06a 1 Peter 4:12-19

I Peter 4:12-19
Life Under the Cross

Our Father in heaven once again we find ourselves on a Wednesday evening in prayer with our hearts bowed before You and your sovereign throne of grace and mercy, coming now once again with Your word open before us, looking to you for help, for guidance, for instruction, for obedience, for a will that would turn in your ways. Father we ask for your blessing; be our Teacher, we pray and grant that out of your word you would lead us and guide us in the way everlasting, for Jesus’ sake, Amen.

Now once again in I Peter we come to a section that deals with a subject that we’ve found Peter dealing with again and again as we’ve been studying this epistle together. In actual fact, this is the fifth time that Peter has alluded to the subject of trials and difficulties of testing in the Christian life. Technically this section that we’re dealing with brings to a conclusion a section which began back in the second chapter, and there in chapter 2 and in verse 11, he begins with the expression, “Beloved,” or in some versions, “Dear friends.” And now again in verse 12 of chapter 4 you’ll see he once again begins with that term of endearment, “Dear friends” or “Beloved,” as though these are two bookends in which Peter has included a section of teaching in which he wants us not to be surprised by the painful trial that may come to us as the professing people of God.

I’m very conscious as we look at this section together that it’s all too easy for us to approach this academically. Academically in the sense that there are Christians in the world tonight for whom this is marked academic, that who are indeed suffering for Jesus’ sake, who are being persecuted for Jesus’ sake. I was thinking as I was looking over this section of that 17-year old girl in Columbine High School, you remember who was sought out in the library, or so it appeared afterward, because she was a Christian. We’re bombarded in our day and age by a religious media that suggests that following Jesus will bring you blessings of a material kind and for whom the message of Peter would seem to be altogether alien because Peter wants us to understand that the closer you are in following Jesus Christ, the more likely you are to suffer.

Five times then, and this is now the fifth occasion Peter has returned to this theme that following Jesus may well cost you. And I suspect that the reason that Peter returns to this again and again and again is because he had discovered in his own life an unwillingness to pay that price for following Jesus Christ. Because I think that that incident in the life of Peter where he denied the Lord, refusing to take up a cross and to follow after Jesus Christ was to haunt him for the rest of his life. Now don’t misunderstand me. Peter was forgiven and Peter knew the blessings both spiritual and psychological of what that forgiveness would mean, but I don’t think that he ever forgot it. I don’t think that moment, that evening, where he denied the Lord that he ever, ever forgot that, and I think as he wrote, sat down and penned this first epistle under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he returns again and again to “dear people” and says to them, “Now look, if you really, truly follow Jesus, don’t be surprised if the cost of that is that He may call upon you to suffer.”

Now there are three things, I think, that Peter want us to appreciate about suffering in this particular section and they’re not new; they are things that he has said before but now he seems to draw it out to a conclusion. First of all, never be surprised by suffering. Secondly, never be ashamed of suffering. And thirdly, never be confused by suffering.

I. Never be surprised by suffering.
In the first place, never be surprised by suffering. Look at how he puts it in verse 12, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial among you which comes upon you for your testing as though some strange thing were happening to you.” Don’t think of suffering as something that’s strange. Don’t think of trials and difficulties as something that ought not to be in the Christian life. Now isn’t it interesting that he uses that very same expression right at the very beginning of the epistle, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who reside as aliens, scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,” and so on. Aliens, strangers – same word, same thought, same idea. “Don’t regard suffering as something strange.” Wasn’t it our Lord Himself who Peter no doubt had heard saying from His own lips that “if they persecute Me, they will persecute you also”? What is it that Amy Carmichael says in that poem, “’Tis the way the Master went, shall not the servant tread it still?” It’s a basic principle; this is the Christian life 101; this is what John Calvin so wonderfully and beautifully weaved into his treatise on the nature of the Christian life in Book 3 of the Institutes when he summed up the Christian life in terms of two things: cross-bearing and self-denial. And that’s what Peter is saying here. Peter would have echoed a hearty, “Amen” to that understanding of the Christian life that it involves “cross-bearing and self-denial.”

