The Way of Suffering (And Why We Shouldn’t Avoid It)

Hello, hello. Welcome, everybody. I hope everybody's having a good day so far. I hope you found a parking spot. I hope the Lord was with you in your parking.

I don't know about you, but when I came in, I was like, Lord Jesus, I need your supernatural power to find a spot. And He will. He will find a spot. He didn't promise you won't be towed out of it, but He found me a spot. So, we'll see.

We'll see what happens. I'm so glad everybody is here during our Summer of Salt series. And thank you for letting me speak with you guys today. I'm super excited. I know this amazing email went out saying our pastor's wife is going to bring us a message on the fullness of joy.

The Sermon on Joy is actually next week. So, please do come back to hear Grant Sappington talk about joy. Today, we're going to talk about something a little different that I have entitled The Way of Suffering. So, hey, you know, it's a reason for you to come back next week. You can get the good stuff in a week.

So, you know, this message was really dropped in my spirit last week or a little before that because actually a few weeks ago, I had a conversation with one of our lovely, lovely church members, Lisa Winekoop. Who knows Lisa? Anyone? Yep. And, you know, Lisa and her family have experienced a lot of loss recently have experienced a lot of loss recently and our church family has experienced a lot of loss recently and suffering and tragedy and sorrow.

And Lisa, who is a firm believer in Christ, one of the most positive people I know, and, you know, she was kind of talking about some of the things affecting her family and she just said, why? You know, sometimes I want to know why does this happen? Why do these things happen to these people? And if you guys have been believers for any length of time, you've probably run into someone that you've wanted to share Jesus with, right? And what is the one question that's almost rhetorical at this point that gets thrown at us when we want to talk about the goodness of God, right?

That is, why do bad things happen to good people? If I had a dollar for every time I've heard that, I would be much wealthier than I am. Why do bad things happen to good people? And as believers, guys, we have got to be able to address this. Not just in our testimonies and in our witness to other people, to non-believers, but we need to get this so deep in our own spirit because we will not have that fullness of joy.

We will not be able to live the life that God has actually ordained for us if we do not understand the purpose of pain and why maybe it's not that bad thing that we think it is and that we fear that it is. So before we jump into what I would like to call a defense of suffering today, I know it sounds so fun. You can go have like a good lunch afterwards and shake this off if you want. But before we jump in, I really think we should start with the definition of terms. And I do that a lot when I, if I'm talking to somebody, I'll say, look, let's just get a baseline, right?

Because if you're asking, why do bad things happen to good people, there's a lot of words in that sentence that we have to parse, right? Before we can even jump in. For instance, good. What is good? And are we even capable of defining it and knowing what it is?

Well, I think God gives us some insight into this, right? In the book of Genesis, if you go all the way back to the beginning, when he creates everything, God sets up almost, almost like a script with some rhetorical phrases going on, where throughout each day of creation, when he gets to the end and he creates that thing for that day, what does he say about it? That was good. He said, this is good. And he said it was good.

And he does it over and over and over again, which makes me think there's a point there that we should draw from it and we should pay attention. Because after he makes man and woman and creates the pinnacle of creation, right, in his image and the crown of that image, Adam and Eve, he says it is good. Well, so after all of this good stuff has happened and been made, what happens? We have the serpent come creeping in, right? And what does the serpent say to Eve, essentially?

He says, are you sure? How do you know it's good? Don't you? I mean, he won't even let you eat from that tree, right? Maybe that would reveal to you that it's not actually good.

Don't you want to know? Don't you want to decide for yourself what's good? Don't you want to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and be the one in charge of your destiny? Be the master of your own fate? And Eve was like, yeah, yeah.

Adam, what do you think? It sounds to me like man trying to determine what is good led to everything bad. Why do bad things happen to good people? Because we try to decide for ourselves what is good. When God said, I'm telling you what is good, you don't have to question it because I'm God.

So now that we know, we actually don't know what good is, we could stop there, but we won't. Why do bad things happen to good, do you know any good people? Raise your hand. I don't. I don't.

You know why? Because Jesus tells us in Luke 18, 19, no one is good. No one is good except God alone. In the book of Psalms, David cries out and says, you are my Lord. Apart from you, I have no good thing.

And then later on, it says that the Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. All have turned away, all have become corrupt, and there is no one who does good, not even one. Oh, well, that's, that's bad news. I mean, okay. Now, you might be saying, well, that's all good and well for you.

