Meadowbrooke Church

“I’m Offended...”

What is it about our tribe that we need to make sure it is clear that we are right and everyone else is wrong?  What I mean by “our tribe” is Bible believing, church going, evangelicals who say that we agree with Jesus on everything that He said being right and true.  Just so that there is no misunderstanding about what I mean by the word “our,” I want to be clear that I am including myself in my question about “our tribe.”
 
Let me begin by acknowledging and confessing some things that I know to be true about myself. I have some very strong convictions about some things.  I hold to certain convictions that I hold to that if my heart and mind are left unchecked, I can come off sounding like an arrogant, know-it-all jerk.  There are certain convictions that are good for all people and there are convictions that are good for you.  When it comes to convictions, I believe there are three categories every person has:
There are convictions that I have that I believe we need to have.
There are convictions that I have that I believe you should
There are convictions that I have that I believe are good for me to have.   
 
Convictions that are of “primary” importance are convictions that are so important that to reject those convictions or ignore them is detrimental to biblical orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice).  Some examples of “primary convictions” include: The origin of the universe, the inerrancy of the Bible as Holy Scripture, the person and work of Jesus Christ (his virgin birth, his suffering, crucifixion, and resurrection), the second coming of Christ to judge the living and the dead, the person and work of the Holy Spirit, and the teaching that God is One and yet three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) while existing as one God (aka the Trinity). 
 
Secondary issues I hold with an open hand because being wrong on such things does not affect my faith and salvation, nor do they have eternal consequences.  Some secondary issues are really important, and you should hold to some level of conviction regarding them. Secondary convictions may be over topics and matters the Bible does address such as the timing of Jesus’ second coming, leadership roles for men and women in the church, and even the age of the universe. 
 
Then there are those convictions we have that come out of a third category primarily related to issues of conscience that the Bible is not as clear about.  In Paul’s day it was over the use and consumption of discounted meat that came from animals sacrificed to idols.  I heard a quote referenced by Tara Leigh Cobble that I really like and believe to be great advice: “Don’t shout where scripture whispers and don’t whisper where scripture shouts.” 
 
This sermon is not about secondary or tertiary level convictions, but it is about what God primarily wants for your life.  What is it that God wants for your life?  We are told in the verses leading up to James 1:19. Here are some of the verses that clue us into what God wants for your life:
God wants your faith to endure: “Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (Jas. 1:2–4)
 
God wants you to live wisely: “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” (Jas. 1:5)
 
God wants you to walk humbly: “Now the brother or sister of humble circumstances is to glory in his high position; but the rich person is to glory in his humiliation, because like flowering grass he will pass away.” (Jas. 1:9–10)
 
God wants you to pursue Him in holiness: “Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.” (Jas. 1:12)
 
Listen to What God Wants to Teach You (vv. 19-21)
What does it mean to be offended?  Based on the English dictionary, to be offended is to be insulted, hurt, or upset.  If I understand the Christian life and how it is that God brings change in our lives, it seems to me that for God to accomplish what He needs to in my life, He must insult my assumptions, wound my ego, and upset the trajectory of my life.  Jesus said, “And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light, so that his deeds will not be exposed” (John 3:19-20).  Jesus said that for a person to be “born again” light must invade and overcome spiritual darkness; for that to happen, God must insult, hurt, and upset a person’s life so that they can go from spiritual death to spiritual life!   
 
In James 1:18, we are told: “In the exercise of His will He gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.” The word of truth includes the gospel of Jesus Christ, but it is also all of God’s written Word. We know this because of the way verses 22-27 describe how God uses His word to change and shape the lives of His people.  Spiritual life and new birth cannot happen apart from the good news of Jesus Christ; in Romans 1:16, Paul wrote of the gospel: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”  What is the gospel?  It is this: “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:1-4).
 
What James states in verse 19 is primarily how it is that God uses His word in the lives of His people to live and finish well.  Why does God want this for your life?  Well, again, in verse 18, God used His word (the gospel) so that we can become born again, “so that we would be a kind of a first fruits among His creatures” (v. 18).  Here is the thing about first fruits: The Israelites were commanded to give God the first fruits of their crops which was the best of their crops.  If you are a Christian, you are God’s first fruits, which means you are of great value to Him, and what He wants for you is to thrive as His child!  How one thrives as a child of God begins with James 1:19!  Be “quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger...”
 
What does it mean to be “quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger”?  Be quick to listen to what God has to say... period. Be slow to speak your mind... because God has already spoken.  Because God has spoken, and your opinions and perspective do not carry the same weight... be slow to anger by swallowing your pride.  What He has said is what ultimately matters!
 
What God wants for you is so much more than the time you have remaining with your vapor-like mortal life; this is why James wrote four chapters later: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. For you are just a vapor that appears for a little while, and then vanishes away” (Jas. 4:13–14). What does He want for you?  Salvation, for you to stand in His wisdom, for you to walk in Christ’s humility, for His word and the Spirit to produce holiness in you! 
 
God uses His word to form and shape His people through the power of His Holy Spirit.  To listen to His word intently will mean that you must let God’s word challenge your assumptions about who He is, how you live your life, and the world you live in.  This is why we must be both slow to speak and slow to anger.  What does that mean?  Well, if you do not like what God’s word says because of what you would like God’s word to say, you must yield your life, heart, and soul to it.  When the word of God confronts you, when it challenges your assumptions, and when it calls you to action, your best course of action is to yield knowing that God wants to accomplish His good will in and through your life for your joy and His glory.  This is how you address, “...all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness” in your life.  This will not happen in your life if you are passive about His word.
 
Learn to Apply What God Wants for You (vv. 22-24)
How can you become “quick to hear”?  How do you become “slow to speak”?  You do so by apply God’s word to your life.  You do so by humbly yielding to the authority of God’s word over your life (v. 21).  You do so by becoming a “doer” of the word, and not just a “hearer” of the word.  Now you may be asking: “But I thought James 1:19 just told us to be quick to listen to God’s word?”  James does say that, for that is where we must begin, but listening to the word of God does us no good if we are not going to do what it says by applying it to our lives. 
 
Being quick to listen to God’s word is both important and necessary, but to listen to it only is like the person, “...who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was.” Mirrors are good, but looking into a mirror in the morning will not fix your hair, brush your teeth, or fix whatever needs fixing before you head out the door in the morning.  The point of a mirror is to show you what you need to do.  When you read your Bible, it is telling you what to do, but if your response to reading it is only to read it, then you are like the fool who agrees with what the mirror reveals but does nothing about what he sees. 
 
To be quick to listen is to be slow to speak because you are more concerned about doing something about what you heard from God’s word!  This is why James does not end with verse 24, but continues to verses 25-27,
But one who has looked intently at the perfect law, the law of freedom, and has continued in it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an active doer, this person will be blessed in what he does. If anyone thinks himself to be religious, yet does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. (Jas. 1:25–27)
 
One pastor said of James’ epistle: “He doesn’t want to know the words you heard on Sunday unless they resulted in action on Monday. If anyone thinks he is religious, his Christianity must be practical (1:26). Vertical worship must have horizontal expression. Your faith must be seen in your conversation, your compassion, and your conduct.”[1] 
 
What is the word of God?  The word of God is, “living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).  What is the word of God?  The word of God is, “inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
 
So, dear Christian, what are you going to do with what you have heard?  What are going to do with the word of God every time you hear it?  God wants to use it along with the power of His Holy Spirit for your endurance, to grow you in living your life wisely, to humble you for the purpose of forming in you a Christ-like character, and to move you towards the kind of holiness He saved you for and is calling you towards. 
 
Conclusion
Now, listen carefully.  You should care deeply about the primary things the Bible addresses and you should care about what others believe about such things like who God is, the person and work of Jesus Christ, the inspiration and authority of God’s word, and what the Bible says about why Jesus came and what it means to follow Him.  We should and must care about all that the Bible teaches and we should care about whether people have heard about the gospel of Jesus Christ. 
 
We should care enough about what the word of God says that we desire and are willing to humble ourselves for the purpose of yielding our lives to what it says.  We should care about being doers of God’s holy word in all that we say and do.  But... and this is a big “BUT”... When it comes to matters of conscience concerning what you think about third tiered matters that rightly have pricked your conscience, but the Spirit of God has not done the same in my life... what matters is what God has said about it, not so much what Keith Miller or anyone else has said about it. 
Now in saying that, it is good and charitable to listen more and talk less when we are discussing matters of conscience.  What I mean is that instead of assuming the worst about a person’s convictions it would be good to listen to why and how that person has arrived with his/her convictions.  It is also wise and charitable to recognize some of your convictions are good for you, but the Spirit of God may not have moved in a similar way in your brother/sister in Christ who loves the same Jesus as you do.  Just because someone does not agree with you does not mean that person is against you. 
 
Permit me to share with you two sets of God’s word that ought to guide every conversation you have about your convictions or the convictions of another brother or sister in Christ:
“Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant. It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered, it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Cor. 13:4–7)
 
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let’s follow the Spirit as well. Let’s not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another.” (Gal. 5:22–26)
 
At the end of the day, who cares what you think about Donald Trump, what you think of Joe Biden, what you think about this thing or that thing.  What you think about who said what or what network is better than the other network.  At the end of the day your opinions are just that... opinions.  What matters is what has God said about it and what you are going to do with what He has said. 
 
In closing, let me share something with you that God said that you really should apply to your second and third tier convictions before you feel the desire or need to share those convictions with others:
“Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peace-loving, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, free of hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” (James 3:13–18)
 
[1] Tony Evans, The Tony Evans Bible Commentary (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2019), 1340.

"Forgive and Forget..."

What does it mean to “Forgive and forget” after you have been wronged by someone?  To forgive and forget is to stop blaming someone for something they did and to stop thinking about it.  Maybe you have heard someone say to you: “I forgive you, but I can’t forget...”  What does that really mean?  Can a person forgive and at the same time hold onto the memory of the wrong suffered? 
 
The Bible makes a big deal about forgiving a wrong suffered.  Just in case you are unfamiliar with what the Bible says about forgiving others, let me share a few scripture passages with you:
“And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you for your offenses.” (Mark 11:25)
 
“So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so must you do also.” (Col. 3:12–13)
 
Included in Jesus’ prayer that He modeled for all Christians is the expectation to forgive others: “Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:9–13).  Of the seven petitions included in the Lord’s Prayer is the need to forgive those who have sinned against us.  But, just in case there is any confusion as to how serious Jesus is about His followers forgiving others, He followed up his prayer with these haunting words: “For if you forgive other people for their offences, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive other people, then your Father will not forgive your offenses” (Matt. 6:14-15). 
 
What Does it Mean to Forgive?
So, what does it mean to forgive and does forgiving a wrong suffered require that you forget it? Peter asked Jesus a question not all that different: “Lord, how many times shall my brother sin against me and I still forgive him? Up to seven times?”  In other words, when am I off the hook for having to forgive a person who is a repeat offender?  When is enough... enough?  It is believed that the rabbis in Jesus’ day taught that forgiveness should be limited to three instances of premeditated sin.  If this is true, Peter asked his question about forgiving seven times thinking that seven times was more than generous with a willingness to forgive.
 
Jesus’ answer was not what Peter expected: “Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy-seven times.’”  Jesus did not mean 77 times, or 490 times, but an unlimited number of times.  How many times should I forgive the one who sins against me?  As many times as necessary.  Jesus’ answer to Peter’s question leaves us with more questions:
Are we supposed to forgive everyone for every offense against us?
Are we to forgive even when the person who sinned against us is not sorry?
Does Jesus want us to let others take advantage of us?
 
To answer these questions, we need to turn our attention to the parable Jesus told about forgiveness in Matthew 18:21-35. 
 
The Slave Had an Impossible Debt that Could Not be Paid
To further elaborate on His point to Peter, Jesus told a parable to illustrate why forgiving as much as necessary makes more sense than three times or even seven times.  Before we consider the parable, you should note that just before His parable, Jesus explained the process that we are to take when addressing the sins we suffer from others (see Matt. 18:15-20).  If someone sins against us, Jesus told us to go and show that person their fault in private. If we go and that person does not listen, then Jesus said we are to take one or two witnesses in an effort to address that person’s sin.  Ultimately, Jesus said that if a person repeatedly refuses to listen when you try to address their sin, that we are to treat that person as an unbeliever.  So, it is important to understand that Jesus’ parable is not about ignoring the sins of others.
 
According to Jesus’ story, there was a king who wanted to settle accounts.  As the king was seeking to settle accounts, a man was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents, which was the equivalent of about 160,000 years of wages.   If we were the man in Jesus’ story, our debt today would be in the billions of dollars.  Jesus’ point was that it was impossible for the man to pay off his debt.  Nothing the man could do would ever be enough to pay what he owed. So, the king demanded the man be sold into slavery along with his wife and children.  The only recourse the man had was to beg for mercy that his life and the lives of his wife and children be spared: “So the slave fell to the ground and prostrated himself before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will repay you everything’” (v. 26). We are not told how the slave accumulated his impossible debt, but the fact that it was astronomically high reveals that he deserved justice instead of mercy.  Yet, it was mercy that the master gave the slave: “And the master of the slave felt compassion, and he released him and forgave him the debt” (v. 27). 
 
For the king to forgive the slave of his astronomical debt, the king had to take upon himself the great loss the slave’s debt caused.  The King showed great mercy towards his slave; mercy is when you do not give a person what they actually deserve. 
 
