The Sufferings of This Life

Imagine you were this young family in the church. The father had somehow lost it mentally, and he became the enemy of his wife and of his children. And he began to attack them in a way that they had to separate themselves from him. And then he became irate and mentally unstable and tried to kill them. And so the family ended up on the run around the United States.

And this man had incredible ability to find them and come after them and to try to hurt them and even kill them. They ran from the middle part of the country over to the West Coast, and the mother, who was rearing these young children, had to get a job under very difficult circumstances, had to find a place to live under very difficult circumstances, and had to be able to move in an instant the moment that she heard or could find out that this husband was after her.

It turned into the husband not being able to find her well and beginning to put out contract killings with assassins. It doesn't take much, it turns out, to hire certain people. But the mother was respected in the little communities. I know some of them up the West Coast. My wife and I have been to. And as we go through those, we remember that there was once a little young church family. Maybe they weren't in the church quite yet, but they were being called into the church, and they used to live in this little town.

And because the mother was so well respected, the contract killers would call her with a 30-minute warning. Say, look, I don't want to do this. I'm giving you 30 minutes. The mother would have to grab the kids, take them out of school, whatever it took, pack up everything they could in a flash. The family was used to the routine and they would blast off again.

It took them eventually on a route that led them back to Central Texas, where family was from. And the church at that time had a college in what is called Big Sandy, Texas. Living in that area, the mother was a member of the church, eventually became a member of the church. And their oldest child, a young boy, saw that there was a church school there. This church school, he thought, would be a great place to go because he was such an outsider. He didn't have a father.

His father wanted to kill him. And these were nice people. And he wanted to belong. But this school turned out, had tuition, and you had to pay money to go to that school. And their family had no money. And remember, they might have to get out of town if dad got out of prison. And if he couldn't get them in person, from prison he might be able to finger them again. And so the answer was, no, Bob, you can't go to Imperial School. He didn't take that very well. He said, all right, what does it cost? All right, I'll pay it myself.

I'll get a paper route. And he not only got a paper route and did so well because he was so committed, but he got a little motorbike, actually a small motorcycle, to run that paper route. And he took on enough paper routes. He could get up in the morning around 4 o'clock, get everything together, go out and run that paper route, and be at school by the time it opened.

And that's how he put himself through school. It was one of those mornings that he had finished the paper route. He was racing back on the motorbike, past a town called Hawkins. And out in the countryside on the highway, he was going very fast on that motorbike. And up ahead, there was a crossroads. And at the crossroads, up the road, was a big diesel rig carrying oil, rigging, pipes, and supplies. There was almost a whole derrick on this rig. And it was lumbering as well, towards the same intersection.

But the big diesel rig didn't want to slow down and stop at the stop sign at the highway, because he was carrying so much weight, and he had so much momentum. And he was higher than all the bushes, higher than all the fences, and he could see there were no cars on the main highway he was about to cross. There was no cars, no traffic. As far as he could look, there was no reason in the world to stop at that stop sign, in that time in the early morning hours.

And so he barreled through the stop sign. He caught Bob on the motorcycle, right on the hood in the front bumper. The motorcycle and Bob were launched through the air. And the last thing Bob saw was landing into a fence of welded steel with of sucker rods that had some kind of a mesh that he flew into. Now, how do you think the young mother felt when her son was in the morgue of the Kilgore hospital, down in the basement, after all the running that she had done?

Do you think that sometimes in life you just get handed too much?

You know, it turns out that life contains suffering. And we all like to think that we won't suffer, and suffering is bad. Suffering is something odd, it's something shouldn't be.

And yet, life contains suffering. And sad to say, it is an integral part of our human experience.

Webster's dictionary defines suffering as anguish, pain, injury, or loss.

That's what suffering is. It can be various types of suffering. It can be a mental trauma, it can be a physical trauma, it can be a loss of something, it can be a hounding.

Our greatest hope and our joy lies in the coming kingdom of God, which we celebrate every Sabbath.

We look forward to the rest that it is called in the Bible, the coming rest in the kingdom of God, where there will be no suffering, it says in Revelation chapter 21.

No pain, no sorrow, no tears. All those things will have been in the past, but we don't live there yet. That is yet to come.

When we think of the time of the end of suffering for the first fruits, it'll be at the seventh trumpet. When the seventh trumpet blows, Paul says, those of us which are alive and remain won't proceed, those which have died will all rise together and meet Christ in the air. And our suffering will be over. Our trials, our pain, and our tears. We long for that.

