Sunday, August 11th, 2024 - 11am Traditional Service - Guest Speaker Brad Yates - "Suffering Part 2"
First B Jackson
2024-08-11

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

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The first announcement is that there's two songs before announcements because I was in the back on the other side of the church, heard the music stop after the first song, and ran over here to find it wasn't time for announcements. So let everybody know. There's two songs before announcements in the second service. The first BBQ is coming back around August 18 between services. Feel free to come early.

The food is provided and it's a great chance for the second service to mix with the first. The first service was completely packed full of people today. What a blessing. So so many cool people to come and meet on the eighteenth to to know about the people from the first service. The first b church camp out is August twenty third through twenty fifth at Palisades Lakes.

Everybody is invited. If you're new, if you've been here a long time, doesn't matter, come hang out. And if you don't wanna stay the night, you can just come for the day and and participate that way. But bring your own camping gear, bring your own food, something to share, and make a friend. Why not?

Sunday school will not be for the third through fifth graders during the summer, but we'll have it for the other ages including middle school and high school. They had theirs today and that went off smashingly. And Old Bills Fund Run is coming up for those of you who don't know on what is it? September, I think it's like twelve, thirteenth. It's the ninth this year.

They have a whole bunch of people that'll be running on Town square, raising money for all the nonprofits in town. And First Be has a benevolence fund that we use to help people out. Almost every day here, we have people coming in seeking medical needs, money to get someplace, food. And it's a big open door for us to share the gospel and to be able to really help people and say yes. So you can make contributions to that through the link on our website if you want to or if you wanna do like cash or something like that, you can do that over at the community foundation.

If you ever have any questions about how we use it, feel free to talk to any of the staff members. There's lots of stories that we can share with people because it really is a big open door. Thank you for giving to them.

And I am, Joe, just

for Please. I wanna take just

a moment to recognize Nick and Diane. They're our frontline people as people Yeah.

And and thank you for making that possible. And the Community Foundation of Jackson Hall also did give us a grant of $5,000 this year too, which helps out. It's a that's a small portion of what we give away each year, but every little bit counts. So thank you very much for helping us out. But and Scott Schneider, who's not here in this service, but if you see him, tell me you love him.

He's such a great volunteer. He was recognized by the Wyoming Community Heroes Organization, and he's their volunteer of the month. He actually helped us out two weeks ago or something like that. He drove over to River Riverton, just dropped everything, drove over to River Riverton to pick up a lady who needed to catch a bus here in Jackson. And he just, without question, just went.

And through the benevolence fund, Diane was able to give him gas and and money money to get there, and he just went. So tell him you love him and and thank him. Yeah. Give him give him a round of applause even though he's not here. Scott, we love you, buddy.

And there is the Women of Legacy luncheon over at the Presbyterian Church of Jackson Hole. There's information on the flyer in the back if you wanna be a part of that. The Turpin family is helping to put that together. And then the church wide emails. If you are new here, you may not know, but we put out our weekly bulletin electronically now.

So if you wanna sign up for that, you can go on the website. I can help you get that too. Or if you wanna study do the the daily Bible studies that are Monday through Friday that are written by people from the congregation, you can go on the website and sign up for that too. Oh, and they're also looking for more people to write too. You can talk to to Brad Yates who's speaking today, and he can help you with that.

And that's it for us. Have we missed anything? It was kind of a lot today. No? Alright.

Well, why don't you stand up and let's continue worshiping together. What's that? Bonderay. Oh, yes. There is.

Thank you, Blake. There is a big worship gathering down in Bondurant, August 31 through September 1. It's a hootenanny. The Tolsons are putting that on, and it's it's supposed to be a whole bunch of fun. There's a bunch of information on our website about that.

But if you play music or just enjoy music and want to take part in that celebration, there's some camping down there and food and the whole whole thing. So let's go ahead and start back with some music.

Let's sing that through one more time together. Sweet power of prayer. You can be seated here, and I'll invite the ushers to come forward. And this is the worship through giving part of the service, and I would love to pray together. I had a verse that I wanna share.

But can I repeat just what we've sang here first? In seasons of distress and grief, my soul has often found relief in prayer. And since he be bids me seek seek his face, believe his word, and trust his grace. Boy, that's rich. And, Lord, we thank you.

