When Suffering Comes

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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And we are going to begin reading. At verse 3. We began last week a new study.

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Of the book of 2nd Corinthians, and we did an overview of the history of this book.

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The author is the Apostle Paul. This is one of the letters that is.

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Even by. Scholars who are not believers or scholars who are more spectacle or not spectacle of skeptical of the authorship of certain books of the

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Bible. This is one of the books that is undisputed because it is so autobiographical, because it is so filled with Paul's references to his own life and journeys and and difficulties and things that he experienced.

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This is what's referred to by unbelieving scholars, even as one of the undisputed letters.

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Paul certainly wrote this. He wrote it around the year 57. This is his fourth letter to the church at Corinth.

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We have two in our Bibles and there are two that no longer exist in our hands.

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We don't have them that they're not missing books of the Bible. They were never intended by God to be part of the Bible. We talked about that last week, but we know this is

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Paul's 4th correspondence with the church in Corinth. And Paul is writing to them about a variety of issues.

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Most specifically, they have called into question or there are those there who have called into question his authority as an apostle.

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And one of the things that we are going to see today is Paul is going to address the subject of suffering because it is in fact that it is, there are those in the church who had made the claim that Paul's suffering was evidence of his not being an apostle.

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How would God allow his man to suffer as Paul has suffered?

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And so Paul in defense of his apostleship describes what we ought to learn when suffering comes.

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So let us stand and read 2 Corinthians chapter one beginning at verse three.

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And it says, blessed be the

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God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

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For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

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If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. And if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.

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Our hope for you is unshaken. For we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.

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For we do not want you to be unaware brothers of the affliction we experienced in Asia.

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For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despised or excuse me, despaired of life itself.

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Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

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He delivered us from such a deadly peril and he will deliver us.

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On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted to us through the prayers of many.

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Father, I pray that you would keep me from error.

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For Lord, I am a fallible man. I am capable of preaching error.

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And for the sake of your name and for the sake of my conscience and for the sake of those who will hear,

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I pray oh God that you would keep me from error. I pray also

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Lord that you would give me words that are both true and clear as today's message has the potential of being misunderstood as your word always has the potential of being misunderstood even today more so Lord, as we consider the reality and the juxtaposition between suffering and comfort.

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And I pray oh Lord that through the word that we would be instructed. And Lord, if there are those here who are suffering,

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Lord that they would be able through your word to find their comfort.

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And Lord, if there are those who are here who are not yet believers that they would find today that there is only one source of strength and comfort.

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There is only one source of salvation and hope. There is only one source of eternal life and that is the

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Lord Jesus Christ. We pray it in his name and for his sake, amen.

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Several years ago, I was asked to speak at the regional conference for the

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Fellowship of Independent Reformed Evangelicals, the association with which our church is a part.

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And I was tasked with preaching on the subject of comforting saints in the midst of affliction.

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And the reason why I was asked to speak on that subject was we were about six months past the beginning of the

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COVID pandemic. And the conference was being held at a church where there were many who had suffered.

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Some had lost loved ones. Some had lost their health.

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Some had struggled very much because of the pandemic. And I was asked to address the subject of comfort from God in the midst of pain and loss.

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Well, during that sermon, I said something that was not universally praised by my fellow ministers.

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Not unlike some other times that I've preached. But in this particular context, there were other ministers there preaching and I was the one tasked with preaching on comfort in the midst of pain.

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And my text was Romans chapter eight, verse 28, which says that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.

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That was my text. That's what I preached. But in the midst of the sermon,

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I said something, again, that was not universally agreed upon by my contemporaries.

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Not because I was wrong, but they were wrong. But I'm gonna tell you what

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I said. I said, this verse is always true.

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But this verse is not always comforting. God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him.

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I said, that's always true, but it's not always comforting. I said, there are times when we are in the midst of suffering that hearing those words can actually be painful rather than profitable.

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The reason I explained is because when someone is going through something excruciating, it is often hard in the moment to find any good in it.

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Quite frankly, sometimes it doesn't seem like there's ever going to be able to find any good in it.

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Saying God's gonna work it out for good can sometimes seem dismissive of the pain that someone's going through in the moment.

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And I've heard it used almost that way. Oh, you're hurting? You're going through the worst day of your life?

