Gospel in Life

Guest (Female): Welcome to the Gospel in Life podcast. What sustains our faith when life feels overwhelming? The Bible tells us that when we become Christians, the power of Christ's resurrection is already at work in our lives. Today, Tim Keller explores how this resurrection power forms a framework for perseverance and hope amid the pressures of everyday life.

Guest (Female): Tonight's scripture reading is from 1 Peter, chapter 1, verses 6 through 9, and chapter 3, verses 13 through 18. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith, of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.

But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. For it is better, if it is God's will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the spirit. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Tim Keller: Each week, we're looking at how Christians can grow into Christ-likeness. Each week, we're looking at something from the book of 1st or 2nd Peter. We're looking at the different conditions, contexts, instruments, ways and means through which we grow into Christ-likeness. The one we come to tonight is probably the main theme of 1st Peter at least. That is that it's through trials, troubles, difficulties, and suffering that is one of the main ways in which we grow into Christ-likeness.

Let's take a look and see what these two passages, one from chapter 1, one from chapter 3, teach us. There's actually more than that because the book of 1st Peter is probably about suffering more than anything else. It might be the only book in the New Testament that is actually completely devoted to the subject of suffering. Job is the other one in the Old Testament. I'd like to pull out three things: the inevitability of suffering, the good potential of suffering, and the disciplines you need to practice during suffering if you are going to have those good outcomes.

First, the inevitability. This is the first thing I want to press. It's a little obvious maybe, but important. In verse 6, it says, "In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials." To say "have had to" is an English construction getting across a Greek term that simply means it's necessary. It's necessary that you suffer. Peter is not simply saying that suffering is possible, but that actually it's inevitable.

We live in a broken world. From a number of points of view, we should expect suffering and not be surprised by it. In fact, in chapter 4, verse 12 of 1st Peter, Peter actually says to his Christian readers, "Don't be surprised when suffering comes upon you as if it's something strange." He said you should be prepared for it because if you're not prepared for it, you're not ready for life.

New Yorkers, in particular, think that if I just do everything just right, if I push all the buttons, if I get the right consultants, if I really have my act together, I can put together this designer life. I don't care how hard you work. I don't care what kind of manager you are. I don't even care what kind of powerful person you are. You cannot stop bereavement, physical illnesses, financial reversals, personal betrayals. Those things will happen to you and they will cause searing pain.

Why is it inevitable? Think about Jesus. He was the perfect man, and yet he without complaining suffered terribly for some greater good. Jesus Christ suffered terribly. He was a good man, the perfect man. He suffered terribly to bring about God's redemptive purposes. What makes you and me think that we would be any different? What makes us think that we would be exempt?

Americans, by the way, are particularly bad at this. Dr. Paul Brand, who was a British surgeon, a very well-known surgeon, spent half of his life practicing in India and half of his life in America. This is what he said: "In the United States, patients lived at a greater comfort level than any I had previously treated, but seemed far less equipped to handle suffering and far more traumatized by it."

There's a man who would know. He says Christians are considerably more traumatized by suffering. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that for a lot of Americans, two-thirds of the pain they suffer when they suffer is shock at the fact they're suffering. There's the thing that's happened to you, and then there's the shock that this is even happening to me because Americans tend to feel that when suffering comes upon them, they're just traumatized by it. We don't expect it. Don't be surprised when suffering comes upon you as if it's something strange, Peter says. Think of the nature of the world. It's broken. Think of Jesus. Think of God. Think. Be ready. It's inevitable.

Point two: there is good potential in suffering. Even though there's a lot of things the Bible says about suffering, what I want to do tonight is just take the image that Peter gives us because it's a fascinating and fruitful image to meditate on. It's in verse 7. It says, "These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith, of greater worth than gold which perishes even though refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."

The image he's using is a furnace. Gold goes through a furnace and is refined. It's purified. What he is proposing is that just as when gold goes through fire, it becomes something greater, so faith, our faith, when it goes through suffering, can become something wonderful as well. He makes a brief point about the fact that your faith is of far more value than gold, because even gold that is refined by fire eventually goes away with everything else in the world. Nevertheless, there's an analogy. Faith is like the gold. Suffering is like the fire.