The Slave was Unaffected by the King’s Great Mercy
The mercy the slave received from his master should have changed him.  Because of the great debt that he had been forgiven he should have been a changed man, but he was not.  As soon as he experienced underserved pardon and freedom, we are told that the slave, “...went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and he seized him and began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe!”  What was owed to the slave was nothing compared to the debt he himself had been forgiven, yet he was unwilling to show any form of mercy to the one who owed him infinitely less.  The irony is that what was owed could have been paid back eventually; it was not unreasonable for the man who owed 100 denarii to promise to pay it back.  Yet even though the man was willing to pay every penny back, the servant who had been forgiven much chose to throw the man in prison until he paid back what was owed.  The paradox is that if you are in prison, then working off a debt is nearly impossible.
 
The great mercy the slave experienced with the cancelation of his impossible debt should have changed him, but it didn’t.  Jesus then concluded his parable with the following sobering words:
“So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their master all that had happened. Then summoning him, his master said to him, ‘You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?’ And his master, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he would repay all that was owed him.” (Matt. 18:31–34)
 
If Jesus’ story ended with verse 34, then it would only be a sad story about a slave who remained unaffected by the king’s great mercy.  However, that is not how the story ended.  The story ends with Jesus’ sobering words that serve as a warning to us all: “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart” (v. 35).
 
What Jesus Teaches Us About Forgiveness
It ought to be obvious who the characters are in Jesus’ parable, but in case you are not sure, we are the slave in the story who owed an impossible debt to the king.  The King is the holy God we have sinned against.  The One who made the canceling of our great debt possible is Jesus who suffered in our place for our redemption. 
 
So there are some lessons about forgiveness that I would like to highlight that I think you will find helpful from the life of Jesus that is true if you are a Christian and I want to show you those lessons from Revelation 5.
 
Our sins will no longer be held against us (Rev. 5:6)
In Revelation 5:6, Jesus is presented in heaven as the Lamb of God standing victoriously who had been slaughtered for the sins we committed.  Throughout the Old and New Testaments, Jesus is presented as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).  Jesus did not take part of your sins away; He addressed all of your sins upon the cross where He was slaughtered! 
 
The Lamb of God is standing in Revelation 5:6 because He did not stay dead!  He rose from the grave and stands as our advocate and sin-substitute! He is, “standing, as if slaughtered...” because He bears the marks of the cross as a perpetual reminder that what He accomplished on the cross was and is all that we need!  Because He will forever be known as the Lamb of God who stands as if slaughtered, there will never be a moment in eternity that His great sacrifice for our sins will ever be forgotten. 
 
Now, you may be saying to yourself: “But Pastor Keith, what about those verses in the Bible that say that God forgets our sins?”  Let’s look at some of those verses briefly:
 
“They will not teach again, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their wrongdoing, and their sin I will no longer remember.” (Jer. 31:34)
 
“I, I alone, am the one who wipes out your wrongdoings for My own sake, And I will not remember your sins.” (Isa. 43:25)
 
“For I will be merciful toward their wrongdoings, and their sins I will no longer remember.”” (Heb. 8:12)
 
The verses from Jeremiah and Isaiah are promises concerning the New Covenant that God said would come through Jesus.  The passage in Hebrews is a reference to that promise that only Jesus can make possible.  The Hebrew word used in both Jeremiah and Isaiah not only can mean “remember” but it can also mean “named.”  It is not that God forgets from His memory all our sins, it is much better than that!  Because Jesus was slaughtered for our sins, our sins will never be named for the purpose of being held against us.  Our guilt has been taken away, and Jesus bears the marks of the cross for all eternity as a testament to that reality! Now, against the backdrop of that truth, listen to Psalm 104:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our wrongdoings from us.”
 
God does not forget our sins as though He suffers from amnesia, but He has chosen to never hold our sins against us because they were placed upon Jesus in our place. 
 
Principle #1: If you chose to forgive, you chose to no longer hold the offense of that person against him/her.  
 
 
We are the recipients of God’s great mercy (Rev. 5:9-10)
In heaven, the heavenly chorus includes lyrics of a new song about Jesus: “Worthy are You to take the scroll and to break its seals; for You were slaughtered, and You purchased people for God with Your blood from every tribe, language, people, and nation. You have made them into a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth” (Rev. 5:9–10). 
 
All our deserved hell Jesus endured to make the forgiveness of our sins possible and redemption a reality!  The way that He did it was with the shedding of His blood. In other words, He died for sinners like us.  In 2 Corinthians 5:21, we read that, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”  Mercy is not getting what we deserved and what we deserved was condemnation, but praise God that He is a God who is rich in mercy, great in His love, and sufficient in His grace (see Eph. 2:4-9)! 
 
Here is what mercy cost Jesus according to Galatians 3:13-14, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a Tree”—in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:13–14).
 
Principle #2: We who have received great mercy, are expected to extend mercy even when it is not deserved as citizens of Jesus’ kingdom. 
 
Reconciliation is impossible unless forgiveness is given, and it is received.
This is the final lesson on forgiveness from Revelation 5, and it seems obvious.  Jesus already made redemption and the forgiveness of sins possible for anyone who wants to receive it, but it is not complete for the sinner until it is received by the sinner.  The incalculable scores of angels, along with the 24 elders shout with a loud voice concerning Jesus: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power, wealth, wisdom, might, honor, glory, and blessing.”  In response, all of heaven affirms what is already true: “To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be the blessing, the honor, the glory, and the dominion forever and ever” (v. 13).
 
Jesus offers forgiveness through what He already accomplished on the cross and through the empty tomb, but it must be received for reconciliation with God and the forgiveness of our sins to be possible. 
 
When it comes to Jesus’ parable about forgiveness, you alone have to choose to forgive those who have sinned against you, but once you do, you have also chosen to longer hold the offence against that person.  To forgive is an act of mercy that you chose to gift to that person.  However, there is a third principle:
 
Principle #3: Reconciliation cannot be possible unless the person forgiven is willing to receive your forgiveness.  All you can do is forgive those who have sinned against you and to no longer hold their sins against them.
 
If we truly understand what it means to be forgiven of our sins and what it cost Jesus, we will hold short accounts of wrongs suffered knowing that what Jesus suffered on the cross was and is sufficient for those who have sinned aginst us.  Amen.

“God is Leading Me...”

Have you ever had someone tell you that the motive behind their decision(s) was that “God was leading them?”  Did you ever wonder how it was that they knew God was leading them?  What if He is not leading you and you make that claim?  On some level, does that make you guilty of breaking the 9th Commandment?  In case you have forgotten what that commandment states, here it is: “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor” (Exod. 20:16).  Is it also possible that by using God’s name as an excuse for your choices in life, that you are also guilty of violating the 3rdcommandment, which states: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain” (Exod. 20:7). You need to understand that God is holy, and He is serious about how we treat His name and how we approach Him. 
 
So, how do you know what the will of God is and when is it okay to make the bold declaration that “God is leading you...”? Get some clue how to know God’s will from Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Prov. 3:5–6).  But what do you do with all the factors that affect how we humans make decisions such as:
Cognitive biases: What happens when our decisions are shaped by our biases and affirmed by information and media that confirms our existing beliefs.
 
Emotional state: How we are feeling can have a tremendous effect on our ability to reason and make decisions.
 
Cultural factors: The culture you grew up in or the one that surrounds you today can affect your perception of truth and how you make decisions.
 
Situational factors: Your physical atmosphere, social environment, time constraints, and circumstances that have brought you to your decision all shape the decision-making process.
 
We have so many things competing for our hearts and it can be very difficult to discern what part of the decision-making process is God’s will and leading, and what part is our feelings and wants.  So, how can you decern what the will of God is for your life and choices? I believe Acts 20:17-38 is helpful in that it shows us five things Paul practiced that helped him understand what God’s will was for his life regardless of his feelings and the circumstances that surrounded him.
 
Paul was Concerned About What God’s Word Said About Everything (vv. 20-21, 27).
The reason why Paul spent over two years in Ephesus was for the same reason he completed three missionary journeys, and that was to declare, “...the whole purpose of God.” Paul declared the full counsel of God’s Word while in Ephesus.  Jesus commanded His followers: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations... teaching them to follow all that I commanded you...” (Matt. 28:19-20), and Paul took that command very seriously.  All that Paul had to offer and give to the Ephesians was the Jesus of the Holy Scriptures.
 
Listen, Paul did not just teach and preach the Bible, his life and choices were governed by the Word of God.  How does one get to the place where he or she is able to declare all that is beneficial from the Word of God without first being in the Word of God privately?  What is the goal of being in God’s word?  Paul answered that question in his epistle to the Philippians: “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; if somehow I may attain to the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:10-11).  You will not get to know Jesus if you are not listening to His voice through His word, and if you are not listening to His voice, you will not know His will.
 
Step #1 for knowing the will of God: What does the word of God say about it?
 
Paul Made Sure His Choices Lined Up with the Mission of God (vv. 17-19, 24)
What is the mission of God?  “For from the rising of the sun even to its setting, My name shall be great among the nations, and in every place frankincense is going to be offered to My name, and a grain offering that is pure; for My name shall be great among the nations,” Declares the Lord (Mal. 1:11)!  John piper wrote in his book, Let the Nations be Glad: “Missions exist because worship doesn’t” and he was right! Paul came to Ephesus because the Ephesians worshiped all kinds of idols, but they did not worship God because they did not know Jesus.  Paul entered Ephesus with a desire to serve the Lord “with all humility and with tears and trials” because his purpose in life was to make Jesus known first and foremost! 
 
Paul did not think he was better than the Ephesians, but because he had a great and accurate view of who God is, he was willing to die to self for the purpose of living for Jesus.  This is what he said in verse 24, “But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of God’s grace.”  For Paul, his mission would include bringing the gospel to the gentiles (see Acts 9:1-19).  For you, God’s mission may look different, but the one thing that it does have in common with Paul’s mission is to make Jesus known where He is not known. 
 
If you are a Christian, you have been called into the mission of God.  That does not mean that you must become a missionary, although it may.  What the mission of God means for you is simply this: God has called you to your world, which includes your family, neighborhood, work, and church to use your talents and gifts to reach the lost and partner with your local church to accomplish the mission Jesus gave His Church.  Wherever you find yourself, Jesus said of your redeemed life: “You are the salt of the earth.... you are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:13-14).  You are Jesus’ ambassador in your home, in your neighborhood, among your friends, where you work, and as a part of a community of Jesus followers within His Church. 
 
Step #2 for knowing the will of God: Will my decision allow me to continue to participate in God’s mission? 
Paul Was Sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s Leading (vv. 22-23)
Paul was sensitive to the Holy Spirit for two primary reasons: His head and heart were affected by the time he spent in the Word of God, and he strived to walk in a manner worthy of his calling (Eph. 4:1).  The fruit of listening to God’s word and obedience to it, is the filling of the Holy Spirit. From the moment you are born again, you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit (John 14:15-24; 16:7), you are sealed by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13-14), and you are baptized by the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:5).  But with the filling of the Holy Spirit comes power and a sensitivity to His leading; this is what Paul wrote to the Ephesian Church and practiced:
“Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” (Eph. 4:30)
 
“And do not get drunk with wine, in which there is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit...” (Eph. 5:18)
 
Jesus promised that to every true Christian who sets their hearts to follow Jesus in faith and trust will receive the Holy Spirit Whom He called, “The Helper” (John 14:16-17).  Jesus promised that the ministry of the Holy Spirit will be to, “guide you into all the truth...” (John 16:13).  This is exactly what Paul experienced throughout his lifetime even when others had a hard time understanding it (as we will see in Acts 21:7-14).  This is why he called the elders together before he left Ephesus to tell them how the Holy Spirit was leading him: “And now, behold, bound by the Spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit solemnly testifies to me in every city, saying that chains and afflictions await me” (Acts 20:22–23). 
 
For Paul, the compulsion he had from the Holy Spirit did not mean that he understood or was aware what the total outcome would be for choosing to leave Ephesus, but the call was clear, and he had to go.  Paul also understood that he would not be able to come back: “And now behold, I know that all of you, among whom I went about preaching the kingdom, will no longer see my face” (v. 25).
 
Sometimes the will of God is a call to leave what is stable and comfortable to a place of uncertainty and danger. Tony Merida, in his commentary on Acts, made the following observation: “The goal of life is not to have a long life but a full life, one lived to the glory of Jesus Christ. For some Christians such faithfulness will involve hardship, persecution, and even martyrdom. Paul’s example here shows how one can endure such experiences: We must value Jesus above everything, and we must rely on the Spirit.”[1]
 
Step #3 for knowing the will of God: Am I walking in step with the Holy Spirit and is He leading me in the decision-making process?  
 
Paul Understood God Was Greater than His Mission (vv. 32-34)
Paul understood two critically important things that are worth considering regarding the will of God: First, God loved the Ephesian Christians infinitely more than Paul ever could.  Second, God didn’t need Paul but chose to use him and would use others in his place after he left.  What was required of Paul and the elders of the Ephesian Church was to trust the God, “Who does great and unsearchable things, wonders without number” (Job 5:8-9).
 
With Paul’s departure there would be dangers for the Ephesian Christians, so he warned the elders; he warned them that savage wolves would creep in among them with the intent to destroy them (see vv. 28-31).  Just because God was leading Paul into another season of life and ministry, did not mean that the ministry God used him to establish was safe.  However, for three years, Paul was preparing the elders and the church for the day when God would lead him elsewhere.  Paul also understood that God would provide the church what was needed in the wake of his departure, so he was confidently able to assure them: “And now I entrust you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (v. 32).  What they needed most, Paul gave them... and that was God and His Word. 
 
Step #4 for knowing the will of God: Understand and trust that God is infinitely bigger than you are and is capable of doing “great and unsearchable things...” without your involvement.
 
