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Transcript:
Well, good evening to you all. I'm going to pray before we begin our time in God's word, but I want to say a couple of things. One is, I want to just thank all of you. This will be the last time I speak with you, at least from the pulpit that you all have been so very kind to my wife and me. We have just sensed the spirit of God here and his kindness and his grace and your comments and encouragements have been just heartfelt. Thank you. Just coming from our environment in California to come out here and to see so many people of different backgrounds and different places, it's just been a great encouragement that the Lord is building his church and his church is well. So very oftentimes we hear so much about how poorly the church is faring, but Jesus is building his church and his church is strong. We've been encouraged in our own faith just with our time with you guys. So thank you very much just for your hospitality.
Then secondly, I need to ask you all for your forgiveness. I mentioned last night that I had a bout with cancer, and I just left you guys hanging. So many of you have came up and just said, "Brother, are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay?" Some of you guys spent most of the night praying for me. Thank you for that. I am cancer-free. I have been for 12 years. Amen. I didn't mean to leave you guys hanging on last night. Thank you for those of you that reminded me not to do that again.
Let's go to God and ask him for his help as we turn to his word.
Father, indeed you, through the spirit and your word, through the exalted Christ, our building, the church, and we are indeed grateful to be a part of it. You have been very kind to us, dear God, as we have gathered ourselves together this past couple of days. We have heard from you through your word, through your chosen servants. For that, we're grateful. We pray now, Lord God, that you would bless us, that you would give us ears to hear what the Spirit has to say to us, that you would gird up the loins of our minds and grant us the grace to think your thoughts after you. Father, help us to be alert having just eaten, God, that our flesh may feel heavy right now. May your spirit just stir our minds and our affections as we come to your word that we might just see the glories of Christ and think together how you are sovereignly working in our lives, even through our suffering.
We commend and commit ourselves to you. Bless our evening and our Q&A session that is to follow our talk now. God, may it all be done for your glory and for your honor. We thank you in advance for what you're going to do. In Jesus' mighty name, we pray. Amen.
Well, in our last session together, I set out to set before you five pillar statements, five theological pillar statements, with the desire to give us a biblical foundation of God's sovereignty over suffering. My aim in that talk was to just help us think biblically and theologically about how God is working all things together for our good and for his glory, which includes suffering and affliction and hardship and in pain.
For this evening, what I want to do is I want to help us to think more personally and more practically about our suffering. I was really helped this morning, I trust all of you were as well, from Brother Ian. His talk was just so helpful, particularly when he was encouraging us and reminding us that we don't always understand what is going on in our lives; that God can take us through seasons of ups and downs. I think the way that he talked about it was resurrections and deaths, all at the same time going from one season to the other season. We don't always know what God is doing, but whatever God is doing, we can know that he's doing it well.
How many of you guys found that helpful, found that very, very helpful, that God doesn't always answer all of our questions, that we can be under the afflictive providences of God and we don't know why, we don't know what he's doing, that the Psalms are so helpful for us that we can, in fact, ask, "How long, our Lord? How long?" It's helpful to have that freedom to be able to come to God with our questions and knowing that he's not taken aback by our questions.
What I want to help us to do is to say, are there some things in God's word that we can know because he's revealed them to us that these are lessons that we can learn when we do find ourselves under affliction, when we do find ourselves being persecuted, when we do find ourselves suffering. Are there some lessons that God has revealed to us that we can latch onto, that we can see that he has told us that this is what he designs some at least of the afflictions that he has appointed and ordained for us in our lives? I think there are several that we can go to.
Now, we must understand that God can be doing one thing and a thousand things all. At one time, in the same act, he could be working in our lives and doing a whole host of other things, even in the lives of the people around us. He may not always give us all those answers. We do still see and look into a mirror dimly. The full scope and revelation of all of the details and the intricacies of God's work in our lives he has not revealed to us, but God has revealed some things. God has given us his word so that we can go to it and we can see ...
I'm oftentimes drawn, and you can turn here just for a moment to James chapter one. You can open up there in your bibles with me in James chapter one. The way that James begins is he says, "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, various temptations, various hardships, various difficulties, various sufferings, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance." Then he says, "Let endurance have its perfect result so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing."
