Sep 5, 2018
By Rev. Johnmark Camenga
SDB Church, Lost Creek, WV
Are we willing to follow?
Do you ever get the sense that you have arrived at a moment that is somehow too big for you? Do you ever get the feeling that somehow the task that lies before you is greater than your ability? But as you face that moment—as you engage the task—you discover that, though you are too small, God is not.
Seventh Day Baptists have arrived at just such a moment and have been presented with just such a task. Though we may feel too small for it, our God is not. God is going to grow us and He is going to strengthen us and He is going to cause amazing things to happen within us and through us, but only to the degree that we are willing to follow where He leads. The question, then, is this: are we willing to follow?
The answer to this question, however, must be founded in reality and the reality is that following where God leads is not easy. Following where God leads is difficult and trying and unswervingly counter-cultural. This is the truth that is presented in 1 Peter 4:12-19. I encourage you to take a few moments to read that passage and come back. Go ahead—I’ll wait.
Welcome back.
So, reading these words and trying to understand how we should respond and how we are supposed to reach out to people who are lost in sin, we start to formulate questions. We ask things like, “Do you understand your desperate, soul-deep, gut-wrenching need for God?” Or, “Do you recognize the utter calamity that will befall your life apart from God?” These are the types of questions that we ask of non-believers, but we never get around to asking the real question: “Have you come to grips with the fact that the same calamity you have in your life as a non-Christian may very well befall your life even if you are in relationship with Jesus?”
The reality is that suffering comes to all of us. We will either suffer in life as a result of our sinful choices or we will suffer in life as a result of choosing to follow Jesus. It’s suffering either way, but we Christians do a pretty terrible job of explaining that to each other let alone those on the outside peering in. We have a tendency to complain about prosperity preachers—especially when they seem to be prosperous—and we say that their teaching about wealth and health and happiness is non-scriptural. Here’s the problem with that: when we withhold from a potential convert the fact that there is suffering and trials and difficulties in the life of a follower of Jesus, we become prosperity preachers.
Yet, because we are guilty of this evangelistic malfeasance, most folks who cross the threshold from agnostic to Christian have very little idea what they’ve actually signed up for. Beyond this, I fear that most churches fail to preach the truth of what the life of a Christian is all about in large part because we don’t know ourselves. Instead, what we do is we present the new Christian with a poorly worded job description that goes something like this:
• As a follower of Jesus and a member of the church you will receive love, joy, and peace.
• As a follower of Jesus and a member of the church you will be expected to serve on a committee, you know, if it’s convenient (this is negotiable).
• As a follower of Jesus and a member of the church you will be expected to bring a casserole to the church once a month (this is non-negotiable).
• As a follower of Jesus and a member of the church you will have other duties as assigned.
So, people read the job description, sign up for the gig, and then proceed to get blindsided by life over and over again and then we wonder why we’re having a hard time recruiting new members and why we’re struggling to retain current members. It’s quite simple: people don’t really know what they’ve signed up for because we don’t really tell them and we don’t really tell them because we don’t really know ourselves.
I was at Walmart recently, walking along the back aisle past the electronics department, when I was stopped by a salesman. He asked me if I was interested in hearing about their current cell phone specials. I said I wasn’t interested, moved on, and overheard as the salesman asked the same question of the man walking behind me. The man responded by saying, “Son, if you can tell me how to get my wife out of this store, I will sign any contract you want.”
A lot of times, we sign up for things without really understanding what the conditions of the contract are. I mean, has anyone here actually read the entire Facebook user agreement? Who’s got time to read about privacy and security when I’ve got all these cat videos I need to share? Where’s that agree button? Click! I am telling you that this is exactly how we treat the church—this is exactly how we treat our Christian faith. We sign up without reading the fine print—we sign up without counting the cost—then, at the first sign of trouble, what do we say? “Wait a minute, I didn’t sign up for this! This wasn’t in the job description!”
I don’t know about you, but as for me, I am tired of hearing excuses and I am tired of making excuses for why we cannot get and keep members in our churches. So much of what the church thinks, what the church says, and what the church does is straight up inexcusable. These are not things that are happening to us, these are things we are doing to ourselves and now is the time for it to stop.
In order for this to happen—in order for us to move on—we must come to God, seeking His guidance, and allowing His Word and His Spirit to weed out the nonsense that we’ve adopted. We need to allow His Word and His Spirit to reveal the challenging and glorious truth of the matter: if this life we are called to live is truly about actions, then what have we actually signed up for?
