Have you ever had the experience of showing kindness to somebody, only for them to repay it to you by being nasty, unkind, or cruel? I guess many of us have known that experience. As we've been working our way through this letter of 1 Peter, thinking about what it's like to live as Christians on our way home to heaven, one truth that Peter's brought us back to again and again is that on our journey to heaven we frequently are still called upon to suffer.
A world free of suffering is something that is not for now, not for yet — that only comes when the Lord Jesus returns. And in the meantime, there is frequently and sadly much suffering. But up to this point in Peter's letter, the sufferings he's been describing have been the general sufferings experienced by every category of human being — illness, unemployment, homelessness, bereavement, pain, war, sleeplessness, hunger.
But that changes as we get to this point in the letter. Starting with today's passage, Peter is talking much more specifically about the sufferings we sometimes experience precisely because we are Christians.
Just imagine that it's you. Imagine that you become a Christian and you start to live out your Christian faith. You show practical love to your neighbours in the street in which you live, making it known that you're doing so because now you're a Christian. You wish to think of others in a way that previously you only thought of yourself. You offered to pray for a colleague at work who is going through a hard time. You share the good news of the Lord Jesus that you've discovered with some of your family. You invite some of your friends to church for a carol service.
Now, these are all just basic acts of kindness. They're good things to do — in fact, you could say that even from an unchristian point of view, that they're harmless. They're just good and kind things.
But just imagine then that in return, you get called various nicknames, or you're frozen out of some of your friendship circles. They don't invite you round to some of the things that previously they would have invited you and a group of friends to. And now they're being invited around for Christmas drinks, and you aren't. Or at work, there's a promotion that's being run through internally, and you just notice that you're being passed by for that promotion.
That's in this country. We can't complain really, can we? That's pretty tame stuff. I mean, there are countries in this world where you could be arrested, where you could lose access to your own children, where your property could be confiscated, or you'd be forbidden in law from owning property. You could lose the right to vote. You could even be killed.
How do you respond if that happens? You become a Christian, you show basic Christian kindness to others, and that's the response you get. How do you react to that? What happens to your new faith when that happens?
Don’t be surprised
Well, there are two very natural ways to respond — two very understandable ways to respond — that Peter flags for us here. One would be to be surprised. You know, a morally upright person — I've just done good things. Why do people treat me badly for it? It makes no sense. You could just say, in the way that people on the street talk about it without really understanding the gospel, “All I've done is be a good Christian. What's gone wrong?”
Well, Peter says, doesn't he — verse 12 — “Don't be surprised, dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on to you to test you, as though something strange was happening to you.” He says, don't be surprised.
Now, we'll come back later to this language of the fiery trial. But he says don't be surprised, as though this was something strange, something that shouldn't happen, that doesn't normally happen, and has hit you as a bit of a kind of freak storm. It's not that, says Peter. This is normal. This is to be expected. Don't be surprised.
Don’t be ashamed
The second perfectly understandable reaction Peter picks up here is that you might be ashamed. See, if you're treated like somebody that's done something wrong, it's very easy, if it starts to get under your skin, to the point where you start to believe you probably have. They don't promote you at work. They consistently promote other people. Is it because actually you're not very good at your job? If your friends don't invite you around for those Christmas drinks, is it because they don't like you? You're just — socially — you're just a bit awkward. You're just kind of not on the “love to have you round” end of the social scale. It just starts to get under your skin.
And if you're treated like a criminal — if you're arrested — well, you know the saying, don't you? “No smoke without fire.” If someone's arrested and released without charge, they must have done something wrong surely. Otherwise, why would they have been arrested in the first place? And it just niggles away at you, until you're slightly ashamed for being a Christian. It's a slightly embarrassing thing for you. You become slightly apologetic. Or at the very least, you just go quiet and play it down.
And Peter says don't do that either. Don't be ashamed — verse 16 — “However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed,” provided, by the way, that that is the reason for your suffering — verse 15 — “And if you suffer, it shouldn't be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler.”
