[0:00] The following message was given at a Sunday celebration at Trinity Grace Church in Athens.! For more information about Trinity Grace, please visit us at TrinityGraceAthens.com.
[0:10] I'm sure some of you, if not most of you, have heard a variation of this saying that goes like this. Nothing is certain in life except for death and taxes. Yes.
[0:25] Now, I'd surmise that Benjamin Franklin, who is credited with that quote, was simply trying to capture the sentiment behind what a lot of us feel about life. It's filled with uncertainty. There's a lot of uncertainties in life.
[0:40] Maybe you too have felt this way about your own life. And while it does seem that Mr. Franklin thought the only real certainties in this world were death and taxes, I'm going to propose just one more category for us to consider today.
[0:56] And that's the category of suffering. Human suffering. Because we live in a world that is marred by the devastating effects of sin, there is the certainty that at some point in our lives, all of us are going to face some varying degree of suffering.
[1:17] And while you might be currently in a season of suffering, or suffering might be right on the horizon for you, we have to confront suffering for what it is and for what it isn't.
[1:34] Let's start with what suffering isn't. Suffering is not biased. It's unbiased. It's not prejudiced. It doesn't discriminate based on color.
[1:46] With suffering, there are no racial disparities. It doesn't hold grudges. Because it doesn't come after certain people and jump over others, there's no one that's exempt from the reaches of suffering.
[2:01] Also, suffering, it has no political affiliation. It's not Republican. It's not Democrat. It's not libertarian or independent. And likewise, suffering doesn't operate according to our financial economy.
[2:17] It doesn't matter how rich you are. It doesn't matter how poor you are. There's no amount of money you can throw at suffering to exclude you from the grips of it.
[2:32] To get a bit more granular, you're not suffering when you're stuck waiting in a long line. And although it might feel like it in the moment, you're not suffering when you order a caramel macchiato from Starbucks and you get a vanilla latte instead.
[2:47] That is not suffering. So, what is suffering? Suffering, for some, might be learning from your physician that you've been diagnosed with cancer.
[3:02] For others, it might mean a close friend or a family member has stopped walking with the Lord. It might be suffering from depression or from some other mental illness that just seems to keep you down for long periods of time.
[3:24] Suffering could be a relationship that's been broken and severed by sin. It could be hearing from your spouse that they no longer want to be married to you.
[3:39] Or it could be the anxiety that seems to be ever mounting as you think about bills that need to be paid, yet there's no money to pay those bills. Suffering comes in many, many shapes and forms and sizes.
[3:56] And it hits us from many different directions. My friends, there's a universality to suffering that is pervasive in our world. It's all around us.
[4:10] And it also presents us with quite the dilemma. Nobody wants to go through suffering. Nobody wakes up in the morning and prays, Lord, please let me suffer for you today.
[4:25] It presents us with a dilemma because we live in a world that cringes at the S word. People don't want to think about suffering. This world is filled with people who will go to great lengths to avoid it.
[4:42] In our city, in Phoenix, there seems to be gyms popping up on every corner of the city almost every week. There are pharmacies. If you drive a quarter of a mile, there's a CVS, then a Walgreens, then another CVS, then another Walgreens.
[4:58] The healthcare industry, if you Google it, props up our economy like no other industry does. Why? Because people will go to great lengths to avoid suffering.
[5:13] The world's message on suffering is this. Run! Escape! Get away! And I think that each of us here are tempted to believe that message.
[5:28] But what does God say about suffering? Here's the big idea for us today. The big idea is this. If there's anything we walk out of those doors with, I pray that it's this.
[5:43] Suffering is never random, and it's powerful in the hands of a redeeming and comforting God. Suffering is never random, and it's powerful in the hands of a comforting and redeeming God.
[6:02] God's word, as we read it this morning, it will show us that suffering's not arbitrary. God uses our suffering to help us shed the veneer of self-reliance.
[6:14] God teaches us to stop pretending that you have it all together. So please, turn in your Bible with me to 2 Corinthians 1.
[6:31] We're going to begin reading at verse 3, and we'll read to verse 11. I hope I can address you as my friends this morning, because I'll do that repeatedly throughout the sermon.
[6:49] So my friends, this is God's word. Let's read it together. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
[7:25] For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. For afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation.
[7:41] And if we are comforted, it's for your comfort which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.
