Every Grief God Sends Can Give You a Golden Faith--1 Peter 1:6-9 (1 Peter Series)

            During my senior year of college, I had a fairly light load of classes, so I decided to join the soccer team. I had played on a soccer team all throughout elementary school and I really enjoyed it, so I thought I’d take it up again. I quickly discovered that elementary school soccer is a much different game than college-level soccer.

            In elementary school, you basically play what some people have called “herd ball” – all of the players gather around the ball like a big herd, and the herd kind of moves back and forth from one place to another. But college-level soccer is much more like what you see on TV, with grown men or women colliding into each other with elbows and knees, and cleats digging into your calf muscles.

            So, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, and since it had been many years since I had played on a team, I didn’t really have the skill to dribble the ball with my feet and look up and around the field at the same time. Consequently, my eyes were always directed downward toward the ball, and all I could see in my peripheral vision were defenders coming at me to take the ball away. And so, I was often kind of panicked when I got the ball, because it was hard for me to look up and see the big picture of the field.

            When we face trying and difficult times in life, our natural inclination is to do what I did on the soccer field – to look down and thus lose the helpful perspective that comes when you can lift your eyes and look at the big picture. Our tendency is to become fixated on our present circumstances, and in the same way that I couldn’t see anything but threats coming at me as I looked down at the ball, we can’t see anything but our threatening circumstances and the pain and fear that they bring.

            The solution for us, then, is to look up, beyond the circumstances of the moment. We must look at God’s promises and purposes for us, and that is precisely what Peter encourages his readers to do in 1 Peter 1:6-9.

Central Idea: In trying times, lift your eyes to see God’s promises and His purposes.

1. God's salvation promises offer joy in the midst of grief (v. 6)

            Let’s remember what Peter reminded his readers about in verses three through five. He reminded them that they had been born again into a new setting in life. This setting involved a living hope that pointed them forward toward a glorious destiny with the risen Lord. It also involved an inheritance in the family of God and protection from God himself so that his plans for them would never be thwarted.

            Peter seems to have all of this in mind when he says in verse six, “In this you rejoice.” But whereas he had previously been talking mostly about their future, which was glorious, he now talks about their present circumstances, which were quite difficult and painful. Let me read all of verse six, and notice the contrast with their joy [READ].

            Notice a couple of important thoughts in this verse. First, notice how joy and grief are not mutually exclusive. They are certainly contrasting emotions and experiences, but they can both be present in your life in the same general period of time.

            I fear that many Christians have a misunderstanding about grief or sorrow. Many of us seem to think that these are emotions that we should never have, and if we do have them, they reveal some kind of flaw in our lives. We have an old hymn in the church by the title of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” There’s a line in that hymn that says, “we should never be discouraged.”

            In my opinion, it’s more accurate to say we never need to remain discouraged. That would mess up the rhythm of that song, but I think it’s more accurate! Grief is a natural – and, I think, acceptable – reaction to difficult news or circumstances. Feeling sad when you receive bad news is nothing to be ashamed of; feeling a sense of fear when you face an unknown future is no weakness. Yet even in those times, there is joy to be found in God’s salvation promises – and many of you can probably testify to that fact in your own lives right now.

            I think the Psalms give us an excellent perspective on processing our emotions and finding joy even in the midst of grief. In many of the Psalms, the author expresses feelings of despair in very clear terms. And remember – those words are just as inspired by God as John 3:16! Yet by the end of those Psalms, the author always finds reason to celebrate by reflecting on God’s mighty works in the past and his promises of a glorious future for his people. I wonder if Peter, as a Jewish man, had that embedded pattern in his mind influencing him as he wrote this section of his letter.

            Notice a second thought now in verse six – Peter states that these various trials faced by his readers may be necessary. Now that seems like a strange thing to say, but remember who it is who decides whether such things are necessary. It is none other than God himself, the one who chose us for himself according to verses 1-2, the one who has great mercy according to verse 3, the one who has a heavenly inheritance under safekeeping for us according to verse 4, and the one who guards us by his own power according to verse 5.

            Though it still isn’t easy to understand why God might feel that certain trials are necessary for us, at least we know that the one who is in charge is someone we can trust. Like the child who has to get a shot at the doctor’s office, we may ask, “What was that for?” While it could be that God has not revealed all of his purposes to us, he has certainly revealed some of the purposes that he has for trials, and we see one such purpose clearly explained in verse seven.

2. God's purposes for trials offer joy even as we wait to see their full benefit (v. 7-9)

            Here’s a little Bible study tip for you to tuck away in your minds. Words like “so that” announce the purpose that lies behind any action that you may have just read about. So verse seven tells us the purpose for which God may deem it necessary for us to face trials. Notice what it says [READ].

            You likely know that when gold is mined out of the earth it doesn’t come out looking like a beautiful piece of jewelry. It comes out as what we call ore, and it has to be melted down so you can filter out anything that’s attached to it in order to get pure gold – which is then quite valuable.

            But Peter’s bold assertion in this verse is that a tested, refined faith is even more valuable than pure gold. And why is that? Because even gold can become tarnished over time, and in particular, when the Lord returns, he’s not going to be interested in your jewelry box or even how much wealth you have. He is going to assess your life – the quality of your obedience and faithfulness to him. A tested, refined faith that has been purified through trials will lead us to receive praise and glory and honor from Christ, and the lasting value of praise from Christ is worth far more than even the lasting value of gold.

