John 11:1-16 (God's Pleasure In Our Pain)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word and may the Lord be with you.

You know, one of the most difficult things for us to understand is how God can be pleased in the midst of our pain, in the midst of our consternation, in the midst of our struggles.

Now, let me be clear. Clarity is a good thing, and especially in a topic like this.

I mean that God is glad when things don't make sense to you. I mean that God is happy when you and I walk through painful situations.

I am intending to say that God is glad when you and I suffer as a Christian. I am saying that God is glad when we go through terrible things in our life.

Not because God is a sadist and he enjoys our pain, not because he doesn't love you, but because he's different than us and he sees something different in our pain than what we see in our pain.

You see, we don't look at the world rightly, you and I. We look at the world minute by minute, moment by moment, craving by craving, and we don't see how the world is fully put together.

You think about Job who's standing before God and he says, I repent. I've spoken about things that are far too wonderful for me to understand.

Job doesn't understand the problem of evil and he doesn't understand how God is using pain in his life and in our life for a good purpose.

Pain dims and skews our perspective. It does.

When I first became a believer, I thought God was going to throw out the welcome mat.

I thought that there was going to be good feelings and positivity to go around. I thought that I was going to be as happy as Joel Osteen on bathroom remodel day.

If you don't catch that reference, look it up later. I didn't get happier, healthier, or wealthier.

My whole life actually fell apart when I became a Christian and I became frustrated. I said things like,

God, what's going on? Out of all this time, I finally come to you. I finally surrender my life to you.

I submit everything to you and then I'm beginning to lose everything. My life is falling apart because I'm a Christian and I was frustrated and I was angry.

Relationships evaporated. Parents turned on me. Family was gone. Relationships that were important to me faded away.

I was miserable for a season of my life, for about a year of my life, because I didn't realize what God was doing in the midst of that.

And I was bitter and I was frustrated because I thought that God owed me something when I came to him.

The reason I felt that way is two reasons, spiritual, what I call narcissism, where we feel like that God owes us something.

And then when we don't get those things and we become frustrated and angry. But I think even more importantly than that is what

I would call spiritual nearsightedness, where I can't see past my own nose, where I can't see what

God is doing in the pain. You see, when you and I go through suffering, when you and I go through pain, when relationships fail, when people hurt us, when there's brokenness in our life, our world shrinks.

We look at the past as though it was better than it was. Like the washed up person who thinks that they're still going to win a state championship and they're reliving the glory days.

We make the past better than we thought it was or than it actually was. We make the present bigger than it actually is.

We make the future bleaker than it ever could be. In our pain, we look at the past like it's some paradise garden of Eden.

We look at the present like a nuclear bomb just went off. And we look at the future as a dystopic, apocalyptic mess.

Pain skews our perspective and it causes us not to see the things that God is doing.

Now, God doesn't struggle with that. God is outside of time. So God can see that not only are we walking through pain, but there's purpose in our pain.

There's purpose in our suffering and in our struggle. There's sovereignty in it that God is doing something, even though we can't see it.

God sees what your pain is producing in you.

God sees what your pain is producing in you, and God is pleased for you to walk through it because he knows what it's going to do to you.

He knows what it's going to make in you. He knows what it's going to produce in you. Now, it wasn't for a couple of years and for my story that I realized what

God was doing. It wasn't until I was able to look back on the past and actually apply my feeble brain to to thinking about all that God is doing.

And now look at my life. And I say, my goodness, look at all of the things that God did in that season.

Look at all of the ways that he was cutting out of me things. There were spiritual tumors in my life that needed to come out if I was going to be the man that God called me to be.

There was malignancies of the soul in a deep level that if God didn't rip them out of me, then it was going to cause death in my life.

There were gangrenous relationships. There were noxious habits that I had. There was all kinds of things that God had to deal with me on.

All the while, I'm laying on the operating table saying, why me? And yet God in his love wasn't harming me, he was healing me.