And would you help us, Lord, in seasons of grief and despair at every time and every season, whether in joy or pain, Lord, that we would come to you trusting trusting in your goodness, trusting in your provision, trusting in your grace. And I think of the verse, and do not forget to thank you. Lord, we are grateful. And may gratitude be something that's welling up, Lord, and and spilling out because we are. Lord, I'm overwhelmed by the the the generosity of of this church body here, Each individual using the gifts that have been given to love you and to love others.

This the the this great command that you've given us to truly to love you with our heart, soul, mind, strength, to love our neighbor as we love ourself. Lord, would the work continue? Would you use us, your willing and obedient servants, to advance your kingdom? And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

I wanted to quickly introduce one of our elders. This is Brad Yates, and he gave a sermon last week. It was part one on a series on suffering, and today is part two. But I would love to just pray for him first. It's not an easy task to stand up here in front of people and and preach.

And and and so I'm grateful for you, Brad. And let me just pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for this morning and the opportunity to gather here as the family of God around your word. Thank you. And thank you, God, for a message that is deeply personal and practical.

And, Lord, may the the truths in scripture land land on a soft and malleable heart this morning in all of us. And thank you, God, for your encouragement, for your love, for your care, and your comfort, for your people. And I pray, Lord, that we would walk away feeling exactly that. In Jesus' name, amen. Good

morning. Good morning. A little cooler in here, thankfully, this week. Last week, we looked at the global problem of suffering and the Christian response to it. If you missed it, it's the idea that suffering and evil do exist.

So how do we reconcile the existence of a personal, all powerful, and all good God with the fact that evil does exist? And the answer is love. God loves us and is patient with us. Because of sin, evil is so intrinsically intertwined with our very being. It's so deeply rooted in our hearts that if God were to eliminate all evil from the world today, he would have to kill those that he loves.

But God is patient, and he's made a provision for evil. And he uses the suffering in the world for our good and ultimately for his glory. In summary, suffering is real, but it is not meaningless. God will not waste your suffering. And when people say that they can't believe in a God that would allow x to happen, what they're really saying is they can't believe in a God that is beyond their own comprehension.

And when I reframe it that way, it's obviously illogical. How could we as finite creatures ever begin to understand an infinite God? But it's okay to admit that you can't imagine what God is doing in the midst of something. It's okay even to be angry at God. The good news is it's hard to be angry at somebody that you either don't think exists or isn't in control.

So you can actually have good theology, good doctrine in the midst of your anger at God. And I wanna circle back at an incredibly important point from last week, is that there is a huge difference between the penalty for our sin and God's discipline. If you are in Christ, if you have a saving faith, God does not penalize you for your sin. If you learn nothing else from this week, I want you to hear me on that. If you have a saving faith in Jesus Christ, he is not penalizing you for your sin.

He does, however, discipline us and allow bad things to happen to us, but they will be redeemed. Because Jesus paid the price in full at the cross for our sin. God cannot accept double payment for it. That would be unjust, and God is just. That said, there are consequences for sin in the world.

If you consistently make bad and destructive choices, it will not go well for you. But that is very different from saying that God is punishing you. Because if you're in Christ, God does not punish you for your sin. You may, in wisdom and love, be subject to God's discipline. He may be choosing to shape you like a potter molds clay to prepare you for something that if he were to tell you, you still wouldn't be able to believe it.

And there were two quotes on this last week that I really liked, one from Tim Keller and one from John Piper. And we'll look at them again this week because they were so good. And I had several people tell me they wanted me to hear it again. It's the high is it the highest good that we be comfortable and without trouble or that we become spiritually and morally great? Is the highest good that we become come or that we be comfortable and without trouble or that we become spiritually and morally great?

And from John Piper, God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and if you're lucky, you may notice three of them. In contrast, think about the people that you know that have had nothing but ease and comfort in their life. Are those the people that you need on your side when life is about to get hard? No. People that have only had ease in their life are more self absorbed, they're more thin skinned, and they're more easily disrupted.

If I'm going into a fight, a physical fight, and I get to pick somebody on my team, I'm not picking the guy that's done nothing but yoga and get massages. I'm picking the guy that's had his nose broken a few times and his ears don't lay flat anymore. And the same thing is true spiritually. We want the Christians with scars to be on our side. The irony, of course, is that none of us want to go through what needs to happen in order to become that person.

