Fruits of the Spirit, Part 6

Mr. Perryman gave the perfect introduction to what I want to talk about today. We've been going through the fruits of God's Spirit, and we're to the one of long suffering.

And there is no more perfect example of long suffering than Job, as he was talking about that going through that. And he's talking about, you know, endurance. What's interesting, long suffering, it capitalizes the idea of it. Endurance, perseverance, which is slightly different, but basically the same concept. But it also involves faith. Long suffering, as a fruit of the Spirit, involves faith. It involves patience. There's a whole lot of character traits that are involved in this concept of long suffering.

So we're going to talk about long suffering today. But, as we do, we will see how endurance happens. How can we endure, because let's face it, a lot of long suffering is humanly impossible to endure. A lot of suffering is just... I mean, people go crazy. People commit suicide. Because they cannot endure the suffering. Where does our suffering come from? It comes from a number of different sources. And when we're dealing with suffering, we have to know where it's coming from. Why are we suffering? And we can know what God's going to at least achieve in that suffering.

And then we can endure it, and we can have patience. You know, when he was talking about there with Job, there's a couple of things in that story that are very interesting. One, Satan, even though he's the God of this world, still has to report to God. And he can't do anything unless God takes his hands off and lets him do it. Now, that's very important. Sometimes we think that, well, when Jesus comes back, he will create the kingdom of God. Now, the kingdom of God exists right now. I mean, God never gave up being God. The universe is still God's.

The earth still belongs to him. He's allowed Satan to have it for a time period. And there's come a point where he has said, he tells us, he's going to tell Satan, you can't have it anymore. He's not...the Christ is returning to create the kingdom of God. He's returning to reestablish it on the earth. He has always existed. God has never given up being who he is. He's never given up his sovereignty. So Satan has to go to report to him. Even as the God of this world. And we also see that Satan couldn't touch Job unless God took his hands off. He couldn't do anything. Now, God didn't do it.

In fact, he put restrictions on him. But, okay, God said, well, you can have him for a while. You can't kill him. You can't take his health away. Another thing I think is very interesting about the story of Job... And by the way, even people who don't believe in the Bible... Job is considered by many, many historians to be the greatest piece of ancient literature in history.

Even greater than the Iliad and the Odyssey. Because it deals with the basic human questions. Is there a God? What's the purpose for humanity? How does God interact with humanity? What's the purpose for our lives? What's the purpose for suffering?

All these issues are in this book. That's why it's considered by many historians to be the greatest piece... Even if they don't believe in God. To be the greatest piece of ancient literature. Because it deals with the core human questions. But what I find interesting here is that Satan doesn't know the future. You think, well, why can't Satan know that God is going to win at the end? If it says this, if it says it here, we know God wins at the end. Satan must not believe that's true.

Because when we look at how he approached God here, he said, if you let me have him, he will fail. I said, nah, no, he won't. And so Satan tried to make you fail. So Satan doesn't know the future. He can't predict what's going to happen exactly. And he doesn't seem to understand that he's going to lose this.

Which explains what motivates him. It also explains that there are powers, sometimes, I think people attribute to Satan. He just didn't have. You know, as powerful as he is. So we have this story. And you know the stories. He went through it. But like I said, perfect introduction. Because there is no better introduction to long suffering than Job.

And God, of course, let him destroy everything he had. Not only did he destroy everything he had, but then he made him sick. And then he took the one person in his life who didn't die, his wife, and she turned against him. And instead of being a support, was just nagging him, saying, why don't you just curse God and die? So she was now his enemy. So his children are dead. He's lost everything he has. He's living in poverty. He's covered with sores, seeping, painful sores. He's sitting in a garbage dump using pieces of pottery that's trying to scrape these sores.

And his wife is telling him, why don't you just die? And that's where he is. And then the story goes on with his three friends who show up, and they spend days just staring at him. They're not saying anything. And then what you have basically is the whole core of the book. From chapter 3 up to about chapter 37 are his friends telling him how evil he is, how bad he is, and God is punishing him because he's an evil man.

And just a pair of them said, the Bible says he was righteous. So why did God do this? Just to beat Satan? Just to win? Now there's a purpose in this. There's a reason for it. We'll talk about it in just a little bit. As I said, human suffering can be really unbearable.

Now that's why when we talk about long suffering as a fruit of God's Spirit we have to understand this is something God does in us by living in us. This is the fruit of His Spirit in us. We've talked about this. Every one of these fruits is in something you can work up on yourself, by yourself. It's like, oh, I just have to be tougher than I can suffer more.

And that's not what he's talking about. It is about God in us to give us help and the ability to suffer long. This is one of the fruits I don't like. I want suffer short. Well, I like no suffering at all, but that's when it's selfish. So what I want is suffer short. God, I've been through this trial for five minutes. It's enough.

God, I've done real well this time. I went 48 hours on this trial. It's time you stop it. But the point is, suffer long. There is suffering, and it lasts a long time. The point is that it's not being able to suffer long just because God likes suffering. There's a purpose in it. But it is God in us. It needs to be able to suffer without losing hope. Now, there may be times you feel hopeless, but you always be able to come out of that. It's not becoming angry. You know what you see with a lot of us when we do this, we can suffer to the point we just become angry.

