Trials and Suffering

OK, I'm going to ask you the question that Bob asked you last week when I was gone. And his question was, what was the last verse that Hal taught on last week? And so my question is, what's the last verse or what is the verses that Bob taught on last week? Well, Bob, you can tell by the overwhelming response that...

This is not a good sign. Was it like... Good that there's no pass and fail. Was it like in 1 Peter chapter 4 verse Twelve and thirteen and thirteen and fourteen. What does it say? Think it not strange concerning the fiery trials that are to try you. And Bob was talking about the fiery trials that are to try us as though some strange thing has happened. And and so just so you remember, I put it up on the screen here. And it goes on to say, but rejoice inasmuch as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy. So the question is, and Bob asked this question, why shouldn't we think it's strange that we're going to be faced with fiery trials? Why? Why don't we look at fiery trials as it was some stranger knocking at your door who you have no clue who he or she is?

Okay, Bob, notice the effectiveness of your... The means by which we put the old man away. He gets burned off as we go through these fiery trials so that we find out that he's not effective, that we don't want to be identified with him. We want to be identified with Christ. Okay. Remember, somebody said we're strangers, so I guess... Okay, good. Okay, so we're strangers here. This is not... And so what was Bob's emphasis? Where is our citizenship? Is it here? No, it's in the heavenlies. Okay.

I want you to look at this, because Bob talked about this. Inasmuch as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings, and the word partaker meant what? The word was koinonia? We're part of, we're joined with, Okay, fellowship or shares, okay. Let's see, do I want to ask you any more questions on this?

But notice something here in this passage of Scripture with which Bob talked about in closing. But rejoice, inasmuch as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy. Now, Bob talked about His glory being revealed. Is that when the Lord takes us home, or is that when the Lord returns at the rapture and we're translated were changed in the moment of a twinkling of an eye, is that when His glory is going to be revealed? I think His glory is revealed every time we go through one of these trials and we're able to realize our dependence on Him and that we've been able to get through the trial and we really look at Him and we're joyful that I mean, that he's part of our life, and all of those things that his character is. I mean, in that room, we see his glory. Okay. So is it possible, then, that the reason for the fiery trial is for him to reveal his glory?

That's what we're going to look at this morning. So Bob left off at a wonderful place in terms of where we're going to start this morning. So I want you to turn. to 2 Corinthians chapter 4. And I want you to look at verse 7. Excuse me, verse 8. And Bob talked about fiery trials. Look at verse 8 and verse 9.

It says we are troubled on every side, yet not distressed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. We are persecuted, but not forsaken. We are cast down. but not destroyed. Does that sound like some fiery trials to you? Wow. And this is the norm. This is the norm, not Norm Avery, but this is the norm of the Christian life.

But I want you to see the context in which these fiery trials are written in. So go up to verse 6. Look at verse 6. And it starts off, For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Think about this for a minute.

Before we look at this passage of scripture, I want you to think in terms of what is the primary purpose of God allowing trials, whether they be fiery trials suffering, whatever, in our life. What is the purpose? What's God's purpose? God must have a purpose. Number one, if God is omniscient and omnipotent, certainly He allows every single trial in your life and in my life.

Right? He knows of it. He allows it. Why? To reveal His glory. And conformance. It's all about conforming us to Him. Okay, to conform us. And to come into the fullness of what He wants for us. Come into the fullness of what He wants in our life. Okay. We're joint heirs, so therefore we suffer as Christ suffered. Okay, we're joint heirs so that we suffer as Christ suffered. Alright.

Isn't it also purification? Okay, purification in what sense? and to pry us away from the old Adam. Okay, to pry us away from Adam. Well, how this circles, let's think a little bit, that the idea, I think, the mindset of the new man is the fact that we're being proven to be who we really are. Okay. I mean, in a sense, that's his glory and asset. Okay, we're being proven as to who we really are. Come to know him better. Okay, come to know him better.

And all of those are true, but I had a trick word in there in the question. Primary, what is God's primary purpose. Now, a lot of responses, in fact, most all except one response, okay, was looking in terms of at us, growing us, conforming us, purifying us, right? And the focus was more on us versus him. But there is one answer that says, to glorify Him. Wow!

That's different, isn't it? And so we've got to go back to what is God's eternal purpose? And I hit on this all the time with you. What is God's eternal purpose? Okay? Wherever, whatever, with whoever, what is His eternal purpose? And you've got to get down to that level to understand what is His eternal purpose. Alright? So, without putting anything on the screen, what's His eternal purpose? To glorify Him. Okay, to glorify Him. To declare His glory. To share it. To share it. To reveal it. And to reveal it. Okay. Okay. Now you guys passed the test. You get a hundred percent on that one. Okay.

