Trials and Tribulations

Suffering is universal

Suffering is universal, at some point in our lives we will all suffer

At some point in your life there will be a medical diagnosis. Your children may make some wrong choices. People you love will die. Unless Jesus comes back first, everyone in this room will die. Life is hard.

I told you all recently that I was diagnosed with Thyroid cancer

Now, the chances of this killing me or even having terrible lasting effects are quite low. I have surgery scheduled on Dec. 14 and if everything goes how it should, I will be fine and just have to take medicine for the rest of my life

That doesn’t mean getting told I had cancer was easy. I went through a range of emotions. Ultimately I was left with the question - why? You know, God, I do my best to follow you - I’m relatively young. I want to see my children grow up.

I told you guys the last time I was up here that I studied Religious Thought and Philosophy in college. I had the “right answers”. I could tell you the answer to pretty much any question about God from pretty much any perspective.

What I mean by that is that if you asked me a question I could tell you what the catholics, lutherans, presbyterians, methodists, baptists, mennonites, amish whoever would say to answer the question and then which one I thought was right and why.

However, when I was diagnosed with cancer, all the information I had wasn’t doing me much good. I still knew the right answer, but that didn’t fix the hurt and I was still left asking why. So what I want us to do today is look at what the right answer to that question is and then look at ways that can help us when it happens to us. So if you would turn to Romans 5:1-5 and stand with me

Romans 5:1–5 NASB95

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

What does the Bible Say?

Paul wrote this letter to the church in Rome, a church he hadn’t visited yet and he gives the most detailed explanation of the Christian faith in the New Testament.

Up to this point in the letter to the Romans Paul had explained the need for justification, and how we are justified with God. Justification is the biblical word for what we called getting saved, or conversion, or simply being made right with God.

And so, by the time we get to chapter 5, Paul makes a shift to talking about some of the fruits or benefits of those who have been justified or made right with God.

So in the passage we read, Paul gives four ways that Christians are blessed by God because we are justified through faith. That’s what that therefore is there for. Therefore in the Bible just means because and if you read any of Paul’s letters you better get used to the word, its how Paul builds any argument (Give an example).

Here Paul says BECAUSE you are justified and made right with God here are four benefits you get to enjoy

We have peace with God

We are standing in grace

We rejoice in our hope of the glory of God

We rejoice in our tribulations, which means a great trouble or suffering

Each one of those points could easily be a sermon on its own, so today we’re going to focus on the fourth one. The Bible says that we exult or rejoice in our tribulations and sufferings. How?

First

John 16:33 NASB95

“These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”

So here Jesus tells us, we’re going to have tribulation in this world - we’re going to suffer. Life is going to be hard. Paul tells us in Acts 14:22

Acts 14:22 NASB95

strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”

It is through our tribulations and sufferings that we must enter the kingdom of God. And then in the Romans passage, Paul tells us that not only is suffering and trouble necessary and how we enter God’s kingdom, but that we should rejoice in those sufferings

Please notice that, Paul didn’t say we should endure our sufferings. He didn’t say not to let suffering get you down. He said you should rejoice in the suffering.

Let’s be clear on what this does NOT mean. He does not mean that you take pleasure in the pain - that is absolutely not the point.

The point is that suffering is just part of the path to Jesus. Jesus suffered and we will share in his suffering. The rejoicing comes in knowing that God has a purpose for this suffering. We are not suffering for no reason, God is working something in our lives that will be to our good.

Look with me at Romans 8:28

Romans 8:28 NASB95

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.

This verse gets taken out of context quite a bit, but let’s be clear with what it does say. It does not say that everything that happens is good. It says that God will work everything that happens FOR good. So it isn’t that everything is good, but God will bring good out of it for those that love him and are called according to his purpose.

Paul also tells us in Romans 8:17

Romans 8:17 NASB95

and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

basically, if we are children of God, if we are Christians we are heirs of his kingdom. And if we’re his children we will definitely suffer with Christ so that we can be glorified with him. A Christian is going to suffer, a Christian has to suffer, but God will work that for our good and that is something that we can rejoice in.

Second

So the first thing we see is suffering leads to glory in eternity. The second thing Paul tells us in this passage is that suffering leads to maturity in this life.

Paul’s point is that suffering can be productive to us here and now, but it depends on how we respond to it.

