What Is God Accomplishing in My Suffering?
Chapters
0:04:5 Count It all Joy
7:28 Judgment To Begin with the Household of God
10:6 The Judgment of God Moves through the World
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | Well, what is God accomplishing in my suffering
00:00:09.460 | and in your suffering?
00:00:11.640 | It's a question Pastor John set out to answer
00:00:13.440 | from 1 Peter 4:12-19.
00:00:17.600 | It's a very important text that we all need to understand
00:00:20.440 | and return to in times of personal suffering.
00:00:23.760 | I'm gonna read that text now, 1 Peter 4:12-19,
00:00:27.960 | and then we'll hear from Pastor John.
00:00:30.200 | The Apostle Peter writes this,
00:00:32.320 | "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial
00:00:36.400 | "when it comes upon you to test you
00:00:38.500 | "as though something strange were happening to you.
00:00:41.660 | "But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings,
00:00:45.680 | "that you may also rejoice and be glad
00:00:47.780 | "when his glory is revealed.
00:00:50.260 | "If you are insulted for the name of Christ,
00:00:52.380 | "you are blessed because the spirit of glory
00:00:54.960 | "and of God rests upon you.
00:00:57.220 | "But let none of you suffer as a murderer,
00:01:00.220 | "or a thief, or an evildoer, or as a meddler.
00:01:04.020 | "Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian,
00:01:05.540 | "let him not be ashamed,
00:01:07.000 | "but let him glorify God in that name.
00:01:10.480 | "For it is time for judgment to begin
00:01:12.680 | "at the household of God.
00:01:14.280 | "And if it begins with us, what will be the outcome
00:01:17.080 | "for those who do not obey the gospel of God?
00:01:21.660 | "And if the righteous is scarcely saved,
00:01:24.720 | "what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?
00:01:27.840 | "Therefore, let those who suffer according to God's will
00:01:30.640 | "entrust their souls to a faithful creator
00:01:35.100 | "while doing good."
00:01:37.960 | To explain, here's Pastor John.
00:01:40.920 | - I'm gonna talk about why Christians suffer
00:01:44.720 | and how they can rise above it.
00:01:46.880 | But the same truth applies to whether or not
00:01:49.160 | the suffering is coming from inside, from a disease,
00:01:52.440 | from a broken clutch, from you name it,
00:01:56.200 | whatever is tending to tempt you to be angry
00:01:59.840 | at people and God, that is under God's sovereignty,
00:02:04.600 | an opportunity of testing to prove and refine your faith
00:02:09.400 | just as much as if you've been hit in the face
00:02:12.000 | by a person that hated you because you were a Christian.
00:02:15.000 | So the point is, while the text deals explicitly,
00:02:18.420 | most of it, with persecution,
00:02:20.420 | the principle under God's loving sovereignty over our lives
00:02:24.560 | and how we handle that is the same
00:02:27.680 | as to whether the suffering,
00:02:29.400 | as when the suffering comes from another source.
00:02:32.660 | The command is there, keep on rejoicing
00:02:35.720 | to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ.
00:02:38.880 | I think any suffering in obedience to
00:02:43.880 | and union with Christ is sharing in the sufferings of Christ
00:02:47.360 | if it's a hangnail, all right?
00:02:49.760 | If you are walking in the path of obedience with Jesus
00:02:53.520 | and you get a stubbed toe, he cares
00:02:56.720 | and it is suffering with him
00:02:58.680 | and it tends to make you murmur and be angry
00:03:01.080 | and therefore it's a big deal.
00:03:03.400 | Not as big as if you were gonna die,
00:03:04.840 | but it's the same principle.
00:03:06.760 | This text says, don't just rejoice because of,
00:03:10.940 | I mean, in spite of, but because of suffering.
00:03:14.840 | Now that's jolting.
00:03:17.420 | This is not kind of a little piece of advice this morning
00:03:20.880 | from the power of positive thinking.
00:03:22.440 | Let's make the best of it.
00:03:23.740 | Let's rise above it.
00:03:24.580 | Let's be heroic.
00:03:26.480 | Let's have some mind over matter here.
00:03:29.440 | That's not the point.
00:03:30.940 | The point is you're being called to do something
00:03:33.820 | that is so abnormal and so counter-cultural
00:03:38.000 | and so against human nature.
00:03:39.520 | It is supernatural and you can't do it
00:03:41.920 | and it isn't for your honor.
00:03:43.560 | When it happens, it's because the spirit of glory
00:03:45.880 | and of God has come upon you and enabled you.
00:03:49.680 | And that's two of those little tough things day by day
00:03:52.440 | and that's two in the big dangerous things.
00:03:55.800 | You can't do it, but God can and he gets the glory.
00:04:00.640 | Aliens and exiles are what we're reading about here
00:04:03.960 | and how they respond to suffering.
00:04:06.160 | Count it all joy, James said.
00:04:07.920 | Count it all joy when you meet various trials.