Paul Was Committed to Prayer (vv. 36-38)
Paul and the elders did not end with hugs and handshakes, but fervent prayer together as brothers committed to the same mission!  It is critically important to note that before there were any goodbyes, before the decision was official, before Paul got on the boat, he and the leaders of the church prayed.  Verses 36-38 are such a touching conclusion to Acts 20 as it is a reminder that there is no point in going anywhere if God is not leading you and although He may be leading you, it does not mean that it will be easy; consider these verses again: “When he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And they all began to weep aloud and embraced Paul, and repeatedly kissed him, grieving especially over the word which he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they were accompanying him to the ship.”
 
This was not the first time Paul, and the elders, prayed about where God was leading, based on what we know of Paul’s life, prayer was the culture of his life.  Because it was the culture of his life, he was not getting on any boat before they prayed together!  Ephesians 6:18-19 gives us a glimpse into the prayer life of the apostle: “With every prayer and request, pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be alert with all perseverance and every request for all the saints...” (Eph. 6:18).  Regarding his departure, Paul prayed all the time, with all persistence, for the glory of God and the good of Christ’s Church!  It is important to also understand that Paul did not pray alone but prayed with those his decision affected most. 
 
Step #5 for knowing the will of God: Bathe your life and choices with prayer with a willingness to die to what you want for the purpose of living for God and His mission for your life.
 
Conclusion
You should know that when you follow the will of God for your life, it may not always be easy, comfortable, or agreeable for those in your life and world.  It will be hard on both those who love you and agitating for those who do not share your love for God and Christ-centered world view.  The safest and most secure pathway forward is to follow Jesus.  When Paul arrived at Ptolemais, he stayed with Philip and while with him, a prophet by the name Agabus took Paul’s belt and bound his own feet and said, “This is what the Holy Spirit says: ‘In this ways the Jews in Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and hand him over to the Gentiles’” (Acts 21:7-11). 
 
When everyone in the house heard what Agabus said to Paul, they begged him not to go up to Jerusalem because they loved him.  Agabus did not say anything Paul did not already know, but it was painful for those who loved Paul to hear and accept.  Paul’s response was both tender and firm: “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:13).  At this point Paul’s decision was affirmed by the Word of God, the mission of God for his life, the prompting and leading of the Holy Spirit, a confidence in God’s sovereignty and power, and a decision bathed in prayer, so he was sure of what God’s will was for his life and he could not be persuaded.  Those who loved Paul saw this: “And since he would not be persuaded, we became quiet, remarking, ‘The will of the Lord be done!’” (v. 14).
 
So, before you declare that “God is leading you” to take that new job, enter into a relationship or marriage, or to move from anywhere to anywhere be sure to check what you are considering against the same five checkpoints we see in Paul’s life:
 
What does the Word of God say about your decision? If God’s word speaks against it, then it is not God’s will for your life.
 
Will my decision allow me to continue to participate in God’s mission? If your decision will further remove you from God’s mission and His people, then it may not be the will of God for your life.
 
Are you sure the Holy Spirit is leading you? If you are not living in obedience to God, your perspective of what God’s will for your life may be severely perverted.
 
Do you really believe that God can do “great and unsearchable things...” without your involvement but wants to use you anyway and that He is about His glory for your good?
 
Did you pray with open hands before God almighty concerning His will for your life related to whatever is before you?
 
Paul’s decision to leave Ephesus ultimately resulted in his martyrdom in Rome, but if he did not leave, he would not have written Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, Philippians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus... and those glorious epistles would not have been included in our Bibles as holy Scripture.  
 
[1] Tony Merida, Exalting Jesus in Acts (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2017), 315.

“It’s Okay to Be Angry with God"

Introduction (Bruce Almighty movie clip)
It is possible that you are here today and are wondering how and why it is that a good God would allow some of the hard things you were forced to experience so far.  Maybe you have said or identify with Bruce’s description of his own experience with God: “God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and I'm the ant. He could fix my life in five minutes if He wanted to, but he'd rather burn off my feelers and watch me squirm.”
 
If God is good, and if he is infinitely and perfectly sovereign… how and why does He allow so much suffering in the world?  How is it that He allows so much evil when he is the measure of all that is holy and good?  There seems to be a great divide between the God we read about in our Bibles and the world we live in.  What are we supposed to do with the confusion, disappointment, anger, evil, and suffering God has allowed into our lives?  Is it okay to be angry with God when we suffer?  I plan to answer the above questions, but we must start with the nature and character of God as He revealed Himself to Moses after 40 years in the desert as a fugitive of Egypt after he murdered one of Pharoah’s guards. 
 
Moses’ Encounter with a Holy God
Here is what you need to know about what led up to Moses’ experience with the burning bush.  God made a promise to Abraham, Isaac, and then to Jacob that their children would become His people; the promise was threefold and included the promise of land, the increase of their people, and that their people would eventually be a blessing to the nations.  However, God also promised that they would spend years in a land where they would be afflicted (see Gen. 15:13; Exod. 12:40-41).
 
When Moses was born, the Hebrew people had spent centuries living in Egypt.  The Hebrew people were first welcomed as honored guests under Joseph (one of the sons of Jacob) who was second to Pharaoh, but as the years past, so did the memory of Joseph.  The Hebrews eventually became the slaves of another Pharaoh; he was so threatened by the birth rate of the Hebrews, that he implemented infanticide as the law of the land and wrote into law that every Hebrew son born was to be thrown into the Nile.  Moses’ mother refused to murder her baby, so she kept his birth a secret until she could not do so any longer; she put baby Moses in a basket covered with tar and pitch, put him in it, and floated it down the Nile where Pharaoh’s daughter eventually found the basket with baby Moses whom she raised as her own. 
 
Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s house, but he was also aware of his roots as a Hebrew man.  We know that Moses had a temper, and on two occasions, it cost him much.  On one such occasion, after seeing an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, Moses killed the Egyptian and buried his body in the sand (see Exod. 2:11-12). When Moses learned that others knew that he killed the Egyptian, he fled and hid in the land of Midian.  Moses spent the next 40 years of his life in Median, got married, and worked for his father-in-law Jethro.
 
What We Learn About God Through Moses’ Encounter
Before we can answer where or not it is okay to be angry with God, we need to consider the God who found Moses in Midian; against the backdrop of Joseph’s 13 years of suffering, the generations of slavery the Hebrews suffered in Egypt, and Moses’ 40 years in Midian. 
 
God is Holy: He is not like us.
Moses approached the burning bush not only because it was weird, but because God called to him, “from the midst of the bush and said, ‘Moses! Moses!” Moses’ response was simple: “Here I am.”  Notice that as Moses got closer to the burning bush, God said to him, “Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”  What made the ground holy?  The presence of God made it holy.  As R.C. Sproul wrote in his timeless and classic book, The Holiness of God: “God alone is holy in Himself.  Only God can sanctify something else. Only God can give the touch that changes it from the commonplace to something special, different, and apart.”[1] 
 
Now, just so that you are aware, it is not only Moses, a mere mortal human, who must remove his sandals in the presence of holiness.  The seraphim whose sole purpose is worship above the throne of God are not exempt from the kind of respect and reverence that was expected of Moses in the presence of the Holy One. Isaiah was invited into the throne room of Almighty God, and this is what he saw:
In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim were standing above Him, each having six wings: with two each covered his face, and with two each covered his feet, and with two each flew. And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of armies. The whole earth is full of His glory.” And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. (Isa. 6:1–4)
 
The great Seraphim must cover their face and their feet in the presence of a Holy God even though they have not been stained by sin, but because they, like us, are creatures and God is the Creator.  Isaiah’s response before the Holy One was appropriate: “Woe to me, for I am ruined!”  Moses’ response was not only to remove his sandals, but to hide his face, “for he was afraid to look at God” (v. 6).  Why?  Because God is holy, and we are not.  God is not like us.
 
God is Omniscient: He sees the big picture.
When we come to verse 6, God let Moses who it was that was speaking to him: “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”  And just as God was intimately acquainted with the lives of Moses’ forefathers, He was aware of the suffering of Moses’ kinsmen in Egypt: “I have certainly seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their outcry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings” (v. 7). 
 
When the Hebrews entered into Egypt, they were the size of a small clan, but after hundreds of years in Egypt, they had become the size of a small nation.  When Moses fled to Midian, he was a 40-year-old used to royalty; the Moses who stood before the burning bush was any eighty-year-old shepherd.  What the Hebrews did not understand, and what Moses could not have fathomed was that God was using the ugly, the hard, and the pain for something far greater than they could have imagined.  God was aware of their suffering all along, and now in that moment was the right time to, “rescue them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from the land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey...” (v. 8) just as He promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob centuries before. 
 
So, God said to Moses: “And now come, and I will send you to Pharaoh, so that you may bring My people, the sons of Israel, out of Egypt” (v. 10).  To which, Moses appropriately responded: “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?”  All that the Hebrews could see was their slavery and suffering; all that Moses could see was his failures and incompetence.  What God saw was that He alone can use the foolish to shame the wise and the weak to shame the strong (see 1 Cor. 1:26-31).  What God saw was that His timing was infinitely better because He saw the big picture. 
 
God is Faithful: He keeps His promises.
Remember that the Hebrew slaves in Egypt were surrounded by an Egyptian culture that worshiped Egyptian gods who were not gods, but demons (see Deut. 32:17).  Moses questioned what name he was to give to the Hebrew slaves if they were to ask Who it was that sent Moses to deliver them (v. 13). Here is God’s answer: “And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “This is what you shall say to the sons of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (v. 14).  Then God continued: “This is what you shall say to the sons of Israel: ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and this is the name for all generations to use to call upon Me” (v. 15). In other words, God told Moses: “You tell them that Yahweh sent you!”
 
At the heart of God’s answer are four facts about His nature for why the Israelites should believe the He could and would deliver them:
Yahweh is self-existent and not dependent. God was unlike the Egyptian gods who were created by their own culture.  Yahweh is the Elohim over elohims.  The great I AM was bigger than the plight of the Israelites as He is greater than any trouble in our own lives.
 
Yahweh is creator and sustainer. Who wrote the Law of Thermodynamics?  Who governs the laws of gravity? Who grants the Sun permission to get up in the morning?  Who gave the song for the birds to sing?  Who owns the cattle on a thousand hills?  Who brings men into power, raises nations into prominence and then brings them to naught?  Is it not the great I AM who keeps His covenant promises. 
 
Yahweh is unchanging. Yahweh is the great I AM whose personality does not change. He does not suffer from a multi-personality disorder.  He does not change with the ideas of his devotees.  He is unmovable because He does not change. Because Yahweh is unchanging, He is constant unlike the gods of the Egyptians or whatever idol we may have set up in our own heart.
 
Yahweh is eternal. Because He is the great I AM, Yahweh will never have a beginning nor will he ever have an end.  Even though the fool has said there is no God, Yahweh is absolute reality with nothing before or after Him. The great I AM does not sleep, slumber, slack off, or slip into a daydream stupor.
 
What God told Moses is this: “Moses, you tell My people that the Covenant Keeper who promised their forefathers that He would make them into a great nation, would give them land as a nation, and would make them a blessing to the nations... you tell them the Faithful and Living One sent you!”  God keeps His promises because He alone is faithful even when we are not.
 
Conclusion
So, the question you may still be asking is whether it is or is not okay to be angry with God?  Is it okay to be angry with He who is Holy and infinitely unlike us creatures?  Is it okay to be angry with the One who sees and knows all things perfectly?  Is it okay to be angry with the One who keeps His covenant promises because He is faithful while we are faithless time and time again?  Is it okay to be angry with Yahweh who is Almighty God? 
 
As you know, God did use Moses to lead the Hebrews out of the bondage of slavery from Egypt, and He did it miraculously and profoundly.  Yet, even after God delivered them, Moses found himself shepherding and leading a people who demonstrated over and over again just how faithless they really were.  After their grievous sin of idolatry with the golden calf, Moses pleaded with God for mercy for His people who sinned, and God granted it.  In Exodus 33:17-34:9 we are given a glimpse into Moses’ heart as a shepherd absolutely in love with Yahweh, and in that exchange asked to see God.  God told Moses that he could not see His face and live, but this is what God did say He would do: “I Myself will make all My goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show compassion to whom I will show compassion” (Exod. 33:19).
 
When God did pass, He hid Moses in the cleft of a rock, and allowed His goodness to pass by him and when it did, Moses heard God proclaim of His goodness: “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in faithfulness and truth; who keeps faithfulness for thousands, who forgives wrongdoing, violation of His Law, and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, inflicting the punishment of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations” (Exod. 34:6–7).  So, what does God’s goodness include?  It includes His mercy, patience, faithfulness, truth, and grace.  But it also includes His justice and wrath in response to sin. 
 
So, again I ask you: “Is it okay to be angry with the God who is Holy and infinitely unlike us creatures?  Is it okay to be angry with the God who sees and knows all things perfectly?  Is it okay to be angry with a holy God who is faithful while we are faithless time and time again?  Is it okay to be angry with Yahweh who is Almighty God?”  Let me reframe the question for you: If God is infinitely good and we are the ones who need to improve upon being good, do we have any right to be angry with God? 
Now, think about the effects anger has on a relationship.  When you are angry with someone because you believe you have been wronged by that person, it interferes with communication.  Anger towards a friend or a member of your family often drives a wedge between you and that person.  Anger typically results in the one offended distancing himself/herself from the person who wronged them. 
 
If there is no need for God to improve, especially in being good, then to suggest that it is okay to be angry with Him is to suggest that it is okay to accuse Him of wrongdoing.  Psalm 145 is a great Psalm to visit while suffering or confused why God would allow you to suffer; verses 8-9 say the following: “The Lord is gracious and compassionate; slow to anger and great in mercy.  The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works.”  Again in Psalm 145:17-18, “The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and kind in all His works.  The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.” 
 
