A Good Church Suffers
A Good Church • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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A Good Church Suffers.
A Good Church Suffers.
it is true that a Good church suffers.
What makes the difference between good and not good is how suffering is handled and who is handling it.
good church doesn’t hide from suffering, but embraces it, for God’s glory, for His ability to handle it, and for the need to support one another in it.
We moved here in 2016 from Oregon and in doing so we made a major cross country road trip out of it. One of the places we stopped was the giant redwood forest (pictures). The redwoods are giant sequioa trees, the tallest trees on earth and can live for hundreds of years. They are astounding, and in some ways overwhelming. These are the trees that dwarf you in their presence. You can walk right up to them and look up the 350 feet or so and not quite even get into view one single tree. You try to wrap your arms around it but you feel kind of like an ant walking across the ground, the tree is so big.
This is kind of what suffering can be like. It is a situation in our lives that is, something larger than us, something that we quite can’t get our arms around, something that we can’t quite get into view. Suffering, because it’s often something we cannot solve ourselves, remains this larger than life giant in front of us. We feel like ants next to it.
And because we don’t often choose to suffer. The situations you find yourselves in are not what we wanted, and because it wasn’t what we chose to experience, maybe it is caysing us pain. It hurts to be in a situation that we haven’t chosen and doesn’t seem to benefit us at all. We don’t always get a choice on the road we walk on. This happens in small and large issues. Maybe we get hurt and we experience suffering for a day or a week or a year.
Or maybe we suffer a breakup in a relationship, something we didn’t maybe choose but now have to deal with the affects of it.
Sometimes suffering is experiencing loss. Loss of a job or possibility, or a comfort. Suffering comes in the loss of a friend, or family member or spouse.
Suffering happens and it feels often like trying to hug a redwood. It is overwhelming and we feel very small in comparison.
Some of us are going through experiences right now that feels like hugging a redwood.
This morning I want to look at Psalm 23, because in it we meet the Shepherd of our souls. And He makes certain promises about who we are, who He is, and where He is walking us.
The big idea we are going to look at is
The Great Shepherd can walk us through suffering because He has been there before and knows the way through.
The Great Shepherd can walk us through suffering because He has been there before and knows the way through.
We may know this to be true but the question becomes, how does He do that? How do we know He is doing that? Let’s look at the Psalm and see what it is God as the Great Shepherd has promised for us.
The shepherd can walk us through suffering because He can both find us in it and restore us through it.
The Shepherd knows the way: He always provides what we need
The Shepherd knows the way: He always provides what we need
He has never left us. Look at the first three verses
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
God is good at anticipating what we need because He created us. He knows we need rest, He knows what our soul needs.
This is the life at peace and at rest. This is the normal offer from God. To live at peace with Him as the sustainer.
For the Christian this is normal life. Life at peace because Christ sustains us. Because He makes and causes peace.
To live in Christ is to trust that someone who can actually do something about our situation is doing something about it.
Peace is the baseline not the exception.
but as we see in the Psalm, this can get disrupted. We can lose a sense of peace quickly, sometimes without even thinking about it. It just happens.
There are no green pastures, not still waters.
Everything is turned upside down. Then what? How do we find peace? Where do we find rest?
It turns out that peace and rest and still waters are not dependent on us to find or hold onto them. They are dependent on the One who leads us to them.
If Christ doesn’t change, if the Shepherd of our souls doesn’t change, then neither do still waters.
The same Shepherd who was responsible for peace and rest during normal times offers the same guiding in the midst of difficulty.
But when the still waters seem further and further away, what do we do?
We trust that
The Shepherd knows the terrain: He Finds us in our suffering
The Shepherd knows the terrain: He Finds us in our suffering
He knows what it means to suffer. He is not unfamiliar with it.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
This idea is a core tenet of Christian faith. God took on human form, chose to go to the cross and suffer on our behalf. He took on the pain of evil and sin when we could not even though we deserved it, and in doing so, offered us a new way.
