Rejoice in Trials (1 Peter 1:6-9)

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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This message was brought to you by Novavax. On this episode of The Wrap Report, I'm going to have a

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Bible study that I do on 1 Peter, continuing that. This episode will deal with the issue of trials and temptations.

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This was a Bible study we did. This I hope will be helpful to you, as we all have to deal with trials and temptations in our life, and having the proper mindset to be able to focus on Christ will help us to be able to get through and deal with any types of trials.

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Now the reality is, as you're going to hear in this Bible study, there is a major difference between joy and happiness.

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And you're going to want to understand that difference, because that difference makes all the difference when it comes to how to deal with trials.

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That's coming your way right now on The Wrap Report. Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host,

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Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the

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Christian podcast community. For more content, or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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Actually, I'm going to cheat and use the computer because I can make it bigger and read it. So 1

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Peter, and what we'll do is I'll start in chapter 1, verse 1, just so we get the context.

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I'll read all the way down to verse 10, or verse 9, sorry. Just so we have the context, but 1

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Peter 1, starting in verse 1, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who reside as aliens scattered throughout

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Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen, according to the foreknowledge of God the

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Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey

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Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood, may grace and peace be yours to the fullest measure.

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to 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 a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

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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 through testing by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

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And though you have not seen him, you love him, and although 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.

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Great text that we have for tonight, we're going to look at verses six to nine. Hey, how you doing?

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So, we just got started, so you didn't miss a thing. We're going to be looking at 1

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Peter, we'll be looking primarily at 1 Peter 1, verses six to nine, but just to give a little bit of review, and I've said this,

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I'm going to each week try to give a little review, just so we don't lose where we're at, right?

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So we talked about the fact that this is Peter who's writing to people who, it says very clearly, they were scattered, they were aliens, they were people who had to reside in different countries, and so they moved to areas where they're mentioned,

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Pontius, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, some of the places that they were scattered to, and this is what happens when persecution comes, right?

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When persecution comes, you know, as it did several times for the Christians in Jerusalem and elsewhere, what people do, they'd flee, they'd go to other areas, and what that actually did was spread the gospel, right?

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I mean, it's a funny thing to think about, so here you have the Jewish people, and I'm trying to get it so I think, so when you have the

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Jewish people, they were given the law, and they were told that this was supposed to impact the whole world, but what they do they kept it to themselves, right?

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And so here you have the Christians, which early Christians were Jewish, still doing the same thing.

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What did they do? They stayed in Jerusalem. They, even though they came from other areas, when, after the death, burial, resurrection of Christ, a lot of the

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Jewish believers stayed in Jerusalem, they didn't want to go home, and so God allowed a persecution that did what?

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It spread everyone all over the place. So some of those people ended up returning to the land that they knew, but others, as that persecution spread, they would go to different areas, okay?

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And so it is, by tradition at least, the Apostle Andrew made it almost all the way to India, you know, in sharing the gospel, and so you see it, they went quite a distance.

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Remember, this was before cars. You walked that, those miles, you know? We appreciate cars now, right?

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Priscilla and Aquila got as far as Rome, and that's how Paul found them.

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Yeah, Priscilla and Aquila got as far as Rome, and I mean, you know, Paul got as far as Rome too, but he lost his head over it.

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So we see that this is a scattering. This scattering ended up furthering the gospel, but he said, and this whole book, as we're going to start looking at tonight, is about trials, dealing with suffering and persecution and trials.

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And so it's really interesting when you look at the first five verses, how Peter starts this, he's really, to start them talking about trials, what does he do?

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He fixes their mind on Christ. I had said when we looked at this several weeks ago, in verse two, you see the

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Trinity at work. Okay? It says, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the

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Spirit, and to obey Jesus Christ. You see all three members of the Trinity right there in one verse.

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You know, we were down in, as many of you know, we were down in Florida doing a seminar down there, and at the hotel that we were staying at, we ended up running into a guy at the pool, and,

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I mean, I see a guy that has a shirt that says, Salvation. Well, I'm not passing that up, we're going to discuss this.

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So I said, Salvation from what? And so, it was really hard, it was amazing.

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This guy was, he didn't want to say, he's like, well, just, I believe salvation in Jesus.

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I said, what if I'm a Muslim, would I be saved? He's like, well, I don't want to judge anyone.

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It was so hard for him to say that anyone else would be wrong, right? He was like, well, you know, if that's how you get to God, I'm like, but would that actually get me to God?

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I mean, there's a thing, there's a difference between what I believe and what's true. I said, what's true?

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I was like, I'm like trying to pull it from him. And so we eventually got to where, you know, he said, yes, someone that doesn't believe in Christ would be in hell, it was hard for him to say, but he eventually got there.

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And then I noticed he had a book from TJ Jakes, or TD Jakes. And so I sort of said, well, so let's talk about who

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God is. I said, what do you, you know, describe God? And I said, you know, so he did the same thing, what

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I expected him to do, which is a form of modalism, which is what TD Jakes believes.

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And he said, well, he says, well, I believe that God was, you know, in the role of the father in the old

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Testament, and then he was Jesus Christ, and then he takes on the role of the Holy Spirit. Now, what modalism would teach us is modes, not roles, but it's basically the same thing.

