JESUS AND OUR SUFFERINGS
(A Christmas Message by Bob Marcaurelle)
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“The angel said, ‘Behold I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people / Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace among men who are pleasing to Him.” - Luke 2: 10 / 14
“He (Jesus) is a man of sorrows, well acquainted with grief.” - Isaiah 53:3
Two words jump out of the angel’s Christmas message- joy and peace. But they seem to have a hollow, sentimental sound, in this world with so little joy; with the sounds of war and crime all around us and with all the suffering.
They are like a strange event in WWI. With France, England and America against the Germans, it was Christian against Christian. The war was fought from long trenches with the danger zone in between.
One Christmas morning the sun rose and the two sides prepared for the hell of warfare again. But a strange thing happened. Soldier from one side started singing Christmas carols, like Silent Night and O Little town of Bethlehem; etc.
Soldiers on the other side recognized the tunes and began to join it. Before they knew it they were out of their trenches, singing together. Christmas day ended and the next morning the two sides resumed trying to kill each other.
That Is the way it seems at Christmas time. We take time out to sing and talk of peace and joy, but the day after Christmas we are back to the real world. But these two wonderful gifts that come out of the arrival of God on planet earth not hollow and they are not sentimental.
They were a reality of the life of Jesus Christ. He was a Man of “sorrows” but he told His disciples, “MY peace I give you. Not as the world gives.” And when He faced the cross, Hebrews 12 says He faced it with joy; the joy of knowing that His work on earth was done, and the rewards of heaven were waiting.
Jesus’ coming gives us the wonderful gift of salvation, and part of that gift is that we can have peace and joy not because we are sheltered from pain. If God absolved Christians from the ordinary blows of life, we could not build enough churches to seat all the people who would come for all the wrong reasons.
We can have peace like Jesus did, in the midst of sorrow, and in spite of sorrow because Jesus walks with us and works IN us and THROUGH us
A. JESUS WALKS WITH US
“(Jesus on the night before He was killed told his followers: “In this world you will have tribulation. Be of good cheer (take heart, be brave), I have overcome the world.” – John 16:33
The message of Christmas is not that the all powerful God who made this universe disguised Himself in a human body. He took on humanity with its frailties. He knew sorrow first hand; tears, first hand; a broken heart, first hand. If you hit Jesus he would bruise. If you cut him He would bleed. If you spit on Him you would not only break his heart, but tempt him to strike back
I do not understand why suffering has to be SO bad. I can understand, in our freedom, how we can manufacture bombs and automobiles and in warfare and in car crashes. But I cannot understand cancer, and I especially cannot understand children with cancer. But I cannot understand that little three year old child in Anderson that was taken to the hospital with 27 broken bones, inflicted by its father.
Folks, I’m sorry. Sue me. But I simply don’t know why it has to be so bad. If I were God, I would put the vitamins and nutrients we need in ice cream, or fried chicken, or milk gravy. I would make spinach fattening, and eating bacon the best way to lose weight. And no child on earth would die of cancer or starvation.
The older I get, and the more I look at the senselessness of suffering, I don’t have any answers, but I am encouraged that God, in Jesus suffered too. And He STILL SUFERS with us. When Saul brutalized God’s people Jesus asked Him, “Why are you persecuting ME? (Acts 9). I would far rather you hurt me than hurt one of my children or my wife. Like you, I would say, “Take me. Hurt me.” The amazing thing is that Jesus feels the same way. He took upon Himself, our sins, so He could pay our sin debt, but He also took upon Himself our sorrows.
In his sufferings we see PURPOSE IN SUFFERING. Calvary was not good, but the resurrection came from it; the ascension to God’s right hand came from it; the outpouring of the Holy Spirit came from it; the church came from it; and when we stand yonder in glory and say, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain”; we will know that every child of God in heaven came from the wounds of Jesus on Calvary.
All this came out of the human sufferings of the man named Jesus. It is an amazing source of comfort to me to know that when I am going through something horrible, that the almighty God of this universe, has not asked me to go through something, He himself has not gone through. He has not given us medicine He is unwilling to take.
And there is peace when we see his PARTICIPATION in suffering. God has not asked us to go through anything that He Himself did not go through to save us.
“At the end of time all the people who had ever lived were brought before God to be judged. They were not a submissive crowd. They were gathered in their groups mumbling among themselves.
They had complaints. One group was the Jews who had died in gas chambers and concentration camps – they asked, what right does God have to judge us?
Another group was slaves - black men with brands, who had suffered unspeakable tortures at the hands of some who claimed to be Christians. How could God judge them?
There were long lines of refugees driven from their lands - homeless people, who had nowhere to lay their heads. And there were poor folk; hard workers, who had never been able to make ends meet.
There were sick ones and sufferers of all kinds, hundreds of groups, each with a complaint against God who sat up on His throne presuming to judge them.