I don't even want it for my kids. I try so hard to protect them from suffering. But if I'm clear eyed about it, I'll admit that more often than not, the way God shapes his saints throughout the course of scripture is through deep suffering. That's how we actually become functional and useful for the kingdom of God. So how can evil and suffering work for our good?

We don't always know. And yet, God does tell us that it works for our good. And he, not us, is the one with the eternal perspective, with perfect knowledge. And why can we trust this? Why can we trust the Bible on this?

It's because ultimately of Jesus. Because God loved us so much that he sent his only an eternal son to die on the cross for us. And since he's done that, we have no other logical choice but to trust him. As as it says in Philippians two, he set aside a quality with God to take on flesh and to die for our sins. So why do we believe in God?

Or why do we believe God in these things? It's because of the cross and the empty tomb and the apostles and the promises and the prophecies and the entire biblical record of God being faithful to us. So that's our review of last week. If you didn't catch it, it's on the First Bee YouTube page under the live tab or email me and I can get it to you. But this week, what are you supposed to do when you or someone close to you is suffering?

Now we're going to look at this in three different ways. We're going to look at it in three different scenarios, I should say. One is collective suffering, the second is when others are suffering, and the third is for yourself. Now collective is gonna be quick because it's really a pretty straightforward application. But we need to talk about what happens when regional or national tragedies strike.

If it affects you or someone directly close to you, then that's what we'll cover later in the conversation. But in terms of, like, broad tragedies, the biblical solution to broad tragedies is always repentance. We can't be in charge of how our nation responds, but we can be in charge of how we respond. And we saw this last week in Luke 13 that we don't actually like this idea very much because it runs afoul of our Western sensibilities. It seems unfair, as it were, for God to judge an entire nation.

And yet, there's more than just a hint of self justification in that. Instead, we can remind ourselves that we should be glad that God doesn't give us what we deserve Because what we're all deserving of is death. We can instead remind ourselves that Christ died for your sins too. Or I can be telling myself that Christ died for mine. And it's not just for my favorite pet sin that I think is is the epitome of evil and things like that.

It's also for the thoughts that I've had just on my way to worship this morning. Christ died for those too. So we can all repent and we can all pray. But we can use those moments of collective suffering with renewed vigor to bring ourselves to God. And to be clear, this is true in the Bible for both Israel and of enemy pagan nations.

God brought calamity upon them both. So just because a tragedy happens in large scale, it doesn't mean God is done using that nation. God chastened Israel time and time again. God sent Jonah with a message of repentance to Nineveh, and Nineveh famously repented that time. But Sodom and Gomorrah did not.

Nineveh was spared. Sodom and Gomorrah was judged, and God is sovereign over both of them. So that's the biblical view on collective suffering and tragedies. Now we'll look to the more personal side. Let's look now at individuals.

What do we do when others are suffering? And for that, we're gonna look first in Job two eleven through 13. You're welcome to turn to it or you can see it up here on the screen. I'll read to you. Now when Job's three friends heard about all this adversity that had come upon him, they came each from his own place and they made an appointment together to come and sympathize and comfort with him.

When they looked from a distance and did not recognize him, they raised their voices and wept. And each of them tore his robe, and they threw dust over their heads towards the sky. Then they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights, with no one so much as speaking a word to them, for they saw that his pain was very great. Our first point here is that this is not a job for somebody else. This is your job.

Not just me, not just Ray or any of the other elders, not even for anybody just on staff. This is for you, for each of us. And I get that from Ephesians four. So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, the teachers. Why?

To equip his people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the son of God and become mature. We in church leadership, we actually exist here to coach you up, to train you up for the works of ministry. And that's part of what we're doing here today. We're gathered here to worship God together collectively. That's why we call it corporate worship.

But we're also training one another up in how to live this out. And since we're talking about the one another's, I think that's the great model for us to look at. If you're not familiar with the concept, there's 59 or so. I have them here. One another's of scripture.

This is the way that the Bible sums up our call as Christians for how to relate to one another. Things like love one another, wash one another's feet, be devoted to one another in brotherly love, love one another, live in harmony with one another. One another, one another, one another. Call them the one another's of scripture. If you want, send me an email.

