You probably know that social media is very good at figuring out what we want to see and showing us more of it. One thing that tends to capture the attention of many users is the sense we are getting a sight of an ideal life. In fact, Christian social media is no exception to this trend. Some have feeds full of women in sunlit kitchens needing out their own sourdough bread, making their own yogurt, and easily leading a trope of homeschool children.
Others might see ripped guys owning the lives and taking dominion. Of course, parenting is full of beauty and many joys, and there are many important battles for us to fight as believers. But what gets left out of this picture? Where is the mother tending a sick child with a high fever, praying fervently that it doesn't inch a degree higher and require a trip to the hospital?
Where is the wife praying for the conversion of her unbelieving husband with many groans and tears? Where is the terminally ill saint confined to hospital bed, but with an open Bible always in his lap? Where, in short, are all the days of mourning and affliction that we know must come? Even those of us less affected by social media are not immune from idealizing the Christian life.
It's easy to think that the Christian life should be all victories, no defeat, all feasting, no fasting. What this picture leaves out is the place of suffering and affliction. And yet, according to the Puritan Jeremiah Varroes, the typical life of the believer is, by God's foreordination full of one kind of affliction or another. If we doubt him, a quick review of biblical biographies should be enough to establish his point.
About most of the greats of the Bible, one could say the same as Israel did before Pharaoh at the age of 130. Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been. In this psalm, we enter into one of the deepest afflictions, open of God's great saints, King David. Let us learn from him how to receive affliction at the hand of the Lord.
We can be certain that if we are not under affliction yet, we soon will be, and we had better learn the lesson of how to approach it before then. Days of deep affliction must come in our Christian walk. Days that will almost tempt us to despair. But we can look to our Lord Jesus, the great man of sorrows, who has walked through all these afflictions before us.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that the reading and the preaching of your word would equip your saints, particularly that you would equip them for the dark times and the hard times, when we most need your grace and support to make it through. But above all, Lord, may the word, read, and preached, set forth as a passing loveliness of Jesus Christ, and move us to adore him, before we pray through his name. Amen.
Psalm 3 verses 1 and 2, a psalm of David when he fled from Absalom, his son. O Lord, how many are my foes? Many are rising against me. Many are saying of my soul, there is no salvation for him in God.
Salah, says the word of God may be a light unto our path. Amen. My son will have three points. First, I want to discuss the suffering of David.
Then I want to consider the problem of being theologically correct. I'll explain more of what I mean by that there. Lastly, I want to consider the suffering of David's greater son. In our first verse, David laments how his enemies have multiplied all around him and surround him.
The heading says this was written during Absalom's revolt, and you remember what a time of immense suffering that was for David. His own son had risen up against him and raised a force to seize the kingdom. And once more in his life, David found himself on the run. Many of his closest confidants had turned on him and went over to Absalom.
With a small force of trusted retainers, he crossed the brook Kidron and stopped at the Mount of Olives to weep over the city falling into the hands of the son who sought his life. Not long later, as David is at his lowest, a Benjaminite named Shime comes out to curse David as he flees. Has that ever happened to you? You're at your lowest and out of nowhere someone emerges to give you one last kick in the shins on your way down.
One of David's loyal men offers to kill Shime then and heir for his insolence. I can imagine well enough what I might do in that situation. I can easily imagine myself saying to myself something like, I've lost my kingdom, I've lost my city, I've lost my son. And this little worm dares to come curse me for it.
If I have to listen to another word out of the mouth of this clod hopping Benjaminite, I just might lose my mind. You know what? Go ahead. Take him out.
It might not be pretty, but I know the corruption of my own heart and how easily it is tempted by lesser slights than this. That is not what David says. Instead, he says to leave him alone. He says that God told Shime the person.
He is willing to accept that this whole situation, Shime included, has been ordained by the hand of God, and he intends to kiss that rod, not curse it. That's the kind of thing that makes David a man after God's own heart. Am I? Are you?
There's a long history of people using David as a precedent to justify their sins. A man will say something like, yes, I'm an adulterer, but so is David, and David was a man after God's own heart. The Puritan Thomas Brooks says people were saying things like that in his own day. Brooks' response was, if you want to sin like David, you better be ready to suffer like David.
It wasn't David's sins that made him a man after God's own heart. But one thing that did was his ability to suffer God's rod with a quiet confidence that God was his father and meant all things for his good. Can I suffer like that? Can you?
David was a great warrior. He fought many notable battles and defeated many great enemies, but perhaps the greatest battle he fought was with his own heart. And the victories he scored there were more remarkable than any victory over a Philistine giant or over a hostile nation. Let us aspire not to sin after David's example, but to be able to suffer like him.
You see, there's a problem with being theologically correct. What do I mean by that? You know, we reform types are known for being somewhat cerebral. We're supposed to be at the church that has thought our theology quite idly and then put it all on paper.
People sometimes suspect us of being more interested in ideas and doctrines than in people. I think if people like that could see our church, they would learn how unfair that perception is. But we shouldn't have a less beyond our garden. It is true that the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but of power.