Then we have this verse, which oftentimes we believe starts another section, but I want to just suggest to you that it's in the same context when James says this, "But if any of you lacks wisdom ..." I think contextually what James is saying is that if any of you lack wisdom with respect to the trials that you're going through, I think that's the context of wisdom. Certainly, we can ask God for wisdom at any time concerning anything, but I think, contextually, James is driving us to say that there will be times when, in fact, you fall into diverse temptations and trials and difficulties, and you just simply don't know what God is doing. You simply don't know how to respond. You simply don't know what to do. You simply don't know how to pray. I think James is saying here that you can ask God.
At that moment, you can turn your confusion and your perplexities and usher it up to God. God will receive it, and God will give you an answer. Maybe you might not like the answer that he will give you, but he will offer you answers. I would suggest to you that he will offer you answers in his already revealed word, that he will take us to text where we can see that we know that I'm in this situation and God wants me to respond this way or God is doing this in me. God is working this grace in my life. God is working this virtue in my life.
James, I think, gives us just an understanding that we can go to God because God, notice what he says, “Who gives to all generously and without reproach.” It will be given to you if you ask by faith. It is our faith that can take us up to God, trusting God and asking God to give us wisdom to know how to receive into our lives the temptations and the sufferings and the persecutions and the afflictions, and know that God is at work in a very sovereign way.
The question then is, “What are some of those lessons that we can learn? What are some of those things that God is working in the lives of his people when he brings about suffering into our lives?” I want to suggest to you, at least give you, seven. This is not a comprehensive list. I'm sure there are more that we can come up with, but I want to try to boil these down into seven words that will help you. I'm putting it this way because I really want this to be practical. I want you to be thinking about worshiping the Lord through your suffering and in your suffering. These are seven words to help you maintain a posture of worship even in the midst of suffering, knowing that God intends your suffering, again, for his glory and for your good.
My real prayer, my hope, is that as we walk through this, that it will impact your hearts, that it will move your minds to trust God even more, to actually worship God, even when you don't feel like it, knowing that what he has brought into your life will, in fact, be for your good. It will, in fact, work. It will, in fact, produce in you comprehensive righteousness and Christ's likeness to the praise and the glory of God. Is that not what life is all about? To be like the Lord Jesus Christ in thought, word, and in deed. That's what we are here for because God is doing that. God predestined us to that glorious end. Even as Brother Ian had mentioned to us, because the grand end of it all is that Christ might receive many brethren into heaven that will look like him. How glorious will that be, that we will share in the glory of the exalted Jesus Christ. We will in the end be as much like Christ as glorified humanity can be.
God is at work, if you are a believer, here, in your life right now, producing that and he does that very oftentimes in our suffering. I pray that with our talk here and all of the messages that when suffering comes into our lives, we will be able to receive it with faith, rather than with fear, that we can endure our suffering with hope rather than despair and that we can come through our suffering rejoicing in God, rather than being embittered against God. Those are real temptations, even for the strongest of us as Christians. My prayer is that this will be helpful to us.
Seven lessons, if you're taking notes and you want to frame it that way. Seven lessons that we can learn from God as we ask God for wisdom to help us understand as he sovereignly ordained suffering for us, as his people. I put these in just one word. Number one, humility. Write that down. Humility. If your Bibles are still over with you, turn to second Corinthians chapter 12. Again, we'll be going through several texts. Second Corinthians chapter 12. You all know is that in second Corinthians, it may be one of Paul's most personal letters. He's defending his apostleship, not because he's so concerned about himself and his reputation, but he knows that his detractors are knocking down who he is so that they can undercut the gospel. He's defending himself only for the gospel's sake. He's speaking somewhat foolishly here. He doesn't like to talk about his experiences, he doesn't like to talk about all of the privileges that God has given to him but God had gave him a tremendous blessing and he speaks of it here.
Look at verse seven. This is second Corinthians chapter 12. He says this, "Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations ..." The revelations that he mentioned here is that God had taken him up to the third heavens and he had heard things and seen things that he wasn't even able to talk about or to share, profound privilege that God had given to him and because of the surpassing greatness of those revelations, for this reason, to keep me ... This is what Paul says, "To keep me from exalting myself there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself."
