How Justified Ones Suffer

Have you guys turn in your Bibles this morning to Romans chapter 5. Romans chapter. 5, what we're going to do this morning is, try to pick up where we left off last week, just, making our way through this section of Romans 5, As for what we're going to do next week, I don't know, but we're just letting the Lord lead. There's a lot that's in this section of Romans 5 for us to look at and enjoy.

And last week, we spent our time in verses 1 and 2 looking at the doctrine of justification, and we found that it's a beautiful A doctrine that has enormous power to serve as fuel for our sanctification if we rightly understand it, live in the good of it, and celebrate it each day. Today we're essentially going to apply the doctrine of justification to show how practical that doctrine is, and we're going to see it applied essentially in verses 3 through 8. And if you want to give a title to the message, it would be How justified ones suffer.

How justified ones suffer.

By the way, let me ask, feel free to raise your hands. How many of you would say that you're going through a season in your life right now that's characterized by just unusual and intense hardship and trial? Raise your hand. OK.

number of people, in our church family are going through a lot right now. Some are getting hit with like one big thing. And then I know a number of people in our church that are like getting hit from all sides, like when it rains, it pours and, and it is pouring on some of our brothers and, and sisters. And if, if you are going through, hardship in your life in any of these ways.

I, I would pray that what we look at this morning would be a help and an encouragement to you. let me start this way, Dan Allender, in his book, The Cry of the Soul, he's a co-author of this book. And he tells in this book, in one of the chapters about two friends of his named Alan and Sally, who had a son named Ben, who tragically passed away at the age of 12. And Dan Allender was invited to be one of the speakers at the funeral of their 12-year-old son, and he was happy to do that, and he spoke, but he spent the rest of the memorial service just watching Alan and Sally as they spoke to people and And just, just watching them as they responded to the suffering that they were going through in the loss of their precious son, and I'll let him tell you what he observed in that service.

He says, recently, I was privileged to be one who spoke at the funeral of a dear friend's 12-year-old son. I watched Alan and Sally greet people who came to say goodbye to Ben as they embraced some. There was a flood of tears. With others there was laughter, an oddly compelling laughter that borrowed hope from heaven.

I was transfixed. I could not keep my eyes off of them. They wept. They laughed.

They knew something that I longed to know. Although I despise and fear the path on which they have learned it, I desperately want to know what they know. I wanted to know what brought streams of both sorrow and laughter to them. Well, Dan was in that service observing two Christians, two justified ones going through heartrending.

Tragedy, and he saw tears and he saw laughter. He saw a tear-stained joy, a tear-stained laughter in this couple that left Dan transfixed and profoundly moved by what he saw and longing for something that they had and that they had found in the midst of their hardship that Dan himself was longing for in that moment. Well, as we look at Romans chapter 5 verses 3 through 8, we're going to be able to sit transfixed as we watch a man named the apostle Paul suffer. Paul throughout his life and ministry experienced almost nonstop pain.

And suffering and whatever he's going through and as he's writing the book of Romans, he speaks and he's not just teaching, but he's also giving insight into his thinking and the way that he responds and where his mind goes when he himself is experiencing heartache. And it's a surprising turn. He starts off in verse 1 saying, having been justified by faith, and so we're expecting this rich doctrinal chapter, but then in verse 3 he brings up tribulations and we might at first think, what in the world do tribulations have to do with our justification, but Paul is going to model this for us and show us the difference.

He's going to show us how justification As we've been learning about it, comes to shape the way that we respond to suffering.

Real quickly, let me do this for the benefit of any of you that were not here last week. What is justification? It's a big word. But basically, it speaks of an event that takes place the moment that a person places his or her faith in Jesus Christ, where they come to Christ and brokenness, and they put their trust in Jesus.

And, and putting their trust in Jesus, in that moment, they're justified. And what that means is this justification is an instantaneous legal act of God, in which he decides to forever think of our sins as forgiven, and Christ's righteousness as belonging to us, and he declares us to be righteous in his sight. So at that moment of faith, God looks upon the sinner, and says, I decide at this moment to forever think of all of your sins as forgiven. And I will forever think of Christ's righteousness as belonging to you.

I declare you to be righteous. And God also says, essentially, I will never think another thought. I will never feel anything with regard to you. I will never have any countenance towards you.

