The Application of Suffering - Part 2

Dear friends, don't be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you as if something unusual were happening to you. Instead, rejoice as you share in the sufferings of the Messiah, so that you may also rejoice with great joy at the revelation of his glory. If you are ridiculed for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests on you. None of you, however, should suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or a meddler. But if anyone suffers as a Christian, he should not be ashamed, but should glorify God in having that name.

Because the time has come for judgment to begin with God's household. And if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who disobey the gospel of God? And if a righteous person is saved with difficulty, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner? So those who suffer according to God's will should, while doing what is good, entrust themselves to a faithful creator. OK. Thank you.

Today we are going to look at the last two verses. I mentioned Chester McCauley. You can listen online. He has a series on 1 Peter. He also has some notes on 1 Peter. And he had actually kind of a summary of 12 of these verses here, kind of in bullet form, which I found very helpful.

I apologize. I'm trying to make this thing work here. Hopefully this will do it, but we'll see. Well, no, it's not. So I can walk over here, I guess. OK, well, whatever. So we're going to kind of cover this in bullet form. first part of this is that in verse 12a it talks about suffering is normal so what we're going to see here actually on your on your handout so you can see it he's going to have suffering is this suffering is that and so on so suffering is normal 12a says that beloved do not be surprised at the fiery ordeals which come upon you for your testing so the a part of that verse talks about the not being surprised so suffering in the Christian life is to be normal I know some some branches of Christianity kind of teach the opposite of that. But boy, scripture certainly doesn't say that.

It says that suffering is normal. In fact, suffering is part of God's plan and his purposes. So that's one point to remember. The next point is that suffering has a purpose. And actually, I read part of that already, which comes upon you for your testing. And that's the idea of testing. That word can be used in a positive sense or a negative sense. I think here, it's testing. to approve you, to show who you are, to show that you're a child of God, to show that you know the Lord Jesus.

And you say, well, maybe I don't act that way. I don't do too well when I'm tested or I have suffering. And we all don't do too well because that's not what the Lord wants us to do. He wants us to rely upon Him. So in and of ourselves, we may not handle suffering and trials very well. We may be very poor at it.

But that's not the Lord's The Lord's purpose is that we allow him, casting our burdens upon him, he's to handle it. And that's one of the key aspects. And one of the hardest things probably to comprehend during a time of trials and sufferings is to allow the Lord to handle it.

That's a whole area which our brother Hal had a whole series on, on trials and suffering, which I found very helpful. Maybe we'll repeat that down the road again sometime. Mostly focused on James, whereas Peter is kind of a He's talking more about suffering in the context of the world system coming after you, coming after Christians.

Okay, number three is suffering is fellowship. That's in 13 that says, but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of his glory you may rejoice with exultation. So Christ suffered, we're to suffer, Christ is in us, he's living his life through us. So as Christ suffered, and as a fellowship, there's a sharing in common, that we're sharing Christ's sufferings. And the next point is that suffering can be a blessing.

McCauley had a little bit different phraseology, and I looked at verses 14 and 15, and it says, if you are reviled in the name of Christ, you are blessed. So that's kind of where that comes from. You may not be reviled in the name of Christ. Not everyone is reviled in the name of Christ.

Some are, some are not. So that's why I have the can be in there. If that happens, and it's hard to say, well, In general, our nature from Adam doesn't want difficulties. We want a smooth sailing. I'm with you on that. I want smooth sailing, no ripples. But that's just not what life is about.

That's why it's so wonderful what the Lord tells us. He tells us here that it can be a blessing if you revile the name of Christ. That's kind of an astounding statement there. It says suffering is a witness. That's in 16. 16 says, but if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but to glorify God in his name. So here we have Christians suffer because they represent Christ, basically. And so he says that as they do that, they're not to be ashamed, but they're to glorify God in his name. So that's a witness to the world in terms of that. And then the next one is suffering is timely, That was Macaulay's word. I wasn't sure I liked that.

