This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Avalon Park, Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar driving directions and more audio recordings. Well we covered the marriage, we covered parenting. The last couple months we've talked about health, we've talked about finances, we've talked about work, we've talked about rest, we've talked about singleness, we've talked about joy last week. But this morning we were going to talk about suffering as we wrap up this series since Easter on the resurrected life and how God wants to resurrect things. I bet all those topics I've looked at referred to a red just now, I bet there's none that plague you more ultimately than the topic of suffering. And wondering, could there be really truth to that? Is there something that can be resurrected from the suffering that we experience in life that truly we could be happy for? That can truly give us ultimately joy, that can give us ultimately peace, that can give us ultimately comfort in that. I love the, Joe the last little stands there of a song, turn your eyes upon Jesus. The things of this earth will grow strangely dim and the light of his glory and grace says a lot in just a couple phrases there. But one of the things I want to say, Ralph the Bat here, that should give you hope is that there is only one resurrected body in heaven that bears scars. And if you're in Christ, it won't be yours. In fact, Jesus revealed it, right? The Thomas who wasn't there when Jesus first appeared to his apostles and he said, hey, look, I'm not going to believe that Jesus really rose from the dead until I can put my finger in his nail scarred hand inside. And what a week later, Jesus appears back to him and Thomas is there and Jesus says, Thomas, come here. I want to show you something. Jesus still bears the scars of his suffering. And as far as we know, there's nothing in scripture that says with our new bodies that will have any bearing of past scars, which if you're like me, you're very thankful for. But Jesus keeps his because suffering and scars are redeeming. Suffering and scars can be a glory. They are to Jesus. That's why he keeps them. And there will be what an eternal sign apparently, an eternal reminder of what he has done for us. So in the midst of that, this morning before we start off off the bat, I want to say right away that Jesus is acquainted with suffering in ways that we won't even understand because he was sinless. Because he was never deserving of any of his suffering because he's the creator of the universe. Because he's the king of kings and Lord of lords. And yet he still suffered to the point of death on the cross for people that he wanted to redeem and save for himself. So there's no person better that we can go and look at and talk to than Christ on the topic of suffering. But suffering is not a new topic for any of you, either I know. And I wanted this to take a chance here. I just spent a little bit of time thinking through just the last three years, the short three years that our church has been in existence of real circumstances of suffering that's happened, either it would directly in our congregation or people connected to our congregation. And here's just a sampling of things, serious illness, dealing with aging parents, divorce, unable to afford medical procedures, marriage struggles due to workaholic spouse, homelessness, death of a spouse, difficult parents, chronic pain, unable to pay mortgage or facing eviction. Marriage struggles due to pornography, loss of health care or inadequate health care, under employed, difficult teacher at school, death of a parent, chronic health issues, marriage struggles due to gambling, broken parent-child relationships, substance abuse, salary decreases, runaway teenager, unable to pay utilities, physical abuse, loss of job, mental illness, stained or broken relationships with friends, hurricane or suicide. Parents, hurricane or storm damage, death of a friend, difficult employer, rebellious children, sexual abuse, close friend moving away, a miscarriage, marriage struggles due to an affair, bullies at school, car repairs, even broken air conditioning on Sunday mornings. I had to throw that one in there. If you're new here, we sometimes don't have AC on Sunday mornings. But as trivial as that is, everything else in this list, not trivial at all, is it? If I said something that you've experienced that you've struggled with, your first thought was, you repass that way too fast. You don't know the pain of what it's like to have X or Y going on in your life. And some of you are like, you said a bunch of mine. You only have just one on the list, you got a bunch. Every single one of us is acquainted, no matter how old, how young, to suffering, to some degree or another. That's a good news. We all have it in common. The bad news is we're all going to have it in varying degrees. And if you're alive, you're not done with the level of suffering that you're going to experience. But I want to look at some of the issues, some of the topics here, some of the things here today that will be key to helping us resurrect suffering and find purpose and meaning behind it. I'm going to look at just two primary keys this morning. And I would say you can follow along in your outline that's in your bulletin, but you don't have a bulletin. So you'll have to use your imagination or follow what's on the screen here. But two main keys that I think will set you free in looking at suffering. And the first one is this. Suffering needs a paradigm shift. Suffering needs a paradigm shift. What do I mean by that? There are several elements and concepts