            It is vital that we take the Bible at its word with a claim like this, otherwise we will not be in a good position to endure trials of our faith. Certain trials may cause us to lose our gold or our wealth, so if we don’t believe that a refined faith is more valuable than such things, we will be easy targets for Satan because we will be prime candidates for bitterness, anger, and even apostasy.

            Now, it can be a little bit difficult for us to believe that the reward of praise from Christ is more precious than gold because we haven’t seen that reward yet, have we? I think we can feel God’s approval through the Holy Spirit within us when we obey, but Peter noted that this praise and glory and honor in particular will come at the revelation of Jesus Christ. We haven’t seen that event yet, but Peter reminds his readers and us in verse eight that a lack of sight shouldn’t bother us because our faith right now is placed in someone whom we have never seen with our own eyes.

            [READ v. 8] I think Peter’s point in this verse is that if we can love someone right now whom we’ve never even seen, and if we can trust him and celebrate over him, then it’s not much more to ask for Peter to ask us to believe that Christ’s rewards will be even more valuable than gold. So then, if God deems it necessary to put us through trials so that he can one day give us something that’s even more valuable than one of the most valuable things on earth, we can trust him through that process. Even when it hurts, even when we are grieved by our trials, we can trust that God has good purposes and intentions in mind for us. Indeed – he is at work to give us something that is more valuable than we will probably ever realize in this life.

            We can rejoice in this, according to verse nine, “because we are obtaining the outcome of our faith, the salvation of our souls.” I think including the word “because” here gives us a slightly more complete translation of verse nine. We rejoice because, even though we have not yet received the full blessings of our salvation, we have foretastes of them, and those foretastes become that much sweeter during times of trial and testing.

            Perhaps you were struck as I was by Peter’s description of Christian joy in verse eight. He says that his readers were able to rejoice “with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory.” He’s talking about that radiant kind of joy that makes your face glow, and that you struggle even to put into words.

            When I read those words earlier this week, I found myself thinking, “Wow! I wish I could experience that kind of joy all the time.” I certainly do experience it at times, but I’d like to experience it more often. That observation led me to ask the obvious question – why don’t I seem to experience that kind of joy over my salvation more often? Bear with me for a moment as I take you through my thinking from the last week.

            I want to make a point here by drawing a comparison between the KU basketball program in the KU football program. Don’t worry – you’ll see where I’m going in just a moment! At KU basketball games, it has basically become the expectation that the fans will never ever storm the court. No matter who we’re playing, no matter how big the game is, no matter how close the game is in the final possession, the fans will never ever storm the court. And the reason is very simple – KU basketball fans are spoiled brats! We win so often, especially at home, that we now just take it for granted, and so KU fans don’t celebrate with that same kind of exuberance that other teams do when they win a big game.

            Now contrast that with KU football. I’ve been at a few KU football games when we won very unexpectedly, and I will neither confirm nor deny that I was down on the field as the goalposts were being torn down. When the KU football team wins, it’s a big cause for celebration because it’s so rare! No one takes those wins for granted because there might only be a handful of them over the course of five years!

            The point I want to make is this – I think my joy over my salvation is not what it should be at times because I am taking it for granted. In those moments when I lack joy over my salvation, I think in my mind I am allowing my salvation to become simply one more good thing in a long list of good things that surround me in life.

            In our country, and particularly in our community, we enjoy so many good things. We enjoy such peace! We barely have to worry about crime, and there’s certainly no army sitting just over the horizon that’s waiting to come in and conquer us. We enjoy all sorts of comforts in life, like clean drinking water that’s piped right into our homes. We enjoy an overall prosperity that is the envy of the world and totally unique in history.

            And when we have so many good things, how often do we really celebrate any one of them – celebrate them with the joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory? When’s the last time you turned on your faucet and said, “Yes! Here comes that clean drinking water again!”

            My question is this – have we mentally reduced our salvation to the same level as all of the good things that we simply come to expect in our country? For the believers who received this letter from Peter, their joy was passionate and radiant because the foretaste of their salvation was made all the more sweet by the sting of the trials that they were facing at that time. For the moment in our community, we don’t have very many of the external factors that make life unpleasant and difficult. We may not get too excited about the thought of being saved from this world because our world is a pretty pleasant place to live.

            Our blessings are not bad things in and of themselves. But if they lull us into a spiritual condition in which we take even our salvation for granted, then we’ve not responded to them the way that we should. And if our environment doesn’t often lead us to crave the return of Christ and long for the total fulfillment of our salvation, then we have a lot of work to do in our hearts to keep ourselves sensitive to those things, so that when we reflect on the glories of our salvation and all that we have to look forward to, our hearts will leap with joy and burst with celebration, rather than respond with the spiritual lethargy that comes when we take our salvation for granted.

            May we allow the Lord to refine us as he sees fit by taking us through trials. And if he should choose that our trials would increase in their frequency or their intensity, may we remember that as we keep our eyes on his promises and purposes, our joy will multiply all the same in its frequency and intensity. The depths of any trial that we face will be overwhelmed by the new heights to which our joy will soar as we become more like Christ and anticipate his return like never before!