Seeking once again the Lord's
help to grant me the ability to speak to you, I'd like you
to turn to the chapter that we read together first, Peter chapter
1, and the text you'll find in verse 7. that the trial of your faith,
being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it
be tried with fire, might be found unto the praise and honour
and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. Over the last few
services we have been looking at faith. We looked in the book
of Hebrews that without faith it is impossible to please God. We saw that we are justified
by faith and we saw also that the stone which the builders
rejected has become the head of the corner. and that the Lord
Jesus Christ is the only object of faith. Faith lays hold of
the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ and without him
our lives are unfinished, our lives are unacceptable in the sight of
a holy God and the Lord Jesus Christ rejected will become a
stumbling stone and then ultimately a rock and which grinds those
who do not believe to powder. And so faith lays hold of the
Lord Jesus and faith is like the hand which lays hold of the
rescuer and we are brought out of that place of destruction,
that place of bleakness and blackness and we are found safe in the
arms of the Lord Jesus Christ. As we look through the letter
of Peter we find that he specifically points to trials and difficulties
in the lives of believers, that faith which saved them, that
faith which is a gift of God, that saving faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ, that a point of contact as it were, it must be
tested and it must be tried to see the genuineness of that faith. And he tells us here that in
verse 6, wherein you greatly rejoice, though now for a season,
if need be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations. There was that rejoicing, that
great rejoicing in the salvation which had been brought to them
and revealed to them of their unity in the Lord Jesus. He says, in other words, in this
you greatly rejoice. In the salvation that they had
received, they greatly rejoiced. But now they were in heaviness
They were loaded, they were overburdened with manifold temptations and
trials. They were in heaviness but it
was for a season. And he tells them that that trial,
that testing of your faith is more precious than gold. But he goes on in the letter
to speak about other different ways in which we may bring trouble,
we may be in trouble. The first trouble is the trial
of your faith and so it is a testing by God of their faith that those
things have come into their life by God for a specific reason
to test that link which links them to the Lord Jesus Christ.
In my mind I can see it clearly as like a crane and a crane has
a hook on it and that hook is what is linked onto the load
and there that hook and where that load meet that is like the
hook of faith and where it links together with Christ and that
is the object of or the point of attack that is where the load
is felt the most And so there Christ or God tests his people
right there at the link, right there at the point where they
hold on to the Lord Jesus Christ and that is the testing of our
faith. But throughout the letters I've
said it speaks of different trials and different problems that come
into the life of a Christian. And there are those problems
that are brought about just because we are Christians. And there
are those problems that are brought about because we also don't behave
ourselves as Christians. And so we bring the problems
upon ourselves. We bring the difficulties into
our lives because we have not been behaving as we should behave. And there are those trials and
difficulties that come in like persecution where because we
are faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ we enter into opposition. In chapter 4 it tells us there Beloved think
it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you
as though some strange thing happen unto you, but rejoice
inasmuch as you are partakers in Christ's sufferings, that
when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding
joy. If you are reproached for the
name of Christ, happy are ye. you are reproached, if you are
attacked, if you are persecuted for the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ count it all the joy, count it a blessing to be persecuted
with the Lord Jesus Christ because you have remained faithful, your
faith is strong and you have opposed the the opposition and
he says happy are ye. the spirit of glory and of God
rest is upon you and on their part he is evil spoken of but
on your part he is glorified but let none of you suffer as
a murderer or as a thief or as an evildoer or as a busybody
in other men's matters yet if any man suffer as a Christian
let him not be ashamed but to let him glorify God on this behalf. And so there is those two types
of suffering. There can be that suffering due
to persecution and faithfulness to the Lord Jesus Christ and
there can be that suffering which is self-induced because of bad
behavior. murder, a thief, an evildoer
or busybodying in other people's matters and so when you are persecuted
because of those things it is not a joy it is a shame for it
has exposed what we truly are and what we truly are doing and
we cannot claim that our faith is being tested because we have
acted in a sinful way and we have suffered the consequences
of our sinful behaviour but if any man suffers as a Christian
let him not be ashamed and so there is suffering as a Christian
we can be persecuted those in other lands that are persecuted
because they are Christians because they worship God through the
Lord Jesus Christ it is not a shame that they are persecuted although
their lives are extremely difficult and no one would want to be persecuted,
nobody wants to live an uncomfortable and a difficult life yet the
scripture tells us that they can rejoice in as much as they
are partakers in Christ's sufferings. He was despised and rejected
of men. He was crucified outside of the
city. He was an outcast of society