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We had a great time, we basically kept getting together with this guy. And it was funny because as Anthony and his wife started talking to him, the guy became more and more orthodox and conservative as, you know, and I think what it was, we concluded that he had been trained a certain way and never really dug into it.

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And as we're looking at things, and this is one of the verses I brought up is, here you see all three members of the Trinity, and they're separate and distinct, and yet all acting at the same time.

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You know, so that's one of the things here, one of the passages to just remember when we look at the

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Trinity, because here you see three members, they're all, what makes them God is the work they're doing, right?

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They're doing the work that God does. So this is something we would look at and say, well, see, each one of them is

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God. Oh, you all right, yeah, let Denise, because we were going to go outside, so just, yeah, open the, open the other door.

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Yeah, well, no, you see the, there's a, yeah, you get it. Oh, wow. So, so here's one of the passages, there's a couple of key passages.

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This one, the baptism of Jesus is a good one. What do you have at the baptism of Jesus?

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You have Jesus physically there, you have the voice of the Father and the Holy Spirit coming down as a dove.

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So what you see all three in one place at one time and yet distinct from one another.

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So these are some good passages to just keep in mind. So we see here that all three members of the

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Trinity are active in, in the work of salvation here.

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And so looking at verse three, we ended up seeing that here, here becomes the blessing.

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ according to what his great mercy. We talked about this, his great mercy that did what it caused us to be born again.

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So our salvation, our, our, you know, us being regenerate is, is caused by God.

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We can't do that on our own. We can't save ourselves, right? And those of us who go and evangelize, this is like the number one thing we have to deal with because when we ask a person, do you consider yourself to be a good person?

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How many people say they're a bad person? Very few, right? They're all a good person.

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Some are even a great person, right? And so the reality is, is we have to help them.

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I've always said this. It's not hard to get someone saved. It's hard to get them lost.

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It's hard to get them to a point where they see a need for a savior because they think they're great, right?

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They all compare themselves to Hitler or Mussolini or someone bad, right? They never compare themselves to God and say, let me do that as the standard.

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And so here you end up seeing that this is a work God has to do. So many people think their works are going to, are going to save them and their works aren't going to save them.

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And so, so it's God who, who by his mercy, because if he didn't show this mercy, there's, we wouldn't have, we wouldn't be able to be born again.

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And so it's his mercy that causes us to be born again. And he describes this as a living hope.

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But then he says, through what? Basically the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

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That's important because when we evangelize, you know, most people do, they leave Jesus in the tomb. He died.

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He was buried. People forget to talk about that. He rose. That resurrection is what vindicates everything he said about himself, that he is

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God. I always say, you know, you know what dead people do? Rock.

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They don't raise themselves from the dead like he said he would do. You, you as a dead man, raising yourself from the dead, that's not man.

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Right? And so the resurrection becomes important. But it's not just that it's in verse four, it was to obtain the inheritance.

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The fact that we, and I think about this, if you're struggling with persecution and trials, and you, you think about the inheritance we're going to obtain with Christ, right?

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That gives us something to look forward to. If we have, if we don't have something, you know, to, to keep us fixated on, on a future thing, then we end up getting stuck on the here and now.

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I was just preaching at a Colossians chapter three this past weekend about the fact of that Paul was saying that we need to have our minds fixed on the things above, not the things of earth.

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And that's what Peter's trying to do here is to say, think about the inheritance we're going to get. We're going to obtain an inheritance we don't deserve, but we are going to receive that.

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And so in light of everything we're going to go through on earth, compare that to the inheritance that's waiting for us in eternity.

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That is what gets us through those trials. Okay. I said this before,

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I'll probably say it again. There's with everything that's gone on in 2020 and 2021, a lot of professing believers were seeing their faiths being shipwrecked.

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Why? Because their whole focus was like here on earth. There's a whole lot of people that lost their minds, whole lot of professing

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Christians lost their minds when Trump lost. Like their faith was in Trump more than Christ.

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That's fixated on the things of earth. And so we have to have a mind that's focused on eternity.

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That's what's going to get us through trials. Not only that, but he said in verse five that it's protected.

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Protected by who? Our inheritance is protected by God. Anyone know anybody stronger than God? No?

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Then guess what? It's protected. You're not losing it, right? And that faith that we have will be revealed at the end times.

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So now he gets into discussing the main thing of the issues that we would have, and that is the issues of trials.

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So looking at verse six here, and I should quiz someone.

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I know some of you guys are not with us, but there's some of us who are trying to memorize the book of verse,

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Peter. So any of you that want to do it with us, I could give you the link to the app that we use.

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I don't know if it's on Android. I know it's on iPhone. Yeah, I don't know.

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We got to find someone that has an Android phone. I think so, because Anne has one, and she has that app. She has the app.

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Okay. So the app is called Versus, and I'm creating what's called a collection for us to go through all of 1

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Peter. So we can see that Kevin is ahead of everyone. I got far behind.

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I was two weeks in Florida. I noticed all of my rings have disappeared.

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You have to redo them. Yep. One trick though, if you back it up without completing it, that way you won't lose your ring.