I have head Christians and Pastors console the suffering and confused: “It is okay to be angry with God.”  To which I ask, “How is it okay to be angry with He who is infinitely holy, how is it okay to be angry with Him who sees all while my vision is limited, how is it okay to be angry with the Almighty whose faithfulness has been proven time and time again while my faithfulness has been found wanting more than I count?”
 
Listen dear friend, not only are we not given permission in all of Scripture to be angry with God, but we also have no right to be angry with Him.  Here is what is permitted and even expected by God: We can be confused, frustrated, and even hurt emotionally.  If God is infinitely good, which He is, then we can run to Him with our confusion, we can run to Him with our frustration, and we can run to Him with our wounded and bleeding hearts knowing that even though we can’t see His goodness in and through our pain, we can trust that He is still good and will turn it around in His way and in His time for His glory and our good!  
 
After Moses experienced the goodness of God when His glory passed by while he was in the cleft of the rock, Moses responded on behalf of the sins of Israel: “If in any way I have found favor in Your sight, Lord, please may the Lord go along in our midst, even though the people are so obstinate, and pardon our wrongdoing and our sin, and take us as Your own possession” (Exod. 34:9).
 
Dear brothers and sisters, if your faith and trust is in Jesus as proof of God’s infinite goodness, then my plea to you is not to run from Him in anger but to him with all your pain, confusion, and frustration.  Run to the God of Romans 8:28-32,
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. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?
 
[1] Sproul, R.C., The Holiness of God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers; 1998), 39.

“He/She is in a Better Place.”

I have officiated dozens of funerals over the years as a pastor, which means that I was involved in the planning of the service, the delivery of a sermon, and some form of committal service involving the burial of the deceased’s body or placement of the ashes of those bodies that were cremated.  The first funeral I officiated was that of my 47-year-old father and since I have been responsible for burying people of all ages as young as grade school to the oldest who was 101 years old.  I have been asked to memorialize people from all walks of life, many of whom loved and walked with Jesus as fellow Christians and some who were not Christian.  The one thing that every one of the funerals and memorial services I officiated have in common is that every family and friend of the diseased who asked me to officiate the service of their loved one believed and articulated their belief that he/she was in a better place. 
 
Just as the old spiritual is true: “Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.”  So, it is true that we will grope for reasons to believe that our loved ones are in a better place regardless of what they believed or even how they lived.  Most people do not want death for anyone they love, and when death does come, we want heaven for those we love. 
 
After officiating so many funerals, I had come to the place in my experience as a pastor that I believed that I had experienced just about everything there was to experience related to funerals and grieving family member.  I am old enough and have seen enough to know better.  I remember Ian White’s family who reached out to Northwest Baptist Church (the first church I served as the Lead Pastor in Colorado).  Ian was not a Christian, nor was his family; he was found dead on the front steps of his apartment and was 34 years old.  I remember their response when I sat down with them to plan Ian’s memorial service and their request after I asked if they would like a song or two for those present to sing in honor of Ian’s life.  I expected something like Amazing Grace, but Ian’s family wanted everyone to sing Free Birdby Lynyrd Skynyrd.  
 
I remember a woman who started attending the church I planted in Colorado and the grief she carried with her with the death of her husband.  I still remember the Sunday she wanted me to know that her dead husband was with her.  In that moment I thought she meant his spirit or memory, but no... I discovered what she meant when she opened her purse to show me the urn that contained the ashes of her deceased husband. She brought the urn with her every Sunday she came, and I believe that she even sat her husband’s urn on the chair next to her.  I guess for this woman, the better place for her husband was in her purse.  
 
How do you know if a person who has died is really in a better place?  What evidence does one have to make such a claim? 
 
 
What Happens After We Die?
One of the things I say at every funeral is that when we die, we will experience the immediate judgment we are warned about throughout the Bible.  In Hebrews 9:27-28, we have one such warning: “And just as it is destined for people to die once, and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.”  But what kind of judgment are we destined to face? 
 
To begin, you need to know that there are two types of judgment every human will face, the first has to do with where our disembodied soul must go, which is temporary.  The second judgment we will all face is permanent.  For the Christian, the day that you die will be the moment you will be in the presence of Jesus just as we are promised in the Bible: “Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight—but we are of good courage and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:6-8).  
 
Jesus told a parable in the Gospel of Luke about a rich man who lived a life of luxury while ignoring the poor man by the name of Lazarus (not to be confused with Jesus’ friend who Jesus raised to life in John 11:1ff.).  In Jesus’ parable, both men died; Lazarus’ soul went to where Abraham’s soul dwelled while the rich man’s soul went to Hades where he suffered torment.  Of Hades, the rich man begged for a drop of water to ease his torment because, his words: “I am in agony in this flame” (see Luke 16:19-31).  Before Jesus told His parable about the rich man and Lazarus, He said this about money: “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Luke 16:13).  The rich man was not in hell because he ignored Lazarus, he was in hell because he loved his money more than God.  Had he loved God, he would not have been able to ignore Lazarus. 
 
Jesus spoke more about hell than he did about love or heaven, and he did so for a reason.  He spoke so much about hell because he came, “…to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).  The reason why Jesus described the distance between the rich man in hell and Lazarus in heaven as a “great chasm” is because hell is the place where those are sent who, “will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power” (2 Thess. 1:9).  Jesus described the place the rich man went to immediately after he died in the following ways: A place of torture (Matt. 18:34), a place where the wicked are cut to pieces (Matt. 24:51), and a place of scourging (Luke 12:47-48), a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 8:12; 13:42; 24:51; Luke 13:20), and a place of outer darkness (Matt. 22:13; 25:30).   
 
Just as there is a new heaven and earth that is promised to the Christian, at the same time there will exist the lake of fire where the devil and his demons will be cast into forever.  The lake of fire is described as a place where, “...their worm will not die and their fire will not be extinguished; and they will be an abhorrence to all mankind” (Isa. 66:24b).  In Revelation 20:11-15 we are told of a second judgment that we all will face:
Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.... Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
 
There are only one of two outcomes every person will face the moment of death: eternal life with Jesus that will eventually include a physical resurrection and life on a new and resurrected earth, or eternal death apart from Jesus that will eventually result in eternity in the lake of fire.  Neither the lake of fire nor a resurrected life with Jesus on a new earth are temporary, but eternal. 
 
So, the question we need to answer is if it is true that every person who dies is in a better place? 
 
Jesus Is the Hope of a Better Place
There are scores of Bible passages we could have looked at today to discover whether it is true or not that all people eventually go to a better place after they die, but I thought we could settle on Revelation 1:12-18.  For me, this is one of the most hopeful and encouraging passages in all the Bible!  In verses 12-16, we are given certain details about Jesus to clue us into who He really is.  There is a lot packed into these verses that we simply do not have the time to examine, but there are some things that I must show you in order to address the topic of this sermon.
 
Jesus is a Better High Priest
First, Jesus is a better priest. Every year, on the Day of Atonement, a high priest would go into the temple in Jerusalem to enter a place called the “Holies of Holies” to bring a sin offering into the presence of God on behalf of Israel.  The high priest would do it with a rope around him just in case he died, and his corpse had to be pulled out due to any sin not yet addressed in his own life before entering.  The High Priest wore a long robe and was fitted with a type of belt or sash that was laced with gold.  Once a year, every year, the High Priest would act as a representative and advocate for all of Israel. 
 
As you know, Jesus died on a cross as “the Lamb of God” for our sins; when John turned to see the voice that was speaking, He saw Jesus dressed as a High Priest because the sacrifice He made was sufficient to cover all our sins for all time, once and for all.  For this reason, Hebrews describes Jesus in the following way: “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things having come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made by hands, that is, not of this creation; and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all time, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:11-12).
 
Jesus is the Only Sufficient Savior
What follows in verses 14-17 are characteristics which reveal why Jesus is sufficient to redeem and save sinners such as us.  First, His hair is white like wool and as bright as snow because He is profoundly and divinely wise.  Yes, Jesus is fully man, but He is also fully God; Jesus is the Son and at the same time He is the ancient of Days with all the wisdom of eternity (see Dan. 7:9-14). Second, Jesus’ eyes were “like a flame of fire” which speak of His ability to see and know all things as God can only do.  Third, His feet were like burnished bronze to symbolize His omnipotent strength to judge the nations, crush Satan, and triumph over death as the author and giver of life.  Forth, Jesus holds the seven stars that serve as the seven messengers to the churches of which He holds in the palm of His hand; the point is that Jesus is also divinely sovereign.  Fifth, out of the mouth of the Savior comes a sharp two-edged sword symbolizing His right to Judge as King of kings and Lord of lords.  Sixth, the face of Jesus shines like a powerful sun because of His holiness, majesty, and absolute beauty as One worthy of our worship because He is God. 
 
Jesus is presented in Revelation 1:14-16 in the way that He is because of what Adam lost in the garden due to his sin and rebellion; Jesus is the only One qualified to redeem what was lost, for He is the second and greater Adam who is fully man and fully God in one Person.  Simply put, because of Adam’s sin, we are sinners under a curse that God alone is able to sufficiently and completely reverse; Jesus was qualified to do just that!
 
Jesus is the Great I AM
The One titled the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (Rev. 5:5), the Lord of Glory (1 Cor. 2:8), the Pioneer and Perfecter of our Faith (Heb. 12:1-2), and the King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev. 19:16), is “the first and the last.”   Where else have we seen that kind of language: “I am the first and the last”?  I will tell you!  We see it in a host of passages, but Isaiah 44:6 will suffice: “This is what the Lord says, He who is the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the Lord of armies: ‘I am the first and I am the last, and there is no God besides Me.’”  Because He is the “first and the last” He conquered death because, as the Living One, “...it was impossible for Him to be held in its power” (Acts 2:24).
 
When John saw Jesus, he fell at His feet like a dead man, but Jesus declared to him: “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore...” John had no reason to fear because Jesus stood as a greater High Priest on John’s behalf, He was the sufficient savior John spent a lifetime following, and Jesus was the only One qualified to pay the penalty for John’s sin by becoming a curse in his place.  John not only believed this, but trusted that Jesus was all that he needed, and that is why he had not need to fear.  
 
Conclusion
This Jesus is the “Almighty” and the “Alpha and Omega” (Rev. 1:8; 22:12-13).  He is the “Author of Life” (Acts 3:15).  He is the Bread from Heaven (John 6:32), the Bread of Life (John 6:35), and the Bright Morning Star (Rev. 22:16).  He is the Chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 5:4) and He is the Deliverer (Rom. 11:26).  He is the Good Shepherd of the 23rd Psalm (John 10:11).  He is the rightful Heir of All Things (Heb. 1:1-2).  Jesus is the Holy and Righteous One (Acts 3:14), the Horn of our Salvation (Luke 1:69), and the Great I Am (John 8:58-59).  He is the Light of the World (John 8:12), the Gate for the Sheep (John 10:7), the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25), and He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6)! 
 
If all who die eventually go to a better place when there exists a very real hell designed by God for the punishment of sinners, then why did Jesus who is the “first and the last” willingly take on flesh to become like us for the purpose of dying for us to redeem sinners like us? 
 
If some don’t go to a better place, but most “morally good” people do, then why did Jesus say in conclusion to His sermon on the mount: “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is narrow and the way is constricted that leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matt. 7:13-14). 
 
If religious people end up going to a better place, then why did Jesus warn us of the following possibility? “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; leave Me, you who practice lawlessness’” (Matt. 7:22-23).
 
If there is another way to a better place other than through and with Jesus, then why in the world did He so confidently and boldly declare the following:
“If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, this is the one who will save it. For what good does it do a person if he gains the whole world, but loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory and the glory of the Father and the holy angels.” (Luke 9:23-26)
 
There is a judgment we must all face.  The verdict from the moment of conception is this: “...all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23), and judgment for our guilt: “The wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our lord.”

“All Dogs Go to Heaven”

What I mean by the statement, “All dogs go to heaven”, is really a question I have been asked numerous times by both young and old: “Will my pet go to heaven when it dies?”  I want to do my best to answer that question, but I want you to know that my answer will also address a much broader question related to what God’s ultimate plan is for his creation.  We know what His plan is for humanity, but do you know if God’s plan of redemption includes animals? 
 
Let me begin by stating some things that could not be any clearer from the Bible and then we will dive into Psalm 8.  So, here is what I know beyond a shadow of a doubt:
The Bible assures us that God is the giver of every good thing (James 1:17); what this means is that God is not the taker of every good thing. When Nathan was five years old, we got him a kitten because we believed that he would enjoy having a cat.  You have given gifts to your children out of your love for them as well.  Here is what Jesus said about what we do for our children: “If you, despite being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him” (Matt. 7:10–11)!
 
God is so good that there is no room for improvement for Him to be better. I already mentioned James 1:17 but listen to what the verse actually states: “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.”  In Psalm 106, we are told to “give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy is everlasting” (v. 1). According to Psalm 145, God is “righteous in all His ways, and kind in all His works” (v. 17).  Because there is no room for improvement, God is not trying to get it right in the way He exercises His goodness.
 
However, we live in a reality where the curse of sin is inseparable from our human experience and sorrow and sighing are like the compounds that come out of the curse that suck the joy out of life.  You may even feel like Bruce from the movie Bruce Almighty in the way he described God: “God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and I'm the ant. He could fix my life in five minutes if He wanted to, but he'd rather tear off my feelers and watch me squirm.”
 
So, let’s walk through Psalm 8 together with the hope that there is enough in these verses to help us gain a fuller appreciation of what God is doing with this sin-cursed world. 
 
