Question 2
Does God love everyone (in the same way)?
Arnaud Weulassagou
Usually, the sermons at Eglise Connexion are based on a book of the Bible that we go through from beginning to end in order to follow the logic and understand what God reveals of Himself and of His will in that book. However, for the summer, we are taking a break from preaching through a book of the Bible for a series of messages that respond to questions that have been raised by several people. Last week, for example, the message was on suffering, and specifically as it relates with the providence and sovereignty of God.
Today, the question that we are going to cover is: “Does God love everyone… in the same way?”
When I found out that it was going to be me who was going to preach on the subject, it was the first part of the question that got my attention. “Does God Love everyone?” And I thought to myself: we’re going to devote a sermon to this? Of course God loves everyone!
But on closer examination, the question is not merely “Does God love everyone?” but “Does He love everyone in the same way?”. Expressed like that, it’s no longer the same question. Thus we need to look more deeply into the Bible to understand the answer that it gives to this question.
To respond to the question then, I propose that we approach the subject under three headings drawn from two different texts in the Bible.
Since the question “Does God love everybody?” is closely connected to His nature – what one does is a function of who they are – we will discuss first of all the character of God. More specifically, the fact that ‘God is Love’ (I) as we see in 1 John 4.7-8. Then taking as our text 1 Timothy 4.10 we will look at what the Bible teaches about the love of God for humanity in general (II); that will be the second part of the message. And finally from the same text, we will consider what the Bible teaches about the love that God reveals in a particular way toward believers (III).
I) God is Love
We read in 1 John 4.7-8 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because GOD IS LOVE.
Notice that the apostle does not say “God is loving” or “God is full of love”, but rather that “God is love.”
In the Bible, we find various passages which teach us about what are often called the attributes of God.
It is these passages that describe the character of God: WHO HE IS and WHAT HE IS IN HIMSELF.
For example, Psalm 145.17 says: “The LORD is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works.” We can conclude from this that it’s in the character of God to be righteous in a general sense. Justice is an attribute of God – God cannot be unjust.
We find still other passages in the Bible which reveal the attributes of God and what God is like: thus we see throughout the Bible that God is good, that He is generous, that He is faithful, that He is wise, etc.
But there is also a second category of attributes that speak not simply of His character or of His disposition, but of His essence, that is WHAT God IS. What He consists of, if I may.
So for example, in John 4.24, it is said by Jesus that “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” We understand from this passage that God is not made from flesh and blood as we are. God is not material; he cannot be touched or seen. He is Spirit.
As for those attributes which pertain to the character of God, we find plenty of other relevant passages. For example, we learn elsewhere that God is omnipresent (that there is nowhere in the universe where God is not), and that he is self-sufficient (he needs nothing outside of Himself to sustain Him – no food, no oxygen, etc.)
In short, we can divide the attributes of God into two categories: the first of which describes the way in which He acts, and the second which describes what He is in His essence.
The apostle John could have said “God is loving” from which we would understand that there is love in the way God acts. But he goes further than that: in his description of God he says “God is love.” In this passage from his letter he encourages believers to love one another. And to do so, he tells them that it is completely contradictory to love God without loving our neighbor, because love is part of who God is.
If someone asks “does God love?” (obviously concerning His creatures), the answer is that God is love. God cannot not love. It is in His being to love.
God is not just full of abundant love. He is love in its entirety.
We have to deal with people every day. We know that men are variable in their attitudes. We can be more loving some days than others, and we can be more or less loving depending on the person in front of us (whether it’s because the person is affectionate, or because of their education, or their social standing, etc.)
But the love of God is not dependent on the attitude adopted by a person. The love of God does not vary with circumstance. The love of God is who He is. He is love. His love is unwavering and unconditional.
Now that we’ve seen that God is love, that His love is infinite and unlimited, we come to the question “is this love manifested towards everyone in the same way? Does God love everyone equally?”
To answer this question, we’ll go to the text found in 1 Timothy 4.10, where we read: “For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.”
II) God’s general love for all people (1 Timothy 4.10)
The verse which we just read is the words of Paul in his first letter to Timothy, which we just finished studying.
In this portion of the letter, Paul exhorts Timothy to strive diligently to advance the work of God where he has been called. He reminds Timothy that in working for the gospel, he accomplishes God’s work of bringing men to salvation.
But it is interesting to note what Paul says in the last part of the verse: “because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.”
By this phrase of the apostle Paul, we are reminded that God is benevolently disposed towards all the men who he has created. In effect, the apostle Paul says:
- God the the Savior of all people.
How do we understand this phrase, “God is the savior of all people”?
The word savior, in the Bible, is of course often used in reference to the eternal salvation that God offers. He is therefore the savior in the sense that it is He who conceived and put into action the means by which we may be pardoned for our sins.
But the word savior can also have a broader meaning, in the sense of someone who looks after the needs of a person in distress. A savior in that sense can be understood as someone who comes to the aid of someone in need, aid without which they would not survive, or at least suffer some serious difficulty.
Thus God is the savior of everyone in the sense that God comes to the aid of all men. Everyone on earth benefits every day from the aid and the providence of God. Jesus reminds his disciples of this truth when He says in Matthew 5, verse 45, that God “… makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”
God is love, and in a sense, He acts lovingly towards everyone.
It is God who gives life to everyone, it’s God who sustains the breath of life.
It’s God who gives to men their families, their loved ones with whom they experience the pleasures of this life.
It’s God who gives to men their abilities, the enjoyment of their activities in work and in recreation.
God is love and everyone, every day, whether they recognize God or not, benefit from the love and the blessings of God.
It’s true that many people experience great suffering, because we live in a fallen world, deprived of the full presence of God. It remains no less true however that everyone created by God is loved by Him and enjoys His blessings.
So God is love, but it would be a distortion of the word of God and of God himself if we were to stop there.
As we have already seen in recounting the attributes of God, God is also just. As Lord of creation, He has fixed a day when He will judge all men in accordance with their acts.
As it says in Hebrews 9.27, “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment”
This implies that even though all men benefit from the love of God and from his blessings, for certain men this will not continue for all eternity but will end with their death. And after their death they will face the judgment of the same God who had given them all that they had in this life.
- God will judge all men.
God could be pictured a bit like a judge who in his personality and his character is loving and on good terms with all those around him. And one day he puts on his robes to render judgement and in front of him is someone he likes. If he is a good judge, he must and he will render justice regardless. A good judge must watch over the morality of the society; he must ensure that the innocent are not punished, nor the guilty left unpunished but are justly sentenced.
It is the same with God. All men benefit from his love and his generosity in everything that He gives them every day, but that we do not deserve. But there will come a day when, although he is a loving God he will also be the God who exercises final judgement, and who will give to all men that which they have deserved by their actions.
The Bible indicates that in this judgement, some men will be condemned. It says that all those who have benefitted from the blessings of God, even while rejecting God, who have not honored Him but rebelled against Him and His words will experience eternal punishment. They will be forever separated from the presence of God and all of the good things that He gives and from which they have benefitted, that is, everything.
In Luke chapter 16, the Lord tells the story of the man who finds himself in hell and who requests a drop of water. We understand from this that those who suffer eternal torment will not benefit from any of the good things that God has created, not even a drop of water.
Thus, even though God is love and all men benefit from His love and His blessings, for some men there will be a day that all this comes to an end.
But this will not be the case for those who have believed in Jesus. For this reason the apostle Paul says that God is “the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe”.
We understand here that believers, like all men, benefit from the love of God and His blessings. But they do so in a particular way.
The love of God is manifested towards believers in a special way.
III) The particular love of God for the believer (1 Timothy 4.10)
For those of us who are children of God, we recognize that being a child of God will not make us richer, we will not necessarily enjoy better health, we will not be more intelligent, etc. We experience the material blessings of God like everyone else, in the same sense in which God is the savior of all men.
But unlike that love which is exhibited towards all men, the love of God for the believer has several unique aspects:
- An eternal love
First of all, the love of God towards those who have placed their trust in Jesus is an eternal love which endures even after death.
As Paul writes in Romans 8.35: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” And in verses 38 and 39 he says: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
If we have placed our faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins, the blessings of God towards us will never come to an end, even after our death. But after death we will benefit from a better communion with God where we will be fully in His presence. We will see Jesus and know Him as He is.
- A deep and unconditional love
If we have placed our faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins, God loves us with an unfailing love.
We read in Isaiah 54.10: “For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you.”
Often as children of God, we can feel miserable when we have an attitude that is not pleasing to God, and we can even begin to doubt the love of God. If you are a child of God, ask yourself this question: can your sins move mountains? Can your failures cause the hills to tremble? Even if the mountains depart and the hills be removed, if you are a child of God, the love of God for you will never waver.
God loves us with an eternal and infinite love, and His love for us will never fade and will never come to an end.
God loves us as a man loves his only son, and He has given his only son for us.
We can understand that with the image of Abraham. He must have been a loving man, and he must have been a loving master with his servant, but he certainly didn’t love his servants as much as he loved his unique son Isaac. In the same way, God loves every people, but not with the same depth and passion that He has for His sons and daughters.
