Episode Transcript
[00:00:16] Speaker A: I think that there's always a lot for us to learn. As a relatively young church, predominantly young church, there's always a lot for us to learn from older men and women who have walked with Jesus much longer than we have and who have suffered greatly.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: I've heard it said. I've experienced this in my own life. I'm still pretty young man, but have experienced this in my own life, but have heard it said. And I believe that this is true, that there is no growth without pain.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: In order for us to really come to know experientially the joy of what it means to be a son or daughter of God through faith in Jesus, you and I must share in the afflictions of Jesus.
That's just a part of life.
And it's when we don't believe that this is a part of life or we come to expect that this is not a part of life when our faith begins to shake.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: So one of those saints that I think is such a, by the grace of God, such a good role model to look up to as we prepare to enter into Hebrews 11 next week is a woman named Joni Eareckson Tada. So if you have not read Joni Eareckson Tada, you should read her. Here's her story very briefly. When Joni was 14, she was invited to a Christian summer camp. And it was there that she met Jesus. So she heard the gospel, that God was good, that she was a sinner, that God the Father sent Jesus his son to the earth to live the life that she could not live in perfect obedience to the Father, to die on the cross for her sins and then to be resurrected on the third day. And that if she repented of her sin and put her faith in Jesus, she'd be saved and brought into right relationship with God and forgiven of all of her sins. She heard this wonderful news and she said yes to Jesus at age 14. That she would go on to admit that after that moment, for at least a season of her life, she really struggled to not intermingle her Christian faith with the American dream.
And the sense of the way that she thought about the Christian life was essentially, God exists for me.
So her prayers really revolved around God, could you give me this God? Could you give me that God? Would you give me good health? Would you give me a boyfriend? Would you give me a good job? Would you like all the not bad things to pray, by the way? Necessarily.
But if fundamentally we believe that God exists for you and for me rather than the other way around, then we've missed biblical Christianity.
And so she functionally believed this. And one day, her and her sister go out swimming in the lake. And so while they're swimming, she proceeds to exit the water, get on the shore, and she goes to what seems to be a deeper part of the lake, and she decides to dive in. So when Joni dives in the water, she doesn't realize how shallow the water is that she dives into. And she hears her neck crack and then realizes that she can't move. So she's floating face down in the water, unable to move.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Her body can.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: And in that moment, she goes on to describe that she.
She's thinking in her mind and hoping in her heart and begins praying that her sister, who's there, would somehow see her. But the problem is, is that her sister's back is actually turned to her at this moment. She doesn't hear Johnny dive in the water. But this is crazy. A crab bites her sister's foot. At that moment, her sister turns around in shock to warn Johnny of the crabs in the water and notices that she's floating face down. And so she goes over and she picks from the water and she saves her, right? So they take her into the hospital, and it's at the hospital that she's told she's never going to walk again.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:03:53] Speaker A: For the rest of her life, she's never going to walk again. And so here she is, relatively new Christian teenager, trying to grapple with this paradox of how could God be all good and all powerful and all loving? And this happened to me at the same time.
This is what some modern we'll say youtubers are calling divine hiddenness.
It's one of the biggest objections to Christianity today, this idea that if pain and suffering and death are all a reality of life, and these wars are going on, and there's all this political turmoil, and everybody seems terrible and people are dying, and how could there be a God?
This is what they're calling divine hiddenness.
So I think. And this is. We've talked about this a lot. If you've been around through the Book of Hebrews, the Book of Hebrews has a lot to say about this.
Like how we as Christians, as followers of Jesus, ought to think about the problem of pain or the problem of suffering or the reality of tragedy and death. And not just how to think about it, but how, by the grace of God, if you are a follower of Jesus this morning, you and I might persevere through it to finish well. And so that's what the text hits on. The text today is about endurance, resilience.
What does it look like, by the grace of God, to cultivate resilience and endurance in our life? A Christian resilience, by the way, not a worldly one. There's a difference between the two. Worldly resistance says that you need to. You need to get up, you need to pick yourself up, and you need to be strong and move on by the strength of your own power. That's not Christian resilience. So how do we cultivate Christian resilience that we might, by the grace of God, finish our race? Well, because this must be the goal, right? That everybody in the room who's here today would finish well and receive the reward promised in the text.
Like, we don't want a single person in the room this morning to not finish well.
It isn't enough for you to just start strong, right? Didn't we talk about this last week with the parable of the soils? Like, lots of people do that.
Okay, so how do we finish well, by the grace of God, how do we cultivate resilience and endurance? So let's look at the text together.
