Speaker: Well, I've been taking creatine recently, uh, because I asked AI.
I said, "What does creatine do for a 41-year-old guy who
is, uh, past this prime?"
And A- AI told me, "Well, in your latter decades of life, thank you, AI, that
muscle mass begins to break down in the body, and creatine can help reverse
that, or at least keep it at base."
I was like, "All right, whatever.
I'll give it a shot."
Uh, I, I'm not a big supplements guy.
Uh, my wife has tried to get me on probiotics, and I, I don't ... I've
dabbled, but I just don't see the tangible benefit, so I stop.
And, and yet creatine is, uh, uh, maybe it's a placebo effect, but
it seems to be doing something.
So I've been doing that for a couple of weeks now.
Um, I don't know if you do creatine, uh, but, uh, whatever.
Uh, I'm, I'm, I'm taking it.
Um you don't snort it.
No.
Um, but all that to say, I know eventually my body's gonna break down.
Uh, and you're like, "Newsflash, uh, that's obvious to the rest of us."
Uh, yeah, I know that's gonna happen.
And you might say, "Well, duh, right?
Because why?
Because time is batting a thousand on physical bodies.
Uh, no matter who you are, in fact, I watched a documentary this week of a
World War II soldier who had fought, uh, at Bastone and was part of Easy
Company, was part of the 101st Airborne, and the, the documentary was done, the
interview was done back in the 80s, and he's sitting in this easy chair.
And you looked at him probably at that point in his late 60s, and you
could tell that he wasn't in the same condition that he was when he fought.
Uh, and then it fast forwarded to a picture of him from 2014 where he was
present at the 70th anniversary of D-Day, and he was a frail, emaciated
form of even the self that he was back in the 80s during that interview.
Time wins.
It will.
And so your physical body, no matter where you are this morning, if you're towards
the back end of time or you're on the, the middle grounds of time or wherever,
your physical body's gonna break down.
It just will.
And, and there's no supplement that's going to keep that at bay.
Time bats a thousand when it comes to breaking our physical bodies down.
But what about spiritual strength?
What about spiritual vitality?
Spiritual wellbeing?
Uh, we, our church believe that, that we are made up of, of two
components, that there's the physical component and the spiritual component.
A- and so if we think, okay, physically, time will decay, deteriorate these bodies.
That's part of the curse, that's part of the fall, that's part of the
brokenness of the world that we're in.
What about spiritually?
Is there a way that we can stay spiritually strong for the long haul?
You might think of some supplements that maybe would help your spiritual wellbeing.
For example, you might think of, uh, time in the word and prayer and fellowship
and meditation, memorization of the word.
Those are all great.
Uh, but if you wanna be able to, to be sustained for the long haul, if you
want your faith to stay strong, even when the storms come and come, they
will, there has to be more than that.
You can't just go through the motions yourself.
There's gotta be something that's empowering all of that, and that's
what we're gonna find out this morning.
If you want to be spiritually strong for the duration of your life, no matter
the trials that you go through, no matter the opposition that you face,
Peter's got the secret for you in one Peter chapter five, verses 10 and 11.
First Peters chapter five, verses 10 and 11.
So take your Bibles and open up there with me.
First Peter five: 10.
Peter writes this.
He says, "After you've suffered a little while, the God of all grace
who called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself restore,
confirm, strengthen and establish you.
We're gonna camp out here in verse 10 for our first two points this morning,
but as we get into it, what I want you to notice right off the bat is what
Peter writes, after you've suffered for a little while, for a little while, you
may be going through suffering right now that has been so terminal and so
long that you're sitting there saying, "Who do you think you are to say that
my suffering is for a little while?"
In fact, this is the second time Peter said this, one Peter one: six,
"In this, you rejoice though now for a little while, if necessary, you've
been grieved by various trials."
Last week, we looked at the reality of spiritual warfare,
that we've got an enemy that's on the prowl and you're on the menu.
Uh, but really all of one Peter has been talking about suffering, hasn't it?
It's been talking about living as exiles in the midst of a, a
world that's hostile towards us.
It's been even talking about the, the battle that we have within, that
we have the passions of the flesh that wage war against our souls.
We know suffering.
Y- you know suffering.
Some of you know suffering in a very tangible way this morning.
Y- you've seen another negative fertility test, or you're thinking
the job, my job is, is over, or you're in the hospital right now.
Some of us may be listening to this later on.
Y- you know suffering, your marriage is falling apart.
You, you know suffering, and it doesn't feel like it's a little while, and so
who does Peter think he is to say after you've suffered a little while, or think
about somebody like Johnny Ericsontada, decades in a wheelchair, and Peter's
looking at Johnny saying, "Hey, Johnny, after you've suffered a little while,
I'm sorry, but what gives Peter the
right?"
Peter, the reality is, could have written this at any point in human history to any
group of people, anywhere, at any time.
He's already writing to quite a broad audience.