From each group a leader was chosen and a group assigned present up their case against the Almighty. Their conclusion was that before God would be qualified to sit in Judgment on them, let Him sit where they sat, and walk where they walked.
Instead of God judging them, they judged God. They cries of each group rang out on how God could be qualified to judge- let God be sentenced to live on earth as a man with no safeguards.
The Jews said let Him be born a Jew. The poor said- let Him be born poor. Let the legitimacy of His birth be suspect. Let His mother be called a harlot. Give Him hard work to do and let Him taste of poverty. Let Him be rejected by His people.
Give Him for friends only those who are despised by the community. Let a friend betray Him. Let Him be brought up on false changes; tried before a prejudiced jury; and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let Him be abandoned by His friends and see what it is to be terribly alone.
Slaves yelled, let Him feel the whip. Men who died in third world prisons said, let Him be tortured, and then let Him die a slow and painful death.
As each group announced its sentence on God, cheers of approval went up from the throng. When the last had finished there was long silence. Strangely, and slowly, silence settled over the crowd and one by one, each group stood motionless.
No one uttered a word or made a sound. The Judge walked out. On His forehead were the scars from the crown of thorns. On his hands a feet were the scars of crucifixion. Everyone knew that God had already served the sentence they imposed. He was qualified to judge.”
B. JESUS WORKS IN US
“In the days of His humanity / He offered up prayers / with loud crying and tears to Him who could deliver Him / He learned obedience through the things that He suffered.”
(Heb. 5:7-8
“We rejoice in our sufferings because that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces proven character. Proven character produces hope / and hope does not disappoint us because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” (Rom. 5:3-5)
Suffering, like everything God allows in this universe, has a good purpose. Jesus learned things in His suffering. If it was true for Him, it is certainly will be true for us. Suffering made Jesus a better, wiser, stronger person. And it can do the same for us.
No one illustrates this better than the young preacher, Stephen. (Acts 8-9).His Savior, Jesus, faced his horrible death and his murder with remarkable courage; with hope in the hereafter; and most of all forgiving love. He prayed, “Father, forgive them.”. We even see his concern for him mother while dying. The devil is doing his worst, but is only revealing heaven’s best.
We say, greater love has no man that for a may to give His life for his friends. But there is a greater love; to give you life for your enemies. This the highest form of love! This is goodness at its best!
Five - eight years after this another young preacher, Stephen. And he died with remarkable courage, with the hope of heaven and most of all with a forgiving spirit.
When he preached the gospel in a large Jerusalem synagogue the people ground their teeth, drug him out of the church, threw him over a cliff, and dropped huge stones on him.
It takes a long time to die from this. A bone is broken here. A cut opens here. The head is hit, along with the face, the feet the body- just like Jesus.
And what does Stephen do? He repeats the prayer of Jesus. He cries, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”. Jesus prayed that same prayer. Jesus went through this, before Stephen did. That’s what I am talking about today.
Stephen repeats the second prayer of Jesus, except he prayed TO Jesus, the only one who knew exactly what he was going through. “He fell on his knees”- can you see him? Covered in blood? Hardly able to talk” Surrounded by an ocean of hate, like Jesus?
And he prays, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And then he fell asleep in death. Don’t you know that if you were that boy’s mother it would break your heart to learn about all this? But don’t you also know that you would be the proudest of the proud to have a boy like that.
Joseph Parker announced in the newspaper that he was going to preach on Stephen. A heckler on the street yelled, “Hey Parker, God did not do much for Stephen, did He?” Parker said, “O yes He did. He gave him the love to pray for his murderous. And that is a greater miracle than had he sent ten thousand angels to rescue him”. And Stephen got all this from the example o Jesus.
C. JESUS WAITS FOR US
“Because of the joy that was set before Him (Jesus) endured the cross / and took His seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Heb. 12:2)
“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory That will be revealed to us.” (Rom. 8:18)
Jesus didn’t go to the cross, He went through it. Beyond the cross He saw the crown. He looked through the valley with the eyes of faith and saw heaven, where there is no sin, no Satan, no separation from Christian loved ones, and no no suffering.
And there He waits for us. That is why Paul, a great sufferer looked beyond his sufferings to the glories of heaven. Go back to Stephen. The Bible says,
“Filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God. And he said, Look, I see heaven opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” (Acts 7:56) John Chrysostom said, “Jesus stood up to welcome the first Christian martyr home.”
What wonderful gifts peace and joy are, and the good news is that God wants each of us to have them. They are our legacy. They are our new birthright. If a drunk driver kills one of my children, I can’t bring myself to say God did it or allowed it.
I won’t have any answers. But I am thankful that we have a God who suffered like I am suffered what I am suffering; a God who can use my pain to make me a better person and a God who waits for me along with my child in heaven with Him.
No person can explain suffering but by the grace and power of God we can overcome it, and have peace and joy, two of God’s greatest Christmas presents.