I... I... You don’t necessarily believe this Bible stuff. You got to define your terms. You also got to define where you're pulling your terms from.

I'm pulling my terms from what I believe is the inerrant, complete Word of God in which there is no mistake. But I submit to you that even if you don’t believe that, you're like, oh, well, who cares? I still think I know good people, and I think I'm a good person. I actually think when somebody says, well, but they're a good person. Or I think I'm basically a good person.

I think what you're really saying is, they do good things. I do good things. Because if you don’t believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, and you don’t believe in a higher power, or that God is dictating what is good, you can't really say that you are intrinsically good, can you? Because there's no standard. All you can say is, well, I do good things.

Well, now we're really getting into dicey territory. Because how many good things do you have to do to overcome the bad things? Is it got to be 51%? Is it got to be a majority? Two-thirds?

A quorum? We probably all know people who've done incredible things. They've given all their money away to the poor, and they've joined a monastery. Who knows? They've built educational systems.

They've built hospitals. They've built orphanages. They do all these good things. But what if that same person who does all those good things on the back end in their private life, maybe it's not so pretty in the background. Maybe they are a serial adulterer, and they've cheated on many wives, crushed people's spirits and lives.

Maybe they abuse their children. Who knows? Are they good? Does the bad cancel out the good? Does the good outweigh the bad?

If you are measuring your goodness based on your good things, you will never, ever, ever know that you know that you know that you are saved and that you will spend eternity with God. You will spend the rest of your life in torment, in concern, in worry, and waking up and questioning everything that you do, and questioning your motivations. Am I doing it for altruism? Am I doing it for pride? Am I doing it so that people think I'm good when I know I'm secretly bad?

You're never going to know, and you're never going to have that blessed assurance that Jesus is mine. So now that we've defined those terms, how about bad? Why do bad things happen to good people? What makes something bad? I think in general we call something bad that causes pain.

If it hurts, it is bad. That's why you rip your hand away from the stove, right? When you touch it and it's hot, you move. You avoid it because it hurts. Our body instinctively pulls away from pain to keep us alive, right?

So we don't just leave our hand there and burn up. Who says pain is bad? Who determines that? Well, today I would like to maybe submit to you that all pain is not bad. That maybe all pain actually has a purpose, and it's not one we should instinctively avoid or run from, but we should do everything we can to actually cling to it, get through it, understand it, and see what God is telling us with it.

So with that, let's start out. I've got five reasons that I think suffering exists, five purposes for suffering. And if you just hang with me, I hope that you get something from it. And if you don't, that's okay too. Come back next week.

Grant's going to talk about joy. So in defense of suffering, we're going to start with the easiest one, guys. Super, super easy. We'll blow through this one. I call this one just desserts.

Suffering exists because you have to have something to kind of like punish people for. You have to atone for bad things that happen. It's this idea of retributive justice that we believe that people should get what they deserve. Of course we believe that, or we would not have a legal system that enforces that. We do believe it.

We absolutely believe people should get what they deserve. I'm so glad, though, that God doesn't. Thank you, God, that your justice is so far above my own and so transcendent that you absolutely do not believe that we should get what we deserve. You say, forget that, because what do we deserve? And do we really want it?

Do we really, really want what we deserve? Romans tells us, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That means every single person has sinned. We see later that it says just as sin entered the world through one man, through Adam, that condemnation reverberated all the way down through history.

Everyone is now born into sin. You were not born a blank slate. Just look at the way the world goes. I don't see that happening anywhere. You're born into sin.

You're born destined for hell. Problem is, hell was not created for us. Hell was created for Satan and his minions. So now we have a problem. We've all sinned.

So if sin is what we do for a living, basically, what is our paycheck? When we work, we earn a paycheck. It's what we deserve. It compensates us for the work that we've done. So if our job as humans is to be a sinner, which is what Romans is saying, what have we earned?

What is our paycheck? Romans 6.23 says, for the wages of sin is death. So what do we deserve? What do all of us good people deserve?

Death and hell. If that's what we deserve, and that's worse than anything I can comprehend, how much more do we deserve these light momentary afflictions that beset us in this life? We deserve death. We deserve hell. But God says the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

It's a gift. He's saying, I'm not going to give you what you deserve. You're not going to get what you deserve. I'm going to gift you for free something better. I'm going to wrap it up, tie it up with a bow, and present it to you.

