Pastor Skip Heitzig guides us through First and Second Peter in the series Rock Solid.

Would you do me a favor, please? Would you stand to your feet and just do something a little bit different for the reading of God's Word just to show God that he's in your presence and we honor him. We're going to read First Peter chapter 1 verses 1 through 7. And I'm just going to read it and you can just read along as I read it to you.

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,

To the pilgrims of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ:

Grace to you and peace be multiplied.

Blessed be the God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Let's pray together. O Father, it just does my heart so much good to read what Peter said about what is ours coming in the future, and what your plan is for us now and then, and how that truth can be so transforming in our present difficulty, our present trial. I pray you would speak to us. I pray that your Word would have its maximum impact in our lives, in Jesus' name, amen.

Please have a seat. Like most of you I live my life by certain routines, things that I do on Monday, things that I do on Tuesday. And I keep schedules like you do. And there's predictable events that happen like in your life. But every now and then life sort of hits you by surprise. It comes crashing down on you. You don't expect things to happen that happen. You are going a direction, your day is planned out, but you get a phone call from a doctor or a friend. The news is not good, the prognosis is not good, and you didn't see it coming.

Max Lucado uses those words in opening up a story in one of his fine books about a parakeet named Chippie. "Chippie the parakeet never saw it coming," he writes. "On one second he's peacefully perched in his cage. The next he's sucked in, washed up, and blown over. The problems began when Chippie's owner decided to clean Chippie's cage with a vacuum cleaner. [laughter] She removed the attachment from the end of the hose and stuck it in the cage.

"Then the phone rang, and she turned to pick it up. She barely said 'hello' when ssssssopp! Chippie got sucked in. The bird owner gasped, put down the phone, turned off the vacuum, and opened the bag. There was Chippie---still alive, but stunned. Since the bird was covered with dust and soot, she grabbed him and raced to the bathroom, and turned on the faucet, and held Chippie under running water.

"And then, realizing that Chippie was soaked and shivering, she did what any compassionate bird owner would do---she reached for the hair dryer and blasted the pet with hot air. Poor Chippie never knew what hit him. A few days after the trauma, the reporter who'd initially written about the event contacted Chippie's owner to see how the bird was recovering. 'Well,' she replied, 'Chippie doesn't sing much anymore, he just sits there and stares.' " [laughter]

What a description---"sucked in, washed up, and blown over." That describes how events hit our lives and transform us when they do. There's two words in verse 6---and verse 6 and 7 is what we're going to look at today, First Peter, chapter 1. There's two words in verse 6 that just don't seem to fit together---the word "rejoice" and the word "trials." They're in the same sentence. Rejoice? Trials? Is that even possible? Should those words even be together?

I mean, there are certain words that just---when you see them together, they go, "Uuuuhh." They don't fit. "Airline food" is an example. [laughter] It's never worked for me. It's disputable as to whether it really is food or not. Of course, you could say that with hospital food, I think, as well. "Political science" are two words that don't fit. "Pretty ugly"---"Microsoft Works"---and there are several other examples. [laughter]

But rejoice and trials? No, no, no. We rejoice when the trials are over. We get happy if we can avoid our trials. But the fact that Peter would write about these two ideas in the same breath, these two life experiences in the same sentence shows us it is possible in the midst of great suffering to have great joy. There's a couple of giveaway words that you need to notice in verse 6.

Look how he begins the sentence: "In this you greatly rejoice." Of course, the question is: In what? And this is where you need to have been here for the previous studies to understand what "this" is all about. It's what he has written about in previous verses. "In this you greatly rejoice." And, if you recall, last week we noticed that God has the power to save you, the power to secure you, and the power to send you to heaven. So, as you look around, you can't rejoice much in what you see in your trials, but if you look ahead, you can.

Now, we want to examine your favorite subject this morning---trials. We hate trials, but we also love them. We love them because of what they produce. We don't love it when we're going through them, but we love it when it's all over, the pain stops, and we've learned lessons from it. So, the name of my message is "Why We Hate Trials (And Why We Love Them)." I'm going to give you five reasons, five characteristics of trials beginning in verse 6.

Characteristic number one: trials are diverse. Look at it with me, verse 6. "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials." If you have an old King James, it says "manifold trials." Did you know that the word actually means: many colored, variegated, many colored, manifold, various colors.

As many colors as are on a Pantone chart of colors---which are, by the way, 1,114, because I checked. [laughter] As many as colors as you have on that chart are kinds of suffering, kind of trials that you can experience. Have you discovered that trials come in all shades, in all hues? Some are small, some are big, some are short, some are very long. And Peter just sort of sums all that up by saying, "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials."