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Oh, so you're cheating. No, no, no. If you want to go through it again, because it gets harder as you pack up more verses.

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Yeah. You want to remember the old ones, so you don't mess yourself up. You get back out, so you don't lose your rings. It gets frustrating.

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Unless it's a typo, it'll take it out. Yeah, yeah. So there's a way where you play games to actually help with...

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It's a very good verse, though. Yeah. It's fun because you spend... It's like instead of playing time with a game, you're spending that time with memorizing scripture.

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And so we're going through that. And so if any of you want...

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I thought I'd catch up while I was gone for two weeks. It's the reverse. So in verse six, in this you greatly rejoice.

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Now, it's really interesting. The idea in the Greek for greatly rejoice is the idea of being overjoyed.

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It's an extreme joyfulness. It's not just joy, but it's an extreme joyfulness. It's to greatly rejoice.

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So it's more than just being glad at something. Now, with this, I want to... There's an interesting thing that we have in English.

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Most people think that joy and happy are the same thing, and they're not.

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To rejoice or to have happiness are not the same. The easy way to remember this is happiness is based on what happens.

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Happiness is dealing with circumstances. So if you are... If your mind is fixated on the things of earth, then as long as everything's going well, you're going to be happy.

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Okay? And we have a generation of people that try to teach that everything is about happiness.

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What makes someone happy? I really don't care about happiness.

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I care about joy, because joy will get us through bad times. See, happiness only lasts as long as everything goes the way we want it to go.

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Once things don't go the way we want it to go, we're no longer happy, but we can still have joy.

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Okay? Joy is beyond what happens. Where is it based? Well, we already saw in verse four.

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In our inheritance, thinking of our inheritance that we have, that would give us joy.

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Being that we'll be with Christ, that gives us joy. So we could look forward to what's in the future for us, and anything we have to go through on this earth, well, okay, we have to go through that waiting for heaven.

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Okay? Peter's going to say later in this book, in chapter two, that we're aliens in this world.

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Now, he used aliens in a physical sense. It's the only two times that the word aliens is used.

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Okay? And not space aliens, like legal and illegal aliens.

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It's what they were called before, immigrants or undocumented workers or different names that we all have.

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But an alien is just someone that lives in a foreign country. He's going to later use it in chapter two to talk about that all of us that are believers, this is not our home.

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We're aliens here. This is just a foreign country for us. Heaven is our home.

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And so that's what we would look forward to. And throughout this whole book, we're going to see this. He's going to keep re -hitting this same idea over and over and over again.

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Why? Because if we're going to have joy in this life, the only way we're going to have joy is to have our mind fixated on eternity.

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If we're thinking about Christ, then, yeah, we can go through a lot of trials and temptations and we can discuss what those things are, but we can go through those things.

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If we're just looking for a comfortable Christianity, as many Christians have been, they're not happy right now.

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And unfortunately, they don't have joy either. So this idea is a great rejoicing.

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It's not just to have joy, but we should have an overwhelming abundance of joy.

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And if our mind is fixated on Christ, that should happen. And so he says, in this, you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while.

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And so we think about that, that, you know, he's right off the bat.

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Notice what he did in verse four. He's talking about that eternal inheritance. And here he's saying, before he's getting into this trials that we're going to have, he mentions it's just for a little while.

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Some will go, yeah, but I've been suffering for 40, 50, 60 years or something.

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Okay, well, think about it. Say you live 100 years and you struggle with things on earth.

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Take that 100 years, compare it to eternity, and how big is the 100 years? Right? All of a sudden, that's really little.

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I mean, we think about, like, I'm sure none of you guys ever thought this way. It was just me. But when I was a kid and my dad turned 40, man,

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I thought he was old. When he turned 50, I was like, man, he is ancient.

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You know, 60, I was like, man, oh, man. Yeah. Now he's 80, and I'm like, okay.

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But it was really funny. When I got into my 30s, suddenly 40 didn't seem so old. Now that I'm in my 50s,

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I'm like, you know, my dad actually was pretty active when he was 50, and I thought he was really old.

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But, you know, I'm still running 50 miles a week, and, you know, I'm doing all right. You see how we end up thinking, especially when we're younger, that, you know, 40, 50, 60, 70 years, that seems like such a long time.

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It all depends what we're comparing it to. Compare it to eternity, and even

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Methuselah living nearly 1 ,000 years is just a drop in the bucket.

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Right? I mean, you think about it. Methuselah lived almost one -sixth of all of the

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Earth's history. He spanned a great amount of that time.

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Right? And yet, what do you have? You end up seeing that 1 ,000 years is just a small blip.

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Right? And so we have to keep in mind that when we talk about these various trials, they're short -lived.

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Okay? He says, in this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while.

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And he says, if necessary, you've been distressed by various trials.

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So the interesting thing, if necessary, is it always necessary?

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Well, James says, when trials, not if trials.

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Right? As if we should expect that. Why should we expect trials in this life?

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What do you guys think? It changes us? That's good.

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It's part of the journey. It's part of the journey? It sharpens us.

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It sharpens us? Regenerate. What do you mean by regenerate? It changed over.