00:04:12.920 | I mean, maybe he should have said,
00:04:15.560 | count it a little joy.
00:04:17.760 | Count it, there is a little joy in it
00:04:20.980 | or maybe some way down the line, joy will come from it.
00:04:24.560 | But why this massive count it all joy?
00:04:29.560 | How do you handle that?
00:04:31.560 | There's only one way that I know of
00:04:33.520 | that that can be not stupid or not foolish.
00:04:38.220 | One reason, God.
00:04:41.680 | There's a God and if there's a God
00:04:44.200 | and if he's sovereign and if he rules Satan
00:04:46.440 | and suffering and me and causes kingdoms to go up
00:04:49.800 | and go down, have you been reading Jeremiah these weeks,
00:04:52.440 | moving through the Bible?
00:04:53.800 | One chapter after the other, how God up down Moab,
00:04:57.960 | up down Edom, up down Assyria, up down Babylon,
00:05:01.720 | he reigns, that's Jeremiah's command
00:05:04.960 | and his belief and his message to us.
00:05:08.040 | And if he reigns over all the nations
00:05:10.360 | and over all the circumstances
00:05:11.880 | and over my cars and my children and my wife
00:05:15.080 | and my marriage and my job and my sickness
00:05:17.440 | and this church and he's good,
00:05:20.200 | it's not stupid to say, count it all joy.
00:05:25.840 | He loves you.
00:05:26.680 | It's not easy, but it's there.
00:05:30.560 | Keep on rejoicing because the suffering is not a surprise
00:05:34.280 | but a plan, verse 12.
00:05:36.200 | Beloved, do not be surprised
00:05:39.000 | when the fiery ordeal comes upon you or among you,
00:05:42.120 | which comes upon you for your testing, purposeful,
00:05:46.960 | as though some strange thing were happening to you.
00:05:49.920 | It isn't strange, it isn't absurd, it isn't meaningless.
00:05:53.280 | You don't tear your hair out and say,
00:05:55.240 | there's no point if you believe in God.
00:05:59.200 | Verse 19, you'll see how it has a point.
00:06:03.160 | Let those who suffer according to the will of God
00:06:08.920 | and trust their souls to a faithful creator.
00:06:13.280 | It is according to the will of God when we suffer.
00:06:18.280 | God wills it,
00:06:21.240 | even when Satan may be the immediate cause of it.
00:06:26.760 | You know that from the book of Job.
00:06:29.080 | We know it from 2 Corinthians 12,
00:06:31.640 | where the thorn in the flesh was what?
00:06:33.680 | A minister of Satan.
00:06:36.200 | Doing what?
00:06:37.440 | Humbling him and making him holy
00:06:39.720 | so that he would love the glory of Jesus Christ
00:06:43.080 | because Christ was overruling Satan's minister
00:06:46.280 | and turning Satan into a means of Paul's holiness.
00:06:49.880 | That's the kind of God we have.
00:06:51.920 | God reigns over Satan, over suffering,
00:06:55.320 | and therefore it's okay to resist your suffering in prayer
00:06:58.080 | and pray against it and ask God to remove it like Paul did.
00:07:02.400 | And sometimes he does miraculously and wonderfully.
00:07:05.480 | And sometimes he doesn't for holy and wise purposes
00:07:08.880 | because he loves us.
00:07:10.320 | But his sovereignty is not called into question
00:07:13.600 | by the immediate causality of sin and Satan.
00:07:17.400 | So many passages of scripture show
00:07:20.280 | that God is overruling these things constantly
00:07:23.080 | for our great good.
00:07:26.000 | Look at verse 17.
00:07:27.640 | "For it is time for judgment to begin
00:07:30.240 | with the household of God."
00:07:32.040 | You see the purposefulness in suffering now?
00:07:34.120 | This is God's judgment upon the church.
00:07:38.360 | "For it is time for judgment to begin
00:07:40.360 | with the household of God.
00:07:41.280 | And if it begins with us, Christians,
00:07:43.360 | whom he loves with all of his heart
00:07:44.720 | and gave his son to die for,
00:07:46.680 | what will be the outcome of those
00:07:49.320 | who do not obey the gospel?"
00:07:52.600 | So the judgment of God is moving through the earth
00:07:55.760 | and it begins with churches.
00:07:59.200 | And the judgment of God comes upon churches.
00:08:03.240 | Why?
00:08:04.080 | He hates us?
00:08:05.080 | Not at all.
00:08:06.160 | But because he loves us so much,
00:08:07.600 | he will not spare us anything
00:08:09.000 | to get out of us what he hates.
00:08:11.760 | Did you get that?
00:08:12.840 | It's not because he hates us
00:08:14.560 | when a church or a Christian
00:08:16.120 | goes through times of darkness and trial.
00:08:18.480 | It's because he loves us so much,
00:08:20.120 | he will spare us nothing
00:08:22.840 | to get out of us what he hates, namely sin.
