Sermon
Do you ever wonder what a new preacher or public speaker is going to be like?
Perhaps you have some method for finding out whether they’re going to be interesting or not, very quickly.
The founder of CWR, and the author of Every Day with Jesus, Selwyn Hughes recently told the story of how he used to do this as a lad of 12 or 13.
If the speaker began his talk by telling a story then most of the time the speaker was likely to be interesting.
If, however, the preacher began by saying, ’Let’s turn to 1 Peter chapter 1 this morning’, he was most likely to be uninteresting.
In this case he would get out his pen and paper and begin playing noughts and crosses.
Now you should have noticed that I’ve begun by telling a story.
Surely that’s good news then.
Okay, so let’s turn to 1 Peter chapter 1 in our Bibles this morning.
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READ PASSAGE (1 Peter 1:3-12)
There is one question that pastors and ministers get asked more often than any other.
Can you guess what it is?
’If God loves us so much, why does He allow suffering?’
Sometimes it’s a personal question, ’Why am I having to suffer so much?’, or ’Why is the person I love so much having to suffer like this?’
Sometimes, after a disaster, it’s more general, ’Where was God on September 11th last year when those planes flew into the World Trade Centre?’
I asked this kind of question when my Great Aunt died unexpectedly two years ago, ’Why did God allow that to happen?’ I asked.
These are not casual questions that people ask to pass the time or make polite conversation.
Often those who are asking them, ask out of deep personal pain.
They are trying to align their faith that God does, indeed, love us, with whatever awful thing has happened.
If God is good, and God is all-powerful, why does God let this happen?
There are, of course, a variety of answers to this question.
Some are over-simple and ignore one end or the other of that equation of God being both all-powerful and all-loving.
Or they side-step the question altogether by saying something like,
’I don’t know what God had in mind when He allowed your friend to have a serious illness, but it will all be made clear one day.’
God’s power is made clear in these statements, but where is the Love that took on our flesh and died on a cross so that we might know how much we are loved?
Other statements assume that everything that happens, both good and evil, is God’s will.
For example, ’God had something in mind for that young woman when He allowed her to be crippled in a car accident.’
Statements like this don’t take seriously the reality of sin, which means that we can do things God doesn’t want us to do.
If we can defy God, misbehave and do our own thing, how can we hold God responsible for the evil that we do?
It would be wonderful, of course, if children were never kidnapped, accidents never maimed or killed anyone, rape never occurred, weather never devastated or volcanoes never erupted.
But if we are to ask God to interfere every time someone has an idea to do evil, what kind of a world would we have?
The rapist might be stopped, killed at the command of God, but what would God do to us when we scream for the blood of the killer?
When vengeance is uppermost in our minds?
Probably none of us would be here right now!
God is both loving and powerful.
Sometimes it’s difficult for us to reconcile the two, but God is both.
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For what can we turn to God, then?
Peter offers us three things that God gives.
The first of these that he talks about in our letter today is that God has given us hope.
It’s not some abstract idea, but instead the hope that the trials and suffering and grief we face will be used to refine us as gold is refined.
It’s not that God particularly wants us to suffer, but that our sufferings may be used to make us finer than we were.
It will make us more refined, more gracious, and more understanding of others.
Hope looks into the future and gives us reason to live.
Will we place our hope in God then, the one who is our rock and our fortress?
He has our best interests in mind, and yet we still might wonder why we suffer.
I was recently listening to a cassette tape of Paul Scanlon, the pastor of Abundant Life Centre, Bradford, talking about Romans chapter 8, in which he used this phrase, ’Everything is either God sent or God used.’
He goes on to talk about all the blessings and opportunities that God sends us, and then follows this up by talking about other things.
He says that God still uses everything that comes to us, even if it doesn’t come from Him.
So God can use the most everyday of things for His own good purposes.
As it is written in Scripture, ’God works everything together for good, for those who love Him.’
This verse doesn’t say that God will only work together for good the things that He has sent to us, but instead everything.
Suffering, then, is probably best described as ’God used’.
It’s not something that God sends to us, but it is something that we should expect if we are following His ways for our lives.
It is something that God works together, and through, for good.
Where the church is most active, suffering is a part of everyday life.
Throughout the world, the church is becoming more and more active, and as this happens, more and more Christians are suffering, even to death.
Do you know how many brothers and sisters in Christ were martyred in 1999 alone?
Approximately, 164,000.
The most ever - that figure speaks for itself.
So we should expect to suffer, whether its ridicule from friends and family, illness or accidents.
Yet, in the midst of all this Peter talks of a hope, and goes even further to say that ’in this (the sufferings) you greatly rejoice.’
So, we can turn to God for hope in our sufferings, for He is our rock and our fortress.
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Secondly, we can turn to God for joy.
Now joy doesn’t seem to be the most obvious thing for God to give us in the midst of our sufferings, but this is exactly what He does give to us.