of suffering that are skewed or just downright wrong that we have as human beings when we look at suffering that just come from somewhere that are really just out of place, really aren't true. And until we change the paradigm of how we understand suffering, we're going to constantly be rubbing up and having questions that cannot be answered. In fact, let me look at a few of these things. I want to look at the need for a change question. We have a need for a change question as it relates to suffering. How many of you here were fully ready, by the way, for the transition, the change that just happened a couple of days ago, going from analog TV signal to digital TV signal? Raise your hand if you're ready. OK, those aren't ready. I'm not going to ask you to put your hand up there because you know who you are on that. Well, roughly, probably they're guessing, you know, some 3 million plus people, maybe up to 6 million, were not fully ready for the change in that. But interestingly, they didn't get as many calls as they thought they would about the questions with that. They anticipated many. They had 300,000 still in the first day. And since 6 o'clock last night, they've had 800,000. So I won't say there was a few. There was certainly a lot. But listen to what one of the questions came through from somebody I had. This is a quote. Their quote was, my television has gone blank. What are they doing to me? You know, it's just, like, somebody's out to get them on this. Now, we would all sit here and we can laugh at that because we know, you know, that's really the wrong question to ask. You know, like, who's out to get you? All right, a better question might be, you know, where did I miss the communication on this, you know, or the little thing that was running around the bottom of the screen and all the news articles and TV shows on it. If you watched TV a lot, you would have heard about it, right? Wrong question to ask. Still a question that's being asked. But let me also tell you some questions about suffering. In fact, you can probably tell me. The two main questions that are asked related to suffering. Everybody here knows them. What's the first one? Why me? What's the second one? Not not exactly. Not exactly. Why me? And then why God? God, why would you allow this to happen? God, why would you do this? God, if you're a good guy like the Bible says you are. If you're all powerful like the Bible says you are. If you could do whatever you want. If you love me like the Bible says you do, why would you do that to me or allow that to happen to me? Why God? Why me? Or the two dominant questions? And I would even propose to you that the eighth is this heart says, yeah, the why God question has led me to my atheism much of the time. Why God? Why me? But they are as wrong a question as my television has gone blank. What are they doing to me? Here's why. The right question is this. Why is there suffering? Why is there suffering? I want to propose to you as the right question to be asking not why God, why me? Go deep enough though to not just ask that question the right question but go deep enough to find the hard and unpopular answer because there is a hard and unpopular answer. Let me share with you the first part of that. Why is there suffering? Well first personally for each of us as individuals as human beings because the Bible says you have a sinful nature and you are born with it. You are born broken. Adam and Eve are the only ones that could claim that they were born not broken but according to the Bible every man and woman in the heritage and the seed of Adam and Eve all their descendants which includes all of us are born with a problem. Sin, our rebellious heart against God, a denial that God is even there to begin with and when we discover or see proof that he is there a denial that we don't want to accept it and if we do want to accept it or we'll accept that there is a God we don't want him intervening into our lives and telling us what to do and commanding and giving requests for us to be obedient and calling us to allegiance and punishing us and others when we don't. Personally the Bible says for all have been born with sin and all have a sin penalty with that. One of the things I want you to realize here this morning is that much of our suffering in fact in many cases most of our suffering often is due to our own sinful nature. Our own sinful problems meaning you brought them upon yourself. I brought them upon myself. God didn't put them on you but you made choices to do that. For example even though every single one of these things I'm about to list here there are legitimate reasons that aren't sinful to be experiencing this. I want you to realize there are illegitimate reasons. For example struggling financially if that's because of greed. There are many that we've read and heard about maybe none here that are in financial problems now because what the last three to five years they took a whole pattern of greed with their approach in that. Businesses are failing as a result of that in many cases. There are some who are struggling with depression some legitimately but some illegitimately due to simply living a self-centered life. You want to get depressed be selfish with no restraint that would make anybody depressed. Some who are struggling marriages due to following a worldly viewed marriage due to basically saying you know God your Bible gives very specific details about what a marriage is to be but you know what that's all my shelf and I'm following my own plan. And your marriage is struggling and you have some real areas of suffering simply because you are living rebelliously