In Luke chapter 17, verse 24, let's notice something that Jesus says. Luke chapter 17, verse 24, he talks about that very event. He's looking forward to it as a human being who was suffering. Luke 17, verse 24, just as we look forward to it.

Luke 17, 24 says, For as the lightning that flashes out of one part under heaven, shines to the other part of heaven, so also the Son of Man will be in his day.

Oh, he was looking forward to that. Imagine a human being facing what he was facing on a daily basis, thinking about the day when he would come and heavens would rip back.

It's a great day to look forward to. And yet, there's a lot more that happens before that day comes. If we read verse 25, even he said, But first, he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.

What did that statement mean, if you think about it? He must suffer many things and be rejected by a generation. He lived in an evil age. He suffered as a human being. Many things, many losses, as you would say, as Webster's would define, anguish and pain and injury and loss, persecution, defamation, etc., etc., running for his life, one would say, at times. People always trying to kill him.

It's hard to imagine what his daily life was like. But what's the takeaway of that statement for you and me? That's about him. Let's go to John chapter 15, verses 18 through 20.

John 15 will begin in verse 18.

He says, If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you.

Oh, so it's not just him that's going to suffer and be hated. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you're not of the cosmos, the society, the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

Wow! You and I have been called and chosen out of the world, and therefore we've got the cross hairs of society on us, is what he's saying. Hmm. Remember the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. Hmm. Well, we can see then that being associated with a family of God is not going to be necessarily an easy time from without. Suffering impacts everyone. Sometimes it's unexpected. Sometimes it's from within in our own bodies. Sometimes it's caused from within by what we do or what we say. Sometimes it's caused from without, as Jesus just mentioned. But there's going to be suffering, and it can be severe at times, and it always feels unfair. That unfairness causes many people to stop believing in God, to leave the faith if they were in it. It's the number one reason why people become atheists, is because there's unfair suffering on this planet. So today I'd like to look at suffering, examine the Bible's teaching on suffering. The goal today is a realistic understanding of the topic, so that from God's Word we can realize what we're going in and be realistic about the expectations of it. The title of the sermon is, The Suffering of This Life.

If we go back to Job chapter 7 in verse 1, Job was a fine man. God described him to Satan as being the most righteous man that at least Satan knew. Have you seen a more righteous man than my servant Job? If we go to Job chapter 7 in verse 1, here's a man who served the widows, he helped his neighbors, he was an obedient person, God considered him righteous. And if we look in chapter 7 in verse 1, Job talks about it from his perspective this way. Is there not a time of hard service for man on the earth? I was kind of thinking it was going to be better than this. Hard service. And are not his days also like the days of a hired man? Hired people, depending on what civilization you're in, what kind of hiring you're doing, don't always get to do the good things, the easy things, the pleasant things. That's why they get hired. If you want your septic tank dug out, you're probably going to hire somebody rather than dive in there yourself. And I bet that person's not going to have a real good day down there in the septic tank or smell real good when he gets home. He says, like a servant, verse 2, who earnestly desires the shade. You know, some people have to work out in the hot sun, and they get assigned out there, and they say, this isn't fair. You know, the guy up there with all the money, he's inside where the air conditioning is. I've got to work out here under the hot sun and get burned up. And it's terrible. And like a hired man who eagerly looks for his wages, it's not fair. That guy's got all the money in the world up there on the hill. And I just, I'm trying to get by. I need a little bit of money just to pay the bills, just to put some food in the kid's mouth. So Job said, so I have been allotted months of futility, and wearies some nights have been appointed to me. This is part of the life of a righteous man, is the point. Not everything is going to be just absolutely hunky-dory in life.

Pretty good description here that Job gives of human life.

Tell you about some church members of ours over in a place called Mayimbetatu. Mayimbetatu is a Lua, Kenya word, meaning three mango trees.

Three mango trees sounds idyllic. My wife and I love mango trees. And that's the village where we live when we're over there. We have our little hut house there. And within that little village, which is on the edge of a large town, are church members. And we have a little church family there, and we think of them as family. We have parents in the Lord, a son and daughter in the Lord. We have grandchildren in the Lord and a new grandbaby in the Lord. It's kind of our family when we're there.

