One day, a cowboy was driving down a dirt road with his dog riding in back of the pickup truck and his faithful horse in the trailer behind. He failed to negotiate a curve and had a terrible accident.
Sometime later, a highway patrol officer came on the scene. As an animal lover, he saw the horse first. Realizing the serious nature of its injuries, he drew his service revolver and put the animal out of its misery.
Then he walked around the accident scene and found the dog, also hurt critically. He couldn’t bear to hear it whine in pain, so he ended the dog’s suffering as well.
Finally, he located the cowboy – who had suffered multiple fractures – off in the weeds. “Hey, are you okay?” the cop asked.
The cowboy took one look at the smoking revolver in the trooper’s hand and quickly replied, “Never felt better!” (Leadership, Vol.19, no.1; Bible Illustrator #496, 4/1998.3)
Sometimes we say to one another, “Never felt better,” but inside we’re hurting real bad. These are hard times for a lot of people, but these are also times to look ahead with hope.
And that’s what this season of the year does for us. It’s advent, a time when we look ahead to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, usually we think about our Lord’s first coming at this time of year, but in the 6th Century, Christians in Rome linked this season of year explicitly to the second coming of Christ. It was not until the Middle Ages that the church began using the Advent Season to prepare to celebrate Christ’s first coming. In fact, the liturgy in many churches today still emphasizes the second coming of Christ up until December 16th. Then, from December 17th to the 24th, they focus on His birth. (Christian History & Biography, 2002, Christianity Today International; www.PreachingToday.com)
So in the true spirit of Advent I’d like us to do the same thing. We’re going to focus on the second coming of Christ in the next few weeks up until the middle of December. It will help us gain some perspective in these hard times as we look ahead to the hope that’s before us.
Actually, there was a group of believers in the 1st Century that had it a whole lot worse than we. They were going through so much trouble, they thought they were in the Tribulation; they thought they were in the great and terrible Day of the Lord; they thought they were experiencing the end of the age.
That’s when the Holy Spirit inspired the Apostle Paul to write some words of encouragement for those of us, in any age, who are going through hard times. 1st of all, he assures us that we are NOT in the Tribulation. Then he gives us some practical advice on how to handle the hard times even when it feels like we ARE in the Great Tribulation itself.
If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to 2 Thessalonians 1, 2 Thessalonians 1, where we have God’s words of encouragement for hard times.
2 Thessalonians 1:1-5 Paul, Silas and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing. Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring. All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. (NIV)
Their suffering made them better. It made them worthy subjects. It made them better citizens of God’s Kingdom. It caused them to grow in faith and in love.
Codfish are shipped all over the United States mostly from the northeastern part of the country. Public demand is so great for the codfish that at first it posed a problem for the shippers. In the early days, they froze the cod before shipping it, but that took away much of the flavor.
Then they experimented with shipping the codfish live in tanks of seawater, but that proved even worse. It was more expensive. The cod still lost its flavor, AND it became soft and mushy. The texture of the meat was seriously affected.
Finally, somebody came up with a creative solution. They placed the codfish in a tank of seawater along with some catfish, their natural enemy. And from the time the codfish left the East Coast those ornery catfish chased them all over the tank until they arrived at their destination. When they got to market even on the West Coast, they were as fresh as the day they were first caught. There was no loss of flavor, nor was the texture affected. In fact, some said the codfish tasted better than before (Charles Swindoll).
Life is like that sometimes. We find ourselves in a tank of inescapable circumstances. We may not be where we want to be. & To make matters worse, God has put some “catfish” in our tank. We feel like trouble is chasing us all over the place.
Tell me, does God do this just to make us miserable? No! “God’s judgment is right,” verse 5 says. God allows trouble in our tank to keep us alive, alert, fresh and growing. It is NOT his intention to destroy us. On the contrary, He wants to produce a Christ-like character in each and every one of us. & He wants us to arrive at our destination better than we ever were before.
So don’t let your troubles get you down; instead, let God use them to bring you up.
GROW THROUGH THE PAIN.
Trust God to help you get better instead of bitter through the trial.
I love the story of the oyster, which I’ve told many times.
There once was an oyster whose story I tell,
Who found that sand had got under his shell,
Just one little grain, but it gave him much pain,
For oysters have feelings although they’re so plain.
Now, did he berate the working of Fate,
Which had led him to such a deplorable state?