Angry, bitter people. And bitterness is what we're supposed to be, even. When you read through Job, there's a couple places in there towards the end where he was bordering on bitterness. He's bordered on it because he kept saying, this isn't fair, and it wasn't. And he started to border on bitterness, but God showed up to deal with the issue. Now, long suffering isn't fatalism. You know what fatalism is. It's just a hopeless belief that everything is predetermined.

So, hey, I have no control over this anyway. Oh, well, his law is filled with fatalism. It's my turn to die, so, okay, I'll go blow somebody up because it's my turn. Now, we know God guides things. We know that God is involved in things. But there's an interaction between us and God. You can see it in the Bible. Look at the king who went to God and asked...he was sick and he was going to die, and he asked for healing. And he said, okay, I'll give you 15 more years. There's an interaction between God and people.

We will see God alleviate suffering or change it, make it bearable, because he's evolved. So, it's not fatalism. It actually involves faith in what God is doing in our lives. And so, this is where this adores. This is where this patience is developed in us. Look at James 5. James 5 verse 7. He says, therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Be patient. Now, patience is hard. When you're a little kid, I want to be patient. You're on a time out. That's the hardest thing. You know it's lasted for three days. Okay, you're five minutes is up. Why did you make these dinner for three days?

Because patience is so hard for us. Be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth. Now, we're back into these analogies of fruit that we see throughout the Scripture as we go through all these fruits of the Spirit. You wait for the fruit. You ever grow just apples or grapes or anything? Pears. You go out and there's a bud and you wait for the fruit. You know, and you watch it grow.

Is it ripe yet? I can remember asking my mom, is it ripe yet? Is it ripe yet? Then sometimes no fruit comes. You know, you just have a bud or a flower or whatever. No fruit comes. But he says the farmer knows.

He's waiting for this fruit that's going to come. He says, for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. In other words, it has to go through a process. But we've talked about how God says he has to prune us and throw an ore on us, the bare fruit. Here, James says, you know, when you watch for fruit, you know it's a process.

It takes rain. It takes spring rain. It takes fall rain. You know, it just doesn't happen overnight. If you have a garden, you don't plant it and didn't expect to go out the next day. Oh, I planted corn. You get out the next day and harvest your corn. It doesn't happen that way, does it? You wait for it to grow. And you go out, you take care of it, you dig up the weeds.

I can remember as a kid, I hadn't thought of this for years. I must be getting old, because every once in a while I had memories of being a child. I hadn't thought of it in years. I can remember my mom grew rows and rows of green beans.

And she, Chris, wouldn't use pesticides. And one year we got bugs on these green beans. Like little Japanese beetles, what they look like. You know what a Japanese beetle is? So every day, my job, when I first got up in the morning as this little kid, was to take a mason jar, half filled with water, and go through every plant, pull out the bugs, and throw them in the water. And drown hundreds of bugs.

So she could have her green beans. Of course, in the middle of the winter, when there's three feet of snow on the ground, and she had a pot of green beans to eat, you were glad you picked all the bugs off the green beans. So it doesn't happen overnight. There's a process, there's a former range, there's a latter range. This is the point he's making. He says, you also be patient, just like a farmer. You know, the fruit in us is born. Sometimes we get, well, why don't I have more long suffering? Why don't I have more meekness? Why don't I have more peace? God says, okay, we have to develop this. The fruits of God's Spirit, we get frustrated because we want them, and we want them now. Well, God says, that's part of the problem. It's the former latter range here, which means the long suffering takes time. Oh, good. If I suffer long, I'll learn how to, you know, if I suffer short, that's all I need. No, the point is long suffering. It's to be able to deal with suffering. Now, there's a reason for this. We'll talk about it. Why would God want us to do this? Why would God want us to learn how to suffer? Why doesn't God just erase all suffering now? We'll talk about that in a minute. Verse 8 says, you also be patient. Establish your hearts where the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grovel against one another, brethren, lest you be condemned. Now, let's be careful how we treat each other. Behold, the judge is standing at the door. Father, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord as an example of suffering and patience. See, here we see endurance, patience all tied together, perseverance. In their suffering, they remain loyal to God. They remain faithful. This is why faith is part of this, the belief that God is going to work this out. There's a point where this gets worked out. Indeed, we count them blessed who? What? Indoor. You have heard of the perseverance of Job. See, the end intended by the Lord. But the Lord is very compassionate and merciful. There was an end intended by the Lord. In a minute or a little bit, we'll talk about the Lord's intended result for Job. What was that intended result? We'll look at it in a minute. How do we do this? Long suffering is an attribute of God. God never had to suffer. He did the moment He created us. You see, and you don't think He knew that? The moment He created us, He suffered.

It says He grieved Him at the time of Noah. You know how grief is? We all experience grief. It grieved Him what He saw, what His children did. God experienced grief. He suffers because of us. It is only because God's suffering for us that Christ came. Look at 1 Timothy 1.

