Good morning. There we go. Good morning.
Oh, man, it's so good to be here with you. My name is Jonathan, Lead Pastor here at Destiny. So thankful that you're here this morning. I got a couple of things I just want to make sure I tell you about. And then we're going to get into today's work, because I'm really excited about the message today. One, next week, Pastor Charlie mentioned it, but it's Easter. And I talked about it last week, last couple of weeks. But I really want to just take a moment to reiterate and encourage you to be thinking about, to be praying, to be asking God, who is it that you should invite to join you for this Easter service? I believe that everyone here has the opportunity to at least extend an invitation to participate in an Easter service. It could be an individual, it could be an entire family. But many people are looking for a place to participate in Easter. And the thing, the only thing that's lacking is an invitation. And there's plenty of online invitations. There's plenty of sign invitations. There's plenty of billboard invitations. But there's very few physical, personal, looking at someone in the eyeball and inviting them to come to church. And so I want you to pray and to think about that and to make that happen. That's really, really an important thing. And I want to make sure that you do that. Secondly, this week, Sunday kicks off what the church tradition calls Holy Week. And I did this last year, and I wanted to just share it with you all. But I found a really great Holy Week reading plan, a little short reading plan that you can do starting today, every day leading up until next Sunday to kind of walk through this preparation process of the resurrection of Jesus that we get to celebrate next week. And so if you'd like that plan, if you say, hey, that sounds pretty cool. And if you scan that QR code in the seat back in front of you, the very top tab is one that's called Holy Week reading plan. You can click on that. It opens a link on you version. It's a great little reading plan. It's not like a ton to do per day, but it's really meaningful. And each story is really purposeful and where we're at. And so it's really, really a fun thing to be able to do. And so I'm excited to be able to do that this week. And I encourage you all to do that together. You know, if you even want to take it to another level, you can do it with your family, read it together, whether it's with your spouse or with your children. I think it'd be a really cool opportunity to kind of focus and to kind of take this week and to dwell on what Jesus came and did for us. We do this for me. We stand up to your feet. I want to read a couple of scriptures here for us to get ourselves set for today's message.
Isaiah chapter 53, verse two, he said this. He said, he grew up before him like a tender shoot and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, a familiar and familiar with pain, like one from whom people hide their faces. He was despised and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took our pain and more our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to their own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgressions of my people he was punished. He was assigned a grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer. And though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days and the will of the Lord will prosper his hand.
After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied by his knowledge. My righteous servant will justify many and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great and he will divide the spoils with the strong because he poured out his life unto death and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sins of many and made intercessions for the transgressors.
Father, we thank you for today.
Lord, I thank you for sending your son Jesus.
I thank you that you sent him to suffer on our behalf so that we could find righteousness and salvation and redemption.
Lord, we give you all the praise and all the glory this morning. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. You may be seated. You may be seated.
So today is kind of like a multifaceted message. So it's actually the final week, at least in this iteration of a series we've done on the Holy Spirit. It's the seventh week on the Holy Spirit. It's also Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter that we celebrate and begin to kick off Holy Week and think about what that context looks like for us in our life. And also it's an opportunity for us to set up what we're doing as a church this week and on our Friday fast and being able to participate in a Friday meal for this good Friday and inviting people for Easter. And the thing that we're walking through this morning, the last several weeks as we've been talking through the Holy Spirit is we've been asking ourselves the question of ways in which the Holy Spirit interacts with us, works on our behalf. And by no means have we compiled or covered everything that the Holy Spirit does with us and for us. And by the contrary, there's probably more that we haven't talked about than what we've gotten the opportunity to share about. But today, I feel like this is a message that we get to share and walk through that I believe is something that will be a blessing and appropriate for this season that we are in. Because one of the things that the Holy Spirit enables us to do and is at work in our lives and a way that he is able to help shape us and form us into the image of God is through the idea of redemptive suffering.
Now I know no one came here this morning thinking, I really hope Pastor Jonathan teaches the message on suffering this morning.
That sounds like exactly what I wanted to hear. I really came in for an idea of like suffering. I just, that was what I felt in my bones. And but here's the thing. Suffering is an important thing for us to look at because suffering is common to human life. No one has to seek out suffering.
Everyone here has had something happen in your life that has caused or has created some form of suffering.
