Joy in Suffering: A Conversation in Light of COVID-19

Hi, this is Jimmy.

Today on the podcast, the guys discuss joy and trial and suffering.

No doubt your life has been upended in recent weeks with the COVID -19 virus.

So we take a look at the book of James amongst other scriptures, and we seek to help all

of our listeners understand that these passages are not meant to draw us to trials

themselves and the joy of the trial, but rather the goodness and the grace that we find

in Christ in the midst of these trials.

In our members podcast, we seek to go after some of the platitudes and the

simplicities or the oversimplification of certain churches and approaches to

trial and suffering, so we hope this conversation is beneficial to you.

Stay tuned.

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Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed perspective.

Your hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

And myself, Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church here in Willmar, Minnesota.

Gentlemen, I feel like we are uniquely prepared

for our current crisis because we always meet on Zoom.

We always meet digitally, but anyway, good to see you both again.

Good to see you too, man.

We are appropriately socially distanced on Theocast.

We always are.

We always are.

We aim to be prudent and wise.

That is the question I get most people say.

So do you guys like fly in to record?

And I always say, what kind of budget do you think we have?

We do have a jet.

Yeah, right.

Right.

Are you offering to pay for that?

We Zoom in with each other every week.

Zoom.

There you go.

Zoom.

Yeah, we do.

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom.

Well, we're making some of the comments about social distancing in light of the COVID -19

reality that we all find ourselves in.

I know the three of us had a conversation this morning before we hit record about how we're trying to lead our respective churches

in this extraordinary time.

We keep using phrases like this.

I know I do, that these are exceptional times.

And so there's a lot of wrestling as a leader and as a pastor with how do I care for my church?

How do we as elders care for our churches, love our people, help people feel connected to one another when we are

precluded from gathering together?

And there needs to be, I think this is a good word for us to just throw out there quickly, there needs to be appropriate

charity, grace, and latitude in these conversations because we're all really sailing in

uncharted waters here.

I mean, we're trying to navigate things that none of us have ever tried to navigate in our lifetimes where we're kept from

gathering for an extended season.

And so we're having to ask hard questions and wrestle with wise practices and what's best.

And I know the three of us did not agree on everything.

This morning, when it comes to the particulars of how to do church in this season and how to best love our people and

what do you live stream?

Do you live stream?

How do you think about the ordinary means when we're kept from them?

And what if we can't meet for months and months?

What do we do?

And we were stretching one another and challenging one another in good ways, I think, and I hope that

pastors out there are doing that for one another.

And if you are a member of a church somewhere, pray for your leaders, pray for your pastors, that God would give them wisdom, and

do your part as a member of the church to continue to reach out to other members of the church and love

your neighbor well.

And yeah, these are just strange times, guys.

It's like everything is out of whack.

Rhythms are just destroyed.

Everything feels dystopian.

And man, may the Lord give us grace.

Yeah, indeed.

Well, I will say that if you're a pastor and you're listening to this and you've not reached out to Theocast,

we're trying to care for pastors as well as we can by connecting them together.

We ourselves don't have a lot of free time, but we have a lot of

other pastors and we have groups and we have chats.

And I had the opportunity twice now to meet with over 15 different pastors.

And if I'm totally frank, I was more encouraged by them than I think they were ever encouraged by me.

And I just say all this.

I know there's a lot of pastors feeling alone and confused.

And if you're not in a close network of other pastors, you can feel very isolated

if you're in a small church plant context and you don't have a lot of elders.

So my encouragement is we'd be more than happy to love on you, care for you, and answer questions as you're trying to

think through what's the best way of doing this.

I learned about two resources.

I didn't know those were available.

I'm going to go get those for my church.

That's pretty cool.

So anyways.

In light of that, what is the main topic that we want to talk about today, John?

Well, I think everybody's feeling at the moment that this is definitely a trial.

Some would call it suffering because there are people who are suffering.

I know in every context, Jimmy and Justin, we've all been on the phone that we have church members going

without jobs that are concerned about their health, the health of their loved

ones.

And we're all feeling this.

And I think that there's even possibly, well, I know for a fact, there's probably people listening that have someone who's sick or have even

died as relates to the current trial.

And we don't want to be insensitive.

