The tried Saints

Proverbs 23, I won't be like, well I shouldn't say that. Archie Stewart was heard, heard to say following another brother who had said he's going to find the time and the brother took 20 minutes out of the 30 and where's Archie Stewart's got up in his unique way and said I first time I ever saw 30 divided by 2 and came out 20 and 10 so I'm gonna divide it equally and I'll sit down. 23 and 10 Job says but he knoweth the way that I take or the way with me when he hath tried me I shall come forth as gold.

Go over to 1st Peter chapter 1 where brother Scott read yesterday. 1st Peter chapter 1, I'm not taking up the same subject as he did exactly, it's been on my mind here. Notice from verse 5 in verse chapter 1, who are kept or guarded by power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in last time wherein or in which time ye greatly rejoice though now for a season if need be or if necessary it is.

Ye are in heaviness or in grief through manifold temptations or trials at the trying of your faith be much more precious than of gold that perisheth though it be tried with fire might be found in a praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. I just want to speak to you a little bit about the tried Saints. I think that if you look at again where Paul, where brother Bill Avery read already in Hebrews chapter 11 you'll find that every one of those that is listed every one of those men of faith those that triumphed in their life were known as men who experienced trials.

Beginning with Enoch and going right to those unnamed ones at the end they knew what it was to go through a furnace of affliction in some way or another they experienced trials and difficulties and Peter is writing to believers that are doing the same thing and I take it he is writing to them so that he might encourage them and encourage us to realize that the path of Christian development is a path in which God works in our life to refine us to develop us and it's not an easy pathway all the time it's really a pathway that involves difficulties. I've never read the book but I have seen the title of a book that Charles Swindoll wrote it's called the bumps are what you climb on. I never saw it but the title intrigues me the means of by which you and I progress in spiritual life is by a bumpy road with difficulties problems along the way and I think that we can exceed examples of the Word of God of men and women as well who experienced different trials in their life and they never expected them.

I'll just mention first of all the experience of Job. I don't know that you can find a man in all the Word of God that was tried more than Job was. You ever ask yourself why it is that that that the Lord challenged Satan in relation to Job? It wasn't Satan's intention to do this it wasn't Satan's initiation it was the Lord threw down a challenge to Job, to Satan.

He says have you considered my servant Job? There's no one like him in all the earth. A man who was perfect and upright and who eschewed, who feared God and eschewed evil. He says if you looked at him take a look at this man you don't think that a man would stand for God in his life here's a man I want to point him out to you.

Satan says just let me have a chance. I'll show you that you're wrong. I take it that God did that because he knew the way that Job would take that's 23 and 10.

He knows the way that I will take and he knew what Job would do and how Job would react. Job gave, God gave Job the privilege of suffering the attack that he never understood why it was coming. If Job could have only understood what took place in chapter 1 and chapter 2 it would have helped him an awful lot.

He had no clue what was taking place in the heavenly sphere and the desire of Satan and the origin of all these problems that he was coming into. He couldn't understand it. I knew I need to say that there are oftentimes trials that come in a believer's life and they don't understand them either.

They don't know the purpose. They don't understand why this is all happening to me and it may take many different forms. Job lost a tremendous amount.

Were you to put yourself in Job's position just sit with him a little bit in the ashes and scrape yourself with a potsherd and see how you would feel when you've lost everything. Well the Lord gave him his wife. He still had his wife.

But he lost everything else. He lost his property. He lost his means of livelihood.

His business was gone. He lost his children. He lost everything.

He lost his health. That's a real shall we say a quadruple blow that that man experienced. He sat down in the dust and ashes.

He said, Naked I came out of my mother's womb. Naked I'll return again. And you could criticize Job for the way he reacted over the period of time.

You just remember his own friends incited him to do it. It's the way they challenged his righteousness. It's the way they acted toward him.

It's the way they failed to support him and to give him encouragement at a time of distress. I take it that Job was stirred to that kind of reaction because of their constant attacks on his person and his own character and he knew they were wrong. But Job could say I know that he knows the way that I will take.

He knew exactly that God knew the end of it all whatever it was going to be because he didn't know. He said what he has tried me I shall come forth as gold. You know it's a link between these two passages.

