SS Class Affliction

Okay, today we're going to talk about suffering in relationship to the Kingdom of God, and this could be misconstrued right off the bat. When we think of suffering, we have certain ideas of what we mean, and I'm going to be very specific in delineating what I'm talking about as we go through here, but I want to start with having you consider, I don't know how up on current theology and current practices of ministry you are, but in many, many places, there is more and more of this coming forth, and by this I mean the idea that the Christian life is meant to be a life of health, abundance, affluence, prosperity, blessing, all the things that make for the good life. And if you would do just a survey of what's being taught at most, quote, spirit-filled churches, and by that I mean just churches that are really teaching and preaching the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit, you would hear it. Basically I would have to say that what Fred even addressed this morning, to me, had the distinction that the Christian life is meant to be a life of blessing, and I would be the last person to dissuade you from believing that God wants to be generous with you, that he desires your best, and in fact, as we'll see through this, I think the fact that he desires your best is the very reason why I'm going to propose an alternative thesis to what most of us have heard recently about this idea of everything's got to be good. If you're right with God, everything is a life of happiness and joy, and if you're not happy and joyful, if you're not healthy and wealthy, then you're somewhat inferior to the other Christians who are healthy, wealthy, and happy, and I'm getting too poetic there, but there's this idea that the only way that you can truthfully be right on with God is to be right on with God in every way that the world would describe as being acceptable, healthy, wealthy, blessed, whatever. Now, we spoke, and by the way, lest I be misconstrued, we spoke initially in the first or second week on authority in the Kingdom of God, and I spoke that privilege is part of the Kingdom life. In other words, we have privilege before God. We can't ask God for those things on our hearts. We know that God wants to bless. We know that his desire for us is that we be provided with the things that we need, and I want to reiterate that I believe that most Christians today, I don't know about the cross-section represented here, but most Christians today, if we would take a cross-section of those who are Christians in the North Hills, most have no idea how abundant their spiritual privilege is, but there are some, and I would say a portion of you here today have been exposed to the teaching of the abundant life is the only good life that Christians could ever live. I suppose what has happened in those people is that the other side of the coin, suffering, sacrifice, self-discipline, these kind of things, weariness, pain, these kind of things have been either glossed over or pushed far enough down in the corner here that you don't really talk about them with any measure of acceptability, because if you're experiencing those things on any kind of an ongoing basis, sure, that's important, sure, all of us experience that one time or another, but if you go to your sister or brother in the Lord and they've been weary or if they've been in pain for a few weeks, then hey, you're not claiming the promises. You're a defeated Christian. You're losing. I'm sorry, that door is bothering me, but somebody did that. People keep walking by. So people down here, all of us go through the Little Valley now and then. I'm not talking about a day or even a week, but I'm talking about an ongoing experience of defeat. Now, I have heard, and I don't know if you have, people would raise the question, what brings more glory to God? Thank you. What glorifies God? And almost invariably, the quote faith teachers of the day would say, God is never glorified by an unhealthy person. Any of you have heard that? Okay, I've heard it a lot. How could God be glorified by somebody who's poor? How does that speak of a good father if a person is poor or oppressed or whatever, these kind of things? And the question I want to raise is, what does glorify God the most? To me, this is sort of an ultimate question in the kingdom of God. That's what we're really after, isn't it? If our life is to be glorifying to God and pleasing to Him, then that is an important question that we need to ask ourselves. Now, if you are not healthy, and if you are not wealthy, and all of those, that's a very general statement, as you understand, does that mean that you are automatically, if you're not, does that equal second-class citizenship in the kingdom of God? Many people believe that it does, and I'm going to raise a question about that today. I'm not proposing this as an answer, but as a possibility. Let's look and see what the Bible says about affliction. Turn to 2 Corinthians 4, verse 17 and 18. There are no outlines today, so you didn't miss that. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 17. Okay. Barron Davis, do you have it back there? Go ahead. Would you read it for us, please? All right. Thank you. For this slight momentary affliction, affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. Now, the word affliction, as it's used there for Paul, undoubtedly meant, if you read the context, which you should always do when somebody leads you to a verse, the context would mean basically Paul's persecutions and largely his physical hardships. And I'll tell you, if you ever think you haven't dropped physically, read some of the stuff that Paul endured. Over there in chapter 6, if you're in that, it's in the same page, with beatings, imprisonments, tumult, labors, watching, hunger. You just go through all kinds of things. Shipwrecks. He was robbed, stoned. And this just didn't happen to him one time. I think he had 40 lashes minus one, something like three or four times. And many people died from that 40 lashes minus one. But anyhow, he had all these afflictions. And this is what it meant to Paul. But I would say, as I look up the Greek word and what it basically means, it literally means anything that causes distress, pain, or pressure. That's what the word means. Anything that causes distress, pain, or pressure. Now, whereas maybe not a lot of you could identify with persecutions and physical hardships, you all look pretty happy and unbeaten. What about these things? How many of you experience pressure? How many of you experience different kinds of distress? That to me implies an internal knowing. Or perhaps a physical pain or a mental pain. I think we all can say that these are part and parcel of our lives. And for some of us, they are a primary experience in our lives. Now, in this, could we include such things as... Would sickness fall under those? Sure. Disease or sickness. What other things could fall under here? Distress, pain, or pressure. Just name a few off. Pardon? Depression. Heart worry. Financial failure or insecurity. Maybe it would have been a better word. That's probably a point of pressure, isn't it? Particularly to the men who feel responsible to provide other things. Schedules would be certainly a source of that, of pressure. But there's a lot of them. There's a lot of different things that we could see. I want to think about that. I think that's really true for me. Schedule is a real affliction. But affliction is these things and many others. Many others, and we could take the time to list them. And the question is today, what can come of affliction for us? Let's look at that verse again. For this slight momentary affliction, distress, pain, or pressure is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. I like the way those words flow together. It just sounds good, doesn't it? Eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. I'm one of those people who's old-fashioned enough to believe that heaven's going to be really worth waiting for. I'm just looking forward to that a great deal. And it's saying to us that affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory. The word in the King James is worketh, and here it's prepare. And the word in the Greek means literally, let's put it down here, prepare, literally means to create, to create for us an eternal weight of glory. And so what I want to suggest, that just possibly suffering, affliction, can, if properly received, not make us a second-class citizen in the kingdom of heaven, but rather make for us, create for us an eternal reward. And I'm going to talk about what that reward is. Now, suffering, then, does not necessarily make us inferior. Defeat in the eyes of the world, in other words, I should say defeat in the eyes of many Christians is the fact, for example, you prayed for healing and you weren't healed. And to some Christians, there's only one explanation for the fact that you weren't healed, and that is that something was still wrong. You didn't confess a sin, you didn't pray properly, you didn't have enough faith, you didn't anoint correctly, you didn't bind the spirits, you did something wrong, and therefore you're not healed. And I have wrestled with that, and I've heard so many people say, why aren't people healed? And to the point where the norm, then, for a lot of Christians today is to not even pray for healing. They've run away from it because they've seen it not happen the way they expected. Now, I don't believe that is to be the case. I believe we are to pray. But for those who aren't healed, for those who aren't financially free and laughing when they drive by Mellon Bank or whatever, for those who have depression and aren't able to escape from it, for those who are discouraged in their home situation, they don't have children who are responding to them or to the Lord, for all these things which seem to be areas of defeat, is it really that you are a second-class Christian, or could it be that this could be something that God would use for creating you an eternal way to go? Suffering, affliction, why? Okay, this is the second point. The first point was to ask this question, what mortifies God? The second point is, why would God, who is a good God, and we all affirm that, why would suffering be part of God's economy of doing things? I rushed this up that question? It could be easily tied into, why do Christians die in automobile accidents? That's maybe a corollary question. Why is a Christian baby, or a baby of a Christian parent, born with a birth defect? When there's all these pagan people, why aren't their babies born with a birth defect and our babies born healthy? These are all questions that relate. I would propose today, and maybe you've thought about this, and I'm sure many of you have, but do you realize that God is the supreme sufferer