We often think about God like he's coming at us with a shank. But I tell you, he's coming at you with a scalpel to cut the things out of you that are harming you and that are keeping you from being who

God has called you to be. We may we may bleed, we may hurt, we may weep.

But what I want to tell you is that God has a purpose in your pain and that he's using it to produce something in you that I hope that we will see today.

He knows the abandonment you're facing. He knows the frustration right now that's going on in your marriage.

He knows the problems that you're having. He knows the thing that happened to you when you were a child and you didn't have any reason for it.

You didn't invite it. You didn't want it. But yet you carry the wounds and the scars of it still today. God knows all of that.

And he is still equipping you and using it and working to produce a weight of glory.

So that when you stand before King Jesus, you will stand like he says in Jude, stand before his presence, prepared and equipped through all of this pain and sorrow and toil.

Think about God like a sculptor, a master sculptor. You've got this massive block of stone in front of God.

And the first thing that he does is he takes out the hammer and he starts beating the parts of you that don't align with his purposes.

And then he grabs the chisel and he starts making finer cuts. But it hurts and it cuts. And then he takes the sandpaper, the grittiest sandpaper you can imagine, and it's polishing you and polishing you.

And then when you look back at the course of your life, you see that all that pain, all that cutting, all that pounding was producing the image of Christ in you.

Your pain has a purpose. And he will not spare you temporary sorrows to turn you into the person he's called you to be tomorrow.

He won't. Because he loves you too much to do that. Today, we're going to look at a perfect example of this in John chapter 11, verses 1 through 16.

And we're going to see four things. We're going to see how their problems cause them pain, just like they do for us.

We're going to see how when the problems came, they had a perplexity. They didn't understand their pain. We're going to see in the midst of that, how

God is promising to do something with their pain. And we're going to see how underneath the surface of all of it,

God has a purpose and a pleasure over what is going on through us in our pain.

So we're going to look at four or five things. Problems, the perplexities, the promises, the pleasure that God has, and the purpose that God has for our pain.

And if you can grab hold of this message, if you can grab hold of what the scripture is teaching us here,

I think it could change your life. I don't say that every week, even though the word of Lord can always change your life. But this one is so central to our tendency to complain and to grumble and to be frustrated that if we can understand what

God is doing in our pain, we would never grumble again. We would never be bitter again. We would praise

God even for the famine. We would praise God for the cancer. We would praise God for everything.

So let us right now turn to John 11. Let's read it.

Let's pray. Let's examine it. And then let's glorify God together. This is what the word of the

Lord says. Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister

Martha. It was the Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother

Lazarus was sick. So the sister sent word to him saying, Lord, behold, he who you love is sick.

But when Jesus heard this, he said, this sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the son of God may be glorified by it.

Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was sick, he then stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Then after this, he said to his disciples, let us go to Judea again. The disciples said to him,

Rabbi, the Jews were just seeking to stone you. And you're going there again? Jesus answered, are there not 12 hours in the day?

If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles because the light is not in him.

This he said, after that, he said to them, our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go so that I may awaken him out of his sleep.

And the disciples then said to him, Lord, if he's fallen asleep, he'll recover. Now, Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought he was speaking of literal sleep.

So Jesus then said to them plainly, Lazarus is dead and I'm glad for your sakes that I was not there so that you may believe, but let us go to him.

Therefore, Thomas, who was called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, let us go so that we may die with him.

This is the word of the Lord. Lord, you show us in this passage that you are glad that you did not provide an immediate cure to Lazarus, that you were glad that you allowed

Mary and Martha to wait, that you were glad that the disciples, although you could have spoken a word, you could have spoken a word.

You've done it before in John five and created healing in Lazarus from a distance.

You could have done that. But you didn't. You were pleased to allow your people to go through pain because that pain would produce something in them that was worth it, that would never fade and would always last.

Lord, I pray that we, as your people, would see that the pain that we go through is not something strange that's happening to us, but it's something good that is happening to us.

And we're not masochistic. We're not the kind of people who just rejoice in backwards ways because we're hurting again.

