September 15, 2024 | Suffering: What's Love Got to do With It?

Transcript:

Let's pray. As we begin this morning, father, we. We are so moved.

By the reminders of our hope is in you.

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for life and health. We thank you that you are a God who does miracles. We thank you for your presence of your spirit here today. Lord Jesus, I pray you'd help me to get out of your way. Spirit of God, you speak to our hearts beginning with me, and may you be glorified this morning.

In Jesus name. Amen.

I was thinking about this morning's message. And last week. Jed was in first Peter three, and we were at that section verses 13 to 15, a part of it that I just want to go back to and remind you as we begin this morning, to kind of frame what we're going to be talking about. Beginning in verse 13 of first Peter three, we read.

Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ. The Lord is holy. Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason, for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect.

As I was thinking about this morning last week, in a nutshell, a part of what Jed was talking about was the fact that, in the suffering and the affliction, the crisis that the church was experiencing, he was talking about one of the ways that we go through that suffering is in Christ, not unlike how Noah and his family went through the flood in the Ark.

And just as they were in the Ark and survived the crisis. So we go through suffering in Christ. But the question that came to my mind that, I talked with Jed about was, it is true, and it is necessary that we are in Christ as we go through the suffering, if we come through it with victory. The question is, is that while we're in it, what is God doing?

What is God doing in us? In it? Now, maybe a good place to start. Since the last time that I stood as the teaching pastor in this pulpit here, Brian, there are a lot of new faces who do not know me and don't know the story. And I'm not going to recount the whole story, but just very quickly.

I got up on Sunday morning, the 14th of February, came to church, taught, went home, felt great, and that night at seven had a fever of 104. And subsequently that led to 70 plus days in ICU with Covid and almost dying, led to six more months of oxygen trying to recover, getting a virus. That December, being still for four weeks, developing a blood clot and in the end, ending up at Vanderbilt Hospital with a lung transplant and three months living there, recovering post-surgery and going forward from there.

So when I come to speak to you this morning about suffering, I know a little bit. There are people in who suffered far more than me, but I've learned a few things in that journey about our Lord and about how he works in our hearts and in our lives. In the midst of this, if I was going to title this message this morning, what I think I would call it is suffering.

What's love got to do with it?

I went through times of isolation and no one could see me. Nurses would come in with hazmat suits and yellow suits with masks. And they talked to me like pearls. And then I'll give me a shot and they'd be gone. And that was pretty much 50 days of that journey. About the only people I saw that I knew, were a few of the folks from the church here who worked at the hospital who graciously came by and would spend some time with me.

And it was life giving, but I didn't get to see my wife for weeks and weeks and weeks other than over FaceTime. It was tough time. There were multiple people dying around me every day, and I'd hear the codes. I was later told after I was leaving ICU by one of the nurses who I'd gotten to know well that on my chart, the prognosis for it.

I don't remember the exact word, but essentially it was terminal. They did not expect me to come out of there. Unfortunately for them, they don't know how God numbers days. Thank God for that.

But I was suffocating. I was there so long that I was no longer mobile. My legs wouldn't move. It was a rough time. But in that time, God led me to Psalm 62. Why don't you turn there with me this morning? Psalm 62.

Verses five through eight.

Psalm 62. Verses five through eight.

Where we read, For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be greatly shaken. On God rest my salvation, on my glory, my mighty rock, my refuge is God. Trust in him at all times, O people. Pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us.

Notice that word trust in him. Our expectation of what God is supposed to do when I ask him to relieve our pain is interesting. 50 days in ICU. Agony of soul I found myself asking the question, how long? God. How long? I thought maybe a couple of weeks. How long? And then there was the day. The morning I woke up and I wanted to stand up and I could not move my legs.

They were. They were nonfunctional. I'd lost 40 pounds, lost all muscle strength. I couldn't move my legs. And I remember that night. This is interesting how we do this. I laid there and pray and said, father, I trust. Trust you that you'll give me strength in my legs overnight. And tomorrow I will wake up and I will get up, and I'll walk down this hall, and I'll give you glory, because all these people will go, wow, how did that happen?

I'll say you God did it. So I woke up the next morning and my legs didn't move. God didn't do it.

Turn to Psalm 123, a very short Psalm four verses one of the Psalms of Ascent, that the people of Israel would sing as they went to feast in Jerusalem.

