Chapter one. And then bow with me for a moment of prayer before we read it. Father, thank you for this last few minutes. May it remind us of the joy of the corporate gathering of your church. We're thankful for the work that you've been doing in our hearts and minds already. and continue to do that work, Holy Spirit, as we come now to the Word of God. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart and our hearts be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, our Rock and Redeemer. In His name we pray, Amen. Many passages of Scripture, I'm sure, are worthy of memorization. Think of Romans 8. Think of Ephesians 2. Think of Psalm 23. I suppose we could go on forever, but please put 1 Peter 1 verses 3-12 right up on the top of the list. For in this passage, we get really a full-orbed view of our great salvation. In fact, the word salvation is found in v. 5, v. 9, and v. 10 and really ties together the thought from v. 3-12. Remember, Peter is all about encouraging suffering believers, encouraging and strengthening these chosen exiles who are scattered north in Asia Minor at the edges of the Roman Empire. are really people and Christians that are suffering and Christians that are discouraged. And he encourages them, not by starting with suffering in verse 1. In fact, we haven't even got to suffering yet. We will today, but he hasn't got there yet. He starts by focusing on salvation and our great God. Salvation from sin and exalting God. Remember, He gives reasons for praise for our future reward. In verses 3-5, the living hope of inheritance that is stored up and reserved in heaven for us. He talks about, in verses 10 through 12, he's going to talk about more encouragement for joy and praise as we consider our great salvation's past glories, so our future hope, and then next time, next week, we'll go into the past glories of our great salvation, and we'll simply rejoice and be astounded at our privileged position on this side of the cross by which we take great encouragement in our suffering. But in the middle between the future and the past is where the rubber meets the road and it's the present. It's today. It's right now. It's this morning when we got up. It's Monday morning when we get up for work. The problem is for some of us, for many of us, it's one thing to to look at our future hope and to glory in the past glories of the cross and the Old Testament and realize that we're so privileged, but we're not able to make that connection to the present, we could still wonder, are we really gonna make it home to heaven safely? We could feel like the trials and sufferings of this life will simply overwhelm us and cause us to be undone. And so Peter begins to address our present situation and the present situation of his readers in suffering, taking that up really in verse 5. Our real life, our grinding situation as we travel along the difficult road to heaven. So look at your text in verse 5, where he makes this shift to the present. So he's describing elect exiles in verse 5, who are protected. You'll make it home. He says, you are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. And we can say amen to that, and we spent a whole sermon on that. We'll be safe because God is protecting us right now by His omnipotent power. but we are protected through faith. God protects his children on the dangerous road home to heaven by sustaining their faith. He protects us on this dangerous road to heaven by sustaining our faith. And so our faith has been mentioned in verse 5, and now our present journey of faith becomes Peter's theme. And faith comes front and center. I want you to look for the word faith as I read our passage. Follow along looking at verse 6. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith being more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And though you have not seen Him, you love Him. And though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. Faith is mentioned explicitly four times here, and as I've reflected on it, at least implicitly four other times. It is the theme of this passage, the now walk of faith. But what Peter is doing here is he's helping us to go beyond, okay, thank you for telling me that I'm protected through faith. That was helpful, but he builds on this. And he says now, okay, what does it look like right now when God is protecting you by His power by sustaining your faith? What are the characteristics of a faith that God is sustaining until the end? We say it another way, when God is sustaining your faith, During your hard road to heaven, your faith will be marked by four elements. This is what it will look like. Sustained faith. Looks like certain things. Number one, faith endures trials. Faith, sustained faith, endures trials. Look at verse 5. Again, who are protected by the power of God through faith, for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice. Notice that joy is in verse 6 and in verse 9. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials. And so believers are protected by the power of God through faith. Yes. God protects us from the mortal enemy called unbelief. by sustaining our faith. But now Peter goes on to tell us that God is sustaining faith, which is a great word it turns out. He's sustaining our faith through the crucible of trials. And so saving faith endures trials because our omnipotent God sustains this faith through trials. So Peter now finally, perhaps for some of the readers, finally begins to address their state of suffering. And he talks about these trials. And Peter opens their eyes and our eyes to, I think they're encouraging. to five encouraging realities about these trials. Sustaining faith endures these trials, but he's going to teach us five things about these trials that are encouraging, I think. First, notice their variety. Various trials, the text says. Trials and hardships, brothers and sisters, come in various shapes and sizes and various forms. And so whatever trial you are facing today, either from within or from without, is covered by this passage. That's encouraging. That's very encouraging. Peter's going to get more specific about trials as the book goes on, but rest assured that your trial that you are facing today, I look around, I know many of your trials that you're going through. Everyone in here fits this bill. Everyone. And rest assured that your trial is under this passage. Tons of variety in the trials in the book of 1 Peter. Some were lacking provision and protection. Some were feeling like outcasts. Some were recipients of verbal and physical persecution because of the Word. Some were suffering because their loved ones were hurting and in pain. Some were assaulted by the prowling attacks of Satan and very dark times in their life and their thought about giving up. All were suffering from the struggle with indwelling sin that haunted them night and day and with the temptations of going back to the former way of life. Brothers and sisters, I want you to take a moment, just take five seconds right now, and make this real to you. Think of the trial that is most on your mind this past week. Do you have it? Okay, you got it? This passage is for you. Various trials. Hold that thought, hold that trial, and apply this all the way through. The second encouraging facet about trials, notice their difficulty. You say encouraging. Their difficulty. You have been distressed. I'm so thankful for that word distressed. You have been distressed by various trials. Brothers and sisters, your trial that you just thought of is not easy. The text tells me that. They are painful. You are distressed. The word for distress here is deep grief and pain. It's the kind of mourning over the death of a loved one. It's mental anguish. It's used to describe, yes, the death of loved ones in the New Testament. It is the word used. As our Lord sweat great drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. Don't be thinking that your trials are no big deal. The text says you're distressed. There will be tears. There will be pain. Mark it well. It is not a sin to be grieving under the trial that you're under. It's not a sin to be sad. It's not a sin to shed tears. It's not a sin to lie flat on the floor, speechless and undone before God and your spouse or your kids. Yes, there's joy. I know. Verse 9, verse 6. There's joy in this passage, but there is grieving too. The Christian life is that. It's mournful joy. Paul felt the same way. Remember 2 Corinthians 6.10, he says, he lives as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. Now, this is a really important point because in our culture in Minnesota, we think being stoic and putting up a brave front is somehow godly. Not in certain contexts, perhaps it is, but I'm telling you that it misses the point that the Bible says that our trials are grievous and distressing and they ought to cause us to weep. And to plaster some sort of fake smile in front of our fellow brothers and sisters in the corporate gathering of the fellowship and during grace groups or wherever it is, is just plain silly. It's not biblical. In fact, to do that is to deny the wonder of the Christian life, the grieving and hope. It's to deny the glory of the Psalms. Men who were in pain but refused to abandon the hope of the Gospel in the midst of their tears and their mournful prayers, their real prayers. Think of your life like a little tree whipped around by a tornado. The roots will hold. God will keep you to the end. Let's not deny that that tornado does some pretty good damage. My good friend, Pastor Fred Zaspel, he's an associate pastor in Pennsylvania currently. His daughter, Gina, suffered with the neurological ravages of Lyme's disease for over a dozen years. Years of sleeplessness. Constant nausea. Passing out with the resulting concussions that come with that. Severe and unrelenting headache pain. Haunting hallucinations and confusion and blood clots and infections. It was awful. And Pastor Fred writes this, quotes, And as we watched her suffer, how we prayed, often in despair, that God would deliver her from it all." And then three years ago, God did. Miraculously, it would seem, God delivered her. And I mean, it was laughter and rejoicing and normalcy for Fred and his family and for Gina. It was incredible. And as quickly as it went away, it came back. It came back with a sort of vengeance that you cannot put in words. Suffering became unspeakable, overwhelming for Gina, and it was over. And Gina was gone at age 29. Grieved. by various trials. Gut-wrenching pain. That's what the Bible says about your trial. Third, their brevity. In this you greatly rejoice even though now for a little while. Now, praise the Lord that by God's design these distressing trials are brief. Problem? Brief is relative. when it comes to New Testament writers. Am I right? Let me tell you what I mean by that. One pastor says, if you say, wow, he can hold his breath a long time, you mean two or three minutes. If someone says, that's pretty long for breath holding, but if you say he's been a pastor of the church for a long time, perhaps you mean 15 or 20 years. So it is with our trials. Sometimes they last two or three days. Sometimes you're like Joni Eareckson Tada and they start when you're a teenager and they don't let up until the day you see the Lord. But what Peter is saying that's encouraging