Let us not be content with merely having our doctrine straight, but also desire to see the spirit working in power through our lives. There is a danger in other words in settling for being theologically correct rather than factually correct. There's an old story, and I'm sorry, I can't remember where I first heard it, that the phrase politically correct had its origins in the Soviet Union. At that time, the government was pushing collective farming as the wave of the future and promised that among other things it would lead to higher crop yields.
When critics pointed out that collective farms actually had lower yields, they were told that while their view was factually correct, it was not politically correct. That sounds ridiculous, but we are really no better when we just say the right words without meaning. How many times have I said that I'm a sinner who deserves nothing but hell? I confess that I have often said it and not believed it.
How do I know that I don't? Let's imagine a little parable. A servant is called before his king. The king warns the servant that he must ask him to make a great sacrifice on his behalf.
The servant says, ask anything of me, O king, if you desire my house and lands, they are yours. If you have need of one of my fingers, you can cut it off. In fact, if you need my whole head, here is my neck. The king reaches into his robes and retrieves a set of fingernail at the bridge.
Very carefully, he trims the nail on the little finger of the left hand. The servant shrieks in distress. He says, that's too much. He accuses the king of injustice and unfairness.
You see, though the servant made great promises, he was unwilling to make even small sacrifices. Hence we know he did not mean what he said. But again, I'm no different. I say that I deserve eternal suffering, but as soon as God sends any minor misfortune my way, I cry out at the unfairness of it.
I can't stub my toe without feeling that something somewhere has done me an injustice much less than the greater matters of life. My flesh reacts against it. I'm willing to admit that it's theologically correct that I deserve far worse, but I don't act as though it's factually correct. But we need more than theological correctness to be able to suffer like David did.
We need the power of the spirit. Our flesh is not capable of this, and in fact fights against it. The truth is, even if I were willing to bear all I deserve for my sins, I couldn't. The full force of it would squash me, leave me a wretched husk.
If I, a sinner, am to be saved, I need someone else to bear on my behalf. To bear hell itself in an infinite degree of punishment. Adam and Eve, you see, entered into a covenant of works with God. They would receive life in exchange for perfect obedience to him.
The punishment for breaking the covenant was death. Both death and the literal physical sense, and what our first parents perhaps only dimly understood the second death of eternal separation from God that we heard mentioned in the letter from Revelation earlier. Ever since that covenant was broken, for a sinful man to be reconciled to God, two things have been needed in the same person. A human being who could bear all the penalties that the covenant demanded, and who could also stand in perfect obedience to all the law required.
If such a man to be found, then he could be saved, and all in union with him could as well. Such a man would have to somehow partake of our nature without being tainted by our sin, and willingly yield himself a sacrifice for sinners. We need a human being that could literally go through hell and then burst through the other side intact. Indeed, it doesn't require much imagination to understand that such a man would really need to be a godman, to be able to bear all the suffering required, and yet do it in perfect obedience to the law's righteous stipulations.
Let us now consider this man given for us. David's greater son, the Lord Jesus. Have you ever noticed that the way we imagine the suffering of Jesus tends to be all vogatha, no gift them any? This is not to underestimate the crucial significance of the cross, but the suffering Jesus bore on our behalf did not start at the cross.
It started as he too crossed the rook Kidron to ascend the Mount of Olives with a small band of oil disciples on the night who was betrayed as they entered the garden there. The Mount of Olives is not too distant from Jerusalem, but quite a bit higher, so that they could behold the vast panorama of the city that was about to condemn the Lord of glory. Many foes were about to rise up against him from this city, both the highest religious authorities in the form of the High Priest and the Sanhedrin, as well as the highest civil authorities of the Roman magistrates and military. He was about to be mocked, scourged, beaten, and crucified, but his agony begins not there but he gets them in him.
Cruel and shameful as the death of crucifixion was, it was not merely the anticipation of the cross which put him in agony, and they can sweat great drops of blood. No, if there were only pain and death, we would have to wonder at Christ's suffering. For many men in history have faced the same or similar things with greater equanimity and composure. According to John Calvin in Gethsemane, Jesus began his descent into hell.
Now as we were reciting the Apostles Creed, I don't know if you noticed the footnote there on the descent into hell, for it gives the interpretation of our Church doctrine that for Christ to descend into hell means that he was under the power of death until the third day. He was crucified on the cross and died a real physical death and was under the power of death until the third day. I don't know that John Calvin would disagree with that at all. But what Calvin meant when he said that, he gets them and he marks the beginning of Christ to sent into hell, he means that the wrath of God against sin began to be poured on Jesus in that garden.
The eternity of suffering that we all deserve was made real for the only human in history who did not deserve it. He who knew no sin was made sin for us, he fell under the curse of the law. Later his enemies would taunt him with God's seeming unwillingness to deliver him. They would save him as it was said of David that there was no help for him in God.