[7:53] Our hope for you is unshaken. For we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort. For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia.
[8:13] For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.
[8:25] God, we were so but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril and He will deliver us.
[8:42] On Him, we have set our hope that He will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.
[9:01] May God bless the preaching of His Word this morning. Here at the beginning of His letter to the Corinthians, Paul identifies himself as the author at the very beginning of the letter which is addressed to a church in a real place in Corinth.
[9:25] And then what he does is he transitions into what some commentators have called a benediction or a doxology in verses 3 through 7. What Paul does is instead of including what he typically uses which is a thanksgiving at the opening of this letter, Paul breaks out and prays.
[9:46] He does this in verse 3 when he writes, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then he acknowledges God as the Father of all mercies and God of all comfort.
[10:00] Paul, his MO is, if you read through the epistles, his MO is always beginning with God. That's his reference point. And he does that in this benediction.
[10:13] But he goes even a step further. What he does is he elaborates on exactly who God is to his people. God is our Father.
[10:27] God is our Father. That truth alone might resonate with some who grew up without a father.
[10:37] God is your Father. But he's not just any father. He's the Father who provides all comfort and all mercy.
[10:50] not just some comfort. Not just a little bit of comfort but all comfort and all mercy. Paul focuses his readers' attention on the very intentional care God wants to give to his people.
[11:07] Yet, there is a specific reason why Paul wants his readers to know, why he wants us to know that God is the God of comfort. comfort. To be comforted implies that there's something causing the need for comfort.
[11:23] And as we'll see, this cause for comfort is suffering. This theme of suffering is woven throughout this passage and throughout this letter and throughout much of Paul's ministry.
[11:38] Why does Paul include suffering as such a prominent theme? Well, he does give us one reason in verse 8 when he writes, for we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia.
[11:52] Paul wants his readers to know that there was a very real affliction. This is an abstract truth. This is not just Paul thinking and saying, well, you might face some suffering.
[12:08] There was a very real circumstance that led to Paul's suffering. suffering, which in turn led to the comfort that Paul received from God. Perhaps this is why Paul includes the word comfort some ten times in this passage.
[12:26] Paul wants his readers to know that God comforts the suffering saint. Paul knows this because he himself received God's comfort.
[12:37] Paul's message is that God is concerned with what ails us. he cares. He's not like many of us who when we see someone in their pain and their struggle, we might try to distance ourselves.
[12:53] What Paul is saying is God moves near to the sufferer because he's eager to care for us in our daily struggles.
[13:04] He cares for us in our suffering. suffering. He is an ever present help in our time of need. Though we do live in this broken and fallen world, God enters into our suffering and brings comfort to the sufferer.
[13:26] This question is for the potential sufferer here this morning. I'd like for you to consider this. Are you experiencing pain, anguish, hurt?
[13:43] Are you feeling weary from everything that life has thrown at you? God's eager to comfort you. God cares for you.
[13:57] He wants to give you comfort. That's his very disposition towards us. His character is that of a helper and of a comforter.
[14:09] This is exactly why he's given us his Holy Spirit, who the Bible refers to as our helper. And verses like John 14, 16. My friends, we can find ourselves at so many times in life in need of help.
[14:27] God to help us. And it's the heart of our comforting God to help us. And he does this by his Spirit.
[14:39] And whether you're in a season of suffering now, or if one is coming, we should all take a lesson from the Apostle Paul here, in this opening to the passage, in how he has crafted this message.
[14:54] Remember how I just mentioned that he begins with a doxology. He begins with praise. We should be more prone to praise God for his goodness, for him being our father, than we are prone to feel sorry for ourselves, for the circumstances we might face in our suffering.
[15:18] Praise should be our immediate response. something we should consider about this church in Corinth, is they did have some serious doubts over Paul.
[15:33] If you were to read 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians in their entirety, you would see a church that questioned Paul's ministry. There were doubts over Paul's lack of rhetorical ability and skill, but it is possible that the Corinthians had doubts over Paul's ministry, because it seemed that suffering followed Paul wherever he went.
[16:03] They questioned if this anointed man of God was truly anointed by God because he suffered so much. Which leads to our next point.
[16:15] Suffering equips us to comfort others. What Paul does is, rather than laying into the Corinthians with a scathing rebuke over their doubts, Paul, he takes time to remind them of the nature of our God.
