Hi, welcome to go to the word radio broadcast a ministry of faith Baptist Church in Ontario, Ohio I'm pastor Dave Davenport Today, we're studying in first Peter and we're in chapter 4. I trust you'll have your Bible open Stay with us for the next several minutes as we go to the Word. So here Peter is saying to his readers, he's saying, listen, this is a trial. This is a hard one. It's a trial by fire. And what God's doing is he's looking to get out of you a picture before these Gentiles of the genuineness of your faith, something real. You might have to work for them. Oh, don't want to work for them. Don't want to work for them. You might have to. And then he talks about that, doesn't he? He says, if you have a froward master, treat him with love and he'll see grace. You know, those kind of things. So what I'm showing you is that he's told us about the fiery trial, he's now revisiting the fiery trial, and he says it's not something strange. And the reason it's not something strange is not only because everybody has a hard time down here, the whole of life is hard for lost and saved alike. This world is broken. This world is fraught with discouragements and hardships and sickness and breaking of hearts and breaking down of all kinds of things. That's why in Ecclesiastes, he says, don't forget the days of darkness because they're going to come. If you live many years, they're going to come. If you've had a great run, it's going to come. It's going to be hard because life is going to end one day some way or another. I want you to put your mind around something, though. He says, I want you to not think it's strange, this fiery trial. I'm going to drill into this and I'm going to take something you've heard for years. I'm going to try to unpack it in a way that maybe will help you understand it with new eyes. Because I have, when I started looking at this fiery trial, I had to look and find where I might have seen something like this before. And I lit upon a passage and it's in first Corinthians in chapter three. You're very familiar with this because it's one of those chapters that brings us up a little short when we're reading our Bibles, especially as believers that have got a few miles on us. Because what happens is we think, well, it's all good. I've been told I'm saved forever and life is going to be wonderful. And, you know, now Jesus loves me and there's no condemnation. And all of those things are true because God says I've come that you might have life and life more abundantly. Oh, that's true. It's everlasting life. This is life that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you've sent. All of that's true. And it's yours. And you should know that, okay? And when you know that, you should not have to worry about it too much after you get it down in your core, because then you can begin to walk intentionally. Ephesians tells us that you're to walk in love, you're to walk circumspectly, you're to walk as children of the light, and you're supposed to walk in wisdom. This is the way we're supposed to walk. Walk, walk, walk. Why? Because God would not have you just sit down and bask in your riches. He wouldn't have you looking over your treasury. We're going to get home one day and it's going to be a party throughout eternity and never-ending bliss and joy. It's going to be amazing. But right now, fiery trials. And they're going to come not just because life is hard, but because God designs them. These are trials to try you, okay? That's what's going to happen. So with your eye on 1 Corinthians 3, down in verse 9, it says, we are laborers together with God, and Paul's talking about himself, and he's talking to the Corinthian people. And he says, you are God's husbandry. The word literally is you are God's tillage. Okay, which is a little bit more visceral. If you're thinking of your garden right now, you know, when you till it, it breaks the ground up and it's like not really a happy thing. Okay, so we're right now already touching the idea of a fiery trial. If you're God's tillage, he's going to have to break some fallow ground up now and again. He's going to have to remove some weeds. He's going to have to prune, right? That's part of what he says in John 15 about the branches and the vine. So he says, you're God's husbandry, you're his tillage and you're God's building. And he goes on to put the emphasis on the building. He says, according to the grace of God, verse 10, which is given unto me as a wise master builder, I have laid the foundation and another buildeth thereon. Let every man take heed how he builds thereupon. For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. It says, now if any man builds on this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and stubble, every man's work shall be manifest, for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. Now, there's your word, fire, and I wanted you to see the connective. He says, no matter what you're going through, no matter what you think the world is going to be like once you trust Jesus, there's going to be a trial by fire. That's why they shouldn't think it in Peter's epistle that it's strange. And right now in this passage, he says, every man's work shall be manifest for the day shall declare it because it shall be revealed by fire and the fire shall try every man's work. Now, if you will, I want you to see a couple of things out of the gate. You need to kind of hone in, if you will, in verse 13 of chapter 3, 1 Corinthians. It says, for every man's work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it. Now, the question on the table for you and me right now is what day is he talking about? Now, you may have in your mind's eye already something that makes sense to you. Maybe it's the day of the Lord. Maybe it's the day of Christ. If I read on, I feel like it's somewhere in judgment. OK, maybe the judgment day. We know about the judgment seat of Christ. He's going to talk about that. Right. He says everyone will stand before the judgment seat of Christ. And I'm going to get to that in a moment. But you need to understand what he's telling us right here is he's saying a certain day shall declare it. That is future. And it's not necessarily distant future. You know, Bible talks about us being raptured out of here, which is an exciting thing to look forward to. Many of the scholars have come to the conclusion that this is emblematic. of the bride being taken. Remember the bridegroom cometh and the virgins and five foolish and five wise. And they're the handmaids to the bride that's waiting for the groom to come. And they connect that to the rapture because we don't know when he's coming. But when he comes, he's going to take his bride. He's going to take her into his house that he's prepared. And now they will have a consummation of the wedding. They have the reception after the consummation of the wedding, which is coming back for the millennial reign. All that's beautiful pictures, beautiful metaphorical truth. and beautiful, beautiful things to ponder. Some people look at that and they think, well, where would we have judgment? And they've tried to plug it in. We're never told that we're judged when we get there. We've already been judged, I want to tell you. We've been judged at Calvary. Your salvation isn't paid for. It's completely paid for. It's paid in full. Jesus said, it is finished. There is therefore now no condemnation. These are truths. Now that's something to get your mind around. You say, well, there's