ON BEING HOLY
WHILE HURTING
Do you find it annoying when you are having a bad day and
someone comes to you and says, “Praise the Lord! Isn’t God good?”? You are struggling to find the positives in your
life and this bubbly oblivious person wants to spoil your cloudy disposition.
Peter
wrote to a people going through a hard time. Christianity was a hard road for
them. They were struggling with work, with family and with unbelieving
neighbors. And Peter writes, “Praise be
to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!” How insensitive Peter! How
rude! These people need more than platitudes.
But
Peter wasn’t speaking clichés to them. He was serious about praising God in the
midst of struggle. Think of it this way: Your job is not paying the bills. You
wonder if your expenses exceed your income. The mortgage and property taxes are
burying you. This is even causing family friction with your spouse and children
because they all want a piece. Then
someone calls and says to you, “Praise God! Your great-aunt Harriet has died
and left you 10 million dollars!” Not such a bad day anymore is it? Your
sunken, heavy-laden spirit suddenly feels much lighter.
What a
difference it makes to hear some good news. What a difference a bit of hope
makes to a gloomy soul.
The
reading of a will can be tedious. Lawyers make their jobs indispensible by
using a language so boring it could put a rabid grizzly bear to sleep. But if
you know that couched in that technical language is a promise of inheritance,
you will listen eagerly. “I bequeath to my beloved (son, daughter, etc.) X
amount of dollars…” You are all ears.
In the
same way, I am reading to you the last will and testament of Jesus Christ. I
hope that I am not using a language that puts you to sleep. But even if I do, I
want you to hear one thing: No matter what you are going through, we can find
our hope in Christ who has saved us for eternity.
1. You stand to inherit a King’s ransom…
The people Peter wrote to were experiencing difficulty
because of their faith. Believing in Jesus made life hard in the workplace and
in society. Even families were divided between those who believed and those who
rejected Christ. They suffered loss in many ways.
Into
this discouragement Peter spoke a word of hope, a reminder that this present
struggle was not the end. He reminded them that God in his mercy had given them
new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus. Because Christ
died and rose again, they could face their current troubles knowing that down
the road there is someone to hope in, someone who will make these trials fade
with his joy.
Hope is
the stuff that keeps us going in life. I remember working at Hull’s Bookstore
in Winnipeg and not enjoying the job. My only joy and hope was to plan a
getaway on my rare weekend off with my best friends. Then I could work
day-by-day, even if that weekend was weeks away. Having something to look
forward lightens the load. These small hopes are just a taste of the great hope
we have in Jesus. If you don’t have Jesus, these small hopes are all you have.
Through
Christ, Peter wrote, we have a living hope, and “…an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade.” This is a
rock-solid inheritance. The way Peter describes it, our inheritance of
salvation has a three-fold guarantee:
It will never
perish – Our salvation is free from death and decay. You can inherit ten
million dollars but its worthless if the market drops out. You could inherit a
farm or land but it might suffer flood or drought or fire. But even our death
cannot separate us from the eternal life Christ has won for us.
It will never
spoil – Peter’s language here suggests that no immoral or impure thing can
wreck our salvation. Statistics show that winning the lottery or inheriting
great wealth can do more to damage family harmony than anything else. People
who win a million dollars are usually bankrupt in a year, they say. Nothing can
spoil our inheritance in Christ.
It will never fade
– It is untouched by time. There is no expiry date on the gift of God which is
eternal life.
What God
has set aside for us in Christ cannot be touched by death, cannot be spoiled by
evil, nor impaired by time. “This
inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s
power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the
last time,” (4b-5).
I want
to share with you one more thing about our inheritance, this great hope we
have. Ray Stedman said it is a double inheritance: “Paul
refers to "the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints." It
is necessary to understand what that means. There is a double inheritance in
the Christian life. We inherit Jesus. He is our inheritance. He is our resource
from which we draw. If you receive an inheritance, you live on it; you use your
inheritance to enrich yourself. So Jesus is our inheritance. We can enrich
ourselves with Him at any moment. He is our power, our strength, our love, our
life, our wisdom, our truth. He is what we live by. Christ is our life.
But, and this is the wonderful thing: we are His
inheritance. He draws on us. Our bodies and souls, our full humanity, are to be
His to use to manifest the new creation in the midst of the destruction of the
old. That is "His inheritance in the saints." That produces riches,
not only in our lives, but in the lives of others as well, and the world in
general--the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints.”[i]
Our hope is not a dead hope; it is a living
hope. We hope not in a dead Christ, but the living Lord. But why then, if we
are shielded by God’s power, do we still struggle?
2. …But you will have to suffer a little while…
Trials and struggles are what deflate the hope we have in
Christ. They suck the joy out of living. Our faith in Christ receives blow
after blow from the disappointments of living in a hostile world.
Peter
wrote, “In this you greatly rejoice,
though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of
trials,” (6). Peter was not unaware of the realities of Christian struggle.
And the struggles were not all to do with being a Christian. He did say “grief in all kinds of trials.” There is the pain of a rebellious child; the
struggle with an incurable sickness; the anxiety of growing older; the
unexplainable aches and pains; a job you don’t enjoy but need to support your
family. There are all kinds of trials.
For some
the struggle is related to faith in God. Aren’t Christians immune to grief and
trials I just mentioned? If I had more faith perhaps the troubles would be
fewer. Maybe if I prayed more. This is wrong thinking. Jesus never promised
that the Christian life would be easy.