It's nothing that you could earn, which means it's nothing that you could lose. Suffering and pain often feel like our biggest problem. And if they are, if suffering is the biggest problem, then that means our greatest need need is avoiding it, right? It's pulling our hand back. That would be our chief.

Chief, we'll be on Twitter here. We'll see you later. point as humans is to avoid pain, avoid suffering, and make it to death, I guess, which sounds bleak when you put it that way, but I submit to you that our biggest problem is not suffering. Our biggest problem is sin. And if our biggest problem is sin, then our greatest need is rescue.

Not avoidance, but rescue. Because avoidance comes within me. That's something I have to do. I have to physically move back. Rescue comes from without.

Rescue comes from other. It comes from God. It goes back to trying to determine what is good and who is good and why I am good and why do I want to call myself good. I don't even know why you'd want to stop there and call yourself a good person when you could be called a saved person, a redeemed person, an anointed person, blessed, holy, whole, set apart, precious, treasured, beloved, saved, sanctified, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Spirit. Why would you want to stop with good?

Good is only from the inside. All of those things come from God the Father because that is what he says about us in his word. We got to get out of ourselves. We got to get out of this internal thing and look at what God has for us and what he says about us. But suffering and sin are related.

And I think this is the hard part. This was really the hardest part for me. This was the hardest part for me when I was putting together this message and studying and having to really look inside myself because I was convicted. And that's the idea that when things are going really well, when life is going good, I got that promotion. My kids are doing well in school.

They're on the honor roll. They're well behaved most of the time. I have a wonderful husband and I do. I mean, what have I got to complain about? Things are great.

And I'm tempted to think, wow, that's evidence of what this great faith I have in God. But you know what? Faith, the scriptures say, is the substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things not seen. It has nothing to do with these things I already have.

And I think a lot of the times, we as believers, we confuse faith with self-satisfaction. When things are going well, I'm happy and satisfied with myself. So if that is the case, when I turn around and things go badly, when something tragic happens, when we lose a child, is God still going to be good in my eyes? I don't think so. I think I like to call God good when really, going back to the beginning, I like it because he does good things for me.

I like the good things he has given to me. So sometimes, God has to make us suffer. And he has to let pain creep in because he has got to reveal that sin that we are harboring deep in our heart that clings to us and won't let us go. Because he knows that all those good things in the world will mean nothing if we lose our soul. And he says, if I have to rip it from you bodily, I will, if that is what it takes to open your eyes.

He's not going to let us come to ruin. He's not going to let us come to destruction. So sometimes suffering is required for us to see what's inside of us that needs to get out. Suffering is not always bad. And sometimes we need it because that weight of sin is so heavy.

It's the heaviest thing. We can't get it off of us. And if you try, you can try and try and try to do it in your own strength, and it won't work. But sin, even though it's the heaviest of weights, there's a really easy way to get rid of it, right? Forgiveness.

Forgiveness is so, so, so simple. It's free. God gives it to us. And the reason God wants to remove that weight of sin is because he wants to replace it with something far, far better. We're actually still going to have a weight.

We're still going to have something put on us, but it's not going to be a burden. It's not going to be heavy because the Lord says, what? My yoke is easy. My burden is light. You're still going to have a yoke.

You're still going to be pulled around. You're still going to be hauling stuff. But he says, what I'm going to give to you to haul is so much better than this sin that you've been hauling. And that leads to my second point. God wants to replace the heaviness of your sin with the weight of his own glory.

C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite, favorite authors. If you have not read any of his nonfiction, I'm going to tell you, you think the Chronicles of Narnia are great? Read his sermons.

And my favorite sermon, and possibly his most famous, is one entitled The Weight of Glory. Please go home and read it, if you have not, after this. It will change your life. C.S.

Lewis talks about this, the weight of glory. And why is it important? Why is this idea important? It's because from the moment we're born, from the moment we take our first breath as a baby, we have entered a battle. And it is not a battle of flesh and blood.

It is a battle between the temporal and the eternal. We are in a battle between what is here and what is not yet. Paul says in the Philippians, in his letters to the Philippians, and I think this is the most important verse we're going to talk about today. He says, For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. There, he equates them.

He puts them together. Father, if I am to live in the flesh, this means fruitful labor for me. Good things are going to happen. Great things are going to happen. Revival will happen.