chastening. Yeah, there is chastening. That's not judgment. That's not wrath. In fact, the Bible says, if you go on in sin after being a believer, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful looking forward of firing indignation and judgment, which shall devour you. No, it's not what it said. It said, which shall devour the adversary. Now you're feeling pretty nervous on that thin ice and God may take you home early. Bible talks about a sin unto death. First John chapter five. A believer cannot be lost once he's saved because God will just take him home. He never fails. If you give Jesus your heart, he takes you into his family. And you started from one of the worst places in the world. You know, everybody likes to judge people according to their own plumb line. I'm telling you, some people, they're crack babies. Some people are human trafficked. I heard a testimony of a lady for about five minutes how she was human trafficked when she was five years old. Full-on weekends until she was 10 or 12. She was laid upon an altar. They were going to kill her. I'm telling you, folks, that woman, if she got born again, which it wasn't about that, it was just her testimony, how somebody stepped in and saved her, and she thought she was going to die on that altar. She laid there for two, three hours, and somebody delivered her. Five years to 10, 12 years old. I'm telling you, scary stuff. Terrible, depraved stuff. And if you judge her by your plumb line, you've got some problems, okay? Jesus can save and Jesus can salvage. Do you remember Rahab the harlot? People say, well, she lied. These guys aren't here. My goodness, don't expect a brand new believer to do what a veteran saint would do. And maybe a veteran saint might find it necessary to say, I don't know what you're talking about, or something. But all you've got to understand is, is that you and I, when we're born again, we will never be unborn. When we are born again, we are safe in the arms of God. But He's not, at this point, taking you out of the fire. You're still in the fire today. And that's why when you read this, some opinions that are out there have been foisted. Mostly what we've heard through our life is that this whole passage in 1 Corinthians 3 is dealing with the judgment that God's going to bring us in, and we're all going to be judged with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and stubble. And we've all pondered, man, I hope I have some gold, I hope I have some silver, maybe a precious stone or two. I mean, I feel like a pygmy compared to maybe people I've read about or seen or know. Listen guys, that's not what he's saying here and I will show you why I believe it's not what he's saying here. First of all, I want to tell you what others have said in the past. When you go to a man named Albert Barnes, he was back in the 1800s, he wrote a commentary and he says the day that he's talking about, the day shall declare it, is the day of judgment. That's what he said. That was what he chose and that's what he believed. But he went on to point out, he says, it may be observed, however, that many critics supposed this to refer to the fire of persecution. Now, think about that for a moment. Did they have that throughout the history of the church? Isn't it true that we know that the trail of blood throughout history since the church has been born has been one? that has been seedlings for the saints and seedlings for the church, where the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. We've heard that said. If you've read Foxe's Book of Martyrs, one man being put to death was a stellar giant of the faith among his peers, and he was a teacher, and he was going to be killed, and they were going to burn him at the stake, and he assured them, listen, if there's anything I can say that I know God's with me in this thing, he says, I will give you a sign somehow. I don't know what I will do, but I'm sure if God's with me, I will give you a sign. He was burnt at the stake and he was completely and utterly gone. And all of the sudden, while they got ready to leave, his hand began to move. And he made a fist and pointed upward. Now folks, listen. That is documented history. And there are many stories of people singing while the fires were being set upon them. They were singing hymns. They were aware. In recent days, I remember over in one of the Middle Eastern countries, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, I can't remember. It might have been India. But there was 11 people were being killed. One of them was a little child. His fingers were being chopped off. His dad was saying, don't doubt the Lord. Just believe the Lord. And he's told, I'll stop torturing your child if you if you will denounce Jesus. And the women were taken down the street and abused in so many terrible, overt ways out in the streets. And then the next thing you know, these men were put to death and the women were lined up. Their heads were placed on the chopping block. And one witness in the crowd said, as the one looked up, she saw a smile come upon her face after all the atrocities. And she said, Jesus, right before the axe fell. Stephen, if you want something more tangibly written in a word, you can believe without question. Stephen, the first martyr of the Lord, he says as they're stoning him with stones that the heavens have opened. And there I see the son of man standing at the right hand of glory on high. And he says, Lord, don't lay this into their charge. How can he say that there are big rocks hitting him? Listen, the fiery trial has always been our calling. It's what you're supposed to be going through. routinely, and we do, we are like a lot who was in Sodom and we saw that behavior right now. They're putting more and more of it on your TV. You can hardly see a commercial without something that's going to just set you back and say, oh, my, what next? And what I'm saying to you is, is that what you and I have enjoyed in America, in our lifetime, in our lifetime specifically, has been nothing but amazing and really an anomaly for the church. We're not on the run, have not been on the run. We've been comfortable. It's been our choice. I'll go here. I'll go there. I'll have opinions about everything. And we don't really have that sense that we need to be under the word of God. We like Bible study where we can be over the word of God and judge it rather than letting it judge us. And it's created in us a disposition that God had to kind of deal with, I believe. Barnes said this, he says, there are many supposing that this refers to the fire of persecution. He names a couple of them. He says McKnight, he says Whitby, others, Grotius, Rosemiller, he says, et cetera. They suppose that the reference to time is to time in general. In other words, we say it this way, time will tell. Okay. Now look at the word again in verse 13 of chapter three. It says, every man's work shall be made manifest for the day shall declare it or time shall tell. what manner of believer you are. Well, that concludes today's portion of the message. This has been a ministry of Faith Baptist Church in Ontario, Ohio, and I'm Pastor Dave Davenport. I hope you'll join us Monday through Friday for our verse by verse studies, and we hope you'll tell others to tune in as well. If you'd like to contact us and learn more about our ministry, go to faithbaptist1.net. You can also download recent broadcasts on our homepage. We hope you'll make it a point to tune in daily as we go to the word.