And many times in suffering and the idea of suffering that during suffering is the time that we seek and look for God the most. And sometimes in the middle of suffering, it's the time where we feel like God is the most difficult to find.
And suffering is something that we look at and we see. And here's what's interesting about suffering. Suffering is unique to each individual, although it's an experience that everyone has had at some point in their life in different varying degrees. Suffering is unique to each individual. No one has ever suffered like you have suffered.
Now, this is not me sitting here like trying to tell you to wallow in your pain. If you know me, that's not who I am. I'm not like a person who's just like, yeah, let's just sit around and suffer for a little while. And it's like a great thing. That's not what I'm saying. But what I want to make sure that we understand that no one has ever walked through the life and the journey of what your suffering looks like. And suffering that we have to understand is a very personal thing. It is a very subjective thing. And the thing that we walk through is when you walk through suffering, your suffering is yours. And you can experience that. And it is hard to you. And here's what the problem with suffering. Suffering varies and changes and grows and expands in ways in which we experience it throughout our lives. And sometimes, especially when you get older, you may look at younger people and they talk about the things that they're suffering through. And your first reaction is, you don't even know what suffering is. You think that's suffering? And then that's when we start to tell our old people stories about like walking to school, a pill both ways through the snow. That's suffering, right? And here's the truth. It's true. If you were to put the weight of your suffering on a young person, it would just destroy their whole life. You're right. I will affirm that in you. But that's not how things work because God loves us. We walk through things. And so the problem is you can't tell someone like, you don't even know what suffering. You're not even suffering. You just need to suck it up. If I had to go through that, it wouldn't even phase me. And listen, that's true. But just because it doesn't phase you doesn't mean it doesn't phase a person because suffering is something that we are exposed to individually and we walk through. And it's a process and it's something to be hard. And here's what I want to make sure that I also talk about. Suffering, this could be an idea. Some suffering is self-inflicted suffering. Let me give you an example. Every so often, me and a few of the pastoral staff, we go out for a lunch on a Tuesday. And we can go pretty much anywhere we want. We're here. We're in Brogano. We have a lot of choices of places that we can go. And we have a lot of genres of food that are just up and down the street. Some of them are a little healthier. Some of them are a little less healthy. But every once in a while, we have this choice. We make this choice. And every time we do it, it feels like the right choice. It feels like a good decision. And I back it up and we decide to go to Ron's hamburger for lunch.
We choose it. We choose it. And then when I get there, the menu is there. Same menus from 1992. Same booths from 1992. Same fried grease from 1992. It's the same restaurant.
And I only go with the one on Elm because that's the one.
And I get there and I'm like, OK, Jonathan, you know a jumbo burger is a bad choice. You should get the small. And you know also there should have never been anything invented called a fry burger, which if you're not familiar with it is a burger with the fries on top. And then the whole thing is tasting cheese and they put the whole thing under the broiler. It's just all of your meal in one thing is very healthy.
And then I say, Jonathan, you definitely shouldn't get the Spanish fry one because that one's got way too many onions and way too many things on it. But but then I look at it and that's the one I really want. And wouldn't you know it, that one doesn't come in a small. It's probably a menu mistype, but it only says jumbo. So don't you know what? I get the jumbo and I say, it's OK. I'm just going to stop when I get full. That was also the same time I say, don't bring out any ranch. I don't need any more calories. But after the first bite, you realize ranch would really help lubricate this down.
If I'm going to finish this thing, I need something to really moisten it up.
And I'm sitting there with three other guys. We're supposed to be being productive. We're also supposed to. There's the picture. That's it. We're supposed to be being productive and we're supposed to be productive after this thing that we're going to do.
And we know we're not going to and we eat it and I eat it and I eat it and then I sometimes finish it, sometimes come close. But no matter what the outcome of how much I ate at the end, there is suffering involved.
I am suffering. I am suffering in that moment. I'm suffering for the afternoon. I usually am suffering for 24 hours. But you know, it only takes 24 hours for me to forget and to think, you know, Ron's would be good. It's like it's like it's the male version of childbirth. You know, if you have some baby and then she forgets how terrible it is and then she has another baby. It's like just what happens when you have Ron? You have it. You suffer for a while. I go, you know, I can go back to Ron's. I can go back. It'd be fine. This stuff is not going to be as bad. I'm sure.
Sometimes we choose suffering.
