WITH FRIENDS LIKE THAT

Suffering is bad enough, but if while you’re suffering, your so-called friends can’t even stand by you and encourage you and comfort you, well that is just the pits.

Worse still when loved ones – a wife or a husband, instead of encouraging you, they take the opportunity to say, ‘I told you so or You’ve only got yourself to blame … well, at that point, you just want to pack it in.

This isn’t a game hypotheticals, this is real life. This happens all the time. In fact it seems to be a favourite game that some people love to play. When he’s down, when she’s down, instead of giving them a hand up, let’s kick ‘em where it hurts.

I don’t know about you, but I have a pretty good handle on my faults. It turns out that every strength we have, is a double-edged sword. It’s both a strength, and, if we’re not careful, it’s a weakness as well.

Say you’re a strong leader type of personality, then you’re great to have around because you can help the rest of us crash through obstacles that we, without you, simply wouldn’t have been able to get through. But at the same time, as a leader, you can be a quite domineering and controlling person.

Or lets say you’re one of those great encouragers, who will hang in there with someone for as long as they need, then you’re a fantastic friend to have in a storm. But there’s every chance that you’re not very organised, not an on-time sort of a person – simply through the fact that you’ve been made to hang in there with people for as long as they need you.

Yep, every strength is a double-edged sword. It’s both a strength, and a potential weakness. So few people understand that. And as a result, when things aren’t going well for us, they’re quite adept, it would seem, at seeing our faults and pointing them out to us. ‘Well, maybe the reason you’re having this problem in your marriage is because you’re such a strong personality. It must be your fault’. Or … ‘Well, the reason you’re having this problem at work is that you’re just not good at time management. You have to get better at sorting out your priorities and hitting the deadlines you need to hit’.

You see how easy it is, to find the fault side of our strength, when people are looking for answers. They think they’re helping us, but they’re only making it worse. I have a friend like that who constantly needs to point out my faults to me, as though somehow he’s an impartial, expert psychotherapist. And when he gets into that mode, I sit there and I think of all his faults – faults that I don’t point out to him – because he’s my friend and he has a whole bunch of strengths as well.

I know what you’re thinking – been there, done that, got the t–shirt, you know exactly what I’m talking about. There is a time and a place for friends to point out each other’s faults and weaknesses and limitations in a constructive way. But that time and place is not when they’re suffering, it’s not when the devil is chasing them around the kitchen table with a pick-axe, it’s not when God is leading them through a wilderness experience. Right?

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been spending some time with Job, a righteous man, a good man, whom God chose to test, by letting the devil go after everything he had. His family, his possessions, his health, his reputation – one by one, God allows the devil to strip them away from Job, to see what lies beneath. To see whether Job truly is this great man of faith, or whether he only trusts God while his faith is propped up by all the blessings that God has heaped on his life.

And Job, as it turns out, had three friends, just like the ones we’ve been talking about. Their names were Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. While Job was crying out to God – asking Him why, and praying to God for relief, these three guys tried to tell Job, basically – it was all his fault. Listen to what Eliphaz says to Job:

Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope? Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, those who plough iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed. (Job 4:6-9)

In other words, Eliphaz is saying to Job, ‘Come on Job, it makes sense. God never punishes a good person or a righteous man. Obviously, you’ve must have done something wrong and that’s why your life is falling apart’.

Yeah, right! With friends like that, who needs enemies? And you see this chapter after chapter throughout the book of Job, these so-called friends – Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar – needling and criticising Job, rubbing salt in his wounds. I know you’ve been there and I know that one day, you and I are going to be in that place again.

Because our friends, and our loved ones they are not perfect, they are weak, fallible people just like you and me. They can’t always see what’s going on. They don’t always have the spiritual or the emotional maturity to perceive what God is doing in your life – or the faith they need.

Listen, friends and family are good. God blesses us with those people and that’s a wonderful thing. But when the chips are down, when God is putting your faith to the test, then it’s in that place that we need to get close to Him and hear His voice and trust in Him. Peter the Apostle puts it like this, 1 Peter 1: 6 – 9:

In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith – being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

Listen, friends and family are great, but there is no substitute in a storm for God Himself. That’s why God tests and strengthens your faith through trials and through suffering.

DARK NIGHTS OF THE SOUL

Dark … nights … of the soul. I wonder what that means to you. I can tell you what it means to me. There have been those nights, over the years, when I’ve lain in bed, with fear racking my very being. Whether it was over a relationship issue, or my job, or finances … whatever it was … I could only sleep in fits and starts, because in the middle of those dark nights, things seemed so bad, so hopeless, that the despair consumed my whole being.

I remember one such night in a hotel when I was travelling for business back in February 1995, it was so bad, that I came this close to taking my own life the next morning. I remember it as though it were yesterday.

Fortunately, most of us tend not to have too many of those dark nights, but when you’re in the middle of a patch of suffering in your life, they become very real. And it’s no good saying to someone, ‘Well, you know, if you believed in God, everything would be fine. You wouldn’t feel like that.

Well, Jesus did. That night that He went to the garden of Gethsemane to pray, we’re told that:

He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.’ And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.’ (Matthew 26:37-39)

Even Jesus was deeply grieved – even unto death. That right there, is a dark night of the soul. And, just as is always the case, when you’re having one of those, His friends were of no use to Him.