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Oh, it changed. Okay. We're living in a fallen state. We're living in a fallen state. So sin.

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Right? Some of the causes, there's a sinful state. And then when you consider what you were saying with being regenerate, if the world is lost, right?

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If the world is being described as being of the world as being of Satan and being in a lost realm.

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And then you put people that are, here's all this darkness. And you put someone that's light in there.

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It's at odds, isn't it? So we shouldn't expect that we're going to get along in this world without trials.

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Because trials are going to be something that if we're not going with the flow, we're going to be going against the current.

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Especially if you desire to live godly in Christ Jesus. Yeah. Especially if you want to live godly in Christ Jesus. There's a

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Jonathan Owens, Puritan writer. Very hard to read. But fortunately, if you ever want to read his books on mortification of sin and indwelling sin, there's a gentleman by the name of Chris Lungard who took those two massive works and condensed it into a really small book.

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So it's kind of like the Cliff Notes version and easier to read. But John Owens uses the illustration of if you're in a river,

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I don't know if any of you have ever been rafting, whitewater rafting. You get into a river where there's a strong current.

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I mean, one of the things if you get out of the boat, what you should do, what you're trained to do, is you keep your feet forward.

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So if you hit a rock, you can just bounce off it. Okay? Because you're in a strong current. Okay? When you're with that current, you're just going downstream.

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Not a problem. There's no resistance. But the moment you decide to plant your feet and try to go upstream, all of a sudden you get to feel exactly how much resistance is in the current.

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See, as long as you're going with the flow, going with the world, you don't even notice the resistance.

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You don't realize what's going on. But when you try to go against the flow, which is what we're called to do, then you feel that pressure.

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The pressure was there all along. When you're in that river, that current is going, but you don't feel it until, like you said, you get regenerated.

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Right? When we turn and try to go upstream. And so we have to expect that we're going to have trials.

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It would be foolish of us not to because of just the world.

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And so but he even he even says here, Peter says that, you know, you've been distressed.

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So he recognizes it's for a little while. He says, if necessary, you've been distressed.

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And this this term distress means to be grieved, to be saddened, to be sorrowful.

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And trials can do that to us. Right. Any of us who have suffered with trials have, you know, know what that's like to have to where it can affect our whole emotional state.

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You know, you end up getting into when you're having just whether it be physical, financial, emotional.

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I mean, you have big decisions to make. It can just drain on you.

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And he recognizes that. And so he says that these these trials, they can distress us.

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Now, notice the contrast. He started with in this you have great joy. But then he recognizes as well that these trials could distress us.

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It shouldn't. And that's the whole thing he wants that he wants to lay down is that we should have joy rather than let these things distress us.

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OK. And so now we get to the term he uses here, various trials, which the idea of various trials can mean manifold, just the number of just a variety of trials.

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And one of the things here that I want to spend a little time on is dealing with the term we call theologically is the title of testing.

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OK, under a category of testings, we have two other categories. One would be trials and won't be temptations.

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And they're not the same thing. They're all testing. Now, when we think about being tested, none of us like being tested.

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We didn't like tests in school. OK, maybe some of you did. I never understood that. Jim still has nightmares of being in school.

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It's the only thing that she ever dreams about where she has a nightmare. She has a bad dream. I'm like, what were you dream about?

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I was in school and I had to take a test I wasn't ready for. You know, I wish that those were only my nightmare.

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My nightmares are usually like, you know, one of my kids got kidnapped or died or something like that. I always think of like the worst things.

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She's like, I had to take a test I wasn't prepared for. What was it

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I tell you? Before we went to Florida, I was dreaming that like that we went there and I wasn't prepared.

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They changed the topic on me or something. And I had to get up and speak. And I wasn't prepared for it. And I was running around looking for notes.

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Crazy dreams. But that was really stressful for me in my dream. But we end up looking at testings.

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And when you look at testings, we have to recognize that God does not. He allows us to be tested, but he does not tempt us.

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And there's going to be a difference here. God will allow a test, much like he did with Job.

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Right. He said to Satan, go ahead, test him. Because God expected him to pass.

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OK. God has the advantage of knowing the end. We don't. God knows we're all going to be glorified.

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And so in that sense, we can look at this and say, OK, this is something that is going to be where God's not.

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He's not putting the temptation before us, but he's allowing it for very much.

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Like you said, it refines us. OK, it when we go through the fire of of trials and temptations, it refines us.

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So now the overarching title would be testings. OK. But I said there's two subcategories to a testing.

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OK. Right here. There's Trevor here. He likes to be in the front row. Actually, right here.

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Yeah. There's a time out here right here. Hey, we're just glad you made it.

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So so here's so now what's the differentiation between trials and temptations?

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Well, here's what it is. Trials are testings that come from outside of yourself.

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In other words, you get in a car accident. Now you're without a car. That becomes a trial.

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You it's not from within you. It's something that happened to you. Temptations are from within.

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So temptations start from inside of yourself. OK. Trials are external.

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So the difference between external and internal. So when we look at this, when we say he talks about trials, this is more of the idea of a testing.