All right, so the Holy Spirit, I believe, through the author of the Book of Hebrews, is going to call us to do two things through this passage.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:06:33] Speaker A: Number one, he's going to call us to remember and reflect on the suffering associated with following Jesus.
And then number two, the reward promised to those who follow Jesus.
So we'll look at each of those individually. So, number one, this is verses 32 to 33. We need to remember that the Christian life is one of struggles.
[00:06:55] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:06:55] Speaker A: The Christian life is one of struggle. John Piper says that if you put your hope in this world, you'll soon come to realize that this life on this side of heaven is a conveyor belt of disappointment.
[00:07:08] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:07:08] Speaker A: Just one disappointment doesn't mean there aren't beautiful and wonderful things in life. Of course there are. But if your hope is in this life alone, then you'll realize time and time and time again that you're disappointed.
So the Christian life is one of struggle. Look at what the author says.
He says, but I want you to recall the former days when after you were enlightened.
That phrase is talking about the enlightenment that comes from the Holy Spirit, when the Holy Spirit enlightens our eyes, enlightens our hearts to see our sin and our need for a Savior, and then enlightens us to see the Savior, Jesus and what he's done on our behalf through his Life, death, and resurrection. That's a work of the Spirit. So he says, recall the former days when after you were enlightened, meaning after you became a Christian, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, plural, a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction and sometimes being partners with those so treated. So many people believe that this is a house church that the author is writing to and that they were being tempted to divert back to their old ways of Judaism because. Because of the present pressure of suffering they were experiencing. And so here's what he's telling. He's saying, hey, listen, after you became a Christian and you came to saving faith in Jesus, I want you to go back and remember the former times when you struggled greatly with various forms of suffering.
He wants them to reflect on the reality that life as a follower of Jesus is one of struggles. When he says you endured a hard struggle, another way to interpret that word is the word contest. So you think about an arena setting where you have multiple athletes doing their best to fight one another for a common prize, for one prize. Okay, this is what he's saying they experienced.
It carried the idea of an athlete straining in an arena against an opponent. So in essence, he's saying, remember this former time after you were enlightened, when your Christian life as a follower of Jesus felt a lot like an athletic contest, like, it was strenuous, it was hard, you had opposition. That. That's life, like, in many ways, that's life as.
As a follower of Jesus.
And so as we think about this, I think there. There's one, an interpretive question to ask, which is, what form of suffering did these men and women, these brothers and sisters in Jesus experience? And then what forms do we experience today? Okay, there's certainly some crossover in there, but Elizabeth Elliot, wife of missionary Jim Elliot, who died at the hands of the AKA Indians in Ecuador back in the 50s. Elizabeth Elliot went on later in life to write a book called Suffering is Not For Nothing, which is a really great book. And in it, she defines suffering this way as to really try to summarize all of life's sufferings as we find them in the Bible.
She says, suffering is the experience we have by which we get what we do not want and do not get that which we do want, which really, it encompasses everything, everything that you and I might experience from a Monday to a Sunday, okay? It's when we get the thing that we don't want and we don't get the thing that we do. Want. Okay? And so when the Bible talks about suffering, and specifically in the book of Hebrews as well, there are different kinds of suffering that are normal in the life or that are common in the life of the Christian. Okay? So I want to give you five, and this is stated by a guy named Philip Moore, who is a Scottish pastor. Five forms of suffering in God's Word that are common to Christians. Number one is normal suffering, which involves aging, death, decay, those kinds of things that result from simply living in a fallen world. So I had a friend this week ask me as I talked about preaching this. He said, does suffering always come as a result of our own sin and mistakes? And the answer to that is no.
I mean, you see that In John chapter 9, when Jesus comes across the blind man sitting on the side of the road, and the disciples are like, who sinned? This man? Or his parents. Classic example of that. And Jesus is like, no, like, you're missing the point.
So there is normal suffering that is a result of living in the fallen world. There's abnormal suffering, which is excessive and out of the ordinary. So it'd be something like what Philip Moore says, like a bridge collapsing or a plane falling from the sky. This is abnormal suffering. These are unexpected things that happen again as a result of living in the fallen world. And it's often abnormal suffering that leads people, skeptics to say, is there really a God? If these kinds of things are happening? The third is unjust suffering. This is abuse, neglect.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:12:13] Speaker A: When. When an innocent party is taken advantage of by a stronger one for their own selfish desires, that's unjust suffering.
That's the kind of suffering that the Israelites experience in Exodus 2, for instance, when it says that their cries and groanings came up to God and God saw them and he knew.
It's the kind of suffering that Jesus experienced on the cross.
Unjust suffering. The righteous for the unrighteous is what Peter says.