But Lord, we see, and Lord, I pray that we would see beyond the pain, beyond the trial, beyond the pressure, beyond the rejection, beyond the abandonment, beyond whatever it is that afflicts us,

Lord, and that we would see how you have a purpose in all of this. It's in Christ's name we pray.

Amen. Now, if you remember, Jerusalem was the place that wanted

Jesus dead. They had already picked up stones to kill him the third time now in three years. And Jesus, at the end of John 10, had to flee.

His time was not yet come. John 10 is December. Jesus is gonna die in April.

So there's months now before Jesus is appointed to die. So he flees from the city of Jerusalem and he goes a full day's journey into Galilee.

We talked about this a little bit a couple of weeks ago, but Galilee was a very special place for Jesus. This is where Jesus was raised as a child.

If you remember, he was born in Bethlehem, his family fleeing. Herod went down to Egypt and then from Egypt, they settled in Nazareth.

So he was raised in the region of Galilee. This is like he's coming home. John the

Baptist baptized him in Galilee. Jesus was heralded and announced to the world.

The lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world in Galilee. He was sent into a Galilean wilderness to be tempted by Satan where he triumphed over Satan.

His public ministry began in Galilee. His public ministry mostly was in Galilee.

He chose his 12 disciples from Galilee. It's where most of his miracles, most of his sermons, most of his healings, most everything in his life happened in Galilee.

So when Jesus leaves Jerusalem and is going to Galilee, it's like he's going home. He's going back to his earthly home with just four months before he goes back to his heavenly home.

This is a sort of homecoming for Christ. Now, the events of John 11.

We don't know exactly when they happened, although I'll make an argument that they were close to the

Passover. John 11 is somewhere in between John 10 and John 12.

That's common sense, right? Okay. John 12 is where Jesus triumphantly enters the city of Jerusalem, and he has just a week left in his life at that point.

John 10 is in December, four months left or three months left in his life. So somewhere in the middle of that is

John 11. But because Jesus goes back to Bethany, he goes back to the home of Lazarus twice.

And he has a feast there in John 12 where he's celebrating with Lazarus over Lazarus being raised from the dead.

It's likely that this event happens around March, around the time that we're just exiting.

So 1 ,992 years ago, Jesus was leaving

Jerusalem, going to Galilee when he hears word of his friend Lazarus being sick to the point of death.

It's an interesting fact that we are in the same season of life that Jesus was in all those years ago.

It can allow us to identify with him as he's walking towards the cross.

Now, John 11 is going to begin with mounting problems that are happening somewhat out of the blue.

They're not completely connected to John 10. It's a new scene. You fast forward in time, and there's a list of problems that John is going to be detailing for us.

The first is the medical problem of Lazarus. Verse 1 says, Now a certain man was sick,

Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. The text also tells us that this is a man that Jesus loves.

It doesn't tell us the kind of sickness that he's going through, but it does tell us that it's a sickness that is urgent and that is going to lead to death if Jesus doesn't intervene.

Like all of us, Lazarus had been sick multiple times before. His sisters who lived with him had probably made him

Galilean stew, probably put a warm or a cool compress on his head when he had a fever.

This was not that. This was something different. This was a sickness that Mary and Martha were around his bed, watching him slip away from life.

His fever was escalating. He probably was refusing water and food. These are just things that when we're deathly ill happen to us.

So it's maybe a little bit of a speculation there, but he was urgently suffering to the point of death, lying in his bed.

And the sisters didn't know what to do. You think about it, this family is not going to bother

Jesus over the sniffles. They knew that Jesus just left

Jerusalem where they wanted to kill him. So Mary and Martha asking Jesus to come and heal their brother is putting

Jesus in a situation where he could be killed. They knew that. It is beyond likely that they were with him when he preached his sermon in John 10 about him being the door and the good shepherd and calling the

Pharisees, the thieves and robbers. They were there at the portico of Solomon where Jesus claimed to be

God and the Pharisees raised up stones to kill him. They were his dearest friends. They were with him in some of his most important moments.