And I think, you know, Justin and I, when, unfortunately, when Kobe Bryant news hit the

newsfeed, we spoke to that about being sensitive when someone dies and how to care for them.

And we want to be careful not to quote Romans 8 .28 here and just, you know, kind of check the box and say,

trust God, everything's going to be fine.

Because trusting God that everything's going to be fine does not remove suffering and pain.

Paul is a great example of this, where he trusted God and yet his pain remained and it still bothered him.

And he even said that it bothered him to the point where he asked God three times and God said, look, my grace is sufficient.

But that didn't remove the suffering and the hurt and the pain.

So then you have a command from John, I'm sorry, from James 1, 2, and from

Romans 5, 3 through 5 from both these men who tell you

to face your struggles and to face your trials with joy, which

just seems almost the way I hear it is fake

it till you make it, put a smile on, don't let the world know you're down.

You better, you're a Christian, so you better keep that, you better keep that frown upside down.

I don't know about you guys, but that's what it feels like when you read those verses, that's

my first initial takeaway.

I mean, am I crazy there?

In the past, when you guys read that, you're like, yeah, I'm not sure what they're trying to do here.

Right, right.

Well, it's interesting.

Something I said to our church over Facebook Live last Sunday is

what's interesting to note is just kind of the various online Christian communities and how they are processing this

trial, this virus, and all of the different things that we are all collectively

facing.

I don't know what it's like.

It's not so crazy here in the upper Midwest.

We don't have the amount of cases that perhaps people on the coastal regions of the United States or even around the

world are experiencing.

I know in Europe, it's being very hard hit right now.

So they're tangibly seeing it.

The most that people are facing here are loss of temporary work,

not getting things that they're used to getting at the grocery store, and so on.

But it is interesting to see the collective online Christian community and how they process.

And what I mean by that is you're starting to see all of the memes and

the pictures of, I think the Tozer quote

is going around.

I don't want to misquote him, so somebody I'm sure will correct me on Facebook later, but I think it's like a

fearful time calls for a fearless church kind of thing, and certainly,

Scripture is chock full of calls to endurance and perseverance and

greater hope and greater realities that we have in Christ.

But one of the things that I encouraged our church is to really treat this as a season of lament,

that we lament not being able to gather together, to not sing and pray and receive pardon

together, that we're suffering.

And so I've just been very interested in

all the calls to not necessarily perseverance, but all the calls to positivity.

And so I think, Justin, you wanted to talk about that as well.

Justin Perdue.

Yeah, I agree with John's assessment that a lot of times, the way James 1 in particular, maybe Romans

5, but especially James 1, 2 through 4, are presented is a couple of

things.

First, when you encounter trial, you just need to smile and be happy and

be joyful because what's going on is just swell.

Everything's great.

And that's not the thrust of the Bible.

To Jimmy's point, lament is all throughout Scripture.

I sent a reflection out to our church yesterday via email about that very thing, lament

through Scripture.

That question of how long, O Lord, is littered throughout the Bible.

And God's people for millennia have been asking that question, have been wrestling

with anguish of the soul and horrible circumstances and all of these things in light of God and His

faithfulness.

And that's the challenge and the struggle for the believer is to reconcile those things.

My life is hard, and yet God is a God of steadfast love.

And so those things are put next to one another in Scripture all the time.

And so my initial thought on this is that, like James 1, 2, count

it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.

The way that that sometimes ends up being framed in the church is that trials in and of themselves are

joyful.

And that's not true.

That's like, if I was going to blow up one thing today, that's what I want to explode, is that

notion that trials in and of themselves and suffering in and of itself is somehow a good thing.

It's not.

It's terrible.

You hear people, this is where this kind of thinking, John, like you said, fake it until you make it, put on a smile.

Jimmy, stuff that you were alluding to results in people saying things like, my cancer is a gift.

And I don't think that's true.

Cancer is awful and it's terrible.

And so the statement that's being made in James 1 or Romans 5 about how, consider

these things joyful because steadfastness and hope and character and all these things are being produced in you,

and your faith ultimately is being refined and strengthened and sustained, it's not a

statement about the goodness of the trial.

It's a statement about how great our God is who works through trial to

sanctify and strengthen us and to sustain our faith and to bolster our assurance

because that's what he does.