I will never allow anything in your life or do anything towards you that is not fully governed by this decision that I'm making right now. That's an amazing thing. And and think about how wonderful it is to have the God of the universe, a holy and a righteous God, look upon someone on planet Earth who has committed many sins and to render this amazing verdict upon them and their life. How do we get this?

We learned last week it's found only in Jesus. If you want God to render this verdict about you, you have to flee to Jesus and get inside of him. This verdict, this justification is one that is purchased by the blood of Jesus. It's validated by the resurrection of Jesus.

And it is acquired solely by faith. Essentially, what God's looking for is people who come to Jesus, and they say, Jesus, save me from my sin, and save me from my righteousness. I want yours, be my Savior. And people who see their bankruptcy and put their trust in Him, they get justified in an instant by faith and not by works.

Well, we looked at that last week, but then we also talked a little bit about the role that justification is to play in our lives from day to day as believers. It's a once and for all act, but God doesn't say, Hey, now that you're justified, forget about it and move on and start thinking about this spiritual growth and sanctification thing. God never communicates that in his word. For some reason, I did that in my Christian life.

I'm thinking, OK, I'm justified. And I basically forgot about that and started looking at the New Testament saying, OK, God, give me the rules to live by. I'm ready to do this sanctification thing. And I was doing the sanctification thing without thinking about and celebrating daily my justification.

And many of us in this church have found out that when you try to do sanctification, disconnected from and not celebrating your justification, it won't work. It's destined to fail. What I'm going to read to you here is one of the most profound things that I've ever read in my life, and I love how succinct it is. Listen to what this reformed theologian GC Berkauer said a number of years ago.

He says it is a mistake to say. We know we have imputed righteousness, but now how do we move on to actual righteousness? All right, I'm justified. That's great that that's legally taken care of.

But what I really want is day to day righteousness. So I want to know how to say yes to righteousness and no to sin and be righteous in my marriage and in my home and in the workplace and in, in my Thoughts, in public and in private, I, I want actual righteousness, Lord, thank you for this legal righteousness. But I want to move on. How do I move on to getting this actual righteousness?

Well, if you ask this theologian that question, he would say that's a mistake. To ask it in that way. Timothy Keller is a little kinder and actually would give a reply to that question. If you came to him and said, I know I have imputed righteousness, but now how do I move on to actual righteousness?

Listen to his answer. He says, we don't move on. We don't move on. In fact, any particular flaw in our actual righteousness stems from a corresponding failure to orient ourselves toward our imputed righteousness.

Sanctification happens. Guys, it happens. But here's how it happens, sanctification happens to the degree that we feed on, or orient ourselves to or have commerce with the pardon, the righteousness, and the new status we now have in Christ, imputed through faith. If you orient yourself to your justification, and daily just focus on that and be exulting in that, you will catch yourself being sanctified.

So as believers, we need to know what justification is. We need to learn how to do commerce with that because it's the fuel of our sanctification. Well, I can't think of many areas in terms of our day to day Christian life which we would call sanctification that are more important than how we go about responding to hardships and trials. My most unsanctified moments.

are made, they occur in response to hardships and trials, both large and small. And so if we're going to be sanctified as God wants us to be, then we need to really think through how do I get my justification to apply and to shape. My response to hardships and trials. And so here's how we're going to frame what we're going to do this morning.

Now that you're justified, there's 5 ways we're going to look at in verses 3 through 8 that you can allow your justification to shape the way that you respond to hardships and trials. All right, the first one we'll look at pretty quickly that we find in verse 3. And that is this If you want your justification to shape the way you respond to hardship, number one, keep exulting in your justification during your tribulations. Look at verse 1.

Paul says, Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we've obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand and we exult. We are exulting in the hope of the glory of God. So Paul says, we've been justified by faith. We're rejoicing in that.

We're rejoicing in the daily peace that we have in relationship. With God, Paul is also saying, I've got my eyes on the future because whom God justifies, he glorifies, and I am locked in with laser focus on that future day when I'm going to be glorified and all my brothers and sisters are going to be glorified, and I'm jumping up and down rejoicing in all of these things right now. Verse 3, and not only this, but we're doing this exulting in our tribulations. At the very least, Paul's saying more than this, and we'll look at this in a minute.

But at the very least, a part of what he's saying is, we are exulting in our justification and all that it means. And when tribulations come, we continue exulting during those tribulations. You get that? Guys, we need to realize that we cannot let our tribulations kill the party.

