There are many things in life which can catch us by surprise. In 2016, the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States certainly caught most people by surprise. The devastation and tragic loss of life in the massive flooding that hit Texas several years ago caught everyone by surprise. Many things can take us by surprise, but Peter tells us of one thing that should never catch a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ by surprise. And that is suffering. 1 Peter 4:12“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.” No one wants to suffer. When suffering comes our way, we tend to be surprised, even shocked, but Peter says we shouldn’t be. In fact, the Bible says we shouldn’t be. Jesus’ life gave his disciples a pattern to follow: suffering would come before glory. It was the pattern of his earthly life. He was the Suffering Servant before he became King of kings and Lord of lords. Peter asks us why we are taken by surprise. Why do we consider it strange? His tone is very pastoral, yet firm at the same time. Startled astonishment should not be the reaction of Christians when suffering comes our way. Jesus warned his followers that the world’s hatred would fall upon them. John 15:18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.” Some of Peter’s readers were facing literal fiery trials, so he calls them back to the realization that they should not be astonished. Peter is not writing as some detached ivory tower scholar. He had faced fiery trials. He had both fallen and triumphed in the face of them. The night in which Jesus was arrested, Peter buckled under the heat of a fiery trial. He denied three times that he knew Jesus. Yet, in Acts, we see him stand boldly in the face of persecution (e. g. Acts 5:27-41). Peter reminds us that this should be our expectation in the present world. There is nothing new under the sun. Peter gives us a reason for the sufferings we face as Christians. He says the fiery trials we face are “to test (us)…” Our faith is tested and refined through suffering and hardships. Though it is a methodology we do not like, God will use fiery trials to test and to refine our faith. Warren Wiersbe said, “A faith that can’t be tested is a faith that cannot be trusted.” Trials and even persecution are an inevitable lot for all Christians. They will vary from person to person in degree and in magnitude. But they are never without purpose. There is always a divine purpose in human suffering. God is not a sadistic tyrant. He is gracious and merciful. But God will test us at times, and often it is because we need it. By nature, we are seekers of comfort and ease. We have hedonistic tendencies. When life is all sunshine and lollipops, it doesn’t take us very long to forget about God. So he may well allow a trial to enter our life to rattle our cage, to refocus us on him. The God who has redeemed us values our souls as more precious than silver or gold. As these precious metals are refined by fire, we are often refined by the fiery trials. Though we may suffer for a time, the goal of God in our suffering is to conform us more to the image of Christ. His goal is to sanctify us, not to destroy us. One of the most vivid example in Scripture is the test given to Abraham in Genesis 22. God told Abraham, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” (Gen 22:2). Isaac was the child of promise. The child through whom the promise of redemption would come. The child for whom Abraham had waited 25 years. And now God was calling him to sacrifice that child as a burnt offering. But Gen 22:1 tells us, the reader, “God tested Abraham…” Abraham did not know this. We have the “reader’s advantage.” But Abraham obeyed and subjected himself to the fiery trial. “So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him” (Gen 22:3). How much sleep do you think Abraham got that night? Nonetheless, Abraham trusted God in the midst of this fieriest of trials. He knew God was faithful to the promise he made. Hebrews 11:17-19 gives us insight into what Abraham believed. “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.” When God tests us, he calls us to trust him as Abraham did. He always has a purpose, and often we don’t know what that purpose is. But he has given us a wonderful promise to help us endure the fiery trials. “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.” (Rom. 8:28). Instead of being surprised by the fiery trials, Peter tells us how we are to respond to them. 1 Peter 4:13 “But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.” Calling us to rejoice in the midst of fiery trials is counterintuitive to human thought. Our default mode is to recoil at the thought of suffering. No one relishes the prospect of suffering, whatever the cause may be. Peter is telling us that instead of looking negatively at whatever suffering we may face for Jesus, we need to look positively to Jesus. Peter may well have been recalling the teaching of Jesus, teaching he heard with his own ears. Matthew 5:10-12“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Jesus does not hide the reality that the world will hate us because of our allegiance to him because we are no longer of the world. We have been born again (John 3:3). We have a new heart. We now how a different value system, one that puts us at odds with the world because it is diametrically opposed to the world. Jesus is telling us that the hatred of the world is not an assumption. It is a stone-cold fact. Peter calls us to rejoice because we are following the pattern of Jesus. His road to glorious exaltation came through suffering. He has called us to follow him. “A servant is not greater than his Master” (John 15:20). Sharing in the sufferings of Christ should not bring us consternation. It should bring us exceeding joy. This does not mean we seek it out, but it may well come our way. We follow the pattern of our Lord. Paul wrote,“The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:16-17). Peter told us in the opening chapter that we have an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading (1:3-5). Paul tells us we are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. But receiving the inheritance that is ours in Christ involves sharing in his sufferings. Paul follows up those words in Rom 8:16-17 with a glorious perspective that we should also embrace. “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” (Rom. 8:18). Paul is calling us again to embrace the current life through the scope of our eternal inheritance. When we view this life in light of eternity, it isn’t even the blink of an eye. That then puts the sufferings of this life in a different perspective (2 Cor. 4:17-18). What we experience here, whether good or bad, is fleeting. What awaits us is eternal. Peter tells us that if God calls us to suffer, we must commit our souls to him. As Paul asked, “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31). We can trust God because he is trustworthy. He is faithful, and trusting in him is the only answer to the reality of suffering in this world. David reminds us, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all” (Ps. 34:19).