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God's gonna turn it out for good. You see how easily that can become dismissive and painful?

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Now again, please don't think for a minute that I don't believe Romans 8 .28 is true. I have preached the book of Romans.

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I have preached Romans 8 .28, and I believe it is true. I do not believe in purposeless evil.

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I do not believe in meaningless pain. I believe every grief that we suffer and every heartache we go through has an ultimate meaning.

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I do believe that. In fact, there's a song that we sing.

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Sang it last week. Though he slay me, yet I will praise him.

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That song is taken from the words of Job, who was, remember, told by his wife,

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I'm gonna just curse God and die. Job says, though he slay me, yet I will trust in him.

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Well, there's a version of that song by the ones who wrote it, the authors of that song, Shane and Shane sing that song.

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There's a version of that song where John Piper's preaching is overlaid in the midst of the song.

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So at a certain point, they stop singing and they only play the guitar part. And while the guitar part is playing, some of you've heard it, you're nodding your heads.

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Only as the guitar part is playing, you hear Piper come in and he starts talking about suffering.

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And he says, God is working a peculiar glory in all of our pain.

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That is beautiful and that is true. And I believe it. But sometimes there is a moment to remind people of that.

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And sometimes there is a moment where it is simply best to sit quietly.

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And I begin with all of that, simply to say that I think it's important from the outset of today's sermon that we understand that when we deal with the subject of suffering and grief, there is no easy answer when you're in it.

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There is no cookie cutter response when you're hurting and there's no easy word when you are at the moment of the shadow of death, whether it's you or someone you love.

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And everyone deals with grief and suffering differently. While there are some universal truths that we recognize and we will look at today, we need to understand that this topic is hard to say the least.

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If you remember just a few weeks ago, we were doing apologetics, a study of apologetics, defending the faith.

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And what did I say is one of the most difficult things we have to address with unbelievers. Why do bad things happen?

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If God is good, why do people suffer? And even though the

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Bible gives us an answer, it's still a universal question. And it's still a question that even believers ask when they're in it.

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So in our text today, Paul talks about the dual nature of suffering and comfort.

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He describes his own experiences of suffering. And by the way, he's very descriptive, even talking about feeling despair.

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He's gonna say, and we've already read it, but he says in the text, he says, I despaired even of my own life.

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I thought it'd be better just to die. Now that's

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Paul. This is important because sometimes

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I think we have a view of the early apostles as if they were otherworldly men, but they were not otherworldly men.

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They were filled with the Holy Spirit, but they were men all the same. They had failures and faults.

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They had struggles and they had pain and they had suffering. And sometimes they despaired even of life itself.

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And that's not my words, that's Paul's words of himself. There's three words in this section that should stand out.

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He uses the word afflicted and affliction four times. Philipsis is the Greek, it's afflicted, affliction, and he uses the word suffering four times, which is pathema.

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And it is essentially a synonym for the word affliction. So if you think he uses the word affliction and suffering, eight times.

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And he uses the word comfort 10 times. Periklesis, 10 times.

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So what we're seeing, if you just think of it that way, Paul is showing the dual nature of Christian living.

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Suffering and comfort, suffering and comfort. And in this text, what he shows us is the

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Christian life is one of suffering and the Christian has a source of comfort. That's today's sermon.

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The Christian life is one of suffering and the Christian has a source of comfort.

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That's what Paul is telling us. So let's look first that the

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Christian life is one of suffering. When we think about suffering, we think about Paul's use of the word suffering and affliction.

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I looked up and studied both of those words this week as I was preparing for the message and I was trying to see if there were nuances here.

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Are there things that we miss? If we only read the English, can we look deeper into the Greek and see anything?

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And there are some things, but what's interesting, it kept coming up in the language tools and in the dictionary, what's it called,

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Mike? Lexicon. In those books that tell us what the words mean.

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And as I was looking up the words and trying to search if there's anything deeper, what

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I came to find out is in all of these words, what kept coming up is the word pain. Whether it's suffering, it was always the definition always included the word pain.

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And then the word affliction, look up the definition, always included the word pain. And what we know is this, pain is not only of one kind.

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There is in our life material pain and immaterial pain.

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Material pain is physical and we learn it very early. It ranges from everything from broken bones to headaches.

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When a child falls on the playground, they experience physical pain. They know they don't like that, so they don't wanna fall down again.

