This past Sunday was our last week in the series, "Good God, Bad World." If you didn't catch it, feel free to download it by following the link or reading the text below.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/t2wuvqzyjiz/Help or Hindrance.mp3
“Help or Hindrance: Faith’s Role in Suffering”
Brimfield Faith UMC
February 7, 2010
1 Corinthians 15:51-58; Psalm 57
When I began preparing for this sermon series last year, I knew there were a number of people in the congregation that were capable of sharing powerful stories. Many of you have experienced pain and suffering in your lives that you have overcome. I love hearing pieces of Brenda’s story, because she shares with such honesty. Life hasn’t always been easy for her and her family, but they have clung to God through it all. I hope that it has been a point of inspiration for you hearing both Dawn’s and Brenda’s story. I want to continue to encourage testimonies of faith so if you have a story you’d like to share let me know and we’ll try to work it in.
Hearing about people experiencing and gaining from the things I preach about is always uplifting for me. I know many times when I preach a sermon series, I end up experiencing some aspect of it in my personal life. When I was preparing to preach this current series I was a little worried. To preach for five weeks on pain and suffering seemed a bit risky. Without fail over the past five weeks, I’ve observed pain and suffering up close. Since we began this series on January 10th, I have officiated three funerals. As a reference point, I officiated six funerals all of last year. By officiating each of these funerals, I was afforded the opportunity to apply some of the principles that we have been talking about each Sunday.
I have also had the chance to observe how different people mourn and react to loss. For example, at one of the funerals, several of the family members expressed their anger about the person’s passing. I affirmed their anger knowing that it is a healthy part of the grieving process. I hope over the past five weeks you have also gained some valuable insights into pain and suffering. In this final week of the series, I want to address the topic that I think undergirds the entire discussion of pain and suffering: the role of faith.
It is not always a given that faith will be a help in times of suffering. In fact, I think the question needs to be asked: Is faith a help or a hindrance when it comes to pain and suffering? Many people wrestle with faith in the face of pain and suffering. Therefore, recognizing that faith isn’t an automatic help for everyone in times of suffering, I want to touch on three ways that faith in God can help us through difficult times.
STANDING WITH US
#1. God stands with us during suffering.
Faith can help us through difficult times if we remember that God will always stand with us during suffering. It is important to remember that pain is not the punishment for our sins. Nor is it not a sign that God has abandoned us or forsaken us. Regardless of our actions, we can always turn to God in difficult times. We don’t have to fear that God won’t be there when we need him most.
One of my favorite concepts in the Old Testament is that of steadfast love. In Exodus Moses proclaims, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin…” This is the same God that we serve today. We can know without a doubt that God will stand with us in every difficult time. Regardless of our actions, we can cry out to God in prayer and know that he will answer us.
The Israelites have experienced continual hardship in their history. Slavery in Egypt. Wandering through the wilderness. Occupation. Exile. In the Scriptures, they turn their backs on God repeatedly . They wander, disobey, rebel. Through it all, God is still there ready to take them back. He does the same for us. God is always faithful, abounding in steadfast love. He truly is as the Psalmist says, “our rock and our redeemer.”
WALKING WITH US
#2. God walks with us through suffering.
Not only is God faithful to stand with us, God walks with us through suffering. In the New Testament, God’s steadfast love goes beyond standing with us. In the incarnation of Jesus Christ, God walks with us through suffering. If God simply promised to never forsake us, we would agree that God is a good God. Yet, God by sending his son Jesus Christ to the earth proves his love in an entirely new way. Jesus walked through suffering and provides the example for how we can walk through suffering.
There is no other religion in the world in which God willingly gave up his seat in heaven and becomes human. We can lean on and walk with God in our sufferings, because God has experienced them personally. He sends Jesus to enter into the fallen world and to experience all of the pain of it. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he spent his only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God allows Jesus to grow up surrounded by gossip, rumors, and shame. Jesus is rejected by his own friends and family. And finally he is crucified as an innocent man. There was nothing glamorous or easy about Jesus’s life.
In 1 Peter 2, Peter paints the picture of how Christ can walk with us through our suffering. He says, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. “He committed no sin,
and no deceit was found in his mouth.” When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”
To think Christianity embraces the easy life is foolish. Instead, faith provides us the means of walking through pain and thriving in the midst of it. If we thought that becoming a Christian was going to help us to avoid pain and suffering, we were sorely mistaken. We serve a God that walked through incredible pain and suffering. The primary image of Christianity is that of the cross. While the cross may look pretty and elegant today, the cross of Christ was a bloody, inhumane, killing machine. It was a slow, painful, humiliating death. Every one of Jesus’ disciples was eventually martyred for their faith.
While this could be a deterrent to faith, I see this as a great asset. We serve a God that walks through suffering with us. This empowers us to live free from the fear of pain. We are able to thrive in all circumstances as Psalm 23 says: “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For you are with me; Your rod and your staff they comfort me.” We can continue on and find strengthen in all circumstances because God is right next to us at all times. Instead of evoking fear, suffering brings about transformation and to make us into new creations. God guides us, teaches us, and empowers us which allows us to benefit from pain instead of being robbed by it.
VICTORIOUS WITH US
#3. God is victorious with us over suffering.
Ultimately, we are able to continue to walk with God through all things because ultimately God is victorious over suffering. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?” 56The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ endured great suffering on the cross but the story doesn’t end with the crucifixion on Good Friday. We are people who have an Easter Sunday faith. The resurrection happened and in the resurrection, God is victorious over sin and death. When we stand with God and walk with God through suffering, we also share in his eternal victories.
People who have endured great tragedy will tell you time and perspective can help to ease the pain. The further removed you are from a painful event the less that it hurts. The distance helps you gain a fresh perspective that helps to see purpose and meaning. The ultimate perspective in gained through the lens of eternity. Our suffering here matters but in the scope of eternity it will feel like the blink of an eye. When we are afforded that kind of time and perspective, suffering takes on a new face. We are no longer overwhelmed and overcome by the challenges of the here and now.
CONCLUSION
I begin every funeral service with the same words. I want to end this sermon and this series with those same words.
“Jesus said, I am the resurrection and I am the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, yet shall they live, and whoever lives and believes in my shall never die. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I hold the keys of hell and death. Because I live, you stall live also.”
Faith can and does make a difference in how we process pain and suffering if we allow it. If we stand with God, walk with God, we will experience victory with God. Pain is no longer paralyzes us with fear. Suffering does not destroy our lives but instead transforms our lives. And that is how a Good God exists in a Bad World.
Let’s pray.
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