Going back to the scripture (1 Peter 4:12-19) we need to understand that this letter is being written to people who seem to be confused about why they are facing persecution. They have become Christians, life is hard, and they don’t understand it. So, in the midst of this persecution and confusion, Peter gives them this great pastoral advice: stand up and stand firm in your faith. And, though this is the primary encouragement, significant themes emerge within the letter, and especially within the cited passage:
• The inevitability, necessity, and desirability of trials and suffering—that it’s going to happen, that it needs to happen,
and that you should want it to happen.
• The importance of doing good in the face of trials and suffering—that we must persist in love and good deeds in the midst of trials and suffering.
• The role of the church in the process—that the church is supposed to be involved.
First, then, is the inevitability, necessity, and desirability of trials and suffering. Let’s pull this out of our passage:
In verses 12 and 13 Peter writes, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.” What’s being said here? Well, if you go to 1 Peter 1:6-7, this thing that Peter is talking about really comes to life.
“In this you rejoice…”
Stop there for a moment. What is Peter referring to here? If you refer further back in 1 Peter 1 you’ll discover that the “this” Peter is talking about is your hope for the future. So, we can read “hope for the future” into the passage like this: “In [your hope for the future] you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials…”
Peter is a little bit lighter-handed here than he is later. When talking about trials, here he says “if necessary” but in chapter 4 he says “don’t be surprised when the trials come.” It seems that the purpose of the trials reveals their inevitability; that it is not a matter of “if” so much as “when.” In fact, this assertion is made clear as these verses continue:
“…you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” So the purpose of trials is both to prove the genuineness of our faith and that we might share in the glory of Jesus. If we were to flip that over, what we realize is that without testing, there
is no genuineness. Without trials, your faith cannot be known to be real. As such, trials are necessary to prove your faith. So it is not just that trials are going to happen, but that they need to happen.
When I was a kid, living in Shiloh, New Jersey, our family had a couple of small gardens where we grew lots of good stuff. We grew green beans, lima beans, corn, melons—lots of good stuff—but we also grew Brussels sprouts. Here’s the thing about Brussels sprouts: I don’t like them. So, when those stalks grew and those Brussels sprouts began to form, this wretched inevitability began to sink in: those wretched little green spheres were going to be on my dinner plate. Now, I was assured that they were good for me—I had learned at an early age that if it tasted bad, it was probably good for me—but just because they provided necessary nourishment and vitamins didn’t make me want them on my plate, in my mouth, or in my belly. The sprouting stalk assured me of their inevitability and my parents assured me of their necessity, but I still did not want them.
This is the same thing we face when we deal with what Peter is talking about here. Just because suffering and trials are inevitable and necessary does not mean that anyone wants them. And this is why—calculatingly and, perhaps, dishonestly—when we write that job description for the new Christian, we skip that part. We gloss over it by saying there are “other duties as assigned.” But the reality is that even though the process is undesirable, the result is not. We want what is on the other side of trials and suffering, we just don’t want to have to clean our plate to get there because the plate is full of Brussels sprouts, right? We want dessert, we just don’t want the dinner.
But what Peter is saying is that we must “rejoice insofar as [we] share Christ’s sufferings, that [we] may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.” The implication here is so significant. If we don’t go through suffering—and even more, if we do not rejoice in suffering—then we do not get to share in the rejoicing and gladness of the glorious return of Jesus.
You need to wrestle with this truth: when we fail to tell people the truth about the trials and suffering of the life of a Christian, we are robbing them of the rejoicing and gladness that Jesus came to give. The trials and sufferings of the Christian life are inevitable, necessary, and desirable—and it is inexcusable for us to present the Gospel without presenting this critical element of the Gospel-shaped life.
Second is the importance of doing good in the face of trials and suffering. Looking now at 1 Peter 4:19 we read, “Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.”
The suffering we endure is God’s will. Just let that sink in for a moment. The suffering we endure is God’s will, which means it is for God’s good purposes. What good purpose could possibly come of it? Well, the suffering we endure puts us into contact with God. Do you ever get the sense that you have arrived at a moment that is too big for you? When this happens, we must reach out to Him who is greater than any moment we face. We have been given access to the Sovereign King of the universe and He is telling us that He will empower us to do His work if we would just turn to Him. As such, the suffering we endure must not prevent us from doing good.