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And we learn very early what physical pain is all about.

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That's material pain. But immaterial pain is different.

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Immaterial pain is pain that is in the heart and in the head.

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It can be spiritual turmoil, it can be depression, it can be anxiety, it can be despair.

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Child on the playground falls and hurts himself, that's physical pain. Child on the playground is bullied and he comes home crying, that's a different type of pain, isn't it?

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It's not material anymore. He's not crying because he got a black eye, he's crying because he got a broken heart.

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And we learn that early too. And something we learn as we get older is that sometimes immaterial pain is worse than physical pain.

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Sometimes the struggle we have in our mind is harder than the one we endure with our body.

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And I think it's important to say this, that as Christians, we are not exempt from either.

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We are not exempt from physical pain and we are not exempt from mental and emotional and spiritual pain.

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In fact, Christians suffer in two ways. This is what makes us different from the world.

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We suffer the first way, the way the world does. We have to deal with the same suffering the rest of the world deals with.

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We deal with health issues, we deal with sickness, we deal with loss, we deal with death, we deal with all of those things.

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In fact, how many of you have ever heard of the health and wealth gospel? The health and wealth gospel postulates the idea that somehow as a

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Christian, you're not going to experience physical pain and you're not going to experience physical suffering as long as you have enough faith.

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And guess what the Greek word is for that? It's baloney. It just ain't so.

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The Bible never promises that as a Christian, you're not gonna suffer physical pain. The Bible never promises that as a

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Christian, you're not gonna suffer physical sickness or death. In fact,

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I've never been able to get my mind around how somebody can sit in a church and listen to a health and wealth pastor wearing glasses.

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One of the most famous health and wealth pastors in California recently was preaching with two splits on his finger.

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He looked like Dr. Spock. I don't know what happened, but the whole time he's preaching, you see two pieces of tape wrapped around both fingers.

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And I said, with all the health, wealth gospel you have taught for the last 20 years and made your bahooku millions off of that garbage, and you can't even fix two sprained fingers?

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Sorry, I got a little uptight about it. False gospel should upset us, because that is a false gospel.

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If anyone tells you that as a Christian you won't suffer, it's a lie.

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This whole section of this text is written by the Apostle Paul, a man of unquestioning faith who endured terrible bouts of physical and mental anguish.

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In fact, as I said before we read, I honestly think this part is included by Paul as an apologetic for his own ministry, because there are those who are seeing his ministry and saying, look at Paul, look at all the suffering

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Paul's going through. How can you follow a guy like this? How can you trust a man? Look at how much he must be under the curse of God because of all this suffering.

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As I said, Paul at one point even said he was utterly burdened beyond strength, even despaired of life itself.

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That doesn't mean he wanted to take his life, be clear. But rather he felt that a certain point death would have been the only escape.

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You ever been in that situation? You feel like the only way this is gonna get any better is if I just die?

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Maybe not. But we all deal with suffering.

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But as Christians we have something else, because as Christians we are also promised that we will suffer with Christ.

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And see, that's a distinction that the world doesn't have. See, we're gonna suffer as the world suffers.

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World gets cancer, we get cancer. World has car wrecks, we have car wrecks. The world has disease, we get disease.

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The world is broken, we're broken. That's the reality. But there's an additional reality for the believer.

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And if you wanna see this, you can turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter eight. I just want you to see this for a second.

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It'll only be there. You'll turn, it'll take you longer to turn than read it. But Romans chapter eight, verse 16.

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In fact, recently I did a little miniature debate with Pastor Doug Wilson on the subject of post -millennialism.

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Post -millennialism is the idea that the world's gonna keep getting better and better and there's going to be this grand overtaking of the world with the gospel.

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It's wonderful and it's great and it's a wonderful positive view of the future. I hold a little different view. So we had this discussion and one of the things

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I brought up, I said, but what about suffering? Oh, well, everybody's gonna suffer, everybody suffers.

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That's true, I just said that. But we have a particular suffering. Look at Romans eight, verse 16.

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It says, the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

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Did you hear what Paul wrote there? He said that we are fellow heirs with Christ provided we suffer with him.

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What is that referring to? Christians have always and will always suffer in one way or another for the cause of Christ because there will always, until Christ returns, be those who are opposed to Christ and his gospel.