Because of what I do, I speak to people every single week, almost every single day about some trial that they face---death of a loved one, loss of a job, emotional heartache, depression. It's what we do. It's part of what we do. And as I was in the earlier years of my ministry, I decided to keep a little journal of trials. I mean, I just said I'm going to do one week's worth of stuff that I am dealing with and encountering just to kind of get an understanding, a handle on that volume.

And so I wrote a few things down that happened in a one-week period of time a few years ago and I kept that in a journal. First of all, it was a Saturday evening phone call, a chaplain of a local hospital called me to come down to the emergency room. There was a couple from our church that was there with their baby. By the time I got down there the baby had died, and there was a mother holding that little infant in her arms. She didn't see it coming, none of us saw it coming, but it was this huge weight and heartache.

During the same week I got a phone call that somebody in my own family had died. During that same week I was informed and got involved in a counseling session for a child who had been molested by a family member. During that same week I spoke to Christian parents whose daughter was arrested on prostitute charges. During that same week I got a letter from missionaries I had just been with in the Philippines. They were burning houses around their house; they're lives were threatened.

During that same week a couple in our church was going through a divorce who had been married twenty years. During that same week a Christian woman in our fellowship was in a serious automobile accident and was in the hospital in stable and recovering condition. Trials don't come in one shade; they come in a variety of colors. Pain wears many faces.

I suppose if we were going to categorize the various trials, we would say there are physical trials, there are mental or emotional trials, and there are spiritual trials. The Bible speaks about all three. First of all, there are physical trials. We know the reality of cancer, strokes, heart attacks, birth defects, automobile accidents. In the Bible people suffered. Job suffered; he had a deteriorating, debilitating, long-term skin condition.

In the New Testament the great apostle Paul had what he called a "thorn in the flesh." Most scholars believe it to be a lingering eye disease. There was Simon who was a leper. There are chapters written about diseases and physical conditions that affect God's people. So, there are physical trials.

Then there are emotional trials. One of the reasons we love the book of Psalms so much is we think, "That is in the Bible? This dude suffered like that? Boy, I felt that same emotional trauma before." On one occasion David even said, "I make my own bed to swim in my own tears." That's an emotional trauma.

Elijah the prophet, besides being a dynamic spokesperson for God, experienced both exhaustion and depression. And when he ran away down towards Sinai, he eventually cried out to God and said, "It is enough, Lord! Take away my life." So absolutely distraught that he wanted to die. That's an emotional trial.

I think that dedicated believers are susceptible to this. I think if you have a dedicated believer, somebody who has nose-to-the-grindstone kind of a work ethic, and just pushes it and pushes it, they can get exhausted. And when you are physically exhausted, you open yourself up to all sorts of issues, including depression.

The great missionary to India, E. Stanley Jones spoke of a minister who was preparing a ten-part series called How to Avoid a Nervous Breakdown. Before he finished the series, you know what happened? He got one. He had a nervous breakdown. A minister of the gospel pushing it, pushing it, pushing it---nervous breakdown.

Then there are spiritual trials. We often don't think about those, but they are very real. That's when we struggle over our own sin, our own guilt, where we wrestle with doubts about God, when we wrestle with expectations we may have of God, spiritual expectations that are unrealistic expectations, and we feel let down when they're not realized.

John the Baptist, I think, was going through a spiritual trial when he was in prison. And he believed in Jesus, and he thought that Jesus was the Messiah, but Jesus wasn't making things happen like he thought they should happen. So he sends a messenger to Jesus, and here's the question: "Are you really the One, or should we look for somebody else?" Those are spiritual doubts, those are spiritual expectations that weren't met, and those were trials.

So, trials are diverse. There are various trials. The second characteristic, and probably the reason we hate trials the most is because trials cause grief. Notice the wording in the text: "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a while, if need be, you have been grieved." A better translation would be "distressed"; "made heavy" is the idea.

It's like you're walking around life carrying you, your load, your burden, and somebody puts something on you, or something comes upon you and it's unbearable. It's weighing you down. It's crushing you. You are grieved by it. And when things happen to you, it grieves you. You gotta know something---grief is a normal and healthy human expression.

Anybody that tells you, "Well, if you're a Christian, you ought to put on a fake smile and march through life with a brave face so that you look more spiritual," they don't know what they're talking about. You're only making the trial worse. The best thing to do is to be honest and say what the Bible says, "I'm grieved."