And if you kind of move into the neighborhood and you set up, you look around, you see what's going on. And all through the year, we keep contact with our little local family there. Well, our son in the Lord, John, was serving a number of years ago at our summer camp.

And he lives in a real warm environment where the temperature fluctuates from about 85, maybe 90 at the high, down to about 65 as a low. And when you live your whole life right on the equator and the temperatures don't fluctuate, then your 85, 90 degree days are the hottest days you can imagine. And the 60 degree nights, they're as cold as it ever gets. And the body reacts like you were at the North Pole or in the hottest desert, and you feel that.

John went to camp and it got down to about 55 degrees there at night. And as it does to many people over there, it got into his bones, it got into his lungs, it got into something, and it weakened him. And now in his 30s, he has to be very careful about thinking of going to another part of Kenya where it's colder because even piled up with clothes and a hat, he and others like him have become unable to deal with such extreme cold temperatures without it really setting them back.

So he lives with that.

His wife, Janet, has an incurable disease.

Their parents, John's parents, the leading members in the church there, have been for decades Philomon. Philomon is a wonderful man and he's going blind. He's losing the sight of his eyes. He can no longer see a Bible or read. It concerns him very much that he's going blind.

His wife, Trufosa, has long been an icon in our church and she recently had a series of strokes that left her paralyzed, unable to move. It's been a big challenge on the family.

Catherine, who we kind of think of as a granddaughter, has had a similar situation but it's either heart or lung issue to where anything comes along. She gets problems in her chest. She's been very weak since she was a young child and up through her teenage years. Now that she's married, she got pregnant and then came down with tuberculosis while she was pregnant. The baby has had a few little complications.

In our little church community, in Maimbetatu, that's kind of the daily life. But these don't get people down. This is just what you deal with in life. Recently, Catherine's house and her husband and baby, which had a water well, got spoiled with sewage in the water well that they depend on because the neighbor built a big apartment complex and sunk a deep latrine pit, a pit latrine, down into the water table. It spoiled people's wells and now they have bad things in their water and it can't be used. This is life, but electricity came through the area. So there is electricity at the church hall and at certain people's houses. We try to help out where we can. This is the ebb and flow of life of people in their 20s and 30s and 60s and 70s.

It's life. It's typical life and yet all are very positive and hopeful for the kingdom of God and look forward to the kingdom and appreciate very much the feast days that we go through that point us to the plan of God. Suffering is a type of anguish that's inserted when we have higher expectations. It's like your life and my life. We anticipated life as we grew up. We planned for it.

Now we're executing it. Sometimes it feels like we're being executed.

It kind of has things built in that we weren't expecting. Compare your life for a minute to an Apollo mission to the moon. Flying to the moon, if you look up tonight, you'll see a very full moon. So full on the horizon you could almost reach out and touch it. The boys were saying last night, our grandsons were saying, wow, what a big moon! And to fly up to the moon would be so fun.

And all the technology that went into the Apollo missions is so complex that getting to go on a ride would just be great. On April 14, 1970, the seventh of these amazing Apollo missions to the moon was nearing the moon. It was getting close to the moon's gravitational field.

It was pretty exciting. In fact, the crew shouldn't even been there because they were the backup crew.

And one of the famous astronauts was on the main crew, but somehow at the last minute, that crew was considered unable to make the trip. So the stand-in crew got to go, wow, you talk about dream of dreams.

John Swigert, the mission commander, called out on the radio, Houston, we've had a problem.

And everybody got very serious. It was more than a problem. An oxygen tank had exploded, and in the explosion, it took out many of the primary systems of the spacecraft, rendering it uninhabitable, unusable, and here they were arriving near the orbit of the moon.

They didn't have the ability to stay alive, let alone get home. And they certainly, the last thing on their minds was landing on the moon.

Four men quickly climbed into the little lunar landing module that was attached to the main spacecraft that was designed for two people, and they sealed themselves off in there.

They had enough air and water and provisions for two people for a day and a half. There's four of them in there for four days. That's a lot of stress, thinking you're going to die, and not knowing you're going to get home. And when you look at the moon tonight, imagine yourself way out there, marooned in space. Suffering involves departures from the peace, the expectations we have, the happiness, the comforts, the joy. It's like that young teenager Bob hit by a truck. Down in the basement of the morgue of the Kilgore Hospital, an orderly was moving along the corpses when one of them said, can you get me some help? Nearly terrified him, scared him to death.

