Job 6:8-14 Matthew 16:1-4

This morning, I am going to wind up my sermon series on Suffering. There is much that can be said about it. If you look in your bulletin, you'll see a handout of 28 different things that can be said about suffering as found in the Bible. We've covered six. I invite you to take this sheet home with you and read these scriptures, reflect on these potential things that are listed here because I think you will find them quite interesting.

When it comes to suffering, the Christian church has always been in the forefront of helping people through the trials and tribulations of life, whether it is physical illness or accident or the suffering that comes in a bad relationship or something of that nature. As you can see from the sacred scriptures, there are a whole lot of guidelines and comforting things that can be instructions to us found by reading and studying the scriptures. The Bible says that Christ will give us a peace that surpasses all human understanding if we keep our mind and hearts focused on the love of God. That is probably the clearest clue as to how to handle suffering. People have asked me in light of what I went through a year ago in my illness, how I stayed so calm in it. In fact, my wife has said, “You know, you are a typical male. When you get a cold, you act like a big baby. Then you go through something intensely life threatening and you get through it beautifully! How can that be? Well, I think we men have a license to act like a baby when we have a cold. How else can we get all the care we want? At the same time, when it is really something serious, there are some things that we can learn and things that I would like to share with you about how to handle the more serious traumas in life. This is something that I truly want to pass on to you because it has served me so well and served others that I have observed.

One of the things that meant so much to me was, I guess close to forty years ago, I read a book by a man by the name of Victor Frankel. I believe the name of the book was Man's Search for Meaning. Victor Frankel was a Jew who was captured and put into a Nazi concentration camp. I believe is was Auschwitz. It may have been Dachau. He was a psychiatrist and as he went through the terrible tortures of the concentration camp, he made a study of those who survived these tortures and those who didn't survive them. He talked in his book about people who simply gave up. Many of these persons ran into the electrified fence surrounding the camp that would immediately electrocute them as an act of suicide. Then he talked about those who stayed strong even though they lived on a subsistence diet of mushy rice, rats and roaches and other things that they could find to eat. Some people got through it quite well. His conclusion was, that if you have a serious enough reason, you can endure any kind of suffering. By a serious enough reason, he said it has to be something that connects with your heart, something that enables you to get through that by giving you purpose. For me in the hospital a year or so ago, it was the love of my life, Jan. She was one of the major reasons if not the major reason I lived. Also, I believe at the time that if I handled this well, it would give glory to God. So those two things really carried me through the suffering, the intense pain and the brush with death that I went through.

Consider Victor Frankel's shocking experience. He described that he used the goal of being reunited with his wife as his main reason for surviving the concentration camp. He said no day passed without thinking of his wife, without praying for her, without being determined to survive the torture that he was given so that he could be reunited with her. The sad thing was that when the war ended and the American soldiers liberated his camp, he discovered that his wife had been killed three or four years earlier at the hands of the Nazis. In a sense he had suffered for a reason of being reunited when that was actually a fictitious reason. It wasn't ever going to happen. It couldn't happen. She was killed by the Nazi's at the beginning of the war, yet he said the thought of being reunited with her was what carried him through.

We Christians are in better shape than that. We Christians always know there is going to be a reunion  for real! We Christians know that there is life after this life and that knowledge can carry us through anything. That is why the martyrs could face lions; they could face crucifixion; they could face the sword and having their heads chopped off and things like that in the early days of Christendom. Even today, there are Christian martyrs. I subscribe to a magazine called The Voice of the Martyrs, and this magazine reports that there are over 300,000 Christians killed each year in the world for their faith. These are persons who are willing to say, “I will take any torture. I will even accept death because I am so committed to the Word of God. I so believe in Jesus Christ that I will do this.” In that sense, they have purpose and meaning in the suffering that they go through. If you look at the sheet that I have in your bulletin, there are a couple of things that have given me great purpose and meaning. Take a look at #4 on your sheet.

#4 SUFFERING MAKES US DEPENDENT ON GOD. When we suffer, we have an incredible opportunity to turn to God and ask for help, beg for help. “God, be with me through this. Help me to get through this (whatever it is.)”