But you notice that Peter does not only say that we must endure these sufferings and these trials, but that if you really grasp the nature and the significance of trials and difficulties in your life. “You will rejoice in them,” Peter says, “to the degree that you share in the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing.” Now does that remind you of something that Paul says in the fifth chapter of Romans when Paul says something almost identical to what Peter is saying here that we must not only endure trials, you know with a stiff upper lip, gritting our teeth and cursing as we go along, but rather we must positively rejoice in tribulation also. Now why do we rejoice in tribulation? Is Peter saying, is Paul saying that we rejoice in tribulation because we are masochists who just like to feel the pain and difficulty, who like Eeyore, the character from Winnie the Pooh, just constantly like to feel gloom and doom? You know, there are people who are never really happy and so they are gloomy. Is that what Peter is saying here? No, of course not! Peter is saying that when you really appreciate what trials do, verse 13 “to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ.” There’s the hint, there’s the goal of being open as to what the true nature of sufferings are in our life; they should help us to appreciate that we are actually participating in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. If we are suffering in the name of Jesus, then we are participating in the sufferings of Christ. We are having fellowship with Jesus Christ; there is something, there is enough of the life of Christ in you that people will want to resist that influence upon their lives. You know if there is enough of the life of Christ in us to be worthy of trials and tribulations, that’s something to rejoice in; that’s something to glory in; that’s something to reckon as glorious.

Now notice what Peter says, Peter is saying look at this from this point of view that there is enough of God’s grace working in your life, molding you and shaping you and conforming you to the image of Jesus Christ that out of that suffering there is squeezed the joy of our relationship to Him. And that, Peter says, is a foretaste of the joy which is to come, “So that also” end of verse 13, “at the revelation of His glory, you may rejoice with exultation.” If suffering makes you more like Jesus, if suffering reminds you of your relationship to Jesus Christ, that ought to make us joyful. That ought to remind us of the true nature of our existence here on earth and that is a foretaste, just a little glimpse of what is to come. Suffering is the raw material of joy, from a Christian perspective, Peter is saying, that there is no way that the world can understand that. That is altogether the converse almost of how the world would regard suffering. But for a Christian, Peter says, don’t be surprised that God wants to make you like His Son, that God wants to mold you and shape you like His Son, don’t be surprised if the trial comes, if the difficulty comes.

So many dear Christian people in this church and in this little communion we have with us here this evening, so many trials and so many difficulties, so many various ways in which God has called upon His people to take up a cross and to deny themselves and to follow after Jesus Christ. It comes in all forms; standing up for Jesus is costing you. It’s costing you in your family, it’s costing you in your relationships with brothers and sisters, perhaps with parents, perhaps with relatives of a more distant nature, perhaps in your employment, perhaps in your job, perhaps in the lack of promotion that you have received; in a myriad ways, in a variety of ways God may have called upon you to suffer. But don’t be surprised; ‘tis the way the Master went, shall not the servant tread it still?

II. Don’t be ashamed of suffering.
Don’t be surprised but rejoice, Peter says. Secondly, don’t be ashamed but count yourself privileged. Verse 14: “If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed.” Why? “Because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.” And then you notice that Peter utters a warning in verse 15, “By no means let any of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer.” And it’s so very easy for us to read that list, and it’s typical of a number of lists that you can find in the epistles of Paul and Peter in the New Testament and we read those and you can almost see Peter’s reader ticking them off: “Murderer? No, doesn’t apply. A thief? No, doesn’t apply. A criminal? No, doesn’t apply.” And then Peter slips in something as though he is an experienced pastor of souls and knows how it is that people listen to and he says, “what about a troublesome meddler?” And there are troublesome meddlers in any church, of every size, you know people who are busying themselves in other people’s business. People are on the telephone, people are writing e-mails about things that don’t concern them, who are actually making things worse and not better, who are actually rejoicing in other people’s troubles, who like to talk and gossip and stand in little corners talking about other people’s troubles because it makes them look good. It hurts, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it hurt? And Peter is like an experienced pastor and, you see, you weren’t expecting it and the knife is going in. If you are going to suffer, make sure that you’re not suffering because of something that you have done, some foolish thing, some sinful thing. Peter isn’t talking about suffering because you’ve sinned. He’s talking about suffering for righteousness’ sake, suffering for Jesus’ sake. “By no means let any of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or evildoer or a troublesome meddler; but if anyone suffers as a Christian.”

