WEBVTT

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 This being Good Friday, I've been thinking a lot today and reflecting on the state of

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 the world, and I've been thinking about the problem of suffering.

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 How do you explain suffering, like what we see in the world?

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 Especially now that we live in a world where we have instantaneous contact with tragedies

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 all around the globe.

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 The minute something happens, like the fire in the Notre Dame Cathedral or the fires

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 in the various other churches that received far less press over the past couple of weeks,

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 we know instantaneously when tragedy strikes.

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 And so we have to make sense of that somehow because we're human beings.

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 And all religions have to deal with the problem of suffering.

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 And honestly, after years and years and years, I've realized that no religion gives a fully

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 satisfactory explanation, including Christianity.

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 And it's been a struggle for me.

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 It's been one of the great sources of struggle in my own faith, is that the Christian faith

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 does not give a fully satisfactory explanation for the problem of suffering.

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 But that doesn't mean I've come to realize that the Christian gospel does not offer an answer

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 to suffering.

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 Because while it doesn't give us an explanation, I do believe it gives us something far more valuable

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 in that it offers us a solution to suffering.

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 I was reading today Isaiah 53, verses 4 and 5 say,

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 Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

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 Yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

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 But He was pierced for our transgressions.

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 He was crushed for our iniquities.

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 Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace.

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 And with His wounds, we are healed.

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 And that last line struck me deeply today.

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 That God's answer to our grief and suffering was to bear our grief and suffering.

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 To enter into it and take it upon Himself.

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 And so now, as we're gathered here for Good Friday, very appropriately, the cross is at the center of our focus.

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 And in a few minutes, we'll invite you to come forward and to venerate the cross, if you so desire.

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 To kneel before it, to touch it, even to kiss it.

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 To recognize and to give respect to God's answer to the problem of suffering and to reflect on what it cost Him.

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 Because as we do that, we realize that we are dealing with a God who loves us enough to take on pain and suffering in order to promise an end to pain and suffering.

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 And that verse which says, with His wounds we are healed, that's meant literally.

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 That's not poetry.

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 That's not a nice sentimental idea.

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 It literally means, with His wounds, we are healed.

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 And so what I want to say tonight is that this healing is available here and now.

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 Spiritual healing is available here and now.

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 All of the ways that we've been cut off from the source of life, from our Maker, all of the ways that we've rebelled against Him,

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 and the purposes for which He made us,

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 all of that, all of the wrongs that we've committed against one another,

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 all of that can be dealt with here and now in a moment.

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 You simply have to look to the cross and ask for forgiveness.

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 And that spiritual healing is yours.

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 There's also emotional and psychological healing that is available at the cross.

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 If you look at the next chapter in Isaiah, Isaiah 54, it says,

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 Sing, O barren one who did not bear.

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 Break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor.

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 You know, to be a barren woman in the ancient Near East was the epitome of shamefulness and failure and inadequacy.

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 It amounted almost to a death sentence because your children were everything.

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 They were your future.

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 They were your honor.

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 They were your glory.

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 They were your wealth.

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 They were everything.

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 So to be a barren woman was the most hopeless situation one could imagine in the ancient Near East.

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 And yet what this is saying is that because of the cross, because of the God who bore our suffering,

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 we receive something that is of such infinite value that even a barren woman in the ancient Near East,

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 when she receives this gift, will break forth into song.

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 Because this God has given us Himself.

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 And in Him, our family, our descendants will be as numerous as the stars.

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 So I don't know if you're anything like me, but around 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning,

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 that's the hardest time of my 24-hour day.

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 Because that's when I, for one reason or another, I wake up and everybody else is asleep,

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 and these voices begin to needle away at me.

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 And I have these things in my life, these things that I've done, these things that I've left undone,

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 that cause me tremendous shame.

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 And the voice of shame begins to speak to me as I lay there in a half-awake state.

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 And some days and some nights I feel tormented by those voices.

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 I felt so tormented sometimes that I will audibly say,

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 shut up.

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 And then my wife says, what?

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 And I say, not you.

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 And you realize that in the cross we have an answer for our shame.

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 We have an answer for our guilt.

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 We have an answer for our inadequacy.

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 And we can come before the cross.

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 And we can take those sources of shame and we can cast them on the cross.

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 And then we can walk away free from them.

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 And we never have to listen to those voices again.

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 There is social healing to be found at the cross.

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 I don't know if there is anyone in your life who has hurt you or wronged you.

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 People you have struggled to forgive.

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 People you have not forgiven.

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 Come to the cross.

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 Reflect on the price that God paid to forgive you.

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 Find not in yourself, but in the cross,

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 the strength to bear the suffering required to forgive those who have hurt you.

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 Because forgiveness does require us to suffer.

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 You can even find physical healing here.

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 I was reflecting on the Good Friday service and realizing, if anything, this is a healing service.

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 By His wounds we are healed.

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 And so come, if you have physical ailments, if your body is rebelling against you,

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 if the entropy of the fallen world is pulling at your soul,

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 come and ask God to heal you and restore you.

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 And the promise is this.

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 Either God will heal you,

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 or for a time, God will allow that thorn to remain in your flesh.

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 But one day we will all have new bodies.

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 And suffering and pain will be no more.

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 And so come to the cross.

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 Ask God to heal you.

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 And reflect on these words from Ed Shalito,

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 who endured the horror and the suffering of World War I,

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 and in the wake of all of that evil,

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 had to make sense of the question of suffering in his own heart.

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 And in his wrestling, he wrote this poem called Jesus of the Scars.

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 And I'll only read the final stanza.

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 The other gods were strong, but thou wast weak.

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 They rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne.

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 But to our wounds only God's wounds can speak.

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 And not a god has wounds, but thou alone.

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 Lord, we ask that as we come forward,

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 and we touch the wood of this cross,

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 as we focus our attention on the wood of this cross,

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 that this would be a way that you might draw us into the reality of the true cross of Christ.

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 And that as he stretched out his arms on the hardwood of that cross,

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 and as he opened his arms in a posture of embrace to a suffering world,

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 that as we come to this cross, we would come into his embrace.

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 And we would experience the healing and the wholeness that is only to be found there.

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 In your Son's name.

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 Amen.

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 Amen.

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 Amen.

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 Amen.

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 Amen.

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 Amen.