Here is the perfect example. I've shown you at least one scripture where these fruits of the Spirit are all aspects of God's character. 1 Timothy 1. 1 Timothy 15. Paul writes to Timothy in verse 15. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance. That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. Paul looked himself and he said, there is no greater sinner than me.

He says He came to save all of us. However, for this reason I obtain mercy, that at knee first Jesus Christ might show what? All long suffering. He came here and spent a human lifetime suffering. His suffering just wasn't on the cross. His suffering was His whole life as a human being. God in the flesh facing what human beings face. Unfortunately, He didn't suffer the results of His sin because He didn't sin. He just suffered the results of all of our sins. I can't imagine what it would be like to walk through us as God in the flesh, as a human being who had been God.

To have perfect character, but to learn. It says He learned things. Why in the world would He have to learn? It wouldn't be character. I tell you what He had to learn. I don't see He had to learn, but He would have learned physical suffering. As God, He never got a cold. As God, nobody ever punched Him in the mouth. You think about what He experiences as a human being, that He never experiences God. He becomes an example for us.

Here is God's long suffering. You understand God's long suffering? Look at Jesus Christ, and now you get it. This is an aspect of His character. If it was thought, He could not suffer long. You and I would not be here. He would have destroyed us a long time ago. Because His suffering comes only from us, or from Satan, or the demons. There is no personal suffering God experiences because He is perfect.

There was no personal suffering between the Father and the Word in eternity. They were perfect. There is no personal suffering between the two of them. They have it now. And it is because of that part of His character that we have in this example. Let's read verse 16 again. However, for this reason I obtain mercy, that if ye first Jesus Christ might show all long suffering, what? As a pattern to those who are going to believe in Him for everlasting life. He is the pattern.

Oh, what is long suffering about? Well, look at Him. Look at Him. Now you understand it. There is God's character that we can see it exhibited as our model. That's why Jesus Christ just didn't come to die for our sins. He came to model for us what it is to be a child of God. He is our model. This is what it looks like. So here we have Jesus as our model and James encouraging us that this gives us the ability to prevail over our suffering.

So where does it come from? Why do we suffer? Let's go through five major reasons why we suffer. And as we do, we can begin to understand how we deal with it. Because you don't deal with all suffering the same way. We have to know why we are suffering. I'll show you an example with number one. The first reason we suffer is because of our own sins. Now, when we deal with suffering because of our own sins, we can't blame God or we can't blame anybody else.

We have to take responsibility for our sins. Now, we know God forgives us. And when God forgives us, He takes away the eternal penalty for our sins. When we are washed and we come up and we have hands laid on us, we receive God's Spirit, we are clean. The eternal death penalty is removed. We actually have to give up God's Spirit to get that back over us again.

Somewhere in His relationship with God through Christ. But He doesn't always remove the temporary penalties. Some of you are suffering. All of us are suffering. All of us. I'm suffering penalties from sins I committed in my youth. Right? We all are. Now, if you drive a car, if you get drunk and drive a car into a telephone pole at 100 miles an hour, and then you repent, God forgives you. You may not change the fact that you lost a leg.

The leg doesn't grow back. You're forgiven. You receive eternal life. But the temporary penalty is still there. So sometimes we have all kinds of health problems. I mean, people have STDs because of their former, you know, the way they conducted themselves in the past. And they have to live with those. God hasn't forgiven them. They've experienced God's grace, God's forgiveness. But the temporary penalties are not always erased. And you see that all through the Scripture.

You see some of the greatest people. Look at David. Some of the greatest people in the Scripture. Suffering greatly because of their sins. And they recognized it was because of their sins. The temporary penalties were not taken away. They did not blame God for that. So we have to sometimes analyze, why am I suffering? And sometimes we're suffering because of our sins. And when we talk about long suffering here, we're not just talking about illness.

No, we tend to think about illness. We're talking about emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual stress, oppression, that causes us to suffer. And sometimes, as we'll go see in a minute, sometimes it's not the physical suffering that's the worst. It's not the physical suffering that's the worst. So we suffer because of our own sins. We all recognize that. We all experience that. It's one reason we try to tell younger people, understand that you will suffer because of your sins, even if God forgives you.

We carry enough scars around. We try to keep them from getting their own scars. But guess what? They will get their own scars. So it is. And they will learn. And they will carry some suffering because of their sins. Because that's what leads us to Christ. When we realize, I'm scarred. I actually hurt because of my sins. That leads us to repentance. So it's going to happen. The second reason we suffer is because of the sins or mistreatment of other people. Now, this is a whole other subject here.

We won't have time to go into this one. Because many times, we as Christians can be destroyed. I see lots of people destroyed because of the sins or mistreatment from somebody else.

We see somebody else sinned. Or somebody treats us wrong. And therefore, we give up on God. Because it's suffering. We hurt from it. It's a suffering. And we don't like to count this. We don't think about this as suffering. But it is. People who give up because of mistreatment, give up on God, give up on God's way. Or because they see someone else sinned, they suffer.