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There will always be those who hate the Lord and hate his people.

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When he returns, he will crush his enemies. Now, I do wanna add something to that.

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All suffer and all will suffer for Christ, but not all suffer equally.

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If you're a Christian in America, it's likely that your level of persecution for the gospel will probably be way different than someone who lives in China.

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And if you live in a country where there is religious freedom, it will probably be much different for you than people who live in places like Saudi Arabia and Iraq where there is no religious freedom.

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Likewise, one may find himself suffering, excuse me, one may find himself suffering tremendous difficulties and see someone else who's not.

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One may be visited with terrible grief and another not. And sometimes this causes the question of why.

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Okay, okay. Huh, why is it that I'm not suffering or why is it that I am?

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And all too often, we ascribe meaning to suffering which is not necessarily true.

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We might assume someone is suffering because they're somehow under some form of curse from God or that they've done some kind of grievous sin and that they deserve punishment.

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In fact, you don't have to turn to your Bibles, if you can get there quick, I'm gonna read it. John nine is a great example of this.

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In John nine, verse one, it says, speaking of Jesus, it says, and he passed by and saw a man blind from birth.

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Remember this? And his disciples asked him, remember this?

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Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?

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That he was born blind. Now, notice they didn't say, notice they didn't say,

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Rabbi, did someone sin to cause this man to be born blind?

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They didn't ask the question without the assumption. And what was the assumption?

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Somebody did this. Somebody deserved this. It might have been him.

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I don't know how he could have been born blind and deserved it. I guess God knows the future. But they were saying, did he sin?

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God knew he was gonna sin, so God went ahead and blinded him from birth. Or was it his parents?

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But you notice the assumption behind the question. Somebody's responsible for this.

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Somebody made this happen, whether it was him or his parents.

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And Jesus' answer is perfect as always. Jesus answered and said, it was not this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

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That man was born blind because Jesus was gonna heal him on that day and in that moment and in that hour, God was gonna get the glory for his healing.

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But there's another passage that I just love. So I will ask you to turn here.

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Turn to Luke 13, beginning of verse one.

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It says, there were some present at that very time who told him about the

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Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.

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Now, right away, we don't know a lot about the story, but basically what had happened was there was some form of insurrection that was happening with some

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Galileans. And so Pilate found out about it. He sent in some soldiers. They killed those men and mixed their blood with their sacrifices as a way of showing contempt for them.

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So that's the background in this. And so the question was, boy, those guys must have really been cursed by God if they're undergoing such a terrible, horrible thing.

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If God would allow Pilate to come in and kill them and mix their blood with sacrificial blood, and that must really be evidence that these men are really bad men.

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And Jesus answered, verse two, do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other

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Galileans because they suffered in this way? That is a hugely important question.

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He said, do you think they were worse than everyone else and that's why this happened?

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That's what they thought. They thought that because these men suffered this way, that somehow they were worse.

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Verse three, no, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

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Jesus uses this as a gospel presentation. He says, listen, understand this. Yeah, those guys suffered and their suffering was bad, but understand this, unless you repent, your suffering's gonna be worse because not only will you die in this life, but you're gonna go to hell.

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And then he tells another story. He says, what about that 18 on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them?

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Do you think they were worse offenders than any of the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

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See, Jesus doubles down and he says, if you see someone suffering and you automatically assume that their suffering makes them worse than you, that somehow they're the object of God's disfavor because of their suffering, understand this, unless you repent, you will all likewise suffer.

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I remember a few years ago, Hurricane Katrina hit. Hurricane Katrina was pretty bad.

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For those who remember all the events that surrounded it. And I remember someone asking me, or no, no,

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I'm sorry, they told me. They said, I heard on Christian TV a preacher say that Hurricane Katrina hit

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Louisiana because Louisiana had legalized gambling.

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And the word Katrina is the Greek word for judgment. And so that was God's judgment on Louisiana.

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What do you think? I said, baloney, and here's my reason.

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One, Katrina is not the Greek word for judgment. So strike one.

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But if that were the case, why doth

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Las Vegas and Atlantic City still stand? And what about all the godly people who were swept away when those dikes burst?

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Were not many churches leveled by the same storm? Absolutely.