Jeremiah the prophet said, "Why is my pain unending and my wound grievous and incurable?" Even Solomon said, "There's a time to laugh and there is a time to weep, mourn, grieve." In ancient times the Hebrews when they would lose somebody in their family or a loved one, they would have a public period of grief that lasted thirty days.

In other words, society expected you for a month to show emotional grief. They gave you a month break. It doesn't mean you get a month off, but it means you can publicly grieve with the wearing of sackcloth, ashes, the ripping of the garments. It was a public display of grief, thirty days. The Egyptians did it for seventy days.

I had a friend visit me from another country, and he said, "You know, of all the things I notice in the difference between where I live and America, is you Americans are, like, really low on the emotional scale. I mean, it's like at a funeral it's like the weirdest and softest, goriest music and everybody's just, like, really quiet." He goes, "In the country that I live in, we give full vent to our grief and our emotions when somebody dies. There's a wail that takes place." So, trials cause grief.

Here's the third characteristic. This is going to take you a little bit off guard: trials can be helpful, they can be helpful. They can be so good for you. I know, I sound like your mom, right? "Take this medicine. It really, really tastes bad, but it's good for you." Sort of like that. Look at what text says, "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a while"---look at this phrase---"if need be." Have you ever thought about this?

Do you think Peter is actually saying that there times when God knows you need a trial? Is that what he's saying? Uh-huh, that's exactly what he's saying. Listen to Philip Yancey who writes a lot about suffering. He said, "If you pinned them against the wall in the dark, in a secret moment, many Christians would probably admit that pain was God's one mistake. He really should have worked a little harder and invented a much better way of coping with the world's dangers."

But Peter by that little phrase "if need be" is indicating that there are special times when God knows we need trials, that they can, in fact, be the will of God. Now, that is contrary to a modern faith theology that says "it's never God's will for you to suffer." They have never read the book of Peter very well if they say that.

Peter writes a lot about suffering, but more specifically, suffering according to the will of God. Here's two examples: First Peter chapter 3 verse 17, "For it is better, if in the will of God, to suffer for doing good then for doing evil." Chapter 4, verse 19, "Let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to him in doing good." When we suffer, we have no idea what need in our life is being met by a sovereign God.

And you need to know something, Christian, God is in control. He is in control. He's got you covered. He has this wired. He's been doing this a long time before you and I ever got around here. He is in control. He knows what he's about. A need is being met. You're going, "Need? What need could I possibly have that suffering would help?" Well, let me answer that for you, it's quite simple actually: trials correct us---a course correction.

If you're a parent, you understand, you get this. Your kids start growing up and exerting their own private will. They don't want to do what you want them to do. And if they get really hardened and really recalcitrant, if you're a good parent, at some point in their life you're going to spank that child. And if you don't spank that child, we need to spank you, perhaps. [laughter] Because you need to correct the course of that child. You don't want to break the spirit, but you definitely want to change the will, and that comes through a course correction. Give that child a "trial."

David said in Psalm 119, "Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word." There it is; he said it. "Before I was afflicted, before I got spanked by you, God, I went astray, but now I keep your word." Trials correct us. C. S. Lewis eloquently said it this way: "Pain plants the flag of truth in the fortress of a rebel soul." So that's why it's needful, it correct us.

Here's something else it does---it humbles us. I tell you, pain does something to just sort of get us right back down to the ground. Even Paul the apostle was humbled by a trial. In Second Corinthians, chapter 12, Paul indicates that he had so many revelations from God that God needed to keep him humble. Now just listen to this: according to the Scripture, Paul had four personal revelations from God. God spoke to Paul.

I don't mean he had a pizza late at night and he woke up the next day thinking, "I think God's speaking to me." No, no. God spoke to him. On one occasion he was taken to heaven, the third heaven, and it was just so amazing he said, "It was just so cool I can't even tell you how cool it was." And I've always hated that verse of Scripture, it's, like, "Come on. What's it like?" "Ah, I can't even tell you, it was just so great."

But this is what he does say, "Lest I should be exalted above measure, a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan was given to me to torment me. For three times I asked the Lord to remove it, and he said, 'My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness.' "It humbled him. Well, I guess God talking to you could puff you up. I mean, you're having lunch with a guy at Flying Star, and you take a bite of your sandwich or your salad or your ice cream or whatever it is---"Oh, by the way, God has been speaking to me and I got taken to heaven the other day." "Really?" Humble by trial.