Leah and I were talking about before services my dad. She had a close relationship with my mom and dad. I can remember being in a master college, and I was upset. Because I saw wrong things going on in a master college. I was like, you know, he said, oh wow, wouldn't it be great to be a master college in 1978? Yeah. But there was also wrong things going on.

And I remember calling him one time and just unloading, you know what, I've seen this and I've seen this and I've seen this and I've seen this. This answer is, why don't you just come home? I said, wait a minute, you want me to come here? You tell me I need to come here? He says, I'm about 12 years old, I'm here and now you want me to come home? He says, if you're not going to grow up and be man enough to deal with other people's problems and sin, you need to come home. You had to know my dad. Oh, okay. So you've seen a minister's sin.

Yeah, you'll see other's sin. You think all of us are without sin? So this allows you to have this bitter attitude. Well, you know, because I'm just falling all over myself with this one, as I managed to get chewed out for a while. We can't let other people take us away from God, but it hurts. It hurts when we see other people's sin, especially people we respect. But anybody, any human being, you watch them long enough and you'll see them sin. Oh, they may not break the letter in the law, but they'll break the spirit in the law.

It's just as bad. This doesn't mean we shouldn't disrespect each other. It means we have to accept reality. And guess what? You're going to be mistreated. Oh, you know, I think you figured it out. But you know what? If we're honest, we've all mistreated other people. We've been on both ends of this, folks. We've mistreated others, sometimes unknowingly, and we've been mistreated.

Since we've been on both ends of this, we need to remember what it says in Colossians 3. So, once again, I need to give a whole sermon on this because this is an issue which I've seen so many people destroyed. Well, I saw this person who I've respected. They're a pillar in my church, and they give sermonettes. And they're real sermonettes. I saw him yell at his wife in a way that was just terrible.

Okay. He needs not to do that. Well, yeah, I can't go to that church anymore. Okay. I remember me actually bringing that to me years ago. He'd seen a minister yell at his wife, and I said, I agree, he should have done that. Have you ever done that? He just stared at me. I said, I have to tell you, I have. Have you? He said, well, yeah. So then I guess both of us need to be out of the church, too.

Colossians 3.12. Yeah, I actually told him that a long time ago. Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility. These are all parts of the fruits of the Spirit. Look, kindness, humility, meatness, long suffering. Now, he's using long suffering here in relationships within the church because he says, bearing with one another. Okay. In the church, we have to do long suffering with each other. So, okay, we suffer because of our sins, and we suffer because of each other. It's just the way it is. Once we accept that, then we can do what it says here that we bear with each other inside a congregation, inside the church of God.

He says, if anyone has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. Now, we can talk about how forgiving somebody doesn't mean that you ignore their sin. It means you forgive them. Forgiveness and repentance are done by two different people. The person who forgives and the person who repents are two different actions because they're two different people. I will forgive when you repent. So, like I said, that's a whole other subject. I will repent when you forgive, and nothing ever happens. That's the normal human response.

I will repent when you forgive, and I will forgive when you repent. And so, nothing ever happens. So, we suffer because we're mistreated by other people. You know, I hadn't thought about this, but when you look through Job, he was mistreated by his three friends. So, he even went through this. In fact, if you really look through the book of Job, all the reasons we're going to look at he was suffering because of. Every one of them. At every level imaginable. I mean, he was physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally.

This man was suffering in all those aspects at the same time. A third reason we suffer, and we have to accept this, because sometimes we like to blame God or just, why is this happening to me? We suffer because sometimes we make bad judgments. You go out and buy a car because it looks like a good deal, and you don't do your research, and you get 11. Is that God's fault? I remember one time praying for a car, and man, this great deal came along, and I bought it, without researching it properly.

I think I've mentioned this before. For the next two years, as I drove around in my van, so much smoke, because I had to put oil in every day. I mean, it just burned oil. So much smoke would pour on people and be waving at me, and I rolled out my window, and they'd be, Your car's on fire! Your car's on fire!

No, no, it's okay. It's just, it's time for another court. I kept oil in the van. And the kids, we get to church, and the kids, we all get out, and we all smell like smoke. Now, we were suffering, and it wasn't God's fault. Everybody else's fault is mine. I just made bad judgments. I didn't give it a sin. I mean, buying a bad car is not a sin.

It's bad judgment. You know, you eat too many potato chips and too many desserts, and one day you look and say, Man, I put on 10 pounds. You haven't necessarily sinned, but it's bad judgment. Right? We suffer because of bad judgments. We make all the time. It's just action-reaction. So we have to be honest enough to look at ourselves sometimes and say, Why am I suffering?

Well, it's because I made a stupid, stupid mistake. Stupid decision. Okay. How do I rectify that? Instead of wallowing in our suffering, we begin to move towards, How do I change what I've done?

We take a more positive approach.

The fourth reason we suffer, again, in these fourth and fifth reasons, they get more complicated. We suffer because we live in Satan's world. You and I, I mean, we're born sometimes with physical ailments or even with genetic predispositions. If you're, maybe you were born into a family where everybody had an anger problem and between the genetics and everybody around you having an anger problem, you now have an anger problem. You don't want an anger problem. You were born in an environment with the genetics that gave you an anger problem. Now, God doesn't say, Oh, that's okay. What God says is, Yes, you were born in Satan's world and you suffer and you must learn to overcome that.