They knew calling him back to Jerusalem was very dangerous to Jesus. Is it any wonder that they waited so long to call

Jesus when Lazarus is at the point of death? Because they knew that this was almost certainly a death sentence for Jesus.

You think that they probably were glad that he left the city because they loved him. They didn't want him to die.

Now, I want you to put yourself in your shoes for a moment. You've got Jesus's safety that you're holding in one hand.

I don't want to summon Jesus. I know Jesus loves my brother. I know he'll come if I call him. And in the other hand, you've got your brother who's going to die.

Now, the fact that they lived with their brother meant that they didn't have husbands. And the fact that they didn't have husbands and they didn't have fathers and they were living with their brother meant that he was their provider.

So in their hand, they were holding their future. If they don't get

Jesus's help here, they're going to starve. They're not going to be able to pay their bills. They don't have jobs. Lazarus had the job.

They were caretaking his estate. This is a pressure situation to say the least.

That's the second problem that they faced. Not just the sickness, but they faced the Jerusalem problem that was hanging over the narrative.

They also faced the distance problem because they waited until Lazarus was almost to the point of death.

Now they had a distance problem that they had to overcome. A messenger in those times was 15, 16, maybe 20 years old.

They were in good shape. They could run, flee to foot, and they could deliver a message, but it would still take nearly a full day to reach

Jesus where he was in Galilee from Bethany. And then Jesus traveling with his discipleship community.

He had 12 apostles, 70 disciples, and crowds who were following him of women and different supporters.

This would have taken him a day minimum to get back there. So by the time they sent the message, it would have been two days before Jesus arrived.

Likely that Lazarus would have already died. And then Jesus waits two days. That's why when we get down into the narrative, we'll see that he had already been dead four days.

Because when they sent the messenger, it wasn't long after they sent him that Lazarus died. There was just so little time to spare and they didn't want to risk

Jesus' life for no reason. The fourth problem that they're facing is an emotional problem. They would have been saying things like,

Lord, please don't let our brother die. They would have been saying the same things we would be saying in that situation.

Same things I know I would be saying in that situation. God, why is this happening to us now? The nation is in an influx.

Jesus has caused this stirring up of passions and frustration and anger in Jerusalem.

We love Jesus. We want to follow Jesus. But why is this happening now? Why does this have to happen to us where we have to get

Jesus to intervene? They were probably asking all the same questions that we would have been asking. It's likely they were still mourning the death of their parents.

It's likely that they were mourning the possible death of their brother. They had a lot on their plate just to even send the message to Jesus.

You think about them sitting in their home and looking out the window, watching to see if they can see the messenger running back and the dust being kicked up from his sandals.

And they looked and they looked and they looked and they didn't see anyone coming. Think about the heaviness that these poor ladies were facing.

The fifth problem is the relational problem that they had. They were close to Jesus. And I'm not just saying that as in they were just like everybody else to Jesus.

This was a special relationship for Jesus. Jesus had many acquaintances as a leader in ministry.

You think about Jesus had attained a sort of celebrity status in the country. People knew him all over the nation.

So imagine his time and the demands on his time, people coming up to him, asking him things. There were lots of relationships in Jesus's life that were necessary because of ministry.

But this relationship was necessary to Jesus. This friendship was essential to him.

We see in the other gospels that he made a point to stop by their home when he was in Jerusalem. This could have been a base of operation for him in Judah whenever he comes to the festivals.

Bethany is about two miles away from Jerusalem. So when in Jesus's final week, he's going back and forth between Lazarus house and Jerusalem, we see that it really is a base of operations.

They expected that the closeness of the relationship would mean that Jesus would come. So imagine the disappointment when he didn't.

Relationships define our expectations, don't they? For instance, if I wrote

Mike Krzyzewski a letter, consoled him on his loss. Final four last night, very important to me.

See, I did that and I said, hey, why don't you come over to my house, have a few drinks, we'll have some fun.