Basically he's talking about judgment begins in the household of God, begins with the household of God. It's time for judgment to begin with the household of God. He talks about that, that God does discipline his children, God does interact with his children. There is refinement in the Christian life. And then he contrasts that with the unbeliever who has not obeyed the gospel.

We're going to see another comparison in 18 coming up here. Suffering is difficult. We're going to study that today. And we're going to find out, does that mean it's difficult to become a Christian? Is that what it's saying? And then lastly, suffering is entrusting. This is a beautiful word that talks about basically putting on deposit, entrusting to our Savior as a faithful creator.

So we'll cover the last two here. I'm just trying to think of a better way to not have to walk over there a lot of times. I guess there's not much of a choice here. Let's just go on. I'll just go ahead and do the whole thing down, and then I'll just talk from the handout, because walking back and forth, I'm going to wear myself out.

All right, so basically the first phrase there, the first part, a part of that verse in 18, it says, and if it is with difficulty, the righteous is saved. And boy, here's a case where just a little looking at the original language and kind of understanding some of the things. There's the if statement there, which I have an asterisk with it. If, and that's a case where it's assumed to be true, or what they call first class condition. Some people can put sense in there. So you can say sense. he who is righteous, is with difficulty, and here's another thing that's really kind of critical, is the verb tense here. And the verb tense is actually present, passive, indicative. And that kind of comes across in the idea that in the present tense it's where it's a continuing process now.

We're being saved. Our salvation is going on now. And that kind of enters this whole area about the different kinds of how scripture describes salvation. It describes it in three parts. And I kind of ask some questions in here about what are the three aspects of salvation.

And I also note that the person is called the righteous. And that's kind of a key thing right there. Think about if he was referring to a person that isn't saved, I don't think he would use the word righteous because he would say if a unbeliever or if a person is difficult for a person to be saved. He's not saying that. He's saying for the righteous to be saved. So he's talking about a different aspect of salvation here. So I listed three verses in here. The question is, there are three aspects of salvation. You probably already have heard this before in the past, but it's good to review it.

So, can someone read Ephesians 2.8 for me? So, actually, notice here it's saying, for by grace you, mine says, you have been saved, right? So, that's talking about what we say is a past aspect of salvation. So, as a believer right now, in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have a past aspect of salvation, that's we have been saved. and then there's an aspect of the present aspect of salvation, and there's a future aspect.

So let's look at the future first, and then we'll come back to the present. That's in 1 John 3, 2. Could someone read that for me? Dear friends, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. So it's the last part of that verse that we will be like him, for we will see him just as he is. So our future aspect of salvation will be conformed to the Lord. We'll be just like him. Except he's deity and we're not. But we'll be without a sin nature. So that's a future aspect of salvation. But there's an aspect right now, which is this being saved aspect.

So what's being said here, I'll just jump down to what Macaulay says. Macaulay says that 18 is telling us that the Christian life is accompanied by difficulties. It's not saying it's difficult to become a Christian. It just says there are difficulties.

So it's talking about the being saved aspect of salvation. That's our present tense. So there's a past aspect of salvation, a present tense, and a future tense. I think that's kind of good. And as you go through scripture, and actually the present tense is in Romans. And that was a little bit harder to see because it doesn't actually come out.

It talks about aspects of our present tense and it says, one of our aspects of the present tense of salvation, according to Romans 6.11, it says, Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. So the Lord has us in our present walk with the Lord Jesus Christ. He has us in the present tense of salvation that Christ is living his life through us. His life is our life, and we are to be counting upon that, remembering that, depending upon that, and to walk that life in light of that.

I think that is what is being referred to here. He is saying that that present aspect of salvation, there are difficulties accompanied with that. That is just what a lot of 1 Peter is about, and what James talks about. There are difficulties in the Christian life. Trials and sufferings come along, and that is part of the being saved aspect of salvation. There's difficulties in that. So thoughts or questions about this? I was reading, excuse me, there was an article this week about the TV personality Stephen Colbert, who I don't know how many people know. He's a fairly strong Catholic. And so we might agree with a lot.

But in this interview, he was talking about his life. He's like the youngest of 11 children. And when he was 10 years old, his father and two brothers were killed in a plane accident, which was a huge event in his life. But he was saying how much the faith of his mother helped him through that, and his faith in God.

And he at one point quotes from J.R.R. Tolkien, who said, what punishments of God are not gifts? And I think we can take punishment there kind of in the context of, of Peter here, the trials, the difficulties, the persecutions that we receive, anything that we receive, which of those are not gifts from God, and helping us grow closer to Him. It was interesting, even coming from that Catholic perspective, the understanding of trials and sufferings, and he made the statement that he loves the thing that he most wished didn't happen. And I think that's consistent with looking at what Peter's talking about. We're persecuted, what James is talking about. All these hardships and growth. Understanding how God is using this to grow us in our life. I think that's the exact right perspective.

We're most thankful for the things that we most wish didn't happen. All those horrible things in our life, we can look back and say, is the suffering that helped me identify with Christ, that helped me understand more about Him, that helped me, as Peter's, I think, main emphasis is, showing the world, this is what grace does. This is the sacrifice that Christ made for us, and by me being able to suffer, that's declaring to the world. And so, that was something that really struck me, that to see somebody have that perspective and be able to, even though we disagree on a lot of other things, the understanding of being grateful while at the same time being sad, never diminishing the difficulty of that. I think it's easy for Christians to say, well, to minimize our suffering or to approach it like, well, it's not that bad because it's all working out for good. No. It is with difficulty that we're saved. It is a difficult thing and I think it's fine to acknowledge that.

You see Paul acknowledging that. In the Old Testament you see David constantly acknowledging it is hard and yet I was reading I think Psalm 16 where David is saying, why have you forsaken me God? You have left me to my enemies and then he concludes, but praise me to God for his gifts. And having that tension there between it's difficult, these are punishments. From our perspective, it may not be anything we've done wrong, but it's difficult.

And it's okay to acknowledge that while at the same time being grateful that God is using this to grow us closer to Him. I think there's an amazing amount in this verse here. Understanding the difficulty and being grateful for that because we know this is something God's doing. for a whole bunch of reasons. Yeah, I think we need to be OK with that.

Difficulty while being grateful for it, which is impossible for humans to do. And one of the things that occurs to me is that we should be maybe easing ourselves, easing our brothers and sisters, because when a very difficult event happens, like the loss of a loved one or something of that magnitude, it's easy for us who haven't worked on that to say what you just said. That's where coming alongside and identifying with that person and realizing that it may take years. And maybe never. Maybe never. That person may never realize that what the Lord allowed to happen was to glorify him, and so on. So there's that balance there between as we come alongside a brother or sister who's suffering and seeing that.

And also for ourselves, as we go through the situation, is to realize, well, I'm not there that I can basically thank the Lord for that particular difficulty or trial. I'm not there yet. And not to be saying, well, that means I'm not that good a Christian. You can beat yourself up, and I don't think the Lord wants that. He wants us to realize that he has provided his very life, and as we depend upon that, we can have his perspective and not our perspective and our own nature's perspective.

Right. And this individual, Colbert, the tragedy happened when he was 10. You said he was 35 before he finally realized it. Excellent. Well, that's a good point. There's a point. Yeah. So it's not like, well, you know, OK, this happens and then six months later, everything's great. No, it's not that way at all. You may take the rest of your life, or maybe you go home and be with the Lord. But I have a question. If you found it in like two translations, the way that it's formatted, verse 18 looks like it's quoting, but I don't know. OK. Yes, actually, I didn't point that out.

OK, let's get his quote. What they claim is quoting. Turn to Proverbs 1131. So I read Proverbs 1131. And that's what it's for. But it doesn't sound exactly like Proverbs 131. So I didn't. So someone can read that. If the righteous will be repaid on earth, how much more of the wicked than sinful? So it's, I don't know. You think, well, the last part maybe. The first part talks about the righteous. Okay, we got that part, rewarding the earth. I don't know. It seems like it, you can say part of that is a quote. Paraphrase, maybe. Paraphrase, yeah.