But Bob had been down there, he figured, for about three hours with the dead in the dark, and he came too. Nearly every bone in his body was broken. The rest of his body was pretty trashed, but through a lot of surgeries, they patched him back together. He had a girlfriend at the time named Elaine, and Elaine was with him and encouraged him.

Humans go through challenging situations, and we make great efforts as a human race in trying to relieve those challenging situations from people. If you think about humanitarian efforts, if you think about sometimes even armies, they go in to stop the suffering, stop the madness, stop the devastating effects that go on towards peoples and innocent civilians. An example has been the Syrian civil war that's been going on that has now killed perhaps 100,000 people in Syria.

No end in sight. In fact, the carnage may grow because the weaponry coming in is just getting bigger and more sophisticated. So there's great efforts made to stop and slow down people dying from hunger by intervening with supplies, people dying from disease by intervening with medications, etc., etc.

But at the same time, humans make even greater efforts to cause situations and circumstances that create massive suffering. I'll give you an example. The United States is arming rebels in Syria, and Iran is arming the Assad regime. They want, everybody wants the fighting to stop, so they're adding more weaponry so that the fighting will stop.

Mr. Kubik attended an address by U.S. Deputy Ambassador to Iraq last week, and that deputy said this, half of the U.S. military aid budget goes to Israel. Israel gets the latest weaponry so that they can have a qualitative edge over the angry nations around them. However, the U.S. also sells military equipment to the nations around Israel, but they don't get the latest stuff.

Statistically speaking, the Vice Ambassador said the vast majority of U.S. military equipment ends up in the Middle East. All the stuff that we make and use and then grows old, the vast majority goes to the Middle East and ends up there. So while we try to help, the help that we have is creating an end time scenario, literally, that is gearing up, or certainly making possible, the prophecies of the end time to unfold almost any time. Let me give you some statistics.

These statistics are a few years old.

35,000 children died daily from a lack of good food. What's the suffering like there for the children, for the parents, for the families, for the communities?

Two hundred thousand slaves exist in the world today. The greatest number of slaves that has ever existed in history exist today. Four hundred thousand are in the process of dying and will die this year in the United States from smoking-related illnesses.

There's a lot of suffering. Aids will kill 10 times more people on Earth than all wars combined.

And that figure only covers the number who die in Africa alone, not the rest of the world. In 3,421 years of recorded history, only 268 of those years have seen no war.

Let me say that again. Of 3,421 years of recorded history, only 268 of those years have seen no war, according to the book The Lessons of History. The authors of that book, Will and Ariel Durant, ask, is it possible that the immense past was only the weary rehearsal of the mistakes that the future is destined to make on a larger stage and scale?

In other words, we as a human race contribute greatly to the suffering that exists on this planet, and always have. And we will, until Jesus Christ returns and sets up the kingdom here on Earth. Let's see why. In Romans 1, verses 28-32, the apostle Paul clues us in to why the future is destined to make mistakes continually and grow and grow.

Romans chapter 1, verses 28-32.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, we're familiar with the scripture, but let's plod through this here and really listen to what it's saying with regards to the suffering that humans create. Humans don't like to retain God in their eyes. Not the concept that there is a God, doesn't mean they're all atheists. They don't want to have faith with works in God. In other words, they don't want to keep God in their mind. They don't want anything except maybe a good afterlife, but keep God out of my life. So, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting. So here's what humans are doing. Filled with all unrighteousness, that is the lack of love for God and love for fellow man. Instead, sexual immorality, tearing apart families and ripping apart relationships, causing a lot of pain and suffering. Wickedness, pain and suffering. Covenants-ness, maliciousness. If people are malicious after other people, are they suffering? You bet they are. Full of envy, murder. When one person gets murdered, a whole family and community and neighborhood suffer. Strife, deceit, evil-mindedness, whispers and backbiters. If you're having a nice life and trying to live right and you have somebody whispering and backbiting and telling tales and trashing you, does that cause pain in your life and suffering and anguish and sleeplessness and gnawing?

And maybe a lawsuit gets involved and that's gnawing and full of anguish?

Backbiters and haters of God and violent and proud and boasters and vinter of evil things and disobedient to parents causing fractured families and parents who wanted wonderful kids. Suddenly, their lives are full of turmoil and pain.

