v.12 "Dear friends". Because he is going to be talking about the suffering they are enduring, he begins by reminding them that whatever opposition they may face from without, they belong to a fellowship whose members are knit together by love.

Because "trial" can now be taken in a general sense as simply an affliction, we should read the text as it literally reads: "the fiery ordeal, which comes upon you to test you." This is the point he has already made in 1:6-7. The verb: "to think strange" is the same one already used in 4:4. So there is this interesting comparison. The pagans think it strange that the Christians won't join them in their sins; the Christians, however, should not think it strange that the world opposes them. John says the same thing in 1 John 3:13: "Do not be surprised if the world hates you."

The idea of persecution as a testing of the soul is found in the Lord's teaching also. Cf. Matthew 10:22: "All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved." And so also Paul [Romans 8:17]: "Now if we are children, then we are heirs -- heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory."

v.13 Paul speaks in Philippians 3 of wanting to share in Christ's sufferings, the most profound way of identifying ourselves with him.

v.14 The blessing is not only in the future, it is already theirs. They are blessed, in one way, in that their persecution shows them to be the true followers of Christ and so people who can be sure that they will share in his triumph; but they are also blessed for the ministry of the Holy Spirit that the Lord Christ promised to his people when they suffer for his sake. Matthew 10:19-20: "When they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you."

v.15 Peter hurries on to say that, of course, it is only suffering as a Christian and for Christ that brings this blessing. There is a lot of suffering that is punishment for unrighteousness not righteousness. The term "meddler" may be Peter's gentle reminder that there are good ways and foolish ways to bear witness to one's faith and to condemn the pagan culture. Human nature being what it is, no doubt there were some Christians who brought down upon themselves the censure of the pagans with whom they lived by zeal for the gospel that wasn't according to knowledge, by immoderate and intemperate public criticism, by rude interruptions, thoughtless interference with family relations and so on.

v.16 We will read on to the end of the paragraph, but we will consider those verses, 17-19, Lord willing, next Lord's Day morning.

Now we do not know precisely what sort of troubles these Christians were enduring because of their faith in Christ. They were facing active opposition from the pagan culture, that much is clear. But what form that opposition took we cannot say. But we know from other evidence what sorts of persecution Christians suffered in those days. There was, of course, the public ridicule of a faith and a life that seemed very strange to pagans -- as ours does increasingly to our more and more pagan culture. Peter has already mentioned this, in v. 4. One cannot live, one cannot explain the Christian faith and life without unbelievers in large numbers gathering that you mean that their lives are unrighteous and displeasing to God. Not the way to win friends and influence people, but inevitable for a Christian who has come to see the truth of human sin, divine holiness, and the impossibility of human beings measuring up to God's standards. People didn't like this message when Christ brought it himself; they don't like it still and they resent those who bring it and represent it in the world. Jesus warned us on a number of occasions that this contempt for Christians and Christianity would be a fact of believing life.

But there were other forms of persecution: ostracism from families, the denial of opportunity in education and business, the loss of property, physical violence -- Paul was stoned several times -- and, of course, finally, arrest and, in some cases, execution. That had not happened too much by this point, but Peter himself, of course, was but a few years at the most from his crucifixion in Rome, arrested and executed for no other reason than his identification with the Christian movement.

And, of course, it has been the same ever since. I read recently a biography of Adolf Schlatter, one of the premier theologians in Germany in the first half of the century and a staunch evangelical in a triumphantly liberal university world. Over and again, obstacles were put in Schlatter's way to obtain positions in the German University because he was a Bible-believing scholar. When Schlatter sought for the first time a professorship at the University of Bern, the professors instituted a requirement that applicants pass a battery of extraordinarily difficult exams with very high marks. Schlatter passed and no candidate for professor was ever asked to sit those exams again. In one instance, a high official in the culture ministry who had power over professorial appointments in German universities, told him outright that he would never consent to make him a professor. "And I will also tell you why," he said. "If I make you a professor, the Pietists in this land would call it an answer to their prayers. And I refuse to give them this pleasure." [Neuer/Yarbrough, 75] The official was dead within the year and Schlatter got his appointment!