People will come to the Lord. He said, if I live, good things will happen. But, which I choose, death or to live, I can't tell. He's really fighting. And he's being very vulnerable right now.

He's telling people how he feels. He says, I'm hard pressed between the two. I don't know what to pick. My desire is to be with Christ, because I know that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is necessary on your account.

Paul is saying, we have got something inside of us that is in a battle. If you ever sometimes just sit and just feel this sense of, you know, being unsettled, almost disquiet, like you just can't get satisfied. If you ever get to that point where Solomon did, where he said, everything's meaningless. I've done it all. I've tried it all.

I've done everything. I've earned every dollar. I've had every relationship you could have. And I'm not there. It's not working for me.

That's because of this. It's because, again, we were created to walk with God in the garden forever and ever and live eternally with him in concert. But sin entered the world and God had to put a hard stop on it. Can you imagine if we all lived forever with sin? You think it's hard now?

Can you imagine if no one ended? God said, you can't have that anymore. But our souls know that we're eternal. Our souls know that we do not have an end with death and they long to be with the Lord. But Paul then goes on to say, you've got to be really careful while you're here.

That just because it sparkles and it glitters, that it's not all always gold. Shakespeare said that in The Merchant of Venice. It's a great play. It's one of the less known ones. But he said, all that glitters is not gold.

All that glitters is not gold. And Paul says something else about it in Philippians. He says, whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage.

Garbage. Garbage. Garbage. Everything I have. Instead, he says, I want to know Christ.

Yes, I want to know the power of his resurrection and I want to participate in his sufferings. Becoming like him in his death and so somehow attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Paul says, everything you have is garbage. He does not mince words. He doesn't say, it's okay, but there's something better.

He says, no, no, no, no. In comparison to Christ, it's garbage. It's filth. It's nothing. And the more and more you get, the more good things that happen to you, it's going to be harder and harder to not cling to those and instead look towards what is eternal.

And this is where we get to it. This is where suffering comes in. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 14, for our momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory, far beyond all comparison, while we look not to the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. We glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, and then perseverance produces character, and character produces hope.

We have to suffer if we are going to take on this weight of glory, because that is how we mirror the image of our Savior. That is what he had to do to take on the glory and the title of Redeemer. We are being made into the image of Christ, and if we're going to be made into his image, we have to participate in his sufferings, and we have to glory in those sufferings so that we can have hope. And what is that hope for? C.

S. Lewis says, if we take the imagery of the Bible to be real, of the scriptures to be real, what we are hoping for is that God will one day give us the morning star and clothe us with the splendor of the sun. That is what scripture says. Is there any house, is there any beach house that beats the splendor of the sun? Is there any salary that you could earn, or car that you could drive, or job for your kids that would just make you so proud of them?

Could that equal putting on the morning star? Spoiler, that's Jesus. I don't think there is. But C.S.

Lewis says, we're on the wrong side of the door. We're not there. We can't see it yet. But we have a hope. We have a hope that there's something more coming, but we can't have that hope without character, and we can't have that character without perseverance, and we can't have perseverance without suffering.

But the good news is, we're not going to suffer alone. And that leads me to my next point, which is all about sanctification. But I want to give us a new definition of sanctification. Another reason that we have to suffer is because of sanctification. Most of us believers have heard the term progressive sanctification.

I would rather change that today and say what we actually need is progressive nearness. Progressive nearness. This is the next defense of suffering. John Wesley said, the best thing of all is God with us. There is nothing better.

But that man could preach. He could write. And John Wesley talked a lot about sanctification. And Pentecostals in general talk a lot about sanctification. And most of us would say that it's a process that springs up from the finished work of the cross.

And a lot of us would define it, and I've heard it this way a lot, as growth in obedience. Growth in obedience. Well, that sounds a lot to me like how we want to teach our kids to become strong, independent adults, leave the home, and go out and be independent in the world. Is that what God wants from us? I don't think so.

I think God says, I want you closer and closer. I want you with me all the time. I want you more and more dependent on me. I don't want you to be independent, fearless creatures who go out into the world. I want you to be with me.

So, I think sometimes the way we define sanctification destroys the intimacy that we're supposed to have with Christ. And intimacy is a scary word, mostly because the world has perverted it. But intimacy, all it means is nearness, being close. But if you look at sanctification as a set of rules you have to obey, as having to crucify the flesh so that you don't sin each day, you are going to fail, and it's going to kill your faith, and you're going to walk away from the faith, and you're going to say, I don't want this. I feel worse than when I started.

