1 Peter 1. And I want to read verses 8 and 9. Whom having not seen ye love,
in whom though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice
with joy unspeakable and full of glory. receiving the end of
your faith, even the salvation of your soul. When Peter addressed his letter
to the scattered strangers of this opening few verses of this
book, He called them the elect according to the foreknowledge
of God. The elect according to the foreknowledge
of God. It's a weighty phrase. It is
a phrase that is full of meaning and significance. We have spoken
before of the importance of noting and recognising the identity
of the recipients of the words of Scripture. And here we find
that Peter is addressing this letter to the elect according
to the foreknowledge of God. By this phrase the apostle fixes
a beginning to the grace of God. And he shows us that God's grace
flows from his everlasting love towards us. He shows us also
by that phrase, that title, that God distinguishes and God's
grace distinguishes between men, that some are chosen to life
and others are not. And he shows us by this phrase
that our God and his grace powerfully fulfills and accomplishes the
sovereign will. Now, I don't want these statements
to be mere words to you. I don't want them to seem like
jargon or to appear as if it's some secret language that only
the initiated can understand, a code that only a few insiders
might know what it means. Because Peter wrote these words
to common people. He wrote these words to people
just like you and just like me. People, men and women, with problems. Men and women who had troubles
and who daily faced trials in their lives. Now we've realised in recent
weeks, I trust, that Peter was writing these things to encourage
his audience, to encourage those that were the elect, to encourage
those who had been scattered. He calls them strangers scattered. And Peter was writing to encourage
these pilgrims, these folk that had had to leave their homes
and leave perhaps their wealth and their well-being and all
of the things that had once been valuable to them, and break out
and reach out and to go to the furthest parts of the land. because of the trials and because
of the persecution that they were facing. And so he writes to encourage
the Lord's people, to reassure them and to speak to them about
God's love, to remind them of the source of blessedness. And these statements that we
have made with respect to the grace of God, with respect to
the purpose of God, with respect to the gospel of God and the
accomplishments of God in the great work of salvation are the
very statements that Peter uses to comfort and encourage the
Lord's people. Now, I want to draw your attention
to that because that's all we have. It's all we have. And I can come to you and I can
empathise to an extent with the troubles that you're facing and
the trials that you've got. And I can listen to your life
story and we can share together and we can get together and we
can endeavour to sympathise and empathise. But at the end of the day, all
we have is the grace of God. All we have is the goodness of
God and all we have is the love of God. Our friends this morning
are dealing with one of the harshest realities that people will ever
have to face in their lives. And what can we say? What can
we say? What words can we use to comfort
them? What can we say about a lost
son? What can we say about a broken
relationship? What can we say about the feeling
of absolute inability and powerlessness? We sometimes like to say to people
in difficult circumstances, if there's anything that I can do
to help you, let me know. And we mean it. We mean it. Sure,
we do. We're trying our best. But the reality is that there's
nothing we can do. It takes the Lord. It takes the
Lord to make the changes. It takes the gospel. It takes
the grace of God entering into our lives. It takes an understanding
of the ways of God, the providences of God, the person of God, the
glory of God, the fact that he is sovereignly in control of
every eventuality in this world, and he calls upon us to humbly
stand before him and watch the unfolding of his will. But he
tells us in the gospel, that he loves us. He tells us in the
gospel that he desires to do us good. He tells us in the gospel
that he has made a way of salvation, that he has opened a way of access,
that he has recovered us from that separation and that lostness
of which we are part in our humanity and in our nature. And he gives
us hope. that these things, these things
which we are feeling, these things which we are encountering, these
things that we are enduring, these hardships, these trials,
these difficulties, they have a purpose and they have an end
and that it will be good. So the gospel is all we have.