here is that compared to eternity, compared to the eternal, imperishable, undefiled, unfading crown of glory. Compared to the eternal weight of glory, our trials are for a little time. James says our lives are a vapor and then vanish away. And I will just tell you this great encouragement. I don't know what you're going through, but I can promise you Your trial will end if you are a believer in Jesus Christ. It will end. It will be over. I wasn't going to use this illustration, but I'm going to. I'll make it quick. A young pastor, very, very discouraged in ministry, named Pastor Cable, George Cable, was Pastor Don's and Naomi's pastor probably for decades, but we can talk about that later. He, in the beginning of his ministry, went to old-season pastor. Just ready to give up in ministry. Ready to call it in. Can't do it anymore. You know what he said? He's looking for some great wisdom, maybe some verses to memorize. He said, don't worry, George. You'll soon be dead. Now, listen for a little while. By the way, that was very encouraging to Pastor George. I can make it. I'm protected by the power of God through faith until that last day when I see Him. It's for a little while, but a little while is relative. Their brevity. Fourth, their necessity. God's plan for our trials. This is great because Our trials are necessary. The text says, even now, for a little while, if necessary. Don't you love that? You can rest assured that there's no trial or suffering that has come into your path as a believer that is not necessary. That is somehow random. That is somehow not part of God's plan. It's a wonderful little word. In fact, necessary there is the word in Greek that means of divine necessity. Make it even stronger. He's saying that, look, none of these hard things are going to come to you unless it's of divine necessity. Part of God's design. That's why 1 Peter 4.19 says, 1 Peter 4.19, therefore, those also who suffer according to the will of God. Therefore, those also who suffer, watch this, according to the will of God. And so, our trials, our sufferings are part of God's will. They're a divine necessity. Don't get me wrong, evil men, Satan, And the ravages of sin on our bodies inflict the pain in our lives. God does not delight in pain. He does not approve of sinning or the devil's attacks. He doesn't. But, as one has said, He does will that these things be in the sense that He could prevent any of those things, but sometimes does not, but rather guides them because of higher designs than the destructiveness of sin, or the deceitfulness of Satan, or the painfulness of suffering. Designs for our good. You say, what possibly could come from my trial and suffering that I just listed off? Well, that leads us to the next truth, the fifth truth, their design. Their design. What is God's good design? What's the purpose of trials? Well, I'm sure if we did a study of God's Word, we could find a number of purposes for trials, but our text gives us one, a powerful one. Let's look at it in verse 6. Let's read the text, and I think we can rejoice in God's design in our distress. Look at verse 6. And this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Verse 7, notice the so that, or in order that. The design of our trials is this, Peter says, our distresses refine our faith the way fire refines gold. so that when Christ comes back to earth, proven, tested, genuine faith will be found, resulting in praise, glory, and honor. Remember, God is protecting us by His power by sustaining our faith. The trials are the crucible in which the kind of faith that lasts is revealed. Let's think a little more about the design here, this last heading. I didn't give you enough room to write this heading, so find a place. I'm going to make three observations about the design of trials here in connection to faith. First, trials are an opportunity to produce faith. Trials are an opportunity to produce faith. Faith is trusting in the person of Christ, it's resting in His promises, it's depending on Jesus. And trials are an opportunity to believe in Jesus again. That He is enough, that His promises are sure, that they're valid, that you can rest your life upon them. Trials are some of the only things in this life that will drive us to faith, that will produce in us a clinging to Jesus Christ. Look, I know about self-sufficiency. When we're self-sufficient, when we think we've got it all figured out, when we've got our budget set and our life planned, when we see everything laid out before us, when we have manipulated the details of our life to reduce as much suffering and lack of comfort as possible, when we've done all that, we have no need to rest in Jesus Christ or His promises. None. We have no need for faith. Trials remove self-sufficiency and cast us as helpless individuals, helpless saints, into the lap of our Lord Jesus Christ. Trials are an opportunity for faith, to produce faith. Another observation, trials are an opportunity to prove faith. not only to produce it, but to prove it. Verse 7, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found. So Peter uses an illustration here of goldsmithing, purifying gold through goldsmithing. And the idea here is gold is a very precious metal, probably the most precious metal. And gold can be refined by very hot fire. And so what you do is you take a chunk of metal, presumed to be gold. Now listen, that's important. Take a chunk of metal presumed to be solid gold. Presumed. Heat it up. Heat it up. Heat it up. There's three things that will happen. One, it's burned to oblivion. It was fool's gold. Shrunk down to size as the dross comes off with the heat and then is removed. But whatever remains, It's