There's just suffering.
And this is when we suffer because of our own foolishness or sin.
Somebody has an affair and they experience the consequences of that decision. That is just suffering. Doesn't mean they're not forgiven in Jesus. If they have faith in Jesus doesn't mean they can't be restored to the church. But it does mean for the rest of their life they may experience physical consequences because of their sin.
That's just suffering.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:13:12] Speaker A: And then they're suffering for righteousness sake, which is what I believe our brothers and sisters in Hebrews are experiencing. This is what Jesus talks about. Matthew 5, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
So I believe this is what they were experiencing. He says that they were publicly exposed to reproach, that they experienced the plundering of their property.
So as followers of Jesus, those who have been enlightened to see and treasure Jesus for who he is, like these brothers and sisters and like those of us in the room today who have put their faith in him, we must, friends, come to expect that in the Christian life we will experience various forms of suffering, sometimes all at the same time. Sometimes one of these, sometimes a few. But this is a part of the Christian life now. The suffering for righteousness sake, probably, at least most of the time, has not been a part of our daily experience here in the United States.
Okay, we, we talk about this a lot. It is going on around the world in a variety of ways. 70 Congolese Christians were beheaded just a couple of weeks ago in the Congo.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Like this kind of suffering for righteousness sake because they're followers of Jesus is happening, but in our particular context isn't necessarily as prevalent, at least physically. But I think one way that this might look for us today by which we do need to be prepared, malignment.
So I do venture to say that we will experience not so much physical persecution here in our day, maybe as much as malignment from those in our lives as we stand firm on Jesus.
And here's just a side note, pastorally, okay?
Because again, I see this in my life and I just. Part of our job as pastors is to kind of view the landscape of what's going on in the culture, study the Bible and then try to bring the Bible to bear on those things.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:15:21] Speaker A: I don't think it is necessarily. I don't think we are necessarily as much at risk for being maligned by those who don't know Jesus in our lives by preaching the gospel. Maybe we will by telling them that they're sinners and that they need to repent and turn to Jesus. Like that is our primary objective as Christians, by the way, in. In terms of evangelism, okay? But I think we are at danger of risk, for instance, by holding a biblical sexual ethic today.
It's possible that you and I are going to be much more prone to be maligned by those in our lives who don't know Jesus by something like holding to a biblical sexual ethic.
You and I think can expect that when we lovingly and humbly and gently are invited to a same sex wedding and say no, that you might experience some sort of pushback in that.
Or that when a neighbor that you love dearly, that you desire to bring Jesus to and you're friends with, asks you to use their preferred pronouns and you say no, that there might be some alignment there, we can expect that that is the culture by which you and I swim in.
And so we never want to be on the extreme of sometimes what we see. Like, you should get off X, by the way. If you're just on it, you should get off it. Okay, where you have Christians on one side of the aisle who are just absolutely crushing people on the other side and doing so under the banner of truth. We're not talking about that. You also have Christians on the other side who are being willing to compromise because they're so scared of losing the relationship. So what does it look to be a Jesus like person in the midst of this conversation?
Hey, why was John the Baptist killed in prison?
It wasn't because of preaching Jesus primarily.
It was because he told Herod, you can't sleep with your brother's wife.
There's something about sexual ideology in our culture, and I think that this has always been the case that's so closely aligned with people's view of themselves and identity that it's going to cause friction there.
But nonetheless, following Jesus will have a cost and we should come to expect that.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Paul says, anyone who desires to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
So if you desire to follow Jesus, if you desire to be like Jesus and to reflect Jesus and uphold his ethic across the board, not just sexually, but in all areas of life, there's going to be pushback. There's going to be pushback from the left, and sometimes there's going to be pushback from the right.
We see idolatry happen on the right. We should call that out too.
Because Jesus kingdom is not a kingdom of this world, and so the kingdoms of the world won't understand it.
And so with following Jesus, friends, does come suffering. And you and I must come to expect this if we're to build and by the grace of God, resilience in life.
He says, I want you to remember your sufferings.
Remember these things and don't just remember them, but know that this is going to be a part of the daily life of what it looks like to follow Jesus.
So with following Jesus does come cost. But the second reality, and this is verses 34 and 35 that the author wants us to call the call to mind, is that we have to remember that with following Jesus comes reward.
And the reward of following Jesus, the end result of following Jesus is always worth the cost.
It's always worth the cost.
He says, for you had compassion on those in prison. And listen to this. You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property.
What leads a person to do that?
The plundering of my property.
Suffering, whatever form it takes in life.
