Trials

The text

Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 1:6–7 KJV

At a glance

Summary of the sermon

Peter's readers greatly rejoice and are at the same time in heaviness: a paradox but not a contradiction, and Lloyd-Jones is anxious that no one should think the Christian is meant to be an unnatural stoic who feels no grief. The New Testament never promises immunity from sorrow. The heaviness comes from manifold trials — persecution, the loss of old friends, misunderstanding within the family, betrayal by those who once stood beside us — and the histories of Spurgeon, Whitefield and Wesley show that the saints have never been spared.

The remedy begins with understanding. Nothing that happens to a child of God is accidental; Peter's phrase 'if need be' shows deliberate purpose. God may be correcting slackness, preparing someone for a great work as He prepared Joseph and Paul, or using a lesser trial to fit us for a greater one. The deeper purpose is that trials prove and purify faith as fire refines gold, exposing the spurious faith of the stony ground and strengthening the genuine article in patient endurance.

Trials are also bounded: they are 'for a season', never beyond what we can bear, and they end in praise, honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ — glory to Him and reward to us. In the hour of heaviness, then, the believer must deliberately set the living hope and the inheritance reserved in heaven over against the present darkness.

Key points

• Rejoicing and heaviness coexist in genuine Christian experience; grief is not failure.
• Trials come in many real forms — persecution, betrayal, misunderstanding.
• 'If need be' reveals divine appointment, not blind chance.
• Trials refine faith as fire refines gold, proving it genuine.
• They are for a season only, and proportioned to our strength.
• The cure is to remember the great salvation and the glory to come.

Illustrations the preacher uses

• Gold refined and certified in the fire.
• Spurgeon's grief in the Down-Grade controversy; Whitefield's and Wesley's journals; Paul's 'Demas hath forsaken me'.
• The parable of the sower — seed among thorns and on stony ground.

Related Scripture

• 1 Peter 1:3–9
• 2 Corinthians 4:8–10
• 2 Timothy 3:12
• 1 Corinthians 10:13
• 1 Corinthians 3:12–15
• 2 Timothy 4:10
• Matthew 13:20–22

For reflection and discussion

1. When have you felt real grief and real Christian joy at the same time, and what did it teach you?
2. How might seeing a present trial as appointed 'if need be' change the way you respond to it?
3. What would it look like to deliberately set your inheritance and hope over against a current heaviness?