earth they might possibly be doing, but even if I cannot think of any other rational explanation, I still would not consider the possibility that they were stealing it.
You can tell how much you trust someone by what options you are willing to consider as explanations for why he did something that you don’t understand. The more you trust him, the fewer negative options you will consider as possibilities. And so suffering tests how much we trust God. Suffering comes, you don’t understand why, you cannot see any conceivable good that could possibly come from it - does your heart consider the possibility that maybe there is no good purpose? Maybe God has lost control? Or maybe He just does not really like you very much? Or maybe He is capricious and arbitrary in the suffering He allows? Or maybe He is not really in control of all things after all, so it is out of His hands? If any of those even occur to you as possibilities, or if it just seems to you like one of those might be true, that means there is a huge problem in your level of understanding about what God is like. And that can be caused by a couple different things. One is just a simple lack of knowledge. You just have not studied much of what Scripture says about, and so you are misinformed or ignorant about what He is really like. And so the solution there would be really simple - study what the Bible says about God more.
The other possibility is that you have been exposed to the truth about what God is like, but something inside you is holding it at arm’s length. Your heart is not accepting it. That is a believing problem, and it is a little harder to address. You need to search your heart and figure out why you are slow to accept the truth about God. Is it because you are angry at God? When you are mad at someone, your heart will tend to reject truth that reflects favorably on that person. Or it could be that you are not angry at Him - you are just resisting the truth about Him because you cannot see how it squares with other things you believe. For example, you believe God is loving, and you cannot understand how He could be loving and also be in control of these painful things that happen to you, so when you hear the truth about God being sovereign and in control of all things, your heart says, “What? God sent this suffering? No way! The God I know is loving and kind.” So you reject the truth about His sovereignty because you don’t understand how it could be compatible with His love. Or it can go the other way. You believe God is powerful, and there is no doubt in your mind that He is in control of this painful events happening to you, so when someone tries to tell you, “God loves you! He delights in you. He’s pleased with you!” - your heart says, “No, I will not accept that as being true. I can’t reconcile that with the other things I know to be true, so I won’t accept it.”
Another culprit might be self-condemnation. You are so mad at yourself over your failures, that you hold the truth about God’s forgiveness at arm’s length, because you want to punish yourself.
There are all kinds of different reasons people hold the truth about God at arm’s length. When you suffer, if you find yourself entertaining any kind of wrong thoughts about God as possibilities, search your heart and ask God to help you discern why you don’t trust Him. And if you can’t find the answer, find a wise counselor who can help you discover it, because nothing is more important than trusting God.