Now I want you to notice several things here. Oftentimes we're told that after suffering we'll receive a blessing. What Paul says here is that after receiving a blessing, he actually received suffering. He had been given this tremendous blessing of revelation and being in heaven to see the glories of Christ. He says as a result of that God ordained to give him an affliction. It's what he called a thorn in the flesh. Paul doesn't tell us what the thorn in the flesh is. It could be something literally that buffeted him physically or it could be something else. Maybe it was a demonic led individual that just dogged his ministry, it's a messenger of Satan. Whatever it is, God gave it to him. We know God gave it to him because of the reason that it was given to him. Do you see, it is mentioned twice in the verse. He says there, "It was given to me so that I would not exalt myself."
Now, Satan wouldn't ever give us anything to produce humility in our lives. Do you understand? Satan would do something in our lives to puff us up with pride. He would never try to do anything in our lives to produce humility. Since the goal of this thorn in the flesh is to produce humility, we know then that it comes from God, that God had tailor made this suffering for the apostle, Paul, that he might be humbled.
It is interesting that God says in his word that God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. The Bible has so much to say about the necessity of humility. In fact, Jesus himself said, "Unless you are humble, like a little child that believes in me, you will in no wise enter into my kingdom." Humility is a key virtue, a key grace that God's people must maintain. We can only maintain it by the grace of God and God will move in our lives and give us our own thorns in the flesh to produce humility in our lives, to move us downward. The downward disposition of the soul is where God wants each and every one of his children to be.
We live in a world, do we not, in which prize pride. We do so much in our generation to puff ourselves up, to give ourselves platforms to make much of ourselves. That kind of thinking, has it not, even has entered into the church of the Lord, Jesus Christ. That everybody has a means of champion their own voice. One of the grievous things to my own souls about social media is that everybody thinks that they have something that somebody else needs to hear. Some of what we say needs to be heard by no one. It doesn't breed humility out of any of us, does it? I don't see people that post things online and on Facebook talking about how humble they are. It's always about the puffing up of themselves, pictures of themselves, talks of themselves and all how as Christians we need to understand that God loves us so much that he will bring trials and hardships into our lives to produce humility and to keep us from pride.
Paul prayed that whatever, this thorn was, that God would take it away, did he not? He gives us liberty, doesn't He, to pray that sometimes the hardships that God brings into our lives are unwelcome the hardships. Paul prayed and he prayed and he prayed. I don't think there's any magical number three. He just prayed. He labored before the Lord that God would take it away from him, but God didn't, because God knew that Paul needed, because of the way that God was using Paul and the blessings and the privileges that God had given Paul, that he would be tempted to be proud of those things. God did not take those things away. God knew that Paul needed the help of this thorn in the flesh.
God will tell us that we need to be lowly of spirit and humble of heart. Is that not like our Lord, who's lowly of spirit and humble of heart to walk in a Christ-like way, in a cruciform way, to walk in the footsteps of our Lord, as brother Paul taught us, that Jesus Christ is our exemplary. He showed us what perfect humanity is like, to walk lowly and humbly before his God, who is our God. Do we not want that disposition, that lowly posture of the soul, one that is rightly related to the glory of God? If we do then, then should we not then welcome the suffering that God might bring into our lives that he knows that we need to keep us lowly of spirit and humble of mind before him.
Listen, pride is a cardinal vice and humility is a cardinal virtue. Pride's destination it hell itself. Hell is filled with and will be filled with people, who are proud, but heaven will be filled with people who are humble and lowly. God knows that. God then works in our lives to produce the loneliness of heart that we each need. He will bring pain into our lives to guard us from being puffed up with pride. The downward disposition of the soul that is in right relationship with the glory of God is God's aim and design in much of our suffering and in much of our pain.
Embracing the humbling providence of God then, brothers and sisters. We should welcome it into our lives. I was just recently doing some reading on Spurgeon. Some of you love Spurgeon. Spurgeon's life was hard. Spurgeon's life was filled with sufferings of many sorts. I came across a quote from him, just the slander of his name and he suffered in physical ways. He wrote this, having had his name slandered. I quote you, this is what he said. He said, "Down on my knees have I often fallen with hot sweat rising from my brow under some fresh slander poured upon me in an agony of grief of heart that God has given to me [inaudible 00:19:44]. He has broken me. This thing I hope I can say from my heart if to be made as the mire of the streets again, if to be laughed at as a laughing stock and a fool, if it would bring me down to my knees and keep me lowly and humbly, then will I bless the Lord, my God."