CONCLUSION
For believers: recognize that you are loved by God.
There are few things that can build up our faith like the knowledge of the love of God and to know that we are loved by God.
The apostle Paul said to the Ephesians in chapter 3 verses 18-19: I pray that you “may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Here, most of us are children of God, but on occasion we feel excluded [from this world] on account of our faith. In these times we need to be reminded of the love of God for us. The love of God in the communion we have with him far surpasses even ten thousand exclusions.
Think how a small child recovers when he sees again his parents from whom he’s been separated even for a short period.
Let us pray that we would know and experience the God’s love for us.
For those who are not believers: leave that which is temporary for that which is eternal.
God loves you, but that may not always remain true. The Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The life on this earth is transitory. We are deprived of the glory of God, though not completely. We benefit still from his love. The world will one day end, and afterwards, each man will know either total separation from God or eternal union with him in His love. Today you can put your trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and God will freely pardon all your sins for the sake of Jesus.
God is just, and He must judge men for their sins. But, as it is written in the gospel of John chapter 3 verse 16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Some might say “we are Calvinists, we believe in the sovereign grace of God, He will call whom He chooses.” Indeed, but the Lord Jesus has also given us the task of announcing his death and calling all men to repent from their sins and to put their trust in Him for the forgiveness of sin. And Jesus promises that “whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”
If this is not the case for you, I plead with you to be reconciled with God.
Amen.
Question 3
What Is A “Good Christian”?
(1 John 1.5-2.6)
Jason Procopio
We’re in the third week of our current series “Questions/Answers,” in which we’re simply answering the most common questions we’ve received in the church this year. Today’s question, like the others, is a kind of summary of a number of different questions we’ve gotten. The question seems like a simple question, but in reality it is deceptively complex: “What is a good Christian?”
I asked lots of different people this question over the last few weeks, and nearly everyone gave me one of two answers (worded more or less the same way). The first answer was, A good Christian is one who obeys God’s commands. The second was, A good Christian is one who trusts in Christ’s sacrifice for us. Both answers are at least partially true, but both answers are inadequate. To see why that is the case, we’re going to be looking in John’s first letter, starting at the end of chapter one and continuing through the beginning of chapter two. We’re actually going to see the text twice—we’ll look at it once, to get an idea simply of what John says; then we’ll take a step back and think about the question itself, and the typical answers we give to it; and lastly we’ll come back to the text to see if we can go deeper, to really get at the heart of what John says.
1) The Cycle of the Christian Life (1 John 1.5-2.6)
In our passage, John presents us with a picture of the Christian life, and as we’ll see, it’s not so much a linear process, as it is a cycle which repeats endlessly. 5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
So here’s the first thing: we are called to be honest about our own state. We are sinners—that is, we are all rebels against our king, desiring our own ways rather than his ways, desiring our own dreams rather than his will for us. This is nothing less than cosmic treason against the Creator and King of the universe. We are all guilty of this, and if we try to pretend otherwise, then we deceive ourselves, and we accuse God of lying: our guilt just keeps getting deeper. So the Christian’s first duty is to be honest about this, to admit and confess our sins before him. Next:
2.1: My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. John’s clear intention in writing his letter is that his readers might be able to obey God more faithfully. But John is not naïve. He knows that no matter how willful his readers may be, they are sinful people, and they will sin. So he calls us to trust in our advocate: But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
Jesus Christ is our propitiation. A “propitiation” is something which satisfies, or removes, wrath. I know most of you are probably Christians here today, but I can’t assume that everyone here is, or that everyone has heard these things before. So quickly: why was it necessary to remove God’s wrath? Why did God have wrath toward us in the first place? We know the Bible says that God is love—that verse is in this very letter (1 John 4.8)—so how can a God who is love pass judgment? It’s important to understand what God’s love drives him to do. We can cry for forgiveness all we want, but imagine your wife is murdered. Imagine your wife is raped. You will not be indifferent about that. You will be angry, and demand justice, not in spite of your love, but specifically because of your love. Love is not contrary to judgment; love demands judgment when wrong has been committed.
And this is our situation. We have all rebelled against God, we have rejected his glory, and his justice demands punishment—his wrath burns against our sin, and we deserve it. So Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became our substitute: he lived the perfect life we should have lived, and he suffered the death we deserved, in our place. He absorbed God’s wrath against us on the cross, and took it away: he is our propitiation. Jesus is also our advocate. He stands now before God, risen and alive and glorified, as proof that his sacrifice was sufficient to pay for our sins. So we are called to trust this. To believe that Christ’s sacrifice has appeased all of God’s wrath toward us, and that God is satisfied. Next, verse 3:
3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
Next, we are called to respond to the grace God has shown us by obeying his commands. We see what Christ has done for us; we place our faith in him; we grow to know him as our Savior; we grow to love him as our Savior; and if we know him, if we love him, we obey.
But of course, none of us will be able to do this perfectly, for none of us knows Christ as deeply as we should, and none of us loves him as completely as we should. We still sin; we still fall; we still need forgiveness, every day. So every day, what do we do? We go right back to the beginning: 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness… If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. We are honest about our sin, we confess it, we repent of it, and we trust in Christ, our advocate.
This is the Christian life, day in and day out. As Martin Luther said in the first of his 95 theses, “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said ‘Repent’, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.” It’s a cycle that never ends—there are no levels to Christianity, there is no promotion. All of life, from beginning to end, is this: confession, trust, and joyful obedience.
So we could say that a good Christian confesses his sin before this holy God; he trusts in Jesus Christ his advocate and substitute; and he responds to the grace God has shown him in joyful obedience to his commands. This is a surface-level answer, and as far as it goes, it’s a good one. But we shouldn’t stop there, because it is a surface-level answer; it’s missing something that’s there in the text, but that we have a harder time seeing; we’re wired that way. Most of us will zero in on one or another aspect of this text, and miss the point entirely. To help us see that, I’d like us to go back to our question.
2) Two Typical Answers
I mentioned earlier that there are typically two answers most of us give to this question. The first is, “A good Christian is one who obeys God’s commands.” This is true; but taken by itself, it could tend toward what we call “legalism”. Legalism is that mindset which imagines that our salvation or God’s love for us depends on the good things we do, or the extent to which we manage to obey him. No matter how well Christians know the gospel, nearly everyone struggles with this, because this is how things work in our world: if you work, you get paid. If you don’t work, you don’t get paid. A pure legalist would say, “God won’t love you if you don’t obey him well enough.” Now most of us would never actually say that, but on a functional level, most of us still think that way a good deal of the time. We beat ourselves up when we fail, imagining that God now feels the same way about us as we feel about ourselves; or we beat others up when they fail, looking down on them and imagining we could have done better.
The other typical answer to the question is, “A good Christian is one who trusts in Christ’s sacrifice for us.” This is a better answer; but again, taken by itself, it could lead us to another, equally dangerous mindset called “antinomianism.” Antinomianism assumes a right truth in a wrong way. The truth is that because Jesus Christ died for our sins, no failure on our part could ever separate us from God’s love. That’s wonderfully, gloriously true—he is our advocate and our propitiation. But some would think, “Okay, if nothing can separate us from his love, then his commandments are no longer necessary.” They assume that because Jesus fulfilled the wrath of God for us, the commandments we see in the New Testament are more suggestions than actual commandments; since we are saved once and for all, our obedience or disobedience don’t really make a difference. Again, almost no one would actually say this, but no matter how well you know the gospel, you probably struggle with this too. Have you ever really wanted to do something which was sinful? What happens? You’ll think, “But God will forgive me…” If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness…
For most of us, our lives are a constant pendulum swing from one extreme to the other. And when we see that, we assume that the right place to be is somewhere in the middle of the pendulum swing: if you tend more towards one, you need to swing a little more towards the other. If you tend be more legalistic in nature (if you think you need to earn God’s approval through doing good works), give yourself a little dose of antinomianism, an extra dose of grace; if you tend to be naturally antinomian, be a little more legalistic.
But here’s the thing: it never works this way. You can’t fight one problem with the other, because they both have the same root cause. Sinclair Ferguson calls legalism and antinomianism “nonidentical twins from the same womb.” Both legalism and antinomianism are born out of a lie, the lie that Satan told Adam and Eve in the garden, the lie which says that God isn’t really good, that he doesn’t really want us to be happy, so if we obey his commandments, “we’ll miss out and be miserable.”(1) The legalist doubts God’s grace and his love, and so lives under constant pressure to perform for him. The antinomian doubts that a loving God could ever require obedience from us, so he assumes God sent Jesus to obey those commandments for us, so that we would no longer have to.
The reason I bring this up is because these are not new tendencies. They were both present at the time John wrote these words, and although he never uses the words “legalist” or “antinomian,” in our text he is violently attacking both ideas: on the one hand, that our good works are necessary to win God’s approval, and on the other hand, that because God is loving, obedience to his commandments is not really necessary. But here’s what’s surprising: he doesn’t attack these ideas by talking about us; we Christians are not the focus of this text.