You've got those exiles in Pontius and Galatian, Capiticia,
and Asia, and Bethania, that's the opening of the letter.
So you just think those five regions and you think, okay, there's quite
a bit of variety and suffering and length and duration of suffering
that's taking place in those areas.
But Peter wrote to them, and he could have written at any point in
time, and, and Peter was, we believe, superintended by the Holy Spirit
to write this also to us today.
And the reason is, is because Peter's perspective on suffering, and the reason
why Peter said, after you suffered a little while, really, at the end of
the day, had very little to do with the earthly duration of your suffering.
Peter's not referring to the time on a calendar that passes by month
after month or week after week.
Peter's not interested in having us stand up and say, "Well,
here's my resume of suffering.
I've suffered for five years."
Only to have somebody else stand up and say, "Well, I've suffered for seven."
And somebody else say, "10," and somebody else chime in, 50.
Peter would look at all of them and say, "Hey, you know what?
After you suffered for a little while, and we might think what
in the world, how can he say that my suffering is a little while?"
The answer is because of the perspective that Peter was embracing in this verse.
It's a perspective that he's inviting us to embrace as well because, because he's
gonna say, "After you suffer for a little while, the God of all grace who's called
you to his eternal glory in Christ."
See, what Peter wants us to do is get our eyes off of the here and now and
put our eyes to the then and there.
He did it at the beginning of the letter and he's doing it
again at the end of the letter.
And that's what, when Peter holds out eternity for us and says, "Eternity's
coming, that's what can allow him to say after you suffered for a little while."
Peter had the right perspective.
He had a, a different point of view on life, and it's a point of view that we
need to embrace as well this morning.
It's point number one, it's this, seek a God's eye view on life.
Seek a God's eye view on your life, the suffering that
you're going through right now.
When, when we have a, a man's eye view, then we're living right here
in the moment, in the time, and we're just feeling every second tick by on
the clock, and it feels interminable.
The suffering feels like, when is this ever gonna end?
How can I ever see a way out of this valley?
It's darker than it's ever been, and I don't know how to wake up and even
take another step tomorrow morning.
But when we get the God's eye view, that's when things begin to change.
If you've ever been to Disneyland, uh, which in my book is not the
happiest place on earth, but that's just my opinion, one man's opinion
on that, there, there's a ride.
And it, my favorite ride at Disneyland is Pirates of the Caribbean, okay?
And so when, when you're on that ride, as you're going by, you, you, you see as
you're approaching something that looks like a normal pirate, and you see the
Pirate and, and whatever, it's probably saying I made it or something like that.
And then the boat goes by and as you go by the, the Pirate, all of
a sudden you realize that, that the Pirate is no longer a regular
Pirate, it's a skeleton of a Pirate.
What changed the angle at which you were looking at it?
It's the same thing.
What differs in your interpretation is your perspective.
That's what Peter's wanting us to do with your, with our lives.
Peter's wanting us to take our life and, and look at it
from a different perspective.
In other words, not to look at it from the weeds, but to get the zoomed out
view of our life and realize just how temporary this life is in light of
eternity, which means that our suffering as well is temporary in light of eternity.
It is for a little while.
I want you to think about life and death here for a minute.
Death is something that, that the Bible tells us is the wages of sin.
It's the penalty for our sin.
Death is not a good thing.
It's not something that we actively pursue.
It's not something that we welcome.
When we see things like what's taking place up in Canada, which is the medical
assistance and dying program, we look at that and we condemn that justifiably.
That is wrong.
Death is the enemy of life.
A- and yet, I wanna suggest to you that death is also a mercy of God.
And here's how.
Go back to the Garden of Eden with me.
Genesis chapter three, you've got the fall of man.
Yes?
Right?
And so Adam and Ever there and God said, "Do not eat from the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil.
From the day that you eat of it, you will what?
You'll die, death."
Well, here comes the serpent, you know the story.
Eve reached out, took the fruit, gave some to Adam.
They ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Their eyes were opened.
They were embarrassed.
Sin entered the world.
And so God has his confrontation with them.
And during the confrontation, he rolls out the consequences.
And part of the consequences is that not only are they going to be under the
curse of sin, but so is the entire world.
From the, the sweat of your brow, you will eat from the, the, the
fruit of the, the ground, thorns and thistles it will produce.
Romans eight, all of creation is groaning under the weight of sin.
That then is the world in which mankind has lived from that point forward.
And so we live in a world because of sin and the curse that includes broken
marriages, that includes cancer, that includes people harming other people,
that includes war, that includes famine, that includes disease, that includes
sickness, that includes name it, right?
We live in a world, in other words, that is marked by
suffering, and we can't escape it.
No matter how much money you have in the world, there's not
a single person who's ever been free from suffering in this world.
God did something else though in the garden.
He did this.
Genesis three, verses 22 through 24.
"Then the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one
of us, knowing good and evil.
Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of
life and eat and live forever.
Therefore, the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work
the ground from which he was taken.