Psalm 123, verse one. To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens. How do I lift up my eyes? Behold, as the servants, as the eyes of servants, look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of maid servants to the hand of their mistress. So our eyes look to the Lord our God, till he has mercy on us.

Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us. For we have had more than enough of contempt. Our soul has had more than enough of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud.

So I ask myself, what's the key word in this Psalm? I don't know what you'd pick, but I'll tell you what I truly believe it is in verse two, till some of your versions will say, until.

So our eyes look to the Lord our God, until how long is until 24 hours? 50 days, six years. How long is until God has mercy on us?

I remember there came a point. Where, as David says here in verse three and four, I've had more than enough. The Hebrew word there literally has the idea of a sponge that is so filled and soaked that it no longer holds any more. The water drips out of it. The idea of a bowl that is so full. Anything else you pull in, it just spills over the edge.

I have had more than enough of what? For him, it was content. Can I ask you a question? What is your more than enough?

Here's the thing that I know. Everyone in this room suffers something. There are seasons where for a short period of time, life is sweet. And I'm really not experiencing suffering. But for the vast majority of us right now, as we sit here, you're suffering. You're in crisis. You're in pain.

You've had more than enough.

And it's in those moments where we tend to look for comfort. Now comforts an interesting thing. The way we think about it often I want comfort from the suffering. And so often what it means for us is that when we're in pain, we want the removal of that pain, right? I don't want to feel it. Or we want the restoration of something that's been lost.

Or at the very least, I want distraction from the pain I'm feeling. So I just don't have to think about to be conscious of it for a minute. And so I seek something to distract me. So I seek comfort of some type. I don't know if you've ever seen this verse, but in job 3621 is an incredibly insightful verse about the subject of suffering and particularly how we seek comfort.

And this is not about the degree of suffering. Whether you are in intense, incredible suffering or just normal discomfort. It's true across the board how we default to comfort. There we read in verse 21 of job 36 take care. Do not turn to iniquity. For this you have chosen rather than affliction. Now wait.

I've chosen sin rather than affliction. What does that look like? Well, it's simple. I drink too much. I go to pornography. I read romance novels of being eat.

A binge shop, I do whatever, fill in the blank. I do anything to for a moment distract myself from the discomfort of my soul and my body. In cases that I don't feel any relief from. So I find iniquity as a short term solution, and I call it comfort. Where we are told here in Scripture. Take care. Do not turn there.

Do not choose that rather than affliction, which is another way of saying, choose affliction rather than sin. Now why would I do that? I mean, no one wants to suffer right? We may welcome small trials. You know, counting it a joy for a period of time. But no one wants life altering pain. Nobody. No one wants to lie awake with a pit in their stomach at night, agonizing over whether a disastrous situation is going to absolutely blow up, and where it's going to end up.

Nobody wants that. Nobody wants to experience a loss so deep in our life that we wonder if we can even go on.

And we do understand that the rain falls on the believer and nonbeliever, but no one's asking for a deluge. We don't pray for it. We don't seek it. We don't welcome it. And all we can think about when it comes at us is one word relief. I need relief, which is why we cry out to God for reprieve and for rescue and for deliverance.

That's what we do. But Jobe.

Here we have a discovered this. Just an incredible discovery. Sometimes deliverance comes by affliction. Job 3615. Same chapter. Just a few verses up. What a remarkable statement. This is. He delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear to adversity. He.

Let that sink in a minute. At first, that makes no sense. I mean, how can affliction deliver the afflicted? And yet this is what he's saying. We want to be delivered. Delivered from affliction, from suffering, from pain to whatever is troubling us. We want it removed, and we pray and work to that end. And yet, he says, by it.

So if we want rescue from affliction, how can we possibly find it by affliction? I thought about that psalm, and it occurred to me, what's going on here? What's he saying?

What are we being delivered from? That must be worse than the affliction itself.

Since affliction is unpleasant, since pain and suffering is not something I want at best, and in worst cases, it's crushing. It's absolutely crushing to the spirit.

What were we? What we are being delivered from must be of great evil. For God to use affliction to deliver us from it.

Or another way? Another way, I could say that would be our affliction. Must be producing something that is far more precious in us than immediate relief. My flesh wants immediate relief when I was laying in the hospital. I wanted immediate relief. God, in his mercy chose to say until there's something greater that I am doing. So what does suffering deliver us from?

