The following message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. Turn to the text for this afternoon, which is 1 Peter 1, 3-9. Is that still correct, Matt? Okay. You're about to hear the living and abiding Word of God. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again unto a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. To obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. In this, you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you've 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 do not see him, You love him, and though you do not see him now, you believe in him. You greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible, full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever. Amen. You may be seated. Let's pray together. Father, truly, you have blessed us and taken care of us in so many ways. We have countless reasons to bless and praise you, our great God. And Father, we know that the greatest blessing of all is that you've given us nothing less than your only son, and that in him, We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins. Father, what an invaluable gift. And Father, we thank you for your holy word and we pray for our brother as he comes this afternoon to open that word to us. We pray that you would give us open hearts. And Father, we continue to pray for those who are grieving, those who are suffering, And Lord Chief, among them right now, Walter and Sarah, and we pray that you would uphold them in ways that go beyond anything they could ever explain. May they say, the nearness of our God is our good. And so, Father, we thank you. We thank you for our brother, Matt. We now pray that you would bless his labors among us in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, well, unfortunately, I was not here Wednesday night to hear one of my, and I say this just in keeping with the spirit of the sermon, you are my favorite missionary. You're the best, all right? So I heard Matt, I forget when you guys were here last. 2018, so it's been a little while. It was so moving, and so I'm so sorry that I missed Wednesday. But Matt and Nuria and their two boys, hold on a second. Don't tell me, okay? Mark and Alex, it's a pleasure to have you guys with us. And Matt does all kinds of stuff. You heard it Wednesday night. If you don't do any of this stuff anymore, just let me know that I'm wrong. So you guys are missionaries in Spain. Matt is a teacher at a seminary. You teach New Testament, right? And Matt does a Spanish version that's similar to Daily Dose of Greek. Do you still do that? Not anymore. Forget that. And church planting or pastoring, right? And what else? You, so writing in Spanish? Yeah, so very good. Well, we're delighted to have you with us. And the message will be in Spanish, but as you guys saw on Sunday school, many of us received the gift of interpretation. All right, so Matt, come on up. Good afternoon. So while we're saying nice things to each other, I should say, Brian, you are my favorite pastor in Minden. And maybe a few other preliminary remarks. I was wondering about the pulpit dress code here at Grace, and so I asked a really trusted member of the congregation who I will not name, I asked if I should wear my sport coat. And she said that Pastor Brian starts with it and takes it off when he gets hot. Now I remember, I've heard Brian preach three times, twice at fire and once here. And you take your sport coat off when you're starting to get serious. Well, I'm gonna get serious from the very beginning, so I didn't even put my sport coat on. In all seriousness, we are thrilled to be here with you these days. Brian's already introduced the part of my family that's here with me. We have three older children that are in Mississippi and Colorado working summer jobs, so they're not here with us. But it's been a joy. We've only been here for a few days, but Wednesday night was sweet. It was great to arrive, and I saw this spread of not only Spanish food prepared, but Catalan food. Where we live in Barcelona, the northeast region of Spain, that's called Catalunya. And my wife and my children's first language is not Spanish, it's Catalan. And so it was really neat to see that somebody else who will not be named, who is in here, I just saw her, okay, anyway, over there, looked up online how to prepare these little Catalan finger foods. And so I got to eat some Catalan food before the prayer meeting, had a really sweet time. One of the things that really encouraged me was that I got questions before and after my presentation, thoughtful questions that reveal that people here actually read our prayer letters. And in all seriousness, I'm really grateful for that. One of my best friends back in Colorado, who's been supporting our ministry for decades, we were on home assignment five or six years ago, 2018, in fact, the last time we were here, and went to his house for dinner, and he comes up to me and he says, hey brother, good to see you, and remind me again exactly what you're doing in Spain. Somebody's