Trials

Job chapter 23. Let's just read one verse from the expression of Job. In the midst of his stroke and his trial that he was experiencing, verse 10 says, But he knoweth the way that I take, or his way with me.

When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. Be with me in Hebrews chapter 12. The book of Hebrews chapter 12.

Let's begin reading from verse 5. But ye have clearly and totally forgotten the exhortation or the encouragement which speaketh or reasons with you as unto children, actually sons. They have forgotten it entirely. My son despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor fate, when thou art rebuked by him.

For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, he disciplines, and discourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons. For what son is he whom the Father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons.

For the more we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, disciplined us, and we gave them respect or reverence, shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure, but he for a profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.

Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and so on. 1st Peter chapter 1. Last reading. 1st Peter.

Peter speaks to them about their living hope, the inheritance they have, the anticipation of the future. But in verse 6 he says, wherein or in which time ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations or trials, so that the proving or the trial of your faith being much more precious, that proving is more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing, the revelation of Jesus Christ. I will stop with the reading at that point and trust that God will bless what we've already heard, and even give help in this part, the last part of the meeting.

I've heard it's a very profitable ministry that's been beneficial to us. We have much to gain from it and much to put into practice. But I want to speak to you about something that I believe every one of us as God's people knows something about.

And if we haven't known it yet we certainly will, and that is trials. Perhaps not trials in the way that we usually think about it, but it's a matter of discipline. We have a number of words that the scripture uses to describe the process by which God develops his people.

He develops them of course by teaching in the Word of God. We've been hearing the Word of God. He seeks to develop us by inculcating in our hearts and minds the principles of the Word of God.

A part of God's education is the school of discipline. J.B. Stoney wrote a book called Discipline in God's School, and it's certainly well worth reading as he traces the pathway of God's people in the Old Testament time and into the new as they experience God's discipline hand. And they learn from the experiences, they learn from the trials, and they learn from the chastening hand of God in them to mold them and to enable them to put into practice the principles that God was teaching them from his Word or directly by revelation.

We could read many scriptures in our Bible, many passages that would indicate to us the pathway of discipline for a child of God, the proving, the testing, the way by which God would lead us along. In fact in Deuteronomy chapter 8, in that chapter that concludes the wandering, oftentimes spoken of as the wandering of God's people in the wilderness, God reminds them that thou shall remember all the way by which the Lord thy God led thee, to prove thee, to humble thee, to show thee what was in thy heart, and to test them as to whether they would obey the Word of God or not. In other words, it wasn't all wandering, it wasn't all just here and there and no purpose to it, but God had a purpose in every experience, and while they looked at it as 38 years of mere wandering and making no progress, God had a purpose in it all.

I can say for each one of us today, we need to learn in our life very soon after salvation that we have entered into school that will involve trial, that will involve tribulation, it will involve difficulties of life, and it's for the purpose that he might teach us and train us and enable us to put into practice the truths of his Word. I think that we understand that trials in a believer's life take many different forms. It may take the form of ostracism from family or friends.

It may take the form of physical sickness. We know those who have been sick almost every day of their life, it seems like, and some with great difficulty carrying on a normal life and experience suffering and pain. Some have experienced the difficulties of unemployment, and yet some of them, if you were to talk to them, they would tell you that we've learned more of God and proving God and depending upon God in this experience than we'd ever learned in any other way.

Trials can take many different forms, because the first thing I'll say to you is this, trials should be expected in the life of a child of God. You know, when we got saved, we entered into God's family, and Hebrews chapter 12 indicates to us that God is a perfect Father. He says, if we had earthly fathers who knew how to discipline or tried to discipline us, I know my father tried very hard.

He doesn't realize, maybe he realized more than I thought, he had a hard job. He didn't quite succeed either, but nevertheless our fathers sought to discipline and train us, because the Word involves more than just punishment. It involves all the sphere in which the parent would seek to instill in the heart and mind right principles and direct their behavior and seek to mold their character and to produce in them something that is commendable, something that is useful.

