How the Gospel Overcomes Our Suffering - Romans 8_18
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Summary
In this sermon, Pastor Ken teaches on the role of divine adoption in our identity and how it relates to our relationship with God's kingdom. God has given us a new family, a new home, and a new identity, but what does it mean to live in this new family?
Transcript
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What a blessing it is to preach through this passage of Scripture.
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This passage of Scripture is actually special to me as someone who has experienced a degree of suffering,
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which I will talk about a bit during my sermon.
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The text is Romans 8, 18. I couldn't even get to 19.
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And so we're going to be going through one verse of Scripture.
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It's typical that I would go through three to four, maybe even five passages or five
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verses of scripture, but today I'm only going to get through one.
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Last week, we closed out Paul's exhortation on the matter of divine adoption.
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Speaking to our identity, he reminded us that we should not be walking in our pre-adoptive
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We should not be walking in the flesh, but in the spirit.
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and he emphasized how our new father does not dominate us by fear or by sinfulness and lead us
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into wickedness, but rather we've been adopted into a family with a benevolent father who loves
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us, who we get to call Abba Father and who leads us into righteousness. But with adoption comes
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inheritance. And for the son or daughter of God, the inheritance is immense. It includes what I
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would say intangible assets like peace with God. It would include eternal life with God.
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And it would include glory. But it also includes tangible assets, which would be like our new
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resurrected bodies, a kingdom, and a new earth. But with adoption also comes association. So we have
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one part of adoption comes with inheritance. The other part of adoption comes with association.
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You become part of the family. You now bear the name Christian. And in a world system that
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abhors your father and murdered his only begotten son. You as an adopted child of this new family
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should not expect to live in this world system without some form of resistance.
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If they persecuted him, they should persecute you. Now you're going to notice that I keep saying the
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word world or the phrase world system and not just world. And I want to talk about that for a second.
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I do that because many Christians in the church today, they understand the scriptures like John
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12, 31 that says, now is the judgment of this world. Now will the ruler of this world be cast
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out. Or they'll look at scriptures like 2 Corinthians 4, 4 that says, in their case,
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the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers. Or Ephesians 2, 2 that says,
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that calls Satan the prince and the power of the air, or when Jesus in John 18, 36 says,
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my kingdom is not of this world. We need to understand the context of world
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Many Christians believe that Satan is the ruler of this world while Christ is the ruler of the
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next world. That is just flat false. That is incorrect. Satan is the ruler of this world
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system, of this worldly system, the fallenness of this world. Jesus does not receive his
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authority from this world system. So when Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world,
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he's saying my kingdom does not derive its authority from this world system of which
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he is speaking to Pilate. He's saying, no, my authority comes from the heavenly world,
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from a greater world, from the dominating world.
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The earth is God's. Psalm 24.1 says, the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.
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It is his earth. The great commission in Matthew 28, Jesus says, all authority has been given to me
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in heaven and on earth. So this world, this earth is the Lord's. It's not Satan's. He's not ruling
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this world. He's ruling this world system. All those that are fallen, all those who have not
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been regenerate. But I'll tell you what, the kingdom of Christ will overcome this world.
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Jesus even says the gates of hell will not prevail against his church, against his kingdom.
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So allow me to get back to my point where we're talking about association and we're
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We are now bearing the name, and this is context that we need for this discussion around the
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world, but our association with Christ is that we will be hated by this world system.
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You're not going to be hated by the kingdom, but you will be hated by the world.
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Jesus tells us in John 15, 18 through 20, it says,
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If the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you.
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If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own.
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But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world,
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Remember the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master.
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If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you, end quote.
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He closes in verse 23, a couple of verses later, he says, whoever hates me, hates my
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So truly, this is a prime example of what our culture might call ancestral hatred.
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It's a real version of that, a real form of ancestral hatred.
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John 3, 19 through 20 says, the light has come into the world and people loved the darkness
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rather than the light because their works were evil.
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For everyone who does wicked things hates the light
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and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed.
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And as children of light, they hate our presence.
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Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
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At some degree, you will be persecuted if you agree to live a godly life in Christ Jesus.
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Your very presence will threaten their love affair with sin.
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The man who says, no, I'm not going to put pronouns in my email.