not reading our prayer letters. But you do, and you asked even about specific details about our youngest who's had some health challenges this year, and my heart was warmed. Just so thankful that you're paying attention to our ministry, that you're praying for us. You've supported us generously as a family, supported us generously also in the seminary, and we are so thankful to be here today. with you. So Brian has already read our text. We'll come back to it. It's a really dense text. It's a really rich text, so we're gonna work through it. I was told that I have like an hour and a half. Yeah, that was less funny, wasn't it? Yeah. We'll go through it slowly. I'll warn you that we're gonna start, we're gonna be in verse three and four kind of for a long time, and it's gonna look like the sermon might last an hour and a half. It won't. I promise we'll speed up as we get a little farther into it. But I wanna begin by thinking a little bit about insurance. So my guess is that many, if not all of you have insurance, and perhaps different kinds of insurance. You know, you can insure just about anything today, not just your house and your car, If you're so inclined, you can insure your pets. You can insure body parts. Do you know that some NFL quarterbacks insure their throwing arms? True story. You can also insure your mustache. I might be tempted to do that if I could grow a good one, but I can't. So, why do people have insurance? Well, insurance is designed to protect us. Insurance provides a certain guarantee of our well-being amid setbacks and problems that we suffer in our lives. So you can think about your car insurance for a minute. I'll tell you a story about my father-in-law. So my father-in-law is a real character. And he's got a car. He's got a nice car. He's got this Range Rover SUV. I think it's called the Evoque model, if you're familiar with that. He loves it. So it's always polished. He's always got it clean. He's taking care of it. And it's just a prized possession for him. Well, one day, it was somebody's birthday at our house. I don't remember who it was, but my father-in-law was up, my mother-in-law, grandma, grandpa, of course, and after dinner, he left early. I don't remember why, but he wasn't out of the house 60 seconds, and we heard the screeching of tires, and bam, a big crash out in the street, right in front of our house. And sure enough, it was dark out, and my father-in-law didn't see the oncoming traffic. He pulled right out in front of somebody. Boom, he had a big accident. In his prized, Range Rover SUV. And so we went out, and the first thing we wanted to make sure of is that nobody was hurt, and we saw that everybody was okay. And I went to talk to my father-in-law, and I thought he would just be crushed, because he loves his car. And he was remarkably calm. And I remember what he said to me. He said, it's okay, the insurance will pay for it. It took months, supply chain problems and getting doors from Great Britain to Spain is not easy for some reason. But that peace and that calm that he had was based on this guarantee that came from his insurance policy that in the end his car was going to be okay. Now, wouldn't it be great if we could all have an insurance policy that would guarantee happiness in our lives? Wouldn't that be wonderful? I'd be happy to be an insurance salesman if such a policy existed. How would a policy like that work? What would its terms be? Well, it would have to guarantee your health and your job and a happy family and pretty much a constant flow of pleasant experiences in your life. Obviously, no such policy exists. But I can talk to you this morning about another guarantee that's even better. It's not an insurance policy, but it's a promise. And it's a promise that if we trust in it, we can experience in this life, in the midst of suffering, true joy and true peace. So Brian's already read our passage, 1 Peter 1, verses three through nine. Let's dive into that. Peter starts off the letter by worshiping God. Right there in verse three, first part of it. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. So Peter sits down to write, to his readers and it's like he can't help but just start off worshiping, it's spontaneous. But it's interesting because he goes on to give his readers a reason why they should worship God too. So have you ever wondered why when you come to church service, one of the first things that happens in the service is that somebody gets up and reads a passage from the Bible, call it a call to worship. Is that our cue to sit down and be quiet? Is that why that happens? No, the thing is that a lot of us are dull and slow. I'll be really honest, there's a lot of Sundays where I show up to church and I'm not just gung-ho to start worshiping God. Worship and praise don't flow out of me spontaneously like they ought to. And I need to hear that passage at the beginning of the service to remind me of some of the reasons that I have to be happy in God. And that's precisely what Peter is doing here. He's