against God and what he says about marriage. Rebellious children due to not parenting as God commands. The Bible says that very specifically that if you do train up a child in the way that he or she should go when he's older she's old she will not depart from it. Or how about addictions due to choosing numbing the pain rather than finding healing that God offers rather than dealing with the heart issue addictions often are way for us to escape the pain to numb ourselves from the pain. And don't get me wrong those all these things are listed can be real feelings very serious areas of suffering but realize the root cause of things like this is sin is rebellion against God and that's not a popular answer to you because we much rather blame somebody else. In fact we'll pay money to help somebody talk to us about how we can shift the blame in our life and experiences to somebody else rather than take ownership for our own choices. Personally our simple nature is one huge way that we experience sufferings eliminate this type of suffering the Bible says through simply faith and obedience. A huge portion of suffering your life and experience can be eliminated that's good news by the way. Is that God offers forgiveness and God offers hope but don't let me I can't be wrong for me to tell you this morning that it would come in a way that's not difficult and unpopular to be obedient to a living God. I know some of you are here maybe that you know I'm not sure about this whole Jesus Christ thing I'm glad you're here to listen in on this and invite you to come and think about this. But those of you who have chosen the follow Jesus Christ you've chosen that he is your king that he is your Lord and he has promised yes to bless you but the blessing comes through faith and it comes through obedience. And if you're not even looking forward if you're not searching his word on it if you're not seeking God the counsel if you're not spending time praying saying God show me what I should do then you're often going to be finding yourself in that sinful situation. Do it around me 30 9 through 10 I think I have here on the screen then the Lord your God will make you most prosperous in all the world and although I'm sorry and all the work of your hands and the fruit of your womb the young of your livestock and the crops of your land. The Lord will again delight in you and make you prosperous just as he's lighting your fathers. But it's not a period right there is it. Everybody likes this part the promises of God everybody wants to clean these kind of promises God's there he's for you he's good he cares about you he loves you he's in the sound of the cross but there isn't if. And there was a comma there and it goes on to say if you obey the Lord your God and keep his commands and decrees that are written in his book of the law and turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul those are words from the King those are words from the Lord of Lords creator the universe but there is hope there but there is a contingency there as well to invite you to that. Do you need a paradigm shift this morning. Well another area to that we see personally the effects of suffering has nothing necessarily to do directly with a choice of sin but the Bible says that God told Adam and Eve the day they eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree they will surely what die. Now I don't know about you when I first read as a kid I thought what said they would die but they didn't die we have something died their right relationship of God died their spirit died. But the physical body what took some many years later to follow suit but they were kicked out of the garden so they couldn't eat at the tree of life that would sustain them. And their body was slowly decay we are all living with bodies physical bodies that are aging that are decaying because of sin. So realize this that even when you think of areas of struggles and suffering in your own physical body illnesses diseases just the process of aging those are result of sin entering the world. Those are a consequence to choices that we've made. Yes through Adam and Eve in the garden but ones that we still reap the benefit or really the curse of as a result with that. Well second thing is 5.21 says this to says God made him Jesus who knew no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteous of God. Jesus never knew these types of suffering suffering as a result of sin or even suffering because of a body that was decaying. He never knew that kind but all the rest of the kinds I'm about to talk about Jesus didn't know. He shares all these in common that we'll start to talk about here right now. Yes there's a personal way that we experience suffering but it's also a corporate way that we experience suffering as well too. Society provides greater opportunities for good but also greater opportunities for evil. None of these pictures need any explanation if you're old enough probably sitting in the service. Do they? Of what is capable corporately a group of people a way of teaching a belief of people to say that yeah suffering in our world and some of the worst cases that we've ever known in history have come corporately through evil that's happened. Yeah with a one person maybe leading it but with a group a whole group following it. These need no explanation not only corporately but naturally as well too. Do you know that even creation is under the effects of the curse of sin. These pictures especially what the hurricane needs no explanation here living us living here in Florida. We can remember 2004 some of us very clearly depending on what your