I remember back to those times in my life and God put some really, really good people around me. I thank God for them. But it seemed that nothing that they were able to do or to say, could touch my soul deeply enough to make a difference.

You look back on Easter – you hear the old, old story of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest and the trials and the beatings and the crucifixion and then the resurrection – and sometimes it’s easy to imagine that those things don’t have anything relevant to speak into our lives for the rest of the year. We go through Easter the ritual, but then we put it back in the cupboard and forget it for another year.

But for me, somehow, knowing that God understands my suffering, not just because He’s God and He knows everything, but because He’s actually been in my shoes. And He’s lived His own dark night of the soul, well that’s a huge comfort. It means I know that I know that I know that I’m talking to a God who totally gets it. Who doesn’t judge me in my pain, but whose heart aches for me. That’s a huge thing.

Now I wouldn’t wish a dark night like that on anyone. Not even on my worst enemy, yet they’re an absolute inevitability. I had the privilege and the pleasure to catch up with a man who is one of the giants in my life. He was the Pastor of the first church that I attended after I became a Christian. His name is Phil. And he showed me a photo of himself as a young man.

He was lying on a stretcher, after a car accident in which he’d been badly burned by an exploding fuel tank. After rolling in the dirt and the dust to put out the flames, he was unconscious, bandages all over him. He had not been a Christian all that long, and he was telling me what it was like to be there in the hospital, alone, doctors and nurses talking about whether he’d make it or not, and the septicaemia that was attacking his open wounds, the skin grafts that he would need.

Phil was a trained surveyor, and as he lay in that hospital bed in that dark, lonely place – a dark night of the soul if ever there was one – He spoke of God’s presence. He was thinking about the rest of his life, if he had much of it before him, and he came to the conclusion that God didn’t want him to be a surveyor for the rest of his life. It was in that place that he decided to become a pastor.

Now, many years on, at the retirement end of 40 plus years of pastoring, he can look back on a life in which he has touched so many people, so many lives with the love of Christ.

Those dark nights are often very important times in our lives, where God can connect with us in the most amazing way. Where our hearts, wounded and raw with pain, are open to receive something incredibly powerful from God.

We’ve been travelling a bit of a journey with Job, and it was a terrible time for him. Back in the Old Testament book of Job, we see how God gave the devil permission to strip everything away from the man. He was a good guy, a righteous man, who honoured God in everything he did.

Yet, God allowed his faith to be tested by letting the devil strip away one by one, each of the blessings that God had given him. His children, all his possessions, his wife, his friends, his reputation, even his health – he suffered in every sense of the word. He gets to a point finally where he says this to God, Job chapter 10: 1 to 4:

I loathe my life; I will give free utterance to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. I will say to God, ‘Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me. Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favour the schemes of the wicked? Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as humans see?’

Pretty direct, don’t you think? He is telling God exactly what he thinks and feels. He’s laying his perspective right out there, in front of God. I think sometimes we think that we have to sanitise it for God, that somehow, before we go to God we need to put on our Sunday bests and put a smile on our face and go and tell God how rosy things are.

But in the midst of those dark nights, things aren’t rosy. They don’t look rosy, they don’t feel rosy and putting on a false face for God is just about the dumbest thing that anyone can do.

I want to encourage you in the middle of those places to pour out your heart and your soul to God. Tell Him exactly what you think; exactly what you feel. I want to encourage you today, that in the midst of your despair, your God is the one constant on whom you can rely. He is the one person who is faithful beyond all others.

MY REDEEMER LIVES

A few years ago, Hillsong released an awesome worship song called ‘My Redeemer Lives’. It’s bouncy and happy and clappy and upbeat. It kicks off with these lyrics:

I know He rescued my soul, His blood has covered my sin
I believe, I believe
My shame is taken away, My pain is healed in His name
I believe, I believe
I’ll raise a banner, ‘Cause my Lord has conquered the grave
My Redeemer Lives, My Redeemer lives …

And the song goes on from there. It’s an awesome worship song. If you go to YouTube and search for it, you’ll find a whole bunch of young people with bright coloured t-shirts on, dancing and waving their hands and singing the song. I think it’s awesome.

But the very first time those words were uttered in the Bible, ‘My Redeemer lives’ was by a guy named Job, and that wasn’t the context. As we’ve seen all along in this series of messages, Job wasn’t all happy and clappy, Job was suffering terribly.

This good and godly man was tested by God as the Lord unleashed the devil into his life, and the devil took away each of Job’s blessings, one by one by one, even right down to his health, until he had nothing left.

Job was in huge pain, he struggled with God, and asked God what was he doing and why was this happening and when it would end? Just like you or I would have. Job was getting desperate, and as we’ve seen, even his friends, instead of encouraging him, were needling him and blaming him and rubbing salt in his wounds – undermining his confidence in God.

So, just in case you hear those words, My Redeemer Lives, and you’ve sung that great Hillsong chorus and you’re thinking happy clappy, let me share with you exactly what was going on for Job, in the verses leading up to this famous declaration that My Redeemer Lives. Just soak in these words and see the picture of devastation and destruction that he’s painting here for us. Job chapter 19, beginning at verse 8:

God has walled up my way so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths. He has stripped my glory from me, and taken the crown from my head. He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, he has uprooted my hope like a tree. He has kindled his wrath against me, and he counts me as his adversary. His troops come on together; they have thrown up siege works against me, and encamp around my tent. He has put my family far from me, and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.