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So this could this could end up including a temptation or what we call trials. OK. And so the various trials that Peter's referring to could be whether because the term in the

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Greek for trials is means of a temptation to entice to sin to trap.

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So it's more the idea he has here of what we would call temptation. OK. Things that are happening from within us.

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However, he was talking about them being scattered. What is that? They scattered because of persecution.

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That's external. And so for that reason, I would say that this includes both of those categories.

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It could include trials and temptations. So just the broad concept of of testings.

33:41

All right. And the thing that we end up seeing is that James says that Christ or God does not tempt us.

33:49

Right. But he will test us. He will allow something to happen.

33:56

But he doesn't force us to be tempted. OK, but something external.

34:03

Could could come and that could cause us to be tempted with something, you know, like someone bringing donuts and me being a glutton.

34:12

You know, is that a temptation or is that a trial? Me, you know, desiring that was probably a temptation from within because I made the excuse.

34:23

We think more trials would prove the genuineness of your faith. So does a trial prove the genuineness or face more temptation?

34:32

I actually think both do. Here's the now. So here's the thing with with temptations different than trials.

34:40

Because the trial is external, we can't control it. With a temptation, this issue with a temptation is that we can resist a temptation.

34:50

OK, temptations, when we have them, will get greater and greater in severity until a point that they just they're gone.

35:00

Right. When you resist the temptation, you'll feel that desire getting stronger and stronger and stronger.

35:07

And then you conquer it when it's just gone. The reality is, the more you do that, the easier it is to conquer the next time when the same temptation occurs.

35:16

OK, now I say that. Now think about this. Jesus Christ tempted like we are.

35:24

Without sin. In other words, every time that that something happened, he he would he would have, you know, being at the cross, have a desire not to not to go to the cross.

35:34

Right. But he suffered that to the fullest extent of it. Right. Because what happens when we give in to a temptation?

35:45

It's over. Right. It's amazing how quick that that desire just gone. Desire for that donut just.

35:52

No, actually, I'm desiring that because I only tried the jelly and not the chocolate. That's the problem. You're not helping me here.

36:03

So so what we end up seeing is. That we end up seeing that when we were tempted, we actually do have some control by the by the

36:15

Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit. We do have some ability to conquer that temptation.

36:22

And every time we're tempted, we have a choice. We can resist. We can give in.

36:29

Every time we give in, it is easier the next time to give in. Every time we resist to the full weight of it, it is easier the next time to resist it.

36:42

OK, and so literally every time we were faced with, you know, a temptation, that's what we have to realize.

36:49

Am I going to give in or am I just going to, you know, fight it? And sometimes, you know, look, you know,

36:57

Kenny and I talk about the fact that, you know, like I. So I have the I had I should say I had more of some of the

37:03

OCD issues where, you know, I used to drive him crazy. I'd have to check like my lock in my house, like even though I just checked it and made sure it was locked.

37:10

I have to check like seven times a night. I literally went when she would go to bed and the kids would be in bed.

37:16

I would go through the house like usually like half dozen times or so, checking all the locks in the house.

37:25

Nobody's up. Nobody came down. Anyone that came down, I would see them because my office was by the stairs.

37:31

You know, I'd hear them like, what do I think changed? Right. Nothing changed, but it was all in here and it was this compulsion.

37:42

I'd have things that I'd have to touch a certain way. And and the thing that you always says is that so she would do the laundry.

37:52

These are the things when you first get married, you have to learn how to deal with one another. Right. So she do laundry.

37:58

And she was like, you know, she just put the clothes in the, you know, just her pants go here.

38:04

Short sleeved shirts go here. Long sleeved shirts go there. And like, oh, no, no, no. We can't do that. Like I had to have them color coordinated and by style.

38:13

So polo shirts by color, you know, short sleeve, you know, the short sleeve business shirts by color, you know.

38:21

And so she basically was like, well, I'll give you one or two choices. Do your own laundry or accept the way

38:27

I do it. And so they're like she would do the laundry.

38:33

I used to rearrange it, you know, like after I used to go into the closet. OK, I'm just going to adjust this.

38:39

And then over time, you know, I just said, you know what? I know that's all up here.

38:45

I just have to fight this. And now the problem is I don't check the locks enough right now.

38:52

We're out having a fire one night and hours later, he was like, you didn't lock the door. See, so I've gone too far the other way now.

39:02

But but you see, that's that's the thing with a temptation. The temptation can be resisted.

39:10

OK, and in resisting that temptation, we get stronger to resist it the next time.

39:16

And that's the thing we have to to have with that. And where are we going to get the power to resist it?

39:22

Well, that's the Holy Spirit. It comes from having a thinking. One of the things that John Owens in his works on sin that he talks about is the fact that we have to understand that when it comes to temptations, we have kind of a you think of it as a fortress.

39:40

The way he does it is three barriers that we have. The strongest barrier, the outside barrier is our mind, our thinking.

39:47

Second is our emotions. And third is the volition. And so what what it means is that to to to resist temptation, the hardest thing to resist, if if if a temptation has gotten past your thinking, past your emotions, you're just going to give in to the will.

40:03

Right. And so the easiest period to fight it is when it's in the thinking process.