experience was like during that. Listen what Romans 8 says Paul writing here he says I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that we revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration not by its own choice but by the will of the one who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right after present time. Creation itself is experiencing the effects of the simple choices that happen in the Garden of Eden. In the new heavens and the new earth nature will not be destructive. Animals will not kill and hurt people right the lion will lay down with the wolf and live in harmony and so on. The child will stick his hand in the viper's nest right. Those are pictures and images of a creation of a nature that will one day be very different but natural disasters and things like that are evidence as well too of a sinful world. A world by the way that Jesus came and walked in just like us as well. Well the last area to that we feel suffering directly is an area of righteousness. There is righteousness suffering the Bible talks about. The right reason for each of us to suffer personally is for the sake of righteousness and there are many throughout history who have suffered for those reasons. But I bet if you're willing to really think honestly if you're like me there's not nearly as many examples in your life of you suffering for righteousness as there are of you suffering because of sinful choices or because of your sinful nature are living in the sinful world. But yes the Bible says righteously is the way that we're called to do that. First Peter 2 says this for it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. In other words that's a good thing but how is it a credit to you to receive a beating for doing wrong and enduring it. But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it this is commendable before God. To this you were called because Christ suffered for you leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. You're to suffer for doing good. Matthew 5, 10 and 12 say this blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me rejoice and be glad because great is your reward in heaven for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You know the word blessed can also be translated happy. Happy is the person who is persecuted for the sake of righteousness. Not because the experience itself is pleasurable but because of why you're being persecuted because of your allegiance to a righteous king in a sinful world. So righteously is the way that God says we should be as well. Well we first hear under a point when we talked about it change a question. You need to change their question relating to suffering but you also need to have a clear picture of God's involvement. You need to have a clear picture of how God is involved. Common grace is a term that's usually used by theologians to talk about aspects of how the world works but it's a very important concept here to learn about. Common grace is what God does to provide the lessons to the entire created universe to all human beings those that follow Allah a false God those who follow Buddha a false God those who are atheist and say there is no God and for every Christian he provides common grace common blessings. Jesus said I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons of your father in heaven why because he causes his son to rise on the evil and the good he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. There's common grace that God is constantly pouring out which by the way is taking for granted isn't it. We are so quick to say God why would you do this why you allowing this why why why why God instead of saying God the sun came up again today. I don't know how many thousands of years or millions of years that's been happening thank you there was oxygen in this atmosphere to breathe again today. Thank you oh sometimes we have a little bit too much rain sounds we have a little too much too little rain but God I haven't gone a day without having water to drink. Thank you there's common grace that God is constantly providing for even one of the things that was cool if you look in the Genesis chapter 3 even after God kicks them or is kicking them out of the garden of Eden. If you're not careful you miss one of the things he does verse 21 says this the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and he clothed them. And the Lord God said the man has now become like one of us knowing good and evil he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever. So the Lord banished him from the garden to work the ground from which he had been taken. How do you send him out? Did they deserve it? No. Was there a cost? Yeah. The first physical death that we know of in the Bible happens because the skin of animals is taken. Very beginning of a picture that because the need to cover sins of men and women would require death the shedding of blood and God starts the process. And he says, hey, there's one that's going to come from the seed of woman who's going to crush the head of the serpent. Oh, it's not going to be in your lifetime in Adam and Eve, but it's going to happen. God begins to pour out and caring for people in a common grace sort of way when I only through common grace but he also does it through restraining evil. God restrains evil all the time. And I'm telling you, if you look at common grace and you look at things like restraining evil it will change your paradigm of suffering. What do I mean by that? Well, think about it. Even the flood that we're told about in Genesis 6 through 9, God sends this flood. Why? Because the world had become so corrupt. God