I'll shoot you a copy of this. It's a great study for how we as Christians are supposed to live it out. But my main point for today is that it's not just for people on the payroll. It's for each and every one of us as Christians. And I think you guys know this, and our church generally does a pretty good job with this.

But what I'm calling you to is to excel still more. Go deeper into it. Take responsibility for the ministries of your church. Now as we apply it today, the simplest and most effective thing to do in terms of one another is when someone else is mourning, it's the ministry of presence. This is show up and listen, or if it helps you remember it, show up and shut up.

If you get no other practical advice from me today, it's that. When someone is suffering, show up and listen. Next, once you've done that, then you can be useful. Do whatever is in your gifting. Cook, clean, mow, repair, organize, pray, whatever it is.

But don't do the generic ask. Don't send them the text message, I'm sorry, I heard this. How can I help? You need to know that when someone is in suffering, their brain does not function the same way as ours, and I don't mean in a good way. They are basically incapable of creative thinking, and that's effectively what you're asking them to do when you say, How can I help?

Instead, the more effective way to go is, Hey, I'm going to cook you a meal. Would you like it tomorrow or the next day? That is incredibly helpful for someone that's going through it. Be just a little bit pushy in the way that you do it. If you tell them that you're praying for them, pray for them right then.

Don't just say, and this is true in general, church, if I could change one thing. Don't just say I'll be praying for you. Stop what you're doing right there. Pray for them. And then tell them how you prayed for them if you're not praying with them.

Like, if you're if you're in separate parts of the country or something, different houses. And then try and be discerning and wise and listen to the Holy Spirit for specific guidance on how to be best of service. You have the Holy Spirit in you. Listen to him. If you're in somebody's house and you notice something that is broken, that might be the Holy Spirit or it might just be the fact that you know how to fix something.

Either way, you can do that work. And then here's one where I'm preaching mostly to myself. Please don't feel the need to be profound. We need to know, all of us, that your brilliant insight or mind is not what's going to get somebody through suffering. You are not the solution to somebody suffering, God is.

But you can be a tremendous help. Do you understand the difference there? A word for me is not gonna be what gets somebody through suffering. But through love and presence and patience and prayer, I can help bring them closer to God, and God is their help. So just know that we're all gonna respond differently.

Because for true tragedies, like what was described in Job, things that seemingly don't have a real obvious meaning, You can end up in some combination of isolation, despair, anger, or just overwhelming loneliness. And each of those will need to be met and dealt with in their own stage. But if you're the helper, if you're if you're somebody that's coming alongside them, you probably don't need to be the one diagnosing and telling them about it. Just be aware of it. Help them move through it in time.

And you also don't need to correct every theological error that they say in their anger. That's not on you. Because some people, when they suffer, they do become incredibly selfish. They may try to hold on to pain as a way of protecting themselves from the outside world or from any more perceived pain. And some people never get over that feeling.

It drives them to become incredibly self absorbed. And others will become less self interested than they've ever been in their entire lives. And we've got to help them help both of them in that suffering. So maybe going on a walk with someone is helpful. Maybe bringing them a meal.

Maybe it's the feeling of just being loved and served and wanted. Or some people want to feel useful, and we can allow for that too. Maybe they wanna do a deep dive on Christian philosophy of suffering. Or maybe they just need a hug from a friend at church that lasts a lot longer than they expected to. But by the end of it, they feel like they can finally breathe even if just for a moment.

So what are some other common things not to do? First, and this is mine, don't throw the ninja star versus. These are the things that we all carry around like Romans eight twenty eight, like pull out the ninja star and we like whip it at somebody that's in suffering. We know that in old things, God works for the good of those who love movement called according to His purpose. It's not helpful, and it's my tendency.

Because all of these verses are filled with truth and are super helpful, and we should all memorize them. They should be life verses. But truth applied to an open wound can be incredibly painful. And so we have to be wise and discerning in it. Said another way, a helpful medicine given at the wrong time or in the wrong dose is no longer medicine, it's actually poison.

And we have to be wise in the way that we apply truth to suffering. And this is what Job's friends did wrong after they had previously sat around for seven days. Seven days. Any of you guys ever sat around with somebody without saying a word for seven days? You guys have seen me talk.