And that's what Peter gave to these pilgrims. That's what Peter
gave to this band of scattered strangers. He nails down the
origin and the source of all goodness and all grace in our
lives. And it's right and appropriate
that we remember that grace and goodness does not originate in
ourselves. It does not come to us because
of the things that we do or the things that we say or from anything
in us. The grace of God, the goodness
of God is free and it is unconditional and it is bestowed out of His
magnanimity and His love. The Father's love. Peter tells
us this in the opening verses. He speaks about the Father's
love in his foreknowledge of a people that he has chosen to
everlasting life. He speaks about the Holy Spirit
setting that people apart, distinguishing that people from amongst the
men and women of this world and setting them apart, as it were,
enclosing them, protecting them, putting them, if you like, behind
a barrier. These are mine. And he tells
us about the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. and how all of
these, the love of the Father, the sanctification of the Spirit,
and the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ combine together to identify,
to secure, and to deliver the elect of God from all their enemies
and all their troubles. And yet, We have seen too in
this passage that Peter is not ignorant of the sufferings of
the Lord's people. So while he takes them to the
only source of their true comfort, he is able to empathise with
them also as one who knows what they are enduring. He knows that
the saints of God, he knows that the loved of God, he knows that
the redeemed of blood, nevertheless, are tried and tested in this
world. And within a few sentences, as
it were, of Peter talking about these glorious truths in the
introduction of this letter, he is then talking about heaviness. He speaks of a heaviness which
comes upon the people of God. Look at verse six of 1 Peter
1. He says, Wherein ye greatly rejoice,
though now for a season, if need be ye are in heaviness through
manifold temptations. What does Peter mean by that
word heaviness? Well, it's, I guess, fairly straightforward. He's talking about sadness. He's
talking about depression. He's talking about grieving.
He's talking about sorrow. And he's talking about the fact
that the people of God are no strangers to these feelings. He is talking about the fact
that despite being eternally loved by God, being set apart
by God the Holy Spirit, being the object of the redemptive
work of Jesus Christ upon the cross, yet the Lord's people
know what it is to suffer in this world and to experience
and endure heaviness in their hearts, in their souls, in their
minds, and in their bodies. Maybe it is not only to experience
these things, but heaviness means to be weighed down by them, to
be brought low by them, to get to that place where first you
stumble, and then you trip, and then you fall. and then you can't
get back up. To be in such a place of heaviness
that you don't know what to do and you don't know where to go.
To be weighed down with a burden of sadness and grief and sorrow
and depression and to feel yourself crushed underneath it. Have you ever felt crushed? Do you know that it sometimes
doesn't take much to crush a person? I wanted to read that passage
from Luke chapter 22 to some of the younger members of our
congregation because I also wanted to draw attention to the fact
that Peter was crushed in that moment by a look. A look was all it took. A look. We're told that the Lord Jesus
Christ turned and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the
word of the Lord, how he had said unto him before the cock
crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And Peter went out and wept bitterly. It's the man who's writing about
heaviness that went out and wept bitterly. It's the man who's
writing to the people of God, the scattered strangers. who
knows what it is to taste the bitterness of a Luke that went
to his very heart, that went to his very core, and that broke
him and crushed him. And I am so grateful for the
testimony of Peter in the Word of God. I am so grateful that
the Lord gave us this man, that the Lord chose him to be one
of his disciples and one of his apostles. Because I don't know
that there are many better examples in the whole of scripture of
a man who was so proud and yet so much humbled. A man who was
given such a prominence of leadership and yet made such straightforward,
transparent mistakes, who spoke when he should have been silent, and yet was granted forgiveness
by the Lord and reinstated to that place of leadership amongst
that band and had the very flock of God committed into his care
and keeping. There are lots of lessons to
be had from the life of Peter. You can be crushed by a look. And you can be crushed by a word,
just a word. In James chapter three, verse
eight, we read, the tongue can no man tame. It is an unruly
evil full of deadly poison. The tongue, full of deadly poison. If you can hurt someone with
a look, you can hurt someone with a word. We used to say, a little chorus,
mind your lips, mind your lips, what you say. There's a saviour
up above, looking down in tender love. Mind your lips, mind your
lips, what you say. And I take this to myself, and
I trust that you will take it to yourself. We've realised perhaps
again afresh, not because we didn't know, but because the
stark realities of the facts of our life and our day have
been confronted to us once again with the losses that have been
felt in a family that is close to us here in the church of just
how serious this life is. We need to be kind to one another. We need to be gentle with one
another. We need to be considerate in
the way we deal with one another, because we never know when that
last opportunity will have been given to us and lost. And our prayers go out to those
who have lost much. And if you can be crushed with
a look and you can be crushed with a word, you can be crushed
with an action and you can be crushed with a loss. And so we
look to these people, these people who are in heaviness, these people
who are weighed down with a burden. And it seems as if Peter is saying
to these people that as they view their temptations, there's
many of them It seems as if they're piling up these trials, these
difficulties. They're piling up in the consciousness
of these scattered strangers. And under the heaviness of this
manifold temptations, there is a tax which come against
the elect of God. Now these temptations, these
trials, I grant you, are often physical. They're often what