cleanses and purifies the earth. He actually comes in a way that comes to restrain evil. Had gotten so bad, we need to get rid of the people that were living so badly. And he comes and he preserves the people for himself in that. We're told that even in giving up the law, even in God's ten commandments, even though many would reject them, even though we're trying to get them out of our courthouses these days, they're still, because of the ten commandments, is embedded in realization in most societies that it is wrong to kill, that it's wrong to commit adultery, or to take some else's wife, that it's wrong to steal. These are all components of how God, through his word, is restraining evil through even his ten commandments, and the many others that he's given in his word. God restrains evil. You want to get a good picture of hell, no common grace, no restraining of evil, no sense of God's presence. You get those three things, you got a good picture of hell. The Bible's best way to describe it is that, you know, it's like burning, being on fire. It's like a place where there's weeping and gnashing a teeth. The Bible gives us the best idea to give you an allegory, but it might be like, what it might compare to? There's no common grace, there's no restraining of evil, there's no sense of God's presence whatsoever, that's hell. Well, not only do we need a clearer picture, we also need a clarification, a clarified calling, and following Jesus Christ. Our leader in Lord suffered whom we follow. John 1520 says this, Jesus says this, himself. He says, remember the words I spoke to you, no servant is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. Jesus makes it really clear, if you are a follower of mine, if you are calling yourself a Christian, a Christ follower, you will experience persecution just like me. It's a promise. First Peter 2 says this too, to this you recall, because Christ suffered for you, leading an example that you should follow in his steps. We are called to take part in the sufferings of Christ. We are called to make those sufferings perfected in the sense that we are his body, we are his church moving against the gates of hell, which won't prevail. With our suffering we go, and carry the gospel, the good news, to the remotest ends of the earth. But it will and call resuffering as well. It will involve that. Point number one was that we need a paradigm shift about suffering. But the cool thing about suffering too is that God redeems it. God uses suffering, and that's point number two in our last point this morning. Suffering grows your faith. Suffering grows your faith. The text, the same text we used last week too, from 1 Peter 1, 7 says this. These have come so that it's your faith, a greater worth than gold, which perishes, even though refined by fire, may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. What's he talking about? Your sufferings, your persecutions. God uses those in redeeming ways. Helen Keller said this. She said, character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved. Most of us would not say that we've even come close to the level of suffering that Helen Keller experienced in her life. But she as a follower Christ understood the importance of it and how God redeems it as well. This verse also mentions that it proves it genuine. Like refining gold, gold that goes through refining process and every gold does by the way, if you think it comes right out of the ground ready to go, absolutely not, it gets refined. If you look and study it, two, three times burn and refine to purify it, to place where it's usable, to place that we would call it precious. You want to wear it on your ring or have it on something like that. It requires refining that. Suffering proves your faith genuine and it proves that the several people won to yourself. It's easy to say you believe and Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, but when you follow Christ in the midst of suffering, it's a very different experience. It purifies your faith in a way. It lets you know that I really believe this. I've shared this story for other things in the past, some of you have heard it before, but the first time for me is a kid. I still can't remember exactly how old I was, but I don't have to be my first time going away to overnight camp. I remember going off and I was a Christian. I asked Jesus in my heart at age four, but I was like maybe age six or something now. Going off to overnight camp for the first time. Everything was going fine up until bedtime. Anybody ever been first night ever way camp bedtime? All right. I had a lousy plastic covered mattress that as I was on and I started to sweat my back just stuck to it. You know, summer camp, joys. And I remember there while everybody else fell asleep, I sat there going, oh my gosh, I can't fall asleep. I'm alone. I'm tired. I'm in a strange place. Nothing feels like home. I'm away from mom and dad for the first time. You know, not just like at a friend's house, but way away from mom and dad. I sat there and cried myself to sleep that night. The next day baby, I was on the phone. Mom, dad, come pick me up. Camp's been fun. I'm ready to come home. Mom and dad very wisely decided that it would probably be more important for Scott to stay at camp than to rescue him in the moment. My brother was working as a counselor. He was old enough to be a day counselor, so he came in and brought some extra goodies from home. But rather than a ticket home, he came in with a little index card for my dad that had the Isaiah 41-10 passage on it. You know, that I'm with you. I'm having a surgery. If you're not, I'll uphold