My relatives and my close friends have failed me; the guests in my house have forgotten me; my serving girls count me as a stranger; I have become an alien in their eyes. I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must myself plead with him. My breath is repulsive to my wife; I am loathsome to my own family. Even young children despise me; when I rise, they talk against me. All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I have loved have turned against me.

My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! Why do you, like God, pursue me, never satisfied with my flesh?

O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book! O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth. (Job 19: 8-25)

I mean, his life had completely been destroyed – everything is gone. The only thing that could be worse is that he could be dead, although, having said that, he muses elsewhere that, that might indeed have been a better outcome.

Now if you or I were crying out those terrible words, if you or I were summing up our terrible pain and our loss in those very words, what conclusion would we come to? How would we draw all that litany of disaster together and summarise it? I suspect that many a man and many a woman would come to the conclusion that there’s simply no hope left.

And yet at the end of all that he says, ‘Wow! I wish all this were written down for others to see and to know – because in the middle of all this disaster, I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVES!’

What a conclusion to come to! What a man of God! How did he get to that place? How can he come to such a conclusion?

Well, here’s the answer. Job was a man who lived his life for God. No ifs, no buts, no maybes. His heart was set like flint toward honouring God with everything he was and everything he had. Right at the beginning of the book of Job chapter 1, verse 1 this is what we’re told:

There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

That’s the thing. When we get our lives in order before the storm hits, then when the storm comes, while it still hurts, while we still have questions for God – why and how long being the two most common – whilst we will certainly have friends who misunderstand us and make it worse; deep, deep, deep in our hearts, we will be able to declare in the face of every demon that hell can muster and throw against us, we will still be able to declare with boldness and an uncommon courage, that MY REDEEMER LIVES.

And that’s what counts. When everything else fails, this one thing stands: My Redeemer Lives. And that counts for everything. That’s what matters. In fact it’s the only thing that matters.

Perhaps, you’re going through a tough patch at the moment and if not, we both know, don’t we, that the next tough patch is out there somewhere, just waiting for us to catch up with it.

So let me encourage you with this: when the suffering begins, worship God through every moment, thank Him, bless His name, draw close to Him. Because He is there to travel through every moment of it with you. And come what may, no matter how terrible it gets – may you stand up and declare, My Redeemer Lives.

So far, as I look back on the most difficult days of my life, all the dark nights of the soul, what I know is this: my record for surviving them so far is 100%. Hey, that’s not such a bad track record is it? And I’d hazard a guess that you too have a perfect score – a 100% track record for surviving your worst days.

The other obvious truth is that those days will always pass. They did for Job. Have a listen to how it all ended, Job chapter 42, verses 10 and 16:

And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children’s children, four generations. And Job died, old and full of days.

In other words, God gave Job double for his trouble, and allowed him to live to a ripe old age. So is God going to give you and me double for our trouble? I really don’t know. Sometimes He does, other times He doesn’t. But what I do know is this: God’s blessings are greater than anything that we can imagine, and He always finds ways to bring His blessings to pass in our lives.

Is God going to allow you and me to live to a ripe old age and full of days? Again, I don’t know what His plan is for you or for me. But this I do know – that as we persevere, as we get out of bed every morning and do our best to honour Him and to bless others – Jesus is away preparing a place for us, for you and for me, in our Father’s house. So that we can spend eternity in His Presence and behold His glory. Feast on His glory for ever and ever and ever amen.

That, you’d have to say, is not such a bad ending. In the meantime, I can tell you this, beyond any shadow of a doubt, ‘My Redeemer Lives’. How about yours?

By about this time of year any little bit of a break we might have had over Christmas and New Year is but a dim distant memory. We’re back in the grind and we’re looking forward to our next break – awesome! But surely there’s more to life than that.

HOPE MATTERS

Hope is a beautiful word, four letters, just one syllable, there’s a clear, pure ring to it, isn’t there? HOPE. I don’t know how your year is going so far, what just three months in but for most of us there have been some ups, there have been some downs and underneath it all that constant incessant grind that we all call life, the daily ritual.

I know there are some people on the London Tube with their headphones on listening in to this message today. I know that there is a farmer on his harvester listening in on his local radio station in Australia, in the US and in other places. I know that there is a man in Chicago down at the local gym probably tuned in to the podcast as he is most days and I know that there are refugees in camps wondering what the next day will bring, gathered around their radio’s listening to today’s message all over the world, all different circumstances.

Some good, some not so good, some downright awful, I know that so here as we head into this Easter time, Berni drops the word ‘hope’, pure, clean, crystal clear hope, what does it mean to you right now given where you’re at, what’s going on in your life? Hope.

My year so far has been a bit of a mixed bag, isn’t that always the way? Some great things, a short holiday with my lovely wife in January, awesome and some tough issues to grapple with here too in the ministry called Christianityworks that I’m privileged to lead. But the most constant thing, it’s like a drum beat that never stops, is the daily rhythm of the grind.

Up early each morning working on radio programs, dealing with staffing issues and all that comes with running an organisation that produces radio and television programs around the world. And for me, as I participate in this daily grind, punctuated from time to time with some delightful days and some dreadful days.