pure. It's solid. It's real. It's precious. Now, this is important because the text is definitive in the original language. It's not so much faith without that adjective in front of it that's precious here. It's the tested genuineness of faith that is more precious than gold. Let me say that again. It's not faith. It's, I have faith. It's tested genuineness. It's the proof of your faith or the tested genuineness of your faith that's more precious than gold in this text. Why? Because gold is perishable. It's more precious than gold because gold is precious only for this life. But genuine faith, tested faith, if it's found when Christ returns, this results. and praise and honor and glory. Upon finding faith, listen to this, God gives praise and honor and glory to His people on the last day. You say, praise and honor to people? I'm sure that it's more. than what I'm about to say, but that phrase resulting, that what will be found will result in praise and honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus is no less than hearing God say, well done, good and faithful servant. You were faithful with a few things. I will put you in charge of many things." Oh, many things in glory. I can't wait to see that kind of glorious responsibility. I'll put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your Master. Matthew 25, verse 21. One Puritan has said, that faith which is here in the furnace shall be then made up into a crown of pure gold. It shall be found unto praise and honor and glory, that it be both to their praise, that is to God's people, to their praise and to the praise of Christ. For certainly all their praise and glory shall terminate in the glory of their head, Christ, who is God, blessed forever. They have each their crown. But their honor is to cast them all down before His throne. Casting crowns. Oh, believer, you will not be lost on that day. On that day when He comes back. The text says you're protected by the power of God through faith. We can say more amen than ever to that when we start to consider that great day when He comes riding the great white horse with a sword. Right? You will not be lost on that day. Faith will be found. God will sustain your faith by His omnipotent power through trials. An opportunity to produce faith. Trials, an opportunity to prove faith. And third, an opportunity to purify faith. So trials prove that your faith is real, but never forget that your faith, while real, believer, Can I get an amen from this next thing? Your faith is imperfect. We always say with the centurion of old, we believe, help our unbelief. Because we know there is mixed with real faith the dross. of unbelief. We have faith in Christ. We trust the person and work of Christ. But we are so weak. We are so imperfect. We have so far to go. There is slag elements. I love that word. There's slag elements. There are the dross of murmuring and complaining and self-sufficiency. There's the dross of greed and the fear of man and trusting money and trusting people. And trials by God's good design purify faith so that this dross comes to the surface. And what? And can be removed. Can be removed. Purifying your faith. So faith is sustained through trials, which are opportunities to produce faith, prove faith, and purify faith. Fred Zaspel's father, Dr. James Zaspel, a minister for over 50 years. He recently died, but he had all kinds of sayings. One of my favorites by Dr. James Zaspel, one of the most memorable for me was this. He would always say, faith that has not been tested cannot be trusted. It puts a little different perspective on trials, doesn't it? Faith endures trials. We're going to pick up the speed. The last three points will go quickly. Faith, second element of a sustained faith, is found in verse 8. Faith rejects sight. Faith rejects sight. Verse 8. Read verse 8 in the context of trials. And though you have not seen Him, Peter says, you love Him. And though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him. Peter says to his readers, you've never seen Jesus Christ walking in the flesh like I have. You've never seen it. Yet he commends them, yet you love Him. You don't see Him right now, but you're believing in Him. Brothers and sisters, Seeing is not believing. Sustained faith rejects sight. Seeing is not believing. Faith is conviction of things not seen. Not seen, the author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 11, verse 1. If we are bound by what we see, living by sight, we are not believing at that moment. You may call it faith, Your daddy may call it faith. Your pastor may have called it faith all your life. But when the fire of trials and persecution and the pleasures of this world come, that faith may be toast. Will it burn up in the crucible of your trials? And Peter is saying, not so with you, Not so with you. He says, let me tell you, though you do not see Him, but I'll tell you what you do see. You see people accusing you of cannibalism. You're losing your jobs and your homes. Your parents are rejecting you. You're getting beat by your masters. You're getting rejected by your unsafe spouse and persecuted by them. You're struggling with the flesh, and you long to go back, but you know it's not right, but you're tempted. He's saying, that's what you see. You don't see Him, but you see that, and yet, you love Him. And same with us. What do we see with our eyes? I mean, if we look around, even in this congregation, at what we can see with our eyes, it will produce fear and discouragement, and I'd even say panic. renal cell carcinoma, pancreatic cancer. This is what we see. Cervical cancer. Loss of five-year-old fathers. We see heads removed from the