We cannot let them destroy the celebration. Sometimes it's easy to be rejoicing in our justification when everything's going well, but then when hardship comes, we can, we can lose our bearings and our celebration in what God has done for us by virtue of justifying us. That party ends. That celebration ends because we're overwhelmed by the tribulation.

Paul would say, No, no, listen. Exult in your justification and all that that means during good times and when bad times come, keep the celebration going, especially be exulting in these realities during. Your tribulations. You say, well, who is Paul to talk about how to respond inside of tribulations.

By the way, the word tribulations just speaks of any hardship, any hardship. it's a strong word. It, it, it means great, struggle, pressure, suffering that, that creates a pressure or a distress of soul. I know there have been times in my life where I've been going through a hard time to such a degree that I felt like my heart is like floating in my chest and And like there's like a pressure on my chest, and that's like almost literally the idea of this term, just circumstances, hardships that create a pressure, a distress of soul.

And so this word is broad enough and big enough to include any difficulty, any hardship, large and small. Paul was very well acquainted with tribulation, and we see this evidence throughout the New Testament in various places. Write this reference down. Acts chapter 9, verse 16.

Jesus said to Ananias about Paul, he says, I'm going to show Paul how great things he's going to suffer for my name's sake. In the opinion of Jesus, Paul suffered greatly. So if that's Jesus' opinion about the degree and intensity and the duration of Paul's suffering, then I think we could probably say that Paul suffered greatly. In fact, he suffered more greatly than Any of us in this room.

Paul himself describes some of his suffering. He says in 2 Corinthians 11, I've been beaten times without number, often in danger of death. 5 times I've received from the Jews 39 lashes. 3 times I was beaten with rods.

Once I was stoned. 3 times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day I have spent in the deep. I've been in labor and hardship through many sleepless nights and hunger and thirst, often without food and cold and exposure, and apart from such external things, almost as if to diminish.

All those things. There's the daily internal pressure upon me of concern for all the churches. So Paul knew hardship, and this man who knew hardship from day one of his Christian life to the day he was martyred is saying that we are continuously exalting even during the tribulations. We don't allow our tribulations to, to bring an end to our celebration of our justification and all that it means.

There's a second way to respond to hardship when it comes your way in a way that's allowing your response to be shaped by the gospel and by your justification, and that is be exulting in the tribulations themselves, knowing that God is doing good to you through them. So you're not just celebrating in spite of your tribulations, but in Paul's mind, you're, you're celebrating because of the tribulations. You're actually looking at the tribulations, and you're exulting in those specific tribulations because God is through them giving you something.

Look what he says in verse 3.

Not only this, but we exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance and perseverance, proving character, proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. He's saying a lot there, but guys, in a nutshell, what Paul is saying. Is that the gospel is not simply one piece of good news that you can fit into your life somewhere amongst all the bad.

I know your life's full of a lot of genuinely bad news, but here's some good news you can hold on to.

Just squeeze that in there amongst all the bad. In the thinking of Paul, the gospel genuinely makes good news out of every other aspect of your life, including your most severe trials. And the good news about this is that God is, the good news. About your trials is that God is actually taking those trials and forcing them to do good unto you.

Because you're a justified one. It's almost as if God subjugates all of your trials, and he forces every one of them to pay tribute to you. There's a golden coin in the mouth of every trial that comes your way. God is giving you something in every hardship and in every trial.

And so even your tribulations are good news. God's grace is abounding to you even through those trials, as God is using them to yield up good and blessing to you. In fact, look at how he enumerates what these blessings are, the gifts that God's giving to you through your hardships. Verse 3, and not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing, here's why we're exulting, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance.

Hardships give us perseverance. That's a gift that our hardships give us. And I know many of us are saying, Oh, goody, we get perseverance. What a great gift this is.

The honest fact is, We're not really asking for perseverance, most of us, right? That's not on the top of our list. God give me endurance and bring about circumstances into my life that will cultivate endurance in me. We're not asking for that.

We don't prize this the way God obviously does. In fact, most of us spend a good part of our life arranging our lives from day to day, so that as little endurance will be required as possible. Right. I'm guilty of that.

and I'm not saying it's all necessarily a bad thing. If I'm at a grocery store and there's 3 lines, I'm going to pick the shortest one. I don't want to wait. By the way, the word endurance is the idea of bearing up underneath, so it speaks of enduring, being able to wait patiently for a response from the Lord, to be able to bear up under circumstances that are difficult and hard, and wait for God to intervene.

And bring deliverance. It means to bear up under circumstances that are less than ideal, hard and difficult without complaint, without whining, without sinning, and trying to sinfully escape out from underneath that. It's just a spirit of perseverance and patience and endurance, and we typically try to arrange our lives where we need as little of that as possible. There's, I'm not going to mention names of stores here.

If I got paid by these stores to mention them, I would as an advertisement, but there's a store in town that sometimes I'll need to go there to run an errand and get something for my wife, and, and the items are cheaper there, but the lines are longer. And so I tend to go to another place where the lines are not as long and get that same item because to me I don't like to wait. The computers that we buy, what do we want? We want speed.

That's part of what they're advertising. This thing is fast. It'll do whatever you tell it to do. instantly.

I googled something this week. I did some word search and, and I got like 72,000 whatever answers or pages in answer to my, the question that I had posed or the word search that I had done, and, and it told me you got 72,000 whatever in 0.18 seconds. So it's like, here's, here's what you asked for, and by the way, just for the record, we want you to know how fast we got this to you. And they, they obviously think that we'll look at that and go, well, that's really great.

Next time I have a question, I will go to Google because I get very quick answers. the problem is that God doesn't answer our prayers in 0.18 seconds. In fact, in the book of Exodus, it took hundreds of years for God to answer the cry of His people, acting and intervening in perfect accordance with what His sovereign plan was for the people of Israel and delivering them from Egypt. And many times we cry out to God, we want answers, we want deliverance, and, and we don't get immediate replies, and we're wanting explanations, and those explanations don't come sometimes they never come.

And the reason is God is bringing about hardship into our life. He's allowing them providentially because he's trying to give us something, and the quality, the commodity that God values so much that he wants us to have this first is the commodity of endurance. And look at the reason why. It's evident.

It's surprising to me that this is the first quality that's identified in Romans 5, and it's the first quality identified in James 1. Count it all joy, my brethren, when you fall into various trials knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. Same idea. Same word there.

And then everything else emerges from that endurance. The reason God wants us to have this endurance is because everything else we need comes from that endurance. One writer said endurance is the mother of all virtues, and I'm not sure I totally agree with that, but at least looking at these passages, one can make an argument for that. All the other qualities God wants.

Us to have come their birth out of endurance. And so God allows hardships because He's trying to give us something, and that's endurance. They bring about perseverance or endurance. Verse 4, and perseverance brings about proven character.

Through those hardships. God, God is looking at things in our character that are not there that should be there, and God brings about hardships that put Those things in our character. God looks at things in our character that are there that should not be there, and he brings about hardships and allows them to burn those things out of our character. Also, there are times where God sees things in our character that He's put there and he's growing there, but God wants those qualities to become refined and made visible for others.

See, so God allows hardships so that those qualities can rise to the surface for our own encouragement and also for the blessing of others and the glorifying of God. All of that is embodied in proving character. God is improving and proving our character through the hardships that He allows into our lives. And then those that proven character generates verse 5 hope.

The more we're being transformed in this way through hardship, the more we hope and long for eternity. And the glorification that will happen, and he says, hope doesn't disappoint. You can take that to the bank. Whatever hope you have, the hope of glory as you fix your focus on the glories to come is you're going to be fully glorified.

Your brothers and sisters are going to be fully glorified. You're going to live for eternity in the presence of God in heaven and all the accommodations that He has prepared for you, all of that that's wrapped up in the hope of glory that we hope in. Paul says it won't disappoint. It won't disappoint.

In this life, we often hope in things that when we get what we hope for, it lets us down, right? Paul says, I guarantee you that won't happen. In glory. None of us will get to heaven and look at ourselves in the mirror as it were in our glorified state and go, oh, this isn't quite what I hoped for.

None of us are going to look at others. I'm not going to look at you guys and go, oh, I've got to look at that for the rest of eternity. No, you're going to blow me away by how glorious you are, just draped in the transforming glory of the Lord Jesus Christ as you look just like him. On so many levels.

And as we're living in the accommodations and in heaven with the Lord, we're going to be blown away. Whatever our hope is, of that glory, God will not only live up to that hope, and he won't disappoint it, but he's going to blow, those hopes out. The reality will always be infinitely greater than what our hope is. And Paul says, I know that, that's part of why what I'm, what, as I look forward to the hope of glory and all that that entails.

I'm looking forward to experiencing the reality being far greater than the hope itself. Hope doesn't disappoint me because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us in our hardships, in our trials. not only doing good to us through them, but he's also doing something amazing in our hearts. He's given us the Spirit, whose job it is to search out the depths of the love of God, and then to mediate that love, to download that love into the deepest recesses of our hearts.

So that in the midst of hardship, we're walking around being blessed through the hardships and in the hardships being blessed by the love of God that's being poured out into our hearts. I think of the psalmist in Psalm 23. He says, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, the psalmist is saying, I don't want to be here. No one wants to be in the valley of the shadow of death.

He says, I'm OK being here because you're with me, your rod, your staff, they comfort me. so I know you're here in this valley with me, and not only that, but you're preparing a table before me in the presence of my enemies. I wish I had no enemies. I wish they weren't here, but they're here.

But I'm OK with that because you're setting a table and preparing it before me in the presence of my enemies, and my cup's overflowing. So I'm OK being here because of this overflowing effusive love that I am experiencing from You, Lord, as you provide for me both inside and out. Paul says, these are the things that we experience as we go through hardship. It, it brings us deeper into the experience of the love of God in our hearts.

We need to learn to not only cope with, that's what we try to do, we try to cope with our hardship. Paul says you've got to go beyond that to actually embracing hardship and exulting in your hardships because of the good they're doing and the good that God is doing in your heart in the midst of them. It's the attitude of CH Spurgeon, who said, I've learned to kiss the wave. That strikes me against the Rock of Ages.

He says, in the storms of life, the waves come, they lift me up, they strike me against the rock of ages, and I've learned to kiss that wave that takes me closer to Jesus, even though it may hurt in the process. I think of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who He was imprisoned for a number of years for speaking out against the Soviet regime. And while he was in prison under very unideal circumstances, the Lord got a hold of him. He got saved, became a believer in Jesus, and, and God used him while he was there in prison.

But after a number of years being in that prison, he was released. And as he was leaving the prison compound, he turned one final time and looked at the prison that he had been in for years, and he said the words, Bless you, prison. Bless you, prison. He was grateful for that imprisonment.

He would not have wished it on his worst enemy, but he was grateful. For that prison because of what God did in his life through that imprisonment and during that imprisonment. That's what Paul is essentially doing. He's saying we bless our tribulations.

We've learned to kiss those tribulations because they take us closer and into a deeper experience of Jesus, the rock of ages. When going through hardship and trial. follow Paul's example, rejoice and exult during your tribulation and exult in the tribulations themselves because of all that God is doing in you and through you as a result. By the way, let me say this, last week, we looked at verses one and two about what it all means to be justified.

That was really cool, wasn't it? And I, I got a lot of responses from people like, man, it's so great to be justified and It, it's just awesome and, and such a thrilling doctrine. but one of the things you need to know is that if you're justified, and you have like a J on your forehead, when God justifies a person, here's what God says, I'm going to sanctify that person I just justified. And I'm going to use various means, including hardships to get that person sanctified.

He says, I'm going to sanctify you if I have justified you. And so that doesn't make us not happy to be justified anymore, but it does sober us that God is serious about our transformation. He doesn't just justify and then leave us alone. No, He sanctifies those whom He justifies and he glorifies those whom He justifies.

So God, every day is committed to your. Sanctification. You may not be pursuing endurance and perseverance in your life from day to day. You may get up tomorrow morning and your goal, though you may not state it, is your comfort and to live a life that requires as little endurance as possible.

The problem is when you get up tomorrow morning, God, as it were, opens up his daytimer and His agenda is cultivate endurance. bring circumstances into life so as to cultivate and nurture endurance. That's his agenda, and that's a part of what he's doing to sanctify each one of us. So be aware of that and let your goals line up with God's goals.

And when you see God bringing hardship to redemptively to sanctify you and to grow you and endurance and all the other qualities that emerge from that, exult in those things. But there's a third response. By way of allowing your justification to shape the way you respond to hardship, and that is this. Here's what Paul does in this text.

Go to the cross and contemplate the fact that Christ suffered too. Go to the cross and reflect on the fact, contemplate the fact that Christ has suffered too. When, sometimes when we go through hardship, we get so myopic that all we're thinking about is our difficulty and our hardship. Paul didn't do that.

Paul's thoughts inevitably would go to Jesus. They would go to the cross, and he would consider the sufferings of Christ. This passage is no exception. Look what he says in verse 6, still in this context, very much tied to what he's just said.