It is painful to overcome these things. But you and I live in Satan's world. If you just watch the news or listen to it on the radio, you will go crazy after a while. It's all crazy. Yes, Satan is insane and we live in the asylum. Understand that. The head of this asylum is nuts, too. And you and I live in the asylum. In fact, we're sort of half-sane because we've received God's Spirit. So all the crazy people think we're the crazy ones. All the crazy people will think the people getting well are the crazy ones because they live in the asylum and the doctors of this asylum are all nuts. They're not just crazy. They're evil. Understand, they are absolutely evil. We don't like to use that word. My name came up in the news recently and I said, I know that name. She said, well, that was the guy who was committing abortions, illegal abortions a couple of years ago. I said, oh, yeah, I looked him up because I couldn't remember the details and I had to stop reading. This man killed babies after they were born and committed hundreds of illegal abortions, botched abortions, and received incredible money from the government to do it because he had an abortion clinic. That's evil. That's evil. I even looked it up on Wikipedia. It's my primary source, but sometimes I'll look it up just to see what it says. Even on Wikipedia it said it was amazing that this wasn't covered more, but it wasn't covered because pro-abortionists didn't like this. They had an evil guy on their side. So it was only covered for a short period of time and he proved it in Wikipedia, which isn't exactly an unbiased source. It's whoever writes it. But they were able to prove that it wasn't covered by citing sources. That's evil. I had to stop reading. I had to stop reading. If we have God's Spirit, we suffer because of the world that we're in. The stress on us, and if we're not careful, you know what it'll do? It'll make us sick. We will physically become ill because of the world we live in. Because we don't fit in this place. Of course, it's like how many people... One of the biggest problems in this country is alcoholism, drug abuse, and addiction to drugs that the doctors have prescribed, prescription drugs. And one of the reasons there's so much addiction to prescription drugs is because everybody wants to take away the pain. And that's not just physical pain. It's what's going on inside of us. Because of the stress of the world we live in. You and I weren't designed to be evil. We weren't designed by God to be evil. Yet, we live in an evil world, and every human being has absorbed some evil. We're in the process of coming out of evil. So we suffer because we live in an evil world, and because we have evil in us, and we suffer because evil's coming out of us. Yeah, we suffer a lot. If we really are serious about where God's taking us. That's why when we get to the fruit of God's Spirit, peace is so important. Peace and joy. Which are the next two of the spirits of God. Because if we stop with long suffering, it's like, oh, I guess we just got to put our heads down in a door. Yes, but there's other things that happen with all these fruits of God's Spirit when they come together.

So there are times, you know what you do? You put your heads down and you plow through it. But we have to believe there's something on the other side, where God takes us. Look at 2 Peter 2. 2 Peter 2.

Verse 6.

It's the middle of a sentence that is talking about God's judgment on evil.

For that righteous man dwelling among them tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds.

Now we said, well, how come Lot was obviously tainted by the society? I mean, how much of a sin was it to here take my daughters? Right? How could he do that? Because he was so tortured by what he saw every day. I mean, the word here is tormented, like he's being tortured. He was tortured every day so much that it reached the point he was becoming numb to it. It's one reason God said, go get him out of there.

God got him out. Remember, God didn't leave him there. They dragged him out. The angels forced him out. It's like, you can't stay here. You're going to end up insane like everybody else.

Because he was tormented by it. The stress was overwhelming because he lived in Satan's world. He saw it every day. He hated the world he lived in.

It became unbearable to him.

The rest of this sentence, though, is what's encouraging.

He says, then, the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment.

He knows how to save us.

The stresses of this evil world cannot be...we have to recognize that.

That suffering will make us obsessed if we're not careful.

We'll get obsessed with every decision Congress makes.

We'll get obsessed with everything the president does. We'll get obsessed with everything the liberals do.

We'll get obsessed with all...you know what? You and I can pray that you and I can live our lives following God.

You and I are not going to remove Satan as the god of this world.

You and I don't have that power.

Christ will.

So we watch these things, we pray about these things, we condemn certain things, we stand up against it.

We stand up against these things, we stand up against the evil, we talk about it.

But you can't become obsessed with the evil.

Or we will torment our souls.

But we do have to suffer with it because you can't leave it. We're not allowed to run away and act like it's not there. You and I aren't allowed to do that. We're not allowed to run away and pretend the world's not evil. We're not allowed to do that either. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to do that?

Let's all just go by a town someplace, we'll all move there and we'll just live together in peace and harmony. Set up our own, you know, set up certain millennium on earth. You know, people have tried to do that. It always fails. Always fails.

We're to live in the world but not become part of the world. And that's, you know what that means? That means we will suffer. And that mental stress can cause deep emotional problems and it can make us sick. It can make us sick.

We have to recognize that. The last reason we suffer is more to the point, in some ways, in the book of Job.