and when Christianity becomes opposed in the nation then our
time might come to be those who are suffering as Christians and
even there are those who do suffer as Christians in our own land
through persecution and we've seen them who go on the news
sometimes when they have to go to court because they have remained
faithful to Christ and so it is in our land as well and so
faith must be tested we cannot claim that our faith is being
tested when we bring the problems upon ourselves. The trial of
your faith. We've seen over the last week
or so that faith is a gift of God. It is the fruit of the Holy
Spirit of God. It is given to us to enable us
to lay hold of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is like when you children,
if you sometimes get a toy at Christmas, it comes with no batteries
in it. And it doesn't work and it is
useless. And to enable it to work, you
have to put batteries into the toy and then it works. Well,
faith is a gift of God. The Holy Spirit, like a battery,
comes into our life and enables us to believe and trust in the
Lord Jesus Christ. And faith, true living faith,
is life. The scripture tells us that we
must be born again. And so the evidence of that new
birth is seen in faith, laying hold and believing and trusting
in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is living faith because it
enables us to lay hold of eternal life. It is the product of the
Holy Spirit that lives within the life of the body of a believer. And that life, that faith, God
says must be tested. It must be tested to prove that
it is actually genuine faith. We have seen, haven't we, of
Simon who deceived the apostles. He said, I believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And he was baptised. And yet
over a period of time, it was evident that he didn't truly
believe. He was after some money. He was after gifts. And he was
after fame. And so when that process of time
came it was exposed that his faith was fake and it was of
no use. Sometimes when you were young
you may have been walking and you may have seen an animal lying
down at the side of the road or in the woods. and you look at it and you can't
decide is it dead or is it alive. You can't work it out and so
you poke it with a stick. I'm sure we've all done it. And
you poke it to see is it alive or is it dead. If it gets up
and runs away we know that it's alive. If it stays there we presume
that it is dead. So God comes and he pokes Christians
to see are they alive or are they dead? Is there true living
faith in them or is there no faith? Is it fake? Are they just dead people walking? Or are they being made alive
by the Spirit of God? But he doesn't do it for his
own benefit. He is the one that has made people
alive himself. He is the one that has given
them the Spirit. He is the one that has given
them to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one that chose them
before the foundation of the world. And so he doesn't come
and poke people for his own benefit for he knows who are deceivers,
he knows who are wolves and he knows those who are still dead
in their trespasses and sins and are acting out that they
are living in faith. And so he doesn't do it for his
own benefit but he does it to expose the hidden workings of
the heart to ourselves and to others around about. if any of
you have watched the news recently, you may have seen in China they
have built a bridge. And in, I don't think they do
it in our country, but in other countries they load test bridges. And they do so by driving fully
loaded lorries onto the bridge which they have calculated that
it should be able to hold and they park them there and they
wait. And they load test the bridge to see if it is suitable
for that lifelong use. And so God load tests Christians,
not for himself, but for themselves and for others. And it seems
that there is a need for this to take place. There is a need
for testing. As the bridge in China needed
to be tested so that the engineers could see whether their workings
out were correct. So the life of a believer needs
to be tested. We are tested, aren't we? throughout
our school life. If you've been to school, even
in homeschooling, you know that there's constant tests. I used
to have tests every single Friday, maths and times tables and English. Every single Friday, I had to
go to the headmaster and explain why I'd failed my times tables
and my maths and my spelling. As we go on, we go to GCSEs and
we have exams and we are graded as we pass. If we fail, we go
to work or we go to college, go to university and there are
more tests, more exams and we are graded and we slowly filter
out. Some go to higher education and
become doctors and other things in university and others go to
different places. And so we are tested throughout
our lives. Even in driving we have driving
tests and as people get older they have to undergo other tests,
eye tests, body tests, heart tests, hearing tests and so we
are used to being tested and so our faith is also tested. God tests Christians
to see the genuineness of their faith but also to expose any
cracks and any weaknesses within our lives that we may see the
reality of our faith. as we follow the Lord Jesus Christ
on the narrow way that leads to life, we are put under different
tests. Like the bridge, we are load
tested. How much can we bear? And we
are told, aren't we, as we looked at recently, that we are to bear
one another's burdens. We are told to cast our burdens
upon the Lord. And so we are load tested. to
see how much we can cope with and if we react according to
the measure of faith that we have been given. But also the load testing, the
trial of our faith proves the reality of our faith. It is easy to be a Christian
when everything is going smoothly. when you've got money in your
bank and you've got everything sorted in life, your health is
okay, your family is okay. It's easy to swim along, as it
were, and to be able to say, yes, I believe in Jesus, everything
is going smoothly, he's blessing me here, there and everywhere.