of the universe? That nobody suffers more than Almighty God. And that is a very difficult thing to understand. If you were God, would you make yourself suffer? Here is God, who can control everything, and yet God Almighty is the supreme sufferer. And why is that so? What do I mean by that? What expression of God would lead me to be able to say something like that? Yes, he gave this, in a very real sense, it's not really an overstatement, but to say that God gave his life for us. In the person of Jesus Christ, God experienced the ultimate suffering. We will never know the agony that the cross put God the Father through. Anyone who ever believed that God was really standing back at a distance from that whole situation, read the Bible carefully and see the things that happened, that all of creation went in upheaval at the time of the cross, that the temple curtain was torn in two as a symbol that God was overwhelmed by this. This was unbelievable to God to be able to give up the life of his only son. And those of you who have children, you know what your son or daughter means to you. And I think how much more God loved his own son. We are an outgrowth of that, and so we can see. And so I guess another question we could raise here, and I've got to avoid getting too far off track, but have you ever asked yourself, if you were God, would you have set it up in such a way that you had to give up your own son? I probably wouldn't have. I don't know. It seems like there should have been a better way, right? But the reason is that God wanted to give you and me, his creations, he wanted to give us an option. And an option required the option of failure, which really man, of course, stepped right into. And the fall of man occurred. And the fall of man was a result of sin. Sin requires redemption. Redemption requires atonement. Atonement, I always like to remember, means at one with God. And atonement requires suffering. And so ultimately, God knew before the universe began that there was going to be suffering. He knew that it was going to be part of his economy. Could God have chosen a way, way back here, that all of this could have been eliminated? The fall, the sin that precipitated that, the redemption process, the atonement? If he could have, I believe he would have. I don't believe he chose the poorest way to do things, would you think? And so consequently, he knew, way before we even were, there was going to be suffering. And the thing that is beyond me is, what is the basic principle of God's operation in life? How does God deal with us? What is the one word that characterizes God's personality more than any other? Love. Love. God is love. And I'm sure you've heard the Greek word agape, agape love. Love that gives of itself without regard to the recipient. That's agape love. Love which gives away regardless of what you do. Love that's not based upon response. And so what I'm saying is, this is the principle, this is the universal principle of all time. God's agape love. When we die, when this world is ended, God's going to operate his universe on what principle? His nature, agape love. And yet, even though this is true, somehow this got in there. Suffering got in there. And so I believe that it's not necessary to, bless you, not necessary to push suffering off the board because we don't understand it, but to accept it as part of a loving God's creative way of operating. And then, you see, then that opens the door to us to be able to handle our own sufferings. And I do hope to get to the point here where I can possibly offer a reason why we do suffer. Suffering then is part of the plan of God's agape love. Now, maybe you can see why already I should have now. I apologize again for that. But if you didn't get this, I'll be happy to go over it with you. All right? That was pointed, that was the why. That was the why of, why is there suffering? We suffer, basically, we can expect to suffer because God suffers. Look at 2 Timothy chapter 2, just in relationship to that. 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 12, different and different translations. King James says, if we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him. And in the RSV, it's if we, what? Endure with him. And again, the idea is endure tribulation, endure hardship, that we will reign with him. And so, the what, then, of our suffering is, and this is part of the why. The reason why I believe God allows some to suffer, in fact, he allows all to suffer, he allows some to suffer more than others, is that he, his desires, are bringing forth in us the same quality that's most characteristic of him, which is agape love. Agape love. And the thing that we so often fail to see is that we look at life in the moment, we look at life for the now, and we say, why is this, why do I have this toothache? God, I've been praying about this toothache, and you're not taking away the pain, you're not taking away any of it. My dentist can't see me for 8 weeks, because he's on vacation. Whatever, you know, you go on and on. And we just see the toothache. And it's so difficult for us to step back from that immediate situation and see what God sees, something that he might be bringing forth that's of much more value than just that immediate situation. Now, okay, let me see if I can get this on here. God's overall desire, remember what I said, I guess it was in one of the sermons, in August or