We suffer because spiritual growth is painful.

We cannot now, it's also very encouraging and it's very wonderful. But it can be very painful. I can't say it's always painful, but it's sometimes painful.

Spiritual growth is sometimes painful because we're learning, we're growing.

You know, all learning can be very exciting, but it's painful. It was easy for me as a child, you know, to study history. Man, I love studying history.

Algebra was so meaningless to me.

A plus B equals X. But what's A? Well, A is A. No, no, what is it? Is it apples? I got apples plus banana. No, no, no. A is A. I don't know what A means.

As a kid, you don't realize it's an issue of logic. I'm going to know what B means. I'm going to know what X means. I can't tell you what X is X. It doesn't mean anything to me. Man, I struggle with algebra, right? It was painful to do algebra.

I just had dealt with my granddaughter and held her some algebra problems recently. I was so proud because I went to the back of the book and I got them all right.

And then I thought, man, that was painful. I hated doing it.

Couldn't you all hear that?

So certain learning is painful. Well, certain spiritual growth is going to be painful.

Let's go to Job 42. There is one. There are a couple of verses here in Job I would like to read.

Job 42. So here we have all this stuff. He suffers. He loses everything. He's sick. His wife is begging him to die. His friends show up and they just blast away at him. And then God shows up and talks to him.

Job 38, 39, 40, 41 is God talking to him. Let's go back to verse...what is that? I can find it real quick off the top of my head. Chapter 38, verse 2. So here's what God says to him. Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

Now prepare yourself like a man and I will question you and you shall answer me. Whenever God shows up and says, Okay, son, you're going to have to grow up and be a man. You are in real trouble. Okay? Okay, come on. You're going to have to be a man here. Come on. Stand up straight and we're going to have a conversation. I have just a few questions I want to ask you. His first one was, where were you when I made the earth?

First question? Just answer that one. But he doesn't give him a chance. He just asks him question after question after question. Where were you when I did this? Job, I want you to explain nuclear physics. He just said, how did I...you know, certain mathematics and physical properties. How do you explain this?

How do you explain all these things? How about distance between stars? Explain that. Explain all this. At the end of God talking, Job says, verse 1 of chapter 42, that Job answered the Lord and said, I know that you can do everything and that no purpose of yours can be withheld from you. You asked, who is this who hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand. Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Listen, please, and let me speak.

You said, I will question you, you shall answer me. So he said, I'm only going to speak now because you commanded me to answer. But this is after four chapters of questions. He didn't say, okay, answer the question one, answer the question two, answer the question three. He gets it and he says, I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you. Therefore, I abhor myself and repent and dust and ashes.

As Mr. Perriman said, he was so caught up in his own righteousness, which God said, that's a righteous man, that's a good man. He was caught up so much as his own goodness, he failed to recognize who he was before the great God. And before the great God, he was nothing. And he got it.

He didn't say, well, why did you beat on me so hard? Or why did you let all these...could you just showed up and talk to me? No, he realized something. It took losing everything. It took being sick. It took his wife turning against him and it took his friends beating him up for days. And God had to come talk to him. And then finally he said, I get this. I'm just a creature. I'm just a creature. I'm a created thing. Before the Creator who is perfect. And that's all I am. And if he doesn't do things, if he doesn't take care of me, if he doesn't teach me, if he doesn't guide me, if he doesn't do this, I'm just...I'm no better than a...you know, this horse over here, or this goat over here.

I'm no better than that. I'm a creature. That's what he figured out. And then God said, you get it, son. And he blessed him for the rest of his life. You got it. And Satan says, I'm sure Satan's saying, I should have won that one. That's what I should have won. I mean, I hurt this guy as hard as you could hurt somebody. And God says, thank you. You got him to where I wanted him to be.

And Job got it. If I wasn't so hard-headed, you wouldn't have had to do all this to me. I abhor myself. I abhor that I thought I was so great. But before you, I am really not. There was a purpose. It's hard for us to understand at times that we suffer because spiritual growth can be painful. Spiritual growth can cause as much mental stress as actually being physically tortured.

There's been some studies on what it takes for someone to change a fundamental belief. The stress on the body is the same as basically being physically tortured. Spiritual growth can emotionally be so devastating. Spiritual growth, if we're not careful, if we're not growing, if we're faced with spiritual growth and we stop, we don't follow it, we'll get depressed.

You have to go through it. You have to continue to suffer alone to get through the spiritual growth. Think of what would happen to Job if along the way he would have said, yes, God, I am going to curse you. You see, the whole direction would have gone different. He suffered, suffered, suffered, suffered, suffered until finally he said, I get it! The light bulb came on.

Sometimes that's the way it is for us.

Have you ever seen a blacksmith? How many of you have ever watched a blacksmith? An old-fashioned blacksmith? That's a fascinating process. I took the kids when they were little to see in Illinois where John Deere created the first steel plow. There was a blacksmith there. And the kids were so fascinated. We spent an afternoon there just watching the blacksmith and learning how he made steel plows and so forth. But they took a hunk of iron. He took some iron and he took these bellows and he just fired up this furnace. It was just glowing hot. And he would melt this or get this iron so hot, glowing red, it was almost transparent.