So, in the class we've been building on a foundation. In order to understand trials and sufferings, We have to start with the foundation, and the foundation is God's eternal purpose. Just as you said, to declare His glory, to share it, or to reveal it, to share it, and to be glorified. Then on that foundation is identification with Christ, for our citizenship, who we are in Christ. And then we built on that foundation that coming at us is temptations, 24-7, even when you're sleeping, even when you're dreaming, there are temptations that come at us.

And we talked about temptations and our response. And Bob talked about fiery trials in citizenship last week. And the thing is this. every trial, whatever trial it's going to be, whatever suffering that's ever going to come at us, as a result of it, there are going to be temptations. Okay? There are going to be temptations.

And to understand those temptations, we have to understand who we are. And to understand any trial that comes at us, We need to understand God's eternal purpose. So that's what we're going to be looking at this morning. So back to 2 Corinthians, verse 6. So what we're going to do is think outside the box this morning. And usually what we do is we think inside the box. We think of ourselves during trials, how God is going to grow us up, mature us in the trial, how he's going to increase our faith during the trial, etc. etc. And we're looking at our side of it, but what we want to do is change our focus and look at God's side of trials.

So verse 6 says this, for God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness. Let me stop there. It says, for God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness. Literally, it says this, that God said, light will shine out of darkness. It's a future tense. Light will shine out of darkness.

So here's the question. What is God referring to? Is he going back to the first day of creation in Genesis chapter 1? where he says in verse 2 that the earth was out of form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said let there be light and there was light and God saw that the light that was good and divided the light from the darkness question is this and that's pretty miraculous in and of itself isn't it the question is is this what he's talking about in verse 6 God said, light will come out of darkness. I don't think this is what you're referring to.

Doesn't this kind of refer back to Ephesians 5, where he says, you were formerly darkness, but now you are light? Okay, okay. Dead in trespasses and sin. Dead in trespasses and sin. You were formerly in darkness and now there's going to be light. That's what it's referring to. So it's not referring to physical light out of physical darkness, but what kind of light? Spiritual light out of spiritual darkness. What's the source of the light in verse 6? Where's it coming from? Okay. From our Lord. Okay.

It's from the one who said, light will shine out of darkness. Who is light? And look what it says, when it says that the light will shine out of darkness. The word for shine there is the word lampo. We get our word what? lamp, which means to beam or to radiate. That this is going to beam or radiate. And where does it beam or radiate from, with respect to us, in verse 6?

We're known as light in the Lord. Okay. We're known as light in the Lord. And specifically when it says, for God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shone, where? In our hearts. It beams or radiates out from our hearts. Isn't that miraculous?

As was said by Nancy, we were in spiritual darkness and the Lord wooed us to Him and wooed us to the Lord Jesus Christ through the cross. We believed. We became a new creation in Christ, totally new. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a what? new creation, old things are passed away, all that we were in Adam is passed away, behold, all things have become new, or better translated, new things have become.

New things have come into a state of being that never existed before. New things. Light. Light out of our hearts, which never existed before. We were in spiritual darkness. New things have become. It's incredible in terms of if we were to list the new things that have come into a state of being as a result of being in Christ. But anyhow, new things have become.

Question, what's the purpose of this light? So we have this light within us, it's beaming and radiating out from our hearts, and what's its purpose? And I want you to look at verse 6 to answer the question, what's its purpose? To give the light of the knowledge. to give the light of the knowledge. Hold it. Reverse question back to me. I'm the teacher. I ask the questions.

The thing about this that always I think is so much interesting to discuss and to think about a little bit is that there are people who go through trials and tribulations who are not of the Lord. And there seems to be a solitude and a peace about them that gets them through, too. But that's not the glory of God that's being portrayed, correct? That's their ability in the flesh to deal with this in a way that we think really brings glory to God.

So, what's going on here? There goes a whole lesson for this morning. And in a trial, if we If we forget all the foundational stuff and go right to, oh man, I've got to glorify God in this, and that is the wrong, it doesn't happen that way. As we rest in Him, He shines out from us and it's His glory that is shining in us. It's not us manufacturing anything for Him. Okay, excellent.

In response to Bob's question about the unbeliever, doesn't that show us, the believer, The grace of God, even though the unbeliever doesn't realize it, it's still the grace of God that he comes through it, he or she. The unbeliever realizes healing and comes through that trial. Okay, Bob's question. Is there anything in an unbeliever that would cause him or her to uphold themselves in a trial?