Verse 32, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them. In other words, this is getting legs. It's being encouraged more and more through the social media, through the electronic media, through the social scene. All of the things we've just heard are being practiced and approved more and more, which just rolls out more pain and suffering. Sooner or later, it's going to roll out to us. Now, there's a proof in what we just read here, and that proof is God's way works. Because you notice the opposite of everything we just read is God's way.

And God's way is all about happiness and peace and good relationships. And it shows that God should be in our minds. Human beings need Him. Suffering is mitigated, which means it's lessened. When God's ways, His laws are kept, all of our suffering of any kind gets mitigated. Or you can throw gasoline on your sufferings if you live it the way Paul talks about society living it. It doesn't mean it's going to take it away. If you're in the church, it doesn't mean, oh, all my suffering, all my cares, and all my pains, they'll just evaporate. It doesn't happen that way. It didn't happen for Jesus Christ. And he said it won't happen for us. But it can be mitigated with God's help, God not letting us go through more than we can bear. Love casting water on flames of enemies will have a much better response than casting gasoline on the flames of enemies. Suffering is an integral part of the human experience. If we look in Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, and verse 1, Ecclesiastes 3, 1 through 4, Solomon writes, To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven, a time to be born. Ah, that's us. We're born. We roll out. We see life. It's our oyster. We're going to go for it.

Next line, a time to die. Uh-oh. There's a whole process involved there. Whether you're a teenager on a motorbike or a person with a disease or just through the process of growing old, there are trials and suffering involved. A time to plant, a time to pluck up, a time to kill or be killed, a time to heal or be healed, a time to break down, a time to build up, a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn, a time to dance. So life is going to have all of these things built in.

And if anybody ever told you that life was fair, well, as the minister once told my wife, get the word fair out of your vocabulary. And that helped her quite a bit to realize, you know what? Life not only isn't fair, it's not supposed to be fair. And really, we don't want it to be fair, as I've told you before. If you want fairness, well, then you can forget about forgiveness from God, because it's not fair that our Creator would come down to earth and go through all that He did so that we could have our sins forgiven. I don't want fairness. At the same time, we do want to conduct ourselves in a biblically godly way, but when we get into challenges, we can't cop out and say, oh, that's not fair, like a child, and run for the fairness word. That is not the way this life works. There's these times. If you go to chapter 12 and verse 1 of Ecclesiastes, it says, Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth before the difficult days come, and the years draw near when you say, I have no pleasure in these years.

See, life isn't fair. You start out young and energetic, and you end up in days that you wish you didn't have. One of our very fine members who is well into her 90s tells me regularly, ah, with a smile, I just hope I won't wake up tomorrow. That would make her happy as I'll get out. I tell her, I pray that God will let you not wake up one of these days. She says, thank you! There are days that you'll say, I really don't have pleasure in these days, but I do look forward to the kingdom of God. Okay, so we have suffering as part of life. We've established that, and it comes externally or it comes caused by me. It comes from other sources or it's a combination of cause and effect from the choices that I make and then the difficulties I have to live with.

It can come through trials and then enduring those trials, but that's what life is going to be. A bunch of different seasons, a bunch of different situations. Let's see this in perspective of our calling in Romans chapter 2 verses 2 through 11. It's Romans chapter 2 verses 2 through 11.

He's talking here about good things, good choices, and bad choices. He says, we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice evil. And do you think this, O man, you who judge those practicing such things and doing the same, that you will escape the judgment of God? So we should not be too faced or hypocritical. We should be actually living the word of God. Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and long suffering, knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? This is our calling. God's good gifts should be used towards repenting and transforming our nature into a holy, righteous character of the family of God. Verse 5, but in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart, you are treasuring up for yourself wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to each one according to his deeds. So you see, there is choice and consequence. There is action and reaction.

Eternal life to those who by patient or persevering continuance in doing good, seek for glory, honor, and immortality. You can put your hands up to that one. Yep, that's me. I'm pushing for that one. That's what we're going for. But to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, well, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish. Hear those words? Tribulation and anguish on every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek. So you see where the tribulation and anguish are going to come from in that regard. But glory, honor, and peace to everyone works what is good to the Jew first and to the Greek, for there's no partiality with God. For as many who have sinned without law will also perish without law. Many who have sinned in the law will be judged by the law. God wants doers. He goes on and talks about it. We're here to be doers of the Word of God. And if we do that, we have the kingdom of God to look forward to in peace and joy and happiness. Though for now, as it's been given us for a little while, we have to knuckle down and deal with this life. We need to be concentrated on developing holy righteous character. When we do that again, we mitigate the power of persecution. We mitigate the power of the effects of evil and sin that we commit and that others commit against us. And that's very, very helpful. We need also, however, to realize that God is with us. Jesus said in Matthew 6 at the end, He said, don't have any anxious thought about tomorrow, but trust God.