40:11

OK, when you're thinking about it, your mind is going to be the strongest defense, because once once something gets past your mind and you're more emotionally tied into some, you're more likely to give in to it.

40:23

And so one of the things we have to do is have a right thinking. That's what Peter's doing here. Peter's laying out for the believers that are going through trials and temptations.

40:32

Hey, have your mind basically like Paul said it fixed on the things above. Taking every thought captive for a being suppressed.

40:42

Yeah. Yeah. It's you know, one of the things that makes temptations and trials difficult is because unfortunately, when we when we do have trials or things like that that come our way, typically what ends up happening is we get used to that.

41:04

One of the things with depression, when people get into a depression, if they're fixated on something in the past, typically, and they don't look ahead, everything's on.

41:15

Look what happened. This is what happened to all this back here. And they're stuck in the past and they can't move forward.

41:23

But I've counseled so many people that even though they're stuck in the past, they know you can sit there and they go, oh, I know this is bad for me.

41:30

But they don't change. Why? Because unfortunately, when it comes to some of these things, we're comfortable with what we know.

41:39

We don't like change, do we? And so sometimes we would rather be stuck with the thing we know that's bad for us.

41:47

That's hurting us rather than the unknown. That's change.

41:54

Right. So a lot of times people will do things they know are not helpful to them because of the fact that they're comfortable with it.

42:02

They know it. OK. I've counseled far too many married couples who got used to fighting with one another.

42:13

Either they because that's what they saw from their parents or it's just what they've done their whole marriage.

42:20

And that's what they're used to. And they know it's destroying their marriage. But they're comfortable with it and they don't want change.

42:29

And that's the thing that we end up having. You know, was it that you had said earlier when we were on the phone?

42:38

Like change is a harder. I forget how you worded it. Sometimes it's riskier not to take a chance.

42:47

Not to take a chance than to take it. Yeah. Yeah. Because you think of risk.

42:58

Yeah. Like we always think taking the doing the unknown is risky, right?

43:05

Yet sometimes it's riskier to not go to the unknown, not take a chance because you're doing you do more damage by doing what you think is less risk.

43:19

So, you know, so so that's when we talk about trials, temptations, I'm going to use the term testings.

43:27

You know, we'll use them throughout kind of interchangeably some.

43:33

But there'll be times where I'll be specific to say that this is a trial versus a temptation. And so one of the things with it is temptations.

43:40

We just have to know we have control in that. If we're born again, if we're not born again, then we don't have the Holy Spirit and you got you got nothing.

43:49

You know, you may you may not do something because you may not want to steal something only because you're afraid of the consequence.

43:59

Right. I mean, that's one of the things that people ask me when people are struggling with an assurance of salvation.

44:04

One of the things I usually ask them is, do you hate the sin or the consequence of sin?

44:12

See, the reason I ask that is because an unbeliever doesn't like the consequence. Why does an unbeliever not kill somebody?

44:19

Because they don't want to go to jail. There's there's a restraining thing of of consequence society.

44:26

Yeah. But if you hate the sin, well,

44:31

I'm not going to kill someone because that's wicked. Right. It's an offense against God.

44:38

Totally different motivation. Right. But that that hating the sin only comes from the

44:44

Holy Spirit. And so that becomes the thing that we have to recognize that when it comes to temptations, we can overcome that by the power of the spirit.

44:55

However, if it's a trial that go through it as long as it's going and everyone has different trials.

45:04

Right. Some some of us have trials that are physical in nature. Right. You're going to deal with it your whole life.

45:11

Right. Some of you have met Justin Peters or know Justin Peters. He's got cerebral palsy. Had it his whole life.

45:18

You know, and it's always interesting when we do like a Q &A or something, people will ask

45:24

Justin, do you ever miss not walking? He goes, I don't know. I never did it. He's never walked without crutches.

45:32

You know, so he doesn't know what it's like to run. He can't miss it because he never experienced it.

45:39

Right. Well, he's going to live with that all his life. He'll know what running is like in heaven, I'm sure.

45:47

But but you see this. So some of the trials we have are going to be with us a long time.

45:55

You know, no promise that they would go away until glorification, until we die.

46:01

And others, they might be short lived. I mean, you know, get in a car accident and you're without a car for a while.

46:08

It's being fixed. That could be a trial, but it gets fixed and you're you're back. So the difference between those two is that one, we have some control over and one we don't.

46:20

That makes sense. OK, so let's see if we can get through verse seven, because if I only make it to one verse, he's going to kill me.

46:30

No, she just she just said, if you guys think I'm going too slow, let me know. I like to see it.

46:37

We dig in as much as we can and get as much out of it. I mean, there's no sense in it.

46:44

We could we could go on first Peter until Christ comes back. It's OK. And then he'll teach it the rest of the way.

46:54

Yep. So so we see here, verse seven, so that the proof of your faith being more precious than gold, which is perishable.

47:06

Even though tested by fire may be found to result in the praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

47:13

So the idea of the proof here, this is the the idea of of testing something to be genuine.

47:19

It actually, in some cases outside of scripture, has the idea of being without alloying.

47:26

So in other words, if you had you had a gold coin. Right. If you paid for a gold coin at the price of an ounce, you want to make sure it's fully gold.