00:08:26.280 | And we are to count it
00:08:31.600 | under the ashes, under the shadow,
00:08:34.520 | under the frown, joy.
00:08:37.760 | Not the kind of joy that heel clicks
00:08:40.160 | and leaps in that moment,
00:08:42.680 | but that as in Micah 7, 7 says,
00:08:46.880 | "Do not rejoice over me, oh, my enemy.
00:08:50.000 | When I fall, I will rise.
00:08:53.120 | He who has brought me into this darkness
00:08:55.560 | will plead my cause and vindicate me in time."
00:09:00.880 | So much has to be burned up within us.
00:09:02.920 | We're all imperfect.
00:09:04.360 | Everybody's imperfect.
00:09:05.800 | There'll be no imperfect people in heaven.
00:09:08.360 | And a lot of God's process
00:09:09.920 | of getting us ready for heaven
00:09:11.400 | is to burn the hell out of us.
00:09:13.520 | Solzhenitsyn, remember the novelist.
00:09:17.680 | He was in prison years ago in Siberia.
00:09:20.040 | Wasn't a Christian yet.
00:09:21.960 | He's suffering and Boris Kornfeld,
00:09:23.880 | a Jewish doctor, was sitting with him one night.
00:09:27.040 | He was also in prison
00:09:29.040 | and Boris had become a Christian.
00:09:30.800 | And he spent late into the night
00:09:32.200 | talking with Solzhenitsyn, he says,
00:09:34.080 | and gave his testimony about how this Jewish doctor
00:09:36.720 | had become a Christian.
00:09:39.160 | And then he was beaten to death in his bed that night.
00:09:41.880 | And Solzhenitsyn wrote,
00:09:45.560 | "His last words lay upon me as an inheritance.
00:09:50.560 | It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw
00:09:55.000 | that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good.
00:09:59.800 | Bless you, O prison, for having been my life."
00:10:04.800 | Isn't that amazing?
00:10:06.080 | The judgment of God moves through the world.
00:10:11.000 | It'll come to a crescendo one of these days,
00:10:13.280 | but it's moving through the world.
00:10:14.480 | It's moving on churches,
00:10:15.840 | hundreds, thousands of churches
00:10:17.840 | coming under the judgment of God.
00:10:20.160 | When it moves in a church,
00:10:21.160 | it's meant for purity because He loves us.
00:10:24.920 | And when it moves on the world,
00:10:27.160 | it has one of two effects.
00:10:28.520 | Either it awakens like it did for Solzhenitsyn,
00:10:32.040 | or it condemns and destroys if it is resisted
00:10:36.240 | and does not bring people to repentance.
00:10:38.960 | But for the people of God, the apple of His eye,
00:10:43.040 | it refines, it purifies.
00:10:45.960 | - Amen.
00:10:46.800 | That was John Piper preaching way back on October 23rd, 1994
00:10:51.720 | in a sermon titled, "Why We Can Rejoice in Suffering."
00:10:56.160 | You can find the entire sermon right now
00:10:57.680 | at desiringgod.org.
00:10:59.880 | Well, I came upon this sermon clip
00:11:02.160 | just listening to sermons on my walks.
00:11:03.960 | And if you have a favorite sermon clip of Pastor John
00:11:07.600 | that you wanna share with us, send it to me.
00:11:09.960 | Give me the sermon title and the timestamps
00:11:12.760 | from the audio of when the clip begins.
00:11:15.480 | And when it ends, tell me how that clip has impacted you.
00:11:18.920 | Give me your name and the closest city to you
00:11:21.240 | and email me all those details
00:11:23.440 | at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:11:26.520 | And put the word clip in the subject line as well,
00:11:30.080 | if you would, I'd appreciate it.
00:11:31.840 | Well, the Apostle Paul introduces
00:11:34.440 | a haunting category of person
00:11:36.800 | in 2 Timothy 3:7.
00:11:39.480 | There he talks about someone who is, quote,
00:11:42.960 | "Always learning and never able to arrive
00:11:46.320 | "at a knowledge of the truth," end quote.
00:11:49.200 | It prompts a really good question from a listener
00:11:52.480 | who struggles to understand the Bible.
00:11:54.560 | A young woman who goes so far as to say, quote,
00:11:56.760 | "Sermons pass in and out of my ears
00:11:59.280 | "and I take away from them just about nothing,
00:12:02.480 | "or so it seems," end quote.
00:12:05.320 | So could she be this person,
00:12:07.480 | always learning but never able to arrive
00:12:10.440 | at a knowledge of the truth?
00:12:12.420 | And what would it mean to arrive
00:12:14.240 | at a knowledge of the truth?
00:12:16.080 | Really important stuff.
00:12:17.100 | I'm Tony Reinke and Pastor John and I
00:12:18.800 | will see you on Friday when we address 2 Timothy 3:7.
00:12:22.680 | We'll see you then.
00:12:23.600 | (upbeat music)
00:12:26.180 | (upbeat music)
00:12:28.760 | [BLANK_AUDIO]