And so that's the misconception that I know we're going to speak to throughout our time today, but I want to set the table with

that, perhaps.

Well, and I want to be clear that all of us around the mics right now, we

do uphold a very high view of God's divine providence,

that he is in control of all things.

Like, I do really appreciate our church confession, chapter 5,

1689, Lenten Baptist Confession, chapter 5, paragraph 1.

God, the good creator of all things in his infinite power and wisdom upholds, directs, arranges,

and governs all creatures and things from the greatest to the least by his perfectly wise and holy

providence to the purpose for which they were created.

And I think that is important to just kind of help frame this conversation that all

of us do hold to a high view of divine providence, that indeed, God is not

surprised by things that come upon our life, whether they be a novel

coronavirus or cancer or a tragic accident or anything like that,

that all of us pastorally would approach those topics with sensitivity

and ultimately point people to a very, very big, good, loving, providential

God.

But at the same time, I think what we're trying to say is that it is more correct to point people to a

good God in trial than the goodness of the trial, and I think that's what, Justin, you

are wonderfully saying, that we don't...

I remember when we had Chad Bird on a couple months ago, and he talked about the phrase of, I

wouldn't trade it for the world.

Well, certainly, I bet I could go to any cancer survivor and say, hey, if you could

not have cancer, would you want that?

I'm sure all of them would say, yeah, I would want to forgo the months of chemo and the different therapies that I had to go through.

So again, we want to count it joy when we face trials because

it bolsters our faith, not in ourselves and the way we handle them, but in God

who sustains us.

But we don't want to celebrate the trial itself in almost like a masochistic sense.

Well, in John Calvin's Calumetary in Romans 5, he made a statement that

stunned me, and I sat back and literally had to contemplate for about an hour, and I think

he's right.

He says this, all sorrows we endure contribute to our salvation

and final good, which immediately people are up in arms about the

concept of contribute.

But if you understand what James and Paul in Romans 5 are saying, that

trials and struggles expose our sin and our frailty,

and the confession, even when he was quoting chapter 5, even in point three, it's in the providence

of God.

It says that he allows us to linger at time in ongoing sin so

that we will have a greater dependence upon God.

And then what passage do they reference?

They reference Romans 5, and I think that's a fair example that when we head into a

trial, we find ourselves in the midst of a trial, we may not be, and he's not speaking of sinful trials.

I think there's spiritual trials and there's physical trials, and then there's sinful trials.

And Peter says, don't find yourself in, you're going to suffer, don't suffer for the sake of your own sin.

So let's be clear here, not all trials are because you've done something sinful, but it's exposing

the weakness of your flesh and the weakness of your heart.

And trials, this is how I understand them, that we are so easily

enthralled by the comforts of this life and by the ease of life that when we face

a trial, trials are testing our comfortability.

It's the only way, otherwise it wouldn't be a trial.

Why else would you call it a trial?

So when you're talking about a spiritual trial, you're probably being persecuted for your faith.

You're being attacked for standing up for your view of marriage or the Bible or sexuality.

And then when it comes to a physical trial where you have some kind of a sickness or pain or suffering, or for instance,

coronavirus, what it's attacking is our comfortability

of life.

And it reminds us that this life is not what brings us hope.

This life is not the end of all means.

It reminds us that this place is broken.

It's destroyed by sin.

And the only thing that makes it right is what is to come, which is our hope.

This is why in Romans 5, he starts with our hope is the faith in Jesus Christ.

And then he ends with the glorious hope to come.

So I couldn't agree with John Calvin more when he says that the trials

contribute in that it bolsters our faith.

It strengthens it.

Of course, trials can't make you saved, but they definitely can strengthen you in the one who's saving you.

One way I might articulate that, John, in agreeing with you and agreeing with Calvin,

is if we think about ourselves, we've all gone through trials before.

If we've been in the faith for long at all, we've been through a period of trials and suffering.

And because we're still sitting here, people listening to this show and the three of us today, still trusting

Christ, we can give this testimony.

And this is a lot of the utility of trial, I think.

We go into something that's hard.

And in particular right now, in thinking about the COVID -19 pandemic, we're talking about something that has

happened to us.

This is not, like you're saying, John, this is not something brought upon us by our own sin directly.