I get seven minutes. This is why Job called them miserable comforters. They were off to such a great start with just the showing up and the listening, but they had a tendency to rush to conclusions because they thought they knew what God was doing in that suffering, and they were wrong. But many of the things that they said can actually be true in certain circumstances. Man does reap what he sows.

God does bless the righteous sometimes. But to apply that carte blanche to somebody that's in suffering is a thin and shallow understanding of scripture. It's similar to the prosperity movement or the word of faith ridiculousness. And speaking of which, we need to do a small diatribe here because we all need to hear this, which is that similar to taking how how taking verses out of context can make you think wrongly that you can get a Gulfstream jet out of God, you or your friend's lack of healing is not a sign of doubt of faith. Just because you are not being delivered on the timeline that you think you should be, that is not a sign of your unfaithfulness.

Does that make sense? Hear me on that church. Because that's in our that's in our church culture. Is that if we would just believe enough, if we would just pray according to a formula, or if we would just pray with enough intensity or gnashing of teeth or rending of cloth or whatever it is, that God will then have to do what we want him to do. And that's not God.

That's a genie in a lamp. This is the creator and sustainer God of the universe. He is sovereign. He's not Aladdin. That's all I'll do on that for now, but it gets me fired up.

But to summarize, much of the modern approach of suffering is way too solution oriented. We want to, like, pull out the the the suffering checklist and go through all the steps and then rush ourselves or our friend out of suffering and back to normal life or real life. But the biblical view of suffering is that normal life or real life very much includes suffering. And so we don't need to rush through that. Instead, we we need to realize that real life is made deeper and more colorful by suffering as much as we hate it when we're in it.

Suffering is real. It is not a part of God's original design, but he uses it. He does not waste your suffering. So we can strive against that current and not rush through it. As review, when someone else is suffering, show up, listen, weep with those who weep, mourn with those who mourn, be a help, recognize that everyone will go through this differently.

Don't feel the need to be profound, and don't throw my ninja star verses. Give them time. In summary, love them as you would wanna be loved. The golden rule, after all, is an invention by Jesus Christ himself in teaching to his disciples. Now one more thing I'd be remiss not to mention before we move on is prayer.

And we could do a whole sermon series on prayer, especially for people that are suffering, and I hope we will one day. But a phrase that's been really helpful for me of late that I wanna share with you guys, and this is general, but it's also true for suffering, is that prayer does does not just aid the mission. In view of God's sovereignty, prayer is the mission. Prayer is not some last ditch effort. Oh, I guess all that's left is to pray about it.

It's like, oh, is it really that bad? You know, it's like, no, we go to prayer first because we trust in the sovereignty of God and the strength of God. It's not a Hail Mary. It's the it's the mission. So pray and tell them you're praying.

One one helpful thing that friends of mine have done for years that that I've I've adopted is I'll set a daily phone alarm for a specific time where the number correlates to a Bible verse that that might be helpful or applicable to the situation. I have some friends that are not reconciled with a child of theirs. It's a really hard situation. And every day, if you guys have been around me at 12:20 every day, my alarm goes off. If we're doing men's Bible study on Thursday, I tend not to interrupt.

But at any other day, like if I'm at lunch with somebody, believer or not, it's an opportunity for me to go, hey, that's my reminder alarm to pray for my friend. Can we just stop and pray for a minute? And if I'm with an unbeliever, don't expect them to pray. Who are they praying to? But I'm going to pray, and I'm going to tell you that I'm praying, and I'm going to touch base with you every once in a while and say, hey, I'm still praying for you at 12:20 every day.

Short. It's not in the King James, but God hears it. So that's it for taking care of somebody else. So moving on to our third scenario yourself. And this is the hardest one because this is the one that is basically prep work.

How do we prepare to be the ones that suffer? And for this, we're gonna look at Luke 21 where Jesus makes a promise to his disciples. He says, and this is not a fun promise, but you will be betrayed even by parents, brothers, and sisters, other relatives, and friends, and they will put some of you to death. And you will be hated by all people because of my name. And yet, not a hair of your head will perish.

By your endurance, you will gain your lives. Now I want to point out something. It's the two bits that are in yellow text there because I'd never caught this before. They will put some of you to death and yet not a hair of your head will perish. Did Jesus get lost in the middle of that?