Is that your perspective? Desiring to walk in humility before our God so much that you will embrace whatever God designs for your life to keep you on your knees, spiritually, if not physically, before him? The humility that we desire God produces and brings about in us, through our suffering. Secondly, not only has God oftentimes worked towards humility through our suffering, secondly the word is dependency. Not only humility, but dependency. Let's stay here, right in the text. Paul continues to write. He says, "Concerning this, I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me, but God said no." Notice how God said no and why God said no to that. Notice verse nine. He said to me, "My grace is sufficient. My grace is enough. My grace is adequate. My grace, Paul, is all that you need for ... My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness."
Notice what Paul says as a response to that, Paul says, "Most gladly, therefore. I would rather boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me, therefore, I am well content." In other words, I take pleasure then with my weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. What a perspective. Do you see it there? What a perspective. Paul as he prayed that God would take away this thorn in the flesh and God said no and the reason that God gave to him is because his grace would be sufficient.
In other words, Paul, I want for you to feel your weakness. I brought this into your life to strip away your own self-confidence, the own confidence that you put in your abilities, the own confidence that you might put in your training, the own confidence that you'll put in the revelations that I've given to you. I don't want you to have your confidence in any of those things. Paul, I want your confidence to be in me and in my grace.
We're all tempted, are we not, to have confidence in ourselves. The things that sometimes we put our confidence in isn't necessarily always sin. The fact that that young men go to seminary to get trained to [inaudible 00:22:46] the word of God and to shepherd the flock of God, that's a good thing. We should try to get as useful as we can and all of the gifts and the talents that God has given to us, we should try to strengthen those things, but God would never have us ultimately to put our confidence in those things. God wants us to feel our weaknesses so that, as Paul says there, that we might be strong, not in our own strength, but in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then that when God uses us, who gets the glory, not us, but God gets the glory.
For we, all of us together. Are nothing but broken cisterns that cannot hold water. God chooses to pour into us then the treasure of the gospel. When something happens, as a result of that, it is all to the praise and the glory of God, I've oftentimes admittedly just said, "Lord, God, just help me." I look at myself in the mirror and it's laughable. My wife would say yes and amen to that.
I thought, "Lord, how come I can't be smarter? Lord, how come I'm not a better preacher? Lord, I want to be stronger this. I want to be more excellent in these ways. Lord, I want to be like this brother. Lord, I want to be like this sister. Lord, if I could just have more gifts and more talents, I could be more useful, because then I'll be confident in those gifts." God says to us, "No. I've made you just like I want you. In fact, I will bring suffering into your experience so that you will have no confidence in yourself, but that all of your confidence would be in Christ. The weaker you are, the stronger, then, that Christ is in you. When he is stronger in you, his power will flow more freely through you. Paul understood that.
Turn to the first chapter here still in first Corinthians. Look at chapter one. We'll come here again in a moment where Paul says this in verse eight, "For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia that we were burdened excessively," notice this, "beyond our strength so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, we have the sentence of death within ourselves," notice this, this is the purpose clause, "so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead." That God through affliction almost brought them to the point of death so that they wouldn't have any confidence in themselves, but that trust would be in God who raises the dead. That's where God wants each and every one of us. He will at times, will he not, bring us almost to the point of death where we sense that we're close to it so that we might be helped of the Lord.
There is a example of this in the Old Testament, if you guys want to meet me there and turn with me to Second Chronicles. Many of you know who Uzziah was and the greatness of who he was as a king in two Chronicles chapter 26. God just gifted him in tremendous ways. He was an extraordinary administrator, an extraordinary tactician when it came to war. He was gifted and God blessed him. God used him mightily in the kingdom. In verse 15 it says this, at the end of it says, "Hence his, that is Uzziah's, fame spread afar," notice this, "For he was marvelously helped until he was strong." He was marvelously helped by God until he was strong. Verse 16. But when he became strong, his heart was so proud.