This is a, like to use Paul's language, in 2 Corinthians 12, it's a result of sin in terms of

the curse, right?

This is an Ecclesiastes, Genesis 3 world kind of reality.

And so to use the language of 2 Corinthians 12, Paul's thorn in the flesh, he'll talk about boasting all the more, not only in weaknesses and

insults and persecutions, but even calamities.

I mean, the calamity word is really what we're going through right now.

It's happening to us.

And if we could change it, we would.

And it's hard.

And so as we go into this, we're going to experience a season of time where we will suffer in various ways.

And the kind of left to ourselves, reasonable conclusion is to doubt God and to

struggle and to not trust Him and to question everything with respect to what He's revealed about

Himself and about His Son and the way of redemption.

Well, when we make it through this trial, which we will by God's grace, on the other side, we will look

back and we will see, man, if I could have left Christ, I would have.

If left to myself, I would have punted the faith and here I am today still trusting the Lord

and casting my hope upon Christ.

How in the world did that happen?

And we conclude my faith is not my own.

God is the one who gave it to me.

God is the one who is sustaining it.

God is the one who is even strengthening and confirming it in the midst of and through horrible circumstances, not

apart from them.

And so it's a powerful testimony to the faithfulness of God to keep us in the faith.

And so I think that is a lot of the value of trial, is that it refines our faith in that sense.

And we realize all the more, like our confession says, chapter 11 .1, the very end of that first paragraph on

justification, talking about faith, it says, and this faith is not their own, it is the gift of God.

We learn that all the more through trial and it strengthens us and it bolsters our

assurance.

I have two things.

So the first thing, I want to make a statement.

The second thing, I'm going to throw out a question and let you guys wrestle with that and we can all collectively wrestle with that.

But the first thing I want to say is, as we talk about our faith being

bolstered, I think what's important to remember, I

have found great comfort in passages like Psalm 13, passages like Psalm

46, and even Isaiah 53, where Isaiah 53 gives us a

picture of Christ as the suffering servant.

And in those times where we are experiencing great suffering and calamity,

that we remember that we do not have a God who is distant from this.

And this is something that I have said to our church, but Isaiah 53 gives us this wonderful picture

of a Jesus who's not distant from sin and death, but

rather a Jesus who allowed himself to be crucified by it, was buried by it,

but then rose again, defeated those things.

And so that is such a key thing that we look to and we behold as God's

people in these times, that we look to the finished work of Christ.

And I'm mindful of Jesus in the garden, before his crucifixion.

Father, if there is a different way to get this done, can we do it that way?

And yet not my will be done, but yours.

That even Jesus himself, you know, wrestled with earthly suffering, so to speak.

So I guess the question that I have for all of us perhaps to consider is, you know, we are

big on what we call the ordinary means of grace, you know, the gathering of God's people to

have our faith strengthened through outward and ordinary means, and so in this time where all of these

things are lacking, you know, what do we encourage people toward

regarding that?

We are excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called Faith vs.

Faithfulness, a Primer on Rest.

And we, the hosts, put this together to explain the difference between emphasizing one's faith in Christ

versus emphasizing one's faithfulness to Christ, and how one leads to rest and how the other

often to a lack of assurance.

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We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation.

I think we always have to use the extraordinary circumstances.

I think back in the day, they used letters.

I mean, Paul spoke of letters that were sent to him, and he sent letters to other people for the sake of

encouragement.

I mean, we are reading a letter from James, and we are reading a letter from Paul for the sake of

encouragement.

So I think the early church used whatever means possible to encourage each other.

I think that we can do the same here in extreme circumstances.

I mean, Paul in prison says, Hey, can you, I'm in prison right now.

Can you send me some stuff?

Because I can't get out.

Like, can you send me somebody to encourage me?

Hey, can you send me my books?

And I could also use a jacket.

And I think in a way, Paul was trying to encourage himself best he knew how, because he couldn't go

hear the preached word.

He couldn't receive the table.

And I think in the circumstances where we find ourselves today, that it is not ideal.

It is not best.

It's not what we want.

I cannot wait.

Every, not every Sunday now, every day I long to hug one of my church

members and to hear communion given to me by one of my elders and to see people sing and to

do corporate confession, I cannot wait.

And, you know, online is, it's kind of like eating fast food.