we see and what we say and what we do and what we encounter and
what we experience and what is done to us in this world. But what makes every trial that
comes against the people of God most significant is that it has
a spiritual dimension. Yes, we take the buffeting. Yes,
we take the blows. Yes, we encounter the hardship. But these things have a spiritual
effect upon those who are spiritually alive. And while the majority
of people that we know might be spiritually dead and can shrug
these things off and say, well, you know, I can handle it. I'm tough. The Lord's people
find that they can get bruised in their souls and they can be
weary in their spirits and they can be under great heaviness
when it comes to these spiritual aspects. When we think about what we experience
in this world and what the Lord calls us to, we spent a little
bit of time thinking about this on an earlier occasion, but we
are reminded that the flesh profiteth nothing. We are reminded that
this world will pass away, that the relationships of this world
will pass away, that the concerns that we have in this world will
pass away. and that all of the deeds that
are done will all find a conclusion. But that which will remain is
that which is spiritual. That which will endure is that
which is eternal. That to do with the Spirit, that
which is to do with faith. And it's our faith I think that
Peter has in view here also. It is the recognition that upon
the people of God there is a heaviness lies upon our faith, a weariness
that enters into our heart and a trial that is part of our understanding
our relationship with God. And Peter says in his description
of these things, he says that there is a need for the people
of God to experience these things. He says, wherein ye greatly rejoice,
that's talking about the things that he has previously been speaking
about, though now for a season, if need be, if need be. Now, what is he saying here? He is saying that these heavinesses
need to come into our lives. Now, we know that to be true
because we believe that God is in control. And therefore, when
we do experience the hardships, we tell ourselves, rightly so,
and we encourage and comfort ourselves with the fact that
God is in control of this. He's doing it for a reason. This
has been brought into my life. This has been brought into my
experience for a reason. But here's what it is. It's to
try your faith. It's to try your faith. There is always a danger of being
superficial when we talk about this heaviness, when we talk
about these burdens, the sorrow that we have. But I'm only saying
what Peter is here telling us. It needs to be like this. It
needs to be like this. And I don't know what some of
you older folk will experience as far as your health is concerned. or the way in which your life
will come to its conclusion, or the trials that you might
have to have with respect to your children or your grandchildren. And I don't know what's going
to happen with you youngsters. I don't envy you. And I know that in people's lives,
there are pressures, pressures of work, pressures of finance,
pressures of health, pressures of relationships, and they come
into our lives. And we could say they're no different
from everybody else, but oh, they are. Because they need to
be in our lives in order to stretch our faith, to exercise our faith. The Lord could take us into glory
immediately. The Lord could save us and translate
us into his presence without another shed tear in this world. But that's not how he does it. There is a blessedness for his
people that will flow to us only through the heaviness. There
is a peace and a calmness and a reliance upon the Lord which
will be tasted only through the bitterness of the sorrow. A blessing that will do us good
in time and in eternity. There will be grace for the trial. There will be comfort in the
bitterness. There will be mercy in the temptation. And I tell you this on the authority
of the word of God, that you will not be tried beyond that
which your faith can bear. 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse
13 says, there hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common
to man. But God is faithful, who will
not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will
with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may
be able to bear it. Temptations come in many different
forms. Some are external and some are
internal. As I've said, it might be to
do with our loved ones or our health or our employment, our
finances. It might even be to do with our
doctrine and our fellowship here in the church. The devil will
look for every and any opportunity to afflict and affect the church
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it might even be so as to
make us doubt the very faith that the Lord is labouring and
working to exercise and strengthen. The Word of God says that if
it were possible even to deceive the elect. But our faith is in
the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our precious possession. And our faith cannot be lost. It will be stretched, it will
be beaten, it will be battered, but it cannot be lost. Sometimes it might appear that
it's even at breaking point. I want to say one more thing
on this matter. Peter talks about manifold temptations. manifold temptations and he seems
to be speaking about the gathering up of all of these trials such
that the weightiness and the heaviness is about to crush that
little bit of faith, that little faith that we might think it's
almost going to be extinguished, it's almost going to be broken. The Lord says that it never will
be. He'll not crush that flax. He'll not bruise that flax to
the point where it is completely extinguished. Peter uses the
word manifold twice. He uses it once here with respect
to the manifold temptations that we bear. And I think the fact
that he only uses it twice allows us to make a contrast in the
ways that he uses it. In 1 Peter 4, verse 10, he says
this, that we are stewards of the manifold grace of God. So at the very time that he's
talking about manifold temptations that will bear heavy upon us
and crush us, he speaks about the manifold grace of God towards
us. sufficient grace even for the
heaviness of sorrow and the trial of our precious faith. There's
a Baptist writer about 150 years ago I think, a man called William
Young Fullerton, He was from Northern Ireland, he was born
in Belfast and he became a friend of Charles Haddon Spurgeon and
he wrote a number of hymns. He was an evangelist and he was
a hymn writer. One of the hymns that he wrote
was this and I repeat one verse, I think it's a three verse hymn.