[16:34] He's good and he loves us enough to provide us with comfort when we're hurting. But Paul, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, does have another message for the Corinthians, which may be an indirect response to their doubts.
[16:51] And that message is this. Comfort is coming through Paul to the Corinthians. God uses the means of his Holy Spirit to provide comfort to us directly, but he also uses his people to provide comfort to one another.
[17:10] Verse 4 reads, God who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
[17:25] Paul here is telling this dear church that the comfort he's received is meant to be paid forward or passed along to others. My friends, we're not comforted to just hoard up comfort for ourselves.
[17:42] We're not comforted just to be satisfied in our comfort. We're comforted to be conduits of comfort to others. Murray Harris in his commentary on 2 Corinthians aptly comments on this when he writes, the spiritual principle he or Paul is enunciating is that Christians experience of God's help consolation and encouragement in the midst of life's afflictions constantly qualifies and empowers them to communicate divine comfort to others who face troubles of any variety.
[18:33] To sum up what Mr. Harris is saying here, comforted is our suffering that qualifies us to speak comfort into the lives of others.
[18:46] You don't need a seminary degree. You don't need to be a biblical counselor and be certified to provide comfort to other people. Affliction and suffering and the empathy that these afford to the comforted sufferer, these are exactly what certify us as believers to provide comforting words to those who need to hear them.
[19:15] If you've ever suffered the loss of a loved one or if you've experienced God comfort you in unique ways, then you know exactly how to encourage someone who's going through a similar situation.
[19:28] you're equipped to provide comfort. I'm going to share a little story with you all and hopefully I don't break down in the middle of this one.
[19:41] In November of 2021, our little Piper Grace was born with a rare genetic skin condition and right after she was born, we had spent around 12 days in the NICU, in the neonatal intensive care unit with her and we didn't know what was wrong.
[20:02] The doctors, they didn't know either. We were at Phoenix Children's Hospital, which is actually one of five skin condition research centers in the country and they had trouble pinning down what this was.
[20:20] So it was in that moment all sorts of thoughts started to flood my brain. I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you're just thinking all kinds of things.
[20:32] Thoughts that ranged from not knowing if she was going to make it to wondering what would happen to my marriage if she didn't. I was fighting in those moments to just take another step forward.
[20:46] God. But like Ephesians 2 4 says, but God. He always seems to come through right when we need him, doesn't he?
[21:01] One of the pastors from our church in Arizona, Trey Richardson, he drove me to the NICU while Jess was back at the hospital that Piper was born at.
[21:15] And his counsel that day changed my perception on how to think about the gospel in hard moments. Because in church, maybe you grew up in church or maybe you've just walked in over the past couple of years.
[21:33] I don't know your story. But you hear that word thrown out a lot, the gospel. Being gospel centered. And when times are good, it's really hard to understand what that means.
[21:49] So what he did is he said something so simple yet profound that changed everything for me. And this is what he said. Frank, there are a lot of things we don't know right now.
[22:08] Let's focus on what we know. then he proceeded to remind me of the gospel. We serve a good and gracious God that did not spare his own son so that we that are in him can approach him and he gives us everything we need.
[22:32] It's this God who will take care of our little girl. Friends, I share this story not to draw attention to Piper, to my family or the hardship at that time, but to emphasize something greater, something bigger.
[22:51] And that's how God provided comfort and care. And we need each other in the body of Christ. We need our church family to speak words of life when it feels like we're at the brink of death.
[23:06] God will you! God will you walk through God's love. God will you need you to speak words of encouragement that you yourself have received at a time when things were so dark to help them walk through their suffering.
[23:28] As you share a testimony of how God has met you or you give a specific encouragement from God's word, God will use you to provide comfort to those who desperately, desperately, need it.
[23:44] As we move on in this passage, verse 5 shows us how Paul addresses suffering as being what we share abundantly in Christ.
[23:55] This leads to verse 3. Suffering enriches our intimacy with Christ. As Paul is writing these words, he himself is reminded of a truth that should devastate each and every one of us.
[24:13] The Holy Son of God. The perfect sinless Son, he suffered for sinners like you and me.
[24:26] His suffering led to his death. And it was his death that marked the first time in all of human history that a man did not deserve to die.
[24:36] he should have been the ones hanging on the tree. We should have been the ones experiencing the full wrath of God on our sin.