Well, there's the issues of pride, and there's the issues of biting the bullet, and there's the issues of being depressed, which may in fact be portrayed in this man. I mean, there are lots of psychological barriers. Think about this. How was man created in the first place? In the image and likeness of God. That man has a likeness image of God, doesn't he? Okay. Now, when Adam fell, so did the image fall. But the image was there in a fallen state, if you will.

So the question is this, does man have the capacity to love? Where does that come from? I mean, he was created that way. Does man have the capacity to have patience? But it's not God's patience, right? It's that fallen state. So man still has that likeness image, totally fallen, but has these aspects of God's image, doesn't he? But, it's totally out from himself, totally out from self, now.

So what's the difference between the unbeliever's image and Christ's image that's within us. What's the difference? Okay, knowledge of the light. So when we talk about love, patience, long-suffering, in terms of out from an unbeliever versus a believer, what's the difference?

I always think of imitation vanilla. when you're cooking, you know, when you're baking, is real vanilla. And one is just a cheap imitation that's not of the same quality and the same essence or whatever, you know, as the real thing. Okay. So it's what can be generated out from self that looks like the real thing, but isn't the real thing. But the real thing, the real thing is perfect, right? The real thing... And the imitation shows itself in the end for what it is.

It isn't a lasting thing. Okay. Now let's take the scenario of the trial, of the test, to the unbeliever versus the believer. Is there a limit to the love, to the patience, to the long-suffering on part of the unbeliever? Is there a limit? There's a limit. Is there a limit in terms of the believer, in terms of the love, the patience, the power? Is there a limit?

No. Why? Well, I think it's our citizenship. Okay, it's our citizenship. Okay. Alright. Because it's infinite. It's the source. It's the source. It's infinite, right? So there's a big difference. You know, it's just like God says, my ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts. As high as the heaven is above the earth, so are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts. The same thing is true with anything else concerning love and patience and strength and long-suffering in our life.

Where were we? Sorry. No problem. So I asked a question. What is the purpose of His light? Right? And someone answered in verse 6, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. Okay? to give the light. And to give the light is one word in the Greek.

Photismos. Photismos. What English word do we get from that? Photismos. Photography. Photography or photo, right? And that word means to illuminate. It means to illuminate. Now, here within us is the glory of God. It's in our hearts. It's beaming out, and it's beaming out to think of one of these big searchlights, right? And it's beaming out to illuminate something. What's it illuminating? What do you think God is going to use it to illuminate? Here's this, here we are, here's His glory within us, in our hearts, radiating, beaming out, and the purpose of it beaming out is to illuminate something, not to illuminate it's going to illuminate something out there. It's illuminating the darkness. And who's in the darkness? The unbelievers. So it's illuminating the hearts and the minds of men. Think about that.

Right? And it's going to do that. and it's going to give man the knowledge of the glory of God, the objective truth about the glory of God. First of all, what's the glory of God? His essence, who He is, His love, His grace, His mercy, His righteousness. We can go down the list. The totality of who He is, His essential essence, is the glory of God. And man is going to, by beaming out from us his glory, man is going to be able, it's going to illuminate man's mind to see the glory, the totality of who God is.

Question. What other vehicles does God have or use to beam out His glory and illuminate the hearts of men? And specifically, in this case, let's talk about unbelievers. What other mechanism or vehicle does God use? His Word. Okay. So let's talk about His Word. Can an unbeliever Pick up his word and understand. Sometimes people are just changed totally. Okay. Can you understand all about God's love and mercy and grace? Not totally. There are certain things that the Spirit of God will come to an unbeliever with, in terms of the truth of the Gospel, the truth of the Son, what He did for him. But that's about it. Can an unbeliever understand about the patience of God? I don't think so. Why? Why? It's foolishness, and you have to have the discernment.

Where does the discernment come from? From the Holy Spirit. And if the Holy Spirit doesn't involve a person, he doesn't have the discernment. So, God's purpose now is to radiate out, being out from you as a as a believer, the knowledge of the glory of God, of who He is, in the hearts and the minds of men out there, isn't that incredible? That He would use us, okay? That He would use us to do that. And the thing is, as Peggy said, You don't, in and of yourself, say, OK, I'm going to beam out this. Let me tell you something. You won't have a clue as to when this is happening. You will not know. OK? Because all the Lord wants us to do is to walk by faith. As you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him. You receive them by faith, so walk by faith. And as we walk by faith, then that's what's going to be happening.