Then he would pull it out, take a hammer and just beat this thing. Then he'd stick it in water. Look at it, put it back in. Now, every place I go now where I see a blacksmith, I go watch it.

It's a long, hard process. But if he wants a hammer or whatever he's trying to make, say he's got a crowbar, whatever he's trying to make, you'll watch a piece of iron turn into a crowbar.

But it keeps going into the fire, out of the fire, fire, fire. There's my Pennsylvania bringing. Out of the fire.

Beat, beaten and beaten and beaten and it's stuck in water. And on a steam goes that, you look at it and it's not done.

You know, that's the way God is with us. This is the way the suffering is. He sticks us in the fire so that we become pliable.

Job wasn't pliable. Yet he was righteous. He was obeying God.

But because of his obedience, he had become unpliable. He was rigid. So God stuck him in a fire, pulled him out. Then God takes a hammer and beats us.

I don't know, this is pretty good. Sticks us in water. This is God's spirit. This is comforting. See, all of our suffering won't have points of comfort.

In the water, how good. I'm not hot anymore. I'm not getting beat anymore. Thank you, God.

Okay, let this cool down a little bit. Back in the fire you go. Okay, this is the way it is. And it's like, ah, give me all the fire, give me all the fire. And he gets us out of the fire net. Oh, no, I'm out of the fire. Guess what's happening next.

The hammer beats us a lot. And then God says, yes, this is a fine tool.

It is God who is the craftsman, not us.

We're the tool. We're not the craftsman. He is, spiritually.

It's difficult because of these lessons that we have to learn.

So we look at all this suffering. It's still, if we just sort of stop here, it's like, ah, that's sort of discouraging because what you're saying is, there will be periods of our life where I'll have some long periods of suffering. Yes. Remember, you get dipped in the water, too. Okay? We get put in the water, too. There's times when we do receive comfort. Next time when we go through peace, we'll have to understand what peace really means.

Peace is an absence of war. I mean, that's the result of peace.

The absence of war is the result of real peace. Peace is something that happens inside us.

And it happens through the process of long suffering. This is not humanly how I would think this would happen. But when we go through the fruits of the Spirit, it is.

But let's go to, I want to end with some encouragement. Romans 8.

Verse 18.

Romans 8 is one of the most encouraging chapters in all the Bible. When combined with Romans 6, 7, and 8, it's one of the pinnacle passages of all Scripture.

Paul says, "'For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.'" He had to consider this. He had to think about it.

Think of the suffering that Paul went through in his life.

Partly because he'd known sins.

I mean, he... Can you imagine what he lived with knowing? He might walk into a church and someone came up and say, "'Yeah, you took my grandmother and you stuck her in prison and she died there.'" "'Yeah, you took my son and they beat him so much that he's crippled.'" That's what he had to go to.

Go through, especially in Judea and up through Syria, you know, Antioch and even places. Because why? Because that's what he did. He lived with those sins. And he suffered. He suffered to obey God. He suffered physical ailments, which we know of.

He suffered where people in the church wouldn't want anything to do with him.

He suffered where some of his own disciples turned against him.

But he says, you know when I think about what God wants at the end of my life, when he wants to give me when Christ returns?

He says, when I think about that, these sufferings aren't even worthy to think about. Now, that doesn't mean he was some kind of fatalist. That means that he put this into a perspective that helped him get through it. Because this is a very personal passage. He says, for I consider. He's telling us how he feels. He's telling us what he thinks. "'For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.

For the creation was subject to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope.

Because the creation itself will be delivered from a bondage of corruption and to the glorious liberty of the children of God.'" He said, creation itself is in this futile, conflicted state.

Because Satan is the God of this world.

But God's God is who solved that. And being his children is what we have to understand is the goal and the purpose. "'For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.' Not only that, but we also who have the first roots of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves." Well, we have the Spirit in which we're groaning.

He says, we're suffering. We're enduring. This is not easy. This is not easy.

He says, so those who are the first roots of the Spirit are groaning within ourselves. Why? Eagerly awaiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.

For we were saved in this hope. But hope that is not seen is not hope. For why does it still hope for what he sees?

But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with what? Perseverance.

We know the goals that keep us going. It keeps us moving forward. We fall. We stumble. We hurt. We struggle. We're stressed.

We're grieved. We're in pain. We're mistreated.

We live in a world that just is so evil at times. Just feel the insanity.

We suffer because of our sins. And every once in a while we fall into a sin. And then we suffer more.

And he said, but we understand where God is taking us in this.

There's a great benefit that we see in verse 26. Likewise, the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought. But the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. In other words, because you have God's Spirit, when you can't even talk to God, when your discouragement or your hurt or your depression or you're just overwhelmed with what's happening in your life is so great.

And he said, I can't even talk to God. It's okay because God understands you have His Spirit.

You are linked together with God in an eternal state unless you give up the Spirit. Understand that. When we're changed, it's not like, oh good, God changes this and takes His Spirit away.