Here’s what this beautiful clear word hope means to me. It means that just around the next corner, just over the next rise there’s something more, something better, something that is really worth looking forward to, much more than my next holiday or next trinket or bauble that this world may have to offer. A solid hope, a certain hope that one day the trials and tribulations of this world will be over and that I’ll get to spend eternity in the presence of Jesus.

It doesn’t matter who we are, what sort of life we’re leading, how rich or poor, north or south, east or west, our lives maybe, I believe that we’ve been hand crafted to hope for something in the future, I believe that there’s something innate inside each one of us that no matter how much we may delight in or despise this particular day, there is that something that reaches out to the future looking forward for, well what exactly?

Something better, something more, something beyond, something utterly delightful, you know it, don’t you? You often dream of the future, you hope for this and that. The young woman hoping for her prince charming to ride into her life. The middle-aged man hoping for release from the yoke of the mortgage that drives him to work these long hours under so much pressure. The hope of a frail, elderly, lonely woman whose joints are racked with arthritis hoping for deliverance from this world.

No matter what stage of life we’re in we’re always hoping for something. The sad thing is that we sometimes, often times, place our hope in things that simply can’t deliver what we’re looking for. I happen to enjoy technology, I like the way smartphones have revolutionised my life, sure. But I look at the hysteria, the overnight queues, the cheering and the waving that accompanies the release of certain brands of smartphones, it seems they always put it on the evening news these days as though somehow this idolatry is newsworthy and I shake my head. Surely life has to be about more than the next iPhone release, doesn’t it?

Might I ask you, what are you hoping for right now at this moment? What is the hope that is in you that keeps you going through the grind and through the dark days and through the fun days even?

Paul the Apostle was put on trial for his very life, his judge, the Roman governor, had the power of life and death over him. And in his defence this is what he says, Acts 24: 15 and 16.

I have a hope in God that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous. Therefore I do my best always to have a clear conscience towards God and all people.

When it came to the point of life and death Paul was bold enough to tell the judge that his hope was in God, his hope was in the fact that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous and it is that hope that drives who he is, what he thinks, how he behaves.

I wonder how different the life of so many people would be if instead of hoping for the trinkets that this world has to offer, instead of placing their hope in things that can’t deliver and will in any case pass away – they placed their hope in the resurrection of Jesus which is a forerunner to their own resurrection one day.

If this life is all there is, then it ain’t all that much. If I live until I’m eighty years old then I have just under nine thousand days left to go. It’s not a lot when you think about it. If I placed my hope in the here and now, well the here and now is going to be done and dusted in just under nine thousand days, not much of a hope, is it?

But if the certain hope of the promised resurrection that Jesus ushered in on that very first Easter some two thousand years ago, if that’s what I place my hope in then that’s real, that’s forever, that’s a hope in the one thing that matters, a life eternal in His presence.

As the drum beat of the daily humdrum pounds away in your ears what hope brings joy to your heart? What hope drives you to feel and to think and to act? Is it the right hope? Is it delivering you what you’ve been looking for? Well, is it?

LIVING IN FEARFUL DAYS

There have been days in my life, and I know you’ve had days like this too, where I’ve woken up after a fitful night’s sleep with a knot in the pit of my stomach; with a sense of fear and dread so deep, so unavoidable, that I felt paralysed; unable to function; unable to face the world; unable even to see the faintest glimmer of hope for the future. Can you remember the last time you experienced that feeling? It’s just awful, isn’t it? You wouldn’t wish it upon your worst enemy.

I don’t know how you celebrate Easter, but back in the days leading up to that very first Easter, there wasn’t all that much celebration going on. In fact, if you were one of those twelve disciples, celebration was the very last thing on your mind. What was dominating their thinking was fear: Gut-wrenching, that knot in the pit of your stomach, will-I-be-crucified-too kind of fear. Jesus had been warning them for some time now that He would be crucified. Matthew 16:21:

From that time on, Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on that third day be raised again.

That seemed utterly bizarre to the disciples. I mean, they’ve seen Him do amazing miracles. They’ve seen those up-close. They’ve listened to sermon after powerful sermon, where He spoke not just His wisdom into life on earth, but with authority about the kingdom of heaven like nobody else. Jesus, this Jesus, captured? Crucified? Suffering? ‘No way!’ says Peter. In fact (Matthew 16:22-23):

Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying: ‘God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!’

But Jesus turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan. You are a stumbling-block to Me, for you are setting your mind not on the divine things, but on human things.’”

I doubt very much that your reaction or mine would have been all that different in the face of the evidence that pointed to this Jesus being the real deal, the very Son of God, would it? And yet as the days drew closer to the time when Jesus would be betrayed and crucified you could feel the fear in the air, that the plot to assassinate Him was unmistakable.

It hung in the air and the disciples weren’t just confronted by the possibility of complete disillusionment of the idea of that Jesus, their Jesus, their miracle-working Jesus being crucified of all things. But in their minds, in their hearts gripped with fear they were wondering, well will I be next? Will they nail me to a cross too? Well it’s the sort of thing that the Romans do. What if I get caught up in this, what if I’m nailed hands and feet to a cross?

Then the chief priests and elders of the people gathered in the place of the high priest who was called Caiaphas and they conspired to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him. (Matthew chapter 26: 3)

All they could see and feel, these disciples, was the fear. It’s almost like they hadn’t heard the rest of the prediction from Jesus, they couldn’t hear it because they were afraid.