On the
contrary, Jesus said, “In this world you
will have trouble,” (Jn 16:33). Paul said, “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,”
(Acts 14:22). Of us it says in Hebrews 12:6 & 8…And Peter writes in
this letter 4:12. Trouble is part and parcel of living in a fallen
world. Christians are not free of trouble. What we do have is hope, which is
why Peter says, “In this you greatly rejoice…”
The
purpose of trouble in the Christian life is to refine our faith. God uses it to
draw us closer to himself, to trust in him more, to believe in his goodness
despite the pain. Peter said, “These have
come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even
though refined by fire – may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory
and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed,” (7). He echoes the flow of
thought in the OT with this sentiment. One OT quote sums up the message of the
prophets, Zechariah 13:9. That is the product of our suffering, a life
that declares, “The Lord is our God.”
Near Cripple Creek, Colorado, gold and
tellurium occur mixed as telluride ore. The refining methods of the early
mining camps could not separate the two elements, so the ore was thrown into a
scrap heap. One day a miner mistook a lump of ore for coal and tossed it into
his stove. Later, while removing ashes from the stove, he found the bottom
littered with beads of pure gold. The heat had burned away the tellurium,
leaving the gold in a purified state. The
discarded ore was reworked and yielded a fortune. God is refining us, taking
out the refuse and yielding gold in our lives for his glory.
3. …So keep
your eyes on the goal!
You stand to
inherit a King’s ransom…the hope of eternal life through the finished work of
Jesus on the Cross. But you will have to suffer a little while as you work out
the meaning of faith and salvation on this planet. While you struggle and
wrestle with faith in God, Peter said, keep your eyes on the goal. What is the
goal?
Jesus is the goal. “Though you have not seen him, you love him;
though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an
inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith,
the salvation of your souls,” (8-9). We do not see Jesus with our physical
eyes, yet we love him and believe in him. We see him in the daily encounters of
life through faith. We see him in the mundane as an assurance that he is with
us. When we experience joy, even of the slightest variety, we get a taste of
his presence.
Mike Mason was in a low mood one
day. But he was meeting a good friend of his who always seemed to bring a light
back into his dark places. As they enjoyed breakfast together, Mike and his
friend talked about books, music, family, and about Jesus. Whatever bad mood
Mike had begun the day with had dissipated with the good conversation.
When it was time to leave the two
men stood by their cars and said their goodbyes. Traffic was rushing by and it
was really loud, very difficult to hear. So Mike’s friend raised a hand and
Mike thought he heard him say, “Yabba-ka-doodles!”
“What did you say?” Mike yelled
back.
His friend threw his head back and
yelled, “YABBA-KA-DOODLES!” Mike knew his friend and also knew that he was not
prone to speaking in tongues or using ecstatic utterances. Maybe, Mike thought,
he was just being goofy. So he walked over to his friend’s car and said, “I
don’t get it. What is Yabba-ka-doodles?”
His friend looked puzzled and said,
“Yabba-what?”
Mike said, “You yelled
Yabba-ka-doodles. What does it mean?”
Mike’s friend replied, “I said, ‘I’m
glad we could do this.’” After staring at each other for a brief moment, they
both broke down laughing hysterically. There it was – joy!
God gives us a wonderful gift when
we are facing our low moments and he interjects a goofy moment. Is it not the
presence of Christ in our lives that allows us to laugh when all hell is
breaking loose? Is it not the hope of Christ’s Redemption that gives us joy
when others know only tears? Christ is our goal – to be like him, to be with
him, to behold him in glory – for his glory is our inheritance.
What is our
living hope? According to Peter, it is the life of Christ in the heart of the
believer; it is the safe-keeping of our salvation in God’s hands; it is the hope
of the Second-Coming of Jesus Christ in power and honor and glory; it is the
full realization of God’s glory when we die or when Jesus comes; and it is the
blazing reality of that Day when we will be with Jesus forever and ever.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer embodied this
hope even when he faced the gallows. He had been sentenced to die by the Nazis
for speaking out against the regime.
On the day when the sentence was to
be carried out, a Sunday, he led a service in the prison which housed men of
various nationalities. One prisoner, an English army officer who was also
facing the death sentence but was later set free, wrote these words describing
the last day of Bonhoeffer's life:
“Bonhoeffer always seemed to me to
spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the least incident, and profound
gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive... He was one of the very few
persons I have ever met for whom God was real and always near... On Sunday,
April 8, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer conducted a little service of worship and
spoke to us in a way that went to the heart of all of us. He found just the
right words to express the spirit of our imprisonment, and the thoughts and
resolutions it had brought us. He had hardly ended his last prayer when the
door opened and two civilians entered. They said, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer,
come with us." That had only one meaning for all prisoners--the gallows.
We said good-bye to him. He took me aside: "This is the end; but for me it
is the beginning of life." The next day he was hanged in Flossenburg.”
"This is the end, but for me it
is the beginning of life." What was it that so possessed this man, that at
the very moment of his death, he could say that? What was the hope that he
possessed, and why was he able to cling to it?
Living hope through the living Christ. That is what Peter spoke of in this passage we just studied today. No matter what we are facing in terms of trials or sufferings, we can know this hope. We may not be facing the gallows but we have our moments. And the same Jesus who gives hope to the dying gives powerful hope to the hurting as well.
Living hope through the living Christ. That is what Peter spoke of in this passage we just studied today. No matter what we are facing in terms of trials or sufferings, we can know this hope. We may not be facing the gallows but we have our moments. And the same Jesus who gives hope to the dying gives powerful hope to the hurting as well.
That is
how holy people endure the hurts of life.
AMEN
Prayer from Psalm 33:13-22
“From heaven the LORD looks down and sees all mankind;
from his dwelling place he watches all who live on earth – he who forms the
hearts of all, who considers everything they do.
No King
is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength. A
horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot
save.
But the
eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his
unfailing love, to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine.
We wait
in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love rest upon us, O LORD,
even as we put our hope in you,” (Psalm 33:13-22).
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