47:38

Right. There was some Chinese businessman who I remember watching on TV that he was buying bars of gold because he thought that was going to be the best way to invest his money.

47:49

And that it would go up. And so he bought these bars of gold, which were like, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in US dollars.

47:56

And he had these bars of gold. The only problem was they weren't all gold. The center of it was,

48:02

I think, titanium, which is the same weight. And so he drilled through it and realized, oh, the middle of it's like a metal that's nowhere near as precious as gold.

48:12

And suddenly it wasn't as valuable as he thought. Right. And so this idea of being without alloy is without impurities.

48:22

OK, so it means that so that the proof of your faith, that the fact that your faith is genuine, it's tested.

48:29

It's been you know, it is without any alloys, without any impurities. OK. That that is that that faith.

48:39

And how does he describe it? That that that faith is more precious or more valuable than gold, which he describes gold as being perishable, being being destructible, destroyed.

48:52

So you see, we value gold. Well, maybe not in this country as much anymore. Right. We're off the gold standard.

48:58

So now we value the Bitcoin, I guess. But oh, did it drop?

49:05

Oh, yeah. Good time to buy. I do kind of laugh with that.

49:12

I had a guy in the jujitsu that I used to train with and he he kept telling me I needed to get into Bitcoin when it was a thousand dollars a coin.

49:20

And I was always like, no, no, no. I'm too nervous with it. Last I checked, it was like sixty thousand dollars.

49:26

That guy held on because he had thousands of dollars in Bitcoin. If he held on to it now, it's like, yeah, sell that and just retire.

49:37

So so what we see is people valued gold. Gold was a resource that was hard to get and it was it was precious.

49:46

So this at the time would have been one of the most precious metals to have. And he's basically

49:53

Peter goes, yeah, that's perishable. The gold compared to your your faith.

50:00

And that's the comparison here. Gold to your faith. Well, gold is perishable.

50:06

Your faith is not. Your faith is precious, more precious than that gold, which is perishable.

50:13

You see the comparison he's making here. And so he's he's saying here that that our faith should be something that we realize it's tested by fire.

50:25

You have a question? No. OK, you look like you're. So, you know, the the way that you end up basically getting pure gold or pure gold, at least in those days, was you basically put it under hot fire and all the impurities would boil up to the top.

50:44

And you just skim those metals off and dump it on the side and skim it off and then turn the fire hotter and skim it off and higher.

50:53

Skim it off hotter, skim it off. Right. So what is the picture that he has here is the hotter the fire.

51:02

In other words, the greater the temptation, the greater the trials that we have, the more tested, the more genuine our faith is.

51:10

And so people who try to go through the Christian life, avoiding trials and temptations, their faith hasn't been tested.

51:20

Their faith isn't genuine enough, not as genuine as it could be. Right. And so the idea is that the proof of that faith, that genuineness of the faith, it comes through those trials.

51:33

And if we try to avoid them, we're actually going to be less pure than we could have been.

51:41

Right. And so we have to be willing to go through the fire so that we come out the other side more pure, kind of like you had said earlier on.

51:49

Right. This is what these trials do. They change us. They make us more like Christ. OK. And so he says, not only is it tested by fire, but he says here at the end here of verse seven, may be found to result in the praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Christ.

52:12

So this is at that at the end time when we get before the judgment seat. We hear well done, good and faithful servant.

52:22

Right. That's the whole thing of going through these trials. We know at the end.

52:29

We're going to have that inheritance we talked about. We're going to be with Christ and we're going to have that, you know, that claim, well done, my good and faithful servant.

52:41

That gives us the joy to go through the fire. Right. You know, it's you know,

52:51

I'm preparing for in two or three weeks, I'll be at the cruciform conference and I'm doing a talk basically because it's the 500th anniversary of the

53:01

Diet of Worms where Martin Luther, you know, where he was put, you know, eventually, you know, it was his trial.

53:08

And so this 500th anniversary of that. And, you know, so they're the topic is standing firm.

53:17

Now, here's the problem. Anytime you go to a conference where everybody has the same topic, everyone's going to be talking the same thing.

53:24

I'm sure that every single speaker is going to be talking about Martin Luther because it's the 500th anniversary.

53:30

I mean, the Diet of Worms is going to come up over and over and over again. So I always when I get in those cases go, OK, what can

53:36

I talk about that will be something that not everyone else is stealing my message? You know, because they'll often put the their keynote speakers at the end when everyone else has spoken.

53:46

So everyone else already took your material. Right. So it's like, OK, so I decided I would talk about Jan Hus.

53:54

And it don't mean I know who Jan Hus is. Hus is the guy that brought that really

53:59

Luther influenced Luther. We probably wouldn't have the account of Martin Luther had it not been for Jan Hus.

54:07

The goose is cooked. Hus changed. So he changed his name.

54:13

People would call you by the town you're from. He shortened the name of his town to just Hus, which means goose.

54:18

And so when he's when he was burned at the stake, when he was on trial, he said, you can cook this goose, but someday a swan will rise that no that no man will put up.

54:31

You know, and and so what ended up happening is that everyone refers to Martin Luther as the swan and Hus was the goose.