But when the weight is loaded onto our life, and the strain
comes, it then proves the reality of our faith. If you think of
that crane with the hook and as more weight is loaded on to
it, sometimes it takes the strain, sometimes the crane or the hook
breaks and those things come tumbling down. And so the load
testing is essential for the Christian. The trial of our faith,
the testing of our faith proves our faithfulness to the Lord
Jesus Christ. In Matthew chapter 8, tells us there that there are
degrees of faith. You see as we are examined throughout
our life we are graded and those who are not seen as academic
are channeled into one way and those who are academic are entered
into more exams and they go higher up the thing and so we are graded
throughout life. And so Christ reveals to us that
there are also degrees of faith. Faith is graded. There is that
simple faith that lays hold of Christ. But here he tells us
in verse 10, and Jesus heard it after he marveled and said
unto him that followed. Truly I say unto you I have not
found so great faith no not in Israel. The man had just confessed
Christ that he was a man under authority as Christ was and he
said just speak the word only and my servant shall be healed. And in verse 26 Jesus speaks
to his disciples he tells them there whether they were afraid
because of the sea and he tells them oh why are ye so fearful
oh ye of little faith. And so one man is presented as
having great faith and his apostles are told that you've got little
faith. The man said you only have to
speak the word only and it will be done. He could see the power
of the Lord Jesus Christ and he laid hold by faith of that
power and confessed that you are able to do anything But his
disciples were not able to view by faith the greatness of the
one who was with them in the boat. And Jesus says, why are
you so fearful? Why is it that you have no faith? Job was tested by God. The scripture tells us that it
was God's idea. to allow Satan to go and tempt
Job. In Job 1 and verse 8 it says,
And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant
Job? There is none like him in the
earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God and
eschews evil. And Satan answered him, the Lord,
and said, Does not Job fear God for naught? That was made a hedge
about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on
every side. Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his
substance is increased in the land. Put forth thine hand now,
and touch all that he hath, for he will curse thee to thy face. And so we know the account of
how Satan is allowed twice to go and inflict those tests or
those trials upon Job. the reason Satan says look of
course he's going to believe in you of course he's going to
worship you because everything is going well everything is you
have blessed everything in his life and so of course he's going
to believe go and touch now everything and he will curse thee to thy
face And so the trials that Job went
through were to prove to Satan that Job's faith was not based
upon all that he had. Job's faith was based upon his
love or his objective laying hold of God. And it didn't matter
if everything was taken away, Job still had God. The Lord has
given and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of
the Lord. And so his faith was proved to
be a genuine faith, a genuine trust in God, not based upon
the blessings, but based upon who God actually is. Abraham in the book of Hebrews. We are told there when he was
tested in Hebrews 11 verse 17 it says, by faith Abraham when
he was tried offered up Isaac and he that had received the
promise offered up his only begotten son of whom it was said that
in Isaac shall thy seed be called accounting that God was able
to raise him even from the dead from whence also he received
him in a figure. Abraham's faith was tested by
God tried by God when he was tried he offered up Isaac and
his faith was tried to prove the genuineness of his
faith and his ability to to look beyond what he was going to do
and see that God was able to raise up Isaac even from the
dead. And so his faith was tested and
he was proved to be trusting wholly and completely in the
word of God. And he passed, we can say he
passed the test. He obeyed God, he did what God
wanted him to do and the Lord stopped him. The trial of your
faith is being more precious than gold that perishes. We read in Ephesians, that it
is the shield of faith. And so faith, as I said at the
beginning, is the focal point of the attack. Satan, we are
told, has fiery darts to resist those fiery darts. We use the
shield of faith. And faith is that very link which
unites us to the Lord Jesus Christ. And when we enter into a trial,
that laying hold of Christ is the object of the attack. Because
you can let go and you can walk away. But true faith sustains the attack. True faith uses the shield of
faith to resist what is being opposed or thrown at us. Job's wife said to him, if you
want to get out of this Job, if you want to get out of this
trial, curse God and die. throw in the towel, give up,
walk away and die. And so Job's faith was under
attack and his wife said to him just cut it and go and carry
on your life. But Job said no I can't, I cannot
give up on God. I cannot let go of God he has
given and he has taken away and so he used the shield of faith
he used the arm of faith to continue laying hold of Christ or God and so faith is always the point of attack
and persecution We just need to deny Christ and walk away. Cut the faith and walk away. The trial of your faith is much
more precious than gold. So the testing of our faith is
being compared to that of the testing of gold. gold we know
is placed into the fire. As it's dug out of the ground
it's placed into the fire to be purified and as it is heated
up that dross comes to the surface and is scraped off and our faith is put into the
fire, it is tested not to destroy it, but to purify it. The unbeliever's faith, the wolf's
faith, the false professor's faith is destroyed in the fire
and they cut it and they go. But the true believer's faith
who possesses living faith, their faith is strengthened and purified
in the fire. gold when it is put into the
fire it loses some of its weight because the dross is taken out.