Did he curse out the government, call for an election?
No; as he lay on the shelf he said to himself
“If I cannot remove it, I’ll try to improve it.”
So the years rolled by as the years always do,
And He came to his ultimate destiny – stew.
And this small grain of sand which had bothered him so,
Was a beautiful pearl, all richly aglow.
Now this tale has a moral – for isn’t it grand
What an oyster can do with a morsel of sand;
What couldn’t we do if we’d only begin
With all of the things that get under our skin.
(James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, p.19)
My friends, in those days when you feel like you’re in the Tribulation, trust God to help you GROW through the pain. Then…
KEEP ON GOING.
Go on with confidence that God will make all things right when Jesus comes again. Move forward with the assurance that God’s justice will be made plain at Christ’s second coming.
2 Thessalonians 1:6-7 God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. (NIV)
Those who trouble us will find trouble. & Those of us who are troubled will find relief when Jesus comes again.
Even though it seems that evil-doers so often triumph in these days, there is coming a day when God will punish the evil-doers, and they will not ultimately succeed.
2 Thessalonians 1:8-9 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power... (NIV)
They will be “shut out” from God’s presence. That means they will be shut off from all that is good, for “every good and perfect gift” comes from God and God alone (James 1:17). But not only that, they will be punished with “everlasting destruction” – or a better translation would be, “They will be punished with everlasting ruin.”
The Bible is not talking about total annihilation here. It is talking about eternal torment. Jesus Himself described hell as a place where “their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48). Hell is a very real place, my friends.
Several years ago, Dr. Maurice Rawlings, a cardiologist at the University of Tennessee, wrote a book detailing the experiences of those who claimed to have near-death experiences. In the course of their emergency room work, he and his colleagues interviewed more than 300 such people.
Now, what made Rawlings’ study distinct is that he conducted the interviews not months or years later, but immediately after the experiences had allegedly occurred. He talked to the patients while they were still shaken up in the immediacy of the moment before they had a chance to gloss over or to re-imagine what they had experienced.
Nearly 50 percent of them reported encountering images of fire, of tormented and tormenting creatures, and other sights coming from a place very different from heaven. In follow-up interviews, much later, many of these same people had changed their stories. Apparently they were unwilling to admit to their families, and maybe even to themselves, that they had caught a glimpse of something like what the Bible calls hell.
Dr. Rawlings concludes, “Just listening to these patients has changed my life. There is a life after death, and if I don’t know where I’m going, it is not safe to die.” (Daniel Meyer, “The Light at the End of the Tunnel,” Preaching Today No. 238; www.PreachingToday.com)
Tell me, friend, do you know where you’re going? You can, if you put your trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior. You see, He died on a cross to take the punishment for our sins. Then he rose again three days later. & Now He offers eternal life to anyone who believes in Him.
In John 5:24, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.”
I urge you, if you haven’t done it already, hear the Gospel and believe it right now. Trust Christ with your life and your eternal destiny. Then eternal life will be yours starting today! It’s not something you have to hope for in the future. Rather, it becomes a right-now, present reality for all who trust Christ.
And that allows us to live our lives with confidence. We don’t have to fear condemnation ever again. In fact, we don’t have to fear even when wicked people try to put us down in this life. We don’t have to be afraid when evil-doers seem to triumph, because their day is coming.
The Lord will punish them, vs.10 says, "On the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you." (NIV)
Those who believe in Jesus will be in awe of Him when He returns. But those who don’t believe will be gone.
There was once an atheist farmer who taunted the people in his small community who believed in God. He wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, which said, “I plowed on Sunday, planted on Sunday, cultivated on Sunday, and hauled in my crops on Sunday; but I never went to church on Sunday. Yet I harvested more bushels per acre than anyone else, even those who believe in God and never miss a service.”
The editor printed the man’s letter and then added this remark: “God doesn’t always settle His accounts in October.” (Bible Illustrator #1225, 11/1993.1)
God doesn’t usually settle his accounts right away. But one day He will, when Jesus comes again. So look forward to that day when God WILL punish the evil-doers. & Look forward to that day when God will bring us relief.
Verse 7 says, “[God will] give relief to you who are troubled.”
That word, “relief,” in Bible days was used to describe the loosening of a bowstring. You see, sometimes God’s people get stretched very tight. We get pulled in every direction and find ourselves under a lot of pressure from people in this world. But there is coming a day when the bowstring will be loosed. The pressure will be released and we will find relief forever.