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that is just one small example that your very presence will threaten their desire for selfishness
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and for sinfulness and for wickedness and for worldliness first Peter 4 12 through 13 says
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beloved do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though
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something strange were happening to you but rejoice insofar as you share in Christ's sufferings
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Acts 14, 21 through 22, lots of scripture today, guys.
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It says, when we heard the gospel preached in that city
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Do you have any resistance or are you a coward?
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We have many people in the church today that are so quiet.
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they do not want to ruffle feathers. They do not want to introduce righteousness into this world
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system. They're afraid. The way of Christ runs contrary to the world. Therefore, as the family
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of Christ, as sons and daughters of God, as children of light, as children who no longer
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have the spiritual DNA of this world system, but have the spiritual DNA of heaven, we should not
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expect a life of peace in this world. In fact, if you have a life of peace in this world, it's because
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you are either too quiet, you are either not saved, or you are sinning. A mark of the Christian life
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should be standing for righteousness. We live in this very strange era of Christian mediocrity.
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It is the reason we have the world that we have today. America used to be a wonderful
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Christian nation. You used to have, you used to be required to have a Christian confession
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of faith to serve in almost every portion of the government.
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Schools used to preach the Ten Commandments every single morning and preach the Word of
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But we have made small compromises of quietness over long periods of time.
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we should expect conflict with this world we should expect conflict with our flesh
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if you're saved you'll have conflict with your flesh
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unconverted people don't have conflict they love the world the world loves them they have no
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conviction over the sinfulness in their flesh because they do not see it as sin
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If you are living a life of peace, that's a very strange and opposite life that Christ lived.
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But as Christians, we should expect temptation from the enemy.
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We should expect hatred from our city and our unconverted neighbors.
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We should expect that life in this fallen state will be difficult at some degree.
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I'm not saying that we're masochists, that we go out there looking for fights and try to make our life difficult for Christ.
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I'm just saying live and live for Christ and see what happens.
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but to this sobering reality paul says to us in romans 8 18 that was my introduction by the way
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for i consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared
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with the glory that is to be revealed to us so first i want you to notice the statement of
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explanation in this first verse okay we are smart bible interpreters i say this often
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You should not be 10 years into your Christian faith and not know how to read your Bible well.
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You should understand every word because Jesus says that man should not live by bread alone,
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but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God.
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We should learn how to interpret and see words for what they are.
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It says, Paul is essentially saying in verse 17,
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and since we are his children, we are his heirs.
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In fact, together with Christ, we are heirs of God.
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And if we share his glory, we must also share his suffering.
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That's basically what's being said in verses 17.
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So the context in Christ is that we have a massive inheritance,
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and we share in God's glory. But we cannot expect to share in the family glory with also
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not sharing in the family suffering. You have a spiritual family. Unfortunately,
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we live in a time in America where church history has been absent. We just think that we're a leaf
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that's not a part of a tree, that all of a sudden we're just reinventing the way that the church
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should gather instead of looking at 2000 years of church history and go, how have they been doing
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this? If you look back at your spiritual family, you will see a people marked with a fight against
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the world. And Paul here has concluded that from the truth of the gospel, that those sufferings
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The persecution, the disease, the fallenness, the temptations,
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all of those things for our association with Christ and being a member of his family,
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they're not worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us in eternity.
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Now, as someone who has, again, experienced some degree of suffering,
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I have been chronically ill for going on five years, and I have also experienced my fair
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share of hatred from death threats to probably 10,000 people that have personally mocked
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I believe from that experience that a theology of suffering
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that you have a way to appropriately interpret them.
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does that make sense let me make a few points suffering is a result of sin
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now if you have not suffered you will suffer every one of us is going to die tragically every one of
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us is going to have some sort of disease that debilitates us we have a neighbor in our street
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who is dealing with dementia and she walks around and she's often lost and we pray for her and feel
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bad for her life riddles us because of sin with tragedy you will suffer it's coming for you
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miscarriages and stillborns and suicides and friends who pass away and adultery and divorces
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they are in everyone's future maybe not ours directly but a friend a family member
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Now, we already discussed how suffering and persecution is a result of sin
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because it's rooted in the hatred of the light.
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But I want to just briefly discuss on suffering as sickness and tragedy.
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Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, Adam,
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And so death spread to all men because all had sinned.
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Now sickness and tragedies or trials are a byproduct of sin.
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The world, including our bodies, do not function as they should.
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this is not a perfect world. And too often we resent suffering because we don't understand
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the gravity of sin. And I want you to pay attention to this for a second. We resent
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suffering because we don't understand the gravity of sin. And think about this for a second. Every
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Every time we complain, every time we complain about our suffering, we are essentially stating
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What you deserve is an immediate physical death and eternal hell.
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Our suffering must be viewed through the sobriety of our sin.
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we don't deserve this. How ridiculous. How ridiculous in the face of our sins against
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a holy God that we say we don't deserve dementia. We don't deserve
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the miscarriage. We don't deserve this suffering. No, we deserve far worse.
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by God's grace he allowed you to live for many years without dementia
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and he allowed you to have another three children
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when we can arrive here and only Christians can arrive here only a Christian can arrive at this
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understanding, then our sufferings become what? Well, if we understand that we don't deserve
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anything great, and actually we only deserve wrath, then our afflictions, our sufferings,
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they're going to be viewed as light consequences in light of what we deserve.
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In addition to that, our blessings become a reason for acclamations of praise.
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Do you wake up in the morning and go, praise God that I'm up?
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Do you drink a cup of water and say, oh, praise the Lord that you gave me good water to drink?
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Do you look at your children and your spouse and you go, oh, praise God for these things.
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Until you can get to that place, you will be a complainer.
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You will not experience the blessing of the Lord.
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Biblical self-awareness is the lens by which we must view life.
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for those who are called according to his purpose.
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having been predestined according to the purpose of him
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He works the structure and the design of the anthill together.
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He works together the pattern of flower petals together.
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He works every molecule in DNA and every asteroid and every star to the counsel of his will.
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John Piper said he would often sit and look at his sprite
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God is ordaining the order of every one of these bubbles
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of what these words are saying in the scriptures?
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without Christ suffering is merely a foretaste of hell
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if you're not a Christian and you suffer it's just an appetizer for what's to come
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but for the Christian suffering is preparation it's sanctification for heaven
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trials wean us from this world and woo us to heaven.
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not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings
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You see, pain, pain often brings people back to God.
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I don't know about you, but that is absolutely true.
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Being chronically ill, I will have seasons where I am absolutely chained to the bed.
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The seasons where I actually feel like I am an animal with so much desire, but I'm chained to a pole.
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and starting to feel like I was breaking free
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and so pain brings people back to god suffering removes our own desire for self-sufficiency
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it truly does and it puts our desire back on the mercy and need of god and trials may be used as
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discipline but for the christians suffering is never pointless and that's my central point here
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suffering is never pointless. Adoniram Judson, the great missionary, once wrote,
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if I had not felt certain that every trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy,
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I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings.
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Some of you will have a life of significant suffering.
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if you don't have a rich strong anchored understanding in the word of god on this
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matter. You will flounder. You will toil. Have you heard the phrase, the death throws
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as your body thrashes in death? That'll be your soul without this understanding
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of God's purpose in suffering. Number three, Christ is our comfort in suffering.
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2 Corinthians 1.5, it's one of those verses that I feel like I never knew was there
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until I read it this week. It says, for just as the sufferings of Christ
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are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.
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And this really gets to the heart of our text today. Paul says, when you weigh your suffering,
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against the weight of Christ there will be no deficit in Christ when you weigh
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the two together when you weigh your suffering against the weight of the
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comfort of Christ there will never be a deficit in Christ this applies to every
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trial every affliction every tragedy for the mother that dies at 36 with five
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children to the elderly couple who lost the son to the father who lost his job
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to the pastor that struggles with chronic illness
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that the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance,
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for I consider that the sufferings of this present time
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Now, this term present time, that should give you a lot of comfort, okay?
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Because our sufferings, while they are present, are not permanent.
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It's one of the most glorious passages of Scripture in the entire Bible.
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It says, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
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He will dwell with them and they will be his people.
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And God himself will be with them as their God.
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Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.
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That declaration of Christian eternity, it's so grand, it's so colossal, it's so glorious
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that it's not worthy to be compared to our temporal and carnal sufferings.
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Our glory, that is our wholeness, our completeness,
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is not worthy to be compared with our current fallenness.
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It's not worthy to compare the infinite with the finite.
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It's not worthy to compare the galaxies with the molecules.
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in the face of a new world, in the presence of your God will be so opulent that cancer will look
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small, that stillborns will look small, that dementia will look small, that martyrdom will
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look small. Now, this passage is not intended to just minimize our suffering. It's not intended
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to just minimize those things as if they're nothing. It's to assure us that our glorification
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will be so great that what looks enormous to us now
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Now, physically speaking, Paul does not say that knowing this truth
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He's not telling us that we should not mourn or we should not grieve
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Ultimately, this passage is intended to alter our perspective.
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Perspective alters the way that we view our circumstances.
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Perspective will make our suffering less difficult and correctly interpreted.
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Colossians 3.2 exhorts Christians on perspective.
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It says, set your minds on things that are above, not on the things that are on earth.
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The lesson is that we need to develop the spiritual discipline of having our feet on
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Our feet need to be in the world while our mind needs to be in the Bible.
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E.M. Bounds once wrote, quote, safety is in heaven.
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No loss is there to grieve and embitter it, end quote.
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an economy where the first is last and the last is first,
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and when losing your life for Christ is actually finding it,
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perspective. We need a heavenly perspective, the ability to shift our eyes from the carnal
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to the eternal. And you need to be able to do this at any given moment. It should be
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the best sermons are not preached from pulpits, but from sickbeds.
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You're telling me that my testimony is more powerful in a jail cell than it is on a beach?
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So a heavenly perspective, the ability to shift our eyes to the carnal, to the eternal.
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in the midst of suffering is an incredibly powerful tool for the Christian.
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I would say more than that, it's an incredibly powerful tool to the unconverted.
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Can you see the terminally ill 28-year-old mother singing
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The contrast, the counterintuitive nature, we don't know how to deal with that in the
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It rocks the pagan mind when we see people who have joy in trials.
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Wesley, when he thought he was saved, he thought that he was a Christian. He was an ordained
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minister in the Church of England. He was a missionary to the Americas. He went to Oxford
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to study theology, and he was lost. He was not yet born again. And on his way back, there was a storm
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on the sea. It was way back to England. And in that storm, the Moravians, which is a group
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of Christians that were on the boat, had a degree of peace that was supernatural. It
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was beyond his comprehension. He could not grasp how they were about to die, but yet
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they were at peace. And that shocked him. In fact, that was the very moment that he
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knew he was lost. And he went home, spent a significant amount of time in sorrow, until
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all of a sudden, he went to a Bible study of those same Moravian Christians, heard the
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gospel preached and was, as he said, altogether born again.
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Our trials, as difficult as they are, are some of the kingdom's most valuable assets.
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They are tools that not only train us for heaven, but they proclaim heaven to others.
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How you act in that terminal disease in your future will be very important for many people, for your children, for your family, for those that the Lord might bring to see joy in the midst of trials.
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Trials are means for us to share Christ's sufferings, but also to share Christ.
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It says, Jesus, the glory take, afflicted and oppressed, reviled and hated for thy sake.
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The blessing we receive, we all are seal set to.
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Now, Lord, we freeingly believe and own that thou art true.
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Faithful and good thou art, we taste the heavenly powers.
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The glorious earnest in our heart ensures the kingdom is ours.
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Exceeding glad we are, our ravished bosoms swell,
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with ecstasy too strong to bear, with joy unspeakable.
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through persecutions bold to thee our songs we raise thee in the furnace we behold thee in the
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fires we praise we know we now know the promise sufficiency is thy love to bear us through the
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storms below and land us safe above to suffer now is sweet for thou the strength has given
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and oh how infinitely great is our reward in heaven. We shall be surely there. The fight
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will soon be won. The cross we now bear with Jesus shall shift us and lift us to the throne.
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Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you, Lord, for
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giving us word in the scriptures to shift our perspective on suffering.
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Lord, that you have gifted us with an understanding and comprehension of how we might view suffering.
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Lord, that we not wallow in it, but that we find joy in it.
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Lord, we pray that you would help us to compare our sufferings not to the glory.
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Lord, that we would remember the heavenly world to come.
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this restored earth where we will dwell with you.
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that your spirit would remind us in the middle of the week.