Called into His Suffering for His Glory

All right, what is up Resty, how are we doing today? Has anyone caught up on sleep from last night or are we still… oh, Danny. Danny has. Prince fell asleep at 11, woke up at 7am., well-rested. So yeah, super excited to be talking and speaking to y’all tonight as we go through the Scriptures, as we go back into our Colossians series, Complete in Christ. It has been a couple weeks since we’ve been here, so I do want to spend some time recapping, but just to kind of set our time really well today. As we start, I do want to start off with this story. 

So a few months ago, our family went to San Diego for a vacation. We usually do family vacations, its usually here in Texas, so we drive down to Austin. We do a lot of food, a lot of eating. We usually do like one outdoor activity just to say that we’re working off all the barbecue that’s down there, but that’s not true. And we spend a lot of time together. But this is the first one that we actually went out of state for this vacation. We went to San Diego and I was told for this trip specifically by Anju, “Hey, Amal, you are not allowed to plan anything for this trip because when you plan things, you stress out everyone on vacation with you. You want to do like 30 things and we end up doing 5 and no one can keep your schedule. You try to pack too much. I will do all the planning.” So that’s right, all right fine, I can relax, I can sit back and not plan for this vacation.

Like I said, when we do a vacation, we do a lot of food. We also try to do an outdoor activity. And so, Anju’s plan was, “Hey, let’s do this hiking trail.” Merin knows, “Let’s do this hiking trail.” This is the picture that Anju showed me for this hiking trail, “Five of the Best Hikes and Trails in La Jolla.” Going down to the beach, it’s like, “All right, this is great, it’s beautiful. Greenery, this doesn’t look too hard, it might be a long one, but I can do it, that’s fine.”

We get there, the one we actually go to is this. It’s called the Ho Chi Minh trail. It is called “The Most Dangerous Beach Access in La Jolla”. The fine print, if you can’t read it, it says, “Warning!” On this article. We find this out later. We already hiked this trail. We find this out later at lunch when we’re like, “Why was this so difficult?” and we look this up. This is the warning that the article gives the Ho Chi Minh trail, “Should only be used by the most adventurous hikers. Even though it is short it is rated difficult for good reasons. This is a fairly technical trail that required a lot of rock scrambling and maneuvering through slippery, narrow ledges. The sandstone gets slippery when wet, so make sure to avoid doing this hike after a recent rain. Also, make sure to wear hiking shoes with great traction and put those sandals away until you get down to the beach.” Can anyone guess what I was wearing on this trail? Sandals. Yes. “This trail is very treacherous. There are at least 100 rescues a year with quite a number of fatalities.”

When I say I was upset at this, you don’t understand the frustration. We get through, like, when it says rock scrambling, we’re on hands and knees. We’re going over this piece of plywood over like, it’s not a river, but there’s water down there. There’s this part where there’s just a rope and they’re like, “Oh yeah, you can go down.” I was like, “Dawg, what do you mean you can go down this rope? I’m not doing this.” But we did it, right, by the grace of God, we overcame, by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. That’s not where that Scripture goes in, but looking back, I wasn’t upset at the fact that we did the trail. I was upset because I was given one picture of what it was supposed to be like, and that was my expectations. But what actually happened was not what was promised to me.

And I bring this up, and I want to start here. And I think we also read the Scripture back in Luke 14, of if you’re going to sit down and build a tower, if you’re gonna sit down and go into war, the first thing you kind of do is count the cost of what you’re doing. Plan for what you have ahead of you so that you don’t go and start something that you cannot finish. 

We’re in Colossians 1, and just to kind of set the tone for today’s Scripture. This, if there’s anything that you kind of get from today as we preface this, is the warning sign for Christian life. I’m not saying don’t hike the trail. I’m saying before you hike the trail, be prepared for what you’re signing on for.