And I think that Peter is touching on something here that comes close to home for him, because one of the things that Peter is trying to deal with here is the sense of shame. Have you ever felt ashamed of being a Christian? Have you ever been next to somebody on an airplane and they’ve asked you a question, you just don’t want to stand up for Jesus and His name, you felt ashamed. When someone has taken the name of Jesus in vain and you just don’t have the courage to say, “Please don’t do that because it offends me” because you feel a sense of shame. And Peter knows exactly what that’s like; when that little girl, that young maiden in the courtyard recognized his northern Galilean accent down in Jerusalem and said to Peter, “Yes, you too were one of the disciples” and he said, “No I wasn’t” and he cursed and he swore that he had never known Jesus Christ. Peter is dealing with this issue of shame and he’s saying here, he’s not talking about suffering because we have sinned, not talking about suffering because we deserve it, but he’s talking about suffering because we have stood up for Jesus Christ, suffering as a Christian. Actually it’s a very technical phrase and it gives a hint of the context, perhaps in which I Peter was written. I don’t think that the severity of that persecution that had yet befallen the Christians to whom Peter is writing in what we would now call modern Turkey. I still think it was possibly a year or two away, but he’s dealing with the social and psychological pressure that Christians were facing as he was writing this epistle of standing up for Jesus and standing up for truth and standing up for the gospel in a society that was extremely laissez-faire. And Peter knows exactly what he’s talking about here, “Never ever be ashamed of the gospel and never be ashamed of the suffering that may follow as a consequence of the gospel.”

You see, it took Peter awhile to learn that. It’s very easy for us to go back to that incident in the courtyard where he denied the Lord, but you know, you’ve only got to turn the pages of the book of Acts and you see Peter once again falling prey to that perennial problem, refusing to eat with the Gentiles, and God having to come to him in a vision and rebuking him to say that there was no such thing as clean and unclean anymore. Paul and Peter perhaps having words over this issue that still befell, like a besetting sin in Peter. “Don’t be ashamed,” Peter is saying, like somebody that’s been there, and he’s begging his readers, “Don’t do as I did. Whatever you do, don’t do as I did. Don’t be ashamed of suffering for Jesus.” If Jesus lays on your back His cross, don’t be ashamed to bear it. Be a Simon of Cyrene and take that cross.

III. Don’t be confused by suffering.
Not only don’t be surprised and don’t be ashamed, but don’t be confused by suffering. There’s a tremendous danger, Peter seems to be saying here, that when we undergo suffering as Christians we become confused about the significance of suffering. Now why are you suffering as a Christian? Well, look at what he says in verse 17: “For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God.” And then he quotes from the Old Testament, “And if it is with difficulty that the righteous is saved, what will become of the godless man and the sinner? Therefore, let those who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful creator in doing what is right.”

Now Peter seems to have on his mind, as he’s writing this, several Old Testament passages: two at least. One is a passage that probably emerges out of chapters 8, 9, and 10 of the book of Ezekiel. I haven’t time to take you through the whole book of Ezekiel but you remember that astonishing and glorious image that’s given to us actually in the very first chapter of the book of Ezekiel where God comes in the form of a blazing chariot of fire with wheels within wheels. Maybe it’s awhile since you’ve read that opening chapter of Ezekiel and it’s a glorious, in the root idea of that word, it’s a glorious image. It’s an image of the transcendence and the glory and the holiness and the otherness of Almighty God and in chapters 8, 9, and 10 the holy presence of God which is born on that celestial chariot is, as it were, burning from within the temple and then it’s being released from within the temple and eventually goes and makes its way through the whole of the city of Jerusalem. And there comes that moment you remember, that astonishing moment in the 10^th chapter of Ezekiel, where the glory of God has departed from the temple and Ichabod, “the glory has departed,” is written over the temple in its judgment. The point being that judgment begins first in the temple of God, in the house of God and to that picture and I think that picture is there as Peter is writing this. Perhaps he’d been reading Ezekiel in his morning devotions.