How so? Well, here is what little I know about goldsmithing. You put gold through a fire. It softens it, it melts it, but the fire cannot kindle it. It doesn't kindle it, it doesn't go to ashes, it doesn't destroy it. But what the fire does do is it takes the impurities in the gold and does something to them. The fire can't really touch the gold that much, but that's not the purpose of putting gold through fire. It's trying to deal with the impurities.

When you take gold out of the ground, it's always got impurities in it, things that are not gold. If you want pure gold, you want to get the impurities out. When you put the gold through the fire, what the fire does is it makes the impurities separate from the gold so that the goldsmith can skim them off. The fire affects the impurities in particular, makes them visible, raises them to the surface, and they can be skimmed off and taken out.

That's an extremely interesting metaphor, because then the question is this: when we suffer, it does something to our faith. What does it do? How is gold like our faith? The answer is our faith has got lots of impurities in it. What do you mean impurities? Well, our faith in God, we have faith in God, we have faith in Jesus, we have faith in our salvation. We believe all these things, and yet the way most Christians actually live is though we say we believe in God, and we do, and we say we believe in Jesus, and we do, the things that we really trust are our career, our romantic relationship, or our family.

These are good things, but we overinvest our heart in them and they become the real things we trust. That's where most of our problems come from. Let me give you an example. Some years ago, I heard a man give a testimony of his conversion in front of a conference, a Christian conference. He was speaking in the year 2009 and he was talking about a conversion experience that had happened to him four years before, around 2005.

This man had been a very successful fund manager, so he was pretty wealthy. He had been very successful in investing. In 2005, evidently, he'd had a really bad year and he was really rattled by it. He was talking to some Christian friends who were trying to talk to him about Christ. He says, "Oh, I don't have any faith. I wish I had faith. That'd be nice. You guys have faith. I'm not that kind of person. I have no faith."

They said, "Really? You don't have any faith?" They said, "You do have faith. What is your meaning in life? What do you look to that enables you to feel safe in the world? What is the source of your self-esteem and your self-worth and your self-image? It's your money and it's your success. That's what you've put your faith in. You have enormous faith. It's your meaning in life. It's your hope. It's your self-worth. You've invested your heart in these things."

The problem is you're having a bad year and that's the reason why you feel so fragile. You know why you're feeling so fragile? Because your faith is in something that's fragile. Because everything in this world is fragile. It was very interesting to him and it was actually quite eye-opening to him. He thought about it and evidently, there was a process. He looked at Christianity, he thought about it, and he became a Christian.

He gave his testimony four years later in front of this group of people, many of whom were also people in the investment community. This is 2009. Some of you remember how bad that year was. 2008, 2009. This is what he said. I was there. I wrote this down, maybe not verbatim, but pretty close because it was so striking. He said, "I'm giving you this testimony because four years later, I'm in a field that we used to call wealth management. I guess nowadays all we can call it is sort of wealth survival."

Then this is what he said: "I have lost an enormous amount of money this year. And here is what I want you to know. I've never been happier in my life. If the great recession had happened four years ago when my faith was in something else, I know where the vodka bottle is and I would have driven myself right into the ground."

You could have heard a pin drop in that room. Hear that? He says, "I have lost an enormous amount of money this year and here is what I want you to know. I've never been happier in my life." Now what happened? He went through a relatively mild fire. He had a bad year in 2005, and what it did was it showed him what he really believed in. The fire brought out what he really believed in and he realized, "Wait, if that's what I'm really resting in, I'm in trouble."

Later on, in 2009, a vastly more terrible recession happened. What happened? His faith resulted in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ was revealed. In other words, what happened was it's like this. You may think you believe in God, but when suffering comes, it separates out the impurities in your faith and you see it's really my reputation, it's really my success, it's my wealth, it's this person in my life, it's my approval. These are the things that I'm really believing in and that's the reason why I'm up and down, up and down, why I'm so anxious, why I'm so angry.