Okay, so like I said, it’s been a while since we’ve been in Colossians so let’s start with a frame of where we’ve been. This is a letter written from Paul to the church in Colossae. It mentions at the very beginning of Chapter 1 that Epaphras was a person who visited Paul while he was in prison. Epaphras travels to meet with Paul and share about what’s happening at the church in Clase. Paul is now writing to this church to teach them, hoping they grow in knowledge, spiritual wisdom, and understanding, they’re able to bear fruit, they’re strengthened with God’s power, and they persevere in faith. So six reasons why Paul’s writing this letter. If y’all open up to Colossians 1, we’re going to be there for a while, but at the very beginning of this chapter, that’s what he’s talking about, those six reasons. And those six reasons are to combat heresy that is now invading the church. If y’all remember, there’s this doctrine or this idea of Gnosticism that’s coming around. Paul is writing this letter to one, teach and educate and encourage the church at Colossae, but also to warn against the heresy that’s coming.

Paul goes from in the beginning of this chapter, talking about this prayer about those six things, to discussing what God the Father and especially what Jesus Christ, his Son, has done for us and all the things that he is. We’ve talked about in the first week of the series the importance of Jesus being the image of the invisible God. Everything Jesus said, did, and taught was God himself saying, doing, and teaching those things. We talked about in week two about Jesus having all authority over all creation in heaven and on Earth, and all things exist perfectly when they’re in perfect harmony in him and him alone. We talked about Jesus being the cornerstone where all other stones are laid against and how our lives are defined in him and around him as the cornerstone. We talked about how God’s pleasure was that his fullness and his deity dwelt in Jesus and how God is now pleased to dwell among his people. And then, at the last Encounter that we had, we talked about how we are not God. We were once not even in his household, we were aliens and hostile in mind, but Jesus is the one that paid for us to be transferred into his kingdom where we cannot be shaken.

And so this section that we’re covering today, verses 24 to 28, seems like a tangent from “hey, we just talked about all these things that God is and God does,” and we’re about to go into a section that talks about just like the encouragement and admonishment for the Church of how we’re supposed to live our lives. This section that we’re covering feels like a tangent, but it’s really just a bridge. And this section only talks about suffering, everyone’s favorite topic. Suffering, tithing, what’s the other one? There’s a third one that when you invite your friends to church for the first time, those are the three topics that the pastor chooses to talk on, suffering, tithing, giving all to God. But this section here is talking about suffering, and there’s three things that I kind of want us to highlight and to understand. If you’re a note-taker, these are the three things: suffering is promised, there’s absolutely nothing you can do to avoid suffering in your life. Second, suffering is God’s. Suffering is something that we steward for God and not something that we internalize or keep for our own. And third, suffering leads to a revelation of a hope of glory, and suffering will always in the Christian life lead to a hope of glory. 

So I started this sermon or this talk with just the story of the expectations versus reality, and I mentioned that we cannot go into Christian Life with a blind eye. So with that in mind, let’s read our Scripture portion for today, this is in Colossians 1:24-28.

“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this ministry, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.”

So this is where we’re at. Paul is writing to the Colossians, he mentions all these things. He starts off with just this understanding of “hey, I have been suffering for your sake.” And this idea of suffering in Scripture is something that has been constantly showing up. I don’t know if y’all noticed in history, but God’s people are usually not the most comfortable people. You can open up any page in the Old Testament, and it’s very likely that the Israelites are being subdued or taken over or attacked by another nation. You can open up any page in the New Testament, and we see that God’s people are being chased out of cities, persecuted, all those things. But Paul, specifically when he’s writing this letter, there’s something very unique about Paul’s suffering that we need to understand as context for this passage.

Before Paul even started his ministry, Jesus promised Paul that he would suffer for the sake of Christ, he would suffer for the sake of the Gospel. We see this in Acts 9. I know we’re going through Acts on our Sunday service, and so I don’t want to spoil anything, but also, it’s been 2,000 years, so y’all should know. But we see this in Acts 9 of Paul’s conversion story. It says “for I will show him how much,” and this is Jesus talking to Ananias who’s a prophet, and so Jesus is saying this, “‘I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.’ So Ananias departed and entered the house, and laying his hands on him he said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.'” 

So Paul, on his trip to Damascus, he’s going to persecute the church, and on the trip, Jesus interrupts him, blinds him, and is telling Ananias “Hey, you’re gonna go – to this guy that was persecuting the church, you’re now going to heal, and you’ll show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.”

So when Paul talks about suffering, Paul’s suffering was promised way before he started his ministry. When Paul talks about suffering, he boasts in it, and he talks about all the things that have happened to him by people who have attacked him. We can read this in 2 Corinthians 11:23-29.

“Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my own people, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.”

Paul is not living a comfortable life. Paul is suffering. So when he writes in Colossians 1 “I am suffering for your sake,” this guy is not having a good time at all. He’s really, really going through it. And yet what we read in Colossians 1, not just to Colossae but what the Holy Spirit has preserved for us today, is that Paul is rejoicing in his sufferings for the sake of the church. It’s not just Paul that’s suffering for the sake of the church.

Jesus, the Son of God, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, suffers as well. There are so many prophecies in the Old Testament written not about Jesus the Conquering King, or the Messiah the Conquering King, but the Messiah suffering, the suffering servant, the one who came to die for the sake of the world. The most prominent one I think that we can kind of remember is here in Isaiah 53.

“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.”

Suffering, there’s no way to escape it. It’s something that is there for all of us. Paul has suffered, Jesus has suffered. And Jesus, in His sovereignty, His mercy, and His foreknowledge, promises us something as well as His servants in the year 2023. Because we are the servants of Jesus, we will also suffer. John 15:18-21 reads like this: 

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they keep my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.”

Man, encouraging, right? THe servant is not greater than his master. If Jesus, the master suffered the way he did, we’re in for it too. Or we can read in 2 Timothy 3:10-13: 

“You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra—which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”

So here’s the big picture: if we believe, and I hope we do, if we believe the Scriptures are true, and if we believe what the Father and Jesus, in their teachings, and what the Holy Spirit has inspired the authors of the New Testament to write, if we believe all those things to be true about suffering, maybe we should have a different idea of what suffering is. Here is the inevitable truth for all of us: suffering is promised, absolutely promised, nothing we can do about it.

And yet there’s this false narrative that the world says and teaches, that the way we live life is to minimize pain and suffering and maximize pleasure. Think Ecclesiastes, King Solomon writing, or the teacher writing— because it doesn’t outright say Solomon wrote that— but the teacher writing in Ecclesiastes: “I have sought out all the pleasures of the world and have tried my best to minimize my pain. I’ve tried my best to eat what I want and drink what I want and go where I want. I’ve bought palaces and built gardens and did all of these things, and yet at the end of all of it, what is it? Meaninglessness, vanity.”

In the face of everything that the world says that we should do, we can either choose to believe what culture and the world and what those things are trying to tell us is true, or we can believe what the Scriptures, inspired by God, written by authors all across history, have been telling us from the beginning: suffering is promised, is inevitable. There’s nothing that we can do to get away from it.

So, if suffering is promised and we don’t believe what the world is telling us about what suffering is, maybe the aim of this life isn’t to minimize pain and maximize pleasure, like what the world, what the rest of the world, is doing. We have this arrogance that we pretend, or we think we have control over our lives. We have such arrogance that we can pretend that our decisions were ours and ours alone when, in reality, if you didn’t know, our decisions are reactions to things that other people have done for us, or done to us, or done around us.

If you think that you have control in life, I hate to be the one that bursts your bubble, but you don’t. Here’s an exercise, if you think you have control:change your eye color right now. Anyone? Change your skin tone. Make yourself taller or shorter. We think that our decisions were made by us and we had complete control in those decisions, but in reality, we have absolutely no control. We did not decide when we were born, we did not decide where we were born, we did not decide what kind of family that we would be raised by, we did not decide the culture of the society of the place that we were born in.

When you’re prepping for going to college soon and you’re doing applications, there are going to be career advisors and counselors that say, “Oh, you can apply anywhere in the world and you can get in and you can achieve your dreams.” I promise, if you apply to Harvard, the legacies of Harvard will have priority over you. More than likely. You’re going to go to UNT, TWU, UTD not because those are the premier schools of the United States but because you’re in Dallas. If you don’t, man, praise God, there aren’t very many of us that have left Dallas for school. But even then, your education has been determined because you’re born here and you’re going to pick a degree program in one of those schools that’s good.

You can say, “Oh, I want to be this, this, and this,” but if those schools don’t have a great program for that, it’s not going to work out and you’re going to change your major from – maybe this is part of your story – you’re going to change your major from medicine to business or I.T., and you’re gonna settle for a degree, and that’s fine. Those aren’t bad things, but it’s just the reality. The world is saying, “You can do whatever you want, by the way, you really can’t. It’s a lie and we’re saying this because it sounds easier to say, and it makes life easier for us.”

So, if the aim is not to minimize suffering and maximize pleasure, what do we do when we suffer? What do we do when we’re going to suffer? What do we do when we have those experiences, those feelings, those encounters? We remember that none of these things belong to us. We don’t have control. Our education isn’t ours, our strength isn’t ours, we didn’t cause the sun to shine today. All those things are God’s. So, maybe we should frame our suffering, or maybe we should also give our suffering, instead of thinking we have control over it, maybe we should give that to God as well. 

Point number two: your suffering belongs to God, it should be stewarded for him and for him alone. We read this in Colossians 1:24, Paul writes, “In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make God fully known.”

So, just a quick point, Paul is not saying in this verse that Jesus didn’t suffer enough, or that his cross lacked suffering, or there was something missing in Jesus’ suffering here on Earth. Let’s actually read Colossians 1:24-25 (NLT), “I am glad when I suffer for you in my body, for I am participating in the sufferings of Christ that continues for his body, the church. God has given me the responsibility of serving his church by proclaiming his entire message to you.”

So, when Paul writes, “I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of the body,” he’s not saying that Christ didn’t suffer enough. He’s saying that his individual body lacks suffering. When he suffers for the church, he is participating in the same suffering that Christ did for his church. We can also read this in 2 Corinthians 1:5, “For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”

So, all our suffering, we suffer because we’re Christ’s, we suffer because our servants are not greater than our master. In our suffering, God is not leaving us alone to experience that thing and let and to think that’s okay; but God is also with us in our suffering. We are participating in the same way that Jesus suffered. So, what the Scripture is saying here, specifically, and the point I’m trying to make, is that Jesus’ suffering, the believer’s suffering, is stewardship for one purpose, according to verse 25, to make God fully known and to advocate for His Church.

Christ suffering was for a purpose. if He wanted to, Christ could have come at the age of 33 didn’t have to be born in manger, didn’t have to have his family relocate to Egypt to escape Herod’s persecution, didn’t have to be beaten bloodied, didn’t have to go to a trial, didn’t have to be hung on a cross. If he wanted to he could have. But his express purpose for coming and experiencing those things was for a specific reason which is to make God fully known. Our suffering in the same vein is for that expressed purpose as well to be stewarded for God and to make him fully known

There’s so much Scripture that I can kind of cover that talks about this. If I do it’s going to take another 40 minutes, I’m not going to do that, but one thing that we see in the Scripture that Jesus came to make God fully known is just this picture of the typologies that’s there: the types and shadows of Christ. We are in, right now in small groups, we’re going through 1 Samuel and we’re comparing how David and Saul are as kings. David is God’s anointed, Saul is the one rejected. But as we see David living and being obedient to God, to following the law, to experiencing those things, we see David as a shadow or a precursor or a typology of who Christ is before Christ even came.

David, we read this yesterday in chapter 23. David, before he made any decision, what did he do? He inquired of the Lord, mimicking and shadowing Christ. This is Jesus speaking: I don’t say anything the father doesn’t tell me to say, I don’t do anything the Father doesn’t tell me to do. We see that picture and that being mirrored in the life of David.

You go through the Scriptures, we go through the Old Testament, you can take any story, you can take any passage, you can take any command and it’ll somehow in a way point to Christ. Adam, the first man; Christ the perfect first man of the New Covenant. Abraham, the father of the promise; Christ, fulfilling that promise for a new generation that brings all people to him. David, the imperfect king who falls to temptation; Christ, the perfect King, tempted in every way, who does not sin. The Passover Lamb, slaughtered for the sins of the people; Jesus, slaughtered for the sins of the world. The Mosaic law that came to bring people to Christ; Jesus’s law of grace not that now binds us perfectly to the Father. The temple, in the Blueprint series, we went through the whole Tabernacle and Temple look, and how even that is a mirror of Jesus and his ministry here on Earth.

So, Jesus came for an express purpose, his suffering is for an express purpose – to make God fully known. So our suffering is also to make God fully known.

Here’s the conviction, here’s the emphasis: we have, and I think we experience this very commonly in Malayalee Pentecostalism, but we have this idea that we can put up masks to hide things. We can edit how our social media presents, we can edit how we talk, dress, and look. We can hide so many things behind a mask or behind a layer and say, “Everything is good, right?” We don’t allow people into our suffering, and instead, we project how we want people to perceive and receive us. But if suffering is something that’s inevitable, and if suffering is something that makes God known and should be stewarded for Him, we don’t have to be the perfect son, daughter, sister, brother, father, mother, friend, cousin, whatever. You don’t have to be those things, right? In our imperfection, we are reminded of a perfect God who will fix, redeem, renew, reconcile all things to Himself, right? And so, our suffering, I think what’s so important here, is in our suffering, in our pain, in our trauma, whatever that is, we don’t have to hide behind a layer. Especially in the body, right? We don’t have to pretend to be someone we’re not here. We’re broken people seeking healing from a perfect God. And I hope that’s something that is just so obvious, and evident, and abundant and that’s built into the DNA of this body.

We should remind ourselves that pain draws people in and points them to Jesus. We don’t have to hide our pain away from people. I share very, very often, very commonly, I share a lot about my story. If you have not heard it, or if it’s the first time here, prep – but I’ll edit a little bit. I share a lot about how in life, I deal with a lot of anxiety. I’ve dealt with depression. I’ve dealt with some extreme thoughts. Mental health has never been something that I am good at. That’s led to a lot of behaviors that I’m not proud of, that’s led to a lot of relationships that, and things and areas and places that should not have talked to, been at, looked at, been around, consumed, right?

And there is very easy, in Malayalee Pentecostalism, I could come and pretend everything’s okay. I can present myself as like, “hey, this is the guy. this is the deacon, hardest working person at Restoration Church,” but in reality, I am so messed up. So unworthy of the Gospel. God’s goodness and favor is not based on my performance. So I remember that’s not suffering, that’s consequences of sin. I remember that, I am adamantly aware of that, right? That’s painful. The suffering comes now when I made a decision when I was 9 to look at things I shouldn’t have looked at and being addicted for 11 years. The suffering comes now to repent daily and instead of feeding something that should be killed, to dying to self, to pick up my cross and to follow. The suffering comes from “friendships” made in places that should not have been made, cutting out those people, and pursuing healthier relationships with friends, family, co-workers, people from school.

I was actually really blessed, at least in that area.  There’s a deep conviction in 2016 where I kind of realized like there’s a good chunk of people in my life that I should not be around right now. And in that conviction, I prayed, “God to help me cut those people off.” Then in 2016, God convicted me to go on a mission trip, and I came back from the mission trip, and all those, by God’s grace, all those people ghosted me. I didn’t have the strength, I think God realized, I did not have the strength to be obedient to Him, so He took care of it for me. But in that isolating season of life in 2016, when about 40 or 50 percent of my community, or 90 percent of my close community, 50 percent of people I just kind of knew, disappeared. God’s grace brought people in college, in the college ministry I was at InterVarsity, people around me to pursue holiness and purity and reconciliation. 

I’ve been meeting with these guys since 2016. We have gone through Regeneration Recovery at Watermark together. We have shared sorrows together, we have shared joy, and laughter, and pain, and all the things together. I’ve been groomsmen in their weddings, and they’re going to be groomsmen in mine if I get married. Because God, in His sovereignty, is going to bring people, and He’s going to build His church the way He wants to build His church. And so, the pain and suffering that we experience is for Him. It’s His, it’s solely His, and we’re going to use it for His glory. 

So, we’re also reminded, point number three, the suffering leads to revelation of a hope of glory. Colossians 1, there is this, in these verses, Paul, as he writes, that his suffering, as hard as it was, led to the church, and not just Colossae, but the Church of the time, and the Church of generations, to receive encouragement and sound teaching in this letter. If Paul did not write this letter, if Paul did not experience these sufferings – he’s writing this letter in a jail cell. He has all the time in the world because of his suffering. He has all the time in the world to write and to encourage, and the Holy Spirit has preserved that knowledge for us for generations. Two thousand years after Paul has been on Earth, his words, inspired and empowered by the Holy Spirit, are still here for us. So those words in Colossians show that suffering leads to a revelation of a hope of glory. But it also shows that when we read about suffering, those things also reveal that suffering leads to a hope of glory.

Earlier we read in Acts 9 about Paul’s suffering, which was promised to him by Jesus. However, if we add one more verse into that portion, in verse 15, it says, “God said to him, Ananias, go, for Paul is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and children of Israel.” And then I’ll show him how much he’s going to suffer for my name. Suffering is there to lead to a hope of glory.

We read in 2 Corinthians 12 about Paul boasting about his suffering. A few verses down, if we continue reading in verse 9, it says, “My grace is God speaking to Paul, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

We read in Isaiah 53, the song of the suffering servant, the prophecy that shows that the Messiah is here to come and suffer. This was something promised to Jesus. Yet, we also see in Isaiah 53 of that prophecy this truth. “Out of the anguish of his soul, he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressions.”

Why? Because suffering always leads to a revelation of a hope of glory. We read in 2 Timothy 3 about Paul encouraging Timothy about his suffering. Just as you followed in all those things, you will also follow in suffering, and that’s something that’s going to be expected and it’s something that’s promised. But we go down a few more verses and we see something that we just read out of context. About the Scriptures, we’ll just read just the highlighted part, “As for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you’ve been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

This Scripture very clearly ties the suffering that was promised leads to the man of God being equipped. Why? Because we know that suffering will always lead to a revelation of a hope of glory for the believers. Always, always in the life of a believer, we read this in Romans 8. God will work all things for His glory and for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purposes.

So, does that mean we should seek out suffering? Is that something that we should strive towards, that we should encourage others to strive toward? No, definitely not. If we can live quiet lives, that’s good, and that’s something that’s encouraged in Scripture. But in each of our sufferings, we know that there’s a unique and powerful revelation of Christ that we may not have fully understood unless we had that suffering.

What does that mean? Very basically: how can we know that Christ is our firm foundation if we’ve never stood on shaky ground? How can we know that Christ, or God, is a safe refuge and an ever-present help in time of trouble if we’ve never experienced danger? Jesus understood. He is a high priest that can empathize. He’s not someone who advocates and intercedes with the most mundane things. Even in this picture of being betrayed by a friend, he knew what it feels like to be betrayed. He knew even before Judas did it that Judas would betray him, and yet, he loved Judas and had compassion on him and did life with this guy for three years. Jesus knows about our suffering. He’s experienced it himself in such a real and tangible way that we don’t understand until we go through the experience of suffering. And we find, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians, the God of all comfort who provides comfort in power.

Suffering should lead to hope. Our suffering does not just lead us to hope, but it also anchors our souls for the work of God. For we know that God works all things together for good. Even then, even in Hebrews 11, at the end of this portion, there’s a section of victory. Victory over victory, over victory, over victory. It comes to the end of this chapter, that talked about all these men and women of faith and how they lived, and it ends like this, “What more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets—who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back their dead by resurrection.”

Victory after victory, after victory, after victory, after victory. “But some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”

The Christian life for some of us, I think both these things are evident and obvious, and we’ll see it. We’ll see the victories. We’re going to see God do crazy things – not just hear about it happening in North India through the Spirit – we’re going to see God do crazy things here in real life, if we’re obedient to Him. We’re also going to be like the others who have suffered, and that’s okay. Because if we endure our suffering, what’s promised to us? A better resurrection.

I have this theory, conviction, I don’t know what to call it, but I think when we get to heaven and we see the judgments, right, the believers going through judgment, I’m kind of convinced that we’re not going to see people fully healed at the throne. I think what we’re going to see at that judgment are men and women who have been martyred, arms cut off, legs cut off, eyes missing, people who have been burned alive, people who have been thrown overboard. We’re going to see the effects of their persecution. There’s no scriptural basis for this, so I’m just deeply convinced of this for some reason; but I think we’re going to stand before Jesus in that judgment seat, and before our eyes on that day, we’re going to see the effects of the persecution be immediately changed, them going into their glorified bodies. They’re to stand before Jesus, and they’re going to see and we’re going to see what faithfulness produced in the midst of persecution and hardship. We’re going to see that be rewarded many times over. 

We don’t have to buy into the lie that the world says to minimize pain and maximize pleasure. We don’t have to buy into the lie of the American dream. We don’t have to think and make trade-offs of “I can live comfortably here on Earth and that’s good enough for me.” Those things are of no value in light of eternity, in the light of eternal life. Gold, as valuable here on Earth as it is, it is so useless in heaven, they paved the roads with it. Why do we cling to it as if it’s something of value or meaning? 

So, in conclusion, three things: One, suffering is promised, there’s absolutely nothing we can do to avoid it, but in the midst of suffering, we should remember that all suffering, all believers’ suffering is God’s, that we steward it for him and for him alone, that we use it to make God fully known. And third, all suffering leads to a hope of glory in the life of the believer, in the life of the church.

I kind of want to end off in this illustration, it’s the story of this guy named David Livingston. He’s a missionary, actually, I think technically, his government sponsored explorer. I don’t think we have that job anymore, but back in the 1800s when Africa was being used for slavery, they sent out explorers and adventurers to map out the continent. And David Livingston was one. Born on March 19, 1813, he gave his life to serve Christ in the exploration of Africa. He wasn’t one of the slave traders, but he went for the sake of the Queen and to create access to the Gospel.

He was the first European to cross the width of Africa and the first to set his eyes on Victoria Falls, which is a waterfall that he founded and named after Queen Victoria. While in Africa, he laid his eyes on the horrors of East African slave trade and devoted himself with passion as an abolitionist. He saw just the awful atrocities of what’s happening to people, convicted by the Holy Spirit, he was someone who would stand against it.

As a young man, he heard from Robert Moffett, a missionary in South Africa. Robert Moffett said this: “I had sometimes seen in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had ever been.” And at a young age, those words for a missionary captured the heart of David Livingston. And so, when he voyages to Africa, these aren’t easy trips for him. He goes knowing that he’s going to map out the continent and what he maps out will be used to spread the Gospel. Yet those trips were marked with hardship. In 1862, his wife Mary dies by the Zambezi River and he has to go home.

During his next voyage, for two years he just disappears. They’re unable to make contact with him. They had no access to him, they did not receive a letter from him, they received no information from him. He was later found so ill that he couldn’t even lift a pen. But even while that sick, he was able to read the Bible straight through four times in those two years. Livingston’s disappearance at that time fascinated the populace as much as Amelia Earhart’s would a few generations later.

He returns from that trip, and he writes. He writes this, and he presents this to college students when they ask him, “How can you suffer so much for the sake of God? That for the sake of Christ? For the sake of God?” And he writes this: “For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Is that a sacrifice which brings its own blessed reward in healthy activity, the consciousness of doing good, peace of mind, and a bright hope of a glorious destiny hereafter? Away with such a view of the world and with such thoughts! That is emphatically no sacrifice I have given. I say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger, now and then with the foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver, and the soul to sink. But let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us and for us. I have never made a sacrifice.” 

He wrote that after his wife died.

Livingston’s journey, his writings, his acts would reach England. His stories which stir up the hearts of many people against the slave trade. Abolitionists would read his writings, be inspired not just of the horrors of what’s happening in Africa but be inspired by the gospel. Hundreds, thousands of men, women and children freed from the slave trade because of his work. But David Livingston saw none of that in his lifetime because on May 1st, 1873, he passes away in his last trip to Africa. They found his body early in the morning, he was found kneeling by his bed with his face in his hands on the pillow in a posture of prayer. Losing everything for the sake of the Gospel, yet thousands of men, women, children of the African continent freed by his work and he gets to see Jesus. Man, I can’t even imagine. He just closed his eyes in prayer and he opened it and King Jesus is there. 

It takes two months for his body to return to England from Africa and on that day there’s a huge procession. The eulogy that’s written about him is this: “He knew not that the trumpet he had blown out of the darkness of that dismal land had reached and roused an army of its own to strike the chains from the slave’s feathered hands; he needs no epitaph to guard his names which men shall prize while worthy work is known. He lived and died for good, be that his fame. Let marble crumble, this is Living stone.”

A life marched with suffering, but the hope of glory found in it.

We started with the Scripture a while ago, right before this is the warning sign before you go on the hike: “Your life will be marked with suffering for the sake of the Gospel, but how many thousands will be saved because of your faithfulness. Count the cost before you start the hike, before you start the trip, before you build your army or start that tower. Count the cost of following Him. It’s going to be a lot but it’s no sacrifice in light of all that is given.”

So as we end our time and Encounter, we want to encourage and foster a place of prayer. So I encourage us to close our eyes and bow our heads and here’s what I want to think. I want us to think about during this time: Where have you failed to count the cost and what do you need to acknowledge and repent from during this time of prayer? Where is God calling you to go and to suffer for His sake to make Him fully known?

Yeah, I encourage us to spend some time in prayer and I’ll end us off. 

Father God, we thank you. We are so aware of the things that you’re calling us to do for your name. We are aware of the cost that we have to pay to be obedient to what you’re calling us to do. Forgive us, forgive us for our apathy, forgive us for our unwillingness to go where you have clearly called us to go, forgive us for thinking that this life is enough and we don’t have to be concerned for the things of Heaven, the things of Eternity. My God, forgive us that we have chosen other things instead of you. 

But will you remind us, remind us, remind our souls tonight, you are of great value, your kingdom is of great value, and the things that have to be paid in order for others to have access to that kingdom are worth it. We will leave everything. My God, remind our souls we’re going to leave everything here on Earth. We’ll not bring a single tangible material thing with us to the next life but there are people that we will bring. Holy Spirit, empower us to share your gospel and to be faithful to go where you’re calling us to go. 

We thank you, we praise you, we pray this all in the name of your Son, King Jesus, amen.