body of kids by ISIS. We see financial stress. We see our oldest child walking out of the faith. We see a desire to have companionship unanswered for decades. You know what we see with our eyes? And yet, Peter says, I know you don't see Jesus. I know what you actually see. But let me tell you, sustained faith survives trials because faith is not dependent on what we see. Faith is dependent on something else than sight. And that leads us to the third element of sustained faith. Sustained faith flows from love. sustained faith flows from love. Brothers and sisters, faith in the work of Jesus Christ, a confidence that He will do what He said He will do, the efficacy of the cross and the resurrection and the promises of the Scripture, faith in Christ flows out of a love for the Person of Christ. You know, my sister said, what do you tell this lady who is struggling to love her man? And she said something just was profound. She said, fall in love with another man. And she was talking about Jesus Christ. Love for Christ. And you guys know what love is. And Peter says, and you love Him. You know what love is. Loving is longing to draw near to Christ, to get to know Him, to meet with Him, to sit in His lap, to spend time with Him, to have a relationship with Him. And Peter says the crucible of trials, in the crucible of trials, this love relationship for Jesus is cultivated. And I'm not going to go so far as to say it can't happen outside of trials. I'm not going to do that. That would be out of balance. But almost. Almost. It's trials that drive us into the lap of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the believer, the worst of times can be and should be the best of times. In the sense that we are forced to cling to Christ, we long for Him to speak comfort to our souls in the world, we find ourselves repeating Scripture, we're weeping over the Psalms, because we've come to the place of absolute, absolute brokenness. before God. And that is the place of brokenness. That place of brokenness is the time when the promises of God in Christ can come alive. This is the rub of the Christian life, right here. Are we going to run from our trials? Are we going to draw near to Christ? This is the opportunity to cultivate your love relationship with Jesus Christ. One pastor said, suffering unbolts the door of our heart so that the word has easier entrance. There was a missionary named John Patton. He was born in 1824 in Scotland. A young man, 34 years old, went to the New Hebrides Island chain in the South Seas. He arrived there, and four months after he arrives there, he loses his wife. A week later, he loses his boy, his son. And alone, he buries them both. He stayed on that rotten little island of Tanna for four years, filled with trials and dangers and troubles. And finally, there was an uprising against him after four years that was so fierce, he decided, all right, I have to escape with my life. So his only trusted friend on the island, Norwar was his name, gave him very strange advice to escape. He said, Pastor John, don't return to the village. You must hide in this tree until the moon rises in the night sky. Here are John's words recorded hiding alone in that tree. He says this. Being entirely at the mercy of such doubtful and vacillating friends, I, though perplexed, felt it best to obey. I climbed into the tree and was left there alone in the bush. The hours I spent there live all before me as if it were but of yesterday. I heard the frequent discharging of muskets, the yells of savages, yet I sat there among the branches as safe in the arms of Jesus. Never in all my sorrows did the Lord draw nearer to me and speak more soothingly in my soul than when the moonlight flickered among these chestnut leaves and the night air played on my throbbing brow as I told all my heart to Jesus. alone, yet not alone. He goes on to say, if it be to glorify my God, I will not grudge to spend many nights alone in such a tree, to feel again my Savior's spiritual presence, to enjoy His consoling fellowship. And then he challenges us, if thus thrown back upon your own soul, alone, all alone in the midnight, in the bush, in the very embrace of death itself, have you a friend that will not fail you then? Faith flows out of love for Christ. And this produces joy. Faith, finally, sustained faith produces joy. Verse 8, and though you have not seen Him, you love Him. And though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him. And these words, come on Peter, don't be so callous. Don't tell me to rejoice with what I'm going through. but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome your faith the salvation of your souls." Now listen, joy includes real emotions, just like grief does. We've gotten out of balance on that. Joy includes real emotions. What is joy if not emotional? Now, I know that it's not happiness. I've read that. Joy is not some brief, shallow emotion built on sight and circumstances, but something that only flows from God-sustained, Spirit-induced fellowship with Christ that leads to faith. But joy follows. Listen. Trials. force us to crawl up in the lap of Jesus in love, which is when the Word of God comes alive entrusting His promises, and then we rejoice. So often we're in the midst and we're told to rejoice and we don't have step one through three. We're thinking, draw near to Christ, trust His promises, then joy flows. Not before. You know, I was talking to someone this week, even, going through a trial. I'm trusting the Lord and praying and she drives to the place and sees that her husband's even doing worse than before and tears flow down her face and she says, I don't know what happened to my