Is he promising you a great head of hair in your casket? Or maybe 11AM, is he saying blessed are the bald in spirit? No. This is Jesus calling back to something that he talked about with with his disciples in Luke 12, where he said, our five sparrows not sold for 2 pennies and yet not one of them has gone unnoticed in the sight of God. But even the hairs of your head are all counted.

Do not fear. You are more valuable than a great number of sparrows. Jesus is saying here that you may very well die for your testimony. But we can trust in the fact that it has been ordained by God and that you will not experience the eternal perishing like we looked at last week in Luke 13 around the Tower Of Siloam. But to repeat, nothing, not even your martyrdom is apart from the sovereignty of God.

Now the flip side of this is actually a little bit more fun. And this is not related to suffering, but we need a little little bit of levity. You are immortal up until the very fat time that God has done with you. That's kind of cool. So you don't have to be afraid when you're flying on a plane that has turbulence.

You don't have to be afraid when you're exposed to heights or when you're persecuted or if I'm talking to me when I'm in incredibly tight spaces and can't move my elbows. It's a thing. You don't have to be afraid. This is the life hack, to use the modern vernacular, to anxiety. You are immortal up until the moment God calls you home.

That's freeing. Back to suffering. The big point here is to give yourself some grace on how to respond. You don't need to cast judgment on yourself in addition to everything else that is going on. Now, for example, for better or worse, I'm a natural fixer.

If you come to me with a problem, I'm going to give you three things to do, two books to read, and one change to your daily discipline. And then we can go ahead and set a calendar item on our phone for five days from now so that you can call me and thank me for how I've changed your life. It's just how I tend to be wired. But Christian maturity is recognizing that, recognizing that it's not helpful and actually that it's sin. So it's something I'm working on.

Ask Natalie how I'm doing. Because why it's not helpful is there's no one type of problem or suffering to be solved. You can look at the heroes of the Bible, for example, on this. Thinking about David, looking at just four examples from David's suffering and thinking about how different these were. One, his hard upbringing.

He fought lions in order to protect his sheep, and he was by himself in the midst of it. Fighting fighting lions by yourself, I think we can call some form of suffering. That's scared. His up his experience of being physically attacked and persecuted by Saul. His king wanted to kill him.

His discipline in being chastened by Nathan and by God after his adultery with Bathsheba, Or the uprising against his kingdom led by his very own son Absalom. Each of these was different, and yet the thing that made David a man after God's own heart was not that David continually sought the healing, but that David continually sought God. He recognized that God was sovereign. And so you see what God what David knew was most important was to lean into God, to be honest, to question him, to even let himself be angry at him, to not be ashamed to pray. We have this tendency in Christian circles to think that there are things that are not okay to say to God.

And for the counterpoint to that, I wanna point you to Psalm 22. Imagine you're sitting with somebody that's suffering, and they say what's written here in yellow. This is Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning?

If somebody says that at men's Bible study, I'm gonna scoot my chair away from them just a little bit in case lightning comes down. But what you also need to know about Psalm 22 verse one right there is that's what Jesus cried out on the cross. We can say these things to God in humility, but you bring them to God. Or Psalm 13 is similar. How long, oh Lord, will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me? There's a bunch of other Psalms that are similarly helpful in times of sorrow. What I'm saying is, it's okay to be honest with God. The key part is to keep going back to him. And if you feel like you can't pray, then pray that prayer.

God, I don't know what to pray right now. Will you help me pray? I'm telling you church, God will answer that prayer. The Holy Spirit groans in us and gives us what to pray even when we can't form words. Or here it is in Psalm 34, where God promises to be especially near to those that are in suffering.

The Lord is near the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. If you've ever been crushed in spirit, turn to God. Guys, you are so loved by God that he sent his eternal and perfect son to die on the cross for you. That changes everything, even how we are in the midst of suffering. But as we saw, it's okay to doubt in those moments of trials.

You just bring your doubts to him. My favorite prayer in all of scripture is in Mark nine when the father of the dying child proclaims to Jesus, I believe, but help my unbelief. Pray that prayer, guys. He answers it. I believe, help my unbelief.

Because bitterness or greatness are basically your only options over time through suffering. It's not the storm that makes you stronger. It's your response to it. And that's not me quoting like a gym T shirt or something. Like, that that is that is biblically learned that bitterness or greatness are basically your only options as you come through suffering.