This joy is found in the ’eternal perspective’.
The Apostle Paul speaks of setting our sights on things above, or the things of God, and I think this is what Peter is talking about here.
He speaks of the ’new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish.’
This is why we can have joy in the midst of our sufferings.
It’s because Jesus has gone before us, and has opened the way for us to follow Him.
Jesus suffered in His life on earth, as we have been reading over Lent and Easter.
He went though all the things that we have been through and yet He had an eternal perspective.
He was filled with joy in the midst of His suffering.
We can also be filled with joy in the midst of our suffering.
James talks about this joy right at the beginning of his letter.
In chapter 1, verse 2 of James we read this, ’Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds.’
Now, what can this possibly mean?
It’s a question that many a theologian and bible scholar have considered long and hard, and have yet still not come to a satisfactory conclusion.
What hope have we of understanding it then?
The problem for theologians and bible scholars is that they, and I probably ought to include myself in this group of people, look for problems where there aren’t any.
It’s about having an eternal perspective, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, as the letter to the Hebrews puts it.
Now the theory of having an ’eternal perspective’ is fine, but the question is what does this look like practically?
It’s looking at everything with a new perspective.
When it rains we need to think of the way that this gives water to plants, and fills up our reservoirs so that we have all the water we need to wash, drink and still have some left over.
Yet, we complain when it rains.
If we take a long term perspective, even an ’eternal perspective’ we will be able to see past the inconvenience of rain showers to the fruit produced by trees.
It’s just like this in our life with Jesus.
When we are convicted of the sinfulness of a habit of ours it can seem painful.
We don’t want to give it up.
I have a bit of a problem with getting angry over little things - music photocopies folded incorrectly, having to get up early.
Over the past few months God has been convicting me of how wrong these feelings are.
It’s not that I go into a fit of rage or anything like that - I just feel angry inside for a while.
I used to let this go on for a while.
Most of the time now, I can cut it down to a minute or two.
I’m not there yet, but God is working in me to change this.
The eternal perspective on this means that I need to get past the immediate irritation at something, and see the harmful effects of this inner anger.
Hopefully this explains better what it means to have an eternal perspective, one that allows us to feel joy in the midst of suffering.
The former minister of Westminster Chapel in London, R T Kendall, put it like this, Joy ’points to the one success in life that really matters. All other joys are derived joys, secondary joys. But there is no greater joy than discernible growth in grace.’
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What R T said leads well into what Peter tells us next in his first letter.
Thirdly, we can turn to God for grace.
Grace is a word we hear an awful lot about in Christian circles.
Its one of those words that everyone uses.
We sing about it often enough, whether in our older hymns like ’Amazing grace’, and ’God of grace and God of glory’ or in some of the more modern worship songs like ’Wonderful grace’ and Graham Kendrick’s ’What grace’.
You’ve probably heard several sermons about grace over the years, and so you may feel tempted to turn off now, and think that you know everything there is to know about grace.
I certainly feel like that sometimes, and yet there’s always so much more we can learn and know about God’s grace.
We could not have hope for the future, were it not for God’s grace, which He showed to us in His Son, Jesus Christ.
We could not be joyful in the midst of suffering were it not for God’s wonderful grace.
How, then, can we get so bored by grace?
Charles Wesley wrote these words, that really express the true excitement and wonder that grace should give us,
’Oh, that the world might taste and see
The riches of His grace!
The arms of love that compass me
Would all mankind embrace.’
Grace, as I’m sure most of you will know, is often defined as ’something that is given for free, that is not deserved’.
So God has given us a gift that we didn’t deserve, and that was His own Son, Jesus Christ.
He died in our place and took upon Himself our sins, so that we might be reconciled to God the Father.
What an amazing gift that is.
So in the midst of our sufferings God gave Himself for us.
He showed us grace in His Son Jesus.
He then in turn gives us the grace to share in His sufferings as Paul says.
God’s grace allows us to suffer, and yet have an eternal perspective, knowing that one day we will see God face to face and live.
We will be with Jesus in eternity.
What better hope can we possibly have?
God sends His Holy Spirit, who gives us joy in the midst of suffering.
God gives us grace to endure these sufferings.
What a great God He is.
Let’s respond to these great truths then by praying a prayer of recommitment.
I believe that we can never recommit our lives to Jesus enough.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re ten, twenty one or ninety.
Let’s pray then:
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Jesus, we thank You that You gave Yourself for us, and died for us.
We praise You that You give us a hope for the future, allowing us to have an eternal perspective on all kinds of things.
We thank You that You have sent Your Holy Spirit to us, and have given us joy.
We pray this morning that You would continue to work in us, and enable us to share in Your sufferings.
Grant us hope, joy and grace in the midst of suffering, we pray.
Hear our prayers Lord, for we pray them in the name of Your Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, Amen.
