Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The sermon text is from Hebrews 12:4-24.
It’s an undeniable fact that at a certain point in a child’s life their parents go from being the smartest and most important to the dumbest people on earth. For many kids their parents’ downfall begins from 13 to 15 +/-, and often lasts until the early to middle twenties, or at whichever point a child begins to pay their own way. When a child assumes responsibility for their own life, their estimation of mom and dad tends to grow.
I remember how often I heard growing up that one day I’d appreciate everything my parents did for me. One day I would understand the rules. One day I’d appreciate the decisions. One day I’d realize the love and wisdom behind some of the punishments meted out. All of that is now true. God doesn’t command us to understand our parents or even agree with them, but He does command us to honor them, as most important in our lives, second only to God Himself.
It’s hard to be a parent. Few things bring greater joy, and sometimes greater sadness. Even the best parents can’t insure the paths their children choose to follow. Like St. Paul, a Christian parent’s mission is modeling a living faith in Jesus, planting the seeds of the Gospel, and praying that God will bring growth. Praise God that our salvation doesn’t depend on parenting perfectly, or even well. Only one parent does it perfectly – our Heavenly Father.
We’re often confronted with the question why do bad things happen to good people? Why do children suffer terrible evil? Why do loved ones get cancer? Why do accidents claim lives? Why is there war and famine and suffering? I preface this with God’s truth: “God’s ways are unsearchable and beyond our tracing out.” Some things are not given us to understand this side of heaven.
Lest that seem like a cop-out, God’s Word does offer us a Divine perspective on suffering. First, we are sinners from the time of our first parents. We are sinners in a sinful world, all burdened under the same Divine judgment: “The wages of sin is death.” Because there are none who are truly good and righteous but God Himself, the first answer to the problem of suffering, sickness and death is: “Repent, lest you too should perish.”
In our dying flesh in a dying world, while: “The wages of sin is death, the free gift of God is eternal life.” How are we to interpret suffering in our lives and in our world? As a call to repentance… a reminder of how fragile we are and the foolishness of building our lives for this fleeting world and its passing pleasures. Only a very foolish person will not realize the truth in Jesus’ words: “What will it profit a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul.” None of us are truly good and righteous, but God sent His Son to be “the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through Him.” There is only one hope for us and our dying world, and Jesus died and rose from death so that you can live in the assurance of a home with Him in heaven.
Another Biblical perspective on suffering in this world has been called, the “hope in God against God” approach. The Patriarch Job exemplified this answer when he lost his children, health, livelihood and his world caved in around him. The only thing he didn’t lose was his wife and she was so ornery, by the end he probably wished he had lost her, too. Yet, Job answered, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Rather than allowing the devil to use our sufferings as a wedge to drive us away from God, faith lays hold of the only sure thing we know in this world – God and His promises. When all your life screams out in your mind that God has turned away from you, look to the blood-stained brow of your crucified Savior. Despite your external circumstances in life, this is how dearly loved you are by God. “God so loved the world (and that includes you) that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” God would have us interpret all our lives in the light of His crucified and risen Savior. God isn’t the Author of evil, but last week in Hebrews we read: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith.”
The third major Biblical answer to the question of why does God permit suffering has been described as the “suffering as blessing in disguise” approach. Romans 8 promises: “God works all things for the good of those who love Him, those called according to His purpose.” I think this is where our text fits in.
We didn’t always understand why our parents punished us. And they didn’t always do it perfectly… maybe they struggled to know how best to discipline or maybe sometimes they were too tough or too light. Hebrews says, “We have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live!”
In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray, “Thy will be done”, because we don’t have all the answers. We don’t know what’s best for us, just as a child doesn’t see the big picture. God sees the big picture. You and I may not understand why cancer ravages our bodies or loved ones. We may not understand why we struggle financially or why God doesn’t make us the next lottery winner. We may not understand how innocent children are abused or lost or why we live lonely lives with no one to lift life’s load.
But the God who called our universe into being and spread out the stars in the skies; the God who “knit us together in our mother’s womb”; the God who knows the number of hairs on our head, knows how best to save us. With our earthly parents, even when we thought they were dumb, we usually took it for granted they were doing what they thought was best out of love for us.
Hebrews tells us: “Don’t make light of the Lord’s discipline, and don’t lose heart when He rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those whom He loves, and He punishes everyone He accepts as a Son. Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as a son.”
I don’t expect anyone who isn’t a Christian to understand this or appreciate it, but God doesn’t leave His children to suffer alone. God’s Word is your strength to lean on when we’re called to “take up our cross and follow Jesus.” St. Paul prayed for God’s deliverance from suffering and God answered: “My grace is sufficient for you; for my strength is made perfect in weakness”, to which Paul responded, “When I am weak, then I am strong [in the Lord].”
Romans 5 says, “Suffering produces perseverance and perseverance, character, and character hope; and hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love in our hearts.” When life’s crosses seem most burdensome, we find out how truly mighty is our God to save. When we find our bodies emptied of all strength and our spirits broken in despair, we learn to echo Job, “I know that my Redeemer lives; and that in the end He will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I, myself, will see Him with my own eyes; I and not another, how my heart yearns within me.”
God’s Word is filled with His promises for you under the cross of suffering: “Call upon Me in the day of trouble and I will deliver you; and you will honor Me”; “Come to Me, you who are weary and heavy-burdened and I will give you rest.” Jesus said, “I have spoken these things to you that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble, but take heart I have overcome the world.”
Sometimes under the cross of suffering and illness and loneliness we learn trust in our God; sometimes we learn patience in His perfect timing and deliverance; sometimes God uses our suffering to witness to others the might power of God. I remember a man in a nursing home whose loving patience and faithful witness to Christ while his body crumbled around him brought his own family and nurses to know Jesus and trust in Him. They all wanted to know a God who could give someone that courage and hope in the face of sickness. And through all of it, suffering of any kind reminds us this isn’t our home. In repentance, suffering teaches us to speak with St. Paul: “I am the Chief of sinners, but here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance; Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”
Husbands and wives exchange these vows at marriage, “For better or worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part.” The Church is the Bride of Christ. God pledged His eternal love to you in the blood of His Son and spoke His vow of love over you in Holy Baptism, just as He did again today for little Cortney. But not even death can separate us from Christ our Bridegroom: “Neither death nor life, angels nor demons, height nor depth nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
We do well to bury these promises of God in our hearts so that we can draw strength from them when suffering comes, so that we are prepared to see God’s discipline, not as God hating us, but as proof that we are His sons and daughters. God knows how best to save His children. Sometimes that isn’t pleasant, but the payoff for those who endure to the end trusting in Jesus as Savior, is Paradise. As you take up your cross and follow Jesus remember the words of Romans 8:18: “The sufferings of this present life are not worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us” and 2 Corinthians 4: “These light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an everlasting glory that outweighs them all.”
Jesus suffered for you and me, so that we can share His perfect glory in heaven. That gift is yours, not because you earn it or deserve it or are worthy of it, but because Jesus earned it for you. Rest in that promise. God doesn’t make promises He won’t keep. Amen.
And now may the peace of God which surpasses human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.