So Peter says, don't get the wrong idea. Okay, if the reason why your friends are giving you a hard time or you've been arrested is because you have actually broken the law or you've just become an interfering busybody who loves telling other people how to run their lives in ways that are none of your business — at that point, Peter says, I have no sympathy for you. But if the problem is that you have simply been a Christian, then if that's it — don't be ashamed.
Don't be surprised. Don't be ashamed.
Rejoice
So what do you do? Well, he tells you two things to do. Verse 13 — you rejoice. “Rejoice,” he says, “inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ.” And verse 16 — “Praise God if you suffer as a Christian. Do not be ashamed, but praise God.”
You see that? So — verse 12 — don't be surprised. Verse 13 — but rejoice. Verse 16 — don't be ashamed, but praise God. Two commands: don't do this, but do this.
How do you rejoice and praise God when you're in the midst of deep suffering because you're — ? How do you do that?
I'm not going to command you this morning to be joyful when you're suffering. I'm not that crass. Now, don't get me wrong — joy is a command in Scripture. Christians are commanded to be joyful. It is not optional. You are told to be joyful — “Rejoice in the Lord always.” But joy is not something that you turn on and off like a tap. The solution, if somebody's life is lacking joy, is not to have their pastor stand at the front of their church and say, “You — be joyful.” Doesn't work like that.
If you're lacking joy, it's because there are things in your life that are disrupting that joy. And if you would seek joy, you have to put the building blocks in place on which joy will grow. So I'm not going to stand here and bark orders at you like an army sergeant major and tell you to be more joyful.
What I am going to do is share with you Peter's framework within which to see your suffering. Drink deeply of the framework — the way to see life that Peter gives you here — and you will find that you are building the ingredients in your life for joy to be your spontaneous response when you do suffer.
So, Peter has three things to say to us by way of a framework for life—a way to see our sufferings.
God is testing you
Number one: when you suffer, God is testing you. God is testing you.
Verse 12: Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you.
Here's the question: is your faith in the Lord Jesus genuine, or is it shallow, superficial and fake?
If you read the book of James in the New Testament, you will discover that God does not test your faith in order to trip you up. He tests your faith through your sufferings in order to give you the reassurance that your faith is real. He wants you every time to pass the test, not fail. That's the point of the test. But it is a test.
I love eating fresh bread, okay? I would be hopeless at making fresh bread were it not for the advent of the Panasonic bread machine. But I know the concept of what you're trying to do—I just can't do it, okay?
You work all the gluten out of the flour and you make sure the yeast is all mixed up. You leave it for a couple of hours and it goes all big and fluffy. What do you do next? Use all that lovely air—it’s gonna make your bread nice and fluffy—you just put it in the oven?
No. You punch all the air out of it until it's a soggy bunch of glop again. And then you leave it and it grows back.
Someone tell me, what is that second stage called? Proving.
What are you proving? You're proving that the yeast is still alive, and that it can survive the process of having all the air pummelled out—and it will still grow back. The only way to test that that is real bread, that will go nice and fluffy in the oven, is to put it through that pummelling, take all the air out, and then you can see that it's real—because it springs back.
Or maybe the parable of the sower. Jesus told a story we call the Parable of the Sower. Remember, a farmer went to sow some seed in four different types of soil. A picture of the seed is like the good news of the Lord Jesus, and the soils are us—different ways that people respond when they hear of the Lord Jesus.
And two types of soil just worth comparing. One is the rocky, stony ground, that the seed springs up really quickly because the soil warms up as the day gets going. But when the sun comes out and is hot, it withers and it dies.
And then there's the good soil—the fertile soil—where the plants can put down deep roots and grow up and produce a wonderful crop.
And Jesus says the beating down of the sun in the rocky soil is like persecutions and hardships. And because you have no root in your faith, when they come, they wither away.
Now here's the point. Before the sun gets hot—before those persecutions and hardships come—the plant in the stony, rocky soil and the plant in the good, fertile soil, they are indistinguishable. You cannot tell them apart. They look exactly the same.
It's only when the sun beats down in its heat, and the one in the good soil continues to grow, that you see that it's genuine.
You are being tested.
So, when you suffer for being a Christian, it is deeply unpleasant. But God is using it. He is using it to prove that you're genuine.