He drove the man out.
And at the east of the garden of Eden, he placed a cherubim in a
flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
Two of those trees in the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil and the tree of life.
And God said to Adam and Eve, "Don't eat from the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil."
After they did, God, in order to, and here's my argument, protect
them, kick them out of the garden so that they wouldn't be able
to eat from the tree of life.
Because here's what would have happened.
Had Adam and Eve eaten from the tree of life, they would have never died
and always lived in a broken, cursed, fallen world under the weight of sin.
They would have spent their whole life never being able to have
any hope that the suffering here in this world is going to end.
In fact, they would have never been able to be an atonement for sin because
nobody would be able to die for sin.
And, and so all of mankind born all the way through here today, you would
simply live this life tired and weary and exhausted and weeping and sinning
against each other and, and breaking one another's hearts and facing things
like cancer and sickness and suffering, except you, you would never have
the mercy of relief from any of it.
And so God drove them out from the garden in order to protect them from
eating from the tree of life and living forever under the weight of the curse.
That is why, for the Christian, death is a mercy of God.
In fact, death really is our ultimate deliverance from suffering.
So when Peter says, after you've suffered for a little while, the other
thing is he doesn't qualify it for you.
He doesn't say, "After you've suffered for six months, after you've suffered for six
years, after you've suffered for 60 years, he just says, after you've suffered a
little while, the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ
will himself restore you, confirm you, strengthen you and establish you.
And, and so your ultimate hope is going to be when you enter into eternity.
And so that frames everything we're talking about here
in one Peter this morning.
Your hope in being delivered, i- i- your hope in God delivering you is not that
all of a sudden your trial's gonna go away and life is gonna be fine for you.
It's not that the, the heartache and the hurt is not gonna
just vanish overnight for you.
It's not that you're gonna wake up tomorrow morning and, and you're
gonna feel better about everything and you're gonna just be bright
and chipper and everything's fine.
That's not the deliverance that God is promising.
In fact, that's far too cheap a deliverance for us.
Rather th- the deliverance, the hope that God holds out to us.
And this is why Peter says this for a little while, and
this is the perspective shift.
This is the God's eye view that we need to embrace.
The hope is that we're gonna leave here and go to be there.
And what is there?
It's his eternal glory.
Eternity is something that's difficult for us to understand.
Why?
Because we are finite beings.
We have a beginning and we have an end.
But when we as Christians die in, in that mercy, God is gonna
deliver us then into his presence, into eternal glory in Christ.
And, and that eternity is going to be a time that's never going to end.
There's no passage of time.
There won't be any clocks in heaven because they're not gonna do you any good.
We have clocks because we are progressing towards something.
As a world, we are progressing towards the culmination of salvific redemptive
history when God decides it's, it's time.
As individuals, we're progressing towards the end of our lives
whenever that may come.
But in eternity, there's no destination.
We are at the destination.
The destination is Jesus.
We're gonna be with him without end for all of eternity.
And, and that's the end of suffering.
That's the end of suffering.
Is there, not here.
And so that's why Peter says, "The God of all grace who has
called you to his eternal glory.
That's why it's a l- uh, only suffering for a little while because when
you're stepping foot into eternity, then all of a sudden you're gonna
realize what Peter meant and what Paul meant when Paul said, This light
momentarily affliction is preparing for me in eternal weight of glory.
You're gonna go, okay, Paul, I, I get it.
It was a light momentary affliction.
That's when you're gonna say, okay, the, the sufferings of this present
age are not worth comparing to the glory that's gonna be revealed.
Romans chapter eight.
Okay, Paul, I get it.
The sufferings of this, this time that right now feel so painful and
that are causing me to weep and that are causing me to lose sleep and
that are causing me to feel the, the, the angst and the pit of my stomach.
There's a day coming when God brings me into his presence and then I'm gonna
say, "That was not worth comparing to even ask the question, was it
worth it in light of where I am now?"
That where I am now is this place.
Revelation.
Chapter 21, I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the
dwelling place of God is with man.
He will dwell with them and they will be as people and God himself
will be with them as their God and he will wipe away every tear from
their eyes and death shall be no more.
Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for
the former things have passed
away."
Do you want that place this morning?
I do.
I wanna be there.
A- a- a- and that's why death is the mercy for us, y'all.
It's not that we, again, it's not that we seek death, that is not it at all.
But what we think of death as, as followers of Jesus is
not the end, but the doorway.
We sing it in one of those songs.
Death is just a doorway into everlasting life, and that's what it is.
And so for us, death is the hope.
Death is the, the mercy for us that God provides to say, "Christian, this is
why you can think about the suffering that you're going through right now
and say, it's only for a little while because there's something better coming."
Again, Peter has bookended his letter this way.
I think I mentioned that earlier, but this is what Peter wrote.
If you wanna take your Bibles back to one Peter chapter one, verses three through
nine, one Peters chapter one, verses three through nine, Peter wrote this.