Do you guys get it? God used him, God helped him. God blessed them as long as he was dependent upon God's power, but then he became strong, in and of himself. When he became strong, in and of himself, he became proud. God judged him as a result of his pride. His life ended so tragically in an isolated house and written over the doorpost of the house is that he is a leper. Oh, that not be our case, that as we are being helped by the Lord that we would never become proud, because our dependency is totally on our God and his strength. That's exactly where God wants us to be.
Listen, we cannot be independent and God dependent, at the same time. If we are independent, God loves us so much that he'll bring hardship into our lives to strip us from our dependency or our independency to cast ourselves upon his mercy. The platform and this is the only platform that should matter to any of us. The platform for God's power is our personal weakness. Suffering is the pathway to that. Humility, dependency, thirdly is what I'm calling sympathy. Sympathy.
Let's turn back to Second Corinthians chapter one, sympathy. Paul and his companions have suffered greatly. Paul gives us these words that are tremendously helpful for us. He says there in second Corinthians chapter one verse three, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies and the God of all comfort," notice this, "Who comforts us in all of our affliction." God brings affliction and he brings comfort at the same time, but notice what Paul says, again, a purpose clause, "So that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which, we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ, but if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and your salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort which is effective in the pace and enduring of the same suffering, which we've also suffered."
That's a long sentence with a lot of 'so thats'. In essence Paul is just simply saying this; that your affliction sometimes is not just about you, that your affliction is so that God might bring you comfort because he wants to use your experience of his comfort in your affliction to then, in turn, pour that same knowledge of comfort out into somebody else who's going through a similar affliction as you are.
What I mean by sympathy is just simply this, I define it this way, that sympathy is the ability to emphatically show transformative compassion to others because of the shared experience. It is grace-filled counsel and comfort toward others, because you have something in common, not just the affliction, but having experienced the comfort of God himself. We are united that way with one another that God means for us as brothers and sisters, to not just keep the comfort that we receive from him to ourselves when we are afflicted, but to come alongside of other brothers and sisters who are similarly going through something that we have gone through and to be able to pour out onto them that comfort that we have received from God, himself. God does that in our lives.
It is interesting that as we think about the word of God that someone should come to our minds and it is none other than the Lord, Jesus Christ. The Bible says this, if you want to turn there in your Bibles, in Hebrews, we know it well. In Hebrews chapter two, "Of Jesus Christ is the prime and chief, an ultimate example of this. That he is that sympathetic high priest." Verse 14 of Hebrews four, "Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the son of God, let us hold fast our confession," notice this, "For we do not have a high priest who cannot," do what with us, "Sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things, as we are yet without sin. Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace so that we might receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."
Jesus is our sympathetic great high priest. He received the comfort from his own father and all of his sufferings and all of his pain and all of his affliction. Therefore, we can run to him when we are afflicted and receive that same grace that he receives. He is delighted to pour that out upon us. God means to not make us one another's high priest, certainly not. That's exclusively the role and the right and the privilege of Jesus Christ, but we can, in fact, come alongside of one another to comfort each other in our time of pain.
My wife and I had to make a huge medical decision. I think this was maybe the first one for our daughter, that I shared with you guys before. We were begging God for an answer. We were laboring in prayer. Even times of fasting, not knowing what to do. We went to a conference, I think it was a T4G conference. We went, both of us, and we were praying, "Lord, we need to hear a word from you." We heard great preaching, we heard wonderful preaching, but none of the preaching answered our question that we came with. I remember sitting there, and if you've ever been to a T4G it's in this huge auditorium and thousands of people. They had all left and there was just a few brothers and sisters sitting around. We were sitting there and a brother and sister that I haven't seen since my seminary days, maybe it was about seven or eight years, happened to be, providentially they were sitting behind us.
We began to talk and they were asking us how we were doing. We shared with them that we needed to make a decision for our daughter and we got our word. They just happened to have had a son who had special needs, who had the exact surgery that we contemplated, that our daughter needed. They shared with us the comfort that they had received from the Lord and we got our word. Praise God. They suffered for a whole host of reasons, but one of the reasons, I dare say, if this text means anything to us, one of the reasons that they suffered was to receive the comfort of God, because God ordained that they would be sitting two rows behind us at a T4G conference so that we would receive the comfort that they had received from the Lord. God means to use each and every one of you in all of your hardships.