I do more bad things than when I started. I cannot win. I might as well just live like a heathen until I die. But true sanctification is only achieved through intimacy with Christ. And the reality is you cannot will yourself into it.

You cannot will yourself into complete sanctification because it's not about your will. It's not about my will. Hebrews 10.10 says, By this will, that is God's will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ. When, once, and for all.

We are sanctified because God wills it to be so, and he willed it to be so once and for all at the cross with Jesus. So, that means it's not about me. There's nothing I can do to get to this glorious sanctification. It's a work of salvation just along with justification. And the only way to become sanctified is for Jesus, his mind, his will, his emotions to become my own.

How do we do that? It's gonna hurt. Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God. Jesus suffered so that we could be with God. Nearness.

Progressive nearness. Go back and read Isaiah 52 and 53. It's incredible. The foreshadowing of Jesus's life, but in particular, his final week. And then go read in the Gospel of John how that week unfolded as Jesus experienced more and more abuse heaped on him, slander heaped on him, betrayal by the people who were closest to him and loved him the most and had seen every miracle he had done.

And then he endured torture and pain and death in the most shameful way possible. And why did he do it? It said he was pierced for your transgressions. That means when each of those nails, when each of those nails went into his hands and his feet and every sin that had ever, ever been committed or ever would be committed was nailed to the cross. That didn't happen just so we could feel clean and feel good.

It didn't happen so that we could have a good life. It didn't even just happen so that we could be saved, although it did, of course. But what actually happened upon Jesus's death is that he tore the veil between what? Us and the temple veil. Us and the holy of holies.

The temple veil. In the Old Testament, the only person who could reach the presence of God was the high priest who made all these sacrifices and had to do all of these things and follow all of these rules to get in there into the presence of God. With Jesus's death, he ripped it down and he said, you too can be in the presence of God. You can experience the Shekinah glory that is his brilliance. You can be in his presence now because I suffered on your behalf.

Jesus died and Jesus suffered so that you could be with his father. He took the keys back from Satan. He became the master of death himself. And he said, no more are your only companions misery and pain and fear. Now you have access to the holy of holies.

Can you imagine the people in the Old Testament? They would have killed for that. They wanted it so badly. And we take it for granted that we have constant access to the throne room through praise. That is why Jesus sacrificed himself.

Suffering sanctifies us by bringing us closer to God. When are we closest to the Lord? When do you feel his presence the most? If you're being very honest. I feel his presence the most when I am in my deepest pain.

When I'm in the deepest, deepest pain. When I don't know what to do and I don't know who else to talk to or cry out to. I said, God, please help me. Non-believers do it. People who've never been to church in their life at the point of death say, please, God, help me.

I need somebody. But the great news is the psalmist says, pour out your heart to him. His arms are open. Suffering happens because God wants to pull us close to him. And it's not a bad thing.

And that flows into the next point, which I think is just so, so powerful. And that is that suffering exists in the universe because it was preordained. Because it was eternally the point. It is actually, it is everything. And here's why.

The second chapter of Philippians describes in detail the humiliation of Christ. Here's what it says. Jesus made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death. Even death on a cross. He says even because that was the most humiliating, shameful way most people were crucified naked to be put to death in front of everybody.

And can you imagine a Jewish man, a Jewish holy man being crucified naked in front of everybody? The shame would have been utterly overwhelming. He had to be humiliated in that way for God to exalt him to the highest place and give him the name that is above every name. That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

In God's mind, his preordained path to glory for his son was the cross. There was no other way for salvation to be accomplished. There was no alternative plan. There was no plan B. He had to be brought to the lowest depth so that he could be raised to the highest calling and title of Redeemer.

Because this was ordained before time began. And how we know it is we take, we go to the end of the Bible, the last book, a book of prophecy, an apocalyptic book called the Revelation. The Revelation, it's God's revelation to John the Apostle. And in Revelation it says this, I saw a lamb that looked as if it had been slaughtered. Sometimes I think I want visions from God and then I read stuff like this and I'm like, maybe not.

Seems creepy. I mean, a lamb, right? A snow white. Think about how much we love animals. They're innocent.