And this is the language of the fiery ordeal in verse 12. Not only come on you to test you—the language of fiery ordeal—this is how they approved and purified metals in those days. You've got some silver, you melt it down, you bring it really hot, all the impurities burn off, and you're left with beautiful, glistening, shining, pure silver.
Of course, if it wasn't silver at all—if it was something completely worthless—you'd be left with absolutely nothing. But that's the point. It's how you prove that it's genuine: you put it in the fire, you roast it, and you can then see that it's for real.
I would like to show you a picture of something currently in the IKEA catalogue. What's it called? Tillgång.
That is Tillgång. Okay—meet Tillgång. Tillgång costs you a pound. Tillgång is a lovely sandwich serving platter. So, you can put your sandwiches, your samosas, your chicken drumsticks, and you can work the room with your friends and hand out your things. Isn't it lovely?
Look—it's a lovely shiny silver rectangular thing with a little lip around there. You might be reminded of something you've got in your kitchen.
They've just changed their website. It now says: Please note: Tillgång is a serving tray made of plastic, not a baking tray, and therefore not suitable for use at high temperatures.
Now why did they change the website to put that on there? Because if you go to last August, there was a lady who decided that she would cook her oven chips on her Tillgång. And she then went to every tabloid newspaper in the country looking for sympathy—that she had bought this baking tray from IKEA that had gone a bit wrong.
Okay—the fiery trial proves that what you have is genuine metal, and not metal-fake, metal-covered plastic.
Do not—okay, there are lots of applications for the sermon today—but here is a really important one: do not cook your samosas on your Tillgång. Just serve them on your Tillgång.
Thank you. Nice out there.
Okay—God is testing you.
God is with you
Secondly, God is with you.
God is with you. If you're suffering, God is with you. And Peter says, to see that God is with you, you need to look at the past, look at the present, and look at the future.
Look at the past.
Verse 13: Rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ.
If you suffer for being a Christian, they're treating you like Jesus—and that, he says, is a wonderful thing: to be treated like Jesus was treated. It's wonderful.
Remember that Peter himself was arrested for preaching the resurrection. The authorities conferred and then—Acts chapter 5, verses 40 and 41—they called the apostles in and had them flogged. That was nice.
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.
Treated as Jesus was treated.
Or as the Lord Jesus himself said—Matthew 5:11–12: Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
If you're suffering for being a Christian, look back. Look to the way they treated the Lord Jesus. You're in good company. God is with you. Jesus is with you. You're with him.
Or look at the present.
Verse 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.
If you're being persecuted for being a Christian, it's possible to feel very alone and lonely. Peter says: you are not alone. The Spirit of God is with you.
But look how the Spirit is referred to: it's the Spirit of glory and of God. Bring those two words together—glory and God—and what you're being led to is to think of God around his throne in heaven, in all his glory, where you one day will be.
And the Spirit is now with you. The Spirit of glory and of God is with you now.
It's a foretaste of what's to come.
Read the apostle Paul in Romans—he'll tell us that the Spirit is the deposit, guaranteeing what is to come: your inheritance.
If you've ever bought a house or bought a car that costs more than about £500, you will know that what you would first of all do is you'd pay some of the money for the thing you're buying to reserve it. Nobody else can have it now—it's going to be yours.
And then a couple of weeks later, when everything's ready, you pay the remaining money for it. And then you get the keys to the car, or the house, or whatever it is.
And that deposit money is you making a promise that you'll be back in a couple of weeks with the rest of the funds. You are committing to buy it. You'll follow through. The deal will go through.
And Peter—and the apostle Paul—are saying that the Spirit of glory and of God, he's with us now as the deposit, that one day we will be with God in all his glory around his throne.
So, if you're suffering for being a Christian: God is with you.
Look back—how they treated Jesus.
Look now—God's Spirit is with you.
And look ahead.
Verse 13: Rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.
The day is coming when you will literally be with Jesus. You will be—the language here is of overwhelming joy—you'll be grinning from ear to ear, just beaming, loving it.
Wow. This is good.
And he says, you can rejoice even now, when you're suffering, because you know that one day you will be with him.