It's like, well, I guess it's necessary, but it's not what I want.

I got to eat.

And you know what happens when you eat fast food long enough?

I do it on vacation, man.

It's called indigestion.

And I think we're all going to get it eventually.

Spiritually speaking, we're all going to be kind of like, I need to be cleansed through the preaching of

the word.

And to answer your question, Jimmy, it's kind of like, I think we've got to hold our nose and wait for

the sovereign God to do what he's going to do.

And I know JP, you want to answer that, but before I move on, because I'm afraid I'm gonna lose this thought, I want to go back to something that both of you guys were

saying, and I think it aligns with what you were saying, Jimmy.

Hebrews 4 .15 has become such a precious passage for me.

It says, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our

weakness.

And I love that.

In the trial, the reason we can have joy is that in my trial and what's being

exposed is my hope in something that's other than God,

what I'm hearing from Hebrews saying is, oh, Jesus knows.

He understands.

And then he says, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin.

He's also experienced those temptations, John, maybe not the same exact ones as I have, because some of mine are based upon my sinful nature,

theological debate.

But where I take comfort is that in the midst of these trials, my Savior

understands how I feel and is why I go through these trials, because he's

peeling back that which is distracting me from where the real sense of joy and the real sense of hope is.

So I think all of us who are doing this online stuff and virtual stuff, we have a

sympathetic Father, sympathetic Savior who understands our circumstances.

And I trust that in these trials, we're going to come out stronger in our faith, not weak.

Justin Perdue.

I agree, John.

I will quickly answer Jimmy's question and then offer another thought.

My brief answer to the question, what do we do right now as men who uphold

a very historic, Reformed understanding of the ordinary means?

And that's appropriate that we do that.

I mean, we need that spiritual nourishment, and God has told us how to get it.

But then in this season where we're providentially hindered from gathering, what do we do?

And my thought is, these are exceptional times under the providence of God, and we are kept from the

ordinary means.

And I trust that God will give extraordinary grace in this season.

And that's the message that I'm going to continue to hold out to my people in our local church, is that

God's got this.

Like, this has not surprised him, and God has been faithful to his people throughout history.

Whether we're talking about exile or Babylonian captivity, or we're talking about persecution when people were imprisoned and they're

providentially hindered from gathering with the people of God, God sustains and gives grace.

And I trust he's going to do the same now.

And so you can trust the Lord.

I mean, just as we've been saying throughout, we're pointing people to God and his character, his goodness, his faithfulness, his grace.

And telling them to rest there, even as the ordinary means are kept from us for a season.

So that's the short answer on that front.

I want to pick up on stuff that you guys are saying.

I'm jotting down thoughts all over my whiteboard as we're having this conversation, because stuff's just kind of popcorning around in

there.

One thought is that God is very, very careful

and loving in the ways that he uses our sorrows.

He is not frivolous and wasteful with them.

Like he spends our sorrows well.

You know, I'm mindful of Psalm 56, 8, where David will use the language of like, you've

kept my tears in your bottle, you've put them in a bottle, you've kept count of my tears.

Like God is aware.

He is not distant and removed and cold -hearted towards us.

He is intimately involved in all of the things that we go through, including our suffering, our trials, and he's aware of

every tear.

And so he's going to spend those sorrows well and not waste them one bit.

And I too am comforted, as you brothers have said, in thinking about whether it's a Hebrews 4 reality

or an Isaiah 53 reality or the Garden of Gethsemane reality, that Jesus

knows what it's like to suffer.

He knows what it's like to experience anguish and the dark night of the soul.

And I find that to be a great comfort.

I know Charles Spurgeon would say, in thinking about depression and melancholy and the dark night of the soul,

he would say, you know, there are times when believers are going through things and they're not even comforted ultimately by the hope

of heaven.

They're not even comforted ultimately by the realities of the cross, but they are comforted tremendously by the Christ of

Gethsemane because they see in Jesus a God who took on

flesh and a Savior who knows what it's like to suffer and to hurt.

And he can empathize with us in our pain and in our weakness.

And it's a phenomenal thing to reflect on in this time as we're wrestling with anxieties and

all the stuff that's going through our minds and hearts.

I kind of want to maybe take a little bit of a turn here.