reminding his readers of one really important reason that they have to be happy in God and to worship Him. So why does Peter think his readers should worship God? Why should we worship God? Peter says that God gives us a living hope. That's also there in verse three. A living hope. Now that word hope, we use that a lot of times in ways different than how it's used in the Bible. So we say things like, I hope I get a new job. I hope I pass my test. I had to ask this morning in day spring, what NFL football team do you root for if you live in Reno, Carson City, or Minden? And I was told the 49ers, amen? Okay, I hope the 49ers, oh, there's a strong no here. Another option, the Raiders, ooh. Ooh, no. Okay, all right, get back to the sermon. I'm hoping the 49ers win the Super Bowl. You get what I'm trying to say. We use the word hope to talk about desires. And it's not a bad thing. Some of those desires are very good. But here, when Peter uses the word hope, he's not talking merely about a desire or about wishful thinking. He's talking about assurance. He's talking about a firm confidence. And it's a confidence that's based in a reality. And he's gonna tell his readers what the reality is in the very next verse. So in verse four, Peter says, verse three, you have this sure hope. The hope is in verse four, an inheritance, an inheritance. So an inheritance is just a family gift. You imagine a young man who grows up in a really wealthy family, and he could be a deadbeat, but when his parents pass, he stands to inherit a lot of money. And he maybe didn't do anything for that money. I mean, he didn't choose to be born into that family. He didn't work to help amass the family fortune. Yet, because he is part of the family, he receives an inheritance. It's a family gift. So it's great how God speaks to us. He uses our language so that we can understand what he wants to say to us. And inheritance, here, means something very similar. It's a family gift. And it really, throughout the Bible, God's good gifts are oftentimes described as an inheritance. So the inheritance in the Old Testament, what is it? The land, yeah. So there in Judges 14, the word inheritance is used to describe the land. And it fits because Israel didn't do anything to earn the land. In fact, God told him, you're no better than the nations around you. But he decided to adopt Israel as his son He willingly chose to be their father, and they received the land as an inheritance. It was a family gift. We as Christians receive an inheritance as well. It's not the land, is it? Might have been nice to have a little plot of land in the Mediterranean where I could sit under my fig tree and enjoy peace and prosperity, 1 Kings 4. That's biblical, eh? That didn't last for very long. We'll talk about that in just a second. But the Christian inheritance is better. Peter says that our inheritance is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. That's there in verse four. Now I think he uses the word undefiled on purpose. Because if you think about the land as an inheritance in the Old Testament, the land could be defiled. In fact, God told the people in Numbers, he said, don't defile the land. And what did they do? By their idolatry, they defiled the land. And what happened? They lost it. Do you see that? So that inheritance of the land, that temporary earthly inheritance, they had to maintain it by their obedience. And they could not pull it off. But Peter says something different about our inheritance as Christians. He says it's undefiled, it's unfading, it's imperishable. And the reason why is because our inheritance, and later he's gonna say that's salvation, doesn't depend on us. Who's keeping that inheritance? So the passage says that inheritance is being kept not by you, it's being kept for you. So you as a Christian are passive while God is keeping that inheritance. And you know, it's actually already been kept because Jesus died on the cross so our sins could be forgiven. Kept the law so that righteousness could be credited to our account. And as we believe in him, all of God's demands are satisfied. The inheritance is ours and it's not because we earned it or deserved it, it's because Jesus did. So that inheritance, it's firm, it's solid. and it's being kept in heaven for us. So I could potentially just quit the sermon right there because that's wonderful news. We could all go home and remember our heavenly inheritance, which is certain. But we have to talk a little more about this because the tricky part is we don't enjoy that inheritance in full right now. And Peter's saying, he's gonna tell his readers, you need to rejoice in that inheritance. But if you're like me, I want it all and I want it now. It's hard for me to rejoice in something future. And really I would say, to become people who can, in the midst of suffering and difficulty in their lives, can rejoice in a future inheritance, that takes a miracle. If you're a Christian, that miracle's already happened in your life. So we're still in verse three. Peter says to