He said, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a
living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to
an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading kept in heaven
for you who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation
ready to be revealed in the last time.
In this, you rejoice this salvation.
You rejoice though now for a little while.
If necessary, you've been grieved by various trials so that the tested
genuineness of your faith, more precious than goal that perishes, though it
is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor
at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Though you have not seen him, you love him.
Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy
that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your
faith, the salvation of your souls.
Your future with Christ shapes your present here with your suffering.
Knowing that's coming is what allows you here to endure.
And, and, and this point is not meant to minimize your pain,
but to maximize your hope.
The Bible tells us as believers, weep with those who weep.
Grieve, help ... Encourage the weak in, in the faint hearted.
Bear one another's burdens.
And, and so this is not a point that says, "Hey, I know you're suffering,
but cry your river, build your bridge and get over it because Jesus."
Now, rather, this is, you are suffering and it is real and we're gonna come
alongside you and we're gonna weep with you and, and we're going to comfort one
another, but you do have an abiding hope.
For somebody who would say, "I'm an atheist, I don't know how you
get out of bed in the morning."
I, I honestly don't.
What is your hope?
To, to do what?
To make more money?
Look at the number of people that have made all the money in the world and
have sat there and looked into the camera and interviews and said, "I'm
miserable."
T- to, to find love?
Okay, but how long is that gonna last?
A- and then what about the suffering that you're going through right now?
Why do you keep going?
What, what, what, what keeps you going right now?
See, if, if, if you've taken God out of the equation, I don't ... The, the
only logical conclusion after you remove God from the equation is nihilism.
That's the only honest unbeliever is a nihilist who says,
"What's the point of any of it?
" Everything else is just inventing fairy tales to try to avoid that conclusion.
Christianity gives you hope that's real, that there's eternity,
that there's life after death.
Solomon said, God has put eternity in the heart of every man.
If you want hope to make your suffering now matter so that you don't have to
just despair, then find it in Jesus.
Come to faith in Jesus.
Know that there's purpose because there's a hope that's gonna be yours,
that God is gonna bring you into that eternity where he's gonna wipe away
the tears that you've cried, and it's all of a sudden gonna be that light
bulb moment where you go, "I, I get it.
Not only is it worth it, it's not even worth comparing to what I'm seeing
right now in the presence of Jesus.
This is not meant to minimize your pain, but to maximize your hope.
I, it, I hope I hope I'm using that word too much.
Whatever.
It's a good word to use too much.
I hope that encourages you.
That's good news.
That's such good news, Christian, that whatever you're going through
right now, you can look at it and say, "It's only for a little while.
It's only for a little while."
Still, it is a while and you are in it right now, perhaps, and it hurts.
So what do you do with the pain?
How do you keep going?
What does it look like for you to acknowledge the pain and yet
acknowledge the, the hope that you have, but still say, "Okay, but I,
I still have this in front of me.
" That's where Peter goes next.
Look at verse 10 again with me.
He says, "The God of all grace who he has called you to his eternal
glory in Christ will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you.
The God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ will himself."
Peter doubles down there.
It, it includes another pronoun there to emphasize will himself.
He could have just written, "The God of all grace will restore, confirm,
strengthen and establish you.
" But Peter said, "The God of all grace will himself do this.
" A- a- and so here's what Peter's saying here, and the promise that
we have in scripture here is that God is going to be with you, helping
you, carrying you, strengthening you, establishing you all the way through
the trials that you face right now.
This is not, "Hey, you're gonna go to heaven, so white
knuckle it until you get there."
This is, you're gonna go to heaven and God's gonna see to it
that he's gonna get you there.
God's gonna be with you in the midst of it.
I want you to think about what it would be like to be overseas and
you're kidnapped by a foreign nation.
You're held hostage.
And I want you to think about how amazing it would be if, if all
of a sudden the President of the United States said, "You know what?
We're gonna go get him."
And so he dispatched SEAL Team six, the elite of the elite, and they come out and
they find where you are and they bust down the doors and they take out the bad guys.
The bad guys lose, the good guys win, you're safe and they put you on a,
a, a, a plane and they fly you back home and they deliver you safe to
the front door to your spouse and to your family or to your loved ones.
And you're just like, "That was the coolest thing ever because
look at how, how much my country defended me and everything else.
And that was so kind to the president to send SEAL Team six
to go get me and bring me home."
Now I want you to think about this.
You're in the same situation.
The President calls SEAL Team six and says, "I'm going with you.
" And the President of the United States shows up with SEAL Team six
and the President of the United States participates in, in your deliverance
and then says, "Hey, you know what?
I delivered you from your predicament, but I'm not done.
I'm staying with you.
In fact, I've got Air Force one here, you're gonna ride with me.
" And so you get on Air Force One and you're still in enemy territory right now.
So there's still anti-aircraft fire being shot and everything else, but you are in
the safest plane on the face of the planet that has all of the evasive tactics.
