Sunday Morning, October 6, 2019 AM

Let's pray together.

Father, we come before you this morning, and we'd like to intercede for

the many who are sick today, struggling, unable to come, and

those who are taking care of them and ministering to them.

I pray that you would bear them up and bless them and

give them an encouraging word from your Scriptures today.

They would think upon you and give you praise and lean into your promises today.

Lord, I pray that you would watch over those who are traveling away from us.

Lord, we miss them and ask that you would restore them to fellowship soon, Father.

I pray for those who have come here today, and Lord, I thank you for this opportunity.

I thank you for the truth and the power of your word, and I pray that you would guide us

in our thinking, transform us in our lives,

conform us to the image of your Son, we pray.

We pray all these things, looking only to Christ, the one with whom you are well -pleased.

A .W. Tozer said, what comes into our minds when

we think about God is the most important thing about us.

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

And what comes into our minds when we think about God happens

precisely in every time we pray.

Every time we pray, we are praying to God, and we're thinking

about who He is, the promises He has made, the things that He has

done, the character He has revealed.

So when we pray, we're thinking about God, and I think

Tozer is right when he assesses that as the most important thing about us.

I say that because Jeremiah is praying in this passage, Jeremiah 32,

verses 16 through 25.

He is praying.

We looked at this last week where he is praying in response to his own

obedience to God.

He's trying to make sense of it.

He's wondering what he's supposed to think after he's obeyed God and walked by faith rather than by sight.

And he's praying to God.

And what does he think about God as he prays?

This passage is very instructive to us as we watch Jeremiah, our fellow

believer, praying to God.

What is he thinking about God?

How is he making an account of his obedience and the circumstances in which he lives?

Jeremiah has bought a worthless piece of property because he is the kinsman redeemer to his cousin, and he has

preserved the deeds instructed by God, preserved the deeds to this worthless property.

That's a sign that God would keep his promises.

So Jeremiah has obeyed God's instructions and is now praying through the aftermath of that obedience.

His battle for faith is fought on two fronts.

We've seen the one.

We're looking at the other today.

On the first one is the seemingly empty results of his

costly obedience.

As we talked about last week, he spent 17 shekels of silver for land from which he will never profit.

But God's purpose in Jeremiah buying this land is to craft an artifact to

bolster the current generation of exiles and to guide the next generation

back home.

So what Jeremiah does in his obedience is to walk by faith and not by sight.

And through his example, the exiles are instructed in the very same way.

And so we talked about last week, what am I to think?

What is Jeremiah then to think after he obeys and it doesn't feel like a win?

Has he really gained anything at all?

His situation is still pathetic.

He's just more poor.

The only thing that has changed when it comes down to the details is the fact that his

coin pouch is lighter than it was before.

But where is the payoff?

He doesn't see it in the here and now.

And as we look at Jeremiah praying to God, we see him following a pattern that is

outlined for us in Jude.

Building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God,

waiting anxiously for the salvation which is to come through Jesus Christ.

Jeremiah keeps himself in the love of God.

How?

By building himself up on his most holy faith.

How?

By praying in the Holy Spirit in agreement with the truth of God's Word.

By waiting anxiously for the fulfillment of God's promises.

So he fights the battle for his faith on that front.

What about the second front?

That's what we're going to look at this morning.

So if you have your Bibles, I invite you to stand with me as I read Jeremiah 32,

verses 16 through 25.

This is the Word of the Lord.

After I had given the deed of purchase to Baruch the son of Neriah, then I prayed to the Lord, saying,

Ah, Lord God, behold, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your

outstretched arm.

Nothing is too difficult for you.

Who shows loving kindness to thousands, but repays the iniquity of fathers into the bosom

of their children after them.

Oh, great and mighty God, the Lord of hosts is his name.

Great in counsel and mighty indeed.

Whose eyes are open to all the ways of the sons of men, giving to everyone according to his ways and according to

the fruit of his deeds.

Who has set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, and even to this day, both in Israel and among mankind.

