Sermon Tone Analysis

Joy and woe are woven fine,

A clothing for the soul divine,

Under every grief and pine

Runs a joy with silken twine.

It is right it should be so;

Man was made for joy and woe;

And when this we rightly know,

Through the world we safely go.

William Blake

Verse 6 starts with: ‘In this you greatly rejoice…’

Everything I have read today has been about rejoicing.

This morning I read

and

In what do we greatly rejoice but in the fact that we have an eternal home in which we will go to be with our resurrected Lord.

This, as we saw last week was the reason for Peter’s thankfulness and blessing of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Thankfulness should be our hearts attitude and this is made easier when we accept the lot and portion God has given to us.

But, of course, it is right to bring Him praise and how easy it is when things are easy and going our way.

Though this is obviously not very true to life for things are only easy going for small parts of our lives.

Life does not often go our way.

Perhaps, as will be alluded to at Bill’s funeral on Friday, his life was not plain sailing but a man of God he was all the same.

The Book of Proverbs seems to say in many places that life will be good if you are righteous – and who is more right than Jesus but He suffered beyond any man ever has.

And who is more right than one who has been made right in the blood of the lamb?

So, when things go wrong we can wonder what is going on.

But of course elsewhere it says that God’s ways are His own and what He does no one can really search out.

A lot of the time, therefore, we know that things go well when we are right with God but then we ask questions about how right we are with God if things keep going wrong.

We, though, are not promised that things will not go wrong – just that God will bring good out of it for us…but we might not see nor understand it before we stand before Him one day.

But we can prepare our hearts:

And we know that God is in full control:

He cares for us and wants us to know Him but of course we know He cares for us because He knows us

and indeed He has shown in the ultimate way in redeeming us to walk with Him:

So, back to our passage: trials come and trials go as it is with all people at some time or another and that is no surprise as indeed Peter says later in the same letter:

James has the same kind of words that Peter is expressing:

But what do we mean by trials?

how do we understand them.

When we look at the different places this word is used in the Bible we find:

• There will be seasons in life when you will lack provision, power, position, protection, and a sense of permanence.

• At times you will become the recipient of verbal or physical persecutions that arise on account of the Word.

• This includes the pain experienced by those who have loved ones whose bodies appear to be wasting away before their very eyes.

• This includes the dark moments in life when we are asked to fend off the prowling attacks of Satan.

Hearing that Heaven’s joys are intertwined with earthly trials—and this by divine design—must have raised many questions in the minds of early followers of Jesus—questions like, “What function do trials serve?” or “What ultimate purposes will trials accomplish?”

From our text it appears that Peter intends to provide an answer.

No sooner does he connect joy to woe than he begins explaining the purpose of life’s trials.

… so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

(1:7)

Trials come for testing, and testing, like putting gold into the fire, is meant to prove the genuineness of one’s faith.

To put it differently, trials are the proving ground for our faith.

Which means that occasionally we will fail!

It is also clear that if things are only going well for us then we will not learn anything of any significance.

But when things go wrong it causes us genuine pain, whether of the heart, mind, soul or body.

When things go wrong we will grow in our faith, or at least that should be the outcome of it.

We also know that we will not be tested beyond our endurance:

Temptation is the same word ‘trials’.

It is not always about temptation to sin but the trials that come in our lives.

Peter speaks of gold that has been tested in fire.

Indeed he may have known that

…the Eastern goldsmith kept the metal in the furnace until he could see his face reflected in it.

So our Lord keeps us in the furnace of suffering until we reflect the glory and beauty of Jesus Christ.

A picture from ancient Roman times shows the method by which grain was threshed.

One man can be seen stirring up the sheaves, while another rides over them in a crude dray equipped with rollers instead of wheels.

Attached to the rolling cylinders are sharp stones and rough bits of iron.

As they grind over the recently tossed sheaves, the stones and iron help separate the husks from the grain.

The simple cart was called a tribulum.

This agrarian piece of farm machinery is the object from which we get our word tribulation.

Do you ever feel as if you are under the inescapable weight and force of the tribulum?

If so, Peter wants to remind you that no thresher ever operated his tribulum for the purpose of tearing up his sheaves.

The thresher’s intentions were far more elevated than that.

The farmer only wanted to cull out the precious grain.

And as it is with the ancient farmer, so it is with God.

Understanding that God’s purposes for us include various trials is important, for by them we are tempered.

The extracts of this world are removed from us, and we are made fit for Heaven.

A simple bar of iron ore, pulled from the earth, might be worth $5.00.

However, that same bar, when made into horseshoes, would be worth $10.50.

If the owner decided to make the bar into needles for sewing, it could be worth as much as $3,285.

And if he turned it into springs for watches, its value could jump as high as $250,000.

What made the difference?

Simply the amount of heat by which the iron bar was tempered and honed.

What Peter is saying is that our faith is far more precious to God than a bar of iron.

According to the text it is even more precious than gold!

So be encouraged.

You may find yourself on the anvil of suffering, but God is at work.

He is testing the genuineness of your faith.

And for him, that faith has eternal value.

What comes out of trials is up to us.

We can be bitter, we can be angry, we can be down or we can grow in our faith in God because of it and reap the rewards both in this life and in the next.

Thankfully we have examples and I’ll give two, one from the Bible and other of more modern times:

When this man lost his property and his children in the same day we read:

He is commended to us in the New Testament:

In 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 3 months before he was executed in a concentration camp at the command of Hitler wrote these words in a book I highly recommend, the Cost of Discipleship:

Should it be ours to drink the cup of grieving

Even to the dregs of pain, at thy command,

We will not falter, thankfully receiving

All that is given by thy loving hand.

Indeed he was quite a man.

Can you imagine that if we bear the trials of our faiths without complaining against God, with endurance, what kind of reward we will get when this, as Paul says, fleeting life passes or to quote him directly:

Just think about the weight of glory and we along with all people will carry this glory into the Heavenly City:

Who are the kings here?

Will we not be called kings?

Oh indeed we will: We are already called that:

All these good works we have done since we became Christians will result in praise from the Lamb of God.

We will receive so many rewards on that day for things we did not even realise, for things we did not consider would be worth it.

But the glory of those who suffer in this life and bore it with the help of God will receive even greater rewards and receive crowns.