You know nothing's gonna happen.
You've got the escort of all the, the, the fighter jets and everything else and
they're taking out bad guys the whole way.
And so it's, it's still that there's, there's some enemy fire going on, but
you know that you're secure, you're with the president, you're in the
safest plane you've ever been in before.
And the president's like, "I've got you.
We're going home."
And you fly back home and then you land there and the president says,
"Wait, uh, we're not done yet.
I wanna make sure you get all the way home."
So the president gets his presidential motorcade and he calls for it and he gets
in the, the car and you get in the car too and you're going, "Okay, I'm good.
I, I've got, he's got me now."
And the president takes you all the way back to your house, opens the door, gets
out with you, walks you up, knocks on the door, and hands you back to your family.
That would be something even more amazing than just Seal Team six
coming and doing it, wouldn't it?
He'd be like, "Whoa, who, who am I that the President of the United States
would care about my wellbeing that much that he would see me all the way
through to being brought home safely?"
The God of this universe, the Lord of creation, the God of Psalm 19 who
stretches out the heavens over the earth, whose heavens declare his glory, that
God will himself not only deliver you, but see you all the way safely home so
that nothing will ever happen to you.
He's gonna be with you, in other words, through the trial, through
the suffering, through the pain.
He hasn't left you to say, "Good luck.
See you if you get to heaven."
He's saved you, and then he's promised that he will be with you
all the way until he brings you into his eternal glory in Christ.
That promise and the promises of God that we'll look at, that's such
a comfort to us as we walk right now through the pain and through
the trial that we're going through.
Point number two this morning is this, be comforted by God's promises.
Be comforted by God's promises.
Have you guys read Pilgrim's pro- progress?
If you haven't, I would commend it to you.
In fact, uh, there's Little Pilgrim's progress, which we've read with our
kids I think two or three times now.
It's just a great, uh, rendition of it for kids.
You can find that on, on Amazon.
But there's a scene in Pilgrim's progress where Pilgrim finds
himself in, uh, a castle, and the castle is called doubting castle.
And there's not just a, a castle there, but there's a giant,
and the giant is named despair.
And so Pilgrim and his companion find themselves trapped by the
giant in doubting castle, and the giant despair has taken them and
locked them deep inside the dungeon.
And while they're there, they begin to despair of all hope.
Until Pilgrim remembers something, he reaches in his pocket and he pulls out
a key, and the key is called promise.
And with the key promise, he unlocks the dungeon in the castle of doubt
and escapes from the giant despair to continue on his way back towards
his destination, the celestial city.
Uh, it's a beautiful picture of what we're talking about right now.
The, the, the, the trials that you're going through, the difficulty that
you're facing, the, the problems where you're going, "I don't know
what my life looks like anymore."
The identity that I had is now not my identity anymore.
Or when you're looking at the trial and saying, "I, I don't, I don't know what
to do with what the doctor just told me.
That's something that happens to someone else.
It doesn't happen to me.
And when you find yourself reeling and the doubts creep in and here comes the
giant despair to, to take you captive, the key is the promises of God, to go back
to the promises of God and to remember, just like we're reading out here, that
the God who of, of all grace has called you into his eternal glory and then what
he goes on to say that he's going to do these things, he's going to restore
you, confirm you, strengthen you and establish you in the midst of the trial.
And, and none of this means, notice, none of this says he's going
to, to make life easy, does it?
In fact, you can read any Bible verse you want to, and, and you're
not going to find one that says, "Coming to Jesus makes life easy.
It makes the pain go away.
It makes the suffering
stop."
But you will find a verse like this that says in the midst of the trial,
in the midst of the heartache.
That's where God is going to do this.
He's going to restore you.
He's going to repair what suffering has broken.
He's gonna confirm you.
He's gonna make you more able, more capable to endure, to stand.
He's gonna strengthen you.
He's gonna deepen your resolve.
He's gonna strengthen your conviction, and he's gonna establish
you on the firm foundation of your hope in your future with Christ.
That doesn't mean that your marriage gets restored.
That doesn't mean that the cancer goes away.
That doesn't mean that you find a job.
That doesn't mean that your kids get saved,
necessarily.
But it does mean that God has not abandoned you in the midst of the valley.
You're not alone in the midst of the valley.
What did King David say in Psalm 23?
"Even though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, God's where?
With me.
He's with me.
He's leading me.
He's guiding me through it.
He's gonna confirm you.
He's gonna strengthen you.
He's gonna establish you.
He's, he's for you.
And so When you have the, the insecurities mount the questions that
come that say, "Am I gonna ever recover from what this has, has cost me?
" Maybe you, you lost a lot of money in a, a bad investment and now you've got
questions about your future and your ability to provide for your family.
Am I gonna be able to hold up under the, the pressure while I waver in my
convictions of what I believe to be true?
Maybe you've got a situation where you know for you to tow the line
at work and do what your boss is calling you to do, you can't do that
in clean conscience before the Lord.