September, what is the purpose of creation? Does anyone remember that? You can really lift me up. One person. Alright, what is God seeking to make of us? Alright, thank you. A bride for his church, a bride for his son, a bride for Jesus. That's what God wants to make, so that we can do what for all of eternity? Right, reign or rule with him. I don't know about you, but this sounds more exciting than worship somehow, doesn't it? I don't know why. And yet I think that reign and ruling and worship are all tied in together somehow. Someone said to me, I'm going to worship God forever. As much as I enjoy that, I guess I sometimes rather think I'm going to reign with God forever because that gives me that old power syndrome. I'll just call that kind of thing. But anyhow, this is what we're going to do. Now what is the overarching rule of the universal operation of things? What is the overall principle that God works by? Love. So we need to learn love in order to reign and rule with God. So what I'm saying is, agape love is what God is in the process of teaching us. He's teaching us how to grow in agape love. I believe that when we stand before God, it's not going to be, tell me about your family. It's not going to be, tell me about your mission or your crusade. It's not going to be how many people have you led to be. It's not going to be how much money have you given. Although all those things may be an expression of, his basic interest, his basic criterion is, where are you in relationship to agape love? Have you learned how to give of yourself without regard to the recipient? Have you learned how to give even though to you it may have cost a great deal? That's what God wants to build in us. That's what God is seeking, people who will grow in agape love. Okay, well, we'll get to this, okay? We'll get down to the very specifics. Now, if he is building agape love in us, that we might rule with him according to the principles of this universe, then the way that I'm suggesting that he does that is through affliction. It's through suffering. How many of you have had experience in your Christian life where you would say that you have grown more through a negative circumstance than a positive one? Well, that's not coincidental. The truth of the matter is when things are floating along and you're doing, quote, pretty well, you're not really doing that well because you're not really going very far. It's a paradox of the Christian life, I think, that we think that we need to be joyful in a superficial sense, because we do need to be joyful, but things need to be going well. Everyone needs to be happy, everyone needs to have all their needs met, and then we'll be happy. How many kids come into my office saying, and they list off the things that are wrong with them and their families and their boyfriends or school or whatever, and because of all those things, they're miserable. But yet, really, it's the same thing with them as it is with each of us, that God wants to use those pressures, distresses, and pains to build in them a God-made life. Through that affliction. One thing that I borrowed, which I think is really, really good, there is no, I'll write this down, there's no love, if you read 1 Corinthians 13, you'll see this is true, there's no love without self-giving, and there is no self-giving without pain. In other words, if we are giving away, if we are giving of ourselves, that entails a cost to us, whether it be time, money, kind, anything that we do to somebody else, that costs us something. Therefore, really, there is no love without some experience of suffering or affliction. It is part and parcel of our existence. Now, God then is using the things that come upon us, the afflictions, for the purpose of building love in us. And I want to say this, get this down, if you follow me this far, it's been a miracle, but if you have, if you have, the key to growing in a God-made life is our response to afflictions. That's the key. As we learn to receive, do you believe that God is in control? Do you believe that everything that happens to you is part of God's, is God overseeing your life? Or does Satan sneak up behind you sometimes and fool you, God? I just pulled old Tom Jones down last night, you didn't know about it, did you? It never happens, see? God never, the Bible says, he never slumbers nor sleeps. He's never caught unawares. So everything that's happening in your lives, God knows about, God has formed together to fit your plan. That's a real reason to praise God, that nothing happens to us that God is unaware of, that God has not allowed for a purpose. The grocery cart smashes into the side of your car. The neighbor who kicks your dog every time you run into the road. God knows about those things, those afflictions. And the more serious ones too, which we all need to deal with. And the key then is, do we receive these things, not as God looking to punish us for sin, but as a means by which God will allow us to grow, in response to that meaning of God's love, suffering as he suffered, that we might receive his goodness. And that is the key question. That's the question that we each have to deal with. Every situation that comes up, how do we receive it? From God? Or do we see it as something that has been imposed upon us from God? Okay. I saw a question. Right. I have a couple of things here too, that I put down as... Here are some other reasons for suffering, just