his readers that they've been born again into a new and living hope. The reason why they have hope is because they've been born again. So what does it mean to be born again? Oh, I skipped something I should mention, because I'm gonna come back to it. Ah, this is what happens. So, truth being told here, I preached the same sermon this morning, and I just got a little overly confident. Like, oh, I can do this from memory. No, I need to look at my notes every now and then. Yes. You know, the desire to have it all now is, I think, one of the reasons why something called the Prosperity Gospel is so popular. Have you heard of the Prosperity Gospel? So you won't hear the Prosperity Gospel preached here, but you've probably heard about it. It's the message that says, if you believe enough, God will make you healthy, God will give you money, and he'll make your life peachy. That's the Prosperity Gospel. And unfortunately, this message is preached in many places, in the United States, in Spain, and around the world, and it's attractive, and you can see why. We wanna experience heaven on earth. Wouldn't that be great? But that's not what the Bible promises. I mean, you don't have to go any farther than the passage that Pastor Brian read for us this morning to see that actually what the Bible promises us is suffering. But, In the middle of that suffering, what Peter's saying is that you can have true joy if you can learn to hope in heaven. So back to the new birth. How am I gonna learn to hope in heaven? That's not natural to me. I need to be born again. What does it mean to be born again? Well, it means to start to live. Not physically. So you remember in John chapter three, Jesus is talking to Nicodemus. And he says to Nicodemus, you're a teacher of Israel, you should know better. You need to be born again to see the kingdom of God. If you're gonna enter the kingdom of God, if you're gonna become part of the family and participate in that inheritance, you have to be born again. And Nicodemus doesn't get it. He's like, bro, I can't enter into my mother's womb a second time. What are you talking about? But Jesus isn't talking about something physical. He's talking about something spiritual. The new birth is when God causes a spiritually dead person to become spiritually alive. So if you were converted later in life, you may remember a time when you were not interested in the things of God. Or maybe you were even hostile to the things of God. You might have thought that the Christian faith was like a fable. It's ridiculous. Or maybe it's an obstacle to human progress. And you probably thought that Christians were strange birds. The new birth changes all of that. The new birth changes somebody's disposition, their fundamental orientation, and where there was once indifference and opposition to Christ, now there's love and faith. That's what the new birth does. And the Bible talks about this in different ways. In the Old Testament, Ezekiel taking out the heart of stone, putting in the heart of flesh, the heart that believes. In Ephesians chapter one, talks about God illuminating the eyes of the heart to see the truth that was always there, but to embrace it and to believe in it for what it really is. How do you become a person who, despite suffering, rejoices in God? You have to be born again. The orientation of your heart has to be changed and you have to embrace Jesus. And when that happens, God makes us into strange birds, doesn't he? So how do you get born again? How is that even possible? Why does it happen? Peter tells us. says you're born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So you're not born again just because you got like struck by lightning out in the middle of a field or something like that. There's a specific power that God applies to a person and that's how they're born again. The new birth happens because of Jesus's resurrection. We don't make it happen. It doesn't happen because we're somehow spiritually fit. So we haven't been in Carson City long enough. We've rented an Airbnb in kind of the historical part of town, where there's Victorian-style homes, and it's beautiful. We've really enjoyed it. Haven't seen if there's a lot of gyms. Is there a lot of gyms in Carson City and Reno? In Colorado, there's gyms everywhere. And there's people walking around in spandex with their muscles popping out, even when it's snowing. That's Colorado, yeah. So, kind of an obsession, something that we noticed just coming from Spain. There's a little bit of this in Spain, but it was more obvious here, the obsession with improving my body. And I'm gonna do it myself. You know, if I do enough CrossFit and enough burpees, then I'm gonna be rocked or whatever. Can you be born again doing spiritual burpees? Spiritual CrossFit. No. We're born again because Jesus himself went from death to life when he was resurrected. And so God in his mercy, he unites the believer to Jesus Christ, and what is true of him is true of the believer. Not just in terms of Jesus's righteousness, but also in terms