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We cannot look at the suffering of people and automatically assume that that in some way indicates to us that they are ungodly or reprehensible or deserving because all death, disease, and destruction, while it is a result of sin having entered the world, is not always laid upon a person because of a peculiar sin in their life.

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Some things happen that are beyond our control and are not the result of any specific misbehavior or malevolence on our part.

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The world is cruel, the world is unforgiving, the world is indiscriminate. Cancer doesn't care whether you're a

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Christian. Car accidents don't care whether or not you're a believer. And natural disasters will level the church as soon as they level the casino.

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Grief visits the home of the godly and the ungodly. Death cannot be bartered with. It cannot be reckoned with.

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It comes to all. 10 out of 10 die. Royal doors will not block it and wealth will not bribe it away.

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Now there is a reality where cause and effect do still exist.

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The Bible uses the term what? Reap. And so sometimes there is suffering that comes from bad decisions.

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A lifetime of drink may bring liver disease. A lifetime of drugs may bring other diseases.

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Spending money beyond our means may result in crippling debt as one modern philosopher said, all things happen for a reason.

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Sometimes the reason is you're stupid. You might not like that, but it's true, right?

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Sometimes I look at something that happens to me and it goes, yep, that was a bad decision. And so we have to be honest.

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Yes, there are things that are sometimes the result of bad decisions.

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Testify, right? Last week, a

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Baptist pastor was found dead and found out to be a cross -dresser on Instagram.

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When his perversion was brought to light, he stood before his congregation and said, I have nothing for which to be ashamed.

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And two days later, he took his own life. Now that man's life was filled with bad decisions and it ended with the worst possible one he could make.

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So while I am saying that just because someone is visited with suffering doesn't mean that that person is a object of God's judgment or wrath, we can also say very clearly, the

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Bible does say there's reaping and sowing and therefore our decisions do matter. But all that is simply to say the

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Christian life is one of suffering. The Christian life is one of suffering.

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And I mean, we can walk through text after text that those who live a godly life in Christ will suffer.

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I mean, it's just over and over and over. The Bible is clear. How somebody gets to health and wealth it doesn't even register to me how someone can get so perverted and so far from the truth.

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But the blessing is the second half of the sermon, which won't be as long, but will still be hopefully better.

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Because the first half of the sermon is the Christian life is one of suffering. I think we've come to that conclusion.

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Well, the second part is this, the Christian has a source of comfort.

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Suffering and affliction are in this passage, but it is set against the comfort that God provides.

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I want you to notice the very first thing Paul says in verse three. He says, blessed be the

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God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies, the

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God of all comfort. You see, that's Paul's starting point for the next 10 verses, which are all going to be about this

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God of comfort. I was with my

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Sunday school class this morning. Mike and I were in there teaching. And I asked, what is comfort?

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What is comfort? One of the girls said, it's when you feel safe and secure.

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I said, that's what we often think of comfort. That's a good answer.

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It was a very good answer. But from a biblical perspective,

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I wanted them to understand more deeply what the word comfort means.

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The word comfort we are probably most familiar with in the King James rendering of the word for the

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Holy Spirit. When Jesus said, I will go away, but I will send you another comforter.

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What's interesting is that word, pericletos, in John is the same word here, just a little different ending, because this is periclesis, but it's the same idea is used here of Paul when he says

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God is the God of all comfort. The word pericletos means one who comes alongside to give you strength.

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The word comfort, the word comfort in English comes from the

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Latin and the Latin word has the root forte.

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If you are familiar with music, if you've ever played piano or played in the band or something like that, you'll know that when you're reading your music, you'll come across words in the, either above or below the staff and those words will be like the word piano.

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Piano is not referring to the instrument. Piano means soft or pianissimo means very soft.

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And then you have forte and fortissimo. Forte means with strength.

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Fortissimo means very strong. Comforte means with strength, to give strength.

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And so we translate that into English. We transliterate from the Latin and we say comfort is when we are given strength.

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So when Paul says, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of mercies, the

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God of our strength, that's what he's saying. The God who comes and strengthens us for suffering, not the

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God who removes us from the suffering, but the God who strengthens us in the suffering.

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And Paul refers to a time in verses nine and 10 when he was utterly desperate. I'm sorry, excuse me.

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Paul refers to a time when he had nothing, but God.