you my righteous right hand. And I thought, when we're home, the next card, like, this is it? I cried out in my desperation to my mom and dad, and all I get is a, all right, a few little snacks which I'll, we put up, putting away the next few minutes. I got an index card with a Bible verse on it, and I was angry. I remember crying on the phone, I remember a counselor come over and trying to console me, and I'm like, you know what? That night at bedtime, all I had was an index card, and all I had was a promise from God. And it was the first time that this six-year-old kid or whatever old I was had to come in, and in my midst of, for me, what was probably the biggest suffering I ever experienced at that point as a child. My biggest anguish, my biggest moment of crisis of faith, I had to say, all right, God, you're either with me, and I'm gonna be okay or you're not. So I had a lot of that card, and fell asleep with it in my hand. I fell asleep much quicker than night before. The next night fell asleep with it as well. It was a whole week long camp. By the time that week was over, I don't remember the card ended up, but I remember the verse stayed here. It was through a challenge of suffering in that, that it proved to me that I really was gonna believe this stuff. That I was gonna really cling to God, not just with little lip service, but as much as six-year-old could with my life, to practice it and believe that. Still one of my favorite verses ever is that one as well, too. Well, it proves your faith genuine to yourself, but it also proves it to the world around you when you exercise faith in the midst of suffering. Do you know that early Christians had a reputation? Early Christians had a reputation, and I'm talking on the first few centuries, of two primary things. One, they died like nobody else died, often at the lines, grasp, or burn of the stake. Nobody died like a Christian, and secondly, nobody cared for the hurting in the poor, like Christians did, and not just of their own Jewish people, but of people that weren't like them. People who weren't followers of Christ, they cared for those people, too. That was the reputation of Christians in the early church, and why Christianity spread so much. Even the Council of Nicaea back in the fourth century, there was about 318 delegates. And by the way, the Council of Nicaea, sometimes we read the Nicaea creed in church, and you've heard it there, but we owe much of our thinking and understanding about the Trinity, for example, back to the Council of Nicaea. Very important part. But did you know that the 318 delegates attending that were involved with that Council? There was no less than 12 that had not lost an eye, lost a hand, or had some kind of limp, or had a leg that was layinged by some form of torture for their faith. That was what was the fabric in the DNA of the early church at the time. Men and women who were willing to suffer for Christ and to keep their eyes fixed on him, we owe so much to them, but it was a statement to the world around them because of how they handled suffering. Well, it's not only proves your faith genuine to yourself, to the world around you, but it also does it to the enemy. Did you know that? And I'm not talking about the next door neighbor who won't cut his grass as consistently as you, not that enemy. Not the person who think the gossip is about you behind your back, somewhere, or the bully at school. I'm talking about Satan. We don't have time to read it all here, but if I were to go back in the book of Job and open the book of Job, which you should read sometime, who is probably nobody would question as the greatest person other than Christ, suffered in the Bible. What we're told there, we're told that Satan comes before God, and he asks God, he says, I've been roaming through the earth, going back and forth in it. Looking, verse 8 of chapter 1 says this, then the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him. He is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. Does Job your God for nothing, Satan replied? Have you not put a head around him in his household and everything he has? You bless the work of his hand so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land, but stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face. The Lord said to Satan very well, then everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself to not lay a finger, then Satan went out from the presence of the Lord with God's permission interestingly and struck Job. All his children were killed. All his possessions were burned or stolen. And then we're told to be read on, Satan comes back and goes, all right, what would he be struck him physically? Job is struck physically, struck down completely. What was going on, as we're told in the heavenly realms, there was somebody else that needed to be shown a proven genuine faith that was found on earth through Job. It was Satan, it was your enemy. Whenever we suffer like that, like Job, like Christ, we are proving to the enemy that we truly are children of the living God. We're also told too that suffering grows your faith, not just that it proves that it's genuine your faith, but it produces joy and hope. I know it's kind of ironic. It produces joy and hope because you don't think of suffering like that. But we're talking again about righteous suffering. What does Acts 5 say? After the apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they have been counted worthy of suffering, disgraced for the name. Day after the day in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching, reclaining the good news that Jesus is Christ. They left