Trust God to be a partner and look after some of the more critical needs that you have. So we do have that. And yet we've got to understand that our calling is a magnet for persecution. It's a magnet for problems from others. Suffering is part of our calling. Let's go to 1 Peter 2 and verse 20.

1 Peter 2 and verse 20. Of course, now we can't just say, well, I'm suffering, therefore I'm righteous. Now we shouldn't suffer for our own sins, should we? But if we're called out or persecuted for righteousness' sake and take it, well then that's a good thing.

1 Peter 2 and verse 20. For to this you were called. I forgot to tell you this when I baptized you, some of you, but here's your calling, brethren. Because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that you should follow in His steps. Oh, in all things we're called to follow in His steps. Who committed no sin or was deceit found in His mouth, who when He was reviled did not revile in return. When He suffered, He didn't threaten. He committed Himself to Him who judges righteously, who Himself bore our sins in His own body on a tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness by whose stripes you were healed. We've been called to be connected with one who suffered and set us an example of how to suffer. And when we suffer, that we don't say the wrong things, we don't turn into a warrior in response, but we continue to express that character that the God family has in all situations. In chapter 3 and verse 14, through 18, chapter 3 verse 14 through 18, but even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you are blessed.

Do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that's in you, with meekness and fear, having a good conscience that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed.

Oh, when? Didn't say if. When they defame you. For it is better if it is the will of God to suffer for doing good than to suffer for doing evil. For Christ also suffered once for sins, for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit. We have to realize that this time is an evil generation with Satan as the God of this world, and it's not the kingdom of God yet. But we are in training and we are being developed for service in the kingdom of God in a wonderful time that's just ahead. Trials, endurance, some persecution, some suffering from the outside is going to be part of this. In chapter 4, in the first two verses, therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind. For he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lust of men but for the will of God.

Well, that's how we're to arm ourselves. Be resolute that we're going to live God's way, and when the issues come and the persecution and outsiders and like Jesus promised, we would have a similar or the society would react similarly to us as it did to him. When that comes, we're resolute. We're armed. We're of the same mind, and we are going to live for the will of God.

You know, Moses said it's a good example of this. If we turn to Hebrews chapter 11, Hebrews 11 verses 24 through 27.

This, of course, is the faith chapter, and it says, by faith, Moses, when he became of age, he grew up as a little baby in Pharaoh's household, remember? The world was his oyster. He was in the empire. It wasn't actually called an empire, but if you wanted to name an empire of the day, it would have been Egypt, right in the royal house of Pharaoh. When he became of age, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He turned it all down, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. He made the decision, oh, I'm standing, just like Paul told us earlier, I'm standing firm, resolute, I'm armed, and I'm standing with God, esteeming the reproach of Christ, greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he looked to that reward. By faith, he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured a seeing Christ who is invisible. So that's a very good example of a young individual who was able to stand and take it. A lot of the issues were mitigated, but some of them were not.

Jesus Christ teaches his family to participate in a proper way when persecution comes. Let's look at Matthew chapter 5 verses 10 through 12. Matthew 5 verses 10 through 12. Nobody goes looking for persecution that I know of, nobody with a sane mind. But when it comes, we need to be able to deal with it. And whether it's persecution or any other type of pain, physically, mentally, we should deal with it in context with our calling and with God living in us through his Spirit. We should have the proper response. Matthew chapter 5 beginning in verse 10. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my name's sake. This is that external stuff that comes on us. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad. I told you that the pain and suffering is mitigated when you're doing it right. And here, by being persecuted, evil, false things, you can be rejoicing and exceedingly glad for great is your reward in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. In other words, you're in good company. That means the prophets before Christ, the apostles after the church, everyone associated is going to have this situation come upon them. That's what we are arming ourselves mentally for, not physically, but mentally for, to endure as godly children through any circumstance. In Luke 21, verses 10 through 18, Jesus tells us more. Luke 21, verses 10 through 18, he talks about the end of this age. And you and I are blessed to live in the most technological and probably the richest era that's ever existed on earth for humans to enjoy. We also live at the opening of the worst time that we'll ever be. We don't know when that's actually going to start, but it's pretty bad in places right now.