So our choice sometimes we make decisions in life, often bad choices or maybe maybe contrary to some things that God's laid out and think and suffering entails. But but a vast majority of the suffering that we deal with is not my our choice. It is the result of the fallen world and the fallen nature that we live in. It's the result of the world that we live in. And when I talk about suffering, I don't just mean like the things that we're talking about, like that are just kind of safe in church. I'm talking about the things that keep you up at night, the things that are deep wounds and your soul. I'm talking about that diagnosis that you don't think is fair. I'm talking about that baby that never came to be born in this world. I'm talking about that marriage that ended and it wasn't right. I'm talking about the person in your life who died way too young and you look at that and it tears you up inside. When I talk about suffering, I don't talk about the things we talk about in the lobby. I talk about the things that are in your soul and you walk through those seasons of loss and death and you look at them and you say, I don't know if I can keep going through this suffering.
And those are hard.
And those hurt.
And often in those times.
We walk through these questions and we ask this question, why God?
Why are you having me go through this?
And listen.
As hard as that question is.
And as impossible as that question is for me to answer here, it's a question that God invites you to walk through with him.
That he does not stray away from. But it's not the only question that I think we can ask.
I think another question we can ask is, what does God think about suffering?
What is his view on suffering?
And if we go back to where we usually start, which is the beginning, the thing that is so different about our creation narrative about God's design and God's plan when you compare it to any other different, especially ancient Eastern or Eastern.
Religions is this idea that when God created everything, he created it in perfection and love and unity. It wasn't born out of destruction or violence or hate or suffering. It was born into perfection. When you go and study other world religions, it was always this chaotic suffering thing that a God came in and partnered with. It's always a mess.
But God out of love created man and woman to be in relationship with them. And then through the narrative of the fall, sin entered. And he said the result of sin is death. The result of sin is suffering. And when you follow the story and you see first with Cain and Abel and the suffering that comes from rejection and bitterness and judgment and comparison and being jealous. And you see this first act of heinous crime in which the very blood of one cries out to God for redemption due to the suffering he experienced. And Cain was marked and his descendants continue to create death, violence and destruction. And by the time we get to Genesis chapter six, it says the entire world is filled with violence and destruction and chaos.
And the people were suffering.
And it says that when God looked down on the creation that he made, he says his spirit was grieving and he regretted ever making man.
Not because he regretted man, but because he hated to see the consequence of sin, which was suffering.
Suffering.
He saw people suffering.
And so he started over with Noah. We know that thing. He started over. He flooded the whole world. He started over and then Noah came back and then started fresh in this thing. But at the end of that, he said, I'm never going to start over like this again. I know that suffering is going to come back into this world.
But this is not how I'm going to fix it the next time.
So fast forward through a different river, through a different waters, through a different baptism. Jesus Christ is raised out of the water and the spirit descends on him like a dove. And the God says, this is my beloved son in whom we are well pleased. And out of this process, Jesus is then immediately led out of the waters and into the wilderness for 40 days to intercede and to fast and to suffer.
For 40 days.
No food.
And at the end of this 40 days, at the end of this 40 days, he's given these temptations from Satan.
All three of them are shortcuts.
Don't you want to eat without having to work for it without having to buy for it without having to make it without having to do any of the process? Don't you want to have that shortcut? Don't you want to win your popularity through spectacle and incredible wonders and signs?
And then the last one, don't you want to get creation back without suffering?
Don't you want to become the king without being a servant?
Don't you want the crown without the cross?
Don't you want to avoid suffering?
Because here's the thing I can tell you. Suffering, though, it is a part of life. None of us say, yeah, I would love a little bit more suffering, maybe a little bit more rhymes, but not the other kind.
Suffering is something that is painful and that hurts. And as a result of that, we as humans, we as people try to avoid suffering as much as possible. And guess what? There's nothing wrong with that. I'm not telling you to go and seek out. There's been people and cultures and religious ideas that have told you that you should purposely seek out suffering and seek out ways that you can be punished and something like that. That is not what I'm telling you. That is not what scripture says. That is completely wrong.
But we as humans, we avoid suffering. And when suffering does come, our most often normal reaction to suffering is to try to pretend like it didn't happen and just minimize it as much as possible and move on.
But that's not the narrative. That's not the story. That's not the thing that Jesus left for us and that the New Testament lays out for us.
Listen to this in Romans chapter five, verse three. It says, not only so, but we also glory. And anytime you hear the word glory, you can also put the word honor or receiving honor. But we also glory or have honor in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given.