of the power of the new life that Jesus experienced when he was raised from the dead. If you're a believer, you've already been raised. And I'm sure that on Resurrection Sunday, The main message is gonna be, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, just like Jesus rose from the dead, you too will rise from the dead on the last day. And that is an amazing gospel truth. But the Bible also says, Paul says, in Ephesians 2, you have been made alive. Past tense. If you're a believer in Jesus Christ, you've already been resurrected spiritually. You've been born again. Now how does that happen? The new birth doesn't come out of nowhere. God uses a means to apply it. And now we're gonna go down to the bottom part of the passage. I told you we would make progress. We had to hang out in verse three for a long time. Go down to verse eight. Look at verse eight with me. Why did Peter's readers believe in Jesus? It was because they had met him. They had had a personal encounter with him, but they hadn't seen him. Look what he says. He says, you haven't seen him yet you believe. I think that's really interesting. So Peter's readers are spread out around the Mediterranean world, not sure exactly where they were. And it's not like Jesus after his ascension was bopping down and making personal appearances in the churches. They knew Jesus because they'd heard about him. They'd heard reliable testimony about his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension. They heard the gospel. and that's how they were born again. Now why do I say that? Probably on the same page of most of your Bibles, you can look at verse 23. 1 Peter 1, verse 23, we'll see what it says. This is great, God uses, he applies that power of the resurrection to us, but he does it through a certain means. Peter says that they were born again, this is chapter one, verse 23, Same word, born again. Same word as in verse three. You were born again, how? By the living word of God. So you see, God's word is powerful. How did God create the world? He didn't snap his fingers, he spoke. And where there was nothing, now there was existence. How does God create faith in somebody's heart? In that non-believing heart, there's nothing except death and sin. And God speaks the word of the gospel, person's born again and they believe. Born again by the power of the living word of God. And then continuing on in verse nine at the end, it's by that faith in Jesus, that faith that God enables us to exercise, by that faith in Jesus, we receive the salvation of our souls. Synonym for inheritance. What's the family gift? What's the inheritance? It's the salvation of our souls. How do we receive it? We're born again, we have faith, we trust in Jesus, and we receive that gift. By the way, this is why we have to preach the gospel to people. People have to hear. Faith comes through hearing. This is why you here at Grace are busy in missions. I looked at your website. You're active in ministries locally, internationally. We're thankful for that. That's why missionaries go out. That's why we need to talk to our neighbors. our family members, coworkers who don't know. They have to hear the word. They have to have an encounter with Jesus in order to be born again. And they have that encounter by hearing the gospel. Now, after saying that, I gotta say one more thing. We need to keep hearing the gospel too, don't we? And that's gonna come up here as we progress a little bit. There's a bit of a problem. So I've got this inheritance. Peter tells me about this inheritance. I believe it. It's in heaven. That's great. But I haven't received it in full. I need to keep trusting. How long am I gonna live before I die and see Jesus face to face? Or how long is it gonna be before he comes back? I mean, a long time might go by, decades. That's enough time for me to fall off the train. I wouldn't have started believing on my own. And if it were left up to me, I probably wouldn't keep believing either. So Peter knows that, and so he sounds this note of assurance in verse five. This is really amazing. Here's what Peter says in verse five. By his power, he's talking about God, we're being guarded. Ooh, isn't that great? That's actually a military term, guarded. God is in his strength, in his power, he's guarding us. So God is guarding two things. He's keeping our inheritance in heaven, and while we're waiting to receive it fully, he's guarding us. How does he do it? By faith. What in the world does that mean? Like there's only one thing that it can mean. That God is gonna make sure that we keep on believing till the end of our lives. Until Jesus comes back. So that we're certain to receive that inheritance that we're promised. Okay, so God's gonna guard me. And the means for me to receive the inheritance is my faith. God's gonna ensure that I keep believing. Can I just recline in my spiritual easy chair? Let go and let God, passive, God's gonna take care of it, can I do that? No. No. If I leave out a word, Pastor Brian's gonna, again, I appreciate that. God