A Good God Created a Grand Creation
I love the way the Bible begins: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters” (Gen. 1:1–2). The earth was a “formless and desolate emptiness” until God spoke.  He did not speak out of any need, for He was perfectly content within the fellowship of Himself in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  God was not lonely or bored, nor was He obligated to speak and create.  No, God created because He wanted to, and He wanted to create because He was motivated by love. Out of love, God desired to share that which nothing else could top or compare, which was Himself.  God was motivated by love to share Himself with us. 
 
Our solar system is estimated to be about 12 trillion miles wide. The diameter of our sun is estimated to be 109 times the size of our earth, and if you were to drive from the Sun to Pluto, it would take an estimated 6,000 years to complete the trip.  If that were not enough, you should know that our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains thousands of solar systems like ours.  On our little planet, in our vast galaxy, lives just over 8 billion people.  The renown astronomer, Carl Sagan, died believing that there was no compelling evidence for the existence of a Judeo-Christian-Islamic God, and said of our earth and the universe: “If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space.” 
 
David, in Psalm 8, answers Carl Sagan’s question, and if only Sagan could have opened his eyes to see what David saw: “Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth, You who have displayed Your splendor above the heavens!”  If you are wondering if the universe is too big if life on earth is all there is, the answer is a resounding “NO!”  The universe is the size that it is because it is testifying to the majesty and splendor of the One who spoke all of it into existence. 
 
The God who spoke all things into existence out of the overflow of His love and goodness is not only knowable but created us with purpose! 
 
A Grand God Created Mankind in His Image with Purpose
There is only one creature of all the creatures created that was created in the image of God, and that creature is all of humanity.  On the sixth day, after God created the animal kingdom and everything else, He created Adam and Eve: “Then God said, “Let Us make mankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the livestock and over all the earth, and over every crawling thing that crawls on the earth” (Gen. 1:26). 
 
To Adam and Eve, God gave them the responsibility to manage His creation as His image bearers.  Humans were commissioned and commanded to care for creation and at the same time add to creation by filling the earth with humans like themselves.  We are not a part of the animal kingdom; we stand above the animal kingdom as stewards of what Almighty God created!  King David marveled over this magnificent reality in his psalm: “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place; what is man that You think of him, And a son of man that You are concerned about him” (Ps. 8:3–4)?  David does not stop there, for what he says in the following verses ought to be enough to answer what place your pet has in the universe: “You have him rule over the works of Your hands; You have put everything under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the animals of the field, The birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes through the paths of the seas” (vv. 6–8).
Adam and Eve were commanded to manage the Garden, to be fruitful and multiply, and not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  As you know, they ate the forbidden fruit from that one tree, and by eating the fruit they brought a curse upon God’s creation.  As a result, all of creation was cursed as the Scriptures testify: “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind, because all sinned...” (Rom. 5:12).
 
There is only one creature who bears the image of God, and that creature is mankind.  As image bearers of the living God, we were created to live forever.   There is a part of us that lives on after death known as our soul which is also referred to as our spirit (not to be confused with the Holy Spirit).[1]  Unlike the rest of creation, humans have a soul that only God is able to destroy.  So, when it comes to death, our soul lives on even after our body dies, but death for the Christian is not the end as we are assured from the Bible:
For we know that if our earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed, in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, since in fact after putting it on, we will not be found naked. For indeed, we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. (2 Cor. 5:1–4)
 
So, when your pet dies, there is no immaterial part of them that lives on because they do not bare the image of God and therefore do not have a soul.  What this means is that when your pet does eventually die, regardless of the behavior, there is no eternal punishment or eternal life waiting for them... they simply cease to exist.  The only creature that is born and lives in active rebellion towards God are humans.  Unlike the animal kingdom, sin is now a part of our nature.
 
A Good and Gracious God Has Provided Redemption Through a Second and Perfect Adam
Now, remember what I said at the beginning of my sermon: “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights...” (Jas. 1:17).  God is a good God who is the giver of every good thing, not the taker of every good thing!  After Adam and Eve sinned, they were promised a Descendant who would reverse the curse of sin.   A second and more perfect Adam was promised who would come to reverse the curse of sin: “For if by the offense of the one, death reigned through the one, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17). 
 
The second and more perfect Adam was also promised to David who wrote Psalm 8!  God assured David, “When your days are finished and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever” (2 Sam. 7:12–13).  What will this second and more perfect Adam do? According to Jeremiah 23:5-6, He will “reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land....”  Oh, and the Name by which the Son of David will also be called will be, “The Lord Our Righteousness.” 
 
In Isaiah we are promised that when He reigns as King, “He will judge between the nations, and will mediate for many peoples; and they will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning knives.  Nation will not lift up a sword against nation, and never again will they learn war” (Isa. 2:4).  The second Adam would, be born of a virgin as fully human and fully diving: “...a Son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”  When the second Adam comes to reign as King, His reign will bring the kind of peace only God is capable of restoring:
...the wolf will dwell with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the young lion and fattened steer will be together; and a little boy will lead them.  Also the cow and the bear will graze, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.... They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Isa. 11:6-7, 9)
 
When it was announced by the angels to the shepherds that the promised King was born, it was declared to them: “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11). Jesus, as the second and better Adam, humbled Himself by, “taking the form of a bond-servant and being born in the likeness of men.... He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross” (Phil. 2:7-8).  He was born to live the perfect life we could not live to die the death we all deserved.
 
There is only One who is qualified to reverse the curse of sin, and it was and is Jesus!  In Revelation 21:5, we are told that through His death and triumphant victory over death, that He is making all things new! This is what we all want and what all of creation is longing for!  We long for a day without the dark cloud of the curse of sin.  This is why Paul wrote,
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the eagerly awaiting creation waits for the revealing of the sons and daughters of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Rom. 8:18-21)
 
When Jesus entered into Jerusalem the week before He was to be crucified for the sins of mankind, the children in the temple area shouted something that irritated the chief priests and scribes.  As Jesus entered into Jerusalem, the children shouted: “Hosanna to the Son of David!” (see Matt. 21:15-16).  The chief priests and scribes said to Jesus, “Do you hear what these children are saying?”  What were the children saying?  They were celebrating the promised second Adam, the “righteous Branch of David”, and the One who is to be called “The Lord our Righteousness” (see Jer. 23:5-6).  Guess how Jesus answered the irritated religious leaders who were concerned about what the children were saying?  He answered them by quoting Psalm 8:2, here is what He said: “Yes. Have you never read [chief priests and scribes], ‘From the mouths of infants and nursing babies You have prepared praise for Yourself’?”
 
Do you realize what Jesus said to the chief priests and scribes? He was essentially saying that although Adam made a mess of creation through his sin in the Garden, there was a “Son of Man” who was made a little lower than the angels and God when He willingly took on human flesh to become fully human while remaining fully God at the same time!  Jesus did this for the purpose of redeeming mankind through His cross for our sins, and by doing so, made redemption possible for all creation, and this is the point of Psalm 5, “Yet You have made him a little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty!”  Do you hear Philippians 2 in Psalm 8?
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:8-11)
 
Now, against the backdrop of Philippians 2:8-11, listen what Psalm 8:7-8 promises: “You have him rule over the works of Your hands; You have put everything under his feet, All sheep and oxen, And also the animals of the field, The birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea, Whatever passes through the paths of the seas.”  All of creation, including your pets, are eagerly awaiting for the completion of our redemption because when it happens to us, creation will enjoy the good and faithful reign of the second Adam over them as well, and when He comes to do that, He will make all things new and it is what He will restore that all of creation is longing for:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among the people, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”
 
And He who sits on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” And He said, “Write, for these words are faithful and true.”
 
On the Day Revelation 21 becomes our reality, all that was lost, will be restored and it will be even better than the Eden the first Adam lost!  I am not sure if that means He will restore and make new your pet that was lost to the curse, but I do know that it will be better!  The glory we will be crowned with will be the glory of King Jesus when, “There will no longer be any curse...” (Rev. 22:3).  We will “obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away” (Isa. 51:11)!  The great hope of our future is not who is in office as our president, but the King who is coming to restore all that was lost through the first Adam.  Christian, because you belong to the second Adam, you can declare with David: “Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!”
 
[1] Soul and spirit are used synonymously in the Bible (e.g. Acts 7:54-60; Matt. 10:28).

"God Wants Me to Be Happy"

All people want to be happy.  I have spent a lot of time with people as a pastor, and the majority of couples and individuals who met with me over the years did so because they longed to be happy.  It is also true that the motivation for couples seeking marriage or divorce, the desire for a new job or the determination to quit a job, what led to substance abuse or a willingness to break an addiction is all the same: the desire to be happy. In fact, there have been people who claimed to be Christians who sought marriage, divorce, drugs, freedom from addiction, debt, and freedom from debt out of the belief that God wanted them to be happy.
 
How about you?  Do you believe God wants you to be happy?  Do you believe that the ends justify the means to achieve and experience the happiness you believe God wants for you?  Maybe you are asking any one of the following questions: 
“I am unhappy where I live, if I have the means to do so, can I move so that I can be happier?”
 
“I am tired of driving the same old car, should I buy a new one that will make me happier?”
 
“I feel unfulfilled where I work, can I look for a new job that will fill my day with a little more joy?”
 
“I feel ignored and taken for granted in my marriage, my spouse does not meet my needs, I am unhappy, our children are miserable because we are miserable...  something needs to change so that we can be happy.” 
 
So here is what I want to do with the time we have left.  I want to show you from the Bible three things:
God expects you to seek happiness.
God commands you to pursue your joy.
Finding your joy/happiness is possible.
 
By answering the above three questions, I hope that you will have a clear and biblical understanding as to whether God wants you to be happy. 
 
God Expects You to Seek Happiness (vv. 1-5)
Let me begin by stating that in Psalm 95 alone, the word joy is repeated three times in the first two verses: “sing for joy...”, “shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation”, “shout joyfully to Him in songs with instruments.”  But Psalm 95 is not the only place where such language is used; consider the language from the Bible:
“Delight yourself...” (Ps. 37:4)
“Rejoice...” (Phil. 4:4)
“Rejoice always...” (1 Thess. 5:16)
“Let us rejoice and be glad...” (Ps. 118:24)
 
But where is it that God expects us to find our joy?  Again, consider the same above verses:
“Delight yourself in the Lord...” (Ps. 37:4)
“Rejoice in the Lord always...” (Phil. 4:4)
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thess. 5:16-18)
“This is the day which the Lord has made, let’s us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Ps. 118:24)
 
Is our happiness only to be found in God?  What about verses like Ecclesiastes 9:9, does it not tell us to enjoy life while we have it? “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your futile life which He has given you under the sun, all the days of your futility; for this is your reward in life and in your work which you have labored under the sun.” Yes and no.  Consider the first two verses of Psalm 19 and what it says about creation: “The heavens tell of the glory of God; and their expanse declares the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.” The heavens are what God created, and like your wife whom you love, like the life you enjoy, and everything else... it all points to the glory of the Creator! 
 
The reason why Psalm 95 begins with these words: “Come, let’s sing for joy to the Lord, let’s shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.  Let’s come before His presence with a song of thanksgiving, let’s shout joyfully to Him in songs with instruments” is because He is the giver of all good things!  Why should we worship Yahweh?  Because Psalm 95:3-5 is true of only Him: “For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods, in whose hand are the depths of the earth, the peaks of the mountains are also His. The sea is His, for it was He who made it, and His hands formed the dry land.”  This is why, of the Ten Commandments, Jesus summed up the first four: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37; see also Deut. 6:5; Exod. 20:1-11). 
 
Listen, God expects us to seek our joy, but not ultimately in His good gifts but in the giver who gave those good gifts... namely God Himself.  In fact C.S. Lewis rightfully observed from reading his Bible that, “Joy is the serious business of heaven.”[1] 
 
God Commands You to Pursue Your Joy (vv. 6-7)
Psalm 95 begins with an imperative, which is a command: “Come, let’s sing for joy...”  Why does He command us to pursue our joy?  Because we exist for something greater than the good gifts of His creation.  We exist because of Him and for Him! The second imperative in Psalm 95 begins with verse 6, “Come, let’s worship and bow down, let’s kneel before the Lord our Maker.”  Why are we commanded to bow before God?  Because “He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand” (v. 7).
The command to pursue our joy is not that we find it in anything, but in the One who made all things.  He is God, and by definition there is nothing and no one that is greater than He is.  To look for or expect our happiness or joy to be primarily found in anything or anyone else will not only leave you empty and disappointed, but is to worship the gift over the Giver!  To worship the gift over the Giver is to expect from the gift the thing that only the Giver, God, can provide.   
 
C.S. Lewis wrote in his book, Reflections on the Psalms, something that I have found helpful, so I will share it with you:
“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with.
 
Do you hear what C.S. Lewis is saying?  We praise what we value and care about and our delight is not complete until our delight is expressed. If it is true, that there is no greater beauty, reality, or person than the God who created all that is beautiful and good, true worship cannot be experienced unless it is directed at Him.  This is why the Westminster Catechism is right to begin with these words: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”  But even on this point, C.S. Lewis made the following observation that helps us get a little closer to answering the question as to what kind of happiness God wants for us; here is what Lewis wrote: “The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. To fully enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”  John Piper took it one step further by swapping out the word “and” in the Westminster Catechism of Faith with the word “by”: “The chief end of man is to glorify God byenjoying Him forever.”
 