#8 SUFFERING CAN BE A CHASTISEMENT FOR SIN. Chastisement is a Biblical word that we rarely use but what it means is Discipline. It means that we can be pruned if we use John 15's analogy that Christ is the vine and we are the branches. The branches get pruned so that the whole vine (church) grows. Therefore, we can be pruned which means that our suffering gives us a reason to endure this pain so that we will become a greater Christian and give glory to God.

#12 SUFFERING THWARTS EVIL PEOPLE. That one to me is very meaningful. Those of you who remember the 60's remember watching the race riots in Alabama. Remember watching police dogs sicked on those marching in the protest parades there? These marchers were volunteers, people like you and me who went down to bring about justice in the south. They marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. and endured being horribly bitten by attack dogs, hosed down with fire hoses and beaten with Billy clubs. But what was the result of their suffering? The result of their suffering was that it gave a tremendous witness of faith and it set up pangs of guilt in the persecutors. It mobilized most of the rest of the nation who believed in the line of our Constitution “with liberty and equality for all”. This suffering enabled the nation to rise up and insist that the prejudicial laws be struck down. That happened. The suffering of those people at that time gave rise to a tremendous change and shift in our society. Evil people were confronted as #14 on the back of this list points out. Justice was accomplished and our nation has been much better off as a result of it.

#18 is an important one, too. SUFFERING CREATES COMMUNITY. I definitely experienced that with all of you praying for me. Then I became aware that there were people praying for me all over the world when I was so sick. If that has happened to you, you know how wonderful that feels, how supported you are. I truly attest that my survival of my episode was due to the prayers of the global community that were offered for me at that time.

#20 SUFFERING CAN BE CONTRITION. We all do wrong things in our life. When we suffer, it confronts us with the fact that we've done wrong. It gives us a time to say, “God, if I can manage it, will you take this suffering and erase my sins with it? I actually deserve this suffering in some form or another for the wrong things I've done. But know that I love you. Know that I'm sorry for the things that I've done. And I give myself to you in this time of suffering. I offer my suffering to you, participating in your Son's own suffering through the body of Christ.”

#22 SUFFERING CAN WIN THE LOST. How many times have you seen or heard of a conversion story, even a death bed conversion, when a person is in great pain or something of that nature. Suddenly, someone speaks to them of God. They may say the sinner's prayer  “God, I'm sorry that I have hurt you with my sins. I ask for your forgiveness. I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and I give my life to you.” Suffering can be a moment when that conversion occurs and in that sense, it leads to salvation.

# 27 SUFFERING ALLOWS GOD TO MANIFEST HIS POWER AND CARE. I'm certain that you are like me. At times, I wonder why does this person get healed and this other person doesn't get healed. I've shared with you when I began this series of sermons about a friend of mine who developed pancreatic cancer. I don't think anybody was ever prayed for as much as this individual man. There was a parade of people going into his home and praying for him. And he still died. Some of the people who prayed were really kind of bitter that God didn't heal him. But the answer is&.yes, God did heal him. First of all, he healed his soul, he healed his heart and secondly, this man entered into the kingdom of heaven. He was healed there. He received a new body, a spiritual body with no aches and pains, no more suffering. The cancer would never more be there. As the book of Revelation says, “There would be no more tears.” No more crying. No more suffering. So as Christians, we are the people who, perhaps more than anyone else, can get through suffering when it happens in our life. We should be very grateful to God for giving us all these means and techniques and purposes for enduring it. Suffering is a tremendous gift of God and therefore it should bring out our thanksgiving. It should bring out our joy. Paul says, “Comfort one another with these thoughts because we are not as pagans who have no hope.” Oh boy. We have hope! We know that there is something better for all of us as we get through this life and that all suffering for us is temporary. When it is over, the best is yet to come. So, I hope that you have benefited from this series of sermons. As I conclude this sermon, I wanted to share with you what I have learned. I hope you have learned to trust completely in Jesus Christ. He is the answer. He is the complete answer. He can heal us. He can sustain us. He can grant us peace. And that is what our faith is all about.