Both of them refer to the trial of one's faith and the trial of the individual resulted in something that's very precious. Peter could say that the trial of the approving of your faith being more precious. That approval is more precious than of gold that perisheth though it be tried with fire shall be found under praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

There's some things that are more valuable than gold. I don't know what gold is worth nowadays. I understand it's not worth as much as it used to be but still there are experiences in a Christian's life that have more value, more lasting value and more potential for change in your life and mine and production of something that is for God's honor than all the gold in all the world.

Job knew the reality of trial. I would like to think about others as well. Not only Job but we've been reminded by some of by our brother Lavery of some of these in Hebrews chapter 11.

A man like Abraham. A man that experienced many different trials. A trial first of the call of God that called him out of the Ur of the Chaldees.

Called him to follow God. He didn't know where he's going. He has to leave everything behind but he goes because God had called him the Lord of the God of glory appeared unto him.

Goes without any question. And you find that man being tried continually at every step of his life because God only tests and tries what is real and he does it to prove the reality of it and to develop it. You find him being tried by having to separate from his nephew Lot.

Must have been a trial to him. He was tried not only in that way but he was tried by the famines that he encountered and he ended up obviously failing in some ways but he still was recovered. You find not only tried like that but the trial of waiting because God had promised him a son.

The son never came and he kept waiting and waiting. I understand he waited about 25 years before Isaac was born. That's a long time to wait.

All the time God's holding up the promise of a son that he's going to give him hadn't come yet. I know that he took his own way in relation to Ishmael but still he's being tried by the the need for waiting upon God. For God to do the work because God intended to bring into his life a son that would be divinely given, divinely provided and not only that my brother has been reminding us already the ultimate trial of his life because it seems to be the last one.

It's when God called him to offer that very son up on the altar. He never offered, he never asked him to do that at the beginning but you see he's progressing. His character is developing.

He's growing spiritually. He's knowing more of his God. His eyes upon the one that provided the son in place of the son himself.

You find the pathway of Christian development is much like that which has to do with Abraham. A trial of waiting, a trial of obedience, a trial that tests our willingness just to depend upon God. Trust him to work out his purpose in her life and you can look at Jacob as well in the way that God tried him.

Lovely man at the end isn't it? He worshipped, leading up on the top of his staff. I can think of others as well. Our brother Mechanicus Morley was reminding us about Joseph.

The Word of God it tells us in Psalm 105 that the word of the Lord tried him. You think of the experiences in which he came because of the many different sources which caused difficulty in his life. I take it the word of the Lord refers to the fact that he had seen the visions that indicated to him what was going to take place in the future and he wondered when is that ever going to take place? When will that ever happen? But you know he was tried.

Tried by the envy of his brothers. Tried by a difficult relationship in the home. Tried by having to live in the circumstances when he knew that his brothers hated him.

Tried of course by all the experiences that took place afterwards when he was sold by his own brothers into Egypt and all that took place at Potiphar's house. You could trace the pathway of a man like Joseph. A man that was tried in every way he proved himself to be genuine in his faith and confidence in God.

That trial I take it in relation to Joseph's life was preparatory. It was designed by God and allowed by God not only for the preservation of his own brother and his family but also to develop that man to the point where he would be capable and fully equipped to sit upon to occupy that high place of authority in Egypt. He wasn't prepared to do that when he was the favorite son of his father.

He wasn't prepared to do that when he was just keeping the sheep. He was prepared by means of the process by which God brought him until he could take over in the administration and be used to be the preserver of life in the midst of the famine. You think of a man who was tried in the prison house by being forgotten by the butler and long that he had to languish.

A man waited until God's time came. You trace the whole events you'll understand the whole series of events I think you understand that God had a reason for why this had to wait for that period of time. But Joseph didn't know it at the time.

He wasn't aware of the reason and like you and I no doubt it brought frustration to his heart. I could think of others too when you think of the the the need for development of the need for time and the need for God to allow God to work and you can think of the way that David was tried. You can think of Moses trial.

Moses obviously when he came to 40 years of age he had a desire to deliver his people. We find him going out there from the palace and visiting his own people he knew he had an identity with them and yet we find that they rejected him and thrust him away from them saying who made thee a prince and a judge over us. He was right in his purpose but he's wrong in his time.