He says, if we had fathers after our flesh that did that for us, even though they were failing, we gave them respect, we reverenced them, how much more the Father of Spirits. Be subject to him, because we have entered into God's family and God's purpose in his life for you and me is to discipline and to train us. We don't become mature believers overnight.

It's a process, and God works in our life to produce that which is conformable to his will and the expression of what is of himself in our own lives and our character. We also learn that God, when we got saved, he has put us in his school. A school is more than just learning by rote and learning certain formulas and equations or different patterns of grammar.

It's a school of experience. Sometimes people say that you learn more in the school of hard knocks than you learn anywhere else. Sometimes the school that God puts us into is a school of hard knocks.

In fact, I was impressed with the expression we have in Hebrews chapter 12. He says, Whom the Father loveth, he chasteneth, disciplines them, and scourgeth every son that he receiveth. That's something I never enjoyed.

I never appreciated my father flogging me, and maybe you say he didn't do it enough. Well, maybe so, but I always thought he did it too much. But here's a strong word that is used that God not only treats his children with discipline and training to guide them in the form of their life, that which is for his glory, but even goes so far as to scourge them.

We don't like that. In fact, he tells us in this chapter that no chastening, no discipline for the moment is joyous. It's not happy.

Let us grieve us, but afterward it yieldeth the peace of a fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby. If you trace the pattern of God's dealings with his people right from the beginning to the end of our Bible, we notice that it's a pathway in which every believer experienced the hand of God upon them in some way, to form them, to produce in them that which is conformable to his will. We can take Abraham as an example, we can think of Joseph, we can think of Jacob, and we can think of all of them through the entire Old Testament, and even Paul in the New, and many others that we learned that God's purpose for you and me is chastening, discipline.

So what should be expected? In fact, he says in here in this passage in Hebrews chapter 12, he says in verse 9, whereof all are partakers, all are sharers, no exceptions. He says if you don't have chastening in your life, you're not an illegitimate child. You don't really belong to him.

Some form. So chastening or trials in a life should be expected. They shouldn't be something that takes us by surprise.

Peter mentions trials in every chapter of his first epistle. It reminds the believers who are suffering, don't be surprised, don't let it take you by surprise that you're experiencing these trials. Just remember that that was a pattern of all that had gone before.

What we read in Hebrews chapter 12 only is following on the heels of what we have in chapter 11, because in chapter 11 we certainly have the course of men of faith who experience the chastening of God in their life, and yet every one of them we can say it as Job said concerning himself who experienced the chastening of God, when he has tried me I shall come forth as gold. Peter takes up that same word, doesn't he, in first Peter chapter 1 where we read, he says the trial or the proving of your faith, that proving is more precious than of gold and perisheth, though it will be tried with fire and it will be found under the praise and honor and glory of the Lord Jesus and his revelation. And so trials should be expected.

Sometimes we don't expect them, they take us by surprise. We wonder why is this happening to me? I remember a sister speaking to me one time and they had had a very serious accident and she said I don't know why this has happened to us because we're trying to do what is right before the Lord, we're trying to please God and try to honor his name. Why did this happen to us? Well maybe it happened to them because of that very reason, because of their faithfulness and exercise for God.

Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth. It's a wonderful thing to experience the chastening of God. I remember a time in my life when not enjoying fellowship with God as I should away from the assembly.

The recounting of the memory of dealings of God with me at that time were a great assurance to my heart that it truly belonged to him. He dealeth with you as sons. He wants to bring about your restoration.

I need to go quickly because I'm letting the time get away from me, but trials should be expected, they should be, they're necessary. They're part of the essential part of God's dealings with us, brethren. A young believer anticipate and seek to gain the most from the hand of God and the experiences into which God brings you, that you might learn from them, that you might be exercised by them.