Luke 21, verse 10 says, nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be great earthquakes in various places and famines and pestilences. There's some suffering, no food and insects and diseases, fearful signs and great signs from heaven.

But before all these things, oh, but before all this gets started, he says, they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up into the synagogues in the prison. And you will be brought before kings and rulers for my namesake. Now that sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? You think, wow, what did I get myself into? Remember that mitigating thing? If you're really committed and you're doing well, well, read the next verse. But it will turn out for you as an occasion for testimony. Therefore, settle it in your hearts to not meditate beforehand on what you will answer. Don't sit in those chains in that awful prison cell waiting to get brought up before the magistrate and think, well, I'm going to tell them this, I'm going to tell them that, that's not fair. Don't even think about it. 4, verse 15, I'll be with you. Oh, I'll never leave or forsake you. He says, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist.

You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. And you will be hated by all for my namesake. Are you on board? Am I on board? Are we committed to this? Do we realize that suffering is part of life in certain situations?

What does he say next? But not a hair of your head shall be lost, at least spiritually speaking, by your perseverance possess your lives. We need to endure. We need to persevere. We need to really be about godliness. And then all things are going to work together for good. They'll work together for the family, for what the family of god is doing, and then the kingdom will come.

Paul was a great guy, right? He was a writer, important guy, healings, maybe he spoke in tongues.

Met a lot of people, traveled a lot. If you like travel, Paul was your guy. Traveled a lot.

Paul was an incredible apostle, and we love and appreciate the things that he wrote and how personal he made some of his writings. But Paul also had some challenges.

We tend to not view Paul like he has shown in Acts 27 and verse 21. We sometimes forget that maybe daily life had other things. You know that he got beaten regularly in stone and things like that, but there were some good times that he had. But consider this in Acts 27 and verse 21.

But after long abstinence from food, then Paul stood up in the midst of them and said, Man, you should have listened to me and not have sailed from Crete and incurred this disaster and loss of our ship crashing and being decimated on the rocks. What was that like? They're a long time with no food. They're stuck out in the middle of nowhere. They had terrible storms and terrible weathers and suffered shipwreck and snake and all kinds of things. Roman soldiers taking these people to essentially go to the Colosseum in Rome to be somebody's entertainment.

This is not a pleasant part of life. The travel and the trip and everything is not something that one would have written into a life's plan. Yet there it is. All of chapters 27 and 28 really is months upon months of suffering. In a situation where you're being taken gradually from Palestine over to Rome and getting dropped before one of those vile demonic Caesars that existed throughout the Roman Empire. Not much to look up to.

In chapter 28, let's notice verse 14. Just breaking into the middle of the verse 14.

And so we went toward Rome. Just that statement, and so we went toward Rome.

You know, a destination that you loathe and that you hate and where you're going to die and you're getting closer. And it's shipwreck along the way and it's hunger along the way and it's being shackled at times along the way. And so we went toward Rome.

And yet Paul was a leading evangelist. He was a fantastic apostle. He did a great work. And in verse 15, going on, and from there, you know, Paul had to get pretty low probably. And from there we went towards Rome. He's getting close. I think Paul needed some cheering up.

And he says, verse 15, and from there, when the brethren heard about us, they came to meet us as far as Api Forum and the three ends, where Paul saw them and he thanked God and took courage.

It's interesting, Nanette has been going through a lonely time because she was on a visit away from home in another state and then had an appendicitis attack and had to go into a hospital with people she didn't know and staff she'd never met and people wanting to cut on her that she didn't trust. And she felt very, very, very, very alone. And she told me last night, she said, I went through this very lonely surgery and she said, I got out the Bible and I looked up, I looked in the Bible for courage. Do you know how many times courage is mentioned in the New Testament? Once. We just read it. Paul took courage from the brethren and she said, you know what? I got courage after starving for some help and courage and praying and studying. I started getting text messages on my phone from the members in Phoenix East. They encouraged me. I got courage. That was like Paul, she said. So we need to be there for one another. And just like Paul said in Galatians 6.2, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ, which is to love our neighbor, love our fellow man. Bear one another's burdens. Be there for one another. Like the members came out for Paul. Like many times our members will make phone calls or visits or even people they've not met around the world will send cards. There are trials and when you think of trials, you need to think of Jesus Christ. And when you think of Jesus Christ, you need to think of the body of Christ. Trials, Jesus Christ and his body go together. And we are to participate in these things together. In Luke 22 verses 24 through 30, notice what Jesus says. Luke 22 verse 24.