faith. The tears came and I'm saying, I told her, tears and faith, tears and trust can go together. Joy and distress go together in this Christian walk. Your tears are not inconsistent with trust. So what is that trial today that you're going through? In our worship service, we drew near to the Lord. There is such joy here in this passage. We rejoice because we have been born again out of sheer mercy, hopeless and helpless. We rejoice because we have an inheritance secure in heaven. We rejoice because we are protected by the power of God. We rejoice that the pain that we feel right now is short-lived. We rejoice because the sufferings that we come cannot be random. They have to be purposeful from the hand of God. We rejoice because we look back at the monuments of faith in our life and the previous events of our life. We look back to these things and we remember we still love Him. We still believe in Him. We have real faith. And we rejoice in that. We rejoice that we come through some fires, trusting Him. And we rejoice even when we remember those sweet times of fellowship that we've had with the Lord in the past. And we rejoice the fact that we had it this morning, even if it was for a glimpse. And when the culminating weight of the glory of these facts of our great salvation makes a little more sense for Peter to say, joy inexpressible. That is, it doesn't have words. If it's flown from a relationship, it's flown from real faith in the crucible of trials, If you've been to the lowest and you've come through it, you know what joy inexpressible is and how it is full of glory. It's heaven now, in a sense. It's a foretaste of heaven is what that word means. That is what the Christian life is like in obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. This was the kind of faith this sustained my friend, Pastor Fred Zaspel, who wrote after the death of his 29-year-old daughter. I'm going to read this as we close. Pastor Fred Zaspel's daughter, age 29, Gina, after she had died, four days later, he wrote this. Surely a day will never pass in this life without sensing the deep, gaping hole in our hearts. We just cannot imagine life without Gina. Oh, how we loved her. I have often suspected over the years that Christians who romanticize death have likely never experienced the loss of a close loved one. Death remains a dreaded and devastating enemy, and there is just no way to make it pretty. It still stings deeply so, and when it comes close like this, it leaves us feeling all but completely undone. Yet for the Christian, there truly is a difference. And during this past week since Gina passed, agonizing as it has been, We have learned first-hand that we really do not sorrow as those who have no hope. Now stop there. This is what I'm trying to say by first-hand. It's one thing to have a knowledge of Christ here. But what trials do is they give you a first-hand experience. Experiential knowledge. And that's precious. He goes on to talk about Gina. United to Christ by faith, Gina belonged. How's that for preaching the gospel to yourself? And belongs to God. And through the years of her suffering, we reminded ourselves often that the God who in grace had rescued her in Christ from sin loves her even more than we do. He is too wise ever to make a mistake and too good ever to do us wrong. And we acknowledge that just as He was free and sovereign in giving Gina to us 29 years ago, so now He is free and sovereign and good and just in taking her. He has not wronged us. Indeed, not only do we affirm this great truth, we rest in it. We rest in it. This God is Himself our Father, a Father who knows what is best for His children and faithfully directs our lives accordingly. Moreover, He is the Father who in love one day gave up His own Son to bear our curse in order to redeem us to Himself. Yes, of course, there are many why questions that we cannot answer. but we lack no proof of God's love or His goodness. We bless Him today with deeper passion than ever. We are so very grateful, not only that God gave us our daughter for 29 years, but also that in grace, He saved her and made her His own. This is really everything, He says. Everything. And we recognize that we are blessed to know that Gina is rejoicing today in the presence of our great Redeemer. Oh, how she loved Him. We are hurting for our loss. The pain is massive, and on one level, I'm sure it will never be absent in this life. But deep as the hurt is, we are not left adrift. Scripture assures us that one day God will wipe all tears from our eyes. And I doubt that this language was intended to make us envision a gigantic handkerchief or some kind of cosmic hug. I suspect rather that this comfort will come by means of further revelation. That God will enable us to see things from His perspective. to see His wise purpose as He worked it out in history unerringly for the good of His people, for His own glory. There at last, with fuller understanding, all mourning will be turned to joyful praise. And so even in our loss, we do not doubt that for all eternity, at least one note of our song, looking back, will be, our God has done all things well. Amen. Paul, if you could come up. Father, thank You for Your Word. I pray that this would bring comfort to Your suffering saints, that, Lord, we would not waste our pain, but we would draw near to You, nearer to You, You would open up the door of our hearts to receive from Your Word truth that while we yet continue to weep, we could also rejoice. And Lord, I do pray for those who are here who have not experienced the joy of this living faith. Would You grant them hearts to believe this morning? In Christ's name, Amen. Senate Bill 275.