There have always been such relatively minor impediments placed in the way of Christians. And there has been, of course, throughout this history, many cases of much more vicious persecution leading to martyrdom and, if possible, to still worse suffering -- to have one's children taken away, to be sold into slavery -- such things as are happening in the Sudan today. A Christian news service reports that just this past Wednesday, November 18th, in Pakistan Muslim terrorists murdered nine Christians, eight from the same family, in the northeastern town of Noshehra. The father of the family was a man of prayer and even Muslims would go to him to have him pray for their sick. This offended some extremist Muslim groups. The youngest slain was a grandson one month old. The victims were butchered with a sharp knife and most of them had their throats cut.

Let there be no thought whatsoever that Peter is speaking blithely here, as if he does not really understand what suffering is or how vicious and terrifying persecution can be. He had seen it himself -- seen men executed for their Christian faith. He undoubtedly knew Stephen, in all likelihood was present at this stoning. But, what is more, he here, as he has already in this letter (2:21), linked the suffering of Christians for their faith with the sufferings of Christ himself. And Peter knew about that suffering. He had seen, and from the perspective of his later understanding, he now knew how horrible it had been for a sinless man to be considered by other men not only not the Messiah, but not even a good and righteous man. He knew what pain and humiliation it was for him to have the world deny and reject everything that he was and heap scorn on all that he lived his life for. And then he saw the rest. Peter was in the Garden that night when the Lord Christ, as it were, sweated great drops of blood. He saw him after the Roman soldiers had done their worst; he watched him being hung up on the cross. He heard the Savior's cries from the cross.

The last thing in the world that was possible for Peter was to think human suffering a small thing.

But that fact makes still the more remarkable what Peter says here. You do see what he says? Those who are familiar with the teaching of the Bible are perhaps too used to hearing such words. But perhaps some of you newer to this book were struck by Peter's words. He is telling his Christian readers to rejoice that they are suffering for Christ's sake; that it is a blessing so to suffer -- that is, a good thing; and that it is a cause for praise to God when it happens.

Now you folk who have been Christians for a long time stop and think. You are, of course, aware that this is by no means the only place where such a thing is said. Jesus said the same thing on several occasions, most memorably in his Sermon on the Mount. "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven." James says a similar thing: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know the testing of your faith develops perseverance." These are thoughts not unlike Peter's here.

But, think now. This is really an astonishing thing to say, what Peter says here. We must clear our minds and consider afresh Peter's words. After all, how easy have you found it to rejoice in your trials and how often have you seen other Christians doing so? It is akin to Paul's urging us to boast in our weaknesses because Christ's strength is made known in our weakness. But, then, how many Christians do you hear boasting of their weaknesses compared to the Christians who boast -- or at least obviously hope you will notice -- their strengths.

Now, I say again, to ward off a possible misunderstanding, that Peter is not in any way diminishing the reality and the severity and the weight of this suffering and of other suffering that Christians must bear for the sake of their faith. The Bible is a book of deep feeling and spends a great deal of its space on the anguish that life bestows on even the most godly and devout man or woman.

No one should read Peter here and suppose that he imagined that Sudanese Christians would blithely surrender their children to Islamic militia to undergo forced conversions and to be sold into slavery, all the while happy about it all because they were participating in the sufferings of Christ. Peter's idea is much deeper, much more profound than that. He is not speaking of "joy" as an emotional state of exhilaration. He is speaking of "joy" as a theological conviction, as a certainty in life upon which one may stand and find strength and solace in the midst of darkness and even despair. He uses "joy" precisely for its shock value, for the power of the idea that anyone should have cause to be deeply glad when life comes crashing down upon the head. It is in this way that the same thing is said of the Lord, who, we read in Hebrews 12:3, endured the cross "for the joy that was set before him." That is, he wasn't gleeful at the time, the farthest thing from it. We know of the agonies of his soul and body both at the cross and in anticipation of it. But he knew joy, with a capital "J", because he knew what was to issue from this suffering on his part. And so we read of Moses in Hebrews 11:26: how he "regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking forward to his reward." Similarly, we know that those days of his flight from Egypt and his exile to Midian, following forty years at the center of the Egyptian court, were not happy days in the ordinary sense of the term. But, they were days of joy in this deeper, firmer, mightier sense, for they were days when Moses' faith was being proved, when he was laying hold of the world to come, when God was proving himself a present Helper and Protector.