rejoicing that they had been counted worthy to be persecuted, to experience suffering because of the name of Jesus Christ. What had happened to them, they'd been flagged. You probably have seen a movie here and there that's shown a flagging, even the flagging of Jesus, they had been flagged. And they came out rejoicing because they knew there was something much more important going on than what they were physically feeling at the time. They were happy, they were joyous. Romans 5 says this, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance and perseverance character and character hope. And hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit whom He has given us. When you experience suffering and persecution, when you realize that your stock is not held up here on earth, when you realize that this physical body is not what you're living for, so it is marked or persecuted or scarred, it is the life to come. It is the new heavens and the new earth. It is the kingdom of heaven when it comes in its fullness, when either you either die and go to view with Jesus or He comes back in the second coming. That is what you're living for. Then it becomes a constant reminder of where your hope really lies. When people ridicule you, whether it's at school kids because you're a Christian or grown-ups without the workplace or your neighborhood because you live a little differently and you fall on worship, a living God. It's not your reputation here on earth that you're even concerned about. It's His reputation. And one day you hope and you believe and you know that one day when you see Him face to face, you'll go, this was so worth it. No regrets. That's suffered for Him now. None whatsoever. Last way God uses it to strengthen us, it produces praise. John 16, 33, Jesus said, I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble but take hard. I have overcome it. Jesus said, look, it's in me that you're to find peace. Not in the comforts of this world, this life. And by the way, Jesus is right. What's happening? He's about to go to the crucifixion. And matter of hours when he's speaking this. He said, it's in me that you're to find peace. Christ is our hope and a source of peace. And when you're finding your peace in Him, not the things of this world, not in the reputation that you have among other people. Not in being cool among your friends, but in living for Christ, it's Him that gets the praise for it. It's Him that is the one that is your peace. Your thought was funny that the Apostle Paul was struck with a thorn in the flesh. Read about it in 2 Corinthians 13 sometime. The guy that was going around who was touching and healing people, best we can tell scholars think that his thorn in the flesh was some kind of physical ailment that God used to keep them humble, some kind of physical struggle, some kind of physical suffering. And he prayed three times. Ask Jesus to heal him from it or to take it away from him. And God said, no. Because he says, my strength is perfected in your weakness. And what was Paul's attitude, Paul said, all right, therefore let me be weak so that my hope and my rejoicing will be in your strength. He got it. Well, let me tell you, he suffered and he wanted whatever it was specifically gone. Can you imagine the frustration when you can touch and heal other people? And you know that Jesus said, no, I'm not going to heal you or take away the thorn in the flesh because you need it because I love you. He embraced it. Well, we will all face suffering and varying degrees and we will all face death. So it's not a question of if you will suffer in life will be a question of simply how and when and to what degree and how the Lord calls that specifically. The only question is this, will you have a resurrected hope in the midst of your suffering? Oswald Chambers in his book, Christian Discipline, one of my favorite authors, he says, the suffering is the heritage of the bad, of the penitent, another son of God. Each one ends in the cross. The bad thief is crucified. The penitent thief is crucified and the son of God is crucified. By these signs we know the widespread heritage of suffering. Don't forget Jesus keeps his scars for us. He invites you to follow in his steps and he promises to resurrect hope in the midst of your suffering. Father, we are reminded this morning of a very difficult topic and one that honestly I even get nervous preaching about because I'm like thinking when is going to be my next trial to come and to put this into practice. And even though I'm grateful for all the struggles and trials I've had I would never want to repeat any of them for the most part going back in life but God I've seen how you've used them, how you've been faithful, how you've shown your promises to be true. So God now as we continue to come and worship you through coming to your table, will you remind us that we're taking, we're eating a visual image of a body that's been ripped to shreds on a cross. We are drinking a visual image of blood that has been poured out innocent blood for guilty men and women who simply are clinging to hope and mercy and grace from you. So God prepare our hearts as we come set these elements apart from regular use to noble and spiritual purposes here God and commune with that spirit so we remind us of your sufferings that you have for us and God lead us to your repentance here this morning. The lead us to shift in our view of suffering. God come and use suffering that you will no doubt bring us through in life to come and to encourage and build up our faith so that you would receive all the glory and honor. We pray this in Christ's name and then.