If he didn't come, I have no reason to be frustrated. He doesn't know me. There's no expectation there, but if he were my dad and I asked him to come over to the house because I had a problem and he didn't come, it's a different story, right?

You see, our relationships are defined by our expectations. They had an expectation relationally that Jesus was gonna come.

And when he delayed, you can only imagine how they must have felt. Now that we know, just as a matter of fact, just how close this family was to Jesus, John says in verse two through three, it was the

Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.

So the sister sent word to him saying, Lord, behold him whom you love is sick. Mary was a common name at that time.

And in the gospel of John, not everybody gets a name. There's lots of people who don't get names in the gospel.

You think about the man who was born blind, not named. You think about the man who was healed in John chapter five, the paralytic, not named.

Mary is named. One of the reasons for that is because there were five Marys named in the gospel.

And I think John was being very gracious thus to let us know which one it was. There was Mary, the mother of Jesus, Mary of Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James and John, Mary, the wife of Clophas.

And Mary of Bethany. This was Mary of Bethany. So John is giving us some aid here to let us know.

But the fact that she was named, the fact that she was important enough to show up in the records of the earliest church means that she was important in the church, but she was also important to Jesus.

We also know that Jesus went there in the last moments of his life. And that's important.

Where do we go? Where do we see people go when they're dying? It's a weird thing to see someone continue to work up into the day of their death.

When someone gets a terminal diagnosis, normally they quit their job. They spend time with the ones that they love.

They put down all of the things that they were doing beforehand and they spend time with those who matter to them the most.

Jesus, knowing that his hour had come, he's spending time with this family. That's important. He could have chosen any family to spend time with.

It was this one that he did. I think that lets us know that he was very close to them. It also says that this is the one who anointed his feet.

Think about this. The one who anointed and prepared Jesus for death was not Peter. It was not

James. It was not John. It was not Caiaphas, the high priest, and it wasn't some king in some palace. It was

Mary, the one who prepared our Lord for burial, recorded for us 1 ,900 years later.

Mary, what a privilege and what an honor that she would have had. This woman, this family was close to Jesus.

And as she sat beside her brother's dying side, her heart would have been breaking.

She knew how much Jesus loved her family and she would have reached out to him to step in and help.

Verse four continues the narrative. We see the messenger has arrived to Jesus.

When Jesus heard this, he said, This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the

Son of God may be glorified in it. Now we'll come back to this verse in just a second, but I want to remind us now that everyone involved in this narrative is going to have a perplexity when it comes to this pain.

No one is going to understand what Jesus is doing. Mary and Martha are not going to understand because Jesus didn't come.

The disciples are not going to understand because he did go. We're going to see their confusion in just a moment.

Everyone in this passage is surprised by him. You imagine he gets the message.

He doesn't start packing up his toiletry bag. He doesn't saddle his camel. He doesn't do any of that. He says,

This sickness is not going to end in death. He's doing this on purpose. Not because he doesn't love them, because he loves them.

It says in verse five, Jesus loved Martha and her sister Mary and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was sick, then he stayed two days.

He stayed because he loved them. He let them walk through pain because he cared.

Isn't that fascinating thought? He didn't avoid Jerusalem because he was lazy. He didn't avoid

Jerusalem because he was scared of what was going to happen in the city. He stayed back because he loved them.

He allowed them to shed tear after tear after tear because of his great affections for them.

That is so difficult for us to even think about. That he could love them so much he would let them hurt.

And yet that's what he does. Again, they were probably saying,

I thought you loved us. I thought you cared about us. I thought you were our friend.

I thought you were our brother. And Jesus is saying it's because he loved them that he let them.

The messenger left. The messenger arrived. The messenger was telling them what

Jesus said. You can imagine they're like, what did he say? He said, the sickness won't end in death.

Is that all that he said? Did he say anything else? I imagine by the time the messenger got back,

Lazarus was already dead. Imagine hearing the message from Jesus' own mouth. This sickness won't end in death.

Lazarus is already in the tomb. Imagine the pain, the confusion they would have felt.