Here's the second verse, he said, I cannot tell how silently he
suffered. He's speaking about the Lord
Jesus. I cannot tell how silently he suffered, as with his peace
he graced this veil of tears. Or how his heart upon the cross
was broken, the crown of pain to three and thirty years. But this I know, He heals the
brokenhearted and stays our sin and calms our lurking fear and
lifts the burden from the heavy laden. For yet the saviour, saviour
of the world is here. And so it is that is to turn
our thoughts from our hardships that Peter directs us to think
upon the grace and the blessedness that we possess in our God. Peter has spoken about the sorrow
and the heaviness of our life's experience and how it enters
into our lives but he doesn't leave us there. He carries us
forward. He takes us on another step and
he shows us that there is peace and there is comfort and there
is mercy to be found in God. I say to Peter again, thank you,
faithful servant, for pointing us to the Master and showing
us the Lord. Peter speaks of the appearing
of Jesus Christ. He says that Jesus Christ is
going to appear again, and he's going to appear soon. And he
says in verse seven, the trial of your faith, which is much
more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried
with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at
the appearing of Jesus Christ. Oh, let us see Jesus. Give us a vision, give us a view,
give us a glimpse of the Lord Jesus Christ, because therein
is our strength and our help and our uplifting to be discovered. Peter speaks of the appearing
of Christ and he says, at that appearing, there will be praise
and honour and glory bestowed upon each suffering saint. There's help for today and there's
promise for tomorrow. There is praise, praise to us. We praise God and rightly so. Do you know there will come a
time when God praises us? There will be praise and honour
and glory bestowed upon those whose faith has been tried almost
to breaking point. almost to extinction, and yet,
and yet, they will be overcomers. Each suffering saint and all
of that elect people to whom Peter is writing, there will
come a time when the Lord Jesus Christ himself will whisper in
our ear, well done. Well done, good and faithful
servant. Thou hast been faithful over
a few things. I will make thee ruler over many
things. Enter thou into the joy of thy
Lord. And Peter speaks of faith that
is found unto praise. Faith that is found unto praise. You know what that suggests to
me? that somebody had to go looking
for it. Do you hear me? Some of you think, I don't have
faith. Some of you think your faith
is so small that it's non-existent. Some of you struggle with assurance
and confidence in the Lord. There will come a time when the
faith of the Lord's elect has to be searched for and it will
be found with praise. Why is that? Because we've kept
it clean and polished it nicely and got it set up in a mantelpiece
or in a nice glass cabinet somewhere? No, no. That faith, if it's real
faith, will have been kicked around. It will have been sat
upon. It will have been dropped from
a great height. It will have been bruised and
crushed and battered. And somebody will say it's gone. And someone else will say, no,
I'm going to find that faith to my praise. And so it will
be. It will continue and it will
live. In the midst of our trials, in
spite of our sorrows, in spite of those manifold temptations,
faith persists and faith prospers. It ought to be dead. It was crushed
and broken. It was beaten and battered. It
was stoned and left for dead, like Paul at Lystra when they dragged him out and
they threw him in the street and they said, it's done with,
it's over. But after all, it shall be revealed
in all of its glory and in all of its majesty and in all of
its purity, the faith of Jesus Christ implanted in the soul
of his elect people. It will have a lively presence
in glory for all eternity, and it will bear witness to the grace
of God and the testimony to the mercy of Him who loves us and
preserves us through all our trials. And Peter speaks of blessed
evidences, evidences of God's faithfulness to us, He speaks
of present tense experiences to the goodness of God. He says,
you love the Lord Jesus Christ. You love him. Not we should love
him, not we will love him more, but we love him. He says, whom
having not seen, ye love. Despite your manifold temptations,
despite the beating of your faith, despite the trials of this world,
you love the Lord. Peter is testifying to this fact. We often speak of Christ loving
us, and yet divine grace designs it so. that we return that love
to him. This is a relationship that we
are in. We spoke recently about Song of Solomon and how there
the king and his bride speak together of their mutual love
and affection. We love him because he first
loved us, certainly, but we love him nonetheless. And what are
the marks of this love towards God? It's a meagre love, certainly,
but it is real. What is the mark of this love? We don't rail against Him when
harsh things happen to us. We don't question Him when we
feel these challenges to our faith. We receive his providences
because we know that even in the midst of our hardship, he
loves us and we love him. Can we explain his ways of doing
things? No. No, we can't. But we humble ourself under the
wisdom of those ways. We acknowledge that he is too
wise to err, and too good to be unkind, and that his ways
are always right. We love the Lord Jesus Christ.