I've been thinking about the fact that God sent him out in the wilderness for 40 years and if the Israelites were experiencing the trial of the difficulty in the land of Egypt when he attempted to deliver his own brethren 40 years later they were still suffering. Why did God allow them to continue to suffer under that affliction for 40 years? Why couldn't God bring about deliverance when he was only 40 years of age? God had his own purpose. God was working out his own time and God had the intention of bringing them out in a certain by the a certain point in their experience and in doing so in a way of course that would prove the mighty power of God and his judgment upon all the gods of Egypt and the invincible power of Pharaoh.

You see God has his own way and it's only perhaps after you and I look back on experiences in our life that we understand at least in some measure why they ever took place because in the midst of the trial we may not even know and we might find ourselves feeling the difficulty of it. I don't want to take just a few minutes because there are many more illustrations that could be looked at. Not only David and Hezekiah, a trial in the life of the Apostle Paul being abandoned by everyone practically when he stood before the Roman court.

Notice here in 1st Peter chapter 1, Peter is reminding these who were experiencing the difficulties of the trial of their faith. It was a trial that would test their confidence, as a trial that would test their faithfulness to their Lord. Notice just four things and I'm going to sit down.

He reminds them first of all that those trials can come in many different ways, they're manifold. Not just one way. What one person might experience is not what another will.

One may experience a physical trial, the difficulties of that nature. I know a brother, I don't know if he's got a job yet, but he was waiting to try to find employment, he's in his 50s, lost his job out here in the Midwest. And a year and a half later he was still trying to find a job.

What a trial, learning how to trust God. I know others that because of difficulties in their life, some that we know very well, in physical ways have been brought closer to God, a trial of their physical well-being, a trial of their economic supply and all they have need of financially. Be a trial.

Got bills to pay. Difficulties. Perhaps things have been going so well and so smoothly and God brings you to a straight.

One thing you learn perhaps more than anything else is to look to the Lord and bring him into this in the condition. There may be other trials, there may be the trials of the difficulties you'd face with false accusations, even trials from brethren, trials that would test your confidence and test your fidelity to the Lord Jesus. No matter what the trial is, Peter could say they're manifold.

And these believers were experiencing manifold, different, a variety of temptations and trials. You reminds him as well in this passage that they brought temporary grief. For season they were in heaviness.

No one says that you have to be happy when you're in a trial. You may not be happy. You may find it a heavy thing, difficult to bear.

He says it's only a temporary thing. It's only for the period of time. Hebrews chapter 12 reminds us that they in the midst of that chastening that we become the discipline from our Heavenly Father.

He says he does it because he has a purpose in it. It may not be joyous at the moment. It may be grievance.

He says afterward it yielded the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby. So he says there may be temporary grief and difficulty and stress and strain and tension. So that's the way it is.

Not only that, he says there's mingled joy because there's, he says that he greatly rejoiced and I take it, first of all, it's in the present aspect of things that in the midst of the grief there is joy. In fact, I would take it that Hebrews chapter 12 reminds us that that chastening ought to give us encouragement because it gives us the evidence that we are genuine sons whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth. And so there's a joy that we can come that if I were not a child of God I'd never receive this.

I never told my children I do this, it hurts me that it does you. I've never told them that. If I told them this, I'd never do it to the neighbor's child.

We do it because we love you. And the chastening hand of the discipline of our God in our life is because he loves us. He wants to develop something in us.

When he looks on to the future he reminds them that there is a future result, I take it, that is through faith and the salvation in which time ye greatly rejoice. There will be joy at the end of it all. But notice as well that he tells us that there's a future value in it.

In 1st Peter it's the approval, that approval of your faith is more valuable than of gold that perisheth. The passing through of a trial and proving God in it, an experience of the reality of his presence is very precious. Job says that not only does that, it develops character.

When he hath tried me I shall come forth as gold. God wants to develop Christian character and to make us like Christ as we've been reminded. And he does it in many different ways, but it's by the proving, the testing that he brings us into in life.

May God help us to recognize the value of trial.