3) Knowing God
Let’s look at the text one more time. John constructs his letter in many parts, and these parts turn around each other like gears in a motor. And the central gear around which the others turn, the focal point of his thinking, is always God himself, manifested in Jesus Christ. This happens all throughout the letter, and rarely is it clearer than in our text.
2.1: My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. Jesus Christ is the central gear here, the focus around which the other two parts turn. Jesus is our propitiation—why? Because (1.5) God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. He is perfectly holy, perfectly good, perfectly righteous. But we are not holy; we have rebelled against God, and preferred our own sinful desires to his good will for us. 1.8: If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. So we stand condemned under God’s just wrath, and our only way out of this mess is a perfect, holy sacrifice. And because Jesus is that perfect sacrifice, because God has given us a propitiation and advocate, 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Jesus makes our confession possible: Forgiveness should not be possible, because it would not be just: under ordinary circumstances, God would have to punish our sins, because that is what we deserve. But Christ took our sins on himself, and God poured out his wrath on those sins, which is why he is not only faithful, but JUST, to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Christ makes our confession possible.
So on the one hand, Christ makes our forgiveness possible; Christ makes it possible for God to declare us righteous; Christ makes it possible for us to not be afraid when we come to God, because he’s there next to us, standing there as our advocate. And on the other hand, Christ also makes our obedience possible! It is knowing God, who he is and what he has done for us in Jesus, which drives us to obedience (2.3): 3 And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. You see how John phrases this? He doesn’t point to obedience to God’s commandments as a condition for God’s love for us, but rather as evidence of our love for him—obedience is not the cause, but the result of knowing God, and loving God, and abiding in God.
You’ll see this over and over again if you read John’s letter all the way through. It is an extremely practical letter, full of imperatives—do this, don’t do that, etc. But none of these imperatives comes without first giving us a statement of who God is for us and what he has done for us in Christ. And it is the same for all of the New Testament authors. They tell us to do a lot of things, absolutely, and those things are absolutely necessary as evidence of our faith; but we are always told to do these things because of him. God is good, and gracious, and loving: he showed us that supremely in Christ. And because we know that, because we know him, we are honest about our sins; because we know him, we trust in his sacrifice, given for us; because we know him, we obey his commandments.
Here’s the point. Nearly every sentence in the Bible is written to make us ask ourselves this question: Who IS this God? What kind of a God is this? What kind of God would do these things? What kind of a God goes to so much trouble to forgive sin? What kind of God would plan, from the beginning of time, to provide in himself a substitute and an advocate to defend people who hate and reject him? What kind of a God would take on himself the punishment his enemies deserve? would love people who would hate him? would be murdered by hands he created? would defend those who still deserve punishment, because he loves them? What kind of a God would demand something of his people, give them what he demands, then reward them for that which he gave them? What kind of a God would use a specific people group to show himself to the world, then fling the doors open to the rest of the world, redeeming for himself a global family from all nations and peoples, who will be his family forever? If God has proven that it is his express will to do things like this…then what must he be like?
Here’s why this is so important. How we FEEL about God will determine how we respond to him. If we feel that God is a harsh, overly demanding God who is simply waiting to pounce on the first sin he sees, thenwe will be afraid to confess our sins, and we will take on his commandments like a burden. But if we know, deep down in our gut, that God is a God who is this loving, this good, this gracious, who has given us all and who promises to keep on giving…how then will we see confession? Confession won’t be a trial to be feared, but a fountain of relief when we have made ourselves weary by our disobedience. If we really know and feel that God is like this, how will we view his commandments? They will be not a burden to inhibit our happiness, but a light shined on a twisted path, designed to show us how to be as happy as we could possibly be: how to know him more deeply, love him more fully, and abide in him more completely.
4) What is a “good Christian”?
So what is a good Christian? We could say, like we said earlier, that a good Christian is one who confesses his sin before this holy God; who trusts in Jesus Christ his advocate and substitute; and who responds to the grace God has shown him in joyful obedience to his commands. But while this answer is good as far as it goes, it is incomplete: it gives us the effect, but not the cause. No Christian brings any warrant to his salvation, before or after; our only merit before or after salvation is Christ alone. So being a “good Christian,” to be honest, has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with your God. A good Christian knows God to be loving and good, and so, for that reason, he responds to God in repentance and faith.
God is a God who forgives: he is faithful and just to forgive us. God is a God who saves: he has given us Jesus Christ, our propitiation and advocate. God is a God who guides us for our joy: he gives us commandments which we are always good, because he is good. So because we know that God forgives, we confess our sin before him. Because we know that God saves, we trust in the means of salvation he has given us, Jesus Christ alone. Because we know that God is good, and guides us for our joy, we joyfully obey his commands.
No matter who you are, whether you know Jesus or not, you are incapable of doing any of this on your own. You are incapable of seeing and knowing God like this on your own; and you are incapable of responding to Christ on your own. So I’d like to invite you to pray. You don’t have to (no one’s going to force you to do so), but if you want this, if you want to repent and believe, to know this God, to grow in your knowledge of God and to respond to him in a way which pleases him, I invite you to do that, to pray along with me and agree with me as I go.
Father, we feel ill-equipped to come to you, because as good as you are, we don’t see you as that good; as merciful as you are, we don’t understand your mercy; as kind as you are, we underestimate your kindness. Lord, we confess that we are sinners. We have rebelled against you. We have preferred our own desires to your perfect will for us; we have preferred our own lusts to the treasure you have offered us in Christ. Please forgive us, Father. We need a Savior.
Thank you for giving us this Savior in Jesus Christ. Thank you for pouring out your wrath on him instead of us. Thank you for accepting his sacrifice, for raising him from the dead. Thank you for placing him before you as our advocate, the seal of approval you have set on us. We pray that you would help us to see Christ clearly, and to love him deeply. Help us to see in him the love you have shown to us. Help us to never doubt the extent of your love, and to never underestimate the depth of your goodness.
Please help us to believe that when you ask us to do something, when you ask us to give up something, you never ask anything of us that will rob us of happiness. Help us to believe that when you ask us to give up sin and pursue righteousness, you are asking us to give up fleeting, temporary, tiny pleasures now to inherit an infinite wealth of infinite pleasure in you. Help us to believe you are good, and to see that your commands for us are also good, so that we may desire the things you command. Let all we do, Lord, have you alone as source and motivation. You deserve this, and we want this. Help us to want it more, and love you as you deserve.
Notes
(1) Tim Keller, in Sinclair Ferguson, The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance—Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (Crossway, Wheaton, IL., 2016), p. 13.
QA3 Rest
how do we rest as Christians?
(Questions/Answers)
Jason Procopio
Today’s question is going to be very different from the last two, because oddly (or perhaps not), one of the other main questions we’ve been asked most frequently this year centers on this question of rest. It’s almost funny that this is also one of the questions I’ve asked myself the most this year, as some of you know.
A few months ago we were at Philip and Rachel Moore’s house (Philip was our pastor before we planted Connexion), and we were just talking. They were asking how we were doing, and then how I was doing, and I was just explaining what was going on. We know them very well, so I’m always very open with them.
I had thought it was a perfectly pleasant, perfectly normal conversation. So I was pretty taken aback when Rachel looked at Philip, then looked at me, and said, “Jason, you need a break.”
I said, “Yeah, I am, we’re hoping to go to see my family for a couple weeks in July.”
And she said, “No, no—you need to take a serious break. You need to do no work for an extended period. Like a couple of months.” All the while, Philip’s just sitting next to her, nodding his head in affirmation.
It was startling, but once it was said I realized she was right.
So I talked to the elders about it, and they agreed: they could see that I’ve been exhausted, and we now have a structure that could stand my being absent for an extended period. So they have been kind enough to grant me a two-month break starting July 4th, until the end of August. (So I’m preaching next week, and then I’ll be off.) Our family will be gone for some of that time, and we’ll be here for some of it. So I’ll be here, in the church; but I won’t be working. I’ll be resting. (I just have a couple of weddings after our return from Florida, to which I committed a long time ago, and those messages are already prepared, so the actual work has already been done.)
But committing to a two-month break puts me in a strange position, because on the one hand, I know I’m not the only one close to the breaking point in terms of fatigue (which is why so many people have asked this question this year), and on the other hand, I don’t want to imagine that a prolonged break is sufficient for what we’re feeling, because it’s not.
So today’s message is the fruit of several months of thinking and praying and searching in the Word. I’ve told you before that when I preach, I am preaching first and foremost to myself; that has never been more true than it is today.
We’re going to focus today, generally, on two kinds of rest.
Human Rest
The first kind of rest, I’m just calling it “human rest.” This is ordinary rest (physical, mental and emotional) from the stress and cares of our lives. This is the kind of rest that we can find in things like vacation and naps and leisure and sleeping well.
The Bible has a lot to say about human rest. It’s actually anchored in one of the first things we see in the Bible, in Genesis chapter 2. God creates the world in six days, and after looking at all of his creation and seeing that his creation is very good, we read (Genesis 2.2):
2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.