If we respond in anger and bitterness we will not mature through it. Look through Christian history and see how the saints have responded, often in worse tribulations than us. Christians have been fed to lions, burned at the stake for translating the Bible and have maintained great faith - even praising and worshipping God as they die.

Suffering produces perseverance, or another word is endurance. You can’t learn endurance without suffering because without suffering there’s nothing to endure. I’m not an endurance runner because I don’t train for it. I don’t really have any plans to train for it. Put me in a marathon and I might die.

But our endurance of our sufferings will produce a godly character. The greek word used for character here means the quality of a person who has been tested and passes the test. It’s the difference between a combat veteran and a new recruit. You don’t get that kind of character without persevering, and you don’t learn to persevere without suffering.

The last piece of this sequence is that character produces hope. Hope is the last development. We all want hope, but hope comes from having a godly character, godly character comes from perseverance, and perseverance comes from suffering. That hope comes because the same God who is developing and growing this character in us has been faithful in the past, he’s being faithful now, and we know he will be faithful to us in the future as well.

Third

When we suffer is when we are most assured of God’s love

Naturally you want to argue that, because I want to argue with that. Suffering for many makes them doubt God’s love, but that isn’t what Paul is saying here.

Look again at the chain of events Paul gave us - suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance produces godly character. Godly character produces hope.

And hope does not disappoint us and it never will. Hope in God is not a fantasy. What does all of our hope rest on as Christians? The person and work of Jesus Christ and his love for us. The Bible tells us it is a steadfast love. The reason our hope will never let us down is because God will never let you down. His love will never give us up.

We can be sure of God’s love through our suffering. How do we know God loves us? First, as Paul tells us later in Romans Jesus died for us while we were still sinners.

Second is that God has poured his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was given to us once when we got saved. The pouring out of God’s love in our heart through the Holy Spirit is ongoing. The greek word for pouring is a perfect tense. What that means is that God didn’t just pour his love into us once and that’s it. What it means is that it is a continual outpouring, it’s a constant flood into us.

What Paul is saying is that when you suffer, the Holy Spirit will make it abundantly clear to you that God loves you.

Real Life

So this is what the Bible tells us is the right answer and it absolutely is the right answer.

That doesn’t mean that it’s an easy answer

In my own life, I have become convinced that how we deal with our suffering has to do with our perspective. In fact, without the right perspective nothing that Paul told us in Romans will make sense.

I want to talk briefly about what I mean about perspective and what I don’t mean

I absolutely don’t mean saying that it isn’t hard. Our sufferings are hard, to deny that is lying to yourself and to God.

God knows how we think, he knows what we’re feeling. It is perfectly ok when you or a loved one is walking a hard path to tell God that it’s hard. It’s ok to tell God that you’re hurting. It’s ok to tell God that you don’t know if you can keep going. It is ok to be honest with God.

This next point may help only me, but I used to be a history teacher so a historical viewpoint is useful to me. Now is the easiest time to be alive. At many points in history I would be considered a relatively old man. Life used to be much cheaper, especially in one of my favorite periods of history to study - the old west. It was called the wild west for a reason.

In some ways, things haven’t changed so much. We are protected from things that were tragic in the past, but we still are not promised tomorrow. I could walk out of this church and be hit by a car. Any of us could be in a wreck and our lives change forever, or end.

And this might seems tragic to us, and in a sense it is, but not if we have a heavenly perspective.

This world is temporary. God promises us a new heaven and a new earth in the age to come. Life on earth for us is temporary, and yet we often act like this life is all that matters. Our life on this planet is so short compared with eternity. That doesn’t mean your suffering is not important or that it doesn’t matter, but what it does mean is that when you get to the glory of life after this one your sufferings will seem light to you.

That’s why Paul’s answer is the right one. To be the person you are called to be there are sufferings you have to go through. For me to be who God wants me to be there are sufferings I have to go through. They aren’t fun, it doesn’t feel good, it isn’t pleasant. But God is at work in my life and in your life.

You can rest in the fact that God loves you. You can rest that good will come out of the suffering. Not that the suffering is good, but the God of the universe will work it for your good. You can rest in knowing that eternity is waiting and suffering will be over. Don’t lose hope, God has not abandoned you, God will never abandon you.