uses means to keep us believing. Why do you come to church on Sunday morning? Why do you read your Bible? Every day, if you can. You know, I've had people tell me that, oh, to teach that it's an obligation to go to church on Sunday morning is a new legalism. Don't impose that on people. I had somebody tell me once that, oh, to tell somebody that they should read their Bible every day is legalism. Don't impose that on somebody. I don't remember how I answered that person who said that. I know what I would say now. Here's what I would say. I think this is pretty clever, we'll see what you think. Is it legalism to eat breakfast? I love breakfast, by the way. Oh, this is another just, I'm getting off track, but breakfast in the United States is great. Bacon, egg, sausage, biscuits and gravy. In Spain, they give you a little croissant, a little coffee, and I'm like, oh, I need something, my blood sugar's low. Where's the protein? I love breakfast. Give thanks to God for breakfast. God's gonna keep you alive today. How's he gonna do it? Through means, he provides and he gives you food. God's gonna keep you spiritually alive today. How's he gonna do it? Through the power of his word, through hearing the gospel at church, fellowship with other believers, preaching the gospel to each other, reading the scripture. That's not legalism. But we do participate intelligently in that. It's a means that God uses. So Peter here sounds this note of assurance. If you believe in Jesus, your salvation is secure. You're going to receive that inheritance that God is keeping for you in heaven. But there's still this paradox that we quite haven't resolved yet. Because Peter encourages his readers with assurance. And you know, I think the reason why he does that is because when we look at the circumstances in our lives, sometimes it could look like God's maybe not on our side. We're tempted to despair when things go wrong. So earlier I mentioned the prosperity gospel. It sounds great. You can have your best life now, but that's not realistic. That message promises something that it can't give, and it's based on messed up theology. And I'll give you an example of messed up theology. So I'm not gonna name her name, but there was this famous US soccer player. She was like the best player on the women's nationals team for quite a while. team captain, and in her final match, I don't remember if they were playing like, I don't know, America Cup or the World Cup or something, her last match, she's team captain, she's scored all these goals and she's supposed to enjoy this final match. Six minutes into it, she tears her Achilles tendon. She's done. They interviewed her afterwards and she said something that's really sad. She said, this is proof that God doesn't exist. Now, I don't say that necessarily just to criticize her, but to reflect that bad theology. Because it's real easy to think, if God is all-powerful and He loves me, well, He ought to order my life the way that I would want it to be. But that's not what the Scriptures promise. Life is rough, it's full of trials. And Peter wants to lead his readers away from despair. So the heart of the passage, verse 6, we're getting towards the end here. Verse six, he says the Christian can have joy amid suffering. Look what he says. This brings you great joy, although you may have to suffer for a short time in various trials. Sounds like a paradox, like two things that can't fit together. In the same sentence, joy and suffering. How do we resolve that apparent contradiction? How can those two things go together? Well, Peter gives us two keys for how we can have joy in suffering. He says two things. First thing is this, he says, we can have joy because our trials don't last for long. He says, we may have to suffer his words for a short time. And you may say, ha, short time. What about my broken family that's never gonna be reconciled? What about this chronic illness that I'm going to have for the rest of my life? What about the loss of a loved one? You know, C.S. Lewis wrote something really interesting, and I don't remember where I read this, but I think he was talking about somebody was trying to counsel him after his wife died, and they said something like, time heals all wounds. And C.S. Lewis said, no it doesn't. He said, if your arm gets cut off, it doesn't matter how long you wait, it doesn't grow back. And he's right. There's some of us that have affliction in trial, really serious things that are gonna burden us for the rest of our lives. So, what does Peter say for a short time? What is he talking about? Well, I think he's comparing this present life with eternity. And there's a passage in 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 4, I'll read it for you, you can write it down and take a look at it later, but listen to what Paul says. He says the exact same thing I think that Peter's saying. 