Because God is not a stranger to suffering, He can find us in it. He knows the way, He has been there before.
We seem to think that God could not understand or that He wouldn’t want to understand. That cannot be further from the truth. Even before we entered into whatever situation we are in, whatever feels like it is collapsing around us, God understands it.
in fact, this is the condition that Christ insists on. He ca,e for the hungry, for those who mourn, for the sick.
And He knows how to find us in it. He knows where to look, knows how to come to us.
In June 2018, 12 young soccer players and their coach went for a hike in the woods in northern thailand. They found a cave and went exploring. They were not prepared for the monsoons to hit and were soon trapped in the cave by rains that swept in quickly.
The situation was unlike any other. 12 kids and one adults stuck in a cave, the only way out through muddy water. And the rains were coming again.
People from all over the world gathered and planned on how to to a)find the group and b)get the group out. While together there were decades and decades of diving safety and experience, no one really knew how to do it.
The cave was so dark, it was “kind of a darkness that pulls you in”
In order to pull this off they needed a specific set of skills and a specific set of equipment. No one had done this before or were prepared on how to do it.
The complexity of the task was enormous. But they searched and were able to find and successfully rescue all 13 people on the team. They didn’t know how to start but they figured a way and found them
God has found us in suffering because He has suffered Himself, He knows the terrain, He has walked the valleys before. He knows where people get tripped up, He knows where people get tired. He seeks and searches those who get lost in their suffering. He has not left any one of us to figure it out ourselves.
Christ has been to the outer reaches of the human experience. He has gone to extreme depths.
It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent!”
He came for us in suffering. He sees us because He knows the way. No matter what you are facing this morning, the God of the universe can find you in it. He has not left us to figure it out on our own.
Maybe you are suffering deep loss and trauma. It feels like you are trying to hold onto a giant redwood.
But maybe you are facing a different kind of loss. A kind of internal struggle. Maybe on the outside things are easy and great, but inside it’s kind of like the soccer team lost for weeks in complete darkness. Maybe you fumble around inside looking for a way out.
No matter what that is, Christ is familiar. He brings light to dark caves and He wraps His arms around unbearable redwoods
The Shepherd knows the way through: He Restores us in our suffering
The Shepherd knows the way through: He Restores us in our suffering
When we suffer we feel as though every resource has been exhausted. There is nothing else left to do. What else do we have?
That is what suffering, both internal and external does. It exhausts possibility.
But here is the most incredible thing about Christianity.
Christ in suffering shows us that there is entire possibility, even in death.
Death is the final exhaustion. It is the one place we we know we haven’t been able to find help in.
But in Christ the cross, the place of death, becomes the place of complete possibility.
And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.”
now with that in mind let’s look at the last part of the psalm
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.
God provides when it feels like all is lost.
He shows us that in death there is life. We have been given all possibility in Christ. It is not a magic trick, it is not sleight of hand. It is that God has come to bring life when we could not navigate our way out or through.
We are offered eternity in Christ.
And it happens through the door of death that we thought nothing could come from.
And if Christ can redeem death, He can work in and through our suffering.
We know because He has come to lead us through.
Notice how the Scripture states that we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. We don’t get lost in.
Christ walks us through. HE guides and leads. He offers rest and sustains us.
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
If you are facing something that is too big for you, internally or externally, ask the Shepherd of our souls to guide you. To lead us. These are not just good ideas, they are a GPS of sorts. Christ will guide you. But you have to let Him.
Offer Him your life. Offer Him whatever you are struggling with.
He trades our suffering with His riches. That is what the cross teaches.
We are going to transition to communion as an application
We will take it together but I want to offer some thoughts:
As you take the elements and wait with them, offer a prayer. Ask God to shepherd you in whatever it is you are struggling with. Offer Him what you have.
AS you hold onto the elements remember that we are holding onto them together.
Part of a good church suffering is realizing that we are together. Part of struggling is sharing that. Find someone who you can trust and share it with them. Ask someone to pray for you. Ask someone to check in on you.