And as Jesus said to his disciples before he died: Nothing will take away your joy.
So if you're suffering for being a Christian, rejoice. God is with you. Look back — they're treating you like Jesus. Look now — the Spirit of glory and of God is with you. Look forwards — one day you'll physically be with Him.
God is beginning the judgement
God is testing you. God is with you. Thirdly, God is beginning the judgement. God is beginning the judgement when you suffer.
Something else is going on here. Verse 16: If you suffer as a Christian, don't be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name. Why praise God? Well, because of verse 17: For it is time for judgement 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?
The Old Testament had an expectation that one day God would return to this world. He would judge it, He would remove everything that is evil from it, and He'd rescue His people. But the process of purging the world of its evil starts, say the Old Testament prophets — Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel — with His own people. Before God comes to judge those who do not know Him, He comes to cleanse and to purify us, His people who do.
And this is Peter's point. If God is using the suffering of His people to make us more like the Lord Jesus, if He's using it as His fatherly discipline, then that process has begun. And if the process has begun, the process will complete. If it begins with us, he says, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And if it's hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?
When you suffer as a Christian now, that process of cleaning the world up is beginning. It's beginning with you, because God uses the sufferings to make you more like Jesus — if you let the sufferings do that. But the process will go to completion, and one day all the evil and all the troubling and all the suffering will be gone.
As well as being not very good at making bread by hand, I'm not very good at gardening. And we've inherited — the house we've bought contains lots of lovely rose bushes. Now again, I know the idea of what you're meant to do, but it doesn't always work.
So what you're meant to do is, at the right time of year — it's a huge subject — what you do is you cut back the stalks that have flowered to about half their length, so that it encourages growth next year. The trouble is, it doesn't always work. Whenever I come to do that, I've always learned there are a number of plants that the previous year's pruning exercise killed. So the aim is to do that, but not to kill them.
So having pruned the ones that did flower this year, what you then do is, you then go back around the garden and find the ones that didn't survive the previous year's pruning — and you get rid of them. You get them out of the ground.
When Christians suffer, what He's doing is, He's pruning His roses. But when He's done that, He will go round the garden and take out the dead plants that aren't flowering roses and that shouldn't be there at all. And that's the day when all trouble and evil and suffering will be gone.
So when we're being pruned, it's painful — but it's painful with an end in sight, which is the end of all the stuff that spoils the world.
Conclusion
Now, there are implications here for folk who do not know the Lord Jesus, who are not Christians. Because — and if that's you — maybe one of the things preventing you becoming a Christian is the thought that you might suffer if you do. I hope that is one of the thoughts you're thinking through. It's one of the costs you need to consider. Christians suffer.
But here's Peter's point. It's not just Christians who suffer. God lets Christians suffer to prepare us for glory. There's a positive purpose. And Peter says that you can keep going because you know there's a positive goal at the end of the road. But he also says that you can be sure that those who arrive at the day of judgement without knowing the Lord Jesus Christ — well, they will suffer. And they'll suffer far more than we do in this life. And it won't be because there's a positive purpose for them at the end of it.
So actually, if what puts you off being a Christian is that you might suffer, realise it's not being Christian and not — it's not whether you suffer, but the purpose and intensity of your suffering. It's whether you're going to be a rose that doesn't like being pruned, or a rose that will be removed from the garden entirely.
But there's a message here for us who are Christians, isn't there, as well? Suffering is partly how God prepares you for heaven. Suffering will end. And the fact that you're suffering now proves that the end process has begun.
So as Christians we still suffer. Sometimes we suffer because we are Christians. We serve, after all, a Jesus who suffered. That is how He saved us — He suffered and died for us. And therefore, suffering is to be expected. Jesus said, If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.
But rather than giving up as a Christian because of the surprise, because of the shame, it is possible to rejoice even when we are suffering. It is possible to keep praising God in the intensity of that pain.
How? Well, before the suffering comes, get your thinking straight. See things the right way up. God tests us. He proves our genuineness. God is with us even as we suffer. The Spirit of glory rests on us as we look forward to that day of overwhelming joy. And even our sufferings are the beginning of God cleansing this world of pain, ready for that glorious day in the future.