While Jesus was going up to Jerusalem he took the twelve disciples aside by themselves and he said to them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem and the Son of man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes and they will condemn him to death. Then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified and on the third day he will be raised up’. (Matthew 20: 17 – 18)

See, I see a lot of myself in those disciples. How about you? We’re driven by and large, you and I, by self-interest, and there is no greater motivator than self-preservation, is there; than saving your own skin, and on those days when we’re afraid, that’s all we can think about.

As we celebrate Easter this week, in a way that would have been so incredibly foreign to those fearful quivering disciples, I wonder how much your own self-interest obscures the powerful life-transforming message of hope that is Easter. I wonder.

The sad thing is that it’s especially in those dark places on those dark days that we need the peace and the hope that only Jesus can bring which is why He spoke these words to the disciples not long before the end came, John 14:27. Jesus said:

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives, do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid. (John 14:27)

The message of Easter is a double-sided message: Two sides of the one coin. It’s a message of freedom from the past, and hope for the future. It’s a message of forgiveness, and a message of a glorious future.

Some years after the terrible events of that Passover the Apostle Paul put it this way, part 1 – the message of forgiveness and grace. Paul wrote:

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace that he lavished upon us. (Ephesians 1: 7)

That bloody spectacle on the cross was all about paying the shocking price of my rebellion against God and yours. Through the suffering of Jesus we receive mercy, through the suffering of Jesus on our behalf, the punishment that we so richly deserve has been lifted from us and just a few verses later Paul talks about part 2 – the message of a glorious inheritance, the message of hope that can dwell in you and me, should dwell in you and me if we believe in Jesus. Ephesians chapter 1, verses 11 to 14.

In Christ we’ve also obtained an inheritance having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will so that we who are the first to set our hope on Christ might live for the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation and had believed in him were marked with a seal of the promised Holy Spirit. This is the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1: 11–14)

And it’s that message, that certain hope that takes the fear away.

NON POMP AND CEREMONY

Each year at Easter, on Good Friday and Easter Sunday the world’s evening news services beam images of the Churches Easter celebrations from around the globe right onto our television screens and invariably those images look something like this: they’re filmed in big lofty imposing cathedrals packed full of the faithful, there are processions of crimson clad clergy following a cross down the aisle. There are choirs covered in red and in white singing hymns and songs. There are Church leaders preaching a message to their flock.

Of course not all of us celebrate Easter like that but that’s the image we seem to project out into the world. But Easter is a time for both solemnity and celebration and that somehow what goes along with that is some considerable pomp and ceremony.

Now the abundant use of the colour red in the clothing of many clergy, harkens back to the shedding of Jesus blood, that’s what it’s meant to symbolise. But as I look at those images on my television screen year after year I wonder whether the impressions I get aren’t more about the apparent regal nature of the Church than the sacrifice of Jesus.

And frankly, I despair at many of the messages I hear preached by the religious elite. They talk about world peace or poverty or they apologise for the abuses of the Church which it seems, in recent years, are many. And I wonder sometimes whether as a whole as the body of Christ we somehow aren’t missing the point and the point of that first Easter during that fateful Passover celebration two thousand odd years ago had little, in fact no, it had nothing to do with the trappings of Easter that somehow we seemed to have heaped on the commemoration and the celebration.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the different traditions and the way they choose to commemorate and to celebrate, traditions are in many a respect are good things that is unless and until they displace the central meaning of the thing it is they represent.

That first Easter didn’t have any sense of pomp or ceremony about, in fact Jesus, well for Him it was a lonely time, an intensely painful time, a time when He suffered alone for you and for me. After He celebrated the Passover meal with His disciples and washed their feet and predicted that His betrayer was in their midst.

Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane and he said to them, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray’. He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them, ‘I am so deeply grieved even to death, stay here and stay awake with me’ and going a little further he threw himself onto the ground and prayed, ‘My Father if it’s possible let this cup pass from me yet not what I want but what you want’.

Then he came to the disciples and he found them sleeping and he said to Peter, ‘Could you not stay awake with me for one hour? Stay awake and pray that you may not come into a time of trial.’ The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak. Again Jesus went away for a second time and he prayed, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink of it, your will be done’.

Again he came and he found them sleeping for their eyes were heavy. So leaving them again he went away and prayed for the third time saying the same words. Then he came to the disciples and he said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and taking a rest? Look, the hour’s at hand, the son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners, get up, let’s be going, my betrayer is at hand.’ (Matthew 26: 36 – 46)

See, Jesus wanted His friends to be praying with Him in His hour of anguish and yet instead He wrestled with His fate alone in the dark. During His trials, there were several of them, none of His friends came and supported Him. No one stood up for Him or gave a good report about Him, NONE of them and at His arrest.

While He was still speaking, Judas one of the twelve arrived and with him was a crowd with swords and clubs from the chief priests and scribes and the elders. Now the betrayer had given them a sign saying, ‘The one whom I kiss is the man, arrest him and lead him away under guard.’

So when he came he came up to him at once and said, ‘Rabbi’ and kissed him. Then they laid hands on Jesus and arrested him but one of those who stood near draw his sword and struck the slave of the high priest cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Have you come out with your swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I was with you in the Temple teaching and you didn’t arrest me but let the Scriptures be fulfilled.’