They correct us. They humble us. Number three, they strengthen us. When James writes about trials, he said, "The testing of your faith produces patience." Now that's pretty needful, isn't it? Any of you struggle with patience issues? Yeah, your prayer's sort of like, "God give me patience---now!" Yeah, you have an issue with patience then. [laughter] Well, you know what gives you patience? You know what gives that kind of softening of the character? Storms. Trials. Hardship.

They're also needful because they equip us. They equip us to deal with other sufferers. You are never equipped to comfort a suffering person until you become a suffering person. That's why support groups are so big and they work, is because you get people struggling with the same issues together, sharing their secrets how they deal with stuff---that's powerful.

Second Corinthians 1, "The God of all comfort comforts us in all of our troubles, so that we can be a comfort to those who are any trouble, with the comfort we have received from God." So bare minimum---we go through trials so that we can help people who will go through very similar experiences later on. And you can say, "Let me tell you how to get through this and to do it right," because you've been there.

A. B. Simpson wrote, "You will not have any test of faith that will not fit you to be a blessing. I never had a trial but when I got out of the deep river I found some poor pilgrim on the bank that I was able to help by that very experience." So, trials are diverse. Trials cause grief. Trials can be needful. That's why we should love them, because we need them. Number four, trials reveal faith. Trials reveal faith. Let me be more direct---they reveal what kind of faith you have.

Verses 7, "That the genuineness"---mark that word---"of your faith, being more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire." You know how a jeweler could always tell if the gold that was brought to him was real or fake? You know how he could tell? Put it in the fire, heat it up. You heat it up to the right smelting temperature in a smelting furnace, and you can tell if it's fake, or if it's real, or how pure that gold is.

You know how you can tell what your faith is like? Heat it up. Put it in the fire. See what kind of purity or impurity exists in that person's faith. A faith that cannot be tested is a faith that cannot be trusted. So God tests it. Tests it to strengthen us, but also to reveal to us what kind of faith we have. If you recall, Jesus gave a parable, a story about different kinds of people who listened four different ways to him. Not everybody listens to sermons or truth the same way.

Jesus said, "Some of that seed that was sown fell upon stony places, where it did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away." So that sun coming out, that scorching, that trial, that turning up the heat reveals what kind of faith we have, where we might be lacking.

I've watched people go through fiery trials and they just get wiped out. It just totally consumes them. It's irrecoverable. It's like it wastes them for their whole life. I've even walked into somebody's office, I was so stunned by the plaque, I wrote the words down. The plaque says, "I'm going to have a nervous breakdown." Period. "I've earned it, I deserve it, I've worked hard for it, and no one is going to keep me from having it." [laughter] So there you go. "Just want to announce to you things are going to get really bad when I go through this fiery trial."

But I've watched other people go through fiery trials---same heat, same experience, they feel it just as much. Christian or not, they feel that pain, but they seem to improve because of it. They seem at the other end to get purer because of it. So don't look at trials as a personal attack on you. God's after your faith, not you. He's trying to stretch and strengthen and firm up your faith.

So trials reveal faith, the genuineness of your faith. Fifth, and finally, ahh: Trials refine us. They refine us. Verse 7, it says, "Your faith is more precious than gold that perishes, though tested by fire, may be found"---here's the end game---"to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ."

God pouring all of these experiences into you, at the very end when you see Jesus Christ, your life will be that much more refined. God is not out to burn you; he's out to bless you. But sometimes those blessings are disguised in trials. You go, "I don't want that. I'm not taking that." Take it. "Lord, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me." He took the cup; he drank it, a cup of suffering. Take it.

You know, I have a toaster at home. You probably do too, but there's one thing that just always---I never understood about all toasters in general, is there's a setting on all of them that will burn the toast to an absolute crisp that no decent human being would ever, ever, ever eat.

So why is it there? [laughter] I don't know, these are the things that keep me up at night, okay? I'm glad God does not have that setting on his toaster. [laughter] I'm so glad that when I get in the toaster, God isn't going, "Ha ha ha ha! Whew! This is going to be fun! whoosh! Crispy critters." God doesn't do that.

As Warren Wiersbe says, "If God puts you in the furnace, his eye is on the clock and his hand is on the thermostat." And even Job who suffered so much said, "He knows the way that I take." "He knows [God knows] the way that I take; and when he has tested me"---listen to him---"I will come forth like gold." "I will be refined."