But before then in Gethsemane Christ had already begun to feel what was like for him to have no help in God. Would it felt like to be eternally forsaken on the Father? Do you understand now why even a perfect man would pray that such a cup might pass from him if it were possible? This agony of God's wrath and curse, indeed of Christ's own damnation, reached its great crescendo in his words on the cross.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It was not possible for this cup to pass from him. Instead he took it to his lips and drank the wrath to the drapes. He had to hear that there is no help for you in God so that we could hear that there is always help for us in Christ Jesus.
This is the cup Christ began to drink in that garden. He brought his disciples with him. He wanted the comfort of their company and even the help of their prayers as he was about to begin his descent into agony. But they all fell asleep.
Perhaps this desertion heard him worse than when they would abandon him later. At least then fear and panic were partly to blame. Yet here, in the still quiet of the garden, the apostles were simply too tired to console Jesus drinking the cup of wrath. I know what I might say in such a situation.
You call yourselves my followers. You can't even stay awake while I do all this for you. You don't deserve me or my work. I will cast you all away and find followers more worthy of me.
They would have deserved it as we all had deserved to hear those words countless times. This is not what Jesus says. Though he does not excuse them, his rebuke is delivered with consummate gentleness. You could not stay awake with me even one hour.
And he returns to his work of salvation. The man of sorrows was willing to bear the burden of the world's sin alone so you and I could be saved. And so we too are called to take up our cross daily in imitation of our great teacher. In all our affliction, we should take great comfort from the fact that Christ has gone before us to bear all we must bear and infinitely worse.
He has known in perfect innocence what it means to suffer God's eternal and infinite wrath against sin. And he boards that you and I could be free of it forever. I imagine the question some of you may be asking now is yes, but why? Why is all this suffering necessary?
Why did God ordain a world full of such sickness and pain and bloodshed? Why did the world ever have to enter such a fallen condition where the Christ had to pay such a grievous price to redeem it? Was there no easier way to accomplish all of these things? Sometimes my Latin students will ask me why Latin does some peculiar thing that makes it different from English.
My Pat answer goes like this. You see, a long time ago, there were some people on the plains of Shinaar that wanted to build a very high tower and God didn't like it. So he went down and confused their languages and it's still confusing. It's my slightly cute way of saying you're asking me something above my pay grade.
Nor will I attempt to explain why evil and suffering have to be in the world except to say a long time ago there was a man and a woman who weren't supposed to eat a piece of fruit and they did. To give an account of it beyond that is above my pay grade to even try to make it risk trivializing it. But that's not to say there's nothing useful we can say about it. While we may not be able to grasp all of God's purposes, God and the great saints have left us much wisdom and advice about suffering.
The Puritans are excellent on this in exactly the places where the superficiality of our social media universe falls short. In closing, I'd like to consider the words of the great John Newton. In his hymn, I asked the Lord that I might grow. I asked the Lord that I might grow in faith and love and every grace might more of his salvation know and seek more earnestly his face.
Twist he who taught me lust to pray and he I trust has answered prayer but it has been in such a way as almost drove me to despair. I hoped that in some favored hour at once he'd answer my request and by his love's constraining power subdue my sins and give me rest. In other words, he hoped that his spiritual life might have that ideal shape we sometimes dream of. No losses, no crosses, but as you can guess by now it's not what he received.
He goes on, instead of this he made me feel the hidden evils of my heart and let the angry powers of hell assault my soul in every part. Yay, more with his own hand he seemed intent to aggravate my woe. Crossed all the fair designs I schemed, cast out my feelings, lay me low. Lord why is this?
I trembling cried. Will you pursue your worm to death? To zen this way the Lord replied, I answer prayer for grace and faith. These inward trials I employ from self and pride to set you free and break your schemes of earthly joy that you would seek your all in me.
Our suffering in this life is a testimony. It testifies to our weakness and our need for God and his strength. It testifies that our happiness does not and cannot lie in this life. Most importantly, our suffering testifies to a greater day that is coming.
A day when God will wipe away every tear. Every tear, how is that possible? Never mind. He's promised it and he will surely do it.
When Elkanah went into a consol Hannah on her barrenness, he said, Am I not more to you than many children? There is a day coming and we will all look into the face of Christ and he will say, Am I not more to you than all the losses and the crosses? Have I not made up all your suffering in giving you myself? On that day, the man of sorrows will shine with a joy that dims the sun and he will be all joy to receive us.
Even so, come Lord Jesus. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we're pilgrims on this path that you set us on and we are beset with many dangers on every side of all the temptations of the world and the flesh and the devil and the weakness of our own flesh and pain and sickness and adversity. But Lord, we know that you have foreordained all these things, that you know have set the limit of them, and that you are our good Father and have disposed all things for our good.
We pray that you have strengthened us for the trials and the sorrows ahead. Lift us up when we feel on the verge of despair and let us look to the author and perfecter of our faith Christ Jesus, who for the joy that was set before him was willing to endure the death of the cross and all the suffering that was poured out on him. May we hope in him and his righteousness alone for our salvation that we might appear before you in that great day and look into his face and know his surpassing loveliness. For it's in his name that we pray.
Amen.