Now, to be sure, there is a sense in which, and there are times when, under the sway of the Holy Spirit, Christian people really will rejoice and be glad -- with the most intense emotion -- in the midst of persecution and precisely because of persecution. Think of those early Christians in Jerusalem, and the apostles among them, who were flogged by the authorities for preaching Christ and salvation through his name, and who left the Sanhedrin, we read in Acts 5:41 "rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name."

Or think of Charles Simeon, the young, gangly, awkward, shy minister, who had been thrust by a believing bishop upon an unbelieving and unwelcoming congregation in Cambridge, England. The people hated their new minister for the message he preached, locked their rented pews and forced the few people who came to services to stand around the edges of the church while Simeon from his pulpit looked out over empty space, sent college students to disrupt his services, young toughs to accost him in the street.

"When I was an object of much contempt and derision in the university," Simeon wrote, "I strolled forth one day, buffeted and afflicted with my little Testament in my hand. I prayed earnestly to my God that he would comfort me with some cordial from His Word, and that on opening the book I might find some text which would sustain me... The first text that caught my eye was this: 'They found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; him they compelled to bear his cross.' You know Simon is the same name as Simeon. What a word of instruction was here -- what a blessed hint for my encouragement! To have the Cross laid upon me, that I might bear it after Jesus -- what a privilege! It was enough, now I could leap and sing for joy as one whom Jesus was honouring with a participation in his sufferings... I henceforth bound persecution as a wreath of glory round my brow. [In Hopkins, 81]

But Peter is not talking primarily about that kind of triumphant emotion in persecution. He is talking about a joy that believers can have even in the midst of the most miserable and heartbreaking suffering and loss that is visited upon them on account of their following Jesus Christ. That is the remarkable thing about what Peter says. It is a mysterious thing. Remember, Peter has already referred to it in chapter 1 of this same letter as "an inexpressible joy." It is a deep thing, an ineffable thing, this joy; but absolutely real, indestructible, transforming our outlook on life because founded upon the most glorious and transcendent realities. Thousands upon thousands and tens of thousands of Christians through the ages would tell you today what Peter wrote then -- that this joy is real, the most real thing of all.

If I find him, if I follow, What his guerdon [reward] here?
Many a sorrow, many a labor, many a tear.

If I still hold closely to him, What hath he at last?
Sorrow vanquished, labor ended, Jordan passed.

Finding, following, keeping, struggling, is he sure to bless?
Saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs, answer "Yes!"

For, you see, what Peter is saying here, what his argument absolutely rests on, is the conviction that the Christian faith is true! You cannot rejoice in trials such as befall you because you are a Christian, unless it be true: 1) that God is in direct control of this world and that these sufferings also are under his control and will accomplish his holy and perfect will; 2) that he loves his people with an unchangeable love; 3) that in Christ there is forgiveness of sins and eternal life in the heaven; 4) that this life is followed for the one who believes in Jesus Christ with a life, an existence so much better, happier, glorious that it cannot really be conceived; and 5) that God the Father will not fail to reward with his smile those who suffer for the sake of his Son, who love his Son and will not betray them even when their faithfulness costs them dearly. You cannot say that death is better by far, as Paul does when he was threatened with death by the Roman government for his Christian faith, unless it is true that death ushers the Christian -- really, historically -- into the very presence of God, into a sinless life in a world washed clean.