That's from Jonah. That's from David. It's from all the other examples of suffering that we use in the Bible. And it's okay to mourn, and our culture does a terrible job of this. We think it's okay to mourn for a week or so, and then it's right back to hedonism or ramp up productivity.

There is no biblical timeline for mourning. Some sweet believers that I knew back in Dallas, they lost a child. And they said it took them six months to laugh, and it took them two years to not feel guilty for laughing. That's a more biblical view of mourning and giving yourself the grace in it. That's why we call them emotional scars.

They're gonna be there forever. And even while they're healing, random things, and this is Hans told me this last week. He said he feels like he has scabs, and every once in a while, something just pulls up the scab. But it does get easier with time. Okay.

We now need to talk about one of the hardest commands in scripture, and it's related to suffering. But it's all over the place, so we can't ignore it. And it's how do we have joy in the trials? This is a common theme from Jesus, from all the writers in the New Testament. They all talk about it.

But what is it? What is joy in the trials? Because first, we need a definition of joy. Because worldly joy and joy given by the Holy Spirit are two very different things. To no one's surprise, I turned to John Piper on this.

Because here's his definition of Christian joy, and I can't do better. Christian joy is a good feeling in the soul produced by the Holy Spirit as he causes us to see the beauty of Christ in the word and in the world. So Christian joy supplied by the spirit looking upon Christ. And this is not something that we can white knuckle our way towards or that we can produce in a moment when we need it. This is something that is nurtured and cultivated over a lifetime of faithfulness, but we do so by looking at Christ.

So that when we are in the crucible of suffering, we can strive to just keep hold of that joy. Here's the best I can do at illustrating it. If I have the terrible misfortune of peak summer having to run an errand that brings me to Town Square. I'm walking across Town Square after having tried not to fight somebody for a parking spot. And I'm walking across Town Square and somebody sees me and goes, Hey, Brad.

And let's say, I don't know them. Hey, Brad, I heard you preach. You stink. It's going to bother me for a little bit. But I don't know them.

I don't know what axe they have to grind, what it is that made them mad, whatever. But let's say it's one of you guys. Let's say right after we adjourn today, and everybody did this after the nine. Walk up to me and go, You stink. It's going to bother me a little bit more if I think you mean it.

But how much more if it's somebody that I've been working with that I just know that I have in high respect, that's close to me, that knows me intimately? What if it's Ray or Carl or one of the other elders or my community group or my mentors? Or worst yet, what if it's Natalie? What if she says, hey, you suck. That's going to hurt me, and that's going to hurt me deeply.

Because the point is, closer I am to somebody, the more that I respect them and I'm confident in that respect, the more I'm giving them license to to wound me, to correct me, or to encourage me. Now, what if the creator God of the universe, what if the one who knew you before you were born in your entirety? What if the one who knits you together in your mother's womb? What if he, knowing all of your sins and failures, what if he still loved you? What if he told you that?

Wouldn't that change things? Or what if he showed you that he was so committed to loving you that he sent his eternal son? My point is that because of the gospel, because of the most powerful thing in the universe, it changes how we suffer. It changes and allows us to have joy in the trials if we would but train ourselves to look to it. Because every day, we draw nearer to unending joy, to an eternity with Christ.

But in the meantime, we're left here to do the work that God would have us do. So we work, we play, we laugh, we suffer. But we do also all of that with a deep rooted joy in Christ. So we don't have to pretend to be excited for the trial. We don't have to put on a happy face or pretend to smile our way through it.

We can let everyone know that we're grieving, but we don't grieve as those without hope. I talked last week about the shortest verse in the Bible, John 11. Who remembers it? See? Bible memorization.

But the point is Jesus wept. When he was on the cross, he wasn't smiling. He wasn't rejoicing, but he had a deep rooted joy in his heart because of his relationship with the father, and he brought that to the cross. We see this in Hebrews 12. Look only to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame.

Guys, he didn't sing happy songs of praise while he was on the cross. He said that verse one from Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? But he was deeply rooted in the joy, and he went to that cross because of you and because of me. Now if I tell you today that I'm let's say I have a billion dollars, and I tell you that I'm going to give it to you in a week's time. And you leave here and you're driving home and you have car trouble, car breaks down on side of the highway.