He says, for while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died. And then it's amazing verse 6 he says Christ died. Verse 8, Christ died. Verse 9, we're justified by His blood, the painful shedding of His blood.

Verse 10, the death of His Son. Paul just, it's so obvious that in the midst of suffering, He's discipling us to go to the cross, and he's going to tell us a handful of things, but first of all, let's just linger here. Paul here goes to the cross and obviously is contemplating the fact that Christ has died, which means, here's what it means to die, for Christ to die. He suffered to the fullest extent all the way to the point of death.

OK, it's the ultimate suffering. He didn't just die instantly, he suffered a prolonged suffering all the way to the fullest extent to the point of death. So at the very least, Paul's mind is going to the fact that in his suffering, he's turning to the fact that Jesus Christ suffered also. We really need to become skilled at contemplating the suffering of Christ in the midst of our own suffering.

It is a precious doctrine for us to realize that God is not up in heaven, passive, removed, detached from the sufferings of our life. God actually values our suffering so much that He came into this world and placed Himself underneath suffering and evil. Isaiah in Isaiah 53:4 looks into the future at Christ being crucified and says, surely, He has borne our sorrows and carried our griefs. He's not only burying our sins, but he's burying our sorrows and our griefs upon the cross.

We need to cherish that fact. That when Jesus was being crucified, he bore our sins, but he was also taking all of our griefs, and all of our sorrows that we've ever experienced in any way, shape or form, physically, spiritually, emotionally, relationally, all of the pains and sorrows, and he allowed those to be borne upon him when he was on the cross. It's almost as if Jesus said to the Father, Father, when I'm on the cross, and the sins of the world are placed on me, I'm gonna ask you to place all of the grief and all of the sorrow that all of my people have or ever will feel, and I want you to place that on me because I want to feel that.

And Isaiah looks at the crucified Messiah and says, Surely, He's borne our griefs.

Surely he's carried. Our sorrows. And by the way, when Jesus was on the cross, he was offered wine, right? To dull his senses.

And he refused it, saying, I, I want all of my faculties engaged. I want to feel all of this. And so we know that there's no pain that we ever experienced that he did not allow himself personally to feel. Whatever pain we find ourselves coming into, we can know that Jesus already felt exactly this when he was on the cross.

He placed himself underneath this. He knows exactly what this feels like. He gets it because he placed himself underneath this. And he even now though he is in heaven, is sympathetic.

He is emotionally connected to our suffering. He values our suffering. What this means, guys, is that we never suffer alone. We never suffer alone.

We have someone who has suffered with us and who understands our sorrows and our griefs. We need to cherish this. I love what John Stott says in his book, The Cross of Christ. Wow, I got a I've got a slide behind here.

You guys up to speed. OK. now, I'm ahead. OK.

Listen to what John Stott says. He says, I myself could never believe in God were it not for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who is immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed.

The ghost of a smile plays round his mouth, a remote look on his face detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to look away, and in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely twisted tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged into godforsaken darkness. That is the god for me. He laid aside his immunity to pain.

He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us, and our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering. I love that.

John Stott is saying, I I don't have all the answers of why they're suffering and evil in the world. I don't have all those answers. There's still a question mark against human suffering. But over it, we boldly stamp another mark, the cross, which symbolizes divine suffering.

And guys, in the midst of our suffering, of hardships in any way, shape or form, we need to go to the cross and do some gospel thinking and observe the suffering of Christ and realize that God is with us in our suffering, and in our pain. And over our own suffering, with all of our questions that we have, we can boldly stamp over those question marks, the cross that symbolize that God is with us in our suffering and our pain. I was so touched a number of months ago when Carlos Cuellar told us about John Perkins and it sent me on a quest to research this guy, a civil rights activist who grew up in the heart of racist Mississippi and, as a young man, he experienced the trauma of the town marshal murdering his older brother, and at that point, John Perkins was like, I'm out of here.

And so he checked out of Mississippi, went somewhere else, and began to make a life for himself elsewhere in relative safety.

But it was while at this other location that God got a hold of him and he became a Christian. Well, he then began to feel the call of God to go back into the heart of Mississippi to be an ambassador for Christ. So he did that eventually, and it was not long before he was standing up for those who were oppressed with honor and with dignity and his whole approach, trying to model the spirit of Christ, but he was arrested by police officers in the town where he was, and John Perkins tells just a horrifying story.