So part of it is a quote, talking about the righteous. And we're going to talk about the wicked, the godless man, the sinner in a second here. So that's why it is like a capital, like a numerical standard has that too. And so it's a quote or paraphrase from that, from Proverbs 1131.

OK. So now the next thing I ask here is, oops. And actually, I was kind of delving into the word difficulty. And actually, I didn't find it as fruitful as I first thought. I didn't take the chart out. So kind of bear with me here. Basically, you know, the word has the idea kind of comes from the idea from words for labor pains with difficulty, you know, childbirth is difficult.

I mean, you know, All you ladies who have children can testify to that. It's not easy. It's difficult when children are born. But there's a wonderful blessing, too. And there's some verses in Acts, but they all talk about, we had a difficult time going here and there. And there's not really a verse that has this import that we have here. Since the Christians in Peter's day were undergoing severe trials, this can be thought of as a difficulty which allowed God for their growth. I think we just went through a whole discussion about that.

We look at the difficulty we have and we don't say, oh boy, there's another thing. I have to go through another thing. We look for it to be, and be on the outlook for it, that's something that God wants to use for our growth. He has a purpose in that. And then Hebrews basically says, and there's a discipline aspect.

I personally don't, I see there's enough trials and sufferings. I guess I, I don't know, maybe Some people like to, when they encounter a trial or something, I've heard many people, I'll talk with them about that, and they immediately jump to, well, God's discipling you. I guess I don't see that so much in in my interface with believers and talking to people I see more that it's something that maybe they've, you know, it's come upon them for a growth or whatever and it's not so much discipline. Let's talk about the father and son relationship, Hebrews 12.

I'm not discounting that verse, I'm just saying that what I have seen mostly is that the The Lord allows these trials and sufferings, and He always has a purpose. For a believer, there's always a purpose in that. And that's something to keep in mind. That's a very comforting thing, too. Well, there's a purpose in this.

And many times we say, well, what was the purpose of, and fill in the blank, and you probably can't see that purpose. I'm not sure we always can see the purpose, but we trust that God has a purpose, and that in itself can be very helpful. Roger, I've studied Revelation, and the people who are persecuted during the tribulations, I'm sure they don't understand what's going on, why, but they are treated differently when they get to heaven.

You know, they complain, I hear them complaining a lot, you know, Lord why are you waiting so long? How long, oh Lord? But God comforts them. Jesus comforts them. But they are different than we are because of all the suffering. The persecuted church that John talks about in the first few chapters of Revelation was a different church. Jesus had nothing bad to say about them. People who are persecuted and who die for their faith, they are different people. Good point. OK. All right. So actually, I wasn't going to spend a whole lot of time on this. If there's no other question, I was going to kind of move ahead to the next part here. And actually, and I do want to say here, let's go on here.

I do want to talk about the, and the B part of the verse is, What will become of the godless man and the sinner? If you notice back in verse 17, there was a comparison between, for it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God. And then the comparison was with that, and if it begins with us first, what will become of those who do not obey the gospel? Well, here it is. If the Lord, if it's difficult, if the Christian life is difficult, then it makes a comparison which isn't, in a way, isn't really and we're going to see the verse that what we suffer now is not worthy to be compared with what the Lord has for us.

So even though the Christian suffers very difficult things including death of loved ones and a whole variety of other things, maybe his own death, you compare that with the unbeliever and the unbeliever's lot, I listed just three that kind of occurred to me that we see in scripture, the unbeliever's lot is There's no comparison. The godless man in the center, which is an unbeliever, his outlook on life is described somewhat in, this is prior to the church age, but with the rich man of Lazarus, he's in torment. being in torment, and the judgment of the nations talks about how the nations will be judged, the church, and then the great white throne is where all unbelievers are judged. And all those are terrible, awful things. There's really no comparison.