And one of the things I'm sure that you guys have seen this floating around is you see the popular post and

repost and post and repost of, you know, during this time, we Christians can show

that church has never been about the building, it's always been about the people, and certainly, I mean, I

don't, frankly, I don't know any churches that outwardly worship their building,

you know, speaking from a church plant context, man, a building just sounds really nice, to be honest.

I was just going to say, I struggle with envy.

I'd like, I'd really like a building.

So how about that, Facebook?

I'm breaking that 10th commandment on the regular.

Yeah, right.

Break them.

But anyway, again, I think one of the things

that I want to kind of push against is kind of like this whole idea.

Well, I mean, for one, yeah, I mean, yeah, we all agree.

Yeah, church is about people, but that's the problem.

Like people can't gather right now.

Like that's, that's the thing.

So I don't, I mean, I don't know what good that, that post and repost is.

Yeah, I'm not quite sure what we're trying to demonstrate.

Yeah.

Right.

Other than it's like, well, yeah, church is about the people, but I can't even bring you stuff because it's got germs on it, you know,

so there's that.

But, but here's the other thing that I wanted to say is like, I want to just so quickly come to the defense

or maybe come to the offense against this whole idea of, you know, during this time, we're really going to see who's committed.

You know, we're really going to see who the real Christians are.

Yeah.

And it's like, well, I mean, what, what does that mean?

Like the people that are, the people that are like all of a sudden reading their Bible

more.

And I don't know, I just want to like defend and maybe to the listener out there that it's like,

you're living in a really awkward time and I don't want to put that law on you

that it's like, well, you have all this extra time at home.

You better be filling it with, you know, fruitful and productive, and productive spiritual exercise where it's

just like, I don't know.

I don't, I don't think there's a template of like God's expectations of us during this time,

other than to, you know, mourn our situation that we can't come together.

Um, and we are a people of prayer, but I don't think it's anything outside of like the normal

rhythms and activities of your everyday life, you know, that it's not, it's not like we all of a

sudden are going to become like A plus Christians during this time.

We're just not, you know, I mean, I mean, frankly, I don't know about you guys, but, uh,

we get, our, our tempers are raging in the home right now, you know, because we don't have

That's normal for the winter time.

Yeah.

Well, and, and for us too, like it's still cold up here.

And so maybe where you're listening, you can go outside and take a little walk cause it's 70 degrees, but man, here it's still in the

thirties, you know?

So we're like, I just need to go outside.

Nevermind.

I'm not going outside.

It's too cold.

Um, so, so just to, just to bring you comfort again, what, what, what Justin has,

has said so well, that these are extraordinary times and we, we trust in God's extraordinary grace and, and even

to point us to the 1689 chapter five, paragraph three, where it says, in his ordinary providence,

God makes use of means, so in his ordinary providence, in an, in ordinary everyday life, we recognize

that the way our strength or the way our faith is strengthened is through the outward and ordinary means of word

and sacrament, but we also see in paragraph three, though God is free to work apart from them,

beyond them and contrary to them at his pleasure.

And so I think we just kind of find some comfort there that God is going to sustain us, not

because of our grip to him, but rather because of his grip to us

through the gospel, through, through Christ.

Hmm.

Yeah, I, dude, I, that is so encouraging, man.

So, so encouraging.

Just to tag on, this is a quick comment, guys, just to tag on quick to what Jimmy and, and what Justin just said.

For me, in the midst of this trial, the thing that encourages me and that I'm trying to encourage other people is that

there is no suffering that goes unused.

And what I mean by that, sometimes when we hear God works all things for good, we're thinking, well, my finances aren't good

and my health isn't good, and you can't bring this person back to life.

I guess you could, but you haven't.

And so that's not good.

So the relative good is still, we are so connected to what this world has to offer

that we think the good is here and now.

I honestly don't think Paul means that in 828, and I don't think it's meant here either, and I don't think Calvin, when he said the quote, what I

think is, he says our final good, which the good is the glorious state we find ourselves in.

So all of the suffering that comes into our life is used to

keep our focus, which is so easily pulled onto anything but Christ,

it's never used except for, I think, to give us hope and insurance and to help us

persevere.

I mean, one, Paul flat out just says that, and so does James, that it is to strengthen our perseverance, which is for our

final good.