And you have made a name for yourself as at this day.

You brought your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and wonders and with a strong hand and with

an outstretched arm and with great terror and gave them this land, which you swore to their

forefathers to give them.

A land flowing with milk and honey.

They came in and took possession of it, but they did not obey your voice or

walk in your law.

They have done nothing of all that you commanded them to do.

Therefore, you have made all this calamity come upon them.

Behold, the siege ramps of the Chaldeans who fight against it because of the sword,

the famine and the pestilence.

And what you have spoken has come to pass.

And behold, you see it.

And you said to me, O Lord God, buy for yourself the field with money

and call in witnesses.

Although the city is given into the hand of the Chaldeans.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Last week I spoke about Christians I know who sacrifice, confront

and reconcile at great cost to themselves.

They don't live for the immediate results.

They walk by faith rather than by sight.

Often the immediate result of obedience is additional stress.

An increase of worry, a slight sense of regret.

But we must keep ourselves in the love of God, praying the praise of a

sovereign creator whose promises of deliverance never fail.

We fight the front.

We fight for our faith on that front.

But as it so often happens, these kinds of acts of obedience are not

launched from the manicured lawns of trouble free lives.

And this is the second front on which we fight for faith.

Jeremiah's battle is on two fronts.

The first, what is the point of disobedience?

The second, how do I account for my suffering?

The first is trying to understand how does this obedience bring glory to God?

How is this actually what I should be doing?

The second one, the second question, what else am I to think has to do with

making an account of our suffering?

After telling himself, after Jeremiah tells himself with his interjection of faith,

Aha! Adonai Yahweh.

After he says, Ah, Lord God.

And he says, Behold, you have made the heavens and the earth.

After he tells himself to behold God and His sovereign power, then we

hear him inviting God to behold the city of Jerusalem.

Surrounded by the Babylonians, the siege ramps on the wall, the city about to fall.

And asks God to see it.

And he says, You do see it.

And he's making an account of his suffering.

His trials, his tribulations.

How do we make sense of our suffering in our walk by

faith rather than by sight?

Because the admonition that we walk by faith and not by sight, when we say

sight, we also mean feeling.

We also mean not just what we see, but what we

hear, what we feel, what's going on in our current

circumstances.

It is out of our suffering that we're called to walk by faith, not by sight.

Yes, of course, if everything was fine, and if we really did live with a manicured lawn of a trouble -free life,

and everything was peaceful and calm, and everything was working just fine, and then God called us to do

something that was not in the norm, that maybe cost

us something, we would still have to walk by faith rather than by sight.

But as so often happens, that's not when it usually happens.

It usually happens in the context of our suffering.

And we can easily make a list, for anybody who would care to listen, of the top ten

trials and tribulations, worries, concerns, and pains of our life.

It wouldn't take us very long.

We know exactly what they are.

And we may even have them listed in a rank, if we're very organized.

But how do we make an account of that?

This is usually when it happens.

It was out of her wounds.

It was from her tortured past.

It was from her broken heart that the sinful woman who was known for her

sin broke her alabaster vial of perfume, the costly obedience,

anointing Christ for his coming suffering, torture, death, and burial.

She was walking by faith, not by sight, with costly obedience.

But notice, she did it out of her suffering.

It was after being beaten by rods, and having their feet fastened in the stalks, that Paul and Silas prayed and sang

hymns of praise to God.

What good are hymns when you're in jail?

They walked by faith and not by sight.

And notice, they were doing it out of their suffering.

We have to make an account of our suffering if we're going to walk by faith and not by

sight.

If we're going to be spiritually minded.

Last week, we talked about the illustration of the cake.

The sweet icing is this truth about God's sovereignty, his power in

creation.

God's in charge.

He's got it all.

He has it in hand.

But this sweet icing on the cake that melts all the way down through the cake,

it's mingled with a very bitter cake in this text.

And very often, it's mingled with a very bitter cake in our lives.

