What follows is the outline of a sermon I preached last Sunday (June 13, 2010). I invite you meditate your way through it. Pray through it. Or you can listen to it on line at our web site - dallasbible.org. Even though I preached it in view of my prostate cancer, I think it fits for any trouble we may ever face in life. I hope it helps.

“Trouble – What Did I Do to Deserve This?”
(A Short Biblical Theology of Suffering)
Pastor Hal
June 13, 2010

I am preaching this sermon in view of being operated on for prostate cancer in just a few days. I was diagnosed on April 12, and my surgery is scheduled for June 21. So this is a personal sermon as to how I feel about life and hardship. In addition to prostate surgery, I have a total knee replacement surgery scheduled for August 11. We all have many hardships in life, so let’s encourage each other (Hebrews 10.24,25).

The trouble all started in Genesis 3 (3.16-19), and all creation has been groaning ever since – awaiting its redemption (Romans 8.22 and 19).

v.22 – “For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now”
v.19 – “For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God”

All of us have trouble – trouble of all sorts. Our enemy, the serpent of Genesis 3, is after us everyday in thousands of ways, to deceive us into trusting ourselves as opposed to trusting and obeying our God and loving Father.

So the question of “What did I do to deserve this trouble?” is not the right question. As Ecclesiastes teaches that we were born for trouble/hardship (as we are all born in sin), so the real question is “What did I do to deserve all my blessings, the gift of life, of family, the gift of friends – all the blessings of life which flood over us day by day?” I didn’t do anything to deserve them. They are the gift of God. Lavish blessings which He pours out on my life every day!

All of life awaits redemption – a time will come when there will be no hardship and no trouble, but until that time, this life will have trouble and hardship.

This trouble is broad and profound – covering all of life, and it is a part of God’s sovereign plan for redemption (Ecclesiastes 3.1-14).

“He has made everything appropriate in its time” (3.11)
“for God has so worked that men should fear Him” (3.14)

From day one of our birth (an incredible gift), life I both a gift and yet is hard. We were born with limits – “a time to be born and a time to die.” A child stumbles and crashed trying to learn to walk – joys and tears – they are amazingly interwoven.

Perhaps there is no part of life without hardship. Work is challenging. Relationships are challenging. The body is challenging. And yet at the same time, for every hardship there are dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of corresponding joys and ecstacies.
That is the mystery of life – life which is the gift of God. I am stunned again and again at the mystery of life. It is so amazing. As I often say; “I love it!”

The trouble itself cannot hide beauty, and the trouble itself is woven into the web of the beauty of redemption (Romans 8.28; Hebrews 5.8).

In all of life one hears of the value of hardship and the lessons learned. People may even speak of the blessings of trouble and hardship. Even glad for the hardship.

And if that can happen in the natural world, imagine how much greater those truths in the spiritual world where God rules.

“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8.28).

The good that God works through trouble is utterly amazing. Even in my cancer (or whatever hardships I have) God is working for good (my good, His good, others’ good). Everything He does is for good – everything!

“Although He was a Son, He learned obedience through the things He suffered”
(Heb 5.8).

Everything about our Lord Jesus Christ is beautiful. His birth was beautiful. His life was beautiful. The way He moved with people was beautiful. But perhaps there is nothing as beautiful as the love which he showed the world when He died for our sins on the cross. The utter beauty of His love for the world and His Father is indescribable to me. The hardships of His life and death were things that without them would have never allowed us to see His greatest beauty and love.

For the Christian, trouble always gives us the opportunity to identify deeper with the sufferings of Christ in whose image we are and destined to become more and more (2 Corinthian 1.5; Romans 8.29; Colossians 1.24).

“For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance” (1 Corinthians 1.5).

“God’s plan for His people is that they become like His Son – not that they should muddle along in modest respectability.” Leon Morris

“in filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ” (Col 1.24).

So every day in our difficulties, trials, and hardships, we have the privilege of filling up what is left to be completed of the sufferings of Christ. That is value of suffering, hardship, and trouble. God is using every bit of these difficulties to make us like His Son


That’s why we should embrace suffering and trouble (James 1.2-5; Acts 5.41). They keep us dependent and growing.

Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials” (James 1.2).

So James says that we should understand the process. For all the above reasons we should never complain. Why? Because hardships call us to keep growing – to keep trusting God in everything that happens.

Trouble and hardships remind me that I am not in control. Life is not about me. Life is all about trusting a sovereign God who has designed life according to His purposes and He is working out every one of those purposes in my life.

So that’s that I think about prostate cancer surgery. About a knee replacement surgery. That’s what I think about all the hardships I have faced in life and will face in life. I have no hesitations about what God will do in my life through them.

Trouble and suffering bind us together as a community (2 Corinthians 1.4-7).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-MRoIDXeuY&feature=related

This is the story of Derek Redmond in his bid for an Olympic medal. His trouble on the back stretch brought him and his father together in a way that they never would have experienced otherwise.

In a similar way I believe all of our trials are meant to help build a web of relationships. Our trials are meant to help us identify with others. How I experience a hardship will bless someone else. How they experience a hardship will bless me and others. We all profit from each others’ experiences and perhaps nothing encourages us as much as being strengthened by others as they go through hardships.

Who hasn’t been blessed by the biblical story of Joseph or the contemporary story of Joni Erickson Tada?

“But if we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; or if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is effective in the patient enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer” (2 Corinthians 1.6).

So what?

Dig deeper…now. Grow your understanding of God…He is good and gracious all the time.

When hardships come, an initial tendency may be to ask, “Why me?” But why question God as if He does not love me. He does love me. He loved me in eternity past, He loved me while I was still in my sin, He bought me to Himself for all of His purpose in Christ for me, and He loves me every moment of my existence. So I call myself and I call you to keep growing deeper and deeper into the great love of God.

Grow…take ownership of your suffering. Accept it. Embrace it.

God has a plan for you and me in the midst of our trials and hardship. Hardships and suffering have a place in the life of Christ, and they have the same place in our lives as well.

Get in the pit with someone. “Weep with those who weep” (Romans 12.15).

A mentor of mine, Dr. Vernon Grounds, was heading to chapel one day. As he was walking towards the chapel, he saw a seminary student sitting against the wall in the hallway and weeping. Dr. Grounds, stopped by him, slowly slid down the wall until he was sitting next to the student and said; “I don’t think I’ll go to chapel today; I’d like to just sit here and weep with you.” He then put his arm around the student, wept with him, prayed with him, and encouraged him.

I thank God for all of those in this body and my family who have already gotten into the pit with me. Thank you for your love. My prayer is that we will always do this for each other. I believe God’s love is best demonstrated this way.

Let’s not criticize or judge as to how they have gotten into the pit or their own responses of being in the pit. Just get into the pit with them and love them.

Live with confidence and strength.

There is no question that life can be hard, but the life of Christ in us can give us confidence, strength, and even joy.

Romans 15.13 and 2 Corinthians 4.16-18 are verses for me and you.

“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

“Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.
For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,
while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

May God help me and all of us to live for Him with every day and every breath that He gives.

I close with my favorite benediction from Hebrews 13;

“Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus our Lord,
equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever” (Hebrews 13.20-21).

And all of God’s people said “Amen” and “Amen.”