The disciples though are the same way. They were not the only ones or Mary and Martha were not the only ones who were confused. The disciples were confused as well.

When Jesus decided to stay, you can imagine that they probably thought that's probably a good idea,

Jesus. That's probably a good idea. We love Mary and Martha. We love Lazarus. We love this family.

But why would we intentionally risk it? Why would we go back to Jerusalem and put you in danger so that you can get arrested and murdered?

You're leading a revolution. You've got a kingdom that you're bringing about. Why would we risk it?

One man is not worth the importance of your mission, Jesus. You can imagine that them saying,

I don't like this. We're going to pray. We're going to get in a prayer circle and we're going to sing maybe some songs and we're going to ask the

Lord to heal him. But Jesus, you can't go back because the mission is more important than one man. You can imagine them saying that.

And then Jesus two days later is like, now we're going. And they're like, what? They don't even speak in the narrative until Jesus says that they're going to go.

And then they start offering him all kinds of excuses. He wanted them to have a crisis of faith.

He wanted everyone in the narrative to have a crisis of faith. There's not a single person in this narrative, save him, that he wanted to be comfortable.

He just didn't. It says in verse five through seven, Jesus loved

Mary and her sister Martha. So when he heard that he was sick, he then stayed two days longer. And then after this, he said to his disciples, let us go again to Jerusalem.

And they're like, did you not see the softball sized stones that they were going to throw at your noggin, Jesus? Did you not see that they like hate you and they want to kill you?

Like, can we at least wait until Passover when we have to go, please?

You get the idea that that's what they're thinking. Even Thomas in exasperation says, let us also go and let us die with him.

He knew what the stakes were. He knew that if they go, something dangerous could happen to them.

And it says Jesus was glad about it. Jesus was glad that they were frustrated. Jesus was glad that they were anxious.

Every step of the journey where they're like, are we going to die or not? Jesus was glad a deep abiding pleasure was in the heart of Jesus because he knew that in their pain and in Mary and Martha's pain, they were going to get to see

God. Think about the wisdom of Jesus Christ. Think about the wisdom of God that everyone in this narrative is going to experience pain of loss, pain of death, pain of confusion, frustration, fear, impending death.

And all of them are going to get to see the glory of God. Even the crowds that are watching are going to get to see the glory of God because of the wisdom of Christ and allowing them to go through pain by using awful circumstances, by using hurtful, trying, soul -crushing events to awaken their senses.

You think about it. How often do we spurn the promises of God when things are comfortable in our life?

When things are going well, how often do we forget? How often is it do we forget how good

God is and then the trial hits and then our eyes are open and we complain for a season and we cry out to God for a season but then we realize that He's doing that to wake us up.

He's doing that to show us His glory. You see, brothers and sisters,

He loves you and I too much to let you live in comfort. He loves you and I too much to remove us from the pain.

He loves us too much to take us out of the fire because it's in the fire that we see God. Think about iron.

How do you bend it? How do you bend iron? You try to put it over your knee and you break your knee.

You put the iron in the fire and you let it sit in the fire and you let it sit in the fire until the fire gets into the iron and then you can bend it, then you can shape it, then you can mold it according to the purpose that you designed it for.

Sometimes God has to let us sit into the fire until the fire gets into us before He can mold us, before He can shape us, before He can bend us according to His purposes.

God uses the fiery trial in your life and in my life to shape us according to the image of Christ.

We see that all over the scriptures and we see here that His disciples for two days were too comfortable.

They were chilled in their comfort, unbendable, unmoldable, resisting in their rigidity until He turned up the stove and He said, we're going to Jerusalem, the hot spot of fury, the mouth of the lion's den and then you will get to see the glory of God.

Then you will get to see the glory of Christ. Then you will believe. He's doing this intentionally.

Now what I want us to see here is that He's not only allowing them to go through pain,

He's demonstrating them how to live, how to truly live a life that's set apart for the glory of God.