The suffering. The tribulations.

The trials.

We'd rather just eat the icing.

But nonetheless, the whole thing is in our Christian experience.

And sometimes it's wearisome to keep walking by faith when we're suffering, when we have pain.

But when walking by faith wearies us, we are to rest in God's love.

We are to keep ourselves in the love of God.

How do we do that?

By building ourselves up on our most holy faith.

Praying in the Holy Spirit.

Waiting anxiously for the fullness of all the salvation that God has accomplished for us in

Christ.

Last week, we talked about the sweet theme of God's sovereignty in creation.

Now, the bitter cake.

God's severity in covenant.

God's severity in covenant.

We are not left in doubt, in this passage or anywhere else for that matter, in the Bible, as to

how serious God is about His covenant with Israel.

His agreement with Israel.

He has called them to be a certain kind of people living in a certain kind of way to

steward a certain kind of place.

And as Jeremiah is going through this process of keeping himself in the love of God, he makes an

account of his suffering in light of the covenant of

God.

Notice how verse 18 reads.

He describes God this way.

Who shows loving kindness.

Who shows grace.

Who shows mercy.

Who shows chesed.

This idea that God loves us not because of who we

are, but because of who He is.

You show loving kindness, listen, to thousands.

Undeserved love.

Undeserved faithfulness.

This is the definition of loving kindness.

The very definition of the word means that this is a love that is utterly undeserved.

And God shows loving kindness to thousands.

But repays the iniquity of fathers into the bosom of their children after

them.

How do we account for that?

Jeremiah is thinking accurately.

He is thinking biblically.

He is thinking rightly in this moment.

Jeremiah is shut up by the palace guard.

He is in prison after being beaten

by the people for preaching the word of God.

He is suffering for preaching the word of God.

And his situation is made worse by the fact that the whole city is under siege.

So food is scarce.

Starvation is common.

Disease becomes rampant.

People are getting scared and they're just losing it.

And the Chaldeans are about to take the city.

And so his suffering in prison is only made the much worse by the

fact that Jerusalem is just about to be destroyed.

And if you take the time to read Lamentations, the five poems that

Jeremiah wrote about the disaster and the destruction of Jerusalem, you will know what kind of

suffering he experienced in his soul witnessing the suffering all around

him.

How does he make an account for this exceptional degree of suffering?

Yes, he's trying to walk by faith rather than by sight.

Yes, he has acted in obedience.

But what of the suffering?

What of the tribulation in which he lives?

He explains it in terms of the old covenant.

Yes, of course, there's a remnant that know God's grace, thousands even.

But God is repaying the iniquity of fathers into the bosom of their children after them.

The reason why Jeremiah and the rest of everyone else who was in Jerusalem, the

reason why their suffering is because of Manasseh,

because of all the wickedness of Manasseh and his son

and his grandson and his great grandson and all these generations of wickedness

of the kings of Israel.

And God is repaying the iniquity of fathers into the bosom of their children after them.

Even though Josiah was a good king, a righteous king, who turned to the Lord with all his heart unlike any other king

who had ever lived before him, God said, for his sake, not in his

time, but after his time, the destruction will come and it will come because of the sins of

the former generations.

It's unavoidable.

This is a uniquely, distinctly facet of the old covenant.

This is old covenant arrangement by definition.

It was brightly said in the old covenant.

And we saw this in the previous chapter.

It was rightly said in the old covenant.

The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.

Why?

This was not part of the justice system of Israel.

This was not part of the civil punishment of Israel.

God was very clear in the civil government in the way that the judges were to hand down

rulings.

The sons of the fathers would not be punished for the crimes of the fathers in the civil justice system.

That's not how it was supposed to work.

But in God's covenant arrangement with Israel, as God called them to be a nation for the

nations, expressing who God was, living as this caretaker

mediator to show God to the nations and show people how to be forgiven of their sins.

When one generation failed and turned away from the Lord, then this impacted the next

generation, which impacted the next generation.

And the whole thing was going off the rails.

And God promised curses, covenant curses, judgments, punishments

on generational lines because of sin.

Lamentations 5 -7, Jeremiah sums up the reason why Jerusalem was destroyed.

He said it this way.

Our fathers sinned and are no more.

It is we who have borne their iniquities.

This is not to say that Jeremiah's generation who bore the weight of the judgment was sinless themselves.

They were very wicked indeed as well.

But the weight of the judgment, the greatness, the magnitude of the judgment was not

for their crimes alone against, for their breaking the covenant.

It was all the covenant breaking down through the generations that came slamming upon that one generation

in the destruction of Jerusalem.

This is a uniquely old covenant idea.

This is exactly what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 23, when he is describing the

destruction, the coming destruction of Jerusalem.

In Matthew chapter 23, he is rebuking, saying, Woe, woe,

woe to the Pharisees, the religious leaders, the scribes and so on.

And this is what he says, verse 31.

You testify against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.

Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers.

You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?

Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes.

Some of them you will kill and crucify.

Some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city.

Verse 35, now listen, this is a very old covenant idea.

So that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood

shed on earth.

From the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the

altar.

Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills

the prophets and stones those who sent to her.

How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.

And you were unwilling.

Behold, your house is being left to you desolate.

Actually, that's an old covenant.

That's an old covenant idea.

Here comes, here comes the weight of all this covenant breaking.

And all of this guilt is going to be focused right here, built up upon this generation who are guilty

themselves of breaking covenant.

And the judgment for all that covenant breaking will be settled here.

So Jeremiah, I think it's important for us to recognize, when Jeremiah begins to talk about God's severity

and covenant, how God was severe with Egypt, and how God is being

severe with Israel, Jeremiah is locating his suffering

inside that story.

Why is Jeremiah suffering?

Why is Jeremiah suffering in a prison inside Jerusalem?

Why are things bad?

Why?

Because of God's covenant arrangement with Israel.

Because, because they have broken covenant, therefore, here comes the suffering, and Jeremiah is caught

up in it.

Now, we're going to see how that's important in a moment.

Now, let's look at what Jeremiah talks about.

Notice how he places the ups and downs of his personal experience

into the context of the ups and downs of Israel's entire history.

He's thinking about his personal suffering in light of the whole covenant arrangement of God

with Israel.

Verses 21 and 22, Jeremiah 32.

He says, You brought your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs and with wonders, and with a strong hand, and with

an outstretched arm, and with great terror, and gave them this land which you swore to their

forefathers to give them, a land flowing with milk and honey.

And so, first of all, we hear about God setting signs and wonders in the land of Egypt.

What were these?

These were deconstructive miracles.

In Exodus 10 -2, God says very specifically what he's doing

in all these signs and wonders, in all these miracles, these plagues, we call them the ten plagues of Egypt.

Precisely what he's doing is he is mocking the Egyptians.

Another way of translating it is he's toying with the Egyptians.

You see, while he's in the process of breaking apart their physical world, he's

actually disintegrating their spiritual world.

He says, You believe in all these gods, Egyptians, and you've taught my

people to think that they're real?

Watch this.

You have your powerful scepter by which you think you can do miracles by demonic power?

Watch this.

And Moses has this crummy old shepherd staff.

And he does what God tells him to do.

And all of a sudden, the powers that the Egyptians thought their gods had, turns out

the Lord of hosts controls it all, and all their gods are false.

They're nothing.

So God's truth in these miracles, these plagues, is swallowing up

the gods of Egypt, even as the Red Sea swallowed up Pharaoh and his army.

These deconstructive miracles were meant to mock Egypt, disproving their false gods, but also

they were delivering his people from slavery.

God told Pharaoh, Exodus 4, Israel is my son, my

firstborn.

Let my son go that he may serve me, but you have refused to let him go.

Behold, I will kill your son, your firstborn.

Do you hear the severity of that?

Do you hear the severity of God?

He says, these are my covenant people,.