in case you want... Suffering or affliction. One thing, it brings brokenness. What I mean by that is, it pulls us away from self. It decentralizes us. How many of you, when you're sick, you don't feel like doing anything? That happens to me. When I get sick, I don't want to do anything. I don't even want to read the Bible usually. I just want to stay away from everybody and everything for the most part. And God can use things like that to help us to see how in ourselves we're just really self-centered. Failure in your business, man, or lack of a good report in your attempts, whatever it might be, depending on what you're involved in. But when you fail as a person, when you experience some sort of affliction or stress, that leads you back to seeing that apart from God you can do nothing. It decentralizes you. That's one purpose of suffering. Another one is that suffering brings fruitfulness. I tie this with the whole idea of pruning. Remember John 15. Jesus said, He who I love... I don't know exactly how it goes, but it says that simply, if you're not producing fruit, that God is going to lock you up. And if you are producing fruit, and this is interesting, even if you are producing fruit, He's going to prune you. He's going to cut you back so that you produce more fruit. And so what that says to me is, we can experience afflictions as a means of pruning so that we might be more fruitful. Anyone have an illustration of that? Can you think of a situation in your life where, because you saw God do something in you, you were able to be more fruitful in your ministry? A situation like that? Where perhaps you experienced a failure, and then God used that to open doors for you to be much more productive, or much more loving, or whatever? I'm sure you would. I put you on the spot there, but I know I can think of a lot for myself. But the main one, really, is that God allows this suffering, and He might build in us His Acapella. It really should have been number one, but I'll put it down there just to remind you of what it is. Okay. Suffering builds character, character builds hope, and hope builds for us an eternal way of glory. That's Romans chapter 5, verse 3 through 5, by the way, if you want to look that up. That comes up now. Alright, I promised, I promised that we'd get down to the very nitty gritties of these things. God is building character in us. Number four here would be, where does this take place? How does it take place? Where and how? What is this? This is what He's trying to build in us. Why we suffer is because He suffered. And the question is, what glorifies God? We're going to answer that in closing. Okay, here we are. We have a situation. There are people here this morning, I know, who have situations that, in the human sense, are unexplainable. And I don't believe that anyone can really satisfactorily answer a question like Linda raised of, why would a baby be the instrument by which God would bring change in your life? Okay? I would suppose that all that I can offer there is the understanding that, as I recall reading in John this week, that this child is not born, or any situation where an innocent seems to be involved. We can accept it a lot more if we know we've been in fault and we've been in sin. But when an innocent is involved and we don't understand why, there's no simple answer in it. But I feel like the real solution is in this. I don't believe we can say why, but I believe God looks to see what. How are we going to respond? Are we going to respond to him and say, God, this I don't understand, this is not, this doesn't fit in to what I believed was good and right and so on. But I believe you about these things. I know your nature is such that you're working this to an eternal weight of glory for me and for mine. I like the thought, time is the best ability attorney. Time is the best ability attorney. And things which seem to be of such great relevance and importance to us now, in terms of the eternal scope of them, they are just almost wiped out. And so what to us would seem to be of such great importance, in the eyes of God, what's important is the eternal value. And so we have this choice. And I know, for example, in Linda's case, Linda and Paul, I would suppose that I'd be not going too far to say that this has created a tremendous difference in you. This has brought you infinitely closer to God than you were before. Now, we see it in terms of why God, but the question, I think, is more what is our response to being, not being able to figure God's ways out, but to know that he knows how you feel, because his son, an innocent. Other ones, other situations, though, that might relate to some of you more readily, I think that these afflictions and these kind of things happen, for example, in the home a great deal. Another, it doesn't have to be physical, it doesn't have to be financial. Let's give for a situation, there may be some of you here who know the person, a Christian woman, for example, who loves the Lord, but his husband has nothing to do with it, sees it as being irrelevant, unnecessary, sissified, and what have you. And this Christian woman has been laboring under this for 20 years. Now let's make it five years, make it more believable. For five years. And her friends come up and say, you haven't read 1 Peter 3, and you're supposed to change your husband by having a quiet demeanor and not wearing any jewelry. Another