Rejoice! Trials Lead to Jesus (1 Peter 1:6-9)
Due to a malfunction, the sermon on Easter 3 covering 1 Peter 1:6-9, entitled “Rejoice! Trials Lead to Jesus,” was not recorded. Below is Rev. Wiley’s sermon manuscript.
Rejoice! Trials Lead to Jesus (1 Peter 1:6-9)
Picking up with 1 Peter 1:6 where we left off last week, Peter writes to his suffering, afflicted, and exiled brothers and sister, [6] In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials,
Rejoicing in the Reality of New Birth (vv. 3–6a)
The “in this” that causes rejoicing ties us right back to the new “birth,” the “living hope,” and the great “inheritance” that we investigated last week. By God’s great mercy, God’s reaching down to help the helpless, we’ve been born again by faith in Jesus Christ. The sin in our lives that welcomed God’s wrath drowned in the forgiving blood of Jesus. Freed from guilt, shame, and the punishment due on account of sin, we now live in a new realm where we are at peace with God. We didn’t earn this new status or this new reality; God’s mercy drew us into this new life. Now, as born-again members of God’s family, we have one Lord, Jesus Christ, who presently reigns over our lives, no matter what we face and no matter where we are. Jesus is our reality, so we praise God, the Father of the Lord. Yet, not only has God’s mercy remade us, like a builder who demolishes an old home and then removes all the rubble before laying a brand new foundation, the mercy of God also orients us toward a new future, what Peter calls “living hope” and “inheritance.” In a hopeless world, we have found secure hope beyond the world, beyond the grave, and His name is Jesus Christ—the founder, perfecter, and the goal of our faith.
“In this,” in all of this, Peter says, “you rejoice.” Rejoice means to take exceeding delight in something. The ESV translates the same word in Matthew 5:12 as “be glad.” The reality of birth into a new realm and new destiny by the mercy of God fills the Christian’s heart with joy or delight—it makes us happy with an eternal and unassailable happiness. If the gospel, the good news that God helped the helpless when Jesus Christ died in our place on the cross, doesn’t delight our souls and fill our hearts with gladness, then we might need to check our new-birth pulse.
Yet, “rejoicing” is not only a hidden gladness—joy within—but is also an emotion which must burst forth. Christians give vent to their hidden delight, and that completes their joy. C. S. Lewis, while reflecting on the Psalms and their continual call for rejoicing, wrote, “I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.” Peter calls his brothers and sisters, sheep under his pastoral care, to hear the gospel, to believe the gospel, and then to celebrate the gospel by delighting in it in heart and in action.
We who delight in the gospel complete that “joy” by celebrating the gospel in action. Why do we sing on Sunday? To celebrate what we delight in. Why do we feast together? To put into action the joy that fills our hearts. A painter isn’t a painter unless he puts his brush to the canvas. We aren’t truly rejoicing unless our joy colors our lives.
The Tension: Joy in the Midst of Trials (v. 6b)
Some of us, though, might be tempted to level some kind of complaint against Peter. “If you only knew what I am going through, Peter, you would soften your rhetoric. Read the room; I’m going through a mess right now. Can’t the joy wait a moment?” Yet, before we complain, we must remember Peter’s original audience. These first-century brothers and sisters who walked the race before us walked a race of great trial and suffering. Peter describes their situation in verse 1. They are exiles, both spiritually and physically. They face a hostile, pagan world that ostracizes them, ridicules them, and casts them out of society because of their allegiance to Jesus—they’re spiritual exiles. Peter’s audience also live as aliens, dispersed from their homes into Asia Minor. Because of their faith, they were physical exiles. This is a trying situation indeed, and yet Pastor Peter says, “Even so, rejoice! You have every reason to rejoice. To gather and celebrate God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
While calling for joy, Peter is not insensitive to their situation. He is well aware of their struggles, but he knows that the joy found in salvation is not incompatible with “various trials.” Christians, we can navigate trials even with delight in the gospel. That’s Peter’s bold claim, and it echoes throughout the Scriptures. Though not “joy” specifically, we find a similar message from Jesus, when He said in John 16, “In this world of troubles, you can have peace” (John 16:33). James begins his letter with a call for “joy” in suffering (James 1:2-4). Paul says, “We rejoice in our sufferings” (Rom. 5:3). The world, until its renewal, is filled with suffering, filled with trials, but the born-again Christian faces suffering with joy in Jesus Christ.
How? Why? Peter has already answered the “how” question. Fixation on the gospel infuses the heart with joy in all circumstances (3-5), and we will revisit this “how” question toward the end.
Trials Are Temporary—but Necessary
Why, though? Why does suffering exist as part of the Christian life? If Christ is the cure for our deepest disease within, why is He not the end of our external sufferings? Why let suffering remain in the present when in the future Christ will annihilate it? These are pressing questions indeed. They are apologetic questions that the ungodly demand solutions for, and they are evangelistic questions that sinners lost in suffering need answered. Peter says trials are in our lives because they are necessary. That’s why.
Before we move toward trials as necessary, let’s pause on trials as momentary. These trials are only “for a little while,” as Peter says. There is an enduring, unfading, forever inheritance awaiting the saved at the end of salvation’s road. That is forever. Trials, though, are only temporary. They will end. But temporary trials are necessary trials.
Necessary means “must” or “ought” or “fitting.” Trials are fittingly part of the Christian experience, or we ought to endure them. There is a point, then, to our trials, but do not mis-hear Peter. He is not saying, “Suffering through trials is good, by itself.” The Scriptures do not say, “On the fourth day, God created trials and suffering and saw that they were good.” Trials exist in this world because of sin’s invasion. Therefore, we conclude trials and the suffering they bring are not, in and of themselves, good. The world is “groaning” and “suffering, Paul says (Rom 8:19). Pain, physical, mental, and spiritual, leads to suffering, and the world is in pain. And while we have been born into a new reality, we still live in a pain-filled realm—we have various trials. However, in Christ, by the mercy of God, trials are baptized. Trials, though resulting from evil, in Christ suddenly lead to good, and though they cause pain and suffering, suddenly, in Jesus, trials lead to paradise. Trials, once seemingly pointless, in Christ, now have a purpose. The trials that grieve us and cause suffering are necessary.
Do you know how backward this sounds to a late-modern secularist? Wesley Smith, writing for First Things Magazine, says, “Never in human history has suffering been more readily relieved than today.” Modern medicine is God’s common grace to mankind, and yet with it has come a new goal for humanity: no more trials, no more suffering. Yuval Levin wrote in his book, Imagining the Future,
The worldview of modern science sees health not only as a foundation but also a principal goal; not only as a beginning but also an end. Relief and preservation—from disease and pain, from misery and necessity—become the defining ends of human action…
Humanity, ruled by the idols of science and medical advancement, seeks to build a utopia where trials and suffering are no more. But Peter says here, challenging our modern sensibilities, “trials that grieve are necessary for the godly.” Could this be good news to our neighbors raging against the inevitability of suffering? I can’t show you a path around it, but I can, by Christ, show you the path through it.
Grief and Joy Are Not Opposites
But while Peter highlights the necessity of trials for us, he does not pretend that the path is easy. Temporary does not mean painless. Peter, in a stroke of pastoral sympathy, says, “I know you’ve been grieved.” Rejoicing and grieving, somehow, are not incompatible. A diver might find the wreckage of a sunken ship, the source of great pain and sorrow, hanging on the edge of a great wreath covered in underwater majesty, a source of great gladness. When God baptizes our trials, we can be honest about the grief, sorrow, and pain we feel deeply, and still find joy at the same depth.
Various trials flow in and out of our lives, and we can rejoice in the sorrow because trials have an end. Not only an end in their length, but in their purpose. Trials without God’s mercy break us, but trials in the mercy of God makes us, or should I say, with Pastor Peter, “proves us.” Look with me, then, at verse 7, where Peter points us to the goal of the various trials we face in this suffering realm.
The Purpose of Trials: Reveal, Refine, Result (v. 7)
[7] 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.
The various trials in verse 6 “test” the "genuineness" of our “faith.” Trials reveal, refine, and result.
Various trials reveal the depth of our faith. Trials are windows into our faith, to show whether our faith is “genuine.” When Jonathan Edwards, the 18th-century pastor-theologian, wrote his treatise on genuine faith in the wake of the Great Awakening, he began the entire discourse in 1 Peter 1:6-8, talking about the purposes of trials. Edwards said trials “have a tendency to distinguish between true religion and false, and to cause the difference between them evidently to appear.” That’s one reason for our trials; they diagnose or reveal the genuineness of our faith. Jesus told a parable of a sower who went out and cast the gospel into various hearts. Some hearts seemed to receive the gospel by faith, but then the cares of the world and the trials of this life washed away their disingenuous faith. Some, though, received the gospel with true faith, and the thorny trials of life could not choke out true faith with roots in Christ. Trials tell us who we really are: are we Christ’s or not? They are, in this way, a mercy. Trials tell you where you stand: either with Jesus or not.
Trials reveal our faith, but they also refine our faith. Peter is not calling for Christians to doubt their standing in Christ—though they are revelatory, they’re not meant to sow doubt. These first readers were, by faith, born again, and just as no one can give that birth but God, so no one can take away that new birth. The word translated “tested genuineness” is the same word for “proved.” Trials prove to the Christian that he or she is indeed a Christian. Do you lack assurance? Do you doubt your standing in God’s family? There’s nothing like a trial to build up your confidence in the Lord, to refine, like fire purifying gold, our faith. The Puritan Thomas Watson wrote, “The magnet of mercy does not draw us so near to God as the cords of affliction.” God sends us through trials, brothers and sisters, so that we run swiftly to Him. And so, Watson continues, “We should not so much look at the evil of affliction, as the good; not so much at the dark side of the cloud, as the light. The worst that God does to His children, is to whip them to heaven!” Trials lead us forward in faith—they force us to cling to the object of our faith.
Enduring trials by faith reveal, refine, and result. They result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
The faithful Christian enduring trials and suffering with joy does not find much reward on earth. The world does not praise us or honor us. Instead, we hear the mocking world ask, “Why would a good God let suffering happen? If God truly loves you, He wouldn’t allow these grievous trials. If God were really ‘all-powerful,’ then couldn’t He prevent this terrible situation?” The world does not honor the faithful Christian; instead, Job’s wife says to us, “Curse God and die.”
But we who hear Pastor Peter see trials as God’s gracious gift. Jeremiah Burroughs wrote about the mystery of gracious afflictions. He said, “This is a mystery to a carnal heart. They can see no such thing; perhaps they think God loves them when he prospers them and makes them rich, but they think God loves them not when he afflicts them.” Faith, though, allows the man of God to see “The ways of God, the ways of affliction, as well as the ways of prosperity, are mercy and love to him. Grace gives a man an eye” to see God’s good work in all things. How can we see affliction or trial as a grace? When we know they lead to an eternal reward. The world doesn’t mock us when we bless God in plenty, but when we bless God in poverty, when He takes away, and yet we praise, that baffles the world. But we praise no matter what because we know God delights to see us through affliction, and He honors us with praise and glory when Christ comes to us to end our trials.
How Can We Rejoice? With Love, Fix Your Eyes on Christ (vv. 8–9)
And here, then, we come to the mystery revealed. Returning to “how.” How can we joyfully endure trials without cursing God, but by allowing the trials we face, the suffering we endure, to refine us and reinforce our hope?
How? By seeing the end of the road, where we find Jesus. The love of our lives, and the truth to which we cling, the goal toward which we strive, is there, at the end. [8] Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, [9] obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
Do you see how Peter leads with love? Love always drives us. What we love, we pursue no matter what. We’d walk a thousand miles and a thousand more to get our heart’s deepest love, and we’d face any obstacle, or should I say trial, even the most challenging ones, with gladness if we knew our love waited at the end of the road. For Jonathan Edwards, love inclines the human will, shapes our actions, and guides all our decisions. Peter knew this before Edwards, for his Savior taught him that the key to all of life is love properly ordered. The first commandment and the second, which is like the first, are both all about “love.” Peter knows, then, rejoicing in trials comes from loving the right thing, Jesus. Even though we cannot and have not seen Him, we can love Him.
And we love Him because we know Him; deeply and intimately, we know who Jesus is. Put in Peter’s words, we believe in Jesus. We haven’t seen Him with our eyes like Peter and haven’t touched Him with our hands like Thomas, but with the eyes of faith we look to Him and trust in Him.
This is how we walk the road rejoicing: love Christ by faith and find inexpressible joy. Do you see this? With eyes on Christ and hearts in love with Christ, the trials we face, though they are hard, though there is grief, flood with deep-seated and expressive joy, because, as St. Bernard of Clairvaux has said, love’s reward is the object of its devotion. The road, in other words, marked with trials leads straight to Jesus. He is the salvation of our souls. He is the treasure at the end of the map and the gift for faithful endurance.
So, walk faithfully through the temporary trials of life and let love guide you. Notice, Peter never calls us to walk perfectly, sinlessly, or faultlessly. Nowhere does he say fatigue will never nor does he say the grief will be manageable. No, he says instead, find joy in Jesus. Rejoice even when your eyes sting with tears, celebrate Christ even when grief is heavy, and trust Jesus even when trials test. But we never have to do this alone, my friends. We never have to go hunting for joy. We don’t have to go seeking a reward. Joy and salvation have come to us in the midst of our trials. Said another way, Jesus is the suffering Savior who walks before and with the saved suffers.
Christ: The Suffering Savior and Our Joy
Jesus endured a life marked by trials and suffering; He was tempted like us, tired like us, burdened like us, grieved like us, and walked to the valley of the shadow of death just like us. Jesus walked this life of trials and suffering, but joy kept Him on track, and love guided His steps. Hebrews 12 tells us, “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Heb. 12:2). Christ went to the cross, to redeem us from the sins that brought trials and suffering into the world because of the joy set before Him. What was that joy? The salvation of our souls. And Christ endured trials and suffering in the sinful world because of love, for God so loved the world that He gave His Son. Christ loved you so He endured the trial of the cross. Saving you was His joy, so He shed His blood. Jesus has His reward now; you and I, born-again to be His brothers and sisters, adopted by the Father. So we walk toward Him, with love for He loves us, and with joy for He delights in us, and though we do not see Him, He sees us. And one day will lay eyes on the Savior who delights in us and who loves us, and we will lay hold of the outcome of our faith.