And you're doing this to them,.

Therefore I will do this to you.

And God brings the judgment.

And so, Jeremiah is thinking about his suffering.

He's thinking about, I bought this land, and yet I'm in prison, and the city's about to fall.

How do I make sense of this?

And so he locates his suffering inside the covenant story of Israel, inside the old covenant.

So he's thinking about God.

He deals severely with Egypt, setting up signs and wonders to bring fame to himself, and delivering his people.

But after he's delivered his people, and brings them into the land flowing with milk and honey, what do those people do?

They disobey.

They break covenant.

Verses 23 and 24.

They came in and took possession of it, but they did not obey your voice or walk in your law.

They have done nothing of all that you commanded them to do, therefore you have made all this

calamity come upon them.

Specifically, verse 24, behold the siege ramps have reached the city to take it, and the

city is given into the hand of the Chaldeans, who fight against it because of the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, and what you

have spoken has come to pass.

And behold, you see it.

They have done nothing of all that you have commanded them.

They have not loved God supremely.

They have not loved each other rightly.

They have not stewarded the creation, the land, the possessions that God has given to them with righteousness.

They have broken all of his commandments.

They have broken his covenant.

They are not living as a nation for the nations.

They are not fulfilling their role as God's caretaker, mediator, to show

people the way of salvation.

And so, the calamity, the promised calamity, that God said would happen

is now being poured out upon the people.

The promised curses, the promised punishments, many of them are listed there in Deuteronomy 28.

You can read about them and then read the account of lamentations, and you see all sorts of fulfillments and

parallels.

The promised judgment of God had arrived.

Jeremiah 27, verse 8, we've already heard this passage, but

this is what God said would happen to those who resist his servant Nebuchadnezzar, the one who would bring judgment.

I will punish that nation with the sword, with famine, and with pestilence.

Well, sword, famine, and pestilence have come, just as God had said.

And the Chaldeans are about to take Jerusalem.

In Daniel chapter 9, 10 through 14, this is Daniel's reflection on

what has happened.

Several years, the retrospect.

Nor have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God to walk in his teachings, which he set before us through his

servants, the prophets.

Indeed, all Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside, not obeying your voice.

So the curse has been poured out on us along with the oath, which is written in the law of Moses, the servant of

God, for we have sinned against him.

Thus he has confirmed his words, which he had spoken against us and against our rulers, who

ruled us, to bring on us great calamity.

For under the whole heaven there has not been done anything like what was done to Jerusalem.

As it is written in the law of Moses, all this calamity has come on us, yet we have not sought the favor of the

Lord our God by turning from our iniquity and giving attention to your truth.

Therefore the Lord has kept the calamity in store and brought it on us.

For the Lord our God is righteous with respect to all his deeds which he has done, but we have not obeyed his

voice.

That sounds a little bit like Jeremiah 32.

It's because Daniel was reading Jeremiah at the time and was asking God some questions about how to

understand the prophecies of Jeremiah.

So what God did, he did not only set signs and wonders for his great fame

against Egypt, but it also says that he set

signs and wonders in among Israel and among the

nations.

Not only did he pour out plagues upon Egypt, he also poured out

plagues upon Israel.

We see his severity in covenant.

Jeremiah is trying to make sense of his sufferings.

Why am I suffering this way?

Why am I in prison?

Why are these people persecuting me?

Why is the city surrounded?

Why all this tribulation?

Why this suffering?

Because of the severity of God in covenant.

Jeremiah is making sense.

He's making an account of his suffering.

This is part of the fight for faith.

And this severity is something that God is following through for the

reason he always does whatever he does for his own renown, for his own glory.

Verse 20.

Who has set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt and even to this day both in Israel and among mankind.

Signs and wonders, plagues and disasters, judgments all over the place.

And you have made a name for yourself.

You have made a name for yourself as at this day.

The Old Testament is filled with this language of you have made a name for yourself

as at this day.

That phrase is used in many, many different Old Testament

books when describing what God did in redeeming his people up out of Egypt.

He took down the most powerful man in all the world and did so in a very short time with

mighty wonders and plagues and basically extracted the entire

workforce of a nation, destroyed the most powerful

nation's army on the earth and did it all in such short order and his

people never had to fire a single arrow and never had to pick up a sword.

He made a name for himself.

He made a name for himself in redeeming his people.

Nehemiah 9 and 10 is one example.

But there's many, especially in the Psalms.

He made a name for yourself in delivering your people.

Nehemiah 9 and 10.

Then you performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh, against all his servants and all the people of his land.

For you knew that they acted arrogantly toward them and made a name for yourself as it is to this day.

So fame and redeeming his son up out of his son, his son Israel up out of Egypt.

But also fame and restoring his son is on the horizon.

Now, when God judged Israel, he did it in such a way that all the nations would know

why.

When you read the Old Testament prophets and it talks about the destruction of Jerusalem, it would say that the nations will

pass by Jerusalem and they will look at Jerusalem and hiss and wag their head and ask,

why has God done this to his great city wherein he had put his

name?

And then the answer will come back because of all the sin and the wickedness of his people.

And that's how he's making himself a name.

Whether Israel cooperates or not, he's using Israel to show the nations who

he is in his holiness, in his righteousness, in his faithfulness that he keeps his promises.

So Jeremiah 6, 18 through 19, therefore hear O nations and know O congregation, what

is among them, hear O earth.

Behold, I am bringing disaster on this people, the fruit of their plans, because they have

not listened to my words.

And as for my law, they have rejected it also.

Someone takes the nations who I am by judging my faithless people, God says.

But then when God restores them, when God has grace upon them, when God brings them back to the

land, when God forgives, when God restores, and these promises as they are mixed together

with promises of the new covenant, what then will be said,

Ezekiel 36, beginning in verse 22, therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God,

it is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I'm about to act, but,

that's the only reason why he does anything, for my holy name,

which you have profaned among the nations where you went.

I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, which you have profaned in their

midst.

He's going to vindicate it.

Then, listen to the benefit, the grace to the nations.

Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God.

When I prove myself holy among you in their sight, for I will take you from the

nations, gather you from all the lands, and bring you into your own land.

And here's the passage where Jesus quotes, what Jesus alludes to and quotes when he's

witnessing and evangelizing Nicodemus.

That I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean.

I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols.

Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and

give you a heart of flesh.

I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and you will be careful to observe all my ordinances.

It's the law of God written upon the heart, the new covenant promise.

And so God is saying, when I do that, when I show grace, this too will

teach all the nations who I am.

And the fame of the gospel is spread.

Now Jeremiah, he knows that, he's written this, he's been

preaching it,.

But he is suffering.

He is suffering in a number of ways.

And he's making an account of his sufferings.

He's trying to keep himself in the love of God.

He's obeyed, he's done what he's called to do, but now he needs to make an account of his sufferings.

Because all that really has changed is that he's still suffering, but he's just more poor than he was before.

He lost 17 shekels in a bad real estate deal.

But he's still suffering, so how does he make sense of that?

Well, he puts his suffering into the context of God's covenant.

We are not to consider our afflictions or our sufferings,

however we would call them, our tribulations or our trials, we're not to consider them

unless they're in the context of God's covenant dealings with his

son.

Jeremiah put his sufferings in the context of God's covenant dealings with his son, Israel.

Lower S.

Now that Christ has come, we are not to consider our sufferings other

than in the context of God's covenant dealings with his son, capital S.

This is how we're to think about our sufferings.

How can we abide in God's love if we do not think of our suffering in light

of Christ?

We're not in the old covenant where the guilt of the fathers is

gut -punched into their children.

We're not in the old covenant.

We don't have a faithless, waffling, caretaker mediator.

We have the perfect, faithful, fulfilling mediator.

Praise be to God,.

The old covenant is gone.

We have Christ as our mediator, the one mediator between God and man.