Now, Peter is using the analogy of an ancient goldsmith with a smelting furnace, and he lets liquid gold bubble up and fire up and burn and the impurities rise to the top. And he takes the skimmer and skims them off, and keeps it under the fire a little more, and skims off the impurities. And he keeps that up till it gets really, really high-grade gold. Now I've read---I've been told on many occasions, and read it in many books that in ancient times the goldsmith knew that the refining process was done when the goldsmith could lean over the pot of boiling gold and see his reflection.

When he could see his reflection in the gold, it was done. You see the analogy there? You know when the trials will be done in your life? When God the Father looks and sees his Son reflected in you. That's why we're going to have them the rest of our lives, because that process takes a lifetime to get us to be like Jesus. But do you know that is God's plan? Romans 8:29 says, "We have been predestined to be in the image of Jesus Christ." Paul said, "I labor for you, [Galatians] because I want to see Christ formed in you."

And so the fire goes up, we come through pure, hopefully, better, more refined. God looks at us and goes, "Boy, I see a lot of my Son in you." Heat goes down. "Great, life is good right now, happy. I'm having a lot of fun." And then, you know, we hit a little bit of crustiness and impurity---heat goes up. "Ah, man, I hate this." God says, "Oh, but I see my Son revealed in you."

There's one final thing I want to draw your attention to. Verse 6 he mentions "various trials." And I mentioned the King James' word was "manifold trials," "many colored trials"---that's the idea. There's one other usage of that term also by Peter in this book, and I want you to see it to compare one verse with the other. First Peter chapter 4 verse 10; "As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another." This is chapter 4, verse 10. "As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another as good stewards"---watch this---"of the manifold grace of God."

There are manifold trials you go through; Peter talks about "the manifold grace of God." In other words, for every shade of trial you go through, God has a color match. God has a color match. "Oh, Lord, this is so unique. This is so . . . nobody's gone through this." "I've got a color match in my grace palette for you." God is not like the dude in the hardware store that has every single color except the one you need for the job you're trying to finish. Ever had that experience? God has the color match. Various trials, various shades of God's grace.

There was a young woman who was having a hard time in life. She went to her mother, she said, "Mom, life is so hard, and I want to give up. Frankly, I just don't want to fight. I don't want to struggle anymore." Well, that was like a red flag to mom. Mom took her daughter into the kitchen at her house and did something very unique. She took three pots, filled them with water, put them on the stove. In pot number one she put carrots; pot number two, eggs; pot number three, ground coffee.

Turned up the heat, twenty minutes let the heat, let the flames get to the water and boil the water. Twenty minutes later he turned the flame off. It cooled down. She took the pots off of the stove and put the carrots in a bowl, eggs on a plate, and the coffee in a cup, and said to her daughter, "Touch those carrots. What do you notice?" She goes, "Well, they're soft." And she said, "Crack open that egg." And she took the shell off and noticed it was hard.

And mom said, "Now that coffee, take a sip of that coffee." She took a sip of that coffee and she said, "It's actually pretty good, very flavorful." And she said, "Sweetheart, let me ask you this question: Which are you, the carrot, the egg, or the coffee?" She goes, "Mom, explain that to me."

She said, "Well, the carrots went in hard, strong, they came out weak, wilted, soft. The egg went in fragile with that liquidy center, but came out stiff and hard. But the coffee, the coffee is the only substance that actually changed the water that it was in with a fragrance and a taste that you just admitted to me was quite flavorful. So which are you, the carrot, the egg, or the coffee?"

All three of those substances they experienced the same adversity, the same heat for the same amount of time, but they reacted differently. So how do you react in a trial? How do I react in a trial? Does that trial weaken us and wilt us, or do we get stiff and hard and push people away afterwards, or will we by that experience release a fragrance and add a flavor that is unmistakably the imprint of Christ in our lives?

You know what I think? I think it's time to stop telling God how big our storm is and start telling the storm how big our God is. God is big. He is in control of this. [applause] He knows what he's about. He has given me this trial. I hate it, I'm grieved by it, but I'm glad, because he's refining me, he's correcting me, he's strengthening me, he's equipping me, and he is testing my faith so that it would be to the honor and praise and glory of him.

Well, Father, we bow in submission to your wisdom. When we say that God is sovereign, we have to say that includes these times as well. And I pray for my brothers and sisters, some of whom I know personally are experiencing some pretty excruciating circumstances, the loss of a loved one, a lingering disease. And, Lord, it's hard. The shadows are hard. We don't see a whole lot in the shadows. It's hard to know how we would ever need this, but we fall back on that wonderful truth that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him, in Jesus' name, amen.

For more resources from Calvary Albuquerque and Skip Heitzig visit calvaryabq.org.