When we're changed, we won't have God's Spirit in us forever. It says He will be all in all. He's in us forever in a relationship that is not like human relationships.

Oh, Jesus made it simple for us. I abide in the Father, the Father abides in me, and we will abide in you. Oh, yeah, that makes it simple, doesn't it? But that's exactly what's happening here. They live in each other, and they're going to live in us, and we live in them. This is a spiritual state of being.

You already entered into that to a certain degree now.

So when you are so despondent you can't even go to God, He says, God understands. He knows exactly what you're going through. Why? Because He's in you.

Now He can give you the power to suffer more.

Because you and I can't do it.

We can be a state of despondency that we cannot do it, and God will do it in us.

Even when we can't pray to Him about it. Even when we don't know how to explain it.

We can receive that from Him. This is what this promises us.

Chapter 8 is all about God's Spirit interacting with us.

Look at verse 31.

What shall we say to these things?

When we suffer, how do we gain the ability to suffer long?

Nobody wants to suffer.

How do we get the ability to do that?

We do it because God is in us. If God is for us, who can be against us?

Now He's going to tell us a little bit about God's suffering.

He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered Him up for us all.

How shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?

If He suffered that much, what are the limits to God's suffering?

He suffers long.

Those thrown in a lake of fire will not be thrown in a lake of fire because God stops suffering.

It is because they refused to give up their evil.

It won't be because of God.

God just won't deal with evil. I mean, it will be because of His justice, but it won't be because He finally said, Oh, I gave up on you. That's not why. It's because they will want.

Their self-will will not change.

Because He says, What's He going to not give us? He's already shown us what He's able to give and willing to give. So what is He going to hold back from us?

Even though He's suffering because of us.

So we see God as long suffering.

He shall bring a charge against God's elect. It is God who justifies.

Who is He who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore, it's also risen. Who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.

At the Passover, we zero in on Christ's death, which we should. But at Pentecost, we begin to zero in on what He's doing.

Because He is risen. And Paul said, If He's not risen, if He just died, we are of all people most visible.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword, as it is written, for your sake, we are killed all day long. We are counted as sheep for the slaughter.

Yet, Paul says, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

Through Him, not because we just learned how to somehow suffer.

He teaches us this. It's Him in us that causes us, that gives us the ability, because we submit to Him.

For I am persuaded, Paul says, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things that come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

That was the conclusion he came to through his suffering. His conclusion was, nothing can separate us from God.

It is through the suffering that we learned.

It's through the suffering that we learned to be changed, to be like Him. Why do we have to learn suffering?

So for one thing, as we said, a lot of the suffering is because of our sins, because of our bad judgments, because of other people.

But the point here about suffering comes through spiritual growth.

You and I are going to have to suffer long, once we're changed into the spirit children of God.

Because we're going to help Christ work with humanity. And guess what they'll do to us? They'll make us suffer.

God doesn't want us just stuffing people's lives out in the millennium. You know, I'll teach you, okay, I get this power now. Lightning bolts are going to come out all over the place.

I got my rod of iron. Who can I go beat today?

We're going to suffer!

Because of human beings.

Now we have to suffer like He does. So there's an eternal reason for each of these character traits that He's developing in us, so that we are like Him.

None of us likes suffering. I mean, whether it's physical suffering or mental suffering, emotional suffering. So at the conference we had last week in Atlanta, two whole sessions were on helping ministers to learn to deal with the stress of their lives.

And it's basically a spiritual issue if we can't learn to deal with the stresses in our lives.

And of course, it's what we all deal with in the lives that we live.

We suffer because of our own sins. We suffer because of the sins or mistreatment of others. We suffer because of our own bad judgments.

We suffer because we live in Satan's world. And we suffer because spiritual growth is sometimes painful.

Because it involves change that we don't want to make. Yet we have to make. It would be God's children in His kingdom.

God wants us to learn patience and endurance and perseverance. That means we have to suffer long.

There's just no way to learn those things. I'll adore... I learned very early on that I wanted to be the guy who ran the 100-yard run.

I had no speed. So I had better learn endurance. I can run 40 yards pretty fast. But there were only 40-yard runs. That's okay for football. 40 yards. But outside of that, it has no purpose.

When you're 5'0", 100'0", it doesn't matter if you can run 40 yards because you're too small.

So you better learn to endure or you won't do anything. Patience and endurance... This is all part of long. You've got to suffer long!

He wants us to learn to trust Him through suffering. He wants us to understand that nothing can separate us from Him.

And that comes through suffering. And He promises something. And this is what Paul understood.

He promises that through this suffering, He will, as this master craftsman, shape us and mold us.

So that when Jesus Christ returns, we will be changed into His children, where He promises us.

We will not suffer physically. We might suffer with other people. We won't suffer the way we do now.

We will not suffer because He promises that. All suffering, all drawing of all tears. That's what it says.

Through this suffering now, we can learn to live that way then.

The problem is there is no way to get from here to there without the process. So accept the former reigns and accept the latter reigns and wait for the fruit.

Because God promises to produce this fruit in us.

Thank you.