They're needed because the pathway of developing spiritual maturity is not simply gained by learning facts and truth from the Word of God, it's by learning to put it into practice in day-by-day living. And how we react to these circumstances and how we handle the difficulties of life. Not only necessary, but they're also in the Word of God, they're called temporary.

2nd Corinthians chapter 4 reminds us that it's only for a little season, this light affliction, which is only for a little time. It seems like a long time perhaps to you and me, but it's only for a little time. He says that work is a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

Not only temporary, but the trial should be encouraging. Encouraging because it says that he deals with us as his sons. Most of us have had times that we have children that we've had to discipline them.

Never a pleasant thing to do, I never took pleasure in discipline my children. We didn't discipline the two of them the same way because the daughter reacted far differently than a son does. But I never told them this hurts me than it hurts you, because I didn't intend for it to hurt me more than it hurt them.

But I did tell them this, if you were the neighbor's child I would never touch you. But because you're my son and because I desire the very best for you, this is necessary and I have to do it. And so we find that God deals with us as his sons.

Now when we look at God's discipline we learn that there are four different purposes for it, not all the same. We could say that God's purpose first of all in discipline of his children is educative. It's to teach us lessons, to develop maturity in each one of us as God's people.

I think we can see that when we look at the life of Job. Job didn't understand the reasons, he didn't recognize what God's purposes were, but the purpose and the result was that Job emerged a far better man at the end than he was in the beginning. He learned the things that he hadn't learned before and God blessed him even more at the end of his life than he did at the beginning.

We think of a man like Joseph as he was enduring the affliction and we read in Psalm 103 is it that the iron entered into soul. The Word of God tried him. The promises that God had made to him, when are they going to be carried out and where is the fulfillment of them? There he is languishing in the prison.

Falsely accused by Potiphar's wife and then in the prison and left there. And yet I believe we can see that it was for the purpose of God's training him that he might be equipped to come to the throne, be an administrator in the land of Egypt and be instrumental in delivering not only the people of Egypt but also his own brethren and be used for the restoration. He learned things and you and I learn as well.

Abraham passed through trials in his life that progressively seemed to get worse and yet he learned and he developed and he grew. Jacob is another example. Many mistakes he made and who doesn't make mistakes in their life? I love the end of Jacob's life when it says that he worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff or on the end of his bed.

A man that was a pilgrim and increasingly so and learned more of God by means of the straits of the difficulties and all the experiences. All that he thought he was getting away from only brought him into deeper difficulties as God brought him into relationship with a man that was just like him and he found out the results of it. So Jacob was a man that began low but he ended high.

I think we all ought to aspire to end up like Jacob. You know one thing about Jacob, he learned about God in a way that Abraham and Isaac never learned. Abraham never hesitated to go down to Egypt when there's a famine and we find him going in the land of the Philistines again.

Isaac did the same. When Jacob is called to come down into Egypt you remember he came to Beersheba and he waited. He waited upon God for guidance.

He did something those two never did. He waited to know it was God's will for him to go. God assured him of that.

So that Jacob ended on a high note in his life. So trials can be educative, to teach us. They're so necessary for us to grow and to make progress in his spiritual life.

Then trials can be preventative, that is to prevent or preserve us from a mistake, a fall or a failure. We know that in relation to Paul, Paul could say that lest I should be, lest I should be exalted above measure, God sent a thorn in the flesh, an affliction from God to preserve him and to preserve him from being exalted because of divine revelations. He experienced the blessing of it.

Jehoshaphat experienced God's preventative discipline. As you remember at the close of the history of his life it says that he for the second time was going to join in a economic enterprise with the ungodly king of the northern tribes. It says that God destroyed his ships and so they could not go.

He might have thought it was a disaster and a great loss but it was not a great loss because it was a great gain to him to lose his ships and not be able to carry out his purpose. Others could be said it in a similar way, I won't take the time, but God might discipline you in your life and in mine in some particular way to preserve us because not only does God desire the education, the development of each one of us in maturity, but thank God he wants to preserve us from falling and to maintain us in a right pathway of fellowship with him. The third reason may be even for punitive reasons, for chastening.