54:39

And Martin Luther at his trial referenced Hus. So when you talk about the goose is cooked, it refers back to Jan Hus.

54:47

That's where it comes from. But Jan Hus being burned. I mean, they were they they hated

54:53

Hus so much that not only did they burn him, but to prevent anyone from getting his ashes, they dug up all the ash and threw him in all the different rivers.

55:01

So just be gone. You know, the same thing to Wycliffe, who was before Hus.

55:07

They actually after they killed Wycliffe, they dug him up so they could burn him all because he believed in a resurrection from the dead.

55:15

So they think about the Catholic Church figured they're going to stop this. They're going to burn him and spread his ashes everywhere.

55:23

Like what? God can't figure out how to put them back together. God made everything out of nothing. Come on now.

55:30

And so Jan Hus, here he is burning at the stake. And what was he doing?

55:36

He was singing. He was praying. He was reciting the Psalms.

55:43

He's praying for the people that was burning him. How can someone go through literally a fire like that and have that joy?

55:53

Well, it's based on everything that we're seeing here in First Peter, because that joy isn't based on what happens.

56:02

That joy comes from knowing where we are in Christ, knowing that there's the inheritance to come.

56:11

All right. That's where we get that kind of joy that we can go through trials and temptations like that and know that we're going to come out the other side.

56:22

OK, because we can we can have joy. And so the thing I don't want you to do, I don't want you to be happy.

56:30

I do want you to have joy. Right. Any any questions I should

56:37

I should mention, because some of you know, Pauline from Florida, she's watching. So. And we just we got to see her, actually, just she came to the conference the other night, so.

56:51

Do you believe John Hus' statement was a prophetic word? Yeah. So was John Hus' statement a prophetic word?

57:00

No, I don't. I don't think it was a prophetic word. I think I think he just knew. I think

57:05

I think what Hus was saying, you know, he was playing doing a play on his word being being goose. But I do think that with Hus, he probably thought that the swan was more the word of God, because what he did, the two big issues that Hus said, there was actually three, the three big issues that Hus that caused him to be killed.

57:25

One was he had the nerve to say that Christ is the head of the church. Not the pope, not a, you know, a king or queen.

57:34

It was Christ. Two, he thought that people should have the word of God in their own language and that people should that people can know the

57:45

Bible without needing some priest to interpret for them. So and he and more so what he really focused on was that the

57:54

Bible was the authority, not the church. And that was that's where we get

57:59

Sola Scriptura from. It actually came from Hus. He was the first one that made that argument. And then the third thing that he had was he believed that the church was only made up of believers.

58:12

Not everyone who attends. So I think what Hus probably thought the swan was was the word of God.

58:17

That's my thing. He thought that once you know what he would what Wycliffe started and Hus continued, he figured at some point one day people are going to have the word of God and you're never going to be able to stamp it out.

58:32

They're going to recognize what the truth of the word of God. So the issue being the word of God in their own language, because that's what got him in trouble is because he would preach in the local language and people understood the

58:43

Bible. It wasn't in Latin. I mean, mostly illiterate time. And they were preaching in Latin.

58:49

People couldn't even read English. Right. Couldn't read their own language. And yet everything's in Latin.

58:55

So that I think that he probably thought more about it being the word of God. I don't think he ever had the idea of Luther, but Luther being so influenced by him and always referencing him.

59:08

People start calling him the swan. And so with 95 theses being nailed to the door and that being on the

59:16

Gutenherm printing press and going everywhere, that that really did seem like a fulfillment of what

59:22

Hus said. Now, I'll tell you this, and I can't reproduce it the way

59:28

R .C. Sproul does, but if you ever hear R .C. Sproul preach or teach on Hus, he's got that really gruff voice.

59:34

But he tells the story because what happened is the bishop that condemned

59:39

John Hus to death. And John Hus is saying that you can cook this goose, but someday a swan will rise.

59:47

Right. And here you have this Martin Luther who is ordained in a church.

59:55

And as he's ordained, he has to be spread out, you know, with his arms out on the ground, right in front of the pulpit where who is buried there, but the bishop that condemned

01:00:06

Hus. And so R .C. Sproul says it this way, that he just pictures Hus saying that you can cook this goose, but one day a swan will rise and the bishop goes over my dead body.

01:00:20

And there's Martin Luther, the swan, over his dead body.

01:00:30

Now it sounds prophetic. Yeah, especially with R .C. with his gruff voice. Any other questions?

01:00:40

All right. We'll still be around if you have more questions, but let's close in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we're grateful for the fact that we can gather, we can look to your word.

01:00:50

What a reassurance we have as we study your word to know that we have an absolute standard for faith and practice.

01:00:58

We have something we can look to and know that as we as we gather and as we see things going on around the world, we have something we can study and we have you, the person of Holy Spirit, to dwell us and to illuminate your word to our minds so we can understand it and apply it, that we have something to give us joy.

01:01:20

Lord, help us to be focused on eternity and not the things of this earth, that we can go through all the trials and temptations that we might have before us, that we would make you look good, that you would be exalted by our behavior, that people would see you and not us.

01:01:43

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