They are incomparable with what the the believers do suffer, but they have a reward, and Peter constantly talks about that, looking ahead to that reward, right? Constantly looking, reminding ourselves of the reward we have in heaven, regardless of how difficult it is right now. He does that twice here. In 17 he compared it with the judgment of the believers now, and then in this verse he's comparing it with the difficulties we have in the Christian life. Roger?

Sure. Going back, to if it's difficult for the righteous to be saved. And you talked about the three tenses of salvation. Yes. We're talking about the in the present right from the devil. You know, it's just. being saved from all of the influences that come upon us.

But it seems like he's comparing that, he's saying, we're having difficulties as we live in Christian life, but just think about the godless and the sinner, what they're going to go through. It's kind of a, well, Lord, thank you. I have it tough, and it's tough, and I may have lost my loved one, There is no comparison with what the ungodly did.

Not twice, but in 17 and 18. That's what really shook me by the bootstrap. Wow, look at that. You think you have it bad. There is just no comparison. Other places it talks about the ungodly and the sinner. Other places it describes that. It's always not a very pretty picture. It's always a situation that that we're so thankful that we know the Lord Jesus is our Savior.

So this verse, I kind of found that it helped with this verse, if you kind of went through and you kind of diagrammed it, and I avoided putting a sentence diagram thing up there. Our brother Hal, if you guys were here, we had a dear brother, If you guys are familiar with diagramming sentences, of course it doesn't exist anymore in school. They've kind of eradicated that because I don't know why.

I think it's really wonderful. I was never very good at it. I was terrible in English. In fact, my wife tells me. Without Bonnie, you'd sell out more mistakes in these charts. She is so good. She spellchecks the spellchecker. Her English abilities are just so... I'm not even close to that, but I'm very thankful that I have her. That we're one, and that's great.

Anyway, so I tried to just make it kind of bullet form. So the subject actually is a pretty big chunk of that verse. The first part is, therefore, it seems to refer back to the previous verses. It's kind of summing us to the last verse in this chapter. He's kind of summing it up here.

And he's going to make a wonderful statement about our faithful creator. He says, those who suffer according to the will of God. So that's the subject. And he said the verb is shall entrust, or you could have some have it, let them entrust. We're going to learn about that word, entrusting. their souls to a faithful creator in doing what is right.

That breaks down those three parts. If you're in a sentence diagram, there's a certain way you make that look, if you're familiar with that. Once you learn it, it's really cool. But people that don't know it, I found, and our brother Hal tried to do that, it kind of puts you off a bit. You think, what's all those lines going this way and that? What does that all mean?

So I'm trying to do it this way. Anyway, hopefully this is helpful. OK, so I'm going to go through each part. So subject. OK, the subject, those who suffer according to the will of God. So part of it here is that, and maybe I'll just jump to the last part first before we get to this. What would you say, Peter answers this question right here.

How do we know when we are not suffering according to the will of God? Can you think of some verse that we've covered recently that tells us how we know this, or tells us there's a red flag. It occurred in the verses we read this morning. How do we know that? How do we know when we're not suffering according to the will of God?

Verse 15. Exactly. If we do something wrong, right? We steal, we murder, a thief, evildoer, a meddler. That was a tough one. I'm thankful for 1 John 1.9. I'm thankful that the Lord, you know, that when we do, if we're into meddling, then we can, and He's paid for that already. But anyway, we can know, it actually is pretty easy from Peter's perspective. Peter's pretty clear about this.

He tells us over and over again, I don't want to see you, that your witness is not to be for something that you did that was wrong. I want you to be walking with the Lord, basically. So we know the situation where we're not suffering according to the will of God. So Peter is going to address the case where we're suffering according to the will of God. And so once again, that's to settle us down, that's to give us peace about the situation. And in his day, he was talking about people that were physically being persecuted, including death it seemed like, by Nero. So it was a pretty, you know, So basically in 3.17, we've touched on this before, for it is better, if God should will it so, that you should suffer for doing what is right, rather than for doing what is wrong. Here again, he points out that Peter's perspective is that I want to comfort the believers that are suffering for doing what is right. That's one of his main themes of this book.