[24:53] But Christ in divine love, he hung in our place, the sinless, suffering substitute for wretched sinners.
[25:09] In just a few chapters, we find that wonderful verse wherein Paul writes, for our sake he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
[25:27] Here in our passage, what verse five should do is it should remind us of that great exchange that took place, that God crushed his son to make us sons and daughters of our God.
[25:47] We can never move too quickly from this truth. We can never just hop over it. This deserves a point on its own.
[25:58] It deserves a sermon on its own. Let's never ever think that we've arrived from the gospel. No matter how good life is for you at this moment, remember what Jesus has done for you, to make you his son, to make you God's daughter.
[26:21] We need to marvel at the grace of God that was shown to us in the suffering of his very own son. God, in his infinite care and his relentless goodness toward us, wants to reveal to us something in this text.
[26:42] There's a redemptive element that's to be found here. Paul writes, for as we share in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
[26:56] when we read truths like this, what we're intended to see is that as suffering was a reality for Jesus, it's a reality for everyone who serves the Lord Jesus.
[27:15] In his commentary on 2 Corinthians, Paul Barnett states, the apostles' sufferings listed in the letter should be seen as replicating the sufferings of Christ by, as it were, a principle of divine inevitability.
[27:35] That just means we're going to suffer. Just as the one who God sent suffered in and for a world alienated from God, so too the apostle of the sent one and, this is us, the community of the sent one experience the pain of rejection in that same world as they bear witness to Christ.
[28:03] In fact, it was this sent one, Jesus Christ, who told his disciples in John 16, 33, in the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world.
[28:16] those who suffer, or those who serve Jesus will suffer like Jesus did. We might not be crucified, we might not be killed, but if we're on mission with Jesus and we're spending ourselves for the sake of others, suffering will come your way.
[28:43] suffering is meant to produce something. This is the good news. Suffering leads to divine comfort and to deeper intimacy with Jesus.
[29:02] The saint who trusts in the substitutionary death of their Savior and who pursues godliness in this world, you will meet opposition, you will struggle, it will be hard, but we have a wonderful promise here in this text that God provides comfort.
[29:20] God gives us comfort and we will know God even better through our suffering. Point number four, suffering deepens our dependence on God.
[29:38] Verses six through seven, they reiterate how suffering plays this vital role in Paul's ministry to the Corinthians. In verse six, we read how Paul's suffering is for the comfort and salvation of the Corinthians.
[29:51] Notice something interesting. Paul doesn't promise them escape from their suffering. He doesn't promise that it's going to be removed. in times when we're entrenched in deep pain, we feel like it would be easier if God just took all of our hurt from us.
[30:12] But instead, there's a supplement to the promise that God would provide comfort, and it's this. He would also provide the Corinthians with patient endurance.
[30:24] Patient endurance while they suffer. What does this mean for us? Well, it just means God's going to sustain you in your suffering. He might not take it from you all the way.
[30:38] He might not remove every bit of hurt and pain from your life, but he'll see you through it. As you attempt to put one foot in front of the other, trying to make sense of the world around you, while you're in your suffering, God will be with you.
[31:00] He'll give you everything you need to patiently endure through your hardship. We see this in Psalm 34, 18, when the psalmist writes, the Lord is near to the broken hearted.
[31:13] He saves the crushed in spirit. God is near to you in your suffering. Even when it feels like he's distant, he is near to you.
[31:25] as we continue along in the text, verse 7 tells us that Paul had an unshaken hope for the Corinthians. They would share in the apostles' comfort.
[31:37] Paul, he wasn't like the other preachers that these Corinthians loved. They loved the rhetorical skill and the ability of some other of the guys that came to preach to them. No, Paul suffered for them.
[31:53] Friends, we never know when suffering is going to strike. We never know who's going to be the next in our congregation to suffer. But here's a point of application that I believe is here in this text.
[32:10] Your pastors are not exempt. As your pastors experience suffering in their own families or in their ministry, God's going to use what they go through for you.
[32:29] This might be through the loss of a loved one or the pain of having a child wander away from the faith. Whatever it is, their suffering is meant to bless you, to comfort you.
[32:45] What a glorious promise we have from the Lord. God never throws anything out. God never throws anything out.
[32:57] He uses every bit of suffering for his glorious purposes and for our joy in him. As I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon, verse 8, it gives the brief account of a very real situation that Paul experienced when he was in Asia.