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Look at it again. Verses nine and 10, verse nine. He said, indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

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You see, Paul recognized that in his suffering, in his affliction, and he mentioned something that happens in Asia, which we can extrapolate some things.

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We know there was a riot in Ephesus. He could be referring to that, or he could be referring to something that we don't know, but the

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Corinthians did know about, something that had happened that maybe wasn't written about, but we know about at least some things that happened, and he talks about some of those things later in the book.

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But he says, in verse eight, he says, we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life.

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We didn't know how this was gonna work. We felt like we were gonna die. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, like this was it, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.

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Paul is saying this. He's saying this suffering was not without purpose, and here's the purpose.

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God was making us learn to trust him. God was making us learn to trust him, and then he says, he delivered us, and he will deliver us, and he will deliver us again.

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So Paul's saying he's done it before. He's doing it now, and he's gonna do it again.

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That's what Paul says. This affliction, this suffering was not purposeless.

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It was not meaningless. It was not without a reason, and the reason was that we would learn in our weakness how to trust in him whose strength is infinite.

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Paul knew Psalm 46. God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in times of trouble.

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Paul knew Psalm 121, which says, I set my eyes unto the hills.

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From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.

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Paul knew those intellectually, but now he was having to live them experientially, experientially, and he said, and through this, through this, we were taught how to rely on God, and he tells us that the comfort that he received allowed him to comfort others.

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Look back quickly at verse four. Paul says, who comforts us in all our afflictions so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort that we received, excuse me, with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

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See, Paul expresses the value here of his comfort,

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I'm sorry, his suffering for others, saying that in his affliction, he received comfort, and through that, he would be able to comfort others.

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And what Paul is doing here is Paul is showing us the value of shared affliction and shared comfort.

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You know what the Bible says? The Bible says we are a body, and when one part of the body suffers, what?

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The whole body suffers, and when one part of the body rejoices, the whole body rejoices.

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And we can think of this in the most simple way possible. You stub your toe, your whole body goes on alert, but when someone massages your shoulders, you feel it from here all the way down to your toes, right?

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When one part of your body rejoices, the whole body rejoices. When one part of your body hurts, the whole body hurts.

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And Paul's saying we suffer not only for us, not only that we may learn to rely on God, but that we who have learned to rely on God will be able to now minister to others who are suffering and point them to the same

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God who walked with us and tell them he will also walk with them.

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And Paul appeals to them at the very last verse that we read to pray.

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Notice again, he says, you also must help us by prayer so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

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You have to pray. Beloved, are you praying for one another in their suffering?

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Are you praying that the God of all comfort, the God who raises the dead will raise their broken hearts?

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Are you praying for one another knowing that in a body like this, there are always those who are struggling, whether it is with physical pain or whether it is with immaterial pain in the heart and in the mind and in the soul.

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Paul is showing us here the dual nature of suffering and comfort and how the believer has access to comfort even in the midst of suffering.

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Everyone suffers, but not everyone has Christ. If we think we won't suffer, we're wrong.

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Christ suffered, so will we. But with our suffering, we have access to the

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God of all comfort. That doesn't mean we won't suffer, but what that means is there is strength available.

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And I want to begin to point now to this. It's my week to lead the table.

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I don't do it every week. We share it among the elders, but it's my week, right, Andy? Okay, Andy decides.

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He's the man in charge. But you know what this is? This is a source of strength because one of the things that causes us to suffer and causes us to lose our strength is we forget.

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We forget all that God has done for us. We forget that he has delivered us and he will deliver us, right?

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We forget that. And so God says, come to my table. And Jesus said, come all you who are weak and heavy laden,

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I will give you rest. And he says, come and take this bread and be reminded that my body was broken for you and take this cup and be reminded that my blood was shed for you.

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And as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show forth the fact that Christ is coming again.

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He died and raised and is in heaven and now is preparing his return.

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And he has given us a source of strength. And that source is him.

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Beloved, are you today in Christ? Are you struggling?

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Run to him, find in him your strength.

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Let's pray. Father, may we in this time now have our hearts prepared for what we are about to receive.

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The very reminder that our sins are forgiven. Because of what

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Christ has done, not because of what we have done, but because of what Christ has done for us.

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Lord, when suffering comes and it will, inevitably so, may we find our comfort in Christ.