And then we are going to cover this pretty shortly here, 1 Peter 5.10. Can someone read that?

1 Peter 5.10. But may the God of all grace, who called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. Thank you. So basically it talks about, in some ways, God's picture, this is another comforting fact.

The suffering is for a little while. As contrasted with the unbeliever, which is suffering, which is just beyond our comprehension, suffering forever. That just is beyond our comprehension. But the believer's perspective is, we're suffering for a little while. It's only a small time period.

Alright, so let's go on. OK, so that's the subject. So we're talking about those who are suffering according to the will of God. So here's the verb. Here's the action. And this is kind of cool. The word is shall entrust. The word is this idea. It's a banking term. It's to place on deposit. And it's in the present tense, which present tense is continuous action in the present. So we're continually to be entrusting, continually to be placing on deposit.

It's such a beautiful term. You go to the bank and you give them something, put it in a safe deposit box. And I like this concept so well. I remember I mentioned in the Old Testament where they laid out their issues before the Lord in the temple. Here's my problems, Lord. And this is so wonderful.

It shows me that the Lord doesn't want us carrying this. We're entrusting Him. We give it to Him. We take it off our shoulders, we give it to Him. So it's continuous action in the present time. It's a command. And the middle voice, most likely, almost always, seems to be guided for your benefit. So this is for our benefit that we entrust it to Him. And the least has it, He brings it across as being constantly committed.

And I wanted to read, there's just a beautiful verse in Luke 23. Turn to Luke 23, and if someone could read Luke 23, I want to go back and get a little bit of the context. Luke 23, 44 through 46. It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three, because the sun's light failed.

The curtain of the sanctuary was split down the middle, and Jesus called out with a loud voice, Father, into your hands I last that's great well actually see you haven't tried it's the same word it's the same word here so what's beautiful is that the word says commit and a lot more so it says commit either commit or entrust but it's the same same Greek word the Lord Jesus and you know with this the same same picture here he committed himself to the father so isn't it wonderful the Lord Jesus committed himself to the father and we're we are kept to commit ourselves to Him.

It's so beautiful. You're trusting that the One who is the Creator, He is worthy. He is the One we entrust ourselves to. He made us. Why wouldn't we entrust ourselves to Him during a time of trials and sufferings? And then the 2 Timothy 1, it talks about, let's just look at that one. 2 Timothy. Maybe I'll read that one here. And that's not so much in the trials and suffering context, but it's more about faithful men.

2 Timothy 2.2. I'll just read one and two.

You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus and the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses. These entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. So he's talking to the elders, it seems like. We're entrusting these faithful men. We're saying, here are these wonderful truths. I'm entrusting them that you will be faithful in teaching those, teaching others. So just a beautiful picture here of this entrusting ourselves to the Lord. Okay, so that's the verb, and then it goes on. I didn't actually label the other ones as well here. Entrusting their souls, this is a direct object, their souls to a faithful creator.

So Macaulay says here, Peter describes God as a faithful creator, an unusual designation. Only here in the New Testament is God called this. So, it's obvious, and we're going to see shortly here, it's obvious that God, there's many verses that talk about how he's creating all things. But this idea of being a faithful creator is unique here to Peter.

And souls here seems to be used in the sense that that's a total person. We're body, soul, and spirit. But it seems like he's talking about the total person here. I could be talked out of that, too. And then faith is basically, the root word for faith is pistis. This is a form of that. It's the idea of faithfulness or trustworthiness.

And then here's a wonderful verse that I find very comforting. No temptation has overtaken you, but such as is common to man, God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you're able, but what the temptation will provide the way of the escape also, so that you will be able to endure it. So I was going to ask you, we're not studying this verse, I got some insight from my brother Hal about this first. If you remember that, that's great.

But the question is, I find people looking for the magic formula here. They're always looking for, well okay, my way out of this, I'm in debt up to my ears. I'm going to use that as an example. I mean I'm just going to come and pay off my debts and I'm debt free. Is that what the Lord is talking about here? Or is there something deeper than that do you think?