Can you imagine? This is his vision. A beautiful, sweet, white lamb with its throat slit. That's what's happening here. He stepped forward and took the scroll from the right hand of the one sitting on the throne.

That's God. And they sang a new song with these words. You are worthy to take the scroll and break its seals and open it. Why? For you were slaughtered and your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and the people and nation.

Worthy is the lamb who was slaughtered to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. He is worthy because he was slaughtered. But Revelation goes on in chapter 13 to say this. And this was the one that just really shook me. And all the people who belong to this world, the ones who love all the good stuff, right?

They worship the beast. They're the ones whose names were not written in the book of life that belongs to the lamb who was slaughtered. Before the World Was Made. Do you hear what that means? The Book of Life, that's where your names are written in.

It's essentially an account that says this person who knows my son and is in me, gonna live with me for all eternity. That's where your name is written if you know Jesus. And it was written in that book before time began. That means it has eternally been there. Your name has always been there.

It didn't really have a start. This is just some imagery for us, right? Because we need something finite to see. It's always been there. And who does this book belong to?

It says it belongs to the Lamb who was what? Slaughtered. This was eternally... It's hard for my mind to comprehend this because we live in a world bound by the laws of physics, don't we? There is cause and effect.

You cannot have an effect without a cause. We even sang about it, right? The praise. I praise you because this. I praise you because that.

I praise you because you're good. I praise you because you have saved me. That's not how God works, though. Thank God that it's not about cause and effect with him because the cross was not about causation. When the cross happened and Jesus died on the cross, God didn't then come down and say, okay, good.

Now you're lovable. Now I can love you. My son died for you. That has made you clean in my eyes. The cross was revelation.

It was revealing to us the love of God. That God has had for us for eternity. Eternally, God has been triune. Jesus was not created. God has always been three in one.

He has always been the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the Lamb of God who was slaughtered has always existed. That Lamb with the bloody neck has never not been there. That means that your salvation was never not the plan. Jesus' cross and his suffering and what he did, it was not a solution to a problem that happened.

It is everything. God's love for us has always been and it always will be. And that should just overwhelm us. That should be so, so overwhelming. Even death on a cross.

Which leads me to my last point, and it really is related to this one and the reason that we have suffering at all. And it's so that we can truly understand that it is the only way to glory. It is the fitting path to glory. It is the fitting path to joy. The same joy that Grant's going to preach about next week ain't possible without suffering.

You cannot attain it. You cannot achieve it. You will never experience it if you do not experience suffering. The chief end of man, according to the Westminster Catechism, is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. I love that, that those old people wrote it that way.

They didn't say the chief end of man is to not sin. They didn't say the chief end of man is to feed the hungry. They didn't say the chief end of man is to be with the poor and to help the widows and orphans. Those are all great things. But they said, no, no, no, no.

The purpose, your chief end, the reason you're here is to glorify God the Father and enjoy him forever. Enjoy him. What a word. Do you enjoy God? Do you bask in his presence?

Do you just smile and go, man, you're awesome. I love it. But we say that about everything else. We go to a concert. Oh, it's so great.

I love this concert. I am enjoying this. We read a book and we enjoy it. And we go to a movie and we have such a good time. And God's saying, I want you to enjoy me like that forever, for infinity, for eternity.

I want you to have that. Y'all, the second song, what a beautiful name. It is like my whole sermon in miniature, right? The whole, it's so perfect. Couldn't have been a more perfect song for today.

He didn't want heaven without us. It's for us. He didn't need it. He doesn't need us. I got news for you.

But he wants you. So much better to be wanted than to be needed. I don't want to be needed. I want to be wanted. I want to be beloved by God.

And he doesn't want heaven up there without you in it. Jonathan Edwards. And he's such a great person to talk about. This could be a whole other sermon. I was talking about this to two friends a couple nights ago.

He was a revivalist preacher of the 1800s. He was involved in the Great Awakening. If you're here and you did not read Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, I don't know who you are, I feel like that was on everybody's list in school. It was like the thing. It's such a great sermon, and you should read up on it, because Jonathan Edwards, most people don't know, he had a lot of success.

But towards the end of his life, the church was going off the rails in New England. And they were saying, hey, salvation's going to be based on whether you've been sprinkled as a baby, and your parents' names are written down, and we know who they are, and that's how you become a church member. And Jonathan Edwards said, no, no, no. And he wrote that sermon for that. