(upbeat music) Well, what is God accomplishing in my suffering and in your suffering? It's a question Pastor John set out to answer from 1 Peter 4:12-19. It's a very important text that we all need to understand and return to in times of personal suffering. I'm gonna read that text now, 1 Peter 4:12-19, and then we'll hear from Pastor John.

The Apostle Peter writes this, "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial "when it comes upon you to test you "as though something strange were happening to you. "But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, "that you may also rejoice and be glad "when his glory is revealed.

"If you are insulted for the name of Christ, "you are blessed because the spirit of glory "and of God rests upon you. "But let none of you suffer as a murderer, "or a thief, or an evildoer, or as a meddler. "Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, "let him not be ashamed, "but let him glorify God in that name.

"For it is time for judgment to begin "at the household of God. "And if it begins with us, what will be the outcome "for those who do not obey the gospel of God? "And if the righteous is scarcely saved, "what will become of the ungodly and the sinner? "Therefore, let those who suffer according to God's will "entrust their souls to a faithful creator "while doing good." To explain, here's Pastor John.

- I'm gonna talk about why Christians suffer and how they can rise above it. But the same truth applies to whether or not the suffering is coming from inside, from a disease, from a broken clutch, from you name it, whatever is tending to tempt you to be angry at people and God, that is under God's sovereignty, an opportunity of testing to prove and refine your faith just as much as if you've been hit in the face by a person that hated you because you were a Christian.

So the point is, while the text deals explicitly, most of it, with persecution, the principle under God's loving sovereignty over our lives and how we handle that is the same as to whether the suffering, as when the suffering comes from another source. The command is there, keep on rejoicing to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ.

I think any suffering in obedience to and union with Christ is sharing in the sufferings of Christ if it's a hangnail, all right? If you are walking in the path of obedience with Jesus and you get a stubbed toe, he cares and it is suffering with him and it tends to make you murmur and be angry and therefore it's a big deal.

Not as big as if you were gonna die, but it's the same principle. This text says, don't just rejoice because of, I mean, in spite of, but because of suffering. Now that's jolting. This is not kind of a little piece of advice this morning from the power of positive thinking.

Let's make the best of it. Let's rise above it. Let's be heroic. Let's have some mind over matter here. That's not the point. The point is you're being called to do something that is so abnormal and so counter-cultural and so against human nature. It is supernatural and you can't do it and it isn't for your honor.

When it happens, it's because the spirit of glory and of God has come upon you and enabled you. And that's two of those little tough things day by day and that's two in the big dangerous things. You can't do it, but God can and he gets the glory. Aliens and exiles are what we're reading about here and how they respond to suffering.

Count it all joy, James said. Count it all joy when you meet various trials. I mean, maybe he should have said, count it a little joy. Count it, there is a little joy in it or maybe some way down the line, joy will come from it. But why this massive count it all joy?

How do you handle that? There's only one way that I know of that that can be not stupid or not foolish. One reason, God. There's a God and if there's a God and if he's sovereign and if he rules Satan and suffering and me and causes kingdoms to go up and go down, have you been reading Jeremiah these weeks, moving through the Bible?

One chapter after the other, how God up down Moab, up down Edom, up down Assyria, up down Babylon, he reigns, that's Jeremiah's command and his belief and his message to us. And if he reigns over all the nations and over all the circumstances and over my cars and my children and my wife and my marriage and my job and my sickness and this church and he's good, it's not stupid to say, count it all joy.

He loves you. It's not easy, but it's there. Keep on rejoicing because the suffering is not a surprise but a plan, verse 12. Beloved, do not be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes upon you or among you, which comes upon you for your testing, purposeful, as though some strange thing were happening to you.

It isn't strange, it isn't absurd, it isn't meaningless. You don't tear your hair out and say, there's no point if you believe in God. Verse 19, you'll see how it has a point. Let those who suffer according to the will of God and trust their souls to a faithful creator.