God does expect us to seek our happiness, and He does command us to pursue our joy, but a happiness and a joy that is rooted in Him.  If our happiness and joy is sought in anything other than God, it will not satisfy.  However, if the pursuit of our happiness and joy is sought in Him, there will be a joy and happiness that will be rooted in a contentment in Him. This is how and why James 1:2-3 is only true for those who find their joy in Jesus Christ: “Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
 
Finding Your Joy/Happiness is Possible (vv. 8-10)
So, does God want you to be happy?  Yes, He wants you to be happy in Him!  Does that mean that He wants you to leave your marriage because it does not make you happy?  No!  Does that mean you should leave your job because it does not make you happy?  No.  Does that mean you should get a new car because it does not make you happy? No, not necessarily.  Why?  Because your happiness and joy cannot ultimately be found in anything or anyone except the God who is your Maker.
When we come to Psalm 95:8, there is a shift from the command to find your joy in God to Israel’s rebellion while they were in the wilderness, and more specifically, the Psalm refers to something that happened in Exodus 17:1-7 not long after God saved Israel from Pharoh and his army by parting the Red Sea.  While in Egypt, Israel witnessed their God and Maker do mighty deeds that should have left little room to doubt His goodness and love for His people.  Even though they had no reason to doubt God’s faithfulness to them, they still struggled to believe His faithfulness to them, so they complained: “So the people quarreled with Moses and said, ‘Give us water so that we may drink” (Exod. 17:2)!  Moses’ response gives us a glimpse into 40 years of Israel in the wilderness: “Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 
 
Throughout Israel’s existence, they were known for complaining and faithlessness towards God.  Even after 40 years in the wilderness, God said of His people: “‘Be appalled at this, you heavens, And shudder, be very desolate,’ declares the Lord. ‘For My people have committed two evils: They have abandoned Me, the fountain of living waters, to carve out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that do not hold water’” (Jer. 2:12-13).  The great evil that Israel was guilty of was that She traded God for idols that could not satisfy.  Consider another example from Isaiah 55:1-3 when God invited His people to turn away from the things that could not satisfy what they really needed:
You there! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk Without money and without cost. “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. “Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, according to the faithful mercies shown to David.
 
So what happened in Exodus 17?  Moses immediately brought Israel’s complaint before God out of a fear that they might eventually stone him to death.  Moses asked, “What am I to do with this people?” (v. 4).  Listen to the way God responded to Israel’s lack of faith and sin: “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Pass before the people and take with you some of the elders of Israel; and take in your hand your staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb; and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’ And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel” (17:5-6).   In other words, God said to Moses: “Moses, take your staff that ought to be used to strike Israel for their sins, and take your rod and strike the rock I will be standing on so that Israel will not die of thirst.”
 
In 1 Corinthians 10:1-4, the apostle Paul said that the rock Moses struck was a picture and example of what God would do to satisfy the thirst of all who desire to be satisfied.  The rod of God’s judgment for our sin came down upon Jesus as the rock of our salvation!  Paul said of the rock Moses struck: “for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them; and the rock was Christ” (v. 4).  Now, listen to what Jesus said in John 7:37-38, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. The one who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”
 
Psalm 95 begins with these words: “Come, let’s sing for joy to the Lord, let’s shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation.”  Jesus is the “rock of our salvation”!  Again, Psalm 95 continues, “Come, let’s worship and bow down, let’s kneel before the Lord our Maker” (v. 6).  Of Jesus, the Bible testifies, “...for by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or rulers, or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him” (Col. 1:16).  Because the rod of God’s holy wrath came upon Jesus in our place, we are told:
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:8-11)
 
The Psalmist then reminds us that not only is God our Maker, but that He is our God, “and we are the people of His pasture and the sheep of His hand.  Today if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as on the day of Massah in the wilderness...” (v. 7).  Can you not hear the words of Jesus in Psalm 95:7, did He not say: “I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.... I am the good shepherd, and I know My own, and My own know Me.... And I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will listen to My voice; and they will become one flock, with one shepherd” (John 10:11, 14, 16).
 
Conclusion
Is joy and happiness possible for you?  The answer is Yes!  But it will not come from your car, through your job, or from any other person, but your Maker and the Great Shepherd of His sheep... namely Jesus!  If you are seeking your happiness and joy in anything other than Jesus, then C.S. Lewis’ words serve as a fitting conclusion to this sermon: “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
 
God wants you to be happy and He wants you to experience joy, but it is a happiness and a joy that can only be found in Him.  The joy and happiness that can only be found in God is the kind of joy and happiness that does not dissolve through suffering but sustains the sufferer because of the One from Whom true happiness and joy comes from.  Amen.
 
 
[1] C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (San Diego: Harvest, 1964), p. 93.

Where’s the Love?

The church in Ephesus was planted sometime around AD 52 by apostle Paul with the help of Aquila and Priscilla.  The book of Revelation was written by the Apostle John sometime in the mid 90s.  The church had existed in a very difficult city for many years; a city where Christians did not have rights, emperor worship was mandatory, and the economy was heavily dependent on the worship of Artemis. From the time the apostle brought the gospel to the city and the letter to Ephesus, written to the church and included in the book of Revelation, the challenges the church faced in Ephesus did not get easier.  Yet in its 40th year (relatively speaking), they were known for doing some really good things and what they were most known for was their doctrinal purity.
 
It would have been easy for any church present in a city like Ephesus to have fallen prey to the sin of the city had its doctrine not been rock solid.  The church was commended by Jesus for her doctrinal purity: “I know your deeds and your labor and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil people, and you have put those who call themselves apostles to the test, and they are not, and you found them to be false; and you have perseverance and have endured on account of My name, and have not become weary” (Rev. 2:2–3).  Jesus praised the Ephesian Church for not tolerating evil people, their ability to sniff out false apostles, and perseverance to hold the line doctrinally in a city that was utterly demonic.
 
It is only because their doctrine as a church was pure that they were able to persevere and stand against the onslaught of evil people, false apostles, and every other demonic force that threatened their congregation.  Sound doctrine is good theology, and good theology is known as orthodoxy.  As a church, we spent 46 weeks in Ephesians.  Throughout the epistle were encouraged to make sure that our doctrine is pure!  We are told in Ephesians 5:26 that Jesus is cleansing and purifying His people “through the washing of the water of the word.” We, the church of Jesus Christ, are being, “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone...” (2:20-22).  Sound doctrine cannot and must not be substituted by what others feel is less offensive and more agreeable.  
 
However, there was something that Jesus did have against the church in Ephesus, and it is a danger each of us face even today. 
 
Their Love Was Found Wanting
There was a lot of good the Ephesian Church was doing that was praised by Jesus, but the thing that threatened the church most in Ephesus was not the temple of Artemus, it was not the demonic idols and sorcery the city was known for, and it was not even the Roman Empire that saw Christianity as a threat.  The thing that threatened the church was from within, and it is what threatens us today. The church looked healthy on the outside, but there was a cancer that if left untreated could turn terminal, and it was the only antidote that keeps orthodoxy from becoming dead legalism. Listen again to Jesus’ loving but stern rebuke of this church: “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (v. 4).
 
Now, there are three questions you need to answer before you can be helped and encouraged by Revelation 2:1-7, and verse 4 is at the center of those three questions.  Here are the three questions that must be answered: 
“What is meant by ‘first love’”?
“Whose love abandoned who?”
“Who is it that was no longer loved?” The question is this, “What is the object of their love that they left?”
 
What is meant by “first love”?
If the Bible you are using is the NIV or ESV, then your translation reads, “...you have abandoned the love you had at first.”  But the KJV and NASB versions of the Bible translate the Greek in such a way to suggest that the Ephesian Christians have left their first love.  Is the love that has been abandoned a person or is it the depth and quality of love?  Well, one way you can answer that question is to see if there are any clues in the epistle to the Ephesians that help us understand what kind of love is being talked about here, and thankfully there are two clues given to us at the beginning and end of Paul’s letter to this church.  The first clue is found in Ephesians 1:15-16, “For this reason I too, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus which exists among you and your love for all the saints, do not cease giving thanks for you...”  The second clue is found in the very last verse in Ephesians: “Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with incorruptible love” (6:24). 
 
So what kind of love is it that has been abandoned?  I believe it is the quality of love they once had for another person or people.  This is why I believe the NLT version of the Bible offers the best translation of Revelation 2:4, “But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first!”
 
Whose Love Abandoned Who?
This is an easy question to answer.  The Ephesian church is who “left” their first love. What Paul thanked God for in Ephesians 1:15-16, they had lost.  Love is what keeps orthodoxy from becoming legalism.  Legalism is a perversion of orthopraxy (right living) that is devoid of mercy and grace.  You also need to understand that love for Jesus and His people with orthodoxy is also a deadly cancer that threatens the church. 
 
The Ephesian Church abandoned their first love, and I do not think that they did it intentionally. I believe it happened somewhere along their journey and participation in God’s mission that they did not even realize that it happened.  During my church planting years Sundays were always hard work just to make it happen.  We had to set up our platform, chairs, and equipment every single Sunday for years.  One particular Sunday, Seth wanted to go home with me so that he could play with his friends whose parents were helping me tear down.  When I was finished with what I had to do to wrap up, I headed home but it wasn’t long before I received a call from Julie (my administrative assistant at the time) who asked me if I had forgotten anything.  I immediately realized that I had forgotten my Bible to which she replied: “Yes, you did forget your Bible.  Did you forget anything else?”  At that moment, I realized I had forgotten Seth, who was about five at the time.  Somewhere along the way the passion and love for Jesus had been left behind while they held tight to their orthodoxy, but what they were left with was a legalism that threatened from within the church.
 
Who was no longer loved?
You probably already guessed by now the answer.  I believe it was their love for Jesus and His people.  When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was by a group of legalistic religious leaders, he answered: “And He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matt. 22:37–39).  Your love for God will create in you a love for people; you cannot claim to love God and at the same time refuse to love others.  Your vertical love for God will overflow into a love for others, this is especially true for those who Christ died for and are now His church (people).  If you are struggling to believe what I just said, then believe the apostle John who said, “If someone says, ‘I love God,” and yet he hates his brother or sister, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen’” (1 John 4:20).
 
I believe the Ephesian church, who was first known for their faith in Jesus and incorruptible love for Him was the catalyst that created in them a love for one another that they were known for in the early days of the church’s existence.  Their love infused faith in Jesus and their love for all the saints was the cocktail God used to push back evil and transform lives! 
 
What Revelation 2:1-4 teaches us is that Jesus wants our obedience, but He also wants our hearts!  In fact, if Jesus has you heart, He will have your obedience.    
 
The Way Back is Always Jesus
What about you dear Christian?  Have you lost your love for Jesus and His people?  Has your love for Him waned over the years?  Have you gotten sidetracked?  Think about the days when you first encountered Jesus and believed in Him. Remember the excitement of those days.  In many respects, it is very similar to any relationship where you experienced love.
 
If you are married, think back to the days when you first met your spouse.  Try to remember what you felt on your first date.  Can you recall the day you were engaged?  Revelation 2:1-7 reminds me of a funny little article titled, “The Seven Years of the Married Cold.” I am not sure who wrote it, but I first heard about in through a sermon Pastor Greg Laurie preached; here is how the article described the first seven years of marriage dealing with the common cold:
First year of marriage: “Sugar dumpling, I’m really worried about my baby girl. You’ve got a bad sniffle and there’s no telling about these things with all the strep going around. I’m putting you in the hospital this afternoon for a general checkup and a good rest. I know the food’s lousy, but I’ll be bringing your meals in from Rozzini’s. I already have it all arranged with the floor superintendent.”
 
Second year: “Listen darling, I don’t like the sound of that cough. I’ve called Doc Miller to rush over here. Now you go to bed like a good girl, just for Poppa.”
 
Third year: “Maybe you had better lie down, honey. Nothing like a little rest when you feel lousy. I’ll bring you some soup.”
 
Fourth year: “Now look, dear, be sensible. After you’ve fed the kids, and done the dishes, and washed the floor, you better lie down.”
 
Fifth year: “Why don’t you take a couple aspirin?”
 
Sixth year: “I wish you’d just gargle or something instead of sitting around barking like a seal all evening.”
 
Seventh year: “For Pete’s sake, stop sneezing! Are you trying to give me pneumonia?”
 
I am not sure what you may be feeling concerning your marriage, but my relationship with Jesus has also had its ups and downs.  The problem in all my 33 years since the day I entered into a relationship with Jesus was never with Jesus and always with me.  I was the one who found myself growing cold.  But when I first came to faith in Jesus, I could not get enough about Jesus, nor could I stop talking about Him.
 
Who is Jesus to you today?  Have you grown weary of spending time with Him? When you sing in church is it more about what you like about the song than it is about who we are singing about?  Do you find reading your Bible to be boring? Do you find being around His people to be irritating?  Is it possible that your problem is less about music, the church you attend, and your spiritual lethargy, and more about what you have forgotten and left behind? 
 
I don’t want you to feel worse about where you are at spiritually.  But if you are experiencing a loss of awe and wonder, if you are less grateful for the miracle of your salvation, if you are motivated by duty instead of delight for God, and if you feel pressure to perform, you have lost your first love just as the church in Ephesus did.  But here is the good news: it doesn’t have to be that way any longer! Listen to what Jesus said to the church in Ephesus and what He is saying to you: “Therefore, remember from where you have fallen, and repent, and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and I will remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent” (Rev. 2:5).
 
Here is what Jesus tells us we can do to get back to our first love: Rember where you have fallen, repent by recognizing what led you away from Jesus so that you do not do it again, and return to Jesus by serving and loving on His people. It is quite simple:
Remember the things you did that deepened your love for Jesus and His people.
Repent by beginning to do the things that fueled your love for Jesus and His people.
Return by finding ways to spend time with Jesus and ways you can serve with His people.