I remember so well how, I don't know, several years ago, whenever we were in Galatians, and I'm not sure what part of Galatians we were in. Back in 1492. Seven years ago. When you talked about how sometimes we're the only tablet or epistle that anyone will ever read. That just made such an impact on me as you go in your daily life. I mean, just who you are. Maybe the only word or epistle that anyone ever sees. They've never read the Bible and you're it. That is, to me, just really awesome. Right. Absolutely. See Bob, at least somebody remembered what I said. And you know, but our response goes something like this. I'm too weak. I'm not mature enough. My faith is not strong enough for Him to radiate or beam out His glory out of my heart to illuminate the hearts of men.

You know something? You're right. You are absolutely right. And God agrees with you. We are weak. We are immature. And our faith needs to grow. But on the other hand, his purpose never changes. His purpose never, never, ever changes. So here we are, on the one side, weak, immature. Our faith is not strong enough. On the other side, Here's his purpose. Never changes. Does God have a problem here? So, God is going to get his purpose accomplished. independent of what we think and how we feel his purpose is going to be accomplished how does he do that? look at verse 7 it says this but we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of who? of God, not of us.

Three observations in the passage. It says this, that we're earthen vessels. Number two, that there's a treasure in this earthen vessel. Number three, that there's power. We have access to God's power in this earthen vessel. So let's look at the first one, the fact that we're earthen vessels.

The word vessel simply means an instrument, something that carries something, or an instrument used in many different ways, and oftentimes in scripture, The word vessel is used for our body or our frame. And in this case, I think that's its use. It uses vessel for boat. It uses vessels in many different ways.

And it says we're earthen vessel. And the word earthen there literally means made of clay, made out from the ground. Is that true about us in terms of our physical frame? Tell me something about a clay vessel. This is an object lesson. OK. Earthen vessel can crack under pressure. What else? Tell me something about an earthen. Here's a here's a clay vessel. Tell me something about it.

So it's vulnerable, fragile. I mean, if I if I drop it, it's going to break. All right. OK, it's molded. OK, good. It can hold something. OK, so on the positive side, it can hold something. All right. It's basically weak. I can't I can't put. a ton of rocks in this thing, right? It's going to crack it. So it's basically weak. And it says, we're this earthen vessel. We're this weak and fragile vessel. But it says that it can hold something. And so the positive side about this vessel, it can hold something. Now, what's it holding? Right now, what's this holding?

You don't have a clue. Right? I got a cover on it. You don't have a clue. But there's a treasure in here. Right? There's a treasure. And only if I uncover the treasure that, you know, that there is really a treasure. And if you want some of these, you can come up after class. OK, so there's a treasure in this earthen vessel. OK, so what's what's the treasure? Here we are, this weak vessel. What's the treasure in us? Yeah, and specifically, that's true. What does it say? What's beaming out from this treasure? The glory of God How does it say?

In the face of Jesus. Is that what it says? In the face of Jesus Christ? In verse 6, in the face of Jesus Christ. By the way, what's interesting about this passage, it says, in the face of Jesus Christ. What in the world does that mean? In the face of Jesus Christ.

It's a little preposition for all the Greek students here. little preposition n, e-n. And the preposition n could be translated in, like it's translated here, or it can be a preposition of means, which you can translate by. By the face of Jesus Christ. Okay? Now, when you look at the word face, the word face means presence. It can be translated presence. So, the glory of God is being beamed out from our hearts by the means by the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ. So that's the source.

Isn't that a much better translation? Put it down. Much better translation. So we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God. I've got to skip here. But look at what this is saying. That here we are, this weak, fragile, vulnerable vessel, and we have this unbelievable treasure in us. Unbelievable treasure. The glory of God. I mean, think about this. It's the glory of God that's within this weak and fragile vessel. And so what do you suppose his desire is? What's his desire? Tell me again.

Isn't it to let it out of the bag? Right? Right? To put it in our vernacular? Let it all out. Right? To reveal it. Okay. So the question is, how is he going to do it? So God kind of has a problem. Not really. But think about it. Here God is. Now we're going to test. We're going to test to whether or not this has happened before. So back to, if you will, God's supposedly problem. God never has a problem.

On the one hand, Here's God's eternal purpose, to reveal, to share His glory. On the other hand, here you are, and here I am. These weak, fragile vessels. But in these weak, fragile vessels, there's this glorious treasure. How is God going to fulfill His purpose out of these weep, and let out of the bag, let out of these vessels, his, and reveal his glory. How is he going to do it? So that, so let me ask the question, that if you study your Bible three hours a day, is that the way he's going to do it?

You don't have to do that to get the trial. Okay. So doesn't it make sense that what he's going to do is he's going to put trials in our life? He's going to allow these trials, these fiery trials to occur in our life. To let the cat out of the bag, if you will. To reveal His glory.