All of them deserted him and fled. A certain young man was following him wearing nothing but a linen cloth, they caught hold of him, they let the linen cloth go and he ran off naked. (Mark 14: 43 – 52)

Jesus was alone and on the cross He hung alone, suffered alone, He died alone. Where was the pomp, where was the ceremony? There was none. Why am I sharing this with you? Because this Jesus understands suffering, He understands loneliness, He understands you and what you have to travel through because He’s been there and He’s been through much worse.

Formal Easter celebrations? Great, fantastic, awesome but if sometimes you’re left with that hollow feeling at Easter, as though what’s going on around you doesn’t really resonate with where you’re at then come with me and meet this lonely Jesus, this suffering Jesus, the Jesus who was rejected and spat upon, the nailed Jesus, the gasping Jesus and remember He did this for you, for you He did this to set you free from your bondage of sin.

And as you’ll see over the next couple of days, He did this to bring you a certain hope through His resurrection. Romans chapter 6, verse 23.

For the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So, if the pomp and the ceremony perhaps haven’t been connecting with you, forget about them, and rest for a while with Jesus: In the midst of the suffering; in the midst of the deepest inkiest blackness imaginable, you can claim this Scripture for your very own. 1 Corinthians 6:14:

“God raised the Lord, and will also raise us by His power.”

Isn’t that just so awesome? When none of the Easter pomp and ceremony connects with the deepest longings of your heart, Jesus does! The One who suffered and died for you, and the One whose dead body received life again in that lonely, empty tomb.

You see even the resurrection bit, even the bit where hope entered this world because death could no longer hold Him down, the death of my sins and yours that you and I so richly deserved, even in that most amazing moment in all of history where Jesus came back to life, it took place alone in the darkened tomb, away from the glare of the spotlights, away from the adulations of the crowds, away from the sight of any human eye.

The dead body of Jesus came to life, colour returned to His cheeks, His heart started to beat again, He started to breathe again and the resurrection body of Jesus was ready to show the world that He came to bring us hope.

I compare the two, the pomp and the ceremony of the traditional Easter celebrations of today and that amazing transaction of grace and hope that took place in the midst of extreme loneliness for Jesus. And I know which one I prefer, I know which one connects with me deep in my heart, I know which one brings hope into me – it’s Jesus.

With Easter done and dusted for another year, it’s kind of easy to forget about the Cross, Christ’s suffering, the resurrection and the empty tomb … and just get on with life. What do all those things have to do with what I have going on in my life now? But that sort of attitude can get us into a lot of trouble.

THE RIGHTEOUS MAN DESTROYED

It’s funny how we build rituals into our lives that we repeat year after year. There’s Christmas, then New Year’s. For those in the southern hemisphere, that normally means some sort of summer break. Then all too quickly, Easter rolls around, but that happens so quickly that if you blink, you miss it. Although for those in the northern hemisphere, Easter is a sure sign that their summer break is just weeks away. That’ll always give you a bit of a sense of anticipation.

Yeah, Easter is a bit of a marker in the calendar, but for many, that’s all it is. It happens and just as quickly as it came. It disappears again. And I think if that’s how we treat Easter, then we do so at our own peril because there are some lessons in Easter, there are some vitally important truths in the Easter story that can sustain us and bless us all year round, particularly if that year is not looking like it’s going to be a particularly good one.

I was having coffee with a young man the other day. He’s kind of in his mid-thirties, which may seem young from where I sit somewhere on the other side of fifty, and this young man has it all. He has a successful career as a speaker and an author and a business coach. He earns lots and lots of money, a lot more than me, certainly; and he’s a good-looking guy. Emotionally he has it together; he has everything to live for: A beautiful wife, a happy marriage, the ability to travel all round the world to all sorts of fantastic places, and his wife gets to come with him sometimes. We’re also friends on Facebook, and forever I’m seeing photos of him white-water rafting in Thailand, and popping up in London and New York, and he doesn’t fly at the back of a plane either, I have to tell you.

My point is this: If ever there was a guy that you and I would point to and say, ‘Wow! God’s blessed that person’, it would have to be this guy, without a shadow of a doubt. And yet there’s one hurt in his life. He and his wife haven’t been able to have a child yet. They’ve thrown money at the problem; in vitro fertilisation; they’ve prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and still, nothing.

You see, it doesn’t matter who we are; where we live; what our circumstances are. It doesn’t matter how incredibly blessed someone is; there is always something in our lives that isn’t to our liking. There is always something in our lives that we want to be able to change. There is always something in our lives that causes us pain.

You and I, we would look at this guy’s life, then look up at God and say, ‘Yes, please, Lord. I’ll have one like that, thanks.’ We keep thinking that if only I could earn a bit more money; if only my husband, or my wife as the case may be, would love me just that little bit more; if only I could find the right job; if only my children would grow out of this difficult stage that they’re in at the moment; if only I could lose a few extra pounds; if only I could afford that little bit of cosmetic surgery; if only, if only, if only … then I would finally be happy. That’s a lie that most people tell themselves most of the time.

Of course, if you had a quick look back at the cross for a moment, and saw this Jesus who’d never done a single thing wrong in His life hanging there, nailed to His cross, hands and feet, gasping for air, slowly dying that excruciating death, we’d realise that bad things happen to good people all the time. Suffering happens. God didn’t even spare His own Son from that.