[33:14] He writes that the suffering was so intense, we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.
[33:27] He was saying that he and his team were so weighed down by the affliction that they experienced that they couldn't keep going. So, this is the Apostle Paul saying this.
[33:39] When you can say of your suffering that it's caused you to despair of life, you know it's intense. And he goes on to say how it caused him to feel as if he had received a sentence of death from the Lord.
[33:55] Utterly burdened, despairing over life, and a sentence of death. death. These are statements people make when in the grips of intense suffering and pain.
[34:11] We don't know this specific affliction that Paul endured in Asia, but with statements like these, we know that it was intense.
[34:24] But by including the intensity of his suffering in verse 8, Paul, he's setting up the second half of verse 9, when he writes, but that was to make us rely, not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.
[34:46] I don't know if there are any carpenters here, any of you that are skilled in woodworking, I'm probably the least handy of anyone in this facility. If there is a competition after the church service to build a piece of furniture, mine would look terrible, and yeah, we'll just leave it there.
[35:08] But I do know this, you don't go to the furniture store and buy an unsanded tabletop, right?
[35:19] You wouldn't buy a chair that's going to give you splinters. I don't want to be having a meal and then grab my fork, spoon, or knife and get a splinter in my thumb.
[35:34] Well, like extra coarse sandpaper or a file that's meant to grind away edges and bumps, in the Lord's hands, suffering is a tool.
[35:46] It's a tool that's meant to fashion and strip away every ounce of self-reliance. Every bit of us that really is just splinters to our souls.
[36:03] Suffering shows us that a pull yourself up by the bootstraps mentality, it's not godly. If you're tempted to rely on your own strength, then you know how futile this is.
[36:18] When faced with your own suffering, you might be tempted, like I am, to run to any number of things to numb the effect of your suffering. This could include entertainment, binging the latest Netflix series, could be pouring yourself into your hobbies.
[36:38] So for me, that's mountain biking, golfing, doing all other sorts of things. Or it could be receiving counsel from people who aren't even Christian.
[36:52] It could be purchasing the latest self-help book that will teach you how to be a better person in three easy steps. Now I'm not trying to knock these things.
[37:03] They may offer a modicum of comfort or relief while you're in your suffering, but they're not going to bring about ultimate comfort and ultimate relief.
[37:14] As Christians, we need to rely on the Lord's strength in every season of life, especially when we're in our affliction. Of all people, the Apostle Paul shows us this Apostle par excellence, the Hebrew of all Hebrews.
[37:31] He had to learn this lesson. He had to learn that his suffering was meant to teach him to fully trust in the God who raises the dead. He learned the very same lesson the writer of Hebrews refers to when he writes, for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who've been trained by it.
[37:56] Suffering, our suffering like discipline, yields something to those who are trained by it, to those who submit to the tutelage of suffering, suffering yields resolute trust in God.
[38:14] This is the big idea Paul's getting at. The source of all our strength, the wellspring where we find all of our thirst satisfied.
[38:28] The very source of our comfort and hope while in suffering suffering is in the God who raises the dead. But what about before suffering comes?
[38:42] What do we do? When things are going well, you're getting promoted at work, the kids are behaving, marriage is great, everything's looking good in your life, what do you do?
[38:54] Because it's in these moments we need to have a theology of suffering in place. we need to know how to think, and what I mean by a theology of suffering is just how we think about God when we are suffering, when bad things happen.
[39:11] In verse 10, Paul elaborates on exactly what to expect from the God who raises the dead. He's dependable, can be trusted.
[39:26] He writes, what Paul does in verse 10 is he includes past, present, and future activities of deliverance that all come from the same place, the resurrecting power of God.
[39:43] Hope for deliverance is found only in the resurrection of the Lord. It should give us great hope, not merely from temporal deliverance, from trying circumstances, things, though he might be gracious and kind enough to grant us with.
[40:02] Our greatest hope, my friends, is in our ultimate deliverance from the pangs of death and eternal judgment. For those who are in Christ Jesus, this is the type of deliverance we can bank on.
[40:16] Then in verse 11, Paul summons the Corinthians to pray for him. this call to intercessory prayer is said to produce a blessing to Paul and those who are with Paul.
[40:32] When we hear that there are people in our church that are suffering, our first move should be to pray for them. As our pastor back home, Trey, the one who was with me in the NICU, what he always reminds me of is there's talking and there's praying.
[40:57] So let's pray. That's what should be our response. When we hear people are hurting, we should pray for them. Friends, God does not leave us to deal with suffering on our own.
[41:11] And we're given this powerful weapon to help us while in our suffering, and that is the weapon of prayer. Now to conclude, we have a lot to consider here.
[41:21] In just eight verses, Paul has given us a lot. Suffering, we've learned, plays an important role in the Christian life. It's all around us. Suffering helps us to know God's character.
[41:35] It provides us an opportunity to comfort others who are in their suffering. It enriches our intimacy with Christ, and it deepens our dependence upon God. But, you might be listening to this sermon.
[41:52] You might be thinking all this talk about suffering, affliction, pain, hurt. That sounds bleak. It sounds pessimistic. You might not be a Christian, and you're thinking to yourself right now, why would I want to serve a God who keeps us in our suffering?
[42:13] Who wouldn't remove my suffering from me? That's a valid question. It's one that theologians have searched to find answers for throughout the church age.
[42:29] Here's one thing I do know. If you feel burdened by suffering, Jesus can bear that burden for you. The innocent Son of God was crushed under the weight of your sins and my sins, and His death is the highest display of the good purposes of God, because it was by His death and resurrection that you can be made right with God.
[43:02] I implore you, if you're not a believer, believer, if this message sounds pessimistic to you, please, please talk with someone you came with.
[43:14] I'll be up front, talk with me, talk with Walt, Taylor, one of the pastors, talk with someone about what it means to follow Jesus Christ, because apart from Him, you will never know what it means to be eternally freed from suffering.
[43:32] If you are a believer, I do pray that this message helps you see the worth of having a theology of suffering in place before you enter into a season of suffering.
[43:46] We're all going to have affliction in Asia moments, like Paul did, where we're going to feel utterly burdened and we're going to be sent reeling in despair.
[43:58] And it's in times like these our faith will be challenged. I can't tell you the number of times my mind was flooded with doubts as we went through our affliction in Asia season.
[44:12] But just like Paul helped the Corinthians to understand that their suffering and the comfort God provides them with qualifies them to comfort others, Jesus' suffering and his refusal to sin while tempted uniquely qualified him to be the one who will comfort the hurting, heal the broken, and be near to the lonely.
[44:34] Donald McLeod brilliantly captures the heart of this when he writes, Jesus lived not in sublime detachment or in ascetic isolation, but with us as the fellow man of all men, crowded, busy, harassed, stressed, molested, molested, being bothered.
[45:01] No large estate gave him space, no financial capital guaranteed his daily bread, no personal staff protected him from interruptions, and no power or influence protected him from injustice.
[45:14] He saved us from alongside of us. This, my friends, this should be our theology of suffering. We know our Lord is acquainted with what it means to suffer, and he's with us.
[45:28] He's for us, working in us and through us in our suffering. So if you're tempted to run, run to Jesus instead. His arms are outstretched, his heart is for you, and he wants to help you.
[45:44] He wants to hold you while you're in your suffering. Horatio Spafford, he was a man who knew what it meant to suffer. He had a robust theology of suffering.
[45:57] He understood the sentiment of this passage when he wrote the hymn, It Is Well. If you don't know his story, after having lost their four-year-old son to scarlet fever, he decided that his wife and their four little girls should vacation to England back in 1871, and then he would follow them shortly after their journey to England.
[46:21] But he had some business matters to finish up at home, so he would follow them. Well, the boat his wife was on with their little girls was involved in a collision, and it sunk.
[46:37] And in the process, Spafford and his wife lost their four little girls. It's a tragic story. And in the aftermath of this tragedy, he wrote these words, when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul.
[47:09] Whether we are in a season of prosperity, a season of security, or a season of suffering, if you're a Christian, you know that it's well with your soul.
[47:26] Because in Jesus, we've been given eternal comfort for our soul's greatest need. But in this world, though Satan should buffet and trials should come, God provides comfort to the suffering saint.
[47:40] He redeems our suffering for his glorious purposes. You've been listening to a message at a Sunday celebration at Trinity Grace Church in Athens.
[47:53] For more information about Trinity Grace, please visit us at TrinityGraceAthens.com