So you're gonna have to say no.
And you realize if, if I say no, chances are I'm out of a job
and my family no longer has an income to put food on the table.
Will I fall under the temptation to compromise my faith?
Or, or, or even just the, to, to question the things that you've
always believed to be true about God.
God is good.
It's easy to believe on the mountain that's so hard to believe in the valley.
God loves me easy on the mountain hard in the valley.
God is working all things together for my good.
So easy to believe when the promo- promotion comes through.
So much harder to believe when
the relationship falls apart.
And yet, how do you know you're gonna keep going?
How, how do you know you're gonna make it through the valley?
Because it's ultimately, at the end of the day, Christian, not on you.
God's going to confirm you.
He's going to strengthen you.
He's going to restore you.
He's going to establish you.
God's the actor.
God himself will do these things.
He's the one that's gonna give you the hope.
He's the one that's gonna preserve your faith, even in the hardest parts where
you have to say, "I believe, Lord, help my unbelief right now because the
valley is darker than it's ever been."
He's the one that's gonna give you the hope and the confidence to be able to
say, "I understand that I may never come out of this valley on this side
of eternity, but e- if this valley leads to my death here, the, the light
is gonna be there and it's unending and that's where my ultimate hope is.
My ultimate hope is eternity with Christ.
It's not here.
It's there.
And the promises of God are the things that buoy us along the way,
the promises that he's gonna restore, confirm, strengthen and establish us.
The things that, that, that God is going to do for us in the midst of it,
here's just a brief survey in the Psalms that, that God is going to protect you.
In what sense?
Well, well, does that mean that you'll never die?
No, Christians die all the time.
Does that mean that, that you won't have something bad happen to you?
No, not at all.
Right?
If we stop down right now and, and said, "Okay, everybody stand up.
I wanna hear about what you're going through right now.
What suffering are you going through right now?"
Uh, we would spend the rest of our time, the rest of our day talking about what
suffering we're going through right now.
God's protection is not that you're not gonna ever suffer.
His protection is that you're gonna get through the suffering.
Even if that means that getting through it means that he's delivering
you into his presence and eternity.
That's ultimately our deliverance.
That's our hope.
That's our protection.
But God's gonna protect that.
Nothing is gonna be able to take that away from you.
No suffering that you encounter can take that away from you.
He hears you.
When you pray, God hears your prayers.
When you cry out, how long, oh Lord, just like David did in the
Psalms, God hears your prayers.
He's never dull of hearing from you.
As your, his child, you can come before him and you can ask him and
you can pray in faith knowing that he gives good things to his children.
So him hearing and giving good things doesn't mean that the pain's gonna all
of a sudden go away because sometimes the pain is what's making you more like Jesus.
Sometimes the pain is the good thing.
He's with you.
Psalm 23, we talked about that.
You're never alone.
You've got the spirit of God dwelling within you.
The spirit of God is never apart from you.
You have a savior, even in Hebrews chapter seven that's interceding for you
always, that's praying for you, always.
He's with you.
He's praying for you right now in the suffering.
He sees your affliction.
God is not unaware of the pain that you're going through.
He's also not incapable of bringing you out of the temporal
pain if that should be his will.
And maybe he will.
He certainly will when he delivers you into his presence though.
He knows your tears.
In fact, the Bible says in that passage, he keeps them in his bottle.
Why would God bottle up your tears?
Because he's storing them up because justice is ultimately going to be done.
And those tears are a testimony that they will, the things that cause those tears,
those wrongs will one day be righted.
Again, before you die, maybe, maybe not.
He shows us mercy and grace, forgives our sins and heals our broken hearts.
Yo, I'd, I'd love to stand up here and, and just preach this message
that says, "Hey, you know what?
God's gonna lead you out of your suffering temporally and
into a time of fruitfulness.
God's gonna lead you into your best life now.
God's gonna lead you.
He's gonna take away.
He's gonna restore the relationship, the marriage.
He's gonna take away the cancer.
Uh, God's, God's got a different plan for you.
He, he's gonna provide the house that you want.
He's gonna make y- you not have to live paycheck to paycheck anymore.
I, I'd love to stand up here and preach that to you, except I, I, I'd be doing you
an injustice, number one, because those two things are far too cheap to compare
to the ultimate deliverance, the actual deliverance that God's bringing to you.
And, and, and number two, he, he may not do any of that.
He may keep you exactly where you are
until he brings you to himself.
That's your hope.
Ultimately, Christian.
The greatest promise is that you will be delivered into his presence and that you
will be there and you'll be with him.
And all the wrongs that have been done will ultimately be righted.
And you will spend an eternity with the God who has wiped
away every tear from your eyes.
Be comforted by the promises of God.
He's with you wherever you are in whatever you're enduring right now.
And just because the pain persists doesn't mean that God is failing,
or has failed you, or has left you, or has abandoned you.
