"Worth The Wait, Worth The Weight”

“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;

While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

I- the AFFLICTION:

it is light

#Bodily Affliction:

fallen men, partakers of flesh and blood, heirs of that sad legacy of sin that Adam left to all his ruined race, and living in a world of sorrow and woe, we must needs have our measure of those temporal afflictions that were entailed upon all the posterity of our first parent.

Sickness and disease...

But the strongest Christian I have seen in my years of pastoring are those person with terminal disease...

Randy a tambourine dancer, having his dialysis every twice a week... spent his money for a grocery that is supposedly should be spent on his dialysis... Went to his room and there waited for his death....

under all the pain and languor of their afflicted body, they find the Lord near and dear to their heart, ‘sanctified illness’ is proved to them far better than ‘unsanctified health’, and pain of body a far less evil than pain of conscience.

#Family Affliction

another frequent source of grief and sorrow to those that love the Lord, and whom the Lord loves. Many of the most eminent saints of God have had to drink of this most bitter cup in a large measure.

1. What afflictions of this nature befell DAVID!

How he, if possible, would have given his own life for that of his rebellious son Absalom– so deeply did he feel his death,

and as Joab reproached him, would sooner have lost all his fighting army than that one beloved idol.

2- And who can ever forget Joseph and his brothers’ trouble which spanned 13 years!

Psalm55:12

For it was not an enemy that reproached me;

then I could have borne it: neither was it he that hated me that did magnify himself against me; then I would have hid myself from him:

13But it was thou, a man mine equal, my guide, and mine acquaintance. 14We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company.

#Material Affliction

God has chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith, as knowing that “the love of money is the root of all evil,” and therefore mercifully cuts the root to prevent the evil. Poverty starves a good deal of ‘self-indulgence’ by denying the means; and thus the poor are cut off from the gratification of many “foolish and hurtful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition” by the very lack of means possessed by the rich to gratify them. Still, if poverty has its blessings, it has its miseries; and under them many who fear God deeply groan.

#Spiritual Affliction

What is loss of health, of family, of friends, of property, to the hidings of God’s face– to guilt of conscience– to distressing fears as to the reality of the work of grace upon the soul– to anticipations of that tremendous wrath of God which is revealed in a broken law?

II- the WAIT:

What is time compared to eternity?

A drop compared to the ocean; a grain of dust compared to the world in which we dwell. These are insufficient comparisons.

Time and eternity never can be compared together.

they are but for a while, and that a little while; at most they are but for the present time of life, and that is but as a vapour which appears for a little while, and then vanishes away; it is but as a moment, a point of time, in comparison of eternity: but the glory the saints are chosen and called unto, that weight of it which shall be put upon them is "eternal", it will last for ever; it will know no end: hence it is called an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, an everlasting kingdom, everlasting habitations, an incorruptible inheritance, and a crown of glory that fadeth not away. Now the present affliction of the people of God has a considerable influence upon this...

III- the WEIGHT

The Hebrew word “glory” literally signifies “weight;”

and the apostle seems to have some allusion to that circumstance by connecting, as he does, the two words together. There is indeed a natural connection between what is weighty and what is solid and substantial. He would thus represent future glory as something solid,

lasting, and durable, and therefore utterly distinct from the light.

On a weighing scale, the afflictions on the other side of the scale seemed so heavy... but as we looked on the other side of the scale?