Of course God doesn’t need rest; he doesn’t get tired. The rest he takes is an intentional ceasing of activity, and he does it, in part, to set a pattern for us, which we see later, when God establishes his covenant with his people.
When God gives the law to his people, he institutes a day of rest for them. Exodus 20.8-11:
8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.
So one day a week, on this day called the Sabbath, the people are called to stop working, and to focus on God. This tells us a number of things.
The first is that we really do need rest. The Sabbath commandment reminds us that no matter how self-sufficient we might feel, we’re not. We need rest.
The second thing this tells us is that while we need rest, we probably don’t need quite as much as we think. God knows us better than we do, because he created us, and the pattern he set for his people was not a five-day work week, plus long weekends, plus ten weeks of vacation a year. He set up a six-day work week, with occasional feasts and festivals punctuating the rest of the year.
The third thing is that the fundamental rest God’s people need is found in him. It’s no accident that the one day of rest was also meant to be a day of worship for the people. This is why we gather together as a church to worship on Sunday: God means us to find even our ordinary, human rest in him. (We’ll come back to this.)
So this is for all of us.
I never thought I had a problem with ordinary, human rest. I’m pretty good at unplugging after I’m done working, and I take frequent breaks throughout the day: I learned from Edouard Nelson to take a nap every day (except, ironically, on Sundays, when I can’t), and most of the time, when I close my computer or leave a pastoral visit, my brain goes somewhere else. But that just makes it so that I don’t realize my need for rest until I’ve almost completely broken down.
I’m not telling you anything you don’t know: we need rest. We need ordinary, human rest. We need naps. We need breaks. We need to enjoy good times with people we love. We need the occasional vacation—or even the occasional sabbatical.
This is necessary and right: God knew it, and he told his people about this need from the very beginning. But we can sometimes apply this idea in ways that are unhealthy—so quickly, here’s what our need for rest doesn’t mean.
Our need for rest doesn’t mean using “I need rest” as an excuse for laziness.
A lot of us, under the pretext of needing rest, will allow ourselves to become passive and lazy. Any kind of work will feel like a burden to us. So we’ll depend on other people to do the hard things for us, and never stand up and make the effort to work ourselves. The Proverbs have many choice words to say about the “sluggard.”
While God does put a high premium on rest, he also puts a high premium on work. Before sin came into the world and before God instituted the Sabbath, one of the first things God did after creating the first man was that he gave him a job to do. Work, in and of itself, is a good thing, and despite what we may think, we need work every bit as much as we need rest. God is always working, and he created us to work.
Our need for rest doesn’t mean rigidly applying the one-day-a-week rule that ignores the actual state we are in.
I did this for a long time. Because God, in his wisdom, told his people to rest one day of the week, that’s what I did, because I thought, That’s apparently what people need.
But God knows that sometimes we need more, or we need help. When Moses was working his tail off, God sent him his father-in-law to tell him he can’t keep putting all this on himself; he needed to find other people to take some of the burden from him.
So sometimes we need help, and sometimes we need a break. Sometimes we need to take extended rest, or to adjust things in our lives—cut some things out of our schedule—because for any number of reasons, we need to rest, and we needn’t feel guilty about that.
Our need for rest doesn’t mean treating leisure as the goal.
Often we lump the things we like to do (our hobbies, our favorite leisure activities) into the same basket as “rest,” and there is always some overlap there. But how many of you have had the experience of being even more exhausted after vacation than you were before? Many of us will work tirelessly to get to our rest, but we’ll fill it up with so many activities that we’re unable to actually stop and rest.
Leisure isn’t necessarily rest, and above all, leisure mustn’t be the thing we pursue in itself. Or to put it another way, leisure is a support for life; it’s not the other way around.
Now we could go on a lot more about this; we could find practical tips (even in the Bible) to talk about how to rest well during the week. But here’s the question that’s always in my mind when people talk about this subject: what if, for various reasons, we’re not actually able to do all those things?
There are times in our lives when ordinary, human rest will be all but impossible. When your kids are young, for example: you finish your work at the end of the day, you come home…and then the real work begins. And even when the kids go to sleep, when they’re little they don’t always sleep well, so you don’t sleep well either.
For many of us, on top of the exhaustion that comes from work, there’s the exhaustion that comes from everywhere else: from the people we need to see, the other commitments we’ve made, the ordinary things all of us have to do like buying groceries and paying taxes and calling the plumber and everything else.
So here’s the problem—how are we to find our rest if we’re in a season of life where ordinary rest (leisure, vacation, naps, etc.) is very hard to find?
And this is actually the problem that the Bible responds to the most fully. We can find wisdom for ordinary rest in the Bible, absolutely. But if we take a step back and look at the whole of Scripture, we find that the truest rest for God’s people isn’t actually found in the Sabbath. The Sabbath is a picture, meant to point our eyes to an even greater Sabbath.
Or to put it another way: I am so incredibly thankful for the break the elders have granted me this summer. But if that wasn’t possible, it would be difficult, yes…but my deepest need would still be provided for. Even when ordinary rest is impossible, we still have our fundamental rest. So even a physically and mentally exhausted Christian can still be at rest. The one thing we truly need, we always have.
So what is this fundamental rest, and how do we access it?
fundamental Rest (Hebrews 3.7-4.16)
Go with me to the letter to the Hebrews, chapter 3. We’re actually going to read a big chunk of Scripture today, but we’re not going to go in great detail about every verse. There is one specific thing we need to draw our attention to.
In the first chapters of this letter, the author has made the case that Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God who, by his sacrifice on the cross for our sins, has become the great High Priest of his people. If you remember, in the Law of Moses, the high priest would enter into the temple or tabernacle to make sacrifices on behalf of the people, to atone for their sins so that they could remain in the presence of God. The author says that Jesus’s sacrifice is better than these other sacrifices, because Jesus is the Son of God, so the sacrifice of his own life for ours is once and for all. And now he stands as a better High Priest: he is the one who made atonement for our sins, and who now stands in the presence of God as our advocate, so that we can be in God’s presence with him.
Then at chapter 3, verse 7, he makes a transition. He says, “Since all these things are true, there is a promise for us, and there is a call upon us.”
Let’s read—Hebrews 3.7:
7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
8 do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
on the day of testing in the wilderness,
9 where your fathers put me to the test
and saw my works for forty years.
10 Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;
they have not known my ways.’
11 As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ”
(He’s referring to an episode we find in Exodus 17 and Numbers 14, when the people were grumbling that God wasn’t providing for them, despite that he had actually just rescued them from slavery in Egypt. Their hearts grew rebellious toward him, so God told them they would not enter the Promised Land, but that it would be their children whom he would bring in.)
12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. 15 As it is said,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
16 For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? 17 And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
4.1 Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. 2 For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened. 3 For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said,
“As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest,’ ”
although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. 4 For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” 5 And again in this passage he said,
“They shall not enter my rest.”
6 Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, 7 again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted,
“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts.”
8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. 9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
Let’s stop there. There’s a lot to unpack here, and we don’t have time to see all of it. But I’m sure you’ve noticed the main thing. We often say, when we’re teaching people how to read the Bible, to keep an eye out for repetition: if you see the same thing repeated more than once in a short space, that’s almost definitely the author trying to draw your attention to something important.
And in this passage, we see two phrases which are repeated three times. The first is the call God gives to the readers of this letter:
Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts.
The second is the consequence of not answering that call:
As I swore in my wrath,
‘They shall not enter my rest.’
So these are the two things the author is trying to force our attention to; this is his point. It is possible to harden our hearts to such an extent that we do not enter the rest God has promised to his people.
Now that can sound scary to Calvinists like me, who believe that if God has given us salvation by his Holy Spirit, he will not take that salvation from us. So what does God mean when he tells us not to “harden our hearts”? What is he talking about?
He explains it, firstly, in v. 17-19.
17 And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19 So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
So the “hardening of heart” the author refers to looks like this: it is unbelief, that manifests itself in disobedience. The people didn’t believe, so they fell into disobedience.We don’t believe, and so we don’t obey.
So do you see what he’s saying? We have this promise of rest that God gives to his people, and it is first of all an eschatological promise—that is, a promise that speaks about the end of the present world, the rest we will find at Christ’s return.
But God says that this rest is for those who have faith in the finished work of Christ. And (as we see many times in the letters of James and John) this faith in Christ manifests itself in perseverance to obey God’s commands. (Not perfection, mind you: perseverance.) This promise is not for the unbelieving, who persist in sin.
So although it sounds counterintuitive, here’s what he’s saying: if you want to enter God’s rest, you will work hard to pursue obedience. V. 11:
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
Without this “striving”, without perseverance despite the difficulty, we will fall into disobedience, and we will not enter our rest.
But this is where this text is wonderful: the author tells us how to avoid this outcome, how to do the work, by describing the means by which God helps us to do it. And these means assure, not only our perseverance and our eternal rest…but our present rest as well.