If you have a ring that is 14 carats gold and you take it to
the goldsmith and you say you want it melted down and purified
you won't get the same weight out of it but you might be able
to shape it into something else. the Christian when the Christian
is put into the fire they don't come out less, they come out
stronger, they come out more purified and more suitable for
the master's service and so it is being compared to the trial
of your faith is more precious than gold because gold when it
goes into the fire loses something But true faith, when it goes
into the fire, doesn't lose anything. It is strengthened and purified. True faith is not destroyed by
the fire, but it is strengthened in the fire. Job, at the end
of his life, was more blessed than when he was at the beginning. And the believer, when they have
gone into the fire, They come out of it in a better state,
walking closer to the Lord than when they went in. And there is always a reason why
God puts us into the fire. The early church were placed
into the fires of persecution and it immediately stopped those
false or expose those false converts from being amongst the number. They thought well if I become
a Christian then I'm likely to be persecuted. But true faith
lays hold harder of Christ in persecution, in trial and is not knocked down or not separated
or does not buckle under that weight and so there's always
a reason why God puts us into the fire. He tests us to expose the weaknesses
in our lives. as that weight is laid upon the
bridge, those engineers, they are looking, looking for signs
of cracks, looking for signs of movement. And so when God
loads us, we are to look for signs of cracks in our lives,
to find out where we are weak, where we are strong. as the goldsmith puts the gold
into the fire he's doing it for a purpose for a reason to purify
it and to bring it through the fire and to bring it out the
other side in a better place than when it went in and often
we are placed into the fire because we have drifted off we've become
dull and cold And so God brings us into the fire of persecution
and trouble, not to drive us away from him, but to drive us
to him, to make us shine more brightly as we walk with him
more closer. And if our trials have a tendency
of driving us away from God, then we have a problem. The intention
of trials is to draw us closer, to make us pray, to make us walk
nearer the Lord and not to drive us away from him. You've seen on the downs those
trees that are bent over by constant wind and storms. And so the Christian,
as he passes through those winds and storms of life, is bent over,
shaped by them, affected by them. And it's seen. As gold is put
into the fire, when it's brought out, it's seen that it's more
pure, it shines more brightly. When the trees have gone through
the storms, it is seen that this one has been through a storm.
It's bent, it's shaped. Jesus tells us here that that
bending and that shaping and that those storms and that fire
is of far more value than gold because gold perishes it loses
something but true faith does not lose anything when it is
placed into the fire but it grows and it holds on more tighter and it's being made ready for
that final, final day. Though it be tried with fire,
it might be found unto the praise and honour and glory at the appearing
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the trial of our faith
here in this life is of a great benefit to the believer because
it proves the reality of our faith. It is better that we are
exposed, that God shows us that we are a fake now. That we can
be enabled to believe upon Christ now and then not to wait until
the end of time at that final test. You see if trials are meant to
expose something in us then it's better that they are exposed
now. today. You think of those who will come
to the end of time and Jesus will say depart from me for I
never knew you, you workers of iniquity. Imagine hearing that
sound in those words in your ears and then you try and say
well I've done this Lord, I've done this, I went to chapel,
I was baptized, I thought I was a Christian. but it's too late. Trials are meant to strengthen us and expose what
is really going on within our hearts and if we see when we
pass through a trial that we're distancing ourselves from God We need to realise that there's
something wrong. Maybe we were deceived but God
has shown us the reality of our faith that it was a false gold,
that it was dross. We need to come again to him.
in true and living faith, in repentance and faith and lay hold of Christ by true
faith and believe in him and be saved that when it comes to
the final test you'd be ready. It's better to
go into the fire now and to go into the eternal fires forever. Depart from me, for I never knew
you. The trial of your faith, being
much more precious than gold, that perishes, though it be tried
with fire, might be found unto the praise and honour and glory
at the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. That will be the
ultimate revelation of the genuineness of our faith when Christ comes. and he calls us to himself or
he pushes us away from himself. That the trial of your faith
is much more precious than gold. Gold perishes but faith will
continue, that living faith will continue until Christ comes again. May the Lord add his blessing.
Amen. Our closing hymn is hymn number
1013. There is a family on earth whose father fills a throne,
but though a seed of heavenly birth to men they're little known.
Hymn number 1013 to the tune 163. the public eye, they filled the
public store, told them that Venice takes their eye, and held
them base here. Is the King who reigns above,
and claims them for His own? The favoured object of His love,
and gives them to ? These things the Satan knows
? ? Were they another love preferred ? ? Rejected be the thought ?
? Were they their tender heaven ? Dear Lord, we pray that we may be granted that
evidence that our faith is true and living faith. We pray that
as we are placed into the fires of testing that we may be proved
that it is a genuine love to the Lord Jesus Christ. We ask
that thou be with us now as we go from this place to be with
us as we meet together this afternoon and do bless us as we sit around
thy table. Do, Lord, use it as a means of
grace and an increase of our faith. We ask that thou dismiss
us then with thy blessing and may the grace of the Lord Jesus
Christ and the love of God the Father, with the fellowship and
the communion of the Holy Spirit, rest and abide with us each now
and forevermore. Amen.