Again, if you just want to just weep joyfully, listen to Joni's story. Like, go online and listen to her story. It's amazing how much she loves Jesus.
What leads a person to do that?
He says, since you know this is the reason, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward for you have need of endurance so that you have done the will of God. You may receive what is promised for yet a little while. And the coming One will come and will not delay. But my righteous one shall live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. Listen to these phrases. A better possession, an abiding possession, a promise yet to be received. The coming One will come and he will not delay. We shouldn't lose heart over how long it feels like it's taking Jesus to come back. By the way, like, Peter talked about this. He said, hey, the way that we think about time, way that we think about God taking a long time to do certain things shouldn't be. It's. It's not so in the kingdom of God.
Okay, so one day in the kingdom of God could be like a thousand days. Here is what Peter goes on to say. So we shouldn't lose heart at how long it seems to be taking Jesus to come back. He says, the coming One will come and he will not delay.
It is the hope of heaven that led these brothers and sisters to say, I will joyfully accept the plundering of my possessions. I'll joyfully accept with gratitude all of the suffering that comes my way. Because I know that the present state of this world is not my final abiding one, that I have a better possession. And so last week we talked about hell, the reality of hell, what the Bible has to say about hell. And for a few minutes today, I get to talk to you about heaven, what the Bible has to say about heaven. Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is a place.
Heaven is a real place, just like hell is a real place for those who reject the good news of Jesus. Heaven is a real place for Those who accept the good news of Jesus.
Not for the good people who have it all together. Not for the churched people who know all the right answers, but for those who recognize they're sinners. They need a Savior and who cling to Jesus by faith. That's who heaven's for.
It's not a state of mind, it's a place. Jesus says in John 14, friends, let not your hearts be troubled.
Believe in God. Believe also in me. Listen to what he says. In my Father's house are many rooms. Isn't that amazing? Like, I think about sometimes. You ever hear people say, like, heaven could be a garbage dump as long as Jesus is there? You ever hear people say that? No, maybe not. Okay, I've heard people say that.
And you're like, yeah, it could be like, the point they're trying to make is that heaven is not the reward Jesus is. And that's an amazing point. That's true. But here's the reality. It isn't that way.
Jesus didn't go to prepare a garbage dump for you.
He says, I want to prepare a place for you. And if Jesus prepares this place, you better believe it's going to be the most amazing place you've ever experienced.
Many rooms in my Father's house. Read Revelation 21 and 22. It will blow your mind and think about the physicality of it.
So heaven, Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is a place. Heaven is also a place where God's presence most evidently dwells. So God is what theologians say God is omnipresent, meaning that God is everywhere at all times, but his presence most evidently dwells in what the Bible calls heaven. It's where the Bible says Jesus is today. He is in heaven at the right hand of the Father, where he now rules and reigns over all. Over all things.
Isaiah 66:1 says, Thus says the Lord, heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool.
Heaven is a place of immeasurable beauty and joy.
And I just really want you to allow your imaginations to run for a moment in thinking about the word immeasurable.
It's a place of immeasurable beauty and joy. Luke 23:43, one of the most beautiful verses in the Bible, I think Jesus said to the thief on the cross, truly, I say to you, today you'll be with me where?
Paradise. Isn't that amazing?
You be with me in paradise.
At the return of Jesus, heaven and earth will be joined together as one.
What the Bible calls the new creation, new heavens, new earth.
Revelation 21:1 2 John says, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the old heaven and the old earth had passed away. The sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. I don't know what it means that the sea is going to pass away. I don't like the thought of that either. But I do know that it's going to be amazing.
Spurgeon thinks that the sea passing away just means there's going to be no more separation between peoples as the sea separates nation from nation and people from people, saying, I think that's what it means, that there's going to be no separation doesn't mean there's not going to be water and that it's going to be amazing.
And finally, in heaven, our joy and pleasure will be both fully and forever increasing in the presence of God.
So our joy in heaven is going to be both full, satisfied and ever increasing.
So if you think of hell as every day will be worse than the one before, in heaven every day will be better than the one before.
David says in Psalm 16:11, you make known to me the path of life, and in your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
And so the gospel isn't merely about you and I being forgiven of our sins and being made right with God in a courtroom type situation. That's part of it.
But being reconciled to God is also about pleasure. It's about your pleasure. Your pleasure isn't wrong.
Oftentimes it's the object by which you and I try to find most pleasure in where it gets thwarted and distorted.
But David says, at your right hand and in your presence is pleasure forevermore, ever increasing pleasure, because in heaven will be Jesus.
So, friends, this is why. Last verse, Romans 8:18.
This is why Paul, in the middle of his suffering and his trial, can say, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us.