And Peter says, you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. You believe
in him. You do. Though we see him not
yet believing. And the Lord's people take their
Lord and Saviour at his word. We trust Him. We believe the
promises that He has given to us, and we respect the warnings
that He has set before us. And when we struggle, we declare
with Peter, where else can we go? You have the words of eternal
life. Where else can we go? We believe
Him. We love Him, and we believe Him. and we rejoice in him. We rejoice amid the tears, whom
having not seen ye love, in whom, though now ye see him not yet
believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Here's a strange thing, that
the people of God delight to be under the cross that we are
called to bear. Despite the weight of our troubles,
we have a joy that is unspeakable. We have a deep spiritual contentment
and happiness that often cannot be expressed, uttered, or described
but witnesses nevertheless to our spirit and to our soul that
all is well. It is well with my soul. It is
well with my soul. We see that God is in control.
We see that the Lord Jesus Christ shall have the glory. We see
that he will be magnified and uplifted in all of these things. And it's more than contentment
that we have, it is joy to know our Lord and joy to trust in
Him. It is joy in the midst of the
pain and it is joy to be counted worthy to serve Him, to worship
Him and to follow Him. John 16, 22 says, ye now therefore
have sorrow but I will see you again and your heart shall rejoice
and your joy no man taketh from you. And he tells his disciples,
rejoice because your names are written in heaven. Okay, these
four present blessings that we've been thinking about The fact
that we love the Lord is a blessing that Christ grants us. The fact
that we believe in the Lord is a blessing Christ grants us in
this tearful world that we often have to travel through as pilgrims. The fact that we rejoice amid
those tears is something that Christ grants us. And the last
one is this, we receive. We love, we believe, we rejoice,
we receive. Take those this week out into
the world with you. These are the four present blessings
that Peter grants to us in these passages. We love him, we believe
in him, we rejoice in him and we receive of him. What do we
receive? We receive a foretaste of heaven
here upon earth. We receive a present confirmation
of our faith. We receive the testimony of the
Lord's faithfulness to us day by day. The fact that we do endure
through these trials is a blessing from on high. It is a witness
of the glory that awaits us and an assurance that no matter what
befalls in this life, that Paul's testimony will be our testimony
also. when he declares, I reckon that
the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared
with the glory which shall be revealed in us. Brothers and sisters, we are
an enigma to this world. We're a puzzle. They don't understand
us. They can't understand us. They view us with a mix of pity,
and contempt, and sometimes that turns to hatred, and sometimes
it's mockery, and sometimes it's complete indifference. But soon,
very soon, we shall enter into glory, and we shall see what
this has all been about. We shall see what this has all
been about. Soon we shall know why it was
all necessary and why it had to be just exactly like this. Paul says to Timothy, to Timothy
4 verse 8, henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness,
which the Lord the righteous judge shall give me at that day,
and not to me only, but to all them also that love his appearing. May the Lord give us love for
his appearing, more than we love the things of this world, no
matter how dear they might be to us. And may he give us sufficient
grace when he comes and calls to win these things of the world
from our grip and from our grasp. Amen.