And so when we think about our sufferings, we're not thinking in terms of old covenant.

We're thinking in terms of new covenant.

Thinking in terms of Christ.

How can we, who are saved by the covenant sufferings of Christ,

not follow his example and think of our sufferings in light of the covenant he makes?

When Jesus suffered, what did he think?

Did he know why he was suffering?

Because he's the faithful son of the father.

Because the father asked him to.

The father told him to do this.

And the son submitted to the father.

And he went and suffered as the father had commanded him, as was agreed from before

eternity passed.

Hebrews 2, 4, and 12 tell us that Jesus understood what his suffering meant.

And he understood it in light of the covenant he was establishing and bringing about.

He tells his own disciples at the last supper of the

bread and the wine.

He knew his broken body and his shed blood was bringing about the new covenant.

He understood his sufferings in light of the covenant of God.

And by this he saves us and in this he leads us.

Remember Isaiah 53 verses 4 and 5 Speaking of the

Messiah, speaking of Christ.

Surely, surely our griefs he himself bore and our

sorrows he carried.

The translation is surely our pains he himself bore and our sickness he

carried.

Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced through for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities.

The chastening for our well -being fell upon him.

By his scourging we are healed.

In verse 11 of Isaiah 53 As a result of the anguish of his soul he will

see it and be satisfied.

The father is satisfied in the anguish of the son.

The son satisfies the justice of the father.

And by his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant will justify the

many as he will bear their iniquities.

We cannot think of our pain, our sickness, our

suffering, our sorrow, any kind of trial, any kind of tribulation

outside of how God dealt severely with Christ for our sake.

It says he bore it all.

That means, that means he has justified it all.

I don't suffer outside of Christ.

And neither do you.

I don't get sick outside of Christ.

And neither do you.

I don't fill up my study notes with tears outside of

Christ.

And neither are your tears shed outside of Christ.

For Christ has purchased us and he has purchased us entirely.

Now, we have to make an account for our suffering.

So we have, first of all, we need to, if we're going to keep ourselves in the love of God, here's how we build ourselves up

on our most holy faith when it comes to suffering.

Christian suffering is never outside of Christ's suffering.

He has suffered for our suffering.

What does that mean?

Well, first and foremost, when we suffer, we have the tendency to think, I deserve it.

Some of us, that's the first thing.

I did something to deserve this.

God's upset with me.

You've probably gone down this road.

Something happens.

The bottom falls out of something.

Something bad happened and then you say, God's upset with me.

He's after me because I've done something wrong and now I will be punished for my sins.

If you're in Christ, Christ was punished for your sins.

Not you.

You're not a worthy sacrifice.

I'm not either.

God's not punishing you and judging you for your sins when you suffer.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

And it changes the way if we're going to build ourselves up on our most holy faith.

This changes the way we understand about God's sovereign providence.

There's a smile behind the storm.

Whatever we're going through,.

Whatever suffering we're in, we can understand that there is no condemnation.

So it's not like God has stopped welcoming us and loving us and

embracing us as he would his only begotten son if we're in Christ.

Even if we suffer.

God's countenance, his smile of favor upon us has not changed.

The weather may have changed.

There may be overcast clouds.

There may be a storm.

But the countenance of God has never changed.

It changes how we interpret our status before God and man.

How many men?

How many women?

How many people have made headway as false teachers among the people of God by cracking the

whip of guilt?

It's not hard to make Christians feel guilty.

We're supposed to feel sorry for our sins.

Right?

We're supposed to be sensitive to the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

To repent of our sins and seek forgiveness in Christ.

It's not hard to make Christians feel guilty.

But false teachers crack the whip of guilt and condemn us for this, that, or the other

to get us to start believing a false gospel.

But.

Who is he who condemns?

God is the one who justifies.

Who can accuse us?

Christ died for us.

It changes also the way we think of pain, suffering, tribulation, problems.

The worst thing that could possibly happen to any of us is that we would suffer

God's hell for our sins.