Let’s read v. 11 again, then we’ll keep going:
11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13 And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
So that’s the first means God gives us: his Word. I know that some of you aren’t big readers, so when we keep beating on this drum and insisting on the importance of reading the Bible, you get exhausted (not rested). But here is why being diligent to read and study and know and memorize and live the Word of God is essential to rest. Look at v. 14-16, which comes right after:
14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Here is why we need the Word of God to rest: it is in the Word of God that we find Jesus Christ. It is in the Word of God that we are opened up before the scalpel of the Holy Spirit and our sin is exposed in all its ugliness, showing us our need. It is in the Word of God that we find out how we are saved from our sin, through the finished work of Jesus Christ.
This is essential.
Whether we know it or not, our sin is the main cause of unrest in our lives; it is the stress behind every other stress, the exhaustion behind every other exhaustion.
And in Christ, what do we find? We find grace. We find a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weakness.
Because he knows what it’s like. He knows how hard it is. In every respect, he has been tempted as we are.
And that’s why I said this passage doesn’t only speak about the rest that will come at the return of Christ. It is impossible to overestimate the simple, emotional rest of knowing that Christ knows what you’re going through. He’s been there. He understands.
In Christ, the most fundamental need—to be saved from our sin and reconciled to God—has been provided. The most fundamental source of stress and exhaustion in our lives has been taken away. The only thing we truly have to be worried about…we no longer have to worry about. Even if sleep is hard to come by (because of crying babies or loud neighbors or difficulties at work), we can sleep the sleep of the forgiven.
And because he is a good high priest, because he went through every temptation we do, but managed to resist that temptation until the end, he also knows how WE can resist it. He knows how to help us. He knows how to teach us obedience. It’s not easy, and it’s often painful, but it brings rest—again, ordinary, human rest.
Just as we can’t overestimate the rest that comes from knowing that Christ understands us, we can’t overestimate the simple, emotional rest that comes from a clean conscience.
Even if sleep is hard to come by, we can sleep the sleep of the just. Your life may be falling down around you…but there is inestimable confidence and peace that comes with knowing you are doing what God has called you to do—and that even on those days when you screw up…our High Priest understands, and stands ready to give mercy and grace when you need it.
As Jesus said in Matthew 11, the rest he promises us is the rest of carrying a much lighter load; it is the rest of knowing that God is in your corner, because he’s been in that corner; it is the rest of learning from him what obedience looks like, and why obedience is good. Like a cold glass of water when you’re dying of thirst.
Conclusion
This text calls us to a number of very clear responses. The first is to believe—if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Some of you are exhausted because you still can’t quite believe that, as Jesus said in Matthew 11, living in obedience truly is more restful than resisting him.
The second is to obey. Some of you are exhausted because you know what God calls you to do, and you’re not doing it. I know that you might think persevering in obedience, not giving in to temptation, is difficult, or even impossible. But the Holy Spirit is stronger than your sin: fighting against the Holy Spirit is far more exhausting than fighting against sin.
The third is something we read earlier, but didn’t stay at for a long time—and that is to not try to do this alone. Remember 3.12-13:
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
And 4.1:
Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.
If we try to do this alone, it’s not going to work. We need one another; we need help to believe, and help to obey. No one gets left behind.
And thankfully, we are told how to encourage one another, what should be the content of our exhortations.
In the Word of God, we find our High Priest. We find the mercy of God, incarnated in Jesus Christ.
In our High Priest, we find rest today. We find the assurance that the fundamental problem of our lives has been removed, and that he has done what we are unable to do.
In his rest, we find obedience. We find the freedom and the teacher we need to learn to persevere in obedience to God’s commands. We find a clean conscience, and the spiritual and emotional rest that comes with knowing we are doing what we must do.
And in persevering in this obedience, we find the promise of perfect and eternal rest.
The call and the warning we see repeated over and over in this passage, can be—and is—reversed for us. If we do not harden our hearts, but persist in obedience to God’s commands, then we show that we are his people; and there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
In the Word of God, we find our High Priest. In our High Priest, we find rest today. In his rest, we find obedience. In this obedience, we find rest forever.
Brothers and sisters, let us work hard to grow in the likeness of our High Priest; and so doing, let us rest.
Resolutions 2
resolutions: the bible
Jason Procopio
Last week we began a new series called “Resolutions”. In this series we’re looking at what we often call the “spiritual disciplines”. Simply put, the spiritual disciplines are those practices—like reading the Bible and prayer—which God gives us to help us grow in him.
Last Sunday we talked about one thing: that the main reason we don’t better practice the spiritual disciplines is not that we don’t know how to do it, but that we don’t want to. At the end of the day, the main reason why we don’t practice the spiritual disciplines is because of our hardness of heart. This hardness of heart is naturally in all of us, and God gives us the spiritual disciplines to fight against it.
There’s no particular order in which these things happen in our lives, but the most basic element of the spiritual disciplines is the reading of God’s Word.
Now, there are a couple of things I need to say right off the bat. First of all, I know how difficult reading the Bible can be. It’s a big book; it’s an old book; a lot of it is archaic; it’s difficult to understand. And all of us, at some point, have tried to read the Bible and been discouraged because we read for several minutes, and we understand the individual words, but somehow the point gets lost. So if that’s your experience, don’t worry—we all know what that’s like.
Secondly, I know that the logic purists among us will probably be frustrated by what I’m going to do today. We’re going to be looking at the Bible to see why we should read the Bible, which I know is a circular argument. I just want to be clear right away that I’m okay with that.
We believe, and the church has maintained for almost two thousand years, that the Bible—these 66 books of the Old and New Testament—are the Word that God communicated to us through the prophets and apostles, and that they are the highest authority for our lives and our relationship with God.
There are logical arguments we can give in favor of the Bible as the Word of God (some of which we talk about in the members’ class), but ultimately logical arguments aren’t going to convince anyone—not completely. The only thing that’s going to do that is the testimony of the Holy Spirit, that causes us to see the face of God in the Holy Scriptures—to read these words, and hear these testimonies, and to hear God’s voice in them.
Now there are many Christians here for whom this has happened—in whom the Holy Spirit has done this convincing work—who are absolutely convinced that the Bible is the Word of God, and that they should be reading it…but who, for one reason or another, have a hard time desiring to do so. So it makes complete sense to go to the Bible to help us awaken that desire: if the Holy Spirit who inspired these words can’t make us want to read Scripture, then I certainly won’t be able to.
So I want to do two things today. I want to briefly look at two texts, to talk about what the Bible is, and then we’ll spend the rest of our time in one single text together, to look at what the Bible gives.
The Bible: God’s Word to Us (2 Timothy 3.16-17, Matthew 6.9)
The first passage we need to see is the classic one—the first one many of you probably thought of. We find it in 2 Timothy chapter 3. In this chapter Paul is writing to Timothy, to encourage him to stay the course in the face of false teaching. He tells him, basically, the same thing he said to the Ephesians in last week’s text: You know how you learned Christ. You’ve seen my example, you’ve seen the example of your mother and your grandmother; you know where to go for the truth.
And in v. 16-17 of 2 Timothy 3, he gives this summary statement:
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
So he says that all Scripture—that is, the writings of the Old Testament and the writings of the New—are inspired by God. A kind of divine dictation happens, by which the Holy Spirit inspired human authors to say exactly what he wanted them to say, while still maintaining their own style and personality (that’s why John’s letters feel so different from Paul’s).
There are three massive truths which we find here. The first is that God is a God who speaks to his people. He doesn’t leave us in the dark. He doesn’t make us guess. He tells us who he is, he tells us who we are, he tells us how he created us, what he expects of us and what he promises to give us. We don’t have to feel our way through our Christian lives—God tells us what to do.
Which leads to the second thing: that truth is fixed. It does not change depending on the situation, or the period of life we’re in, or how we might be feeling. There are a lot of things the Bible doesn’t tell us, but what the Bible does tell us, is the truth, and it is not conditional or malleable. The idea of there being such a thing as “your truth” or “my truth” makes no sense—logically or biblically.
I know that’s not a popular thing to say these days, but imagine what the world would be like if truth wasn’t fixed. Some of you may have seen Doctor Strange, or the new Spider-Man movie, where Doctor Strange does his finger-spin thing and sends streets and buildings flying and twisting every which way. Could you imagine what it would be like to try to follow a GPS in such a place? If nothing is fixed, the world is impossible to navigate.
But God fixes truth for us, because he is truth. Some things are open for interpretation, but there is a large number of things—that God is the Creator and that we are sinners and that God had a plan for this world and that he sent his Son as the lynchpin for that plan and calls us to respond to his Son with faith and repentance—that are not up for debate. Which means we can finally know where we need to go, and how to get there.
The third thing is this: in the hands of the Holy Spirit, the Bible gives us what we need to grow. That’s the goal of the Christian life, we saw last week; and God gave the Scriptures to teach us, to reprove us, to correct us, to train us in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. If you have the Word of God, you don’t need to go looking for supplementary words elsewhere. If you have the Word of God, you don’t need the opinion of a man to augment it. To grow in your faith, you don’t need YouTube, you don’t need blogs, you don’t need podcasts, you need the Holy Spirit, illuminating the Scripture that he inspired.
So that’s what Paul lays out for Timothy: this book is breathed out by God, and all of it is useful—so if you stay here, you’ll have all you need to be complete.
That should be enough. I should be able to end this message right now, because it should be enough to convince all of us to go out and faithfully read the Word.
But it's not enough for most of us, is it? We’re still not convinced, at least not totally. Many of us know this passage well, can even quote it from memory…and still think, Yeah, but I don’t want to.
I know that sounds blasphemous, but I’ll tell you why I find it reasonable. The goal of the Christian life is to grow in Christ, to grow in spiritual maturity (as we saw last week). That’s a goal—that’s the desired outcome of our Christian lives.
But simply focusing on a goal isn’t usually enough to get us there, because we aren’t mainly goal-oriented creatures; we are relational creatures. That’s why it’s easier to keep up a New Year’s resolution to regularly exercise if you don’t do it alone. If you only focus on the goal, you might keep at it, but it’ll be a slog; if your focus is a relationship, you’re much more likely to persevere.
Now, God had to give us the goal, so we’d know in which direction to point. But he doesn’t stop there. He doesn’t just give us a goal and say, “Go there.” Instead, he gives us a relationship, and says, “Let’s walk together.”
So the question is, What relationship has he established with us? Not that of a tyrant ruler with his subjects, or a cruel master with his slaves, but that of a Father with his children.
Remember Matthew 6? What is the first way Jesus taught us to see God? the first thing he taught us to pray?
Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven...”
We talk about God as our Father so often that we tend to take it for granted, but it changes everything.
I’ve always had a very good relationship with my dad, mainly because our relationship wasn’t merely practical. Yes, he taught me how to change a tire, how to drill a hole and put an anchor in a wall, how to cut drywall, how to use a glue gun—things that, he said, men should know how to do. But he didn’t just teach me those things.
He also laughed with me. He encouraged me. He told me stories. He sang with me, and he sang for me (my dad sings a lot). He enjoyed me, and he showed me that he enjoyed me.
All that to say, a good paternal relationship is never simply practical. There are other aspects to it that seem to be of no real, immediate benefit, but which actually make the relationship what it is. Our goal as parents is not just to show the kids how to walk where they need to go, but to walk with them, and sometimes even carry them, so that they enjoy the walk, because they’re walking with someone they love.
Friends, this is how God addresses us in his Word, when we place ourselves before him regularly, daily, habitually—just like, when I was a child, I talked to my dad absolutely every day; and those days when he was out of town, I felt his absence. God’s Words are not purely practical; they are relational. In other words, they give us benefits we didn’t ask for, which don’t always seem to be immediately useful, but which are precious because they are God, walking with us and carrying us and sometimes even picking us up and spinning us around, just for the joy of the time we have together.
The best place we see all of these aspects of God’s Word, in my opinion, is found in Psalm 119, so that’s where we’ll go after the break.
The Bible: God’s Blessings for Us (Psalm 119)
I’ve preached on Psalm 119 before, and it’s always a challenge: it’s the longest chapter in the Bible, for one—at 176 verses, it’s longer than several books we find in the Bible, and would take about twenty-five minutes to read from beginning to end. (Don’t worry, we won’t read the whole thing.) There’s also a lot of beauty here we just can’t see, unless we’re reading from a Hebrew Bible. Psalm 119 is an acrostic poem—that is, it follows a specific pattern. There are 22 stanzas of 8 verses each; as you move through the stanzas, each verse in each consecutive stanza begins with the same corresponding letter of the Hebrew alphabet (which contains 22 letters). So beyond its content, it’s just a marvel of creativity and intelligence.
But that’s not why we’re looking at it. We’re here because Psalm 119 is a love letter to the Word of God—or, as we find it most often in this psalm, the law or the precepts or the commandments or the testimonies of God. To put it simply, the psalmist spends 176 verses rejoicing in the simple reality of hearing the Father’s voice.
And that’s what I’d like to do for the rest of our time. I’m not going to give a lot of commentary; I just want to give us the opportunity to see the effect hearing our Father’s voice has on us, if we take the time to hear him well.
I’ve grouped the verses (kind of) thematically, so I’ll be skipping around a lot; and I won’t be putting them on the screen. I’ll put the list up here and on the church’s website, so you can come back to it later if you want.
But for now, let’s just listen to the blessings of the Word of our Father.
First of all, his word brings joy, delight, pleasure.
V. 1: :
Blessed are those whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the Lord!
V. 111:
111 Your testimonies are my heritage forever,
for they are the joy of my heart.
V. 162:
162 I rejoice at your word
like one who finds great spoil.
V. 14 and 16:
14 In the way of your testimonies I delight
as much as in all riches…
16 I will delight in your statutes;
I will not forget your word.
V. 103:
103 How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
V. 127:
127 Therefore I love your commandments
above gold, above fine gold.
V. 129:
129 Your testimonies are wonderful;
therefore my soul keeps them.
V. 143:
143 Trouble and anguish have found me out,
but your commandments are my delight.
V. 163:
163 I hate and abhor falsehood,
but I love your law.
V. 174:
174 I long for your salvation, O Lord,
and your law is my delight.
Next: the Word of our Father removes shame and guilt.
V. 6:
6 …I shall not be put to shame,
having my eyes fixed on all your commandments.
V. 39:
39 Turn away the reproach that I dread,
for your rules are good.
The Word of our Father makes us pure, makes us holy.
V. 9:
9 How can a young man keep his way pure?
By guarding it according to your word.
V. 11:
11 I have stored up your word in my heart,
that I might not sin against you.
V. 102:
102 I do not turn aside from your rules,
for you have taught me.
The Word of our Father transforms our desires.
V. 36:
36 Incline my heart to your testimonies,
and not to selfish gain!
The Word of our Father gives us strength, gives us confidence in the face of ridicule, helps us to persevere.
V. 28:
28 My soul melts away for sorrow;
strengthen me according to your word!
V. 41-42:
41 Let your steadfast love come to me, O Lord,
your salvation according to your promise;
42 then shall I have an answer for him who taunts me,
for I trust in your word.
V. 92-93:
92 If your law had not been my delight,
I would have perished in my affliction.
93 I will never forget your precepts,
for by them you have given me life.
Which leads us to the next: the Word of our Father gives us life.
V. 37:
37 Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things;
and give me life in your ways.
V. 93:
93 I will never forget your precepts,
for by them you have given me life.
V. 156:
156 Great is your mercy, O Lord;
give me life according to your rules.
The Word of our Father (and we’ve seen this several times over the last few weeks) gives us stability and peace.
V. 45:
45 and I shall walk in a wide place,
for I have sought your precepts.
V. 165:
165 Great peace have those who love your law;
nothing can make them stumble.
The Word of our Father gives us comfort.
V. 50:
50 This is my comfort in my affliction,
that your promise gives me life.
V. 52:
52 When I think of your rules from of old,
I take comfort, O Lord.
The Word of the Lord gives us something worth worshiping, something worth singing about.
V. 54:
54 Your statutes have been my songs
in the house of my sojourning.
V. 62:
62 At midnight I rise to praise you,
because of your righteous rules.
V. 171:
171 My lips will pour forth praise,
for you teach me your statutes.
The Word of our Father gives us direction.
V. 67:
67 Before I was afflicted I went astray,
but now I keep your word.
V. 105:
105 Your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path.
V. 130:
130 The unfolding of your words gives light;
it imparts understanding to the simple.
The Word of our Father gives us assurance—not in ourselves, but assurance in him.
V. 74-75:
74 Those who fear you shall see me and rejoice,
because I have hoped in your word.
75 I know, O Lord, that your rules are righteous,
and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.
V. 89:
89 Forever, O Lord, your word
is firmly fixed in the heavens.
V. 140:
140 Your promise is well tried,
and your servant loves it.
V. 152 (and here we see the psalmist’s testimony that God’s Word has proven itself through the time he has spent reading it):
152 Long have I known from your testimonies
that you have founded them forever.
V. 160:
160 The sum of your word is truth,
and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.
The Word of our Father gives us hope (and I’m just going to read one of many verses which say the same thing):
V. 43:
43 And take not the word of truth utterly out of my mouth,
for my hope is in your rules.
The Word of our Father gives us wisdom, knowledge and understanding.
V. 98:
98 Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies,
for it is ever with me.
V. 53:
53 Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked,
who forsake your law.
V. 66:
66 Teach me good judgment and knowledge,
for I believe in your commandments.
V. 99:
99 I have more understanding than all my teachers,
for your testimonies are my meditation.
(You see? You don’t need me.)
V. 100:
100 I understand more than the aged,
for I keep your precepts.
(We pray that our children might be wiser than we are—here we have hope for that.)
V. 104:
104 Through your precepts I get understanding;
therefore I hate every false way.
V. 130:
130 The unfolding of your words gives light;
it imparts understanding to the simple.
V. 144:
144 Your testimonies are righteous forever;
give me understanding that I may live.
V. 137:
137 Righteous are you, O Lord,
and right are your rules.
The Word of our Father gives us help and protection.
V. 114:
114 You are my hiding place and my shield;
I hope in your word.
V. 175-176:
175 Let my soul live and praise you,
and let your rules help me.
176 I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant,
for I do not forget your commandments.
The Word of our Father fills us with wonder.
V. 18:
18 Open my eyes, that I may behold
wondrous things out of your law.
V. 161:
161 Princes persecute me without cause,
but my heart stands in awe of your words.
The Word of our Father convinces us that the law itself is its own good.
71 It is good for me that I was afflicted,
that I might learn your statutes.
72 The law of your mouth is better to me
than thousands of gold and silver pieces.
And the Word of our Father shows us that keeping his commands is its own good as well.
V. 56:
56 This blessing has fallen to me,
that I have kept your precepts.
And there are many, many more I know I missed.
Do you see? God’s Word is not a simple road map to get us to something better, just like being a father isn’t a purely utilitarian job. It’s not just about producing a result. Listening to God’s voice in God’s Word is itself a greater blessing than many of the things we usually want.
The thing is, many of us don’t realize that, because we won’t take the time to see it.
When I was a kid we were always in church, so I spent much of my childhood in crowds of people, usually milling around at a lunch or a wedding or standing around talking after service. I got used to hearing the noise of the crowd.
But no matter how loud the crowd was, I could, in an instant, hear my dad’s voice if he called out for me. My dad has a loud voice, but that wasn’t why I heard him—all parents called out for their kids at some point, and we’d ignore everyone else. I heard my dad because I had spent my entire life listening to him talk. Dad always talked to us. When we were reading before bed he’d come into our room and get on his knees beside the bed and just talk. About anything—about music or Star Wars or books or girls…
I knew his voice, because I had heard his voice for years.
And that’s why a lot of us get discouraged reading the Bible. We expect to get something out of it right away; we open the Bible for whatever this passage will bring us on this particular day. And then we read about ceremonial laws when you have mold in your tent, and we think that it didn’t bring us much of anything, so we put it down and don’t want to come back to it.
But that’s not how relationships work. Not every conversation you have with your family will be interesting; sometimes you’ll be bored. But you don’t talk to them to get something out of each individual conversation; you talk to them because you love them. You listen to them because they’re your family.
It’s no surprise, then, that the best chapter about God’s Word in the Bible is also the longest—almost as if the psalmist is showing us that this is going to take time. A solid relationship always does.
So we don’t read the Bible to get something out of it on this day (because we might not feel like we did). It’s like eating. We don’t eat healthy food mainly because it feels good (though it often does); we eat healthy food because we want to see our children grow up, because we want to hold our grandkids.
In the same way, we don’t read the Bible to get something out of it—although very often, we will. Very often God will simply invade our minds and hearts when we read his Word and give us exactly what we needed at that moment. But it won’t always happen that way. And that’s okay, because that’s not why we read it. We don’t read the Word of our Father for what he will bring us over the next ten minutes; we read the Word of our Father for the relationship we are building with him when we do. We read his Word for what the cumulative time spent with God will bring us over the next seventy years. Or eighty years. Or a hundred. And on through eternity.
God is not just focused on a goal; he wants to walk with us along the way, as we get there. He does this through his Word, which we read faithfully, regularly, daily—whether it’s several chapters or only a few verses. And he does this through prayer, during which we respond to what he tells us in his Word.
And we’ll talk about prayer next week.
Question 1
Does Our Suffering Come From God?
(Psalm 44)
Jason Procopio
If you've been coming to this church for any length of time, you know that our normal way of doing things is to simply preach through books of the Bible: we start at verse 1 of chapter 1 and work our way through until the end. (Last week we finished a 4-month series on 1 Timothy; before that it was Jonah, before that it was Philippians, and so on.) We believe this is the most faithful way to preach the Word of God, because (quite frankly) you don't have to take our word for it. You have the words right there in front of you, in black-and-white, in context, so you can not only easily follow what we're saying, but you can see for yourself why we're saying it.
That being said, every year as we wind down before summer, we have thought it a good idea to do a small, thematic series on a specific subject—whatever the church has dealt with the most that particular year. And that is simply because sometimes you come across a subject that no one text speaks on fully. Our first year we looked at biblical manhood and womanhood (staying mostly in Genesis 1-3 and Ephesians 5); last year we saw the intersection between faith and the secular world. Today, we are beginning a new, four-week series, in which we’re going to give biblical responses to the most common questions we’ve received from you over the past year. The first question we’ll be answering is this: “Does our suffering come from God?”
This question is a summary of all the various questions we received on this subject, and nearly all of those questions were centered on our suffering as the body of Christ—for example: Is suffering a trial God sends to us to shape us? Does the fact that I’m suffering mean God thinks I need to grow? and so on. And at the root of all these questions is a common confusion that many Christians feel: "Jesus says I am his, that he will protect me…and yet I suffer. How could that be? If I really do belong to God, why am I still suffering?"
I’d invite you to turn to Psalm 44. (While you’re turning there I should mention my friend John Hindley, an Acts 29 pastor in England, who wrote a wonderful little book on this psalm called Suffering and Singing. I’ve borrowed some things from John, who is able to talk about the most difficult subjects with incredible tenderness and understanding. I can’t recommend his book highly enough.)
1) You have saved us from our foes (v. 1-8).
Psalm 44 is a psalm about suffering, but strangely the authors don’t begin their psalm by talking about suffering. They begin their psalm by praising God for who he is and what he has done for his people.
To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the Sons of Korah. 1 O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us, what deeds you performed in their days, in the days of old: 2 you with your own hand drove out the nations, but them you planted; you afflicted the peoples, but them you set free; 3 for not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own arm save them, but your right hand and your arm, and the light of your face, for you delighted in them.
So they had seen their God act, and they knew their God well. They had seen his love for them in action, when he did for them what they couldn’t do. And they had seen his love for them in relationship: he delighted in them and showed them the light of his face.
Moreover, they continue to feel a deep-rooted confidence in God as their King and Savior—he was not just faithful in the past, but they are confident he will continue to be faithful in the future:
4 You are my King, O God; ordain salvation for Jacob! 5 Through you we push down our foes; through your name we tread down those who rise up against us. 6 For not in my bow do I trust, nor can my sword save me. 7 But you have saved us from our foes and have put to shame those who hate us. 8 In God we have boasted continually, and we will give thanks to your name forever. Selah.
That word "Selah" is meant to mark a pause, to make us slow down and consider this before moving on. This psalm begins in acknowledgement of how much God loves and blesses his people. And this is very important. Try to put yourself in their shoes for a moment and think back to a time where you saw God at work in your life. You prayed, and he answered your prayers; you read the Bible and you genuinely felt his presence, as if he really was there, speaking those words to you. (Which of course he is, whenever you read the Bible.) You were growing in your faith, and it felt as if he was really there with you, all the time, walking with you and talking with you.
Moreover, we have even more reason to celebrate than the Korahites did, because we have seen the full story of how God acts on behalf of his people: how he sent Jesus Christ to take our place in the life we should have lived, and to take our place in the death that we deserve. And because we have seen his faithfulness to save in the past, we have full confidence that he will remain faithful in the future, that he will gather his church to himself in the New Heavens and the New Earth. We are in the same situation, and even better. Think of what that does for your confidence in God, for your future. Because you have seen his faithfulness in the past, you know he will always be faithful to you.
The psalmists begin this psalm like this intentionally, knowing full well where they are going. And they do this for two reasons. The first is that they want to be realistic about what the immense pain and confusion they are going through now—they don’t want to sidestep their confusion, but show it in all its pain by saying that this doesn’t seem like him! The second reason is that they want to model what it looks like to suffer well. Suffering well doesn’t mean not expressing your confusion, as we’ll see, but rather running to our faithful God in that confusion, and being willing to say to him, “I don’t understand!”
So after stating the amazing faithfulness of their God, and their confidence in his continued faithfulness, they come in with this devastating “But”…
2) But you have made us like sheep for slaughter (v. 9-16).
9 But you have rejected us and disgraced us and have not gone out with our armies. 10 You have made us turn back from the foe, and those who hate us have gotten spoil. 11 You have made us like sheep for slaughter and have scattered us among the nations.
This is national-disaster-level suffering. This is husbands and sons falling on the battlefield, wives and children crying before getting hauled off by enemy captors. And what is so painful is that the psalmists are not vague about the origin of their pain; they don’t use the passive sentence, “We have been rejected,” as if hesitant to call it like it is. No—they quite clearly say, “You have rejected us. You have rejected us. You have not gone out with our armies. You have made us like sheep for slaughter.” This is a harsh accusation.
But it is not inaccurate. Do you remember Job’s encounter with his wife? After God gave Satan leave to torture Job, to kill his children and take away all his possessions, his wife came to him and said (Job 2.9), “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.” 10 But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” These are heavy words, and at this point we think Job has lost his mind. And yet the author adds this sentence, which immediately follows: In all this Job did not sin with his lips. In other words, Job’s right—he wasn’t aware of the arrangement God had made with Satan; all he knows is that God is sovereign over his life, so he could say that this pain, this suffering, which seems so extreme and even evil to him, did indeed come from God.
So coming back to the psalm, given the faithfulness of God in the past, and their trust in him for the future, their suffering is immense. It is not just that they are suffering; it is that the one who said he would protect them seems to have abandoned them.
12 You have sold your people for a trifle, demanding no high price for them.13 You have made us the taunt of our neighbors, the derision and scorn of those around us. 14 You have made us a byword among the nations, a laughingstock among the peoples. 15 All day long my disgrace is before me, and shame has covered my face 16 at the sound of the taunter and reviler, at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.
Here’s the point: there are two reasons why this situation is so painful to them. The first is that they are not ambiguous about where this suffering has come from. They proclaim with authority, “You, God, have done this. You were faithful to us in the past, and you said you’d be faithful in the future, and we still believe that… But still, we know you have done this. And we don’t understand.” The other reason mentioned in this psalm as to why their suffering is so painful and so incomprehensible comes from the fact that their suffering isn’t (at least in this case) a result of their sin.
3) And we do not deserve it. (v. 17-21)
17 All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you, and we have not been false to your covenant. 18 Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way; 19 yet you have broken us in the place of jackals and covered us with the shadow of death.
Occasionally, our sin causes us suffering, or it causes someone else suffering. The husband who has a severe hangover because he abused alcohol the night before, and whose wife wakes up exhausted and angry because he crashed into bed at 3 a.m., he knows why he’s having a bad day. And thankfully, for this circumstance there is a wonderful solution, readily available: turn to God in faith and repent of that sin! We know that Jesus’s sacrifice has paid the penalty for that sin, so we can turn to him in faith and believe that he has forgiven us. And while that may not take away the suffering, we are comforted knowing that that suffering is not a punishment for what we have done: Christ was already punished in our place, and his sacrifice covers all of our sins.
So it is true that some suffering is a result of our sin, and sometimes it’s easier when that’s the case—at least we know we’re getting what we deserve. But we have to be very careful, because sometimes our suffering is not the result of our sin. For the psalmists, there is no link that they can see between their suffering and any sin they may have committed to bring it on. This was not like with the psalmists’ descendant Korah (in Numbers 16), who incited an uprising against Moses and whose family was killed as a result; they have no idea what they could have done to bring this about. In fact, they are so confident in their relative innocence here that they call on God to examine them:
20 If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign god, 21 would not God discover this? For he knows the secrets of the heart.
Let me give you a very personal example of this. God has been very good to our church in the last year, in terms of babies—since November, two babies have been born in the church, and two more are on the way. We have been so happy to see this, sincerely. But there's a twinge of sadness here for my family, honestly, because recently Loanne found out that after three years of trying to have a second child, we were expecting too...only to find out the baby had died in the womb a few weeks later. I don't think I need to express the pain of this experience (especially given that because we believe the Bible, we believe that it wasn't just a mass of cells, but that it truly was and is our child, our baby).
Sometimes we encounter suffering—relational issues, or sickness, or miscarriage, or loss of job—that we did nothing to bring about. On the contrary—it may seem like we're doing most things right...and it still happens. Trust me when I say that Loanne and I aren't the only ones in the church who are going through exactly this kind of pain right now. So these words resonate deeply with us at that particular time: All this has come upon us, though we have not forgotten you.
Now, at this point this psalm just seems to be beating us up. We want resolution; we want to hear why this is happening, and how God’s going to get them out of it. But the resolution will not be where we expect it. We expect them to say why they’re suffering: and we know the different things the Bible says—that God allows, or even causes, his people to suffer in order to make them more holy; to build godly character in them; to serve as an example of faith for others, etc. All these things are true and good, and we should remember them. But they are not what we should think of first. Notice, the psalmists never once mention any of these. Their resolution comes simply by knowing that if they belong to God, they are suffering for his sake. John Hindley said it like this: “We do not suffer primarily because we have sinned; we suffer because we are his.”
4) Yet it is for your sake (v. 22-26).
22 Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. The psalmists do not ponder how or why their suffering is for God’s sake, how or why it could serve him; they simply acknowledge that it does. Somehow, what they are going through fits into the bigger picture of what he is doing—both in them and in the world. And this idea will make no sense to you until you understand two things: firstly, that our own personal comfort and well-being is not God’s top priority. He loves us, absolutely (as we’ll see); but he’s got something bigger in mind than our immediate happiness.
We see this all throughout biblical history. Joseph suffered being sold as a slave, falsely accused and thrown in prison…so that God might save both his people and the Egyptians from the famine.
The people of Israel suffered under slavery in Egypt for centuries…in order for God to show his power and commitment to them by defeating the Pharaoh.
The apostles suffered persecution and martyrdom…in order for the gospel to go forward with power, as a proof that his lovingkindness really is better than life.
And of course Jesus Christ suffered rejection and torture and crucifixion…in order that God might gather together all of his children, give them new life in him, and cause them to know and enjoy the gifts of his glory for all eternity.
Whenever God’s people suffer, God knows what he is doing. He may not tell them why, and they may never know, but he knows.
Secondly, we must understand that though it may seem counterintuitive to us, this is one way God shows that we belong to him. As Paul said (Romans 8.16-17):
16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
The love of God was shown to us more clearly through the cross than through comfort. He sent his Son as a sheep to be slaughtered; we too are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered, because we too are his sons and daughters.
So the fact that God’s people suffer for seemingly no reason does not mean that he does not love them—quite the contrary. Paul quotes Psalm 44 in Romans 8 to show precisely this. He says (v. 35):
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
But here’s a wonderful thing. Knowing that it is for God’s sake, that it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love us… That doesn’t necessarily take away the pain of it, and it doesn’t drive the psalmists to say their suffering is actually a good thing. Despite the fact that they are suffering for God’s sake, they feel no qualms about making an appeal to his help to take them out of it:
23 Awake! Why are you sleeping, O Lord? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever! 24 Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression? 25 For our soul is bowed down to the dust; our belly clings to the ground.
So this is the picture: a people utterly devastated, suffering immensely, and knowing that their faithful God, in whom they trust and whom they celebrate, was behind it. So what do they do? They tell him their suffering, in all its brutality and rawness; they ask him to help, like a child begging his father for relief; and lastly, they appeal to his love, looping back to the beginning of the psalm, appealing to the God they know is faithful and loving. Though they are suffering for his sake, they remember that when he answers their prayer and saves them out of that suffering, it will also be for his sake.
26 Rise up; come to our help! Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love!
Conclusion
It is very possible that many of you are suffering today. I know for a fact that some of you are, in much the same way as the psalmists. Knowing all these things doesn’t take the pain away. But seeing the Korahites’ example does give us a wonderful picture of what it looks like to suffer well—to feel intense pain, and to be confused, but to not lose faith. So there are five things I believe this text is calling us to do when we suffer.
1) Know that God knows what he is doing. Never once do the psalmists doubt God’s wisdom or goodness. They don’t say God is wrong to be doing this, because they know better. They know he is good, and they know that he is wise, and they know that he always has a good reason for doing what he does. They don’t understand it, but they know he does. And like a child sitting in the backseat of the car, who has no idea how or why his father pushes those buttons or turns the wheel the way he does, they simply trust that he knows, and that is enough.
2) Let your suffering drive you to God. Our instinct when we suffer is often to run away, to retreat into entertainment or drink or solitude, things that will help us forget what we’re going through. But we should be running in the other direction. The psalmists are suffering at God’s hands, yet they know their only refuge is in his hands; being far from him would be even worse than whatever they’re suffering now. So if you’re suffering, let that suffering drive you to God rather than from away from him.
3) Remind yourself of what is true. Though they do not directly address the fact that God works in us through our suffering, they model it: when we suffer, rather than wallowing in self-pity, they get to work, running through the exercise of praising God for who he is, being honest with him about their pain, proclaiming that they trust in his wisdom and love, and praying that he would rescue them. In other words, they remind themselves of what is really true—they preach to themselves rather than listening to their own pain.
4) Never doubt his love for you. Suffering is no sign that his love is lesser for you. If he dealt suffering to his own beloved Son, who “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,” we can be sure that if we belong to him, our own suffering is no sign that he loves us any less. You can pray with the psalmists, Rise up; come to my help! Redeem me for the sake of your steadfast love!
5) Know that Jesus Christ is the only hope in suffering. If you’re an unbeliever, we’re very happy your here today, but you need to know something. (And what I’m going to say will sound brutal, but please believe me that I say it out of love for you.) If you do not have faith in Christ, there is very little I could say to you to give you comfort. At this point, I cannot say with any certainty, at least as far as you’re concerned, that your suffering is not futile. For those who reject the gospel, the Bible has nothing but bad news. What it does say, again and again, is that the only hope in our suffering is Jesus Christ. That’s all I can give you. Not that there isn’t hope—there absolutely is—but there’s only one place you’ll find it. Jesus Christ is our only hope in suffering. BUT…he is a sure and steady hope. So I invite you to come to him—not in order that you may not suffer, but that you may know the God who gives meaning to our suffering, and promise for eternal release from that suffering, in his presence. Place your faith in him; believe in him; accept his gift of salvation; and this assurance will be yours as well.