That's why, brothers and sisters, if you have been comforted by the Lord, do not keep that to yourselves. There is somebody in your life that needs to know how God came alongside of you. Share your pain, share your struggles with your brothers and sisters because God had so tailor made your suffering. And his grace in the midst of it. That you have a word for another brother or sister who is going through what you have gone through. God wants to use all of us that way.
Humility, dependency, sympathy. Fourthly, authenticity. Authenticity. Turn with me in your Bibles to first Peter chapter one. Peter, who was so just almost allergic to any sense of suffering while he was walking with the Lord Jesus, he wanted no part of suffering nor did he want his Lord to suffer. Is it not just ironic that in the providence of God he writes this marvelous letter about suffering, because he learned the lesson that he needed to learn from his Lord. He writes here about the suffering of God's people, that one of the reasons that we go through suffering is so that God might authenticate our faith, not for his sake, but for ours.
Look at verse six of chapter one and Peter writes this, "In this you greatly rejoice even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, various temptations so that the proof, or the genuineness, or the authenticity of your faith, being more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire may be found to result in the praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." Do you see it? It's plain on the text, that God brings suffering and pain into our lives to burn off the dross of the old man to show the shining brightness of genuine, authentic faith in Christ.
The picture that he paints there is that of what was used to purify precious metal. Some of you know this, that in the refiner's fire, they would put the metal there and burn it so hot that the dross and the impurities would come up to the surface. The individual would skive that off and take that off. How would he know when in fact the metal was pure? The metal was pure when he could see his own reflection in it. It's a wonderful example of what God does in our lives and with our faith. He puts us in fire, does he not, burning off the dross, burning off the old ways, burning off the old habits, removing it off the surface. How does he know when his job is finished? He knows when his job is finished, when he'll be able to look at us and see the reflection of himself in our lives, when we will be fully like Christ, when our faith will be like Christ's faith.
God, he does that in our lives to prove that we are really his people, to prove in our own souls that we really are his people. How many of you guys have ever found yourself there as God has just stripped one thing away from you and the next thing away from you and the next thing away from you, clinging to Jesus, because that's all you have. The whole letter of Job, although it's complex wisdom is really about God's vindication. The question that Satan asked Job is just simply this, does Job worship you for nothing? That's really what the book of Job is about. Satan is saying to God, "Does job worship you, is he a follower of Yahweh just because of all of the things that you have given him? Wonderful things, wonderful blessings, but is that why Job worships you?" God says, "No. That's not why Job worships me. Job worships me for me."
He permitted Satan then to strip all of those blessings away from Job to prove to Satan that my people worship me. My true people, my authentic people, my genuine people worship me for me. That's what genuine faith is, not for the gifts that God gives us. Praise the Lord for the gifts that God gives us, but God never gives us gifts so that we might worship the gifts. God gives us gifts so that we might worship the gift giver. God will take things away from us and strip us of things to show that our faith clings to him, and to him alone.
What happens to you, dear brother and sister, when you find yourself having things stripped away when you may lose a job or when your health is taken away, when you suffer loss? Do you trust him? Do you say, as Job says, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him." That's what God is doing in your life to bring you to that place where you know that you love God for who God is alone.
Humility, dependency, sympathy, authenticity. Fifthly, piety. Piety. What is another lesson that we can learn in the midst of our afflictions? His piety. Our dear brother, Dr. Biggie, took us to this text earlier today. Invite you to turn back to Hebrews chapter 12. We have been called to fix our eyes on Jesus in verse three, consider him in all of his manifold glorious ways. I'll back up to verse four and the author writes; "You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood and you're striving against sin and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to as sons. My son do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him, for those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, he spanks. He scourges every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with sons, for what son is there whom his father does not discipline, but you are without discipline of which all have become partakers and you are an illegitimate child and not a son."
"Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them, shall we not much rather be subject to the father of spirits and live?" Notice this verse 10, "For they discipline us for a short time, as seen best to them, but he, that is God our heavenly Father, disciplines us for our good so that," notice this, "We may share his holiness." God means not only to give us imputed righteousness, the imputed righteousness of Christ, but he wants to impart the righteousness of Christ in us. Yes, we are justified by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. We are positionally perfect and holy and righteous in God sight because of our faith in the risen Christ, but God is meaning to make us what we are, positionally. He means to make us that in practice as well, to share in the very holiness of Christ, to share in the very righteousness of Jesus practically in thought, word and in deed and the way that he does that is to discipline us to bring hardship into our lives. You see it in verse 11.
Now, all discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful but sorrowful. No child likes to be spanked by their father. If they do, we need to have a talk. No one likes that. It doesn't feel joyful for the moment. It's sorrowful, but as we yield to it, as we understand what our father is doing, it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness. The pain from our father leads to the sharing of the holiness of our Father. Suffering, often, is the ground from which God brings forth the fruit of repentance and righteousness in his people.
We ought to do that, should we not? We want to underscore that not all of our suffering is caused by individual sin, but when we do suffer, we would be wise to ask the Lord, is there sin in my life? Are you bringing me low, because there's some area that I have not yielded to the authority of your word and your spirit? God wants to have us to look at him and to trust him and to be like him, to shed the old ways of the old man. He does that through our suffering and through our pain.
Love what the psalm has said. In Psalm 119 in verse 67 he said this, "before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word." Then in verse 71, he said this, "it is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn your statutes." In verse 75, he says this, "I know oh Lord, that your judgments are righteous and that, in faithfulness, you have afflicted me. I'm glad, oh Lord, that I was afflicted because I oftentimes wandered away as a straying sheep, but I've been brought back into the fold because you love me enough to afflict me. Now I have learned your statutes and your ordinances and your principles and your ways, and I delight to do your will, oh Lord." God is working that piety in our lives.
In Hebrews, this is just an amazing verse that I'm sure you've pondered a number of times. In Hebrews chapter five, verse seven, it says this of our Lord, "In the days of his flesh he, that is Jesus, offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one able to save him from death. And he was heard because of his piety." Now, listen to this. Because of his reverence, because of his holiness, because of his devotion to God in verse eight, although he was a son, although he was the son, listen to this, brothers and sisters, he that is Jesus Christ learned obedience from the things which he suffered.
That's the kind of verse that you read and you set the Bible down and you sit back in your chair and you grab a cup of coffee and you just ponder for hours, that the perfect son of God learned obedience by the things that he suffered. His obedience was tested, it was manifested, it was magnified, as he suffered more and more and he submitted himself more and more and more to the will of his father that he became obedient. Philippians two says he became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
If our glorious Lord had to learn obedience through the things that he suffered, how much more then we have to learn obedience and piety by suffering. If in fact indeed we are to become like our Lord Jesus Christ, God would bring suffering into our lives as he brought suffering into the life of the only-begotten son. God would do that for us.
Sixthly; capacity. Capacity. Back to second Corinthians. We're leaning heavily on the Apostle Paul second Corinthians chapter four. This verse is becoming sweeter and sweeter to me as the days go by, as the years go by. The suffering and the affliction and the pain and the hardships experienced in Paul's life shaped him so much that listen to the words that he wrote here in second Corinthians four, verse 16. "Therefore," Paul writes, "We do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day." Listen to this, brothers and sisters and friends, "For a momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparisons while we look not at the things which are seen, but the things which are not seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."
I want you just to focus in on what he says there. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us something. It's working, it's doing something in our lives. It's producing in the Apostle Paul, and this is not just for the apostles, that momentary, light affliction is producing in all of us, [inaudible 00:49:42] what Paul says, an eternal weight of glory.
Now there's debates about what exactly that means. I think it just simply means this; that there will be some senses of a correspondence of the degree to which we suffer here and the degree in which we enjoy the glory of God when we get to heaven, that God is deepening our cup for the capacity of the enjoyment and the joy of glory when we get to heaven. Our eyes have not seen, nor his [inaudible 00:50:17] through the heart of man, all that God has in store for us when we get to heaven. Part of what God is doing to develop that sense and to expand our capacity for the enjoyment of it is to strip us away from our love of the sinful delicacies of this world.