Of what they did to him through that night.

These drunken officers put him in a room and with billy clubs, they just beat him throughout the night. He had an open wound in his head and barely alive, and they made him clean up his own blood with that open wound. On his head they took a pistol that was not loaded, but he didn't know that it wasn't loaded, and they would put that to his head and pull the trigger to where John Perkins just throughout the night never knew if he was going to die or not, so traumatizing him through the night and as the evening wore on, one of the officers took a fork.

And opened John Perkins' mouth and jammed that fork into his throat, causing enormous damage.

After that night, John Perkins was hospitalized. He struggled for a long time after that with depression, post-traumatic stress, and and a whole lot of hatred. Against the white man. But he tells the story of how his heart became changed.

As he lay on the hospital bed. After this experience, listen to just a part of what he says. I'm just going to be reading a portion of his lengthy testimony on this. He says, the Spirit of God worked on me as I lay in that bed, an image formed in my mind, the image of the cross, Christ on the cross.

It blotted out everything else in my mind. This Jesus knew what I had suffered. He understood, and he cared. Because he had experienced it all himself.

This Jesus was arrested and falsely accused like me. He went through an unjust trial. He also faced a lynch mob and got beaten, but even more than that, he was nailed to a rough wooden, to rough wooden planks and killed, killed like a common criminal. At the crucial moment, it seemed to Jesus that even God Himself had deserted him.

The suffering was so great, he cried out in agony. He was dying. He goes on to talk about how Jesus Christ forgave and, and that touched his heart and put him in a frame of mind to forgive. But the words that, that I just want to focus on is that as John Perkins in the midst of his suffering, heart-rending suffering, He went to the cross and just contemplated the suffering of Jesus and came to the conclusion that this Jesus knew what I had suffered.

He understood, and he cared because he experienced it all himself. Guys, in every pain and every grief and every sorrow, we can say exactly. The same thing. Go to the cross as Paul does in your suffering, and contemplate the fact that the God man, Jesus Christ, God entered into this world and placed himself underneath that brokenness and the suffering that we live under, from day to day.

There's a 4th way to respond to hardship and tribulation. in the way of letting your justification shape your response. And that is at the cross, while you're at the cross, contemplate the suffering that Christ absorbs so that you wouldn't have to, OK? Contemplate the suffering.

that he absorbs so that you wouldn't have to. See, when Jesus was on the cross, guys, he didn't just suffer what you suffer. He did that. But he did more than that.

He suffered to an infinite degree, the wrath of God, so that he could absorb that and you could be spared of that suffering. Still in the context of talking about suffering, Paul says, In verse 6, while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. In other words, so that the ungodly would not have to die and experience God's wrath and the fury of his wrath, Christ placed himself in the direct line of that wrath, and that fury, and he received that upon Himself for the ungodly so that they wouldn't have to.

Now here's Paul talking about suffering and hardship, and his mind does go to the suffering of Jesus, that man, he gets it, he understands, he's felt everything that I have felt, but he also contemplates in his moment of suffering.

Paul does the suffering he's not experiencing. Because Jesus absorbed that. You get the point there. guys, it's so important for us, no matter how difficult our circumstances are.

To Look beyond our suffering and consider the fact that there's a suffering that we do deserve as Christians that that we're spared from, because Jesus absorbed that in his own person. I have found in my own life that this is, this is radical. this, this makes such a big difference in my whole orientation to think about, in all of my circumstances, good and bad, to always see those circumstances against the backdrop of what I deserve as a result of my sin. And to realize that I'm not experiencing God's wrath and outer darkness and utter rejection from God because Christ absorbed that.

He bore that when he was on the cross. I like waking up in the morning. And reminding myself that where I deserve to be right now is in the lake of fire. Now there are people who I've told that, and they try to rescue me from that line of thinking, and I tell them, Don't, don't rescue me.

Please don't, don't try to deliver me from this because I like beginning my day with that thought because it puts me in a frame of mind to savor and celebrate and be amazed by the smallest act of kindness and mercy that God shows me throughout the day. there are some people that have, you've heard of the glass half empty, half full, mindset. There's some people that look at a half empty glass and they say, well, that's half full, and others say it's half empty. Some focus on the part that's empty.

And they grumble. Some focus on the half that's full, and they're grateful. The gospel actually creates a different perspective than any of those two. Definitely it's better to focus on the half that's full, but in Paul's mind, here's the way Paul thought.