When suffering comes, it brings out the impurities in your faith. It shows you how little you really believe in God. His love is not tangible, his power is not tangible to you. If it really was, if your faith was what it should be, you could handle life, but you're not. When the suffering comes, when you're in the fire, it brings out those impurities and there's only two things you can do at that point. One is you can say, "God, you're not enough. I cannot live without these things. I've got to have my wealth, I've got to have my health, I've got to have my beauty, I've got to have my popularity. I have to. You're not enough."

Or you could say like what Jacob said when he was wrestling with God in Genesis 32. He's holding on to God and he says, "I will not let you go till you bless me." What that means, I think, is that in suffering, you get a hold of God and you say, "I want you to be my real wealth, so I don't go up and down all the time over financial wealth. I want you to be my real beauty. I want you to be my real love. I really want to know you in a way I haven't known you before because then I can handle life. But right now, I'm so fragile." The impurities come to the surface and you skim them off and you take hold of God. That's why suffering, like a furnace, has tremendous potential to turn you into pure gold.

How can that actually happen? The question comes up then, okay, so you're saying that when suffering comes, I need to take hold of God. It can really refine me. Oh yeah. In fact, somebody once said this. He said if you handle suffering properly, here's four things that happen. Suffering humbles you and gives you a far more self-knowledge than you had before. You'll know yourself in a way that non-sufferers have not.

Secondly, it will teach you not to idolize or overinvest your heart in many things. You'll be a lot freer, you'll be a lot happier, you'll have a lot more poise because you're not resting your whole life in all these things that have to go right. Three, it greatly enhances your intimacy with, dependence on, and experience of God's love and presence. Fourth, it just makes you far more wise, compassionate, and generally more useful in the lives of others, especially those who suffer. You've been there. You can help others. That's turning you to gold.

How does that happen? When you're in the fire, what do you have to do? What do you mean "take hold of God"? Well, there's three things I'd like you to see that the text talks about. There's probably more, but I'm sticking with the text I've got. Here are three things. These are the disciplines now, the disciplines that you have to practice when difficulty and suffering come if you are going to have the suffering turn you into something good instead of just break your heart.

First of all, number one: don't be stoic. Cry. Don't be stoic. Cry. You say, where do you get that? Well, right at the top. Verse 6. David Martin Lloyd-Jones, the great British preacher, preached a sermon on this many years ago, this very verse that was in a book of his sermons that had a big impact on me in my youth. Verse 6 is an intriguing verse. It says, "In all this you greatly rejoice." He's talking about verses 1 to 5. Verses 1 to 5 are talking about all the things basically we have as Christians. We're born again to a living hope. We have the hope of the resurrection to come and all that.

So he says, "You greatly rejoice in your Christian benefits and things." But then it says, "Now for a little while you have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials." Look at this. Suffer grief in all kinds of trials. The trials are the circumstances. Bad things are happening to you: relational betrayals, financial reversals, illnesses, bereavement. Bad things are happening to you, but it's not just that bad things happen to Christians. You suffer grief in those bad things. The word "suffer grief" means you hurt. It's a word that means agonizing pain. Agonizing pain.

So Christians, even though they're rejoicing in what they have in Christ, at the same time, notice it's two present tenses. In these you greatly rejoice, that's a present tense. And yet you're in searing pain. That's a present tense. It doesn't say, well, since you're rejoicing, you're really not that unhappy because you're rejoicing in Jesus. Nor does it say because you're in pain, you're not rejoicing in Jesus. They're happening together.

An awful lot of Christians think what it means to rejoice in the Lord during suffering, they basically think of that as a form of stoicism. Stoicism, the Greek stoics, felt, and it's not just the Greek stoics, lots and lots of shame and honor cultures have the same view, that if you're a strong person and suffering happens, you just don't let it get to you. You keep a stiff upper lip. You don't let it get to you. You don't let it make you weep and break down. That's not the Bible. That's not Christianity. That's not healthy either, by the way.

