Now, here’s something that is at the heart of living the Christian life. “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while,” and that little while there means a lifetime. That doesn’t mean, “Oh, you’re only going to have to experience hardship for a year, and then on the other side of the year no more hardship.” This “little while” is in comparison to eternity.

Paul said exactly the same thing in 2 Corinthians 4 where it says, “This light momentary affliction is working for us in the eternal weight of glory.” And he meant light and momentary, meaning prison and lifetime.

Simultaneous Joy and Grief in Various Trials

“For a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials” (1 Peter 1:6). So various trials means they’re not of one kind. There are as many kinds as there are people in this room, plus, plus, plus. Trials from a wife or a husband who doesn’t respond the way you wish they would, children who don’t write back — don’t want to write back, loss of a job, scandal comes into your life.

Just met recently with a brother who experienced that, and right on down to a bullet in the head or a knife on your throat. The range of trials are as many as there are people and troubles in the world. And you are being grieved by those, and see if you agree with this. Would you agree that 1 Peter 1:6 is teaching that joy and hope (in 1 Peter 1:3–5) and grief in various trials are simultaneous? “ In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved” (1 Peter 1:6).

“Now being grieved, now in this you rejoice.” That’s what I think it means. I think they’re simultaneous. If you are a caring and loving person who is moved by earthquake fatalities or anything closer to you or the lostness of the people around you or the brokenness of the families in your church or anything else sorrowful, you will always have something in your awareness that’s worth crying about, won’t you?

And the Bible says, “Weep with those who weep,” which means weep all the time (Romans 12:15). And the Bible says, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). And right here, we have it. We have a hope that never changes and a God on our side by new birth, presence of the Spirit, keeping us for it, always a reason to joy, always a reason to rejoice.

I like to say to myself and to others, if they will receive it, “You know it’s a good day when you wake up and you’re not in hell.” It is. And you add to that, you wake up into the unshakable hope that you’re going to inherit everything. And you wake up into the unshakable confidence: “He will guard me no matter what happens to me. He won’t let me go. He’ll keep my faith. It may get small, it may be a mustard seed someday, but he won’t let me go. He will keep me. He began the work, He’ll finish the work. He is at work in me.”

Sorrowful Yet Always Rejoicing

And then you weep. And those are not contradictory, are they? I don’t think they are. I hope they’re not. At Desiring God, this is kind of a mantra for us because we try not to bury our head in the sand when a thousand people are killed in an earthquake in Nepal. We try not to bury our head but to come to terms with it. 2 Corinthians 6:10, “Sorrowful yet always rejoicing.”

Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. I think that’s what this is teaching here. So if you can take away from this seminar from those verses and from 2 Corinthians 6:10 and from weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, those three texts, I think, describe the Christian life as almost always simultaneously sorrowful and happy.

And what the Bible teaches you is that love won’t ruin the wedding party with your sadness, and love won’t speak stupid, chipper words at the funeral. Love knows when to release the joy and when to release the sorrow. They’re both always there. It creates a certain kind of worship. It does.

You can tell a church where they get this, that these thousand folks are in pain and joy. And worship leaders help us walk in that, they help us. There’s music that can do that. There’s some music, I think, that’s just way too off on the chipper end and some that’s just way too off on the heavy end and how to weave, weave it all together. That’s a gifted team of lead worshipers, or dads and moms in a family helping kids grow up into this world.

Understanding God’s Necessity in Trials

One more phrase we need to deal with here in 1 Peter 1:6. “If necessary,” what does that mean? We rejoice and we grieve at the same time, one owing to hope, one owing to trials, if necessary. So as these trials arrive in your life “though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.”

So who’s making this necessary? What kind of necessity are we talking about here? The devil is deciding whether something’s necessary or you’re deciding if it’s necessary or your neighbor is deciding that some trials? “You need some trials right now. I’ll bump into your car.”

This is God’s necessity. If I just stay within 1 Peter to get my answer to whose necessity is it? Who’s making this necessary? Who’s deciding that this is necessary? The immediate context says that this “so that” here is a design of these trials. And the design is for the test of genuineness of your faith to be found to result in praise.

That’s definitely not the design of the devil. He does not want your tested faith to result in praise, your praise or God’s praise. We’ll get to that in a minute. Neither does your neighbor. He’s not aiming to help that. That’s a purpose that only God can have. So I’m inferring that this is God’s necessity.

“If necessary” means if God deems it necessary. And why would he deem it necessary for us to have these trials? “So that the tested genuineness of your faith would be found result, praise, and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:7). Now, to confirm whether I’m on the right track here, this is always a good thing to do. If you get an idea, you think that from the context you have decided something accurately and faithfully, check it out by moving out a little bit. So you go to 1 Peter 3. Let’s see if I wrote these down. Yes, I did.

Here’s 1 Peter 3:17: “It is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God’s will than for doing evil.” I think that’s pretty plain. If God wills for you to suffer for doing good, which means that the injustice coming upon you is God’s design for you. That’s big, isn’t it? God wills that you suffer for doing good sometimes. So, the necessity of suffering is God’s.

First Peter 4:19. “Therefore, let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator [in] doing good.” So God wills it. God wills it, and then I went outside 1 Peter to Philippians 1:29: “For it has been granted to you, graciously granted to you,” I preached on this a couple of weeks ago in chapel at Bethlehem College and Seminary and really underlined this word right here. “It has been granted to you for the sake of Christ that you should not only believe on him, but that you should suffer for his sake.” So, it is a gift.

So three times — two of them in 1 Peter, one of them in Paul — we are told that the sufferings that come into our lives are according to God’s will. God is sovereign. So when I look at this word “if necessary” here, then I see, “Okay, he’s my doctor, he’s my therapist, and he decides what’s necessary.”

You ever had a knee replacement or had pneumonia and you got two broken ribs and they say, “Cough.” And you say, “I can’t cough, it hurts.” “You got to cough. You’ve got pneumonia. You have to cough.” That’s what’s going on here. God says it’s necessary for your faith to cough like that. Genuine faith: “Trust me. Your faith will be made stronger. You’ll get over the pneumonia of unbelief and sin if you cough, though it hurts like crazy.”

Mercies for Today’s Troubles

One last question, then we’ll take a break. These trials here come evidently by God’s design and necessity. And they have a grace for every day to meet them, don’t they?

I saw this first years ago when I put together Matthew 6:34 and Lamentations 3:22. This is what happens if you read the Bible through enough times, you stumble onto things like this. Matthew 6:34 says, “Don’t be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day has enough trouble, trials, of its own.” So God has judged that tomorrow will have its appropriate number of trials.

So, don’t bring them into today. Wait, there’ll be enough for tomorrow. You got today’s trials, tomorrow’s trials. Don’t let anxiety go here and bring them into here. Why? Why? Because every day, now back to Lamentations 3:22, “The mercies of God are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.”

Well, if the mercies are new every morning, those mercies are designed for those troubles. If you try to take those troubles that are designed for Sunday, tomorrow, and bring them into Saturday to worry about them, he’s saying, “I didn’t design grace for that. I designed grace for tomorrow’s troubles.” This is unbelievably encouraging that the necessary trials that come into your life, God always will give you grace for them.

“He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). That’s part of what the shield of faith does. That’s part of what being guarded through faith means. Let me pray, and you aim to come back at 10:30 a.m., which will be a miracle, but let’s pray and maybe God will work that miracle.

Father in heaven, cause us to rejoice in the inheritance and the living hope that you’ve provided. And grant that we would be established so that our trials would not undo us, but purify and strengthen our faith. I ask this in Jesus’s name, amen.