I deserve a full glass of wrath. If God handed me an empty glass, completely empty, I would explode in praise to God for His kindness to me. Because I know what I deserve. If God put the tiniest drop of blessing in that otherwise empty cup, I would be blown away by God's kindness towards me.

That God, in fact, has filled my cup to overflowing with all the blessings that are in Christ leaves me astounded and unable to fully express the joy that is in my heart. When Paul looked at the gifts and the blessings God did give him, Paul was first thankful for what God was not giving him. In the way of wrath and suffering, and then secondly, Paul was grateful for what God was giving him. It's a two layered gratitude that Paul had, and we see him even relishing this here in the midst of his suffering, as painful as it is, he's thinking about the suffering he's not experiencing because Jesus absorbed that on his behalf.

And so let us be forever daily mindful of the wrath we're not experiencing because of what Christ has done for us, and it'll set us up to appreciate just, Times where I'll just take a glass of water and it's like I can't believe I have this glass of water. I deserve God's wrath for my sin, and I get to drink this cold glass of water and I've shared this with you before. I don't think I ever get in my car and turn on the air conditioner without thinking this thought. It's like I deserve God's eternal wrath.

I deserve the lake of fire, and yet I have temperature control in my car. That's like crazy to me, and I can set that temperature. Go up or down until it's exactly to my liking. And I'm sitting in my car driving to work and I'm like, this is amazing.

Just having AC in my car to control the temperature. When I should be, if I got what I deserved, I should be in 10,000 degrees of heat. And yet I've got some knobs here to control the temperature. That's just little blessings like that are amazing when seen against the backdrop of the wrath we deserve, but we don't get it because Christ absorbed it.

So let us daily be thankful of the suffering we're not receiving. And then lastly, guys, at the cross, Wonder at your unworthiness of so great a love and so great a rescue. Some people when hardship comes, they're like, why? Why me?

This is not fair. Which is amazing, because the day before when God was blessing them, they didn't ask why, why me? So they obviously felt entitled to blessing, but now hardship comes and they're like, life is not fair. Why me?

Why is this happening to me? But when you look at what Paul says, look where his mind goes. He's in the midst of suffering. And here's where his mind goes.

Verse 6, while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. That's what we were. And then he's like, I've been saved for, for years now, and I'm still trying to figure this out. Let me think this out loud here.

For one will hardly die for a righteous man. He's like, I can, I can barely get that. Though perhaps for the good man, someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, absorbing God's wrath for us on our behalf so that we wouldn't have to.

He uses the word helpless, the word ungodly in verse 6, verse 8, sinners, verse 10, enemies. And so here's Paul in the midst of his hardship, and he's scratching his head. He's bewildered, and he's asking, why? I don't, I don't get this.

This is amazing. Why me? You say, well, what are you asking? Why, why me?

Why are you suffering? No, he's saying, why me? Why would Jesus bear? God's wrath.

So that I would not have to suffer. His wrath. See, here's what justification does when hardships come. Paul looks at the cross, and then he looks at the hardships that Christ bore, and he's left shaking his head in bewilderment saying, I don't get it.

This is beyond my understanding. Why me? Why me? He's amazed by it.

So let us When we go through hardships, guys, let, let your justification shape the way you respond. Go to the cross, be exulting in these things, and you will find yourself being sanctified in the midst of the hardships that I know that so many of you are going through. Well, let's bow our heads in prayer. We're going to take up an offering in just a moment.

We would encourage you to give as the Lord leads you to give. Comments, prayer requests, praise items, put those on the back and put that in the offering bag as it goes by this morning. Let's pray together, Lord. You have justified us and you want that fact to make a radical difference in the way we live our lives, the choices we make.

You want us to feed on this doctrine, to feast on it, to celebrate it, to exult in it. To do commerce with it. You want us to allow our justification to shape the choices we make and the way that we respond to hardships, and it changes everything. May we see all of life and all of our hardships through the lens of the gospel, through the lens of our justification.

And may we live in a state of amazement. And your love and your grace, the suffering we don't bear because Christ bore it. May we be thankful for all the good you are doing through the hardships. That we bear We thank You, Lord, for the opportunity to give of our offerings to you.

Receive these funds that we give Lord and do much with them for the glory of Jesus. At the same time, Lord, we give ourselves and our hearts to You. And we do so in Christ's name. And all God's people said, And