Sometimes he's sustaining you through the pain to bring you into his presence.
And that's a good thing.
That's a good thing.
As hard as it is.
That's reason enough for us to respond, as Peter does there in verse
11, look down and he says, To him be the dominion forever and ever amen.
To him be the dominion forever and ever, amen.
The word amen means, yes, let it be so.
I agree.
In fact, if, if I preach on the right things, like, if I preach on politics in
the right way, I get amens from you guys.
I know where I can get the amens out of you.
If I go off on the gospel hard enough and start getting, you know, all passionate
and stuff, then, then I, I know I, I, I'll get a few amens chimed out there.
Why?
Because you agree with it.
You're like, yes.
I, I, I agree.
Amen.
That's why we say it at the end of prayers.
And so Peter says, "To him, be the dominion forever and ever amen.
Let it be.
I agree.
Yes."
But what is dominion?
Dominion is this.
Dominion is the exercise of power and authority.
It's the right to exercise power and authority.
A king exercises a dominion.
He rules and reigns.
And so Peter, after considering all of this stuff about how God is going
to deliver us and, and the, the promises that he's made to us and,
and back in, in point number one, the, the perspective that we can have on
our life that is suffering only for a little while, Peter's conclusion
is, "I gotta worship God for this.
This is so good that I gotta stop and worship God.
And the way he does that is, is he acknowledges that God is the
one that's ultimately in control.
God's the one who's ruling.
God's the one that's reigning.
God's the one that's on the throne.
No matter what's going on in your life right now.
No matter what you're facing right now, God is in control.
He's the king.
Point number three, because of that he's worthy of this.
Worship God, the ruler of all.
Worship him, the ruler of all.
It, it, it's like Peter is, is unable to contain himself,
kind of like Paul in Ephesians.
Peter's been talking about all this stuff and he's, it's like he's stopping
down saying, "Can you believe it?
Can you believe how good God is?
That he's gonna deliver us into his presence.
Can you believe it?
That, that our suffering we can look at and say, yeah, it's only for a little
while because we're gonna be with
him."
Maybe though you've been struggling to get there
because life right now feels more out of control than it is in control.
You've been struggling to get there
because it, it doesn't feel that way.
You guys know the statement, right?
God is good all the time.
What's the next part?
All the time, God is good.
Yes, amen.
I appreciate that.
Um, believing that though is far harder than saying it.
And there's gonna be seasons where to say that feels pretty, pretty shallow.
It's true.
But when your spouse walks out on you,
can you say that
with the same gusto as you say it in church?
When you are in the hospital room
and let's say you've been put on hospice
or palliative care and the doctors have told your family, there's
nothing more that we can do, you're still conscious, so you can hear
your heart rate monitor beeping.
Is God still good?
Or maybe it's your loved one that's in the bed.
Maybe it's your child.
Is God still good?
Can you still worship him in that moment?
Some of you may know the story of Corey and Betsy Tenboom.
They were taken to Ravensbrook concentration camp.
And while they were there, they were put in some barracks and while in
the barracks, they were reading the Bible that they had smuggled in.
And in the Bible, uh, the, the passage that they came to was first
Thessalonians 5:16 through 18, where it said, "Rejoice always.
Pray without ceasing.
Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God
and Christ Jesus for you.
Give thanks in all circumstances.
For this is the will of God and Christ Jesus for you.
" So reading that, these women got together and they said, "We
have to be able to give thanks.
What should we give thanks for right
now?"
And Corey's sister, Betsy, said, "Well, I wanna give thanks for the fleas."
Cory looked at Betsy and said, "Are you crazy?
You wanna give thanks for the fleas?
Why would you ever give things for the fleas?
If it's not bad enough that we're in the concentration camp, if it's not bad enough
that, that we don't know about our family, if it's not bad enough that we might
die in the concentration, why would you ever want to give thanks for the fleas?
Flea's on top of all that.
This just seems cruel and unusual
punishment."
So Corey said, "I'm gonna give thanks that we've got a Bible with us."
Betsy said, "Okay, I'm gonna give thanks for the fleas."
A couple weeks passed, they kept reading the Bible.
In fact, some of the other women in the barracks came around them and they
were leading them in, in a Bible study.
And Corey began to, to wonder, why are the guards not doing something about this?
Why are they not raiding our, our barracks?
Why are they not coming in turning over mattresses?
Why are they not searching?
Why, what, what is happening here?
And then they overheard some of the guards saying, "Yeah, we're not going in there.
Have you seen the, the fleas and the lice that are in all those bunks?"
And then all of a sudden, Corey had reason to be thankful for the fleas.
It was the fleas that initially she looked at and said, "I
don't ... This is causing me suffering.
It's inconvenient.
I, this is awful.
I can't believe this.
It just feels like God is piling onto
us."
And then with a perspective shift, she realized, "Oh, man.
I can even worship God for the
fleas."
God is sovereign.
I believe God was sovereign over those fleas.