2 Corinthians 4, 17. For our momentary light suffering, he calls it momentary and light. These people are being persecuted for their faith, tossed into jail, maybe some of them killed. Oh, your momentary and light suffering is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. Do you see the contrast? Your suffering now, it's real, but compare that to eternity. Compare that to eternal glory. Because we are not looking at what can be seen, but what cannot be seen. For what can be seen as temporary, that's what Peter means. But what cannot be seen is eternal. So I think the first key Peter gives to help us have joy amid suffering is to just remember the context. Eternity awaits us. And it hurts now. I'm not saying it doesn't hurt. I'm not saying that it's good. But if we can keep it in context, it helps and it'll give us hope and joy in the midst of our trials. The second thing he says is we can have joy because trials have a purpose. Trials have a purpose. So trials are not good in and of themselves. You know, who says, sign me up for cancer. Sign me up to be painfully poor. Sign me up to be persecuted for my faith. I think that's the suffering that Peter's talking about, by the way. Probably being persecuted for their faith. But at the same time, even the worst trials serve good purposes in God's providence. Think of Romans 8.28, it's my favorite verse. For God works all things for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Not just some things, all things. Isn't that interesting? And it doesn't say that God's gonna tell us what he's doing. A lot of times we can't discern what his purposes are, but a purpose he does have in the midst of that suffering, and that's reassuring. Also, in the book of Hebrews, twice, in Hebrews 5 and Hebrews 12, the author to the Hebrews talks about how suffering can be a discipline from a loving Heavenly Father. Why do we discipline our children? Well, sometimes we have to get their attention. And if you've been a Christian for a little while, I'm sure you can give a testimony about how a time when you were suffering, you drew nearer to God than you would have otherwise. and you experienced his comfort and his strength in a way that you might not have otherwise if things would have just continued on as they were. So you can see the good purpose there as well. But Peter talks about another purpose, and this was surprising to me when I studied the text. Peter says that our suffering serves to test our faith. That's the purpose. And when our faith is tried, this is in verse seven, our faith is tried, and it results in praise and glory. And this is what surprised me. For who? Praise and glory for who? So my first thought was, well it must be praise and glory for God. And the way it works is, my faith is tried, I'm suffering, and I keep on praising God. And what does that show? That God is worthy of my praise regardless of what he gives me. He's not a vending machine. I don't need to give him blessings so that I'll praise him. He's worthy of my praise regardless. And that's wonderful. I do think that as we suffer trials and we continue to believe, we give that testimony to a watching world. I was reading some of the commentaries and with the emphasis sort of on the last day, and you know what I think it means? I think it means that the testing of our faith results in praise and glory for us. I'm waiting for Brian to run up and drag me down. Okay, thank you. Praise and glory for us. Not in the same way that God, deserves our praise and glory, and not praise and glory from other people, but approval from God. So as we persevere through trials, we rejoice in God, in spite of our suffering, that prepares us on the last day to receive that proclamation from a loving, heavenly Father, well done, good and faithful servant. I think that's what Peter means. Even if he doesn't, it's still true. And certainly that's one of the purposes. And I think it's really helpful to think of that, to think of, yeah, one of the purposes of this suffering that I'm going through right now is that God is testing my faith. And there's a good outcome to that. There's praise and glory for God, and there's approval for me on the last day. By the way, we talk negatively about approval. And, you know, like, oh, you don't, approval, you shouldn't be seeking approval. Well, we shouldn't seek in unhealthy ways other people's approval, that's for sure. Because that can lead us even to sin. but we should always seek God's approval. So it's good to seek approval, but whose approval are you seeking? You should seek the approval of our loving Heavenly Father. I've got a conclusion here for you. What do you do when you suffer? How do you cope? Where do you try to find some hope, some relief? Well, one option is to binge on Netflix, or something else. or participate in illicit activities, abuse substances, to try to mask it, to try to get distracted, to try to put it away for a while. Well, I think we all know, and I think even the world knows, that none of that stuff actually makes it any better in the long run, right? Well, a supposedly Christian solution for handling suffering is the prosperity gospel. If you would just believe a little harder, then