And just to comment on James real quick in this light of final good, James

1 .4, he says, and let steadfastness hold its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete,

lacking in nothing.

Well, there's no way he means that now, because that would contradict the rest of scripture of us being sinless, which is

impossible.

What he's saying is your trials produces joy because you know, your trials is

what's going to keep your faith in that which is going to perfect you.

And he's pushing, it's an eschatological idea.

He's pushing you past your current reality to your ultimate hope.

And I think if your trials that you're facing doesn't do that, you potentially are, you're losing

sight of the gospel because the gospel does not promise recovery now, it promises

recovery in its return.

And I think trials keep us in that temporary state of hope.

Don't hope in this life.

Don't do it because it will constantly let you down.

Along those same lines, John, I'm mindful of Psalm 77 written by Asaph.

A number of the Psalms that Asaph penned are very gripping in this way.

He begins Psalm 77 talking about his own anguish and his difficulties that

he's experiencing.

He's crying aloud to God and he's seeking the Lord in his time of trouble.

He's acknowledging that his hands are stretched out in the night and his soul refuses to be comforted.

Psalm 77, verse three, even this, when I remember God, I moan.

Like even as I'm trying to think on God, I moan.

And when I meditate, my spirit faints.

Like even those things are not helping me right now.

Verse four, you hold my eyelids open.

I am so troubled that I cannot speak.

I trust that many people are listening to me read those verses right now.

And they're like, bro, you read my mail.

Like that's how I feel in the midst of this suffering and in the midst of this time where we are

kept from other human beings and from community.

And I'm worried about my job and I've got loved ones who are sick, or maybe I'm sick and I'm afraid for my physical

wellbeing.

So Asaph goes on in the Psalm 77 to wrestle with God.

Is God going to spurn us forever and never again be favorable?

Has his steadfast love ceased forever?

Are his promises at an end for all time?

He asks all these questions.

Where does he go?

So John, you were just talking about the eternal hope that we have and the rock solid promises of God to us in Christ Jesus.

Well, Asaph in Psalm 77 says, here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to appeal to the years of the right hand of the most high, and I'm going to remember the mighty deeds of God.

And where he ends up going in the last few verses of this Psalm, he thinks back to God's mighty work of

deliverance in the Exodus.

He talks about God's way being through the sea and your path through the great waters,

though your footprints were unseen.

You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

He's going to think about the fact that God is a redeemer, that God is a savior, and that God is a deliverer.

And so for us in our context, we are looking to the greater Exodus that Jesus has accomplished on

behalf of his people, where we have been not just delivered from bondage and slavery in a physical country,

we've been delivered from bondage and slavery to sin, death, and the devil.

And so when we can't sleep and when our eyelids are held open and when we moan and our

spirit is fainting, we recall the fact that our God is a savior and that he has promised

us life with him forever through Christ and that he saved us.

And that's the ultimate comfort.

And sometimes people are like, well, how does that help me right now in the things that I'm

going through?

And we just continue to hold out the hope of Christ and say, brother or sister, this doesn't take the pain away.

This doesn't just remove all fear, but this is your hope and confidence.

And when everything is falling apart around you, this is your hope and stay.

Yeah, that's good, man.

Yeah, JP, you and I were discussing this yesterday over the phone that

realistically, as you look at the book of Psalms, the Bible's worship and prayer

book, that over one

-third of the Psalms begin with the posture of asking God where in the

world he is, like, why is he doing this or why is he alive?

Yeah, where are you?

And so Psalm 13, I shared this as a meditation with our church last Sunday.

Psalm 13, all Psalms of Lament have a very similar outline.

The first chunk typically begins with a crying out to God, where

are you?

Why is this happening?

What's going on?

Can you please answer my questions?

The second chunk of the Psalm is asking God for faith and for

help.

And then the last part is, JP, what you just talked about, that we remember the

deeds of the Lord and his faithfulness in the past, so even Psalm 13, verse five and six, I have

trusted your steadfast love.

My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord because he has dealt bountifully with me.

And you think of the Psalmist as he wrote this, and he's

recounting deeds past and even greater for us now under the

beauty of the new covenant, that we can look back to Jesus Christ and his finished work,

that we can look back to the gospel and what God has declared over us in

Christ, that we are indeed holy and made righteous and made pure and made blameless in his

sight, and so even as we think about this virus and the threat that it

brings, and statistically speaking, are you going to die from this

virus?