So, friends, do you live with the hope of heaven?
Like do you live? Do you live with a hope? Do you like, do you ever think about heaven throughout your day?
Or is this life and your job and your family and all of these good things, these good gifts of God's grace all consuming to you?
Like what animates you in the morning?
Like what boosts you when things aren't going the way you want them to go?
Do you live with the hope of heaven Christians are invited to live with the hope of heaven.
You will not be so heavenly minded that you're of no earthly good. That has never been the case in church history.
The most effective, fruitful Christians in the history of the church and in the Bible, as we're going to talk about in Hebrews 11 starting next week, all lived heavenly minded. That's how they lived. I have a better possession ahead, a better country ahead, a more unshakable kingdom ahead. That cannot be taken away from me. Why can I not be taken away from me? Because you didn't earn it to begin with, Jesus did.
And so live with the hope of heaven. Think about heaven.
Think about how glorious heaven's going to be.
Read about heaven.
Read Revelation 21 and 22. Read John chapter 14. Read Isaiah 66. Like all of these passages that talk about the new earth, 1 Corinthians 15 that talks about this new glorified body, like all of us have defective bodies in a variety of ways. Some of us experience that more severely than others.
Like Joni can't walk.
But 1 Corinthians 15 says one day she's going to have a resurrected body.
One day you will have a resurrected body. What's that body going to be like? Look at the body of Jesus. That's what it's going to be like.
He's the first fruits of those whom he came to die for.
His body will be like our body will be like his body.
It's going to be amazing.
And so, friends, live with the hope of heaven.
Our we're getting close. Our expectations, in many ways, will determine whether or not you and I make it to the end.
If you expect that the Christian life is one of ease, you're in trouble.
If you think that the Christian life is about God existing for you and your success, whatever that means, you're in trouble.
But as a godly seminary professor told me one time over lunch, God doesn't exist for you, you exist for him.
And if we can believe that by the grace of God, it'll shatter our paradigm.
It doesn't mean that suffering isn't immensely painful.
It doesn't mean that you and I might be absolutely floored by what God in his sovereignty permits to happen in our life.
It doesn't mean that we ought to live with the expectation that in the Christian life comes suffering, but also live with the expectation that in following Jesus comes immense reward. And that reward is so glorious and so weighty that it makes the sufferings of this present time, which are short by the way the sufferings of this present time pale in comparison to it, so we can move on with joy.
So in, in closing, what is necessary for us to attain this promise? So this promise of heaven. What's. What does the author say is necessary for us to.
To attain this promise? Look at the text one more time with me, starting in verse 35.
He says, Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward for you have need of endurance. So that here it is. When you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised.
When you have done the will of God, you may receive what is promised.
What is the will of God more foundationally than believing upon Jesus Christ whom He has sent?
This is what Jesus says is the work of God to believe upon the One whom the Father has sent. And so our author's saying, you have need of endurance.
You remember the endurance that you were able to experience in those previous days when you suffered when life was hard, when there was pushback, when there was sickness, when there was a death in the family, when there was rebellion in your home, when there was marital strife. When you remember those sufferings, you remember how you endured in the midst of those sufferings. I want you to think about that. I want you to consider that. And then I want you to set like flint your mind on the better possession to come.
And you have need of endurance. Endurance is the means by which you and I attain these promises, the promise of heaven.
We're called to endure by continuing to put our faith in Jesus. But here's the underlying reality to this.
He says in verse 39, we're not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls. And so he's giving them an encouragement. He's saying, hey, listen, you're not like those who shrunk back in the midst of adversity and were destroyed, who left the gathering and left faith. And you're not like those. You're of those who preserve your souls, but of those who you're the ones who have faith and preserve your souls. What's underlying all of this? Here it is, and this is going to be our closing thought.
What's underlying all of this talk about perseverance and the call for endurance which you and I have a call on our life to endure in faith in Jesus through the end is the preservation of God in your life.
The reason you and I will endure by the grace of God is because God is the one doing the preserving of you, like His Spirit is the one that's moving you along.
God and his grace and kindness was the reason for these Christians. They were able to endure the sufferings and to keep their hope set on heaven. And the same is true for you and I.
Jesus says in John chapter six, all that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never cast out. And so we endure by putting our faith in the faithfulness of God in the midst of suffering. That's the object of our faith.
We're not called to put our faith in our endurance. We're called to put our faith in the faithfulness of God. And as we put our faith in the faithfulness of God over and over and over again, we get to be reminded that it's God over and over and over again that's sustaining us and leading us to endure that we might by his grace finish well. Amen. All right, let's pray together.