David experienced the chastening hand of God, remember. In fact the majority of his difficulties after he came to the throne were because of his own sins and his own errors. All the fear that he had and all the difficulties with his son Absalom and other sons in his family, God allowed them because of the fact of what he had done.

God does chasten his children and many times we deserve it. In fact we always deserve it if God chastens because he's always a righteous, faithful God. And David experienced that, Solomon experienced that himself.

A punitive judgment of God in his life because of his sinfulness. Departure from God, a man who loved the Lord with all of his heart and with all of his soul at the beginning of his life, ended up loving many strange women and departed from the principles of God's Word. The last reason is that the purpose of discipline may be corrective, to correct us, to restore us and to bring us back.

We've heard about Naomi this afternoon and Naomi experienced a corrective hand of God. As she could say that she had went out, she had gone out full. I went out full, the Lord has brought me back empty.

And while she had gone out with pleasantness, she had to say that when I come back it's with bitterness. She had experienced the corrective hand of God and yet she was brought back to a place where God wanted her to be and into a sphere where God could bring her into blessing in association with that mighty man of wealth. In Hebrews chapter 12 let me just say very quickly that there are four different possibilities in a response to discipline.

How can you and I respond to discipline in our life? Well first of all he says we might make light of it, despise it. Just a happenstance, it's just a matter of chance. That event that happened, that tragedy, that difficulty, whatever it might have been, it just happened.

We just brush it off. We fail to appreciate the purpose of God and not recognize in the events of life that God really is working. And to think little of it and have no value placed upon it.

May only want to escape it and avoid it at all costs. One has said, I've never forgotten this quotations I read one time in a book that I was reading at the time. He said that every test is a game even if we fail, because we learn something from it.

But it's when we avoid the test and when we try to evade it in some way that we end up having to learn all over again because we haven't passed through it. Many of us have failed many tests in life, but we've learned so much from it as a result of the failure. So we can make light of it and God help us not to make light of the hand of God in our life and the dealings of God and the way he would seek to conform us to what he desires to see in us.

Chapter 12 verse 5 we see also that we could faint. If one is to not see God's hand in the trial, fainting indicates that I don't see God's heart. And to not see God's heart result in becoming discouraged, just to give up.

What's the use? No desire to go on, we become weary and despondent. It's possible. He says don't faint, don't faint.

And these believers he's writing to were experiencing a great trial. And he tells them about those in chapter 10 and those in chapter 11, the close of it, that experienced a great trial, a great trial. He says don't faint, don't give up.

There's a purpose in it. God has a heart and God has compassion and he knows exactly. In fact in 1st Corinthians chapter 13 and verse 11 there's no temptation and I take that to be trial, testing that has taken you, but such as is common to man.

So we're not to faint because we're to see God's heart in it. He says in verse 7 we can endure it because we fail to see God's purpose. Simply bear it, simply pass through it, more or less grit my teeth and just allow it to take place.

Without the wisdom James speaks about the need that you have you and I have for wisdom. We might understand the reason for it and so that we need to do more than just endure it. In verse 11 we find a greater thing is to be exercised by it.

That is that we should seek to allow God to develop and work out his mind and his purpose to gain the result that he desires for us to receive from it. Don't make light of it, don't faint, don't just endure it, just be exercised by it. Wonderful thing when you read about the discipline of God, so much to be said about it but I don't have any more time.

One thing it should do is encourage our hearts. It's a sure evidence child of God you and I belong to him, genuine children. It's the evidence that he loves us.

It's the evidence that he wants the very best for your life. He wants you to develop and me to develop in spiritual qualities and to become more like the Lord Jesus. We trust the ministry of God's Word and that which equips us to face the elements of life in which we live might serve that purpose of drawing us nearer to him and working out his own perfect will in our life.