Well if he had, he was reading his evening devotions from the book of Malachi chapter 3, and a passage which, in fact, would well be on your minds and maybe in your vocal chords over the last three days because it’s a passage that is used by Handel in the Messiah about the refiner’s fire, speaking of course of the coming of John the Baptist, “He is like a refiner’s fire.” It’s a beautiful piece; it’s one of my favorite parts of Handel’s Messiah. But it’s like a refiner’s fire and the whole point is that He’s coming to judge and to refine the people of God. The purpose of a refiner’s fire is to heat up the metal until it becomes white-hot so that the dross can be skimmed away.

That’s the purpose of suffering. If God is putting you through the fires, maybe that’s what He’s doing in your life right now, putting you through the fires, and it’s hot and it feels as though your soul is on fire. The point of suffering, Peter wants us to appreciate and never be confused about it, the point of it is to make you pure, it’s to make you something that is going to shine. Were you paying attention to Homer Lee’s prayer of being conformed to Jesus? That’s a dangerous prayer Homer Lee, that’s a terrifying prayer because if God is going to answer that prayer there’s going to be a refiner’s fire for us all because we can’t reach that purity unless the dross is first of all taken away. Be careful what you pray for and if we pray for absolute consecration, and I know that’s the burden of your heart and it’s the burden of every Christian’s heart, don’t be surprised, Peter is saying, if trial comes. Don’t be ashamed if trial comes. Don’t be confused if trial comes.

Isn’t it a beautiful conclusion in verse 19? “Therefore let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right.” You know, who is sufficient for these things? If God really comes and brings trial into our lives, if God really is intent to make us like His Son, who is sufficient to endure these things? That’s why we need to entrust ourselves to God. We need to cast ourselves upon Him, we need to throw ourselves into the arms of our merciful and faithful Creator who has promised to save us.

Do you know a hymn, that beautiful hymn How Firm a Foundation? I’m not sure who wrote that hymn, How Firm a Foundation, but when it was first included in a hymnbook it was given the letter, “K.” I have no idea who penned those words. I know that at the death of Andrew Jackson, the 7^th President of the United States, probably most notorious for the defeat of the British forces in New Orleans, he asked for this hymn to be sung. And you remember that beautiful line in How Firm a Foundation: “I only design Thy dross to consume and Thy gold to refine.” I can’t think but of Bishop Polycarp, 86 years of age, being persecuted for Jesus’ sake, persecuted to death, when being asked to recant his allegiance to Jesus saying that “I have served my Lord for 86 years and He’s never let me down.” To have that kind of courage, to have that kind of faith. Archbishop Leighton, who wrote a wonderful commentary on I Peter, says, “Adversity is the diamond dust heaven polishes its jewels with.” And Robert Murray McCheyne wrote these words, “If anything else will do to sever me from my sins, Lord send me such sore and trying calamities as shall awake me from earthly slumber.” Never be surprised by trials and never be ashamed of trials and never be confused as to the purpose of trials. May God bless His word to us. Let’s pray together.

Our Father in heaven, these are solemn, and yet in a way glorious words because they remind us of your ultimate purpose to conform us to the image of your Son and our Savior Jesus Christ. And though the going may be rough, and though there may be many a difficulty to pass through before we reach that celestial city, our hearts long O Lord, that we might truly be like Christ. And so we pray, send us whatever it takes to conform us to that image. But we thank you for your faithfulness and we bless you for your grace and we thank you that the soul that has on Jesus leaned for repose, He never, no never deserts to its foes. And bless us now we pray and do us good and forgive us our sins for Jesus’ sake, Amen.