And that's what he said to us.
You see, we don't serve a God who doesn't understand suffering.
We don't serve a God who's never suffered. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It says that the Father has suffered to see the fall of creation.
And the Spirit himself came as a man and suffered the life that he lived throughout his entire journey and was hung upon that cross. He suffered the man of sorrow and suffering. That is who our Savior is, the Son of God chose that route to become flesh so that he would be able to understand and know all things that we walk through. And the Spirit goes around walking and seeing and hovering and walk and see everything around the community that grieves and hurts his soul to see suffering around.
We don't serve a God that doesn't understand suffering.
But we serve a God who's victorious.
We serve a God who at the cross won over death.
But there's something that the Holy Spirit does with suffering.
The Holy Spirit takes the suffering and he redeems it. He repurposes it. He restores it. And he takes that thing and he does something inside of you that at the end you end up looking more like Jesus in new creation than you did at the beginning. He takes the thing that the enemy intended for evil, for your harm, for your death, for your destruction and for violence. He takes that thing and he turns it around for your good. And even though if we're being honest, I'd say, hey, I would rather have that person back in my life. I would rather not have that diagnosis. I would rather not have to live through that experience than get the thing I got on the other side. But we don't get to make those kind of deals.
We do get to live through suffering and we do get the opportunity and the option to decide what do I do with it.
Do I hold on to it and let it define me? Do I become bitter? Do I ignore it?
Or do I give it to God?
Do I give it to God?
Instead of praying for God to remove my suffering, maybe I get to change my prayer and say, God, can you redeem my suffering?
Can you redeem the suffering?
Can you make it do something inside of me that changes who I am?
Can you make it do something inside of me that changes the way I view your world? I know this isn't from you. I know you never desired for this world to be fallen and death and violence and destruction to rule. I know that's not your heart for me or for my family. I know where I am in the face of this process, where the Holy Spirit has empowered me to live and to know where I've been raised in heavenly places right now. But I'm also needing the Holy Spirit to help walk the tension, the timeframe while I'm still waiting in the not yet. Because although I've been raised with Christ in heavenly places, I still walk here on this fallen earth and I'm in this constant tension between the now and the not yet. I know what God has done for me now and yet not yet has the earth been redeemed from the fall and the curse and death still has its talents here. But yet we know the end result is coming. And so while I'm in this process, the in between of the now and the not yet, I need your spirit to come and to continue to renew me and to restore me and to redeem things that the enemy would love to end me and instead allow those things to turn and to transform me more into your image. The Holy Spirit makes it where we can walk through suffering in a way that's very different than how the world walks through suffering.
There's five things that happen whenever we walk through suffering with the Holy Spirit. And we can see all these things in different ways through the life of Christ. But the first one is love.
When we suffer, suffering exposes our weakness.
Suffering exposes our weakness. And if you're anything like me, I hate being weak. I hate being vulnerable. I hate not having the answers or being able to do it myself. I hate it.
And yet, in suffering, you are exposed to the opportunity to see weakness.
And what happens is when we expose ourselves and we offer an opportunity for others to show love for us, but even the exposure of our weakness to people around us is an act of love.
Jesus and his ministry was constantly going and moving, but in the last day of his life, he stopped from going and acting in miracles and he became very quiet and very reflective.
And he did not act out of a place of strength, but he laid his life down from a place of weakness. It was in weakness that he invited the disciples to pray with him. It was in weakness that he did not answer the accusations that were given. It was in weakness that he allowed someone else to carry his cross. It was in weakness that he laid himself down to be raised up on that cross. It was in a weakness that he was there and he saw his mom and he invited John, "Please take care of my mom."
When you expose yourself in suffering, it allows and invites others to walk in love towards you, but it also gives this place to show like, "I love you enough to show you where I'm at today."
The second thing that it does is it generates compassion.
If you've ever gone through something that's suffering, it changes how you see that thing.
You maybe didn't care about it before, but the moment that you go through it, it changes how you experience that thing. I remember whenever I hurt my knee before that, I was healthy, I was running, I was way fitter than I am now, way faster than I am now. You wouldn't believe how incredible I was back then. If you didn't know me back then, just imagine twice the man that's standing before you. Three times.
And then all of a sudden I hurt my knee.