We can't always feel it, we don't always know it, but God says it here in this word. Notice something else, as we think about our capacities expanding, and you've got to line the verse up if your eyes are still looking at verse 17. Paul says it's momentary. Our suffering doesn't always seem momentary, does it? Maybe yours does, mine doesn't. It seems like a long time, but you've got to view it in light of eternity. You see it there. It's momentary in light of eternal and it's light in light of the weight. It's an affliction in comparison to the glory. It's a momentary, light affliction that is not worthy to be compared to the eternal weight of glory. God is working in your life, developing you, producing in you the ability, the capacity to enjoy him when we get to glory. There is an enjoyment that we can have right now that we don't have to wait for.
That leads me seventhly and finally to our last lesson and it is calvary. It is calvary. I want you just to turn, as we close our time together, to Philippians chapter three. Paul is speaking very personally and very practically and very experientially here in chapter three. Now, what we learn about the apostle, Paul, is that his greatest desire is to know Christ, to know deeply and intimately Christ in all of his manifold glories.
Paul writes, and I'll pick up the reading in verse eight, "More than that. I count all things to be lost in view," listen, "To the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord." Did Paul already know Jesus? Of course, he had already met Jesus Christ, but he wants to go deeper in his knowledge and fellowship and communion with the risen Christ. For whom I have suffered the loss of all things and caught them, but rubbish so that I might gain Christ and may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith. Notice this verse 10, "That I might know him."
What exactly, Paul, is it that you want to know? I want to know the power of his resurrection, but it doesn't end there. I also want to know the fellowship of his sufferings. Do you see it there? He wants to know the fellowship, the koinonia, the partnership of the sufferings of Jesus Christ. How are we to understand that? I think we're to understand it this way that Paul knows into walking in the joyful union and communion experientially and practically with Jesus Christ, it would mean that he would suffer like Jesus Christ.
How many of you know that to be the case, that it is in those dark nights of the soul that you fear the nearness of Jesus Christ mostly? When you pillow your head at night, when nobody knows the depth of the pain and the heartache and the suffering that you're going through, it is at those times that we are acutely aware of the presence of our Lord communing with us, being there, standing with us. Even though everyone else may have forsaken us Jesus stands with his people.
I read it in the book of Daniel. I was in the lion's den that Christ showed up with Daniel. I was in the fiery furnace that with brothers Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego that Jesus showed up to commune with them. It will be in your lion's den and it will be in your fiery furnaces that Jesus Christ shows up. Is he with us at all times? Of course, he is. But there is a special presence of the Lord when we, in fact, suffer because of our union with him.
Jesus could say to Saul, when Saul was persecuting the church, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting," you say it, "Me?" Well, how can that be? He's persecuting the church because the church is his body and for the body to be afflicted is for Christ to be afflicted. When Christ is afflicted, he communes and comes to his people, as Isaiah 63:9 says, "In all of their affliction, he was afflicted and he comes to us. He communes with us and he blesses us."
Brothers and sisters, he knows what it is to be thirsty. He knows what it is to be hungry. He knows what it is to be despised. He knows what it is to be forsaken. He knows what it is to be scorned. He knows what it is to be shamed. He knows what it is to be isolated. He knows what it is to be falsely accused. He knows what it is to be misunderstood. He knows what it is to be beaten. He knows what it is to feel totally isolated, even from God. It is at those moments, when you are in the same situation, that he will come to you in all of his compassion, in all of his patience, in all of his kindness and all of his mercy and all of his grace and commune with you to the praise and the glory of his father's name.
Brothers and sisters, through it all, God somberly ordains our suffering to make us more like his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray that we would receive our sufferings, as hard as it may be, but receive them as good gifts from a loving father who would move heaven and earth to bring his children to final glory. That we might be like his eternal son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and magnify him forever and ever and ever. Let the church say amen. Let's pray together.
Father, we bless you and we praise you, for you are kind. We pray, our Father, that we would learn of these lessons, know that you are at work in our lives, marvelously and gloriously for our good and for your glory. Pray once again for those who are suffering right now under the sound of my voice, that you would draw near to them through your word and your spirit, and remind them of your love for them and your sufficient grace for them. Hear their cries and let their prayers come unto you, oh God, and bless them, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