God's in control.
He's the ruler of everything.
Whatever the fleas are in your life right now, that you're sitting
there thinking, "Man, God, this just feels like you're piling on.
I've already got enough on my plate, and then you add this.
Maybe even those things are the things that you can stop and worship God for
today."
You may not even know how at this point,
but to say, "God, I, I trust that you are truly the ruler of all.
To you be the dominion forever and ever.
Amen.
I trust that you're the ruler.
And so even this thing that right now feels like the, the last straw
that's gonna break my back, I trust that it's from you, and so I thank
you for it, even though I don't know
why."
Maybe he'll show you at some point in the next handful of years,
or maybe he'll show you when he welcomes you into eternity,
and you're able to see, "Oh, that's why that's good."
Thank you.
The greatest reason we can worship God, no matter where we find ourselves,
is because of the cross of Christ.
Again, Christians have a leg up on anyone else in the world when we
face suffering because we have a hope that this world is not all there is.
And the glue to that, the, the linchpin to that, that the foundation
of that hope is the cross because Jesus died on the cross for our sins
so that our sins could be forgiven.
He gave us his full righteousness so that we would be declared righteous,
and he rose again from the dead so that one day we will live with him forever.
That's the hope that changes everything.
That's the hope that we have now that, that God is indeed going to restore,
confirm, strengthen, and establish us until he ultimately delivers
us into the presence of Christ.
In fact, that's not only our hope, that's our guarantee of it.
You might say, "How can I be so sure that God's gonna stay with me through it all?
And I would say the answer is because what it cost him to bring
you to him in the first place.
Paul put it this way in Romans eight, "He who did not spare his
own son, but gave him up for us all.
How will he not also with him graciously give us all things?"
In other words, if he gave us Christ, why wouldn't he see us through to the end?
This morning, as we get ready to observe communion together, we're gonna
reflect back on that gift of Christ, the cross, his death on our behalf.
And as we do, I wanna encourage you, number one, to, to be
aware of a lack of conversion.
What we're remembering here is the cross of Christ, and it's for
those upon whom the cross of Christ has had an impact by saving you.
So if you're not in Christ this morning, please let these elements pass by.
Today can be the day of salvation for you.
This is not about excluding you and saying, "Hey, you're not
welcome or th- you can't have this.
" This is simply saying this is for those that are followers of Christ,
and it's another invitation to you this morning to do business with the
Lord and become a follower of Jesus.
But as it is, if you would, just let these elements pass by.
Second, be aware of a lack of concentration this morning.
Uh, this is an important thing that we do here.
There's a lot of things that our mind could race a- around to as we observe
these elements, but it's good for us to remember this and to remember the
hope that it gives us in this world.
And then finally, be aware of a lack of confession.
One of the reasons why we take it all together after the, everything is, is
that it gives you time to sit with the elements and to pray before the Lord,
to keep short accounts with the Lord, to do business with God by confessing
sin before him, before we remember the cross, which is the basis of our
confidence that he will forgive that sin.
And so the elements are gonna be passed, the music's gonna play, and
as they are, uh, you can take the elements, all come back up and we'll
take them all together in just a moment.
That song that's playing in the background is the song how deep the
Father's Love for us, how vast beyond all measure that he should give his
only son to make a wretch his treasure.
Again, echoing Paul's sentiments there.
If God did that for you, he's not gonna leave you.
He, he's not gonna let a trial destroy you.
He's gonna bring you to himself.
Apostle Paul wrote in one Corinthians chapter 11, verse 23, "For I received
from the Lord what I also delivered to you that the Lord Jesus on the night
when he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and
said, This is my body, which is for you.
Do this in remembrance of me.
Let's eat.
And the same way also, he took the cup after supper saying, This cup
is the new covenant in my blood.
Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim
the Lord's death until it comes.
Let's pray.
Lord God, you have not promised us a life of ease as your followers,
but you have promised that you will bring us to yourself.
You've not promised us great riches and wealth and luxury here, but you've
promised us a future with you that's gonna be marked by something so much better,
by being with you, by having no more sorrow, no more sickness, no more disease,
no more heartache, no more any of that.
And so God, that doesn't mean that this world won't contain some difficulties.
In fact, you've been honest with us about that.
So much of one Peter has been talking about that.
Also, the words of Jesus himself who said the way is narrow and
hard that leads to eternal life.
And so God, we find ourselves there.
We find ourselves at all kinds of different places in this room, different
levels of suffering, different levels of heartache, but all of us needing the same
message that tells us that there's hope in an eternity with you through Christ.
And so I pray that we would hold onto that hope, that you would confirm us, that
you would strengthen us, that you would restore us, that you would establish us.
Even now.
We know that ultimately that's not gonna be completed until we're with you,
but even now, God, may you hold onto us as we walk through these valleys.
We love you.
We love Christ.
We thank you for the hope that we have in him.
And we pray this all in Jesus' name.
Amen.