I had to get surgery. I'd never had surgery. I'd never hurt anything. I'd never broken anything. I never did anything. I thought I was still invincible.
And then all of a sudden I went through this process. It was suffering. It was horrible.
And then I started seeing other people with knee braces and scars and wounds and my heart for them is different. When I see someone now, I go out of my way to talk to them before I didn't notice them. Or if I did notice them, I had this really arrogant thought of like, what weakness is this there? They hurt themselves. Who does that? Not this guy.
God said, I can run and not grow weary. So, you know, here I am. But now I have a different compassion when I see people with a knee problem because I can look at them and I can say, hey, what'd you do? What's he in for? ACL, MCL, Patel? What we got going on here? Oh, yeah. How many degrees they got you on that thing? Oh, yeah. I know that's the word. I have a new compassion because in my suffering, God was able to get me through my suffering and then he allows me to be there for someone else in their suffering.
For me, it was a need for you. Maybe it's a back or for maybe someone else who was a loss or a diverse divorce or a death or a miscarriage.
You get a compassion that changes you and maybe God brought up someone in your season to help you when you were in that place. But now he gets to do something else. The Holy Spirit redeems and creates compassion in you to move forward, to be a ambassador of his love in that situation.
The third thing is it creates gratitude.
I don't know if you've ever gone through a season of suffering or all the different things, but when you go through suffering or hardship, all of a sudden things become a lot more clear what's important and what's not.
Before you're suffering, you have a lot of things on the agenda that you think are important and then all of a sudden you're like, okay, I think I got like three important things in my life.
Suffering all of a sudden funnels it in and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm so thankful for this.
I'm so thankful for this.
I didn't even know I was thankful for that until this happened and now I realize, oh my gosh, I'm so thankful for it.
And I'm very grateful for it. I'm very grateful for this. As a media example really further, I didn't know how thankful I was for those grab bars and restrooms until I had to go to the restroom and I realized I went to one who didn't have a grab bar and I was like, this is going to get messy.
needed in that moment.
You realize what you're thankful for when you go through these seasons of suffering.
For these family, for the relationship, for the relationship with God, you realize all of a sudden this job entails, like those are not the things that are important.
It allows us to see what's happening.
The fourth one, this one's interesting.
But suffering produces groaning.
And that sounds like weird.
But here's the thing, if you've ever been in a situation that's just hard, and I don't mean the run's kind of groaning, that's a different kind of groaning.
But where everything's so hard, you don't know what to do, you don't know how to pray, you're maybe angry at God, you're angry at yourself, you're angry at people around you, you're angry at the world, you just are struggling to find it, you don't even know what to say or how to say, there's this incredible thing that happens.
Where the Bible says that in our groanings, in our inability to even formulate what we're thinking, it says that the Holy Spirit is with you in those moments, taking those groanings and transforming them from an unimaginable idea and transforms them into the exact prayer, the exact need that you have with your heavenly Father, which the thing that you need most, even in the hardest times and maybe the person you're most upset with is God, is that you need intimacy and proximity with God.
And you may think, I'm so separated from God, but in the moment of suffering and groaning and just the Bible type, that's when the Holy Spirit comes and moves and begins to translate on your behalf, and he says, you're not firm from God, this is your identity, and the one who wants to be close to you, the brokenhearted is the one who created you, the one who formed you, the one who called you, the one who's with you, he has not left you, he has not forgotten about you, this was not what he wanted for you, and yet here he is with you in the middle of this tension.
The Spirit begins to translate these things for us,
to translate them, to create communion with him.
So when you find yourself at a place where like, I don't even know how to pray, I don't even know what to pray, I don't, I'm angry, I don't even know if I want to pray, I don't even know if I believe prayer works,
and then you have that thought, oh, you just discounted everything, you're totally separated, now God has fully embraced your name from the Lamb's Book of Life, that is not what the Bible says, it says in your darkest moment, the Holy Spirit is making advocacy on your behalf, reminding God about your status as a son or a daughter, and speaking in faith to who you are, and then inviting your soul, hey, I know you're hurting, God's presence is here,
God's presence is here, God's presence is here in the middle of the suffering.
And then lastly, redemption, redemption.
The Holy Spirit redeems suffering. (Congregation Applauding)
It's not that he makes it like it never happened.
You see, Jesus went to the cross, he was crucified on that cross, he was put in that tomb, and on the third day he raised, and when he went and he saw the disciples, the thing that he showed them was not, look, it's like it never happened, what he showed them was, look at my scars.
Look at what suffering produced of me.
Look what it did.
In life, the longer we live, we get more and more wrinkles, more and more scars, more and more calluses.
If you're young, you think, not me, it's coming.
The wrinkles represent the life you live, the scars or the pain that you experience and the calluses of the journey and the work that you've been on now. And every one of them tells a story.
You see, the Spirit redeems and heals and makes new. And the beautiful thing about Jesus when he went and he said, look, touch them, the Bible's very clear. Sometimes you see some of these Catholic paintings and it's like blood is oozing out of it when he goes and see Dowing Thomas or whatever, and it's like, oh, that's not what it says. It says they are, it's not what it says. It says they are scars.
They were healed.
And that's why he could say, touch them.
They don't hurt it anymore. I've got a scar on my knee.
It's big. It's really long. It's a good one for guys to show.
Zoom in on that bad boy. Come on, camera guy, you see it. Look at it. You're not gonna see my legs too many times on Sundays.
But I can show this thing off. This is scar now. It doesn't hurt.
It healed.
So I'm hanging out with guys and they're like, come on, check out this car. I'm like, yes, he does it. 36 staples.
They use a chest spreader on it.
I didn't even feel it.
I mean, I don't tell him I was unconscious, but you know, I didn't even feel it.
(Audience Laughing) No biggie.
Scar. You can touch it all you want. It doesn't hurt. In fact, the weird thing about it sometimes, I don't even feel it at all because I don't think I have all the nerves back in there.
(Audience Laughing) No, but if it was fresh,
still bleeding,
it's unhealed.
I couldn't show you that. I couldn't let you touch that. It would hurt, but if it get infected, it'd be bad.
What the Holy Spirit does in our life,
is He takes these wounds that life throws at you. He heals them.
Even wounds that people say those will never heal.
He does miracles.
And He loves you enough to leave the scar.
He loves you enough so that you can walk to somebody out of love and compassion and everything else and say, "Hey, I've been there. "I know what you've got is fresh right now. "I don't wanna touch it, "but can I show you my scars "from when I went through the same thing?"
He redeemed me.
Holy Spirit redeemed me by suffering.
He loves me enough that He doesn't tell me, "Just pretend like it doesn't happen. "Just turn the light. "Don't worry about all the things "that are happening in this world. "Just pretend like everything's good. "You're gonna be fine." That's not what God says. I know it's broken.
But I'm with you even in the suffering.
I do good things even in the suffering.
I've been reading a book this last couple of weeks that my mom got me for my birthday.
And it's the story of Corey Timboum
smuggling a lot of Jews and different people during World War II. And her getting arrested and going to concentration camps. And the thing that is just overwhelming is they experienced overwhelming suffering.
Overwhelming suffering.
Like whatever you've gone through, it was worse.
It was worse.
It was horrendous in every level. And yet they have testimony after testimony after testimony of people not just thanking God that they got out of the prison, but thanking God that they went in.
Thanking God that they went through the suffering. Thanking God that they were put in that place so that he could transform their lives in the midst of suffering and beatings and violence and starvation and decay and death of friends and roommates and family members. They come out saying, "I thank God "that he brought me to this place "because I would not have known "how overwhelming his love and hope is "unless I went to the pit of hell "and experienced it for myself."
That makes no sense to me.
And it wasn't one person who was delusional. It's person after person, man after woman,
Jew and Gentile who's like, "I experience a hope "and a love in the midst of circumstances "that I would never wish even on my worst enemy. "I was able to forgive my oppressors "in the middle of my oppression."
Second Corinthians 4.10 says it this way. "We always carry around in our body "the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus "may also be revealed in our body."
The life of Jesus is revealed in your body because the same spirit that led Jesus into the wilderness, the same spirit that led him through those miracles, the same spirit that brought him to Jerusalem on the night of Passover, the same spirit that allowed him to be arrested and told him to be silent before his accusers, the same spirit who was with him whenever he went up on that cross, is the same spirit that raised him from the grave and is the same spirit that Jesus says, "Now lives inside of you and me "and he will do those kind of works "and even greater inside of your life." And so when you find yourself in the midst of suffering and you look around thinking, "I don't know what else to do," know that your savior Jesus suffered and he also is with you in the suffering and the spirit is there able to create inside of you love and gratitude and compassion and to translate your heart to the father and ultimately to redeem and to restore the suffering and the hardship that you're walking through.
All is part of the work of the cross
so that the spirit could tabernacle inside of you.
And here's the thing, if that's how it ended,
it would be okay.
Like we said in Passover last night, it would have been enough.
But Revelation 21, verse three, it says, "And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "'Look, God's dwelling place is now among the people "'and he will dwell with them and they will be his people "'and God himself will be with them and be their God "'and he will wipe every tear from their eye "'and there will be no more death or mourning "'or crying or pain for the old order of things "'has passed away.'" You see, though we are in the middle in the process of not yet, we do know what the finish looks like and suffering will end because of the work of the cross and new creation will come down and everything will be redeemed and everything will be restored and death will lose its power over this place and you will no longer have to suffer. You will receive something new and eternal in the future but until that moment comes, he is with you in that suffering right up until the moment till we step into eternity and we get to no longer experience suffering. But even in that moment, you won't think if only I could have had this more often and you will be sitting there saying, "God, thank you that you allowed me to become more like you "even in the midst of my suffering." (Soft Music) Even in the midst of my suffering.
What a God we serve.
So here's the thing, church, as we close this morning,
this Friday's Good Friday.
It's the day that Jesus went through his greatest suffering, the greatest suffering that any individual has ever gone through.
(Soft Music)
And we as a church are getting the opportunity
to voluntarily take a moment to partner with his suffering and allow ourselves to reflect on God's goodness.
And the way that we do that is by fasting.
Fasting ultimately, and we don't have time to break it all down, but ultimately fasting is voluntary suffering.
In order that we get to experience God's glory and honor.
And so the thing I wanna invite you to do, like Pastor Charlie said, is after dinner on Thursday night, don't eat again until six or seven o'clock the next day.
(Soft Music) And listen, it's not easy.
You may get angry.
You may feel like you're really, really suffering.
And that's okay.
It's a moment for us to reflect and say, "God, what did you suffer?"
Now maybe you're here and you can't participate, maybe you have a health reason. I've got one son that does, he can't do that. He can't skip food, like that's the thing. And that's okay, listen, then just take it another way. Pray to ask God, like think about, "Okay, if I can't skip food, maybe I'll just lay my phone down for 24 hours." I don't know what it is. But there's a moment that I'm inviting you to, and then when we come back into this building, I invite all of you to come at the end of Friday, to come here for Good Friday for a time of worship, for a time of prayer, and then we break our fast with communion together.
Family communion. And then right after we take communion, we go through and we get to have a church meal together.
Because you fast to participate in his suffering, and you feast to participate in his glory and his redemption.
And both are equally important in celebrating what Christ has done for us.
So you're invited. You're invited. If you can't come Friday night and you wanna do the fast, do the fast. If you can't fast, but you wanna come Friday night, don't be like, "Oh, I forgot and I ate lunch and now I can't come to the worship." No, you come. You come.
You show up. Even if you're like, "I just don't want to do it." That's fine, come.
You're invited. You're welcome here.
To participate and allow this week to be meaningful.
And for it to reshape our imagination and how we see the world around us. Stand with me to your feet.
(Soft Music)
The spirit you receive does not make you slaves that you live in fear again. Rather, the spirit you receive brought you about, brought about your adoption to sonship or daughtership. And by him, we cry out, "A Father."
The spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now, if we are children, then we are heirs. We are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. If indeed we share in his suffering in order that we may also serve in his glory and honor.
Father, we thank you today
for Jesus, for your heart of love,
and the spirit's never-ending pursuit of our hearts. (Soft Music)
Lord, for anyone who's walking through a season of suffering,
pray that your spirit is there
to produce love and compassion and gratitude,
to transform their groanings into intimacy and connection and affirmation of who they are in you, or to redeem the suffering. (Soft Music) I know that in this community, there are people who walk through very hard seasons in life.
I think that we don't have to walk through them alone.
That you're with us, that you redeem our suffering.
And that in participating with your spirit in the midst of suffering, Lord, we are transformed even more into your image.
We love you, Father.
It's in your holy name we pray.
Amen and amen. Church, listen, if you need any prayer for anything, our prayer team's gonna be down here. If you have questions about salvation or anything else, we would love to talk with you. Other than that, you are dismissed. We love you very, very much. Have a great rest of your Sunday.