And while sometimes we suffer as a result of our own mistakes and stupidity, more often than not, the suffering that hits our lives is completely unfair; no rhyme or reasons. It just happens, and while we’re asking ourselves why, while we’re asking God why and when will it end, it’s in the middle of that place that we need to know beyond any shadow of a doubt. It’s right in that dark place that you and I need to be able to declare, ‘My Redeemer lives’.

Sure; that’s the title of a great worship-song – “My Redeemer Lives”; quite a happy-clappy song as I recall, a great one to sing, but for me, it’s way, way more important to be able to mutter through gritted teeth as I’m dealing with pain and uncertainty and fear in my life – ‘My Redeemer lives!’ And that’s what we’re going to be talking about on the programme today and through the course of this week.

Those words were first uttered by a man called Job in the Old Testament. Now Job was a wealthy, successful man, just like the one I described earlier. He’d never set a foot wrong in his life, always honoured God, and then one day, whammo! Have a listen to this.

One day, the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. The LORD said to Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’

Satan answered the LORD, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down upon it.’ 

And the LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’

Then Satan answered the LORD, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house, and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land, but stretch out Your hand now and touch all that he has, and he will curse You to Your face.’

The LORD said to Satan, ‘Very well. All that he has is in your power, only do not stretch out your hand against him.’ So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. (Job 1:6-12)

What a rotten thing to happen to this guy, Job. What a rotten thing for the devil to do. Hey, what a rotten thing for God to do! Right? Everything’s going along swimmingly well and then, throughout the book of Job, we discover how he loses everything: Everything – his property, his children, his health, everything – from rooster to feather duster in one fowl swoop.

So let me ask you: When you hit a patch like that in your life, as we all inevitably do, when you have that one bit of suffering in your life, how do you react? What does it do to your sense of self-worth, to your sense of wellbeing, to what you think of God?

Let’s see what else happened to Job, starting in the very next verse:

 One day, when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the eldest brother’s house, a messenger came to Job and said, ‘The oxen were ploughing and the donkeys were feeding beside them, and the Sabeans fell upon them and carried them off and killed the servants with the edge of the sword. I alone have escaped to tell you.’ 

While he was still speaking, another came and said, ‘The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them. I alone have escaped to tell you.’

While he was speaking, another came and said, ‘The Chaldeans formed three columns, made a raid on the camels and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword. I alone have escaped to tell you.’ 

While he was still speaking, another came and said: ‘Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people and they are dead. I alone have escaped to tell you.’ (Job 1:13-19)

That’s the sort of suffering that strikes from time to time, and it’s rarely just one thing. More often than not, it comes in groups of three or four, so when that happens, how do you respond?

I’ll leave that question hanging there for you to consider. We’ll come back to that again after the break, because it’s right in the middle of a situation like that, that you and I need answers. Suffering happens, wow. Someone should turn that into a bumper sticker, right? Suffering happens. It happens, and when it does, God has answers – some real answers that make a real difference.

THE DEVIL’S TRICKERY

When your life hits a patch of suffering, as every life on this planet does from time to tome, how do you react? How do you respond? Mostly we go to God and we ask Him why and when is it going to end, right? We desperately want to know why this is happening to us, and we desperately want it to end. Those are the two compelling forces that drive us forward in suffering.

It was certainly like that for Job: A good man, a righteous man (whom we meet in the Old Testament), until the devil comes after him with a pickaxe. Let’s have a listen.

One day, the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. The LORD said to Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’

Satan answered the LORD, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down upon it.’

And the LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’

Then Satan answered the LORD, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house, and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land, but stretch out Your hand now and touch all that he has, and he will curse You to Your face.’

The Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well. All that he has is in your power, only do not stretch out your hand against him.’ So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD. (Job 1:6-12)

Now this is a fascinating passage of Scripture because it goes to the issue of over-spiritualisation and under-spiritualisation that I mentioned a bit earlier.

See, all too often, something bad happens to us and we look at the physical circumstances – the people; the issues; the troubles we’re dealing with, and we completely forget about the spiritual realm.

The apostle Paul, many years later, put it this way. Ephesians 6:10-11:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His power. But put on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against rulers, against authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Make no mistake about it. There is a spiritual battle going on in the heavenly places for your soul. If we miss that, we end up completely missing what’s going on when it comes to suffering that we’re going through. But there’s something incredibly odd that happens here in that passage about Job where the devil goes to God. Did you pick it? Here it is again. The devil says:

But stretch out Your hand now and touch all that he has, and he will curse You to Your face.’

So the Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well. All that he has is in your power, only do not stretch out your hand against him.’ So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.

Did you notice that the devil has to go to God to ask Him permission to ruin Job’s life? Because according to the devil, God has put a fence around him and his house and all that he has on every side.

That Hebrew word for fence literally means a deep thick hedge of protection, like the ones that shepherds used to grow out in the pastures. At night, they would put their sheep in it and they would sleep across the entrance to protect their flock from wild animals and thieves: A thick, dense, impenetrable hedge; a hedge so thick that Satan can’t break through it. And with God standing at the entrance, the devil can only enter with God’s permission.

Listen up. If you love Jesus, then you belong to God, and as with Job, He has put a hedge of protection around you. When the devil attacks you, he can only do it with God’s permission.

Have you ever felt spiritually attacked? Sure you have; so have I. What do you imagine God’s doing when the devil comes after you with a pickaxe? Has God fallen asleep? Has He wandered off somewhere? Has the devil overwhelmed Him? No! None of those things. God has given the devil permission to attack you. Now that may sound crazy to some. ‘What? Why would God do that?’