God would straighten all these things out for you. This message is one of the reasons why I wanted to include this in this sermon. Have you heard of people who deconstruct their faith? Have you heard about that a little bit? So these are becoming more and more common. Testimonies on YouTube or podcasts or whatever. about evangelicals, people who grew up evangelical, who later walk away from their faith, they deconstruct their faith, they abandon it. And if you listen to these testimonies, a lot of times, these people grew up hearing prosperity gospel preaching. And they were promised that if they would just believe enough, that God would order out their lives the way they wanted. And as they get older and they start to suffer, as you get older, you start to suffer more. They realize it's not happening, and so what do they do? They've heard this false message, and they start to doubt, and they end up abandoning the faith, but they're not abandoning the true gospel, are they? Maybe this would hit a little closer to home. This is a mentality that sometimes I've had. Maybe you too. Sometimes we have this, we'll call it the if-only mentality. So I don't need the whole prosperity gospel, but if only God would fix this thing. If only that financial difficulty, if only he would heal that ailment, then I could really be happy, I could relax, I could rejoice. Have you ever thought like that? So what happens? I mean, we should pray. Obviously, we should pray that God would intervene, and he intervenes in some amazing ways in our lives, and he relieves, and he heals, and he resolves, and he redeems, and all these things. And we should give him praise, and we should be thankful. But hey, God solves that problem for you, wait a week. and right around the corner, pow, something else. Or maybe it's a month, or maybe it's a little longer, but you see, those are, they're blessings from on high, but they're temporary. And they're meant to point us to that eternal inheritance when the blessing's gonna be permanent. So yeah, pray for those things. Give God glory when he provides. But ultimately, what Peter's trying to say, I think, is that our hope needs to be in heaven. He's offering us something better, and we could say, don't take this out of context, we could say that he's preaching the true prosperity gospel, because it will be your best life, just not right now. It'll be then, in the future. He orients their hope towards the future, and it's a little bit like my father-in-law, who stood out there in front of his crumpled car, and he had hope, because he knew in a couple months it was gonna be fixed. So regardless of the wrecks that we have in our lives as Christians, we can have hope that God's gonna set it all straight in the future. We need to learn to lean into this promise, and for me it's hard. I mean, I wanna prop myself up with like any other kind of crutch that I can find. I want now, I want relief now, I wanna try to hope in the here and now, but I think we need to learn to meditate more on heaven. And so, asking this question of myself, where does my mind go when it's just in neutral? Well, it goes all over the place. My prayer is that God would help me to direct my mind to heaven in those moments. Or maybe you could say it like this, where's your happy place? When you're suffering, what do you think about to try to cheer yourself up? The thing that we ought to be thinking about is the eternal inheritance. That day when we see Jesus face to face, when he wipes away every tear from our eyes, and we hear that commendation from a loving Heavenly Father, well done, good and faithful servant. May the Lord help us to look forward to our eternal inheritance and worship him now for it. Let's pray. Father, we're grateful that you speak to us in ways that we can understand. We're grateful for this powerful word that we have in the scriptures, the word of the cross, which is foolishness to the world, but to you and in your kingdom, it's power, your power unto salvation. We're grateful that you caused the gospel to come to us. that it was accompanied by the Holy Spirit, that it worked in power in our hearts to cause us to be born again. We're grateful for faith. We're grateful to be able to embrace Jesus and for the hope of receiving that perfect, complete salvation of our souls. Thanks for the promise of the inheritance. We pray that you'd help us. We confess our weakness. We try to prop ourselves up and lean on so many other things that are temporary, that are fading that are perishable. Help us, Lord, to firmly ground our hope in you and in Jesus and that undefiled, unfading, imperishable inheritance that you're keeping for us in heaven. And we pray that you'd make us a people who rejoice in you amid the suffering of our lives. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. We hope that you were edified by this message. For additional sermons as well as information on giving to the ministry of Grace Community Church, please visit us online at gracenevada.com. That's gracenevada.com.