Freedom in the Desert

Men's Breakfast - January

Rejoicing in Suffering

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Rom 5:1-11 ESV)  
As we begin a new year, many of us are filled with hope and expectation. We set resolutions and goals in anticipation of making even more of the year ahead. However, we don’t really have control over the actual outcomes. Illness can beset us. We may experience the sudden loss of someone close to us. National or global events beyond our control can intrude upon our lives, affecting our businesses, jobs, or financial situations. On top of the uncertainty of life, we are constantly bombarded with stories of what could potentially go wrong. Will the stock market crash and take your retirement fund along with it? Will the economy enter a recession and cause my company or department to downsize? What if this country goes to war with that country? Now, the question that I want to address today is: how do we, as Christians, think about and address the uncertainty of this world and suffering when it happens to us and those close to us?
When contemplating this passage in Romans, I thought of a story and what it means to rejoice in suffering as a believer in the risen Messiah. This story is about a Chicago lawyer and businessman named Horatio Spafford. Now, Horatio had invested much of his wealth in real estate in the city.
Unfortunately, most of these properties, and thus much of his investment, were reduced to ash during the Great Fire of Chicago in 1871. The fallout from this loss and the work that he and other property owners in Chicago had to undertake to rebuild and restore would take years. The scale of this tragedy cannot be overstated. Over 17,000 buildings were destroyed, and more than 100,000 people (1/3 of Chicago’s population) were homeless. If this were not enough, the Spafford’s young son died of scarlet fever at the age of four not long after the fire.
A couple of years after the fire, Horatio decided to take his family on a trip to Europe to escape the constant work and stress of rebuilding. Who wouldn’t want to get away after all that had happened? He and his family were also going to meet up with and help the famous evangelist D.L. Moody, who was working on the continent at the time. However, some urgent business came up that needed his attention as the trip neared, so Horatio sent his wife and four daughters ahead of him.
One week after the ship set sail, it was violently struck in an accident by another boat at two in the morning. Because of how the ships collided, the vessel the Spafford family was on sank within 12 minutes. Of the 313 people on board, 226 perished. All four of Horatio’s daughters perished that night. His wife, Anna, was found unconscious, held up by floating debris. Nine days after the accident, Anna landed in Europe and sent a telegram. It read, “Saved alone. What shall I do?”
Upon receiving the message, Horatio booked the first passage he could find. However, this was during the 1800s, so this was far from a rapid process. One night, the captain called Horatio aside and informed him that they were currently sailing over the location where the ship carrying his family had sunk. As I contemplate this situation, I can’t help but ask myself how I would have responded. Would I be overcome by anguish or anger? Would I have broken down and wept or shouted out words of rage at God for allowing such a thing to happen? Instead of either of these things, Horatio returned to his cabin to attempt to try to sleep and felt a sense of comfort and hope overcome him. He wrote down these words, “It is well; the will of God be done.” These words would soon become his timeless hymn that resounds with so many gospel truths. The name of that hymn is “It Is Well with My Soul.”
It is worth reflecting on that there is a similar story in the Bible. Job, the man God Himself called blameless and upright, lost everything he owned in a single day. Additionally, his sons and daughters all died that very same day. Job responded to these events with the statement, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21). Notice the similarities? These are not words of quiet resignation or defeat. The LORD may give, and He may take away. In the words of Horatio, the will of God will be done. However, regardless of what happened to these two men, their response is instructive and encouraging beyond belief. Despite what comes, the believer can say, “Blessed be the name of the LORD,” and “It is well with my soul.”
Now, these stories may be inspiring, but you’d be right in asking, “How do I develop that kind of abiding faith and trust in God?” It is so easy to marvel at the faith of others. But the reality is that knowing the stories is not enough. These same types of tragedies, and many more besides, can happen in our lives. Thankfully, as in all things, God does not leave us alone. And I know this because the verses we are looking at today have been my anchor through the most challenging times in my life. They acted as my north star, the way that God guided me through trials and kept me traveling on the path that leads to Him. So, let’s dive in.
1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
            The chapter opens with the word, therefore. This means that what Paul, the apostle who wrote this letter, is about to say directly follows what he has already said. It is essential to keep this at the forefront of our minds as we read scripture; what is the context? Uncountable numbers of irresponsible teachings have come through taking verses out of context and misapplying them. So, let’s take a high-level view of what was said in the letter before our passage today. Paul was writing to the believers in Rome in anticipation of him traveling there, something he had long wanted to do. He wanted to accomplish several things. The letter to the Romans primarily concerns the gospel; Paul wanted to unify the church in Rome around the good news of Christ. Romans is a great place to start if you want a comprehensive understanding of the gospel message. Additionally, Paul wanted to prepare for the missionary journey he was planning to Spain; he wanted the Roman believers to help him on his way after he was able to visit them. Finally, Paul wanted to get in front of a growing division in the church between Jewish and Gentile believers. The focus for our study today aligns with the primary purpose for which Paul was writing: the good news of what Jesus has done. Or, as we more commonly call it, the gospel.
            Paul starts his letter by pointing to the grandeur of the universe as proof of God’s existence and that we can even learn some things about Him through creation. However, many, instead of worshiping the God who created everything, worshiped the things He made.
20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (Rom 1:20-25)
            Paul addressed this because pagan worship was the norm in the Roman Empire. It is important to note here that the people Paul is talking about were the ones who exchanged God for created things in nature. God allowed them to choose and gave them up to what they wanted. N.T. Wright perhaps sums up this concept best.
“You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship.” N.T. Wright
            This is a critical point that Paul made. It spoke directly to the heart of Roman culture and society. And it speaks directly to ours as well. The Romans, like the Greeks, worshipped a pantheon of gods who were very human in nature. They were spiteful, filled with lust, and sought their own pleasure above the good of others. Paul was saying that if you venerate that type of activity, you will act the same way. Now, consider our culture today; we may not wrap it up in religious language and ritual, but it is the same. Think about the lyrics of many of the most popular songs today. Consider the lives and actions of celebrities and others that our society lifts up and puts on a pedestal. Reflect on how often we are told in advertising by the rich, powerful, and famous how if we only buy this item or consume this service, we will be as happy and fulfilled as they are, or supposedly are. Think about how society as a whole treats marriage as trivial or that it is entirely ok to objectify other human beings, especially with what is deemed acceptable to view on the internet for our own pleasure.
Paul then addresses those who did know about the one true God, namely the Jewish nation. However, instead of commending them, Paul has a very different message. What he said was precisely what Jesus did. It doesn’t matter that you come from the line of Abraham or how well you know the Old Testament Law. God cares about and judges people based on what we actually do.
12 For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. (Rom 2:12-13)
            And if we stop for a minute and honestly look at our own lives, this is what we see. We know at our core that there is an absolute standard for good and evil. We know that saying one thing and then doing another is both hypocritical and wrong. We have all, myself included, done things that genuinely hurt other people, damaged relationships, and were contrary to what we know in the deepest parts of ouor being are good and right and holy. Paul quoted the Psalms to sum up this point.
10 “None is righteous, no, not one;11     no one understands;    no one seeks for God.12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;    no one does good,    not even one.” (Rom 3:10b-12)
            Now, this is a pretty bleak letter so far. This is not something that you read at the beginning of a year to feel all warm and fuzzy inside. We’re left with all of these questions that seem pretty important and rather urgent. What if there is a creator of the universe? Spoiler alert: there is. And what if He genuinely cares about right and wrong and how we treat each other? Another spoiler alert: He does. If we’ve all fallen short, and there are consequences for that, is there something that can be done to restore ourselves to God? And here is the best spoiler alert: There is. Paul tells us how this happens.
21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood (Rom 3:21-25a, NIV)
            And there it is, the gospel, the good news that Paul based his entire letter around. There is a God who created both us and the universe we live in. He is perfectly good and, therefore, has made a moral law that we all are to live by. However, all of us fall short and sin. This causes a separation between us and God. However, God did not see fit to leave us as we are. He sent Jesus to live the life we never could and die the death we deserved so that we could be reconciled to Him. This is the good news that Paul was proclaiming.
            So, we return to the opening verses of our passage today.
1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
            We now see what the “therefore” is there for. We were separated from God, but we can now be justified before him by faith. And because of this good news, that we have been justified by faith, certain things happen in the believer's life. First, we have peace with God. You see, it wasn’t that we were just separated from God. We were, in fact, working against Him and were enemies.
In another letter, Paul said, “21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation” (Col 1:21-22, NIV). We just wrapped up an extremely deep study of the book of Ephesians here at Meadowbrooke. Remember what we were told in that letter about the state we were in before being saved?
 