Life, the day-to-day aggravation, those are also, I think, ways that people see. Okay, but look at this, in terms of back to Bob's question. With respect to the unbeliever and believer, okay? The unbeliever, what's the response of the unbeliever in the fiery trial?

I mean, when it gets to the point where it's beyond his strength and he's gritting his teeth saying, okay, I'm going to have patience in this thing, what happens? Cracks on the surface. He does. He cracks into pressure. There's anxiety. There's worry. There's fear. Depression. Desperation. He becomes desperate and eventually can wind up in suicide. Right? Okay.

So the unbeliever knows how he reacts to a fiery trial. He doesn't want any part of it. How about the believer? We typically don't want anything to do with it. And that is true. We typically don't want anything to do with it. And look what we do. We're looking at it from our side. From our side only. Okay? And we look at it from our side. But what the Lord wants us to do is to look at it from His side. And His viewpoint, His side. Bob?

Turn back a chapter to 2 Corinthians 3. It's interesting to kind of look back at what we see in chapter 4 here in 2 Corinthians and you and I were chatting a little bit about that yesterday in the first chapter. 2 Corinthians chapter 3? Verses 2 and 3. Verses 2 and 3. Okay.

And this is what Margaret was talking about just a moment ago. And it says, You are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men, for as much as you are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us written not with ink but with the spirit of the living God not in tables of stone but in fleshly tables of the heart." Hits it right in the head, doesn't it? It goes back to the fact that basically The way we carry ourselves, again, not to put pressure on us, but by faith, that epistle is known and read of all men. And it's interesting.

Let me tell you what this literally says. The subject is you. The verb is are. You are. And the direct object is an epistle. That's what this is saying. You are an epistle. And then modifying the verb is being manifested, being made known. You are an epistle and the epistle is being modified by Christ. You are an epistle of Christ. The source of the message is Christ.

Ah, incredible. The other thing so exciting here is I think it's superlative. In other words, this is greater than God writing in the tables of stone. Yeah, this is greater. Yeah, yeah, right, right. Than what he did in the face of Moses. Right. But it says you are like in the Lord. If you're in the Lord, you are.

It's saying, we are light. Yeah, I think it's in Luke chapter 16, it talks about that fact, that we are lights. And as I was going through this passage this week, I looked up on my wall in my study And I've got a little wooden block and carved in it. It says, Christ in you, the hope of glory. And Art made it for me. And it's Colossians 2, 7. Christ in you, the hope of glory. And Christ is in us. and he's the hope of glory, and we think of hope as something that we wish, but that word, elpidso, the hope, means it's an absolute certainty. Christ in you, the absolute certainty of glory.

And that's what God wants to radiate out from us. And He's going to do it. He's going to do it by trials in our life. So if we take His side and we look at it from His side, and not our side, just His side, that he's going to use everything in our life to beam out his glory from the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Does that put a different light, if you will, on trials? Looking at it from his side? Looking at it from his purpose? And Bob talked about Canada or joy, we looked at in James' chapter, Canada or joy. So when we look at it from his side, Can we see the joy in that?

That, wow, Lord, that you would use me. I am honored that you would use me as a vessel. That you would cause suffering to me. That you would allow these trials to come into my life. Because I know you have a purpose. Wow. Lord, you are wonderful. I'm sorry.

With your clay pot thing, I was thinking of light inside that pot. as there is kind of a breaking down in that pot, then there's little fissures in the side of the pot, and the light shines all the more through. And how the Lord can just shine through those places where He's kind of broken our independence or whatever, and caused us more and more to rely on Him. Then all those cracks where the light's shining through, you put that in a dark room, all you see is the light that's coming through, you don't even see the vessel. I wish I had that as an illustration, but you're often limited, you know, but that's excellent. Okay, so next week we're going to look at how God uses these fiery trials. We're going to look at the rest of the passage here in terms of verse 8 and go on.

Okay, let's close. the first days that I get light. Sun and moon was not created until after that. So it is not that physical. Yeah, that's true. Doug's point is concerning the light that I read in Genesis 1 verse 2. It wasn't the light from the sun and the moon or the illuminaries. It was another light source, not that light source. Let's close.

Father, again, we're thankful for your Word. Your Word does illuminate each and every one of our hearts. And Father, thanking you that we can see trials and suffering from a different side, not from our side, but from your side. Our prayer, Father, is that in each and every circumstance in life, that we would see it from your side. And your side is to fulfill your eternal purpose and to reveal the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ through us. And it's in His name we pray.