That’s something that Job asks God over and over again. He runs the line with God. ‘Hang on, Lord. Aren’t I a good guy? Haven’t I obeyed You in every part of my life? So why are you punishing me like this? Why are you doing this?’

And God’s answer to Job is, in effect: ‘Job, it’s none of your business.’ Years later, James put it this way in his New Testament letter.

 My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but pure joy because you know that the testing in your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4)

God always has a purpose for allowing the devil to attack us, and to bring suffering: Always. It’s not something that He does lightly, and the devil (far from having overwhelmed God) is simply a tool in God’s hands to knock off the rough edges and smooth the surfaces, like a piece of sandpaper. And when God’s done with him, He’ll throw him into the lake of fire.

That’s the important thing for you and me to know when we’re suffering, especially when we have that sense that we’re being spiritually attacked. God is in control! My Redeemer lives! That’s something that Job knew deep inside in his being because when he lost everything, this is what he did. Job 1:20-22:

Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshipped. He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.”

So let me ask you again, how would you react? How do you react? Because how we react say everything about what we believe, and who we are, and our relationship with God.

It feels somewhat unnatural to worship God in the midst of suffering. In fact, not somewhat unnatural – completely unnatural because when we’re suffering, our hearts and our minds start to turn away from God. We question Him; we put Him on trial; we demand answers, like a prosecuting attorney. And when He doesn’t give us any, we give up on Him and focus on our suffering. Fear creeps in; uncertainty and worry creep in, and at that point … Listen to me. At that point, the devil is winning.

God opened the gate for the devil to enter to see what we would do; how we would react. God’s plan is to test our faith. God’s plan is to allow the ravages of the devil to give us the opportunity to exercise our faith. What He’s looking for in you and me, through gritted teeth, is to utter those words that Job uttered, ‘My Redeemer lives’.

What God’s looking for is for us to worship Him; to completely trust our lives into His hands, despite what circumstances are screaming at us. Just like Job, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’.

We don’t really know that our Redeemer lives until we’ve come to know that in the place of suffering. That’s when the unjust suffering of Jesus starts to make sense in our own experience. That’s when the empty tomb has its most powerful effect in our lives. That’s when our faith, all of a sudden, becomes real. And when we come out the other end of it all, having exercised the muscle of faith, all of a sudden we discover that our faith is much, much stronger for having been through it.

So, when suffering comes your way, how will you respond?

BEFORE THE STORM HITS

I want you to imagine that you’re the captain of a ship that’s about to set sail. The weather forecast is for storms out there on the sea. You look out at all the shipping containers stacked high on your vessel, and you think to yourself: ‘Hmmm. I’d better make sure that the crew secures them all’, so here’s my question: Would you make the crew secure them before you left port, or would you wait until the storm hits to send them out there to latch down your precious cargo? The answer’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? So why is it in life that we wait until the storm hits before we go running to God to ask for help? Why aren’t we prepared, just as any good ship’s captain would be? We don’t want to wait until the storm hits to get close to God. We need the wisdom of God in us before the storm hits. We need to know the truth, because it’s not the truth alone that sets us free according to Jesus; it’s knowing the truth. John 8:31:

If you abide in My Word, you are truly My disciples. And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

 You have to know the truth, and you need to know it before the storm hits. The book of Proverbs chapter 1: God teaches us very clearly that we need to be ready for the storm. We need to be in God’s Word and filled with His wisdom, and prepared for the onslaught when it comes. Solomon writes this. He says (Proverbs 1:24-29):

Wisdom is calling out to us on the street. She stands on the street corners, calling, wanting to make her words known to us. ‘But because I have called and you have refused, have stretched out my hand and no one heeded, and because you have ignored all my counsel and would have none of my reproof, I also will laugh at your calamity. I will mock when panic strikes you; when panic strikes you like a storm, and your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you. Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently, but they will not find me because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD.’

Friend, listen to me. God is your strength. He is your counsel, and if you’re a man or a woman of God’s Word, someone who allows the Word of Christ to dwell richly in you, then when the storm comes as it most certainly will, you in the face of calamity and criticism will be able to declare through the tears and the gritted teeth of pain: ‘My Redeemer lives!’

Back when God’s judgment fell on Jerusalem because His people had sinned against Him yet again, when He allowed the city and the temple to be destroyed by the Babylonians, when God’s people were taken into captivity as slaves, the writer of the book of Lamentations was standing in the midst of this devastation, surveying the complete destruction of the great Jerusalem and the temple of the living God. After lamenting the destruction and the loss, this is what he said (Lamentations 3:20-26):

The thought of my affliction, my homelessness, is wormwood and gall; my soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. The LORD is my Portion, says my soul; therefore I will hope in Him. The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, the soul that seeks Him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD.

With all the devastation and destruction that we sometimes see in our lives, you and I can know that the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. In fact, they are new every morning, and that’s what we would know in the midst of devastation if as men and women of God, we took the time to get ready for it. And as your soul seeks Him and waits quietly for His salvation, know this: He is doing a mighty work in you. He is doing things in you that you cannot begin to imagine. The greatest transformations of your life will almost always happen on those dark nights of the soul, and it is good for you to wait quietly for His salvation.