For Peter to tell these Christians what he told them, about rejoicing in their sufferings, was his most powerful way of reminding them that a Christian's outlook on life must be fundamentally different from that of unbelievers precisely because of the mighty, the magnificent things he or she knows to be true! It would be entirely wrong, deceitful, unkind to summon people to rejoice in the terrible woes which many of them had suffered and would suffer unless what Peter gives them to believe about those woes and their meaning is true. Unless it really is true that when Christians suffer for their faith they are sharing, participating in the sufferings that their Savior suffered for them and for their salvation. Unless it is really the case that the opposition that fell upon him is now falling upon them. Unless it really is true that such suffering is the proof that they are in Christ and have his salvation as a present and future possession, that God is with them now and they shall be with God forever. Unless it is true that a true faith -- that is, a faith that stands up even under intense pressure -- will take a man or woman to heaven in due time, to a world where every tear shall be wiped away, and there will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain.

If those things are not true it is cruel beyond reason to urge people to suffer unnecessarily. There is enough suffering in the world as it is. But those things are true, absolutely, indefectibly true. And no one in all the world knew that more certainly than did the big fisherman. He had seen Jesus in the flesh, the miracles he performed. He had seen him transfigured, with the divine glory upon him that night on the mountain long before. He had seen Jesus die; he saw him alive again on the third day. He had seen him ascend to heaven and just before had heard him say both that he was coming again to take his people to heaven and that he would be with his people always until that day when he came again. And he could himself remember the sound of the Savior's voice, in the Upper Room, that fateful night before the crucifixion, when he spoke of going to his Father's house to prepare places for his people, and how he had said "If it were not true, I would have told you."

No, brothers and sisters, Peter knew things to be true that absolutely must change the way we look at suffering, especially suffering for our faith, that absolutely require -- not just make possible but require -- that we should rejoice when we participate in the sufferings of Christ. For there is nothing in all this world that is more wonderful than to know that I share, that you share and will forever share in the salvation of Jesus Christ, and nothing better demonstrates that than a faith that suffers, a faith that stands up to pain for Jesus' sake. Pass that test, by the grace of God, and go to heaven!

Hugh MacKail was one of the martyrs of the covenant in 17th century Scotland. He was not only executed for his unwillingness to be unfaithful to his Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, but was tortured first in hopes that he would reveal secrets about his fellow covenanters. They used "The Boot", an iron case that enclosed the leg and knee. Then an iron wedge was driven between the iron casing and the knee. Eleven times the wedge was hammered home, but no betrayal came from his lips, until the leg was smashed and ruined. He was hung a few days later, and he died, as those men and women did -- so full of grace and truth-- in the mighty strength of faith in Christ. The Lord kept his promise and the Holy Spirit gave MacKail many grand things to say from the gallows. And he lies now in that corner of Greyfriars churchyard that was reserved for criminals, awaiting the resurrection at the coming of Jesus Christ.

In 1496 the Italian reformer, Savonarola, who would suffer and die for his faith two years later, preached his famous sermon "The Art of Dying a Good Death." He said, "Death is the most solemn moment of our life. Then it is that the evil one makes his last attack on us. It is as though he were always playing chess with man, and awaiting the approach of death to give checkmate. He who wins at that moment wins the battle of life." Well, yes. And he won that battle gloriously in his own case. But, Savonarola wouldn't deny that there are other moments, death-like moments, throughout our life when the same great issue is joined and the same opportunity is given to deal a fatal blow to the devil's hopes for your life. And among those moments are those when we are called upon to suffer for righteousness' sake, for sake of Christ's holy Name which we bear!

Hugh MacKail had a cousin, Matthew, who was a doctor and like his suffering cousin a devout Christian. He spent Hugh's final night on earth with him in the prison. Matthew actually jumped up to grab his cousin's jerking legs as he hung from the rope, that death might come easier and sooner. After Hugh was dead, Matthew asked for and received his martyr cousin's black haircloth coat from the hangman. He wore that coat until years later it literally fell into pieces. I want everyone of us in this room to have a coat to leave behind for some godly, tender-hearted, heaven-seeking cousin or friend or son or daughter to wear -- to wear so as to remember that there is no greater privilege in life, no greater wisdom, no greater honor than to participate in the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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