This word says, but what the temptation will provide the way of escape. So what do you think that way of escape is? Possibly a way out of the temptation? or away from the temptation. Anything else? I'm not thinking of it as a way out of it, but a way through it. A way to get through the journey and come out good on the other side that we've learned something or grown something. Anyone else? Part of it is that there is a singular way. That actually kind of helps. What I kind of think is that that's talking about a person. Does that help at all? And it's not your next door neighbor. Or your best friend. Well actually it is your best friend.

I won't go to the matter, I won't die with this, but anyway, I think that this strongly indicates that the way of escape is our Savior, as you look to Him. And it's totally consistent with what he wants us to abide in him, trust in him, rest in him. So the way through a difficulty is that we have a faithful God and we have a faithful Savior who wants us to be looking to him and letting his life be lived through us. That's helping with this verse. Otherwise you're looking for, where's that golden path? You're looking for a path. I think that's kind of a mistake.

What about the ministry of the Holy Spirit with us? What you're saying is that the way can be the Holy Spirit? Both. Anyway, I don't think it's a magic formula. It's got to be the ministry of God in our lives. the Saviour, or the Holy Spirit, I'd be happy with that too. Anyway, we're getting a little bit off the track here.

So, those who suffer according to the will of God shall entrust or put on deposit their souls to a faithful creator. Okay? Roger, just really quickly. I kind of alluded to this before, but all the language that talks about the difficulty, the suffering, with the temptation that you'll be able to endure it.

Again, I've seen Christians have the tendency that, well, you just trust in God and then everything's going to be fine. And we have a tendency to, your life is hard, well, that's because you're not saved. You get saved and then suddenly you have that magic bullet that makes everything... No, there is every indication that there still is suffering, it's difficulty, but we have the faithful creator.

We have a way, as we've said, a way through it. And so, I think understanding that is so key. We do the gospel, we do the Bible in this service when we indicate that if you just trust in God, everything is going to be fine. Well, ultimately it will be. But that doesn't mean the getting there is any less difficult. But what does Peter say?

We have the faithful creator. I'm going over my mind, why would he use the word creator? Other than to show the power of God. We live within the universe and however much man has disordered that, he is still the creator. He is still more powerful than any worldly system, more powerful than any government, anything. that is going to bring this persecution in our life. And so knowing that, oh yeah, we have the storm, but we can trust ourselves to the God who created the elements that make up the storm. And it doesn't necessarily make it easier, but it does give us that perspective and know that.

But we just have to, I don't know where this is going. I don't know what's going to happen. But we entrust ourselves. We entrust our souls. And again, that's a difficult thing for us to grasp because we want to look for that magic bullet that takes away all our pain. We want our tears to be wiped away today. But we don't have that promise at all. What we have is the promise that you just have to trust in God and he's going to work this out to his glory.

It's helped me think about Paul. He went to the Lord about three times about his difficulty, his trial. He said, Lord, I have this thorn in the flesh. And he asked him three times, The Lord said, I'll take it away tomorrow. He never said he'd take it away. He said, my grace is sufficient. You think about that. He never said he'd take it away. Just Jeremy's point. I'm not going to take that away, Paul. But what I am going to give you is, I'm going to give you my marvelous grace. The totality of who I am. I'm going to give you Christ's life in you. And that's going to be sufficient. And when you look at that, you say, but he's not taking away my problem. He didn't promise to take away your problems. He said, we're going to have those problems.

The wonderful part is that He wants us, in spite of our problems, and this is what glorifies Him, in spite of our problems, we're trusting. We're entrusting ourselves to a faithful Creator. It's incredible. It's easy for us to get on that prosperity gospel, where you trust God and everything turns out right. You know, that's not the gospel at all.

In the past few months, there was a pretty well-known megachurch pastor that had to resign because it came to be known that he had an affair. And it seems like that happens all the time. And it seems like a lot of those individuals will kind of go into hiding until things get straight. But within a few weeks after this came out, he started being more active on social media. And he wrote a thing on Facebook saying, we have a tendency to hide the messy parts of the Christian life. He's a guy that teaches grace a lot. Part of grace is letting people see that it's messy, it's difficult, we make mistakes, and yet God is there to help us through that. I think that's part of it.

Understanding how God is using this to the world. Yes, we may mess up and have failures, but to show the world that God's grace is for those failures as much as the good times. To let the world see it. You can have a million dollar house and say, God's been good to me. Okay, that may or may not say a lot to the world, but you're going through difficulty. Even you going through your failures and saying, I messed up, but God's grace is there even though I've messed up. That's what eclipses the world. The faithfulness of the Creator, I think. We're going to see also, Peter's going to come right back at the very end here, doing what's right is still very important.

If you've done wrong, which you talk about a person doing wrong, there's consequences for doing what's wrong, if it's stealing or whatever. You may go to jail, you may suffer a fine, so there are consequences, but God's grace is still there. Okay, good. OK, so actually, I'm no longer creator. I think we somewhat covered the part of this basically. It's a word that's only used here.

I know there are many verses that talk about God's creative, you know, ability, so to speak, creative nature, for by him, Colossians 1.16, for by him all things were created, and Revelation 4.11, for you created all things, so God is a creator God, and he's also a faithful God. Here's another verse where Jesus cried out, he's entrusting you with his spirit, coming up, what we talked about before, and then Philippians, for I'm confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in me, will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. And this verse can be very comforting in trials and suffering as well. You think that maybe I've gone astray, I'm off the path, I've had this big problem in my life, and I'll never get back to where I was.

He says no, we're to remember that I can be confident that He who began it will work for me. He's going to perfect it. He's going to bring it to completion. That's kind of the idea. In doing what is right or doing what is good. Peter in a variety of places talked about submitting to government rulers, obeying masters, submitting to husbands, loving your wives. He talked about doing living out your life, and doing what is right. So doing what is right is important. We can't say, well, God's grace covers it, so should sin abound? The question is asked in Romans there. No, it shouldn't abound. No, we should do what is right. That's what Peter is saying. So, once again, you guys know the answer.

How do we accomplish this? We don't accomplish that by our own efforts. We accomplish it by Christ living his life through us. By us, by faith, abiding in him, trusting in him, and his life is to be lived out through us. If we try to put on our best behavior, so to speak, it's not going to work. We have to put our best foot forward.

There is another verse that I didn't include in here that Peter talked about. He talked about doing right multiple times so far in 1 Peter. He talked about it in 1 Peter 2.15 For such is the will of God, that by doing what is right ye may silence men. So doing what is right always is God's desire for us to do what is right. And that will silence people that accuse you. And he talks about suffering for doing what's right. So he talks about doing what is right maybe a half dozen times in 1 Peter. So doing what is right is important, even in the midst of suffering. We're still doing what's right. Others may not do what's right, but we're to do what's right. So I think that's just about it. So actually, next week, we'll start in chapter 5. And that's a short, you know, and then by about the actually by September 20th, we'll start second.

Roger, throughout this whole thing, I'm suffering. And we've seen it so much of the foundation went through my retired trials, my pathway, my grace, all sufficient shall be my supply. The flame shall not hurt me, hurt the I only design. My dross to consume and my gold to refine. And I think that says so much. It does. I like that song.

J. Bernard McGee plays that at the beginning of this. I believe that's the one that plays. Alperma Foundation? Yeah. That's the one.

J. Bernard McGee. It's on the radio. I think that's his theme song. Oh is it? I think that's it. I haven't heard him for so long. I've forgotten. I think that's right. That's a beautiful song. Beautiful. That's great. Okay, let's close it. Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord. Thank you for the blessings we have, Lord. Lord, we thank you for the difficulties and trials that you've allowed in our lives, Lord. As much as they're just so overwhelming sometimes, Lord, we thank you that you've promised that your grace is sufficient. Help us to count upon that or rely upon that your grace is sufficient for all our needs in Christ's name.