Now there was a dispute among them which would be considered the greatest among the disciples. And he says, the kings of the Gentiles exercised lordship over them. Think about that for a minute.

You've got Gentile countries without the law of God and they're exercising authority. You can look back at some of the dynasties and some of the kingdoms that have existed in other lands and what they've done to their citizenry. Even in the last hundred years, the decimation of millions and millions of people by their own leaders in various of the largest countries on this earth. It's been horrible. So when you think about it from that standpoint, exercising lordship.

Verse 26, he says, Verse 28.

And Jesus commends the disciples. He says, you know, there are those who are always about, you have been with me, you have continued with me in my trials, and I bestow upon you a kingdom just as my father bestowed one on me, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging 12 tribes of Israel. That's what God wants. Trials, Jesus Christ, and the church. We're there for each other, and we always will be. We will be there forever in the kingdom of God, always serving and helping, looking out for one another. The body of Christ cares for itself. Let's look in 1 Corinthians 12 as we wrap this up in verse 24. 1 Corinthians 12, 24-26. In the middle part of verse 24, it says, 1 Corinthians 12, middle part of verse 24, but God composed the body. And he's talking about a physical body, but he's actually talking about the body of Christ here. God composed the body, giving greater honor to that part which lacks it. That there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. Or if one member is honored, all the members are honored with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually. So once again, the suffering, in a sense, are mitigated just by the fact that we are there for each other, helping, encouraging, bearing one another's burdens, showing love, helping out as we have opportunity. Every morning, Bob wakes up in pain. He always does, always has. Broke too many bones. And he doesn't move well in the morning. He kind of goes through a routine, and he gets kind of quiet and stretchy.

Some parts wake up slower than other parts, you know, come around slower. But he gets through it, and he deals with that and gets going. He is a loving husband to Elaine and to his children, and now to their grandchildren, a very devoted husband and father and grandfather.

I had the opportunity to ordain him a deacon in 1993. And what a servant! He says, he always jokes, I like it under the bus. Throw anything at him. He just lives on the tough things, the hard things, the difficult things. He just tears through them and handles them like they weren't even anything.

And a great man in that way, he is serving with his heart. And he continues to serve in the Redlands, California congregation. Now, that is, these stories work together to show examples of suffering within the context of our calling, within the context of our relationship with the body of Christ now and with the kingdom of God that we all look forward to.

Ma'imbe tattoo means three mango trees. And unfortunately, there was a life nets project that built a school there. But unfortunately, the school had to be where the three mango trees were. So John got permission from the village to cut the trees down a few years ago, and they're gone.

So I found out recently, as an individual told me in the church, you know, Ma'imbe tattoo means three mango trees. I didn't even know that. He says, yeah, well, that's what our little community hears his name for is three mango trees. I said, where's the three mango trees? Oh, well, they got cut down to build the school. How does the community feel about that? Oh, they said it was okay. I thought, well, you know, that's too bad, because I mean, it just seems idyllic, three mango trees. So I asked him, how much does it cost? How much would... let me contract you. How much would it take for you to go buy three mango trees, dig and dung, and really put them in right, and water them through the dry seasons, make sure they survive, and if one dies, to plant another one, so we have three mango trees. He gave me a figure. I said, good, go do it. And that money actually goes to build a pit latrine at his house for his wife and child to use, little Jeremy, our great-great-grandchild in the Lord. I don't have any grandchildren over there on my own.

So right there, we have three little mango trees now. I haven't seen them yet, but they're growing next to the church building, and they're struggling. The soil there is poor, and these three mango trees and that red earth and the dry season will struggle to grow. It's interesting, right next to the mango trees is a church hall, and inside the church hall, we have church members. Just like in your church hall, you have church members who are struggling spiritually to grow in an environment that's evil, that's hostile, and it's going to bring some pain, it's going to bring some suffering. Does it get tiring? Yes. Paul said, and let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.

You know, it's very important that we do not get weary, and that we do not lose heart. Life is good. God blesses us. And yes, you will suffer at some time, or sometimes so will I, but let's always hold to the fact that the suffering of this age, of this present age, as Paul said, is not comparable to the glory that we will receive when the kingdom of God arrives.