What is more precious than relief from deep pain? Or the four things that occurred to me over the course of my journey and still work in me to this moment. Number one, suffering delivers us from indifference and lukewarmness.

Isaiah the prophet wrote this in Isaiah 30, verses 20 and 21, though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teacher will not hot himself any more, but your eyes shall see your teacher, and your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, this is the way. Walk in it. It is the suffering that heightens our senses, that impassioned our soul to run in the right direction and say, father, speak.

Give me ears to hear. I am out of tools in my toolbox. We're no longer passive. We're no longer lukewarm. We're no longer indifferent. When the searing, ongoing issue of affliction and pain hit, and we know we don't in ourselves have the answers. Affliction God uses so that we will have ears to hear, eyes to see.

Just as Samuel was told, go back and listen. And he learned to hear the voice of God, recognizing God's voice above all the competing voices that are around us day to day will radically transform us. I'm finding that to be true. It gives us supernatural wisdom. It gives us clarity of direction in our lives, and it ultimately reshapes who we are.

It changes us. It transforms us in the midst of the suffering. It makes us realize, too, how broken the world is in its capacity to meet our needs, and how useless it is to seek the things of the world. We begin to realize in suffering that the world really doesn't have a whole lot to offer us. Pain spurs us to search for meaning and hope beyond.

Lying in a hospital bed. There's got to be farther. More to this than lying here. Getting stuck with needles. There's got to be. And we seek that. There's got to be something more to this than this broken relationship. Lord, that I can't get past. There's got to be something beyond just this brokenness and bitterness in my heart. There is.

The second thing that I've learned from suffering is it delivers us from the ensnare of sin. One of the things that pain and struggle does in our lives is it makes us aware of sin. By bringing our buried struggles to the surface.

It is amazing that when our life falls apart and we can't depend on ourselves anymore, we learn to cling to God. Paul underscores this in a very powerful way in Second Corinthians one. This is his David statement of more than enough and waiting until the mercies of God. Paul writes and says in Second Corinthians one eight, we were so utterly burdened beyond strength that we despaired of life itself.

Indeed, we felt that we received the sentence of death. Now why had God allowed that in Paul's life? He tells us, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God. Who raises the dead?

It occurred to me that what God was doing in my life was teaching me how much I relied on myself. All the while telling myself, oh, I'm trusting God. I'm believing God. I'll walk with God. And there was this much that was true, and this much and more than I can reach. That was not. And God in His goodness allowed affliction.

To deliver me from the afflicted aspect of lives, of how much I was self-sufficient and how little that was true.

It was to make me not rely on myself, but on him. So when despair sets in and we feel burdened beyond ourselves. Reliance on God takes on a whole new meaning. Just like we read in Second Corinthians 12 nine, my grace is sufficient for you when you are in over your head, when you've had more than enough. When nothing's going away, your legs don't work.

The next morning. My grace is sufficient. So suffering delivers us from indifference and lukewarmness. It delivers us from the ensnare of sin. A third thing that it tends to do is it delivers us from loving the world.

Of affliction makes us long for heaven. Can I just tell you?

I'm tired physically of being tired. I'm tired of pain. I'm tired of not feeling like I once did. I'm ready for heaven. I'll be honest with you. I love my family. I love my friends. I love my church.

But I'm totally ready for heaven.

Totally.

This is not my home. I'm a sojourner just passing through. For a believer, living here is our hell. For a nonbeliever, living here is their heaven. That's a stinky heaven.

So, yes. So affliction and suffering and pain has made me long for heaven.

The fourth thing that I have learned in this journey. Is that suffering has taught me that mercy is greater than deliverance.

When David said, Until God has mercy on us, mercy. Is greater than deliverance. While God delivers the afflicted by their affliction, not everyone turns to God in pain. And both God and Satan have their purposes and suffering.

And when we are confronted with intense periods of disappointment and loss and suffering and despair, we are confronted with choices. Satan uses suffering to turn people from faith and to convince them that God is indifferent to their deepest struggles. Some people demand of God to remove their suffering, and when he doesn't. They become disillusioned and turned away. Others blame God for all the pain in the world that they see and that they personally experience.