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Eph 2:1-3)
            When Paul says that we now have peace with God, he doesn’t mean that we have a tranquil state of mind or something like that. Instead, when we become followers of Jesus, we go from being against God or an enemy of God to having peace with Him. Remember what Paul said earlier in the letter. Nobody is righteous; nobody does good.
            But it doesn’t stop there. We aren’t just in some truce or ceasefire with God. What has happened is so much more glorious and incredible than that. We also, through Jesus, have obtained grace. Now, grace can be a mysterious-sounding religious word. All it means is that somebody has received unmerited or unearned favor. It means we don’t deserve the favor or good things God freely bestows on us. Remember, we all sin and fall short of the glory of God; we all were, by nature, children of wrath. The Greek word that is translated here as “access” literally means “to approach” or “to bring into.” We are brought into God’s grace and can actually have a personal relationship with Him. How much has changed because of what Jesus has done for us. We who were enemies not only have peace with God but also can draw near to Him and have a personal relationship with our Creator.
            Finally, we can rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And given what we have just read, there is so much to rejoice in. But again, there is something even more glorious behind these words. We rejoice not just in our newfound peace with God or our ability to be brought into His grace. We rejoice in the hope of something else. The word “hope” in our English language is quite weak. Typically, it means something like, “I hope this year is better than the last” or “I hope my team wins the Super Bowl this year.” It expresses the desire for something to be true, but with the realization that it may not turn out that way. However, the Greek word employed here means something more like “joyful and confident expectation.” Our hope is in something that we are confident and sure of. Tim Keller remarked on this passage that, “Christian hope is not a hopeful wish – it is a hope-filled certainty.”
            But what is it that we are hopeful for? If we were to poll random people about what they most hoped for or were most looking forward to regarding the promises of God, we would likely get a broad range of answers. Many would almost certainly revolve around seeing loved ones again or being eternally happy and without pain or suffering. However, notice what Paul says here. His focus is on the glory of God. More than his own happiness or desires, the reason for Paul’s rejoicing is in the hope of being in the presence of God’s glory.
John Murray remarked on this passage, “[Believers] are interested in the manifestation of the glory of God for its own sake. The glory of God is their chief end and they long for and hasten unto that day when with undimmed vision they will behold the glory of God in its fullest exhibition and vindication.”
            What this means is that the hope of the Christian is not in the hope of our wants, desires, and comfort. Instead, our hope is in being with and living within the glory of God. The focus is on God, not on us. John Piper put this better than anybody else I have heard.
He said, “The critical question for our generation—and for every generation— is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ were not there?” Paul’s answer would be a resounding no. What makes the restored heaven and earth what they will be is that we will finally be with God in all His infinite glory. Everything else pales in comparison to that. And any heaven without that is no real heaven at all.
            Now, Paul has covered a lot of ground in his letter so far. The people listening to this being read for the first time would have been on a real rollercoaster of a ride. First, they heard about this God who is powerful and mighty enough to create the entire universe in which we live. But then they heard that this God is also perfectly good and, therefore, has a moral law. They, just like all of us, broke that law. And they, just like us, broke it repeatedly. They heard about how this created a separation between humanity and God, a chasm we could not overcome ourselves. However, when everything seemed lost and without hope, they heard about how God, through Jesus, redeemed them, and they were now justified. This justification was not through anything they had done but what Jesus had done for them. They heard that they did not have to try to earn God’s merit, and in fact, they never could. They heard that what God really sought after was their hearts and faith in Him. Finally, because of that faith, the believer has peace with God, access to God’s grace, and the hope-filled certainty of witnessing God in His full glory one day. What an experience it must have been to be the first people to hear this letter being read. Can you imagine hearing this fantastic news?
Then, the church in Rome would have heard the words, “Not only that…” Wait! There is more!?! What more could there be after being told this fantastic news? I can only imagine sitting there and anticipating new promises and hopes the apostle was about to relay. Instead, the audience heard, “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings.” Wait… what? We rejoice in our suffering? Weren’t we talking about drawing close to God and witnessing His glory?
            But this is reality, isn’t it? When we decide to follow Jesus, all the hardships and suffering we’ve experienced don’t magically disappear. We still get sick. Our finances don’t magically improve; we all don’t suddenly receive private jets and mansions. We still lose loved ones, and we all certainly still experience getting older and all the wear and tear that comes from that.
            As I reflect upon this past year, the single word that comes most to mind is “difficult.” This was a challenging year for our church family, and we had to go through things, including church discipline and the termination of a staff person in a pastoral role. Individuals and families in our church have also been going through extremely difficult things. There have been cancer diagnoses, losses of family members, struggles with chronic illnesses, sudden visits to the ER, heart issues, urgent and completely unexpected surgeries, and many, many more things besides. Personally, this last year, especially the past six months, has, if I’m being completely honest, been extremely difficult. Due to an autoimmune disease, my health spiraled to a place I have not experienced in over a decade. This resulted in a 10-day stay in a hospital after losing 15% of my body weight and a substantial amount of internal bleeding. But, more importantly, it put a lot of strain on my marriage and meant I was less present as a father than I should be. The stark reality is that suffering is still a part of our lives. It has real impacts on us and those around us. But, as we’ll see, faith in Jesus is not about the cessation of pain and suffering but instead giving that suffering over to God in faith that He will use it for good.
            Paul lays out how this looks for us:
3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
            Notice here that Paul says we rejoice in our sufferings, not because of our sufferings. Paul does not say that suffering suddenly becomes pleasurable for us or trivially easy to endure. He does not say that God is giving us a way to prove ourselves to Him or earn His favor by persevering through hardship. Instead, we rejoice in our sufferings because of something we know. We know that suffering can produce something within us. That something is endurance. For most of my life, and by that, I mean since I was eight, I have participated in endurance sports. This has included distance running, cycling over 100 miles in a day over multiple mountain passes, and summiting 20,000 ft peaks. I bring this up because I have learned a lot about myself and quite a bit about endurance through these activities.
            The first is that endurance is not something magical you hope to have on the day of your event. It is something that you train for diligently. It may take months or even years in some cases to train your body and mind to accomplish the goal you have set before yourself. It is possible to train and not reach the goals you set. However, if you don’t train, the goals will forever remain out of reach. And the thing about training is that a substantial amount of suffering can be involved. Mile repeats hurt. Hill training on a bike can be painful. Interval sessions have left me draped over the handlebars of my indoor trainer like a rag doll. Watching cyclists or other endurance athletes achieve the incredible can be awe-inspiring, often making it look easy. However, it isn’t. What we witness when we watch world-class athletes is the outcome of a lifetime of training and preparation.
And I can tell you from experience, every day I’ve had where I’ve looked like this, cycling up mountain passes feeling in great shape and like I could tackle the biggest of obstacles, I’ve had many more days where I’ve looked a bit more like this.
The key here is that, like in athletics, in life, endurance is not something that happens automatically or magically. It is something that is produced. And often, the production of endurance happens through the crucible of suffering.
            But, unlike endurance training for sports, the type of endurance Paul talks about is not the end goal. It serves a greater purpose. You see, our character is also changing when we develop spiritual endurance. Now, this word in Greek doesn’t just mean something like, “He is a really good person and has good character.” Instead, it is about something proven, or something tested and found to be approved. An example of this can be seen in Paul’s letter to the Philippians concerning his protégé, Timothy.
22 But you know Timothy's proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel. (Phil 2:22)
            The phrase “proven worth” is the same word that is translated as character. And to some extent, we’ve all experienced this. If we have endured something before, when we have to endure it again, there is a confidence we didn’t have before. Or, thought of in a different way, if you had to go into battle with somebody, would you rather go with a special forces soldier who had been on multiple deployments or somebody who has never been through military training but plays their fair share of Tom Clancy video games? The choice is easy, right? What Paul is saying here is that when we go through suffering, endurance is produced. And when we endure our trials and tribulations, we are tested successfully or, as Paul says, our worth is proven.
            But Paul does not stop there. He says that this “testedness” produces something else: hope. And here we return to this idea of hope. Remember, this idea Paul is talking about can be best thought of as “a hope-filled certainty.” As we go through suffering, the endurance and character that result produces an ever-greater certainty that God is exactly who He has said He is and that His promises are sure. Paul then offers a proof of this. He states that hope will never put us to shame because God has given us the Holy Spirit, who dwells within us. In fact, the relationship between the believer and the Holy Spirit is so close that he has been poured into our hearts.
            I had mentioned earlier that these verses have been my anchor verses through suffering. That is not an understatement in any way. I had grown up in the church. In fact, I heard hymns and the words of the Bible before I was born. As I grew up, I did all the church things, camps, and confirmation; I even started participating in lay-level leadership roles in my church. If any of those things sound a bit foreign, it is because I grew up in the Episcopal tradition. Ultimately, instead of letting God into my heart and being the Lord of my entire life, I was going through the motions. Especially in college, my life looked no different than anybody else’s. Remember those verses from Ephesians about living in the passions of our flesh and carrying out the desires of the body and the mind? That was me. Until that is, God got ahold of my heart. A group of us in ROTC decided that we wanted to start getting serious about our faith and started going to church together. We formed our own Bible study and as a small community of college-aged believers, we began trying to figure out what it meant to be Jesus followers.
            To make a long story very short, one of the members of this group would ultimately become my wife. As we deepened in our faith together as a group, I was drawn to what God was doing in her life. However, two weeks after we started dating, I started noticing an immense amount of pain in my abdomen and, even more concerning, evidence of internal bleeding. I started losing weight at an alarming rate and was ultimately diagnosed with an autoimmune condition called ulcerative colitis. Effectively, my immune system goes into overdrive and starts attacking and causing ulcers and a crazy amount of inflammation in my large intestine. Unfortunately, I have a rather severe form of the disease that affects not just a part of the intestine, but the entire thing. As is common with autoimmune diseases, finding the therapy that worked for me took a long time. Because of the severity of my diagnosis, this ultimately led me to being hospitalized seven times in the first 18 months following the onset of my symptoms.
            In addition to the pain, frustration, and confusion over what was happening, other things also started falling apart. A military career was now no longer an option for me. Because of the impact the disease was having on my body, I was sleeping 12-16 hours a day and was unable to continue pursuing my master's program. What is more, because of how the insurance I had purchased through the university was structured, it did not cover costs from chronic illnesses beyond $20,000. But through it all, God was working on my heart and my mind. He was showing me things about himself that I would likely never have learned had it not been for this. He was teaching me that my future job was not what defined me. Who I am in Jesus is what defines me. He was teaching me that the highest goal in life is not academic or professional achievement (I’m a bit of an A-type personality and struggle with making my life about accomplishments). Instead, He showed me that following Him is the highest purpose in life.
            Now, perhaps the most incredible thing about this entire story is that Michaela stayed by my side throughout all of it. We had only recently started dating, but she was there for everything. I can still remember her voice as I was coming out of anesthesia after the scoping procedure that resulted in the diagnosis of the disease. I was insanely sick, my planned career was completely shattered, treatments weren’t working, and I had a sum of medical debt that was growing increasingly large. There were so many times when I felt absolutely lost and without hope. Yet, because of this community of people, especially Michaela, I was constantly reminded of God's goodness and how He works all things for the good of those who love Him, even if we don’t see it in the moment. The Bible was my source of refuge, reminding me of the eternal promises of God that transcend our momentary afflictions.
            Things ultimately improved for me, and through a lot of help from my doctors and a lot of prayer, my condition was able to be controlled. There were still some rough points, and I experienced the occasional flare-up, but things returned to normal. Michaela and I got married, we found a way to pay off the medical debt, and life seemed to be going just fine. But what I didn’t know at the time was that as I was going through all my medical issues and seeing Michaela’s character displayed, God was showing me what it means to stand beside somebody as they are suffering.
            About two years after we got married, Michaela started showing symptoms of something, but the doctors couldn’t figure out what it was. Finally, they had her stay on a heart monitor for an extended time, and the results were so concerning that the hospital in Laramie told us that we needed to come to the hospital here in Cheyenne because they were not prepared to deal with whatever the issue was. When Michaela arrived here, they took an Xray, and they found out that there was a mass about 12cm in diameter in her chest next to her heart. We were once again told that she needed to go to another hospital because the one here had no idea what was going on. However, this time, she had to travel via ambulance. We had come in the same vehicle, but as she was leaving in an ambulance, I followed in the car we brought over. It was such a good thing that it was the middle of the night because I was an absolute mess. If there had been any traffic whatsoever, I probably would have crashed. On that drive, I was confronted with an absolutely petrifying truth. There was nothing I could do for my wife but pray. I was helpless in the face of whatever it was that she had to face. I could not protect her, and I could not save her. And this was an earth-shattering realization for me. Of course, we all intellectually know that our time here is limited and that when it is time for us to leave this world, there is nothing we can do to stop it for ourselves or those we love. However, facing that reality directly is an entirely different notion. The radical realization that I had was that in this situation, she was entirely in the Lord’s hands. The even more radical realization I would only have reflecting later on, was that this is true every moment of every day. I just don’t live like it.
            To capture this idea in his book The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” This has been precisely my experience. The eternal truths that God exists, that we desperately need Him, and that He alone is sufficient for all our needs are sometimes most clearly heard when we are in our most desperate times of need.
            Upon arriving at the University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora, we learned that the mass was a tumor, and it was an advanced stage of lymphoma. The doctors recommended that she start an aggressive form of chemotherapy immediately. We didn’t have time to go home and talk about it. We didn’t have time to prepare in case the therapy made it difficult or impossible to have kids. It was almost as if everything had been put onto tracks, and we were just along for the ride. Now, soon after all of this happened a good friend of mine who has been a mentor in many ways to me came by and prayed with us. Her prayers included pleas for healing, comfort, and everything else we typically lift up to God during these types of events. However, she prayed something else as well. She prayed that our hearts and minds would be open to what God had to teach us during this time of trial. It literally felt like a physical switch turned in my head. Despite all that I had been through, and all God had done in my own heart during my battles with illness, I had not stopped to consider that God may have something to teach us here as well. And teach He did. I learned how incredibly strong of a woman He made when He created my wife. I learned that I am not sufficient for her; only Jesus is. I learned that life can be extraordinarily fleeting and what we consider normal and act like will go on forever can end in an instant.
            Michaela spent the following months going to Denver for a week of treatment every three weeks. I tagged along and slept on the pullout bed on the couch in her room. That was our lives for almost four months: two weeks at home and one in the hospital. When I had to travel for work, her mom took my place. Now, you may be wondering who the better caretaker in our relationship is when the other is undergoing adversity. The answer is Michaela. You may also be wondering who deals with suffering better. The answer is also Michaela.
            Ultimately, Michaela completed the chemo regimen and has been in full remission for almost 10 years. Despite not being able to make alternative preparations, we have two incredible boys who are miracles in the fullest sense of the word. It can be easy to praise God and extol His greatness when things work out the way we hope and pray they will. However, there will come a day when I and everybody else whom I love will draw in their last breath. And in those moments, God still deserves all the glory and all the praise. I want to relay one more story before I wrap up about one of those times.
            My stepmom’s father, my grandfather, or as we called him, Papou (that part of my family is Greek), had been extremely sick for a long time. He was born in Alexandria, Egypt. His wife, my Yaiyia, was a missionary in Kenya when he proposed to her in a letter. After starting their young family, they moved to Athens so he could pastor a church while they served as missionaries. When they moved back to the States, their home was always a place of love where all were welcome. Toward the end of his life, he was unable to care for or even feed himself and had to be placed in a home to receive the care he needed. As the end of his life was drawing ever closer, he came down with a severe infection that left him almost entirely incapacitated. One day, some of our dearest family friends were visiting him. As they prepared to leave, everybody gathered to pray, potentially for the last time, over this man who had lived his life faithfully for God. However, before anybody else had a chance to speak, this saint (by the way, if you are a follower of Jesus, you are a saint as well) who could not feed himself or even sit up started to pray. I was not there to hear these words, but they still reverberate in the deepest part of my being more than a decade later. “Our precious heavenly father,” he said, “we just can’t thank you enough. You have been so good to us.”
            That is the strength that a life lived in the service and love of God bestows upon a person. The Christian lives not in quiet resignation in the face of a world that can be so cruel and cause so much suffering. Instead, the Christian can raise a triumphant cry that in our weakness, the strength of the Lord will be made perfect, and that is enough. We can, as Job did, bless the name of the Lord, come whatever may. We see this in the letter to the Corinthians:
9 But he [God] said to me [Paul], “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor 12:9-11)
            This is why Paul ends this passage with a reiteration of the gospel message. Even though each of us who follow Jesus has the real experience of having the Holy Spirit residing within us, there also is an objective truth for all to see. Christ came and died for us while we were still sinners. And this point is even more important than the point that we are physically broken and endure sufferings in this world. That point is that we are spiritually broken and separated from God, desperately in need of a Savior. Reflect with me on these closing verses.
6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
            Jesus did not wait until we were perfect and had everything figured out before he came to die in our place. Instead, he came when we were still in sin, weak, and enemies of God. Unlike us, who so often act out of self-regard or do something because we view somebody as good and deserving, Jesus came to save us while we were still standing in complete opposition to God. This is the incredible news of the gospel. As much pain and suffering, as much physical brokenness that we may experience in this world, it is nothing compared to the spiritual sickness we suffer because of our separation from God. We all were far from God before coming to Christ, but he died in our place regardless and rose again, conquering death. We are justified, reconciled, and saved by what he did. And if you don’t know Jesus yet, all you must do is accept him as your Lord and Savior and begin walking with him.
            Before we leave, I wanted to review some of the things I have learned from other believers and scripture about how to endure times of suffering. None of this is groundbreaking, but it works.
Don’t wait until you are in suffering to prepare – If you wait until the morning of a marathon to train, it won’t go well for you. The same is true here. If you wait until the moment of your trial to prepare, you are too late.
Be in your Bible daily – The stories of those who suffer in scripture are incredibly instructive and helpful. The principles you will learn from this book will help you in your time of need. But I never would have had these verses constantly in my mind and nourishing my soul if I had not read them. God uses scripture to help His followers in their time of need.
Build relationships with fellow believers—When Michaela and I have experienced times of suffering, it is the people of God, the Church, who have helped us more than anybody else. I have experienced the benefit of having somebody just come sit with you. Recently, while I was in the hospital, several friends visited throughout my stay. Mostly, we talked about the goodness of God. It helped me raise my eyes above my situation and stay focused on my Lord and Savior.
Pray without ceasing – Pray for those who are going through trials. Ask others to pray for you as you endure suffering. The Church was designed so that each member could help one another. And as you pray, follow God’s Spirit in how you can help. If you feel drawn to visit somebody who is ailing, go. If you feel called to cook them a meal, do it.
Look for what God is trying to teach you – Until our dying breath, we are running our race. As believers, we are walking down that narrow path that leads to Jesus. That path can be difficult and filled with obstacles sometimes. But even in our worst suffering, God is faithful, and He works all things for the good of those who love Him. If you let Him, He will develop in you: endurance, character, and a hope which will never be put to shame. Even in our greatest trials, He is still so incredibly good.