To a great degree, our response to the difficulties of life shows the world whom we think they should worship. If trials and suffering defeat us as Christians…if the things we come up against as followers of Christ prevent us from doing the work of Christ, Satan takes credit. He will point at you as you fall. He will laugh at you and proclaim to anyone who will listen, “Look what I did to that Christian!” But if trials and suffering refine us as Christians—if we persevere through our trials in the power of the Holy Spirit—then God gets the glory.
So, this is where the context of this passage hits us: it isn’t just our faith that is at stake, it is the faith of those who observe our suffering and our response. There are evangelistic implications to this, sure—the things we say and do present a witness to the outside world—but if we follow where this passage is leading us, it is leading us to the role of the church in the process.
Read these words from 1 Peter 4:8-11 and ask yourself if this passage describes the way your church works:
“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.”
Would you say this describes the way your church operates?
Is your church just nailing it in all of these areas?
Let’s approach this differently. Do you sometimes dread going to church on Sabbath morning?
Look, I get it that admitting this kind of thing in the past might have been thought of as taboo, but the movement of the Holy Spirit at Conference tells me that we are in a new era as Seventh Day Baptists. The Holy Spirit spoke through our Conference president and has proclaimed a new day for Seventh Day Baptists so, there’s no more pretending, no more hiding, no more sugar-coating, and no more lying. Let’s just open up here a little bit, shall we?
Is there some part of going to church each week that you dread? It seems like that’s the truth for most of us, right?
You know, there’s that person who always talks too much.
There’s that person who always has an awkward prayer request.
There’s that casserole your kids always make an embarrassing comment about.
Maybe there’s that person whose presence makes you feel unsafe.
There’s that person who seeks you out to suck you into negative attitudes and emotions.
Maybe you’re the person who is discontent and you want everyone else to feel that way.
Maybe you no longer pray and you no longer study, and you have been overcome by a sprit of division and you feel compelled to tear the church apart.
Oh yes, we know that these people are out there. We know that these people are among us. So, whoever or whatever it is, there is something that you have come to detest about your church and that feeling is preventing you from giving yourself to the church community in the way that Peter describes. And more than that, it prevents the church from being the church.
What thing can we do that is going to make the biggest difference in our churches and in our communities? It is the very thing that we struggle so greatly with: that we would love God and love each other.
We have a very small egg-producing operation in our side yard. There are two groups of chickens, one about three years old and the other about a year old. Several months ago a couple of our one-year-old chickens had gotten out of the fence and were attacked by a dog. One of them died due to a broken neck, while the other suffered a gaping wound on its back—she was hobbled, but still alive—leaving us with just two from the one-year-old group. I treated her wound, made a bandage for her, and placed her in isolation. So, she sat in the chicken coop, huddled by the waterer, barely moving and the one remaining chicken from that group sat outside the coop, as close as she could get to her injured friend.
After a couple of weeks, the wound had healed some and I decided to let her out of the coop to wander the yard. As soon as I did that, the chickens from the three-year-old group ran after her, trying to attack her. I grabbed those chickens and put them in isolation and then I watched as the other chicken from her group walked up beside her and, together, they walked around the yard, scratching, eating, and clucking.
Now, I don’t know much about chicken sociology, but I can tell you that this is a great example for us in the church. If there are those outside the church who are looking to pick off the weak and wounded among us, does it make sense for us to be doing the same thing inside the church? If chickens—literal bird-brains—are smart enough to know how to come alongside each other in support, do you think maybe we ought to be able to figure that out too?
There is warning in these words from Peter, but there is also encouragement. The warning is that trials are inevitable, but the encouragement is that the trials are good for you. The warning is that suffering is coming, but the encouragement is that there are good things we can do in the power of God. The warning is that difficulties are headed for us, but the encouragement is that we are a church that stands ready to support each other.
I am imploring you. Don’t turn your excitement and resolve over the Conference theme into a lie. Don’t turn back into the church we used to be, a church that smiled and pretended and talked but never did anything. Don’t waste this movement of the Holy Spirit!
This is a new era for Seventh Day Baptists! We must understand that the theme of this past Conference year stands now as a signpost. It stands now as a marker that God has placed upon Seventh Day Baptists. It is evidence that He has moved among us. It is a work of God within each of us and it is a work for which we all will be held accountable.
“Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good.”