More than that, Christ will ultimately be glorified in us (vs.10), and We will marvel at His coming. We will be amazed and overwhelmed by how wonderful He is.
Dear believing friend, look forward to that day, and it will help you live today. & It will help you persevere through any pain.
One morning, a couple of cowpunchers went out on the range to bring in a wild steer from the mountains. They brought with them a burro – one of those shaggy, little, gray donkeys. Now, a big three-year-old steer that’s been running loose is tough to handle, but the cowboys knew what they were doing. They got a rope on that steer and tied him neck and neck, right up close, to the burro. Then the cowboys let them go.
At first, the burro had a bad time. The steer threw him all over the place. He banged him against trees, rocks, and into bushes. Time after time, they both went down. But there was one great difference between the burro and the steer. The burro wanted to go home. And no matter how often the steer threw him, every time the burro got to his feet, he took a step nearer the corral. This went on and on. After about a week, the burro showed up at the corral, and with him he had the tamest and sorriest-looking steer you ever did see. (Bible Illustrator #491)
Sometimes we feel tied neck and neck, right up close, to our problems, but the thought of “home” keeps us going. Jesus is coming again to take us home, so let’s grow through the pain, and let’s keep on going with confidence.
Finally, when it feels like we are in the Great Tribulation itself, let’s...
GLOW WITH THE GLORY OF CHRIST.
Let’s let Jesus shine through us. Let’s glorify His name in all we do.
2 Thessalonians 1:11 With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. (NIV)
Despite our trials, Paul prays for our success. Now, he does not pray for material success; rather, he prays for spiritual success. Specifically, he prays that God would complete every good thing we set out to do and every act that our faith in Christ prompts us to do.
When we set out to please the Lord, then God Himself comes right beside us to finish the task through us. Why?
2 Thessalonians 2:12 We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (NIV)
You see, God desires to glorify His name through us. He wants to make Jesus shine in us, so that the world will marvel at His awesome majesty.
But that can happen only as we depend upon His grace. When we depend on the Lord, then He is glorified in our lives. When we depend on the Lord, then Jesus shines through even in our pain.
Some time ago, a group of ladies in a Bible study were discussing a phrase in Malachi 3:3, which they found remarkable but a bit confusing. The verse starts out, “He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver,” and there were various opinions as to what that actually meant. Then one of the ladies proposed to visit a silversmith and report back what she found.
A few days later, she went to the silversmith’s shop without telling him her purpose and begged to know the process of refining silver. He described it to her fully. Then she asked him, “Sir, do you sit while the work of refining is going on?”
“Oh, yes,” replied the silversmith.” “I must sit with my eye steadily fixed on the furnace, for if the time necessary for refining be exceeded in the slightest degree, the silver will be injured.”
The lady at once understood the meaning of the phrase, “He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.” God sometimes puts us into a furnace of pain to refine and purify us, but even then He never takes His eyes off of us. His wisdom and love knows exactly what we need, and He will not allow us to suffer one second more, lest we be injured.
As the lady was leaving the shop, the silversmith called her back, and said he had forgotten to mention how he knows when the process of purifying is complete. He said, “I know it when I see my own image reflected in the silver…” (Author Unknown; http://therefinersfire.org/refiners_fire.htm)
That’s what Christ is looking for in us when we’re in the fire. He waits to see His own image reflected in us, and He designs our furnace of pain not to injure us, but to help us more fully reflect His image.
So when it seems like you’re in the Tribulation itself, just remember three words: grow, go and glow. In your suffering, GROW up to maturity; GO on in confidence; & GLOW with the character of Christ.
But don’t do it in your own strength. Instead, ask God to help you. I like the way Dick Innes put it in a prayer published in Servant Magazine some time ago:
Dear Lord, Please grant that I shall never waste my pain, for
To fail without learning,
To fall without getting up,
To sin without overcoming,
To be hurt without forgiving,
To be discontent without improving,
To be crushed without becoming more caring,
To suffer without growing more sensitive,
Makes of suffering a senseless, futile exercise, a tragic loss,
And of pain, the greatest waste of all.
(Dick Innes, Servant Magazine, Nov/Dec 1993, p.11)
When we face trouble of any kind, let’s not waste the pain. Instead,
let’s ask God to use it to make us more like Jesus.