And seeing all that suffering gives just a justification for their faithlessness. None of those kinds of responses have demanded money and entitlement to God in power, and enable us to see God's blessing and suffering. Psalm 3421 says, affliction will slay the wicked. Because without an understanding of God, affliction will have the perfect work of building up bitterness, resentment, rage in our souls, and so enslaves the person.

Because what Satan does is he uses that to create disillusionment and doubt and has people deconstruct their faith and ultimately destroy themselves. And there's so much going on today in our world of kids who've grown up in church, who are now doing, going to deconstruction of their faith because of their question about the character of God and the purpose of suffering and part.

One of the writers that has taught me a bit about the ways of God in the heart is a guy named Brennan Manning. I want to read you a quote that he says that I think really strikes at the point of this unwavering trust is a rare and precious thing that because it often demands a degree of courage.

It borders on the heroic. When the shadow of Jesus cross falls across our lives in the form of failure, rejection, abandonment, betrayal, unemployed, lament, loneliness, depression, physical searing pain, the loss of a loved one. When we are deaf to everything but the shriek of our own pain. When the world around us suddenly seems a hostile, menacing place. At those times we may cry out in anguish.

How could a loving God allow this to happen? At such moments? The seeds of distrust are sown. And it requires heroic courage to trust in the love of God. No matter what happens to us.

I remember that moment. Distinctly. I remember it. Thankfully, God has life giving purposes and affliction. When we turn to him. I remember that moment in ICU that come to Jesus moment.

In the hands of our loving God. Affliction rescues his people from evil. God uses affliction to deliver us. To deepen our faith. To drive us to him. To direct our paths. That's what he's using it for. While being delivered from affliction is a great mercy, it is a great mercy to have pain taken away, to have discomfort removed.

That's a great mercy of God. And he does that.

But being delivered by affliction is a greater one. Still.

It makes us more aware of God's voice. It increases our reliance upon him. It prepares us for heaven and the weight of glory like none other can.

So these four things that I've learned over the last few years, my suffering delivered me from the indifference and lukewarmness and continues to do so.

My suffering delivered me from the ensnare of sin, and continues to show me the depths of it in my heart, and drives me to the foot of the cross.

It delivers me from loving the world. I'm learning more and more how empty the world is in terms of options. It gives me for deep satisfaction and contentment.

And it shows me that mercy can be greater than deliverance.

But you know what ultimately got me through? And continues to get me through it is settling the fact that the Lord Jesus is good.

When God walked in front of Moses on Mount Sinai, it tells us that his goodness passed by him. Of all the words.

It's his goodness, the essence of all that he is is good. Even in searing pain. Even in isolation. God is good. I had to settle that.

And the second thing, more fundamental than anything, was that God loved me. God loved me.

The supreme need in most of our lives is often the most overlooked. The supreme need. The need for an uncompromising trust and the love of God. No matter my pain, no matter my lack of resources. An uncompromising trust that no matter what. I truly believe God loves me. To trust God is to trust his timing. To trust God is to trust his way.

God loves me too much to answer my prayers at any other time than the right time, and in any other way than the right way. And more often than not, I'm finding that my timing and my way are not right, because I want it now. Rarely is that God's wisdom.

In the quietness of all that doesn't feel right. This truth does feel right. God loves me in the right way and in the right time, in my suffering. He was and is indeed answering my prayer to form in me the image of Christ, and a big tool of that is the journey of affliction. In closing, I'd want to remind you of First Thessalonians 518.

Give thanks in all circumstances. For this is the will of God concerning you.

Or Ephesians 520. Always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I'm pretty sure that includes pain and suffering.

A verse that the Lord gave me that has carried me through to this very day. More than anything, in terms of dealing with pain and loss, is Psalm nine nine and ten. I share with people all the time the Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. And those who know your name, O Lord, put their trust in you.

For you, O Lord, have not forsake those who seek you. Amen.

Father, we are humbled at how you.

Allow into our lives just the formula that's needed to make us into the image of your son, to give us what our soul truly longs for. To smelt away the poison and the sin, the self-sufficiency. To clear the blindness of our eyes that we can see you and know you and worship you, and trust that you are loving.

You are the potter, and we are the clay, and you are molding us into a beautiful trophy of your grace. O God.

Until your mercy. We look to you in the midst of our suffering, whatever level you have chosen to bring our way. We praise you in Jesus name. Amen.