You can't live a life set apart to the glory of God if you're idolizing your comfort. You can't live a life set apart to the glory of God if you think that you're never going to go through stuff.

Jesus says, in this world we'll have many troubles, but fear not, I've overcome the world.

He's showing His disciples what it means to be righteous, what it means to follow

Him, what it means to trust in Him. He's showing them that when it gets hard, that they're not going to be called to fold and die.

When it gets painful, they're not going to run away like cowards. When life gets difficult, they are not called to scan the horizon to see where the next threat is coming from.

As Christians, as the disciples there and as the disciples here, we are called to embrace the pain as antithetical to our nature as that is to welcome the pain because we know that God is sovereign over the pain and using the pain.

All of our suffering, all of our malice, all of our sickness, all of our hurt will redound to the glory of God, but we've got to embrace it.

We've got to stop complaining like the Israelites and say that my God has a good plan in this pain and He is going to use it for my good so that I will see the glory of God, so that I will showcase the glory of God, so that I will live to the glory of God and so that I will grow in my faith.

This is what Jesus says in 14. Jesus said to them plainly, Lazarus is dead and I'm glad.

I'm glad for your sakes that I was not there so that you will believe.

Your pain has a great purpose. Again, we often overlook times.

We overlook the presence of God. We overlook the promises of God when our life is going well. We overlook

His promises just like the disciples, but when pain comes and we get confused by it and we get burdened by it and the pressure is on top of us,

I want us to adopt God's perspective for our pain instead of our perspective and our pain and to realize that our pain is for God's glory.

Let me give you a couple examples. The pain that you have in your marriage. I am well enough in ministry to know that our marriages are not perfect and I know that there are many times where deep pain is going on in your marriage.

Your marriage may be heading for divorce today and no one in this room even knows it yet. I'm telling you that the pain that you are experiencing in your marriage, if you adopt what

God is saying in this passage, will not end in death, but it will redound to the glory of God. Stop looking at your spouse as though they're the problem and start looking at your spouses that they are

God's gift to you to sanctify you. They might be a total jerk. Maybe they are.

Probably are. So are you. But stop looking at them as though they're the problem and embrace the fact that God has loved you so much that he's gave you this person to drive you crazy.

Because when you're crazy and you realize that you can't figure things out on your own, you turn to God.

You turn to Christ. You cling to his promises. You cling to the cross. You learn how to love another person even though you're frustrated.

Look at the example of Christ. Marriage is an example of the gospel. Husbands love your wife as Christ has loved the church.

Wife submits your husband as the church submits to Christ. We are reenacting how to sacrificially love someone who doesn't deserve it.

We are reenacting sanctification. We're reenacting the power of the Holy Spirit in our marriages. Stop blaming

God for your spouse or your kids. Think about your health.

Stop using your health as an excuse or as a crutch to lean on. Your health is not outside the sovereignty of God.

Your backache, your neckache, or your terminal illness is not outside of the sovereign will of God.

And he is using that to showcase his glory in your life. Will you open up your eyes and will you see it?

Will you embrace that? Will others get to see the glory of God in your pain? There's a great example.

There's a lady in this community who got a diagnosis of cancer.

It was not a good one. And the first thing that she said was, this is for the glory of God.

And I don't know if I've got months left or years left, but I'm going to live every day as if this is a gift.

And I'm going to live every day embracing it. I'm going to grow in my faith. I'm going to spend every day as though it's my last so that other people can see the glory of God.

Because I'll tell you the truth, the world is looking at you. The world is watching you. The world is wondering if it's going to see the same kind of giving up, the same kind of grumbling, the same kind of rejection, the same kind of all these things as they feel, or are they going to see something different?

We can take the pain that we've been given and not begrudge it and not hate it and not grumble about it, not complain about it, but embrace it to the glory of God.

And we can do that because we've seen it. We've seen God do it. Think about Isaiah 46, 10.

God says my purpose will be established and I will accomplish my good pleasure. That's a great verse until you realize that his good pleasure was to crush

Jesus Christ. Six chapters later in Isaiah 53, but the Lord was pleased to crush him.