That's not what you see here. What it's saying is that even though you're rejoicing, you're in pain. I've had people say, how are you doing? I'm a pastor and I guess they think they're supposed to give me a Christian answer. They say, "Well, I'm just rejoicing in Christ and I'm not letting it get to me." Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Read the book of Job. Just read the book of Job. Bad things happen to him. His children die and all of his finances are wiped out.

We're told he tore his robes and he cried out and he fell on the ground. All through the book of Job, he's constantly complaining. He's cursing the day that he was born. He curses the day of his birth. He's constantly challenging God. He says, "God, if you just appeared before me, I have some questions for you." At the end of the book of Job, you and I reading it would say, "Boy, he kind of lost it in there a few times." He's constantly pouring his heart out, saying some of the most awful things, searing pain.

At the end of the book, God vindicates Job and says, "Job, you were faithful to me." And we go, what? That's because we tend to think that Christianity is stoicism. Here's the point: Job never walked away from God. All those horrible things that he said, all that searing expression of pain, he was doing it to God. He was pouring his life out to God. In the end, God says you were faithful to me. Why? He doesn't expect you to be doing a stiff upper lip. It's not Christian. It's not right.

The stoics say don't let it get to you. But the Bible, read the book of Job, read the book of Jeremiah, read the Psalms, and listen to Jesus Christ crying out from the cross. Stoicism is one thing, but in the Bible, the cries of the sufferers resound through the pages of the Bible even from the cross itself. Here's the first thing. When I've had people say, "Well, I hear Christians talk about how when you go through suffering it's like a refining fire and it can strengthen your faith, but all I know is I'm just in pain," those two things happen together. That's what the fire is: the pain. It's not either-or. When people say to me, "I'm just not letting it get to me," you're not even letting yourself go through the fire, I guess. That's like self-hypnosis. That's not courage.

First principle: when you hurt, hurt. Don't be a stoic. Cry. Secondly, though, the second principle is keep a clear conscience. Go down to chapter 3, verse 16: "keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander." Now chapter 3 is talking about suffering, but it's talking about a particular kind of suffering. Chapter 3 is talking about what happens when you're persecuted for your faith. Maybe you're being thrown in jail, maybe your goods are taken away from you. It's a very serious kind of suffering, but it's a specific kind.

I would like to just draw out the principles for all kinds of suffering and this principle, keep a clear conscience in the midst of suffering so you don't give the opponents ammunition, is extremely important. In this situation, it's saying let's say you're being wronged, you're being betrayed, you're being attacked. Don't become cruel, don't become violent, don't lie, don't cheat, don't do bad things. Keep your conscience clear. That means continue to live the Christian life. Obey God.

But it works across the spectrum because when you suffer, this is one of the things that can destroy you in suffering, this is what you have to avoid: self-pity. Because self-pity enables you to do bad things just to console yourself and you feel like you deserve it. I remember some years ago talking to a man who had had a great financial reversal and he was just in such pain, and so he had an affair. He slept with a woman who wasn't his wife. The reason he did that, even though he had always been a very moral, upright type of person, is in the midst of his suffering he said, "After all I've been through, I deserve this."

That's self-pity. "I deserve this." And of course then he not only had his career fall apart, but he had his marriage fall apart. So that didn't make things any better, now did it? No. See, what this means is these two things don't seem to go together. On the one hand, don't keep a stiff upper lip. Yell and scream and bite the rug and cry out and pour out your heart. Don't be a stoic. Cry. But on the other hand, keep your conscience clear and obey.

This is, for example, what Job did. These two things together is what we just don't know how to do. We either fall apart and just do whatever we can do to medicate and numb ourselves and console ourselves, or else we keep a stiff upper lip and we stay disciplined. No, they go together. Job screamed and cried out in agony at the same time he never walked away from God. He continued to pray. When I say keep your conscience clear, I don't just mean don't have an affair. Of course don't have an affair, but just pray every day and read the Bible every day and go to church. A lot of people, because they just feel horrible, everything's so bad, they just stop doing the things you're supposed to do as a Christian. Don't do that. Don't be a stoic. Cry. On the other hand, keep your conscience clear and obey God.