person comes up and says, you're not sharing with your husband, you're not witnessing to him. And she gets all these inputs, but somehow the husband hasn't changed. I believe that that is a form of affliction, that is a form of pressure, distress, and that her response to her husband's unreceptivity to the gospel and to Jesus Christ, her response is building up an internal way with the Lord. Another illustration would be a relationship with your boss, who seems to be this totally non-understanding of you and your ethical way of dealing with things as a Christian. He tells you to go out and work this deal around, move it on the side. You say, I can't do that. I recently sold a car, and the young fellow that I fell with, we negotiated the price and so forth, and at the end of the conversation he said, and when we go to transfer the title, we'll just tell him we only paid $500 for the car or whatever. And I said, no, I don't think that that's what I want to do. And he said, what are you talking about? It's just the state. I'm not taking any money from you. And I said, I know that, but that doesn't fit into my value system. It doesn't matter to me who you cheat, I'm not going to cheat you. He just thought that was crazy, and then he wanted to take it off the price of the car. I should have known I had value systems on that regard too. I'm moving. But you see, these kind of things will happen, and I'm talking about long-term things, more than I am just the daily ups and downs. Now, the only thing that I'm a little concerned about is that some of you could take, we could, we could take this whole thing and say, well, that means then that whatever happens to me, I just accept glibly and kind of go along, and if God changes it, fine, if he doesn't, fine, and I'll just accept whatever comes. And if there's something wrong, it's my fault. And I don't believe that this is what I'm trying to say. I'm saying that we press on for the best. We believe God. We take him at his word. And I think, I really believe that nine times out of ten, or ninety-nine out of a hundred, God honors his word very quickly, so that we see an immediate change of situation. But in the situations when he doesn't seem to be responding, then my question is, do we respond that the affliction would weigh up for us, agape lavi, eternal weight of glory, or do we respond in rebellion and defeat and say, God doesn't care, he has self-pity syndrome, why me? God really isn't doing miracles now. We get all these things. And in a sense, we lose an opportunity to grow, and the one character, the one quality that God ultimately designs. So don't do that. Don't just receive it, but allow it to become an instrument of blessing. There's a difference between an active acceptance and a passive one. I would agree. Well, okay, in light of what we said, the key is that we press on. I believe in how we continue to take the word, and as long as God enables us, his grace is what enables us to take the word anyhow. So we press on, and we believe the word, and we believe that God's desire for your son and for others who have similar problems of the same nature, that God will bring that about. But the question is, don't just stop believing that he's going to change the situation, but in the midst of it, you see, are you responding? God, you're in control, and we have cast ourselves upon you, and if you're doing that, what I'm saying is, it's so deeply personal, but what I'm saying is that all the while, God is laying up for you. He's teaching you this about the love, the love that when you are with him, with Jason and whatever else, that this is going to be a tremendous blessing. You will look back on this and say, thank you, God, for the tremendous blessing that you brought to us through this. The whole problem is getting our eyes off of right now, you see, and I know that that's why. Another situation. These are the first sounds of Amy Kay, recorded September 26, 1975. Amy. Amy. Amy. Amy. Amy. Amy. Amy. Part of the preceding were Amy Kay's cooing sounds made through hiccups and bubble blowing. Amy. Amy Kay with the hiccups. Back down here, Amy Kay crying. Amy. Amy. Amy. Amy. Amy. This is Daddy's day off, October the 20th, 1975, and Amy Kay's talking and laughing. Here's what she's going to say. Anything else, Amy Kay? What? What? What'd you say? Come on. What? Can you say anything else, little girl? You're looking at your hippo. Come on. What'd you say? What'd you say? Come on. You want to hold the microphone. You want to hold that. Keep talking. Come on. Keep talking. Keep talking. What? Now don't wail. No, don't wail. What? Okay. Okay. Okay. She's getting a little frustrated with Daddy's microphone. What'd you say? Huh? What'd you say? What? What you got to say for yourself? Go ahead. Okay. I don't want to get any young people upset about dentist chairs and so on, but that diversionary tactic is a good way of inflicting grief on you in one spot while he's got your attention somewhere else. And so this morning, if any of you have been suffering from a lack of victory in your outer man, in your emotion, your will, your flesh, your physical body, then let's read together a passage which I think gives us a very clear principle of how to be victorious in this area of life. Turn with me if you have your Bible. And, you know, Rich and I were talking the other day. We really encourage you to bring your Bibles this Sunday morn