It is according to the will of God when we suffer. God wills it, even when Satan may be the immediate cause of it. You know that from the book of Job. We know it from 2 Corinthians 12, where the thorn in the flesh was what? A minister of Satan.

Doing what? Humbling him and making him holy so that he would love the glory of Jesus Christ because Christ was overruling Satan's minister and turning Satan into a means of Paul's holiness. That's the kind of God we have. God reigns over Satan, over suffering, and therefore it's okay to resist your suffering in prayer and pray against it and ask God to remove it like Paul did.

And sometimes he does miraculously and wonderfully. And sometimes he doesn't for holy and wise purposes because he loves us. But his sovereignty is not called into question by the immediate causality of sin and Satan. So many passages of scripture show that God is overruling these things constantly for our great good.

Look at verse 17. "For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God." You see the purposefulness in suffering now? This is God's judgment upon the church. "For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God. And if it begins with us, Christians, whom he loves with all of his heart and gave his son to die for, what will be the outcome of those who do not obey the gospel?" So the judgment of God is moving through the earth and it begins with churches.

And the judgment of God comes upon churches. Why? He hates us? Not at all. But because he loves us so much, he will not spare us anything to get out of us what he hates. Did you get that? It's not because he hates us when a church or a Christian goes through times of darkness and trial.

It's because he loves us so much, he will spare us nothing to get out of us what he hates, namely sin. And we are to count it under the ashes, under the shadow, under the frown, joy. Not the kind of joy that heel clicks and leaps in that moment, but that as in Micah 7, 7 says, "Do not rejoice over me, oh, my enemy.

When I fall, I will rise. He who has brought me into this darkness will plead my cause and vindicate me in time." So much has to be burned up within us. We're all imperfect. Everybody's imperfect. There'll be no imperfect people in heaven. And a lot of God's process of getting us ready for heaven is to burn the hell out of us.

Solzhenitsyn, remember the novelist. He was in prison years ago in Siberia. Wasn't a Christian yet. He's suffering and Boris Kornfeld, a Jewish doctor, was sitting with him one night. He was also in prison and Boris had become a Christian. And he spent late into the night talking with Solzhenitsyn, he says, and gave his testimony about how this Jewish doctor had become a Christian.

And then he was beaten to death in his bed that night. And Solzhenitsyn wrote, "His last words lay upon me as an inheritance. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Bless you, O prison, for having been my life." Isn't that amazing?

The judgment of God moves through the world. It'll come to a crescendo one of these days, but it's moving through the world. It's moving on churches, hundreds, thousands of churches coming under the judgment of God. When it moves in a church, it's meant for purity because He loves us.

And when it moves on the world, it has one of two effects. Either it awakens like it did for Solzhenitsyn, or it condemns and destroys if it is resisted and does not bring people to repentance. But for the people of God, the apple of His eye, it refines, it purifies.

- Amen. That was John Piper preaching way back on October 23rd, 1994 in a sermon titled, "Why We Can Rejoice in Suffering." You can find the entire sermon right now at desiringgod.org. Well, I came upon this sermon clip just listening to sermons on my walks. And if you have a favorite sermon clip of Pastor John that you wanna share with us, send it to me.

Give me the sermon title and the timestamps from the audio of when the clip begins. And when it ends, tell me how that clip has impacted you. Give me your name and the closest city to you and email me all those details at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. And put the word clip in the subject line as well, if you would, I'd appreciate it.

Well, the Apostle Paul introduces a haunting category of person in 2 Timothy 3:7. There he talks about someone who is, quote, "Always learning and never able to arrive "at a knowledge of the truth," end quote. It prompts a really good question from a listener who struggles to understand the Bible.

A young woman who goes so far as to say, quote, "Sermons pass in and out of my ears "and I take away from them just about nothing, "or so it seems," end quote. So could she be this person, always learning but never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth?

And what would it mean to arrive at a knowledge of the truth? Really important stuff. I'm Tony Reinke and Pastor John and I will see you on Friday when we address 2 Timothy 3:7. We'll see you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)