But if you're in Christ, the worst possible thing that could ever happen to you already has happened to

you in Christ as he is in your place.

What can man do to me?

What.

Can possibly happen compared to that?

Build yourself up on your most holy faith.

Every bit of your suffering, every bit of your sickness, even the consequences of

our foolishness,.

That.

Suffering is inside the suffering of Christ.

It is justified if we're in Christ.

Therefore, God uses it to sanctify us and we're still not

paying God off for our sins.

No.

We never can do that.

And it changes the way we pray.

It changes the way we pray.

Remember Christ praying, not my will, but yours, in the garden.

See sweat drops of.

Blood.

When we realize that our suffering is within God's covenant arrangement with his

son, when we realize that we don't suffer outside of Christ, this changes the way

we pray because it changes the definition.

Of the word safe.

Some of our hymns, safe and secure from all alarms.

Well,.

There's different definitions for that, isn't there?

Paul in prison having been beaten in Christ is safe and secure from all alarms.

Though that would be a hard definition for us to arrive to unless we walk by faith rather than by sight.

It changes the definition of safe.

It also changes the definition of God's will because we increasingly get the idea that God's will means

the path of least resistance.

That whatever way is least criticized and least difficult must be God's path for me.

But that's not true if we understand what suffering is and how we suffer only in Christ.

It also changes the aim of our prayers.

How often, now remember what we think about God is the most important thing about us.

Now, when we pray to God and if we always are praying to God and thinking that it is.

His desire and His.

Job to always get me out of every single ounce of pain that I experience,

we've got the wrong idea about God.

We have the wrong idea about God.

God is not at all interested in delivering us from every single

inconvenience and problem that we have.

What is He interested in?

Making.

For Himself a name.

And He does that through an increasingly sanctified people as He progressively

sanctifies us, conforming us to the image of His Son, and He uses trials and tribulations as some of His

means to do it.

If we're going to keep ourselves in the love of God, even when we're suffering, we must build ourselves upon our most holy faith, praying in the

Spirit, praying in agreement with the revealed Word of God by the Holy Spirit, and then we wait.

We wait.

Waiting anxiously, but we wait.

God's purpose in our suffering is not going to be fully realized or revealed

in the process of our suffering.

We don't like.

To wait, especially if we're in pain and suffering.

We don't like to wait.

But think about Jeremiah.

Jeremiah is in Jerusalem.

He's imprisoned, and he's going to have to wait.

He's not waiting on the destruction of Jerusalem.

He's waiting on God's purpose in glorifying Himself through the destruction of Jerusalem, through the

bringing of the people back to the land, through the establishment of the new covenant, and so what Jeremiah is waiting on, he's not going to be

fully understood until Christ came,.

And even then,.

Jeremiah is waiting on what we're waiting on.

Jesus shall reign where 'er the sun.

Right?

We're still waiting on the fullness of every last promise that God has made

in Christ.

We cannot think of the present without a fanatical regard to the future.

Let us never think about the present suffering without interrupting

ourselves, not letting ourselves finish about how bad the present is, and just interrupt

ourselves and say, hang on, let's talk about what's to come.

We cannot understand the sufferings of the now without understanding the salvation that is to come, and that is part of placing

our suffering into the context of God's covenant in Christ.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Father, I thank You for the opportunity to think about the fight for faith and how it has gone that You

call us to do things that we don't always understand, things that are costly to us, things that.

The.

Savvy of the world may.

Scoff.

But,.

Father, You call us to do these things often in the middle of our suffering, and how can we think of anything but

just our own self -preservation, but You, God, have something bigger in mind, something far more glorious for Your name, something

far more good for our lives, and You call us to trust You even when we suffer.

So, Father, I thank You for the example that we have primarily in Christ and how He suffered,

but always in faith looking to You for the reason and the meaning, and help us to do the same as we follow Him.

I pray these things for Christ's sake.

Would you stand with me for our song.

Of praise?