We get a vision of what it means for God to have pleasure in our pain, knowing that that can cause the greatest good.

Think about the cross of Jesus Christ. There's never been a moment that was darker than that and never been a moment that God has used more triumphantly to save billions of people.

The pain is a megaphone for the glory of God. And Christ, when he said it is finished, showcased to us how we are to live.

And if we are going to live like Christ and follow him and walk like him and talk like him and obey him and speak like him to the world, then we've got to understand that we too are going to walk through painful situations in our life and we too can give glory to God in the midst of them.

The Bible is all, it's filled with this message. I'll share with you a couple of examples. Romans 5, 3 through 5.

Not only this, but we exalt in our tribulations knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance and perseverance, proven character and proven character, hope and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the

Holy Spirit. He's saying in our tribulations, I'm realized, this is what Paul is saying, that the love of God has been poured out into my heart because of the tribulation.

I see it better now. My senses are awakened better now and I see it and I see all the benefits that God is doing.

He's maturing me in my faith because of my pain. James says in 2, 1 and 2 verses 1 through 4, consider it all joy.

My brother, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance and that endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

John 16, 33. I mentioned this a second ago. These things I've spoken to you so that in me you may have peace.

In the world, you have tribulations, but take courage that I have overcome the world. Philippians 1 .29

For to you it has been granted for Jesus' sake. This means it is your gift. That word granted means that God has gifted you not only to believe, but to suffer for His sake.

It's a gift. Suffering is a gift, not because God hates you, but because He loves you and He sees that your pain has a purpose in producing holiness in you and to showcasing the

Gospel to those who are watching you. Second Corinthians 1 .3 -4 Blessed, happy is the

God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort who comforts us in our afflictions.

God, as strange as it is to say, is pleased with our pain because God knows that there's purpose in our pain and God is producing something in our pain so that we will look more like Jesus and so that the world will get to see who

Jesus Christ is through our struggles. Your pain today is your ministry tomorrow.

Don't forget that. Embrace that and rejoice whether God gives you blessing or whether He gives you troubles because in all of these things

He's producing His good work in you and He will complete that good work on the day of Christ.

Let's pray. Lord, we are such sensate creatures.

We want happiness. We want wealth and treasures.

We want security and comfort. We want all of the things that really don't build us up but cause us to be lazy and complacent.

And Lord, it's no wonder that the fastest growing fringe movement of Christianity in the world is the health, wealth and prosperity gospel because it speaks to our carnality.

It speaks to our earthly sinful flesh. Lord, I pray that we would embrace pain, that we would embrace trial, that we would embrace these things knowing that we've been counted worthy to suffer for the sake of Christ.

Lord, I pray that You would produce in me and in us the same kind of joy that would cause us to be like Paul and sing praises to God even when in prison.

Lord, I pray that we would have the same kind of passion like James and John while walking away from a beating in Jerusalem to say that we've been counted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ.

Lord, I pray that we would be like the saints in Revelation who cry out to praise

God even in the midst of deep persecution. Lord, these things are possible but only by Your Spirit.

If we just try to be happy in pain, we will be the most to be pitied.

If we do that in our flesh, God, I'm asking by the power of Your Spirit that You would cause us to have a godly view of pain and to see what

You were doing in it and to see how You were using it to produce the image of Your Son in us and to showcase to the world the power of the gospel.

Lord, I thank You for a hard teaching. But Lord, I thank You that it's so honest that we can look at it and we can believe it and we can repent for the ways that we viewed our pain.

Lord, I pray for anyone here who is currently right now upset and frustrated and given over to a spirit of bitterness and complaining.

Lord, would You move in such a way that they would see this pain that's in their life right now as a blessing from You?

And Lord, for us who are not currently in the throes of trouble, would

You equip us right now for the trouble that comes tomorrow to view it differently than we ever have before?

Lord, would You cause us to see it the way that You see it? Would You cause us to see