And thirdly, look at Jesus Christ himself. Because down here in verse 18: "For Christ also suffered." There it is. Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. We've been talking about furnaces. Let me tell you another story about a furnace you probably may know of. In the book of Daniel, chapter 3, it tells us about three Jewish young men, exiles, who were in Babylon: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

They had been told that there was a law that everyone had to bow down to an idol. They refused to do it. The king of Babylon was furious with them and so he said to his soldiers, "Take them and bind them, shackle them and bind them, and throw them into a fiery furnace." The fiery furnace was heated so hot that when the soldiers threw them into the fiery furnace, the soldiers perished. The heat was so great that the soldiers died. They threw them in.

So King Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, goes up to this high place to look down and to see his prisoners. He expected to see them writhing in pain and wreathed in flame. Instead, he can't believe what he sees and he turns to people next to him and says, "Didn't we throw three prisoners bound into the furnace?" And they said, "Yes, O King." He says, "I see four men walking around unbound and unharmed in the fire, and the fourth one looks like a son of the gods."

In the Old Testament, there's this figure called the Angel of the Lord, not an angel of the Lord, the Angel of the Lord. When that figure shows up in the Old Testament, he speaks as God, he embodies God, and most of the Old Testament commentators and theologians believe it's a pre-incarnation manifestation of Jesus himself. The point is simply this: when Jesus walks with you through the flames, when Jesus goes through your furnace with you, all that comes off are your shackles, your bonds, the things that addicted you, the things that controlled you, the things that drove you, things that were too important to you.

If Jesus is walking with you through them, you won't be harmed. You'll come out pure gold. Free. Well, you say, what does that mean? How do I look to Jesus in my suffering? How do I rely on Jesus? It's simple. "For Christ also suffered." We are the only religion that says that God actually came into this world and knew suffering.

Aristotle the philosopher said it would be impossible for there to be a friendship between a god and a human being. You know why? They don't have anything in common. Speak for yourself, Aristotle. Because here's what we know as Christians. God in Jesus Christ took on human likeness and he knows our suffering. He knows death. In fact, on the cross, unimaginable, on the cross Jesus Christ even learned what it's like to be lost. For he said, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

He can be our friend, he can be with us. You know why? When Jesus Christ went to the cross, he went into the ultimate furnace. He suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. That was the ultimate furnace. He was completely abandoned by God. He got everything we deserve. If you see him going into the furnace for you, the ultimate furnace for you, then you can know that he's in your furnace with you. Then you can rely on him. You can say if you did that for me, O Lord Jesus Christ, I can do this for you. If you suffered infinitely for me, then I can suffer finitely for you. I'll obey you. I'll cry out but I'll obey you. I'll look for the things in my life that need to be changed and I'll just hold on to you and when it's over, I know that you'll bless me.

Therefore, friends, remember what Joni Eareckson Tada, the Christian lady who's been in a wheelchair for many, many years and knows a lot about suffering, she's also a writer and she says this: "Jesus is worth trusting, period. End of argument. Why? After all, when they have you hung on a cross like meat on a hook, you have the final word on suffering." Jesus says trust me in suffering. End of argument. Do it and you'll come out like gold. Let's pray.

Thank you, Father, for giving us this assurance. O Lord, everybody in this room is either on their way into a time of trouble or their way out of a time of trouble or they're in it right now. We're all like that. So we pray, Lord, the little furnaces, the big furnaces, you would teach us what it means to look to your son Jesus Christ, to keep our conscience clear, yet to cry out and to hold on to you. Knowing that through by trusting you, Lord Jesus, trusting you because you went into the great furnace for us, we know that this is going to change us more and more into your likeness. Giving us a self-knowledge, giving us a strength and joy, giving us a compassion for other people, giving us more intimacy in prayer with you. Give us these things through your son Jesus Christ, O Father, for we ask them in his name. Amen.

Guest (Female): Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you were encouraged by today's teaching, you can help others discover this podcast by rating and reviewing it. To find more great gospel-centered content by Tim Keller, visit gospelinlife.com.

Today's sermon was recorded in 2014. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.