Well, probably not.

Now, don't take my non -scientific word for it, but whenever

something like this, a pandemic or some sort of crisis comes up, we start to wade through life and

death, and so what we look to is not necessarily how we are

going to—our faith is not in how we weather the storm.

Our faith is not in how well we execute the Christian life during a

crisis, but our faith is where it always is, in good times and bad, and that's in Christ and Christ alone.

Yeah.

Hey, before we close down, guys, I just want to read to Jimmy's point.

I want to read a quote from C .S. Lewis that I read in an article by Horton, which was super

helpful.

I posted it on the Theocast Facebook page and group.

I can't remember the name of the article, but the quote from C .S. Lewis says this, "...do

not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation.

Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death

before the atomic bomb was invented, and quite a high percentage of us are going to die in

unpleasant ways.".

Thanks, Clive Staples.

The point of it is that what we try to preserve here in this life is just futile.

We're going to all die, most likely, a painful death, and so you can try and live your life preventing that,

or you can understand that, look, my hope is not here.

I found my place, a resting place, is outside of my current circumstance.

This is not Debbie Downer.

This is not giving in.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be concerned about your health or you shouldn't wash your hands.

That's the exact opposite.

I mean, the exact opposite of the article and what C .S. Lewis is saying, but he's saying is

the world has not changed from the fall just because the coronavirus or the atomic bomb

or the plague, so anyways, I guess it's a way to sign off with hope.

Jimmy, if I can get one parting shot in here before you wind us down.

Lamentations 3 is a familiar passage to many people, but I think sometimes we gloss over it because we

quote verses 21 to 25 all the time, and we don't quote them mindful of the context in

which they occur.

I mean, Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet for a reason, and he writes a lot in the book of Jeremiah and

Lamentations about just horrible realities that the people of God are experiencing in Jerusalem under Babylonian

captivity.

He is just repeatedly talking about how the people have been reduced to cannibalism and eating their children and all these

kinds of things, and the suffering is just terrible and unmitigated, and he even talks about his own lot and the wormwood

and the gall and the bitterness and all this stuff, and then he immediately interjects in the midst of that flow of thought, but this

I call to mind, and therefore I have hope that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

And he goes on to talk about how God's mercies are new and all of those sorts of things, and the Lord is

my portion, says my soul, and therefore I will hope in him, and if you read Lamentations straight

through and you get to those words, they're almost shocking.

Where do these words come from?

They would be shocking if the Bible were not full of the same kind of stuff.

All throughout Scripture, the suffering and the plight of fallen man and our pain

is placed right next to the steadfast love and faithfulness of God, and how those things hang

together in every detail we do not fully understand.

When we start trying to overstate that relationship, we do stupid things with it and we misrepresent God

or we misrepresent pain, and so what we want to uphold here is the reality that life is hard

and our God is a God of steadfast love, and he rules and reigns,

and he will work all things for the eternal good of his people, and what we are called to in the midst of

suffering like now is to encourage one another to trust the Lord and to keep trusting Christ.

Well, this has been, I think, a really good and helpful conversation.

I mean, forgive me, guys, I was just actually texting another group of friends and told them that we were recording right now, and I'm like, man, I'm just really

encouraged.

You know, it's good.

Even though we're socially distanced, you know, I'm grateful for technology that God has given us and

his common grace that we can still gather.

So, thank you to the listener for tuning into this conversation.

We hope and pray that you found it helpful, and far be it from us to ever leave you with

something to do, but if we could encourage you with something, please pray for your pastor.

Encourage him, shoot him a text, tell him that you love him and that you're

supportive of him.

I mean, these are just extraordinary times and it's very, very difficult and it requires a lot of wisdom as we think about

shepherding God's people.

So, pray for him.

God will sustain you during this time.

Keep your eyes upon Christ.

We're going to pop over to our members podcast.

If you would like more information about getting involved there or what it means to be a member, you can head to our

website, theocast .org, where you can find more information of what it means to be a Total Access member.

So, again, thank you for tuning into this conversation, and we hope that you found it

helpful as you seek to rest in Christ.