Are you going to lose your cool on the side of the highway? Or are you going to be pretty pretty neat about it? Or let's say tomorrow morning at work, you get called in, you chat with your boss, and you have the worst work review you've ever had. But you've got $1,000,000,000 coming in a week. You're sitting there going, I got like 4 days left of this job.

It's just not going to bother you. But if a loved one gets really sick or really hurt, if there's real suffering and grievance, you're still going to mourn with them. And that's with a billion dollars. That's a cheap example compared to Christ's love, but it's an easier illustration for us because it's what we know day to day. Or who can remember that first taste of romance?

Right? First time holding hands, first kiss, the first phone call, or the day that you exchanged your vows? Nothing could touch you except for real tragedy. And it helps us delineate how we suffer, what actually matters. What I'm saying is that the promise of what is to come and the reality of love experienced, it has huge implications on how we live day to day, including in our suffering.

What bothers us will change. We will have joy in the trials. But the promise that we've received is an eternity of joy and purpose and love in Jesus Christ. So we don't rejoice for the trials. We don't rejoice because of the trials.

But because of Christ, we can rejoice in them. So that's the prep and the application for how to deal with suffering. Everyone's gonna be a little bit different. Our recap, it's okay to feel distant or angry with God. Be honest with him.

He can take it. He's God. Don't isolate. Force feed yourself scripture to remind yourself of the truth. The Psalms are a great place to start.

Allow yourself to be helped. And remember above all that you are never alone. Jesus is with you, and God is doing something with you even if we have no idea what it is. Like I said at the start, to borrow from my friend Sam, how you experience and relate to suffering is entirely dependent on how you experience and relate to the cross. Said another way, and we'll close with this, is that we need to never forget there is another in the fire.

This is Daniel three. Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego replied to the king, Nebuchadnezzar, we are not in need of an answer to give you concerning this matter. If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to rescue us from the fire of blazing from the furnace of blazing fire. And he will rescue us from your hand, o king. But even if he doesn't, let it be known to you, o king, that we are not gonna serve your gods nor worship the golden statue you've set up.

When Nebuchadnezzar heard this, he was enraged at the furnace, cooked four times the normal temperature, had Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego thrown in. And then he sees them, and he goes, look, I see four men untied and walking about in the middle of the fire unharmed, and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods. He threw three men in, and there were four men in the fire. Church, you are not alone in the fire. Because you're suffering, and I'll invite the band back up.

But your suffering will probably not be as spectacular as being thrown into the fire. But there will be suffering in your life. Jesus has promised it for you, but he's also promised that no matter what, he will be with you always even to the end of the age. The confidence of the three in this story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego was not in the healing that God would provide, but in the fact that God was who he is. Said another way, it wasn't in the gift that would be provided, it was in the giver.

But also Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, they had each other. And first B, that's what we have. We also have each other. So we can be a help to those that are hurting. And we can draw strength from each other in the midst of a fiery trial.

Because, guys, the mortality rate of the diagnosis of being human is still a hundred percent. Suffering's coming. Jesus promised it. But there is hope, and it is worth so much more than a billion dollars. It is so much longer lasting than the fleeting moment of a first kiss.

It's an eternity with Christ. So we suffer, we grieve, we experience pain and loss, but we do not do so as those without hope. We live in light of the eternal life that is to come in Jesus. So when we go out these doors, when we go to live out our week of worship, we can be a light in such a dark place. And we can tell the entire world of the hope we have, and we can have a great week of worship.

Thank you so much for your time.

And would you stand with us? I think we're going to just end with the doxology today and then a closing verse. And I wanna end here with, second Corinthians one three to five. It's all praise to God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God, our merciful father and source of all comfort.

I want you to catch this. He comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others with the same comfort that he has comforted us with. The more we suffer for Christ, the more God will shower us with a comfort through Christ. Lord, as we go from here, Lord, would these these truths of scripture, Lord, would your Holy Spirit comfort each of us? And we know that the comfort that we have been given from you, that we would comfort one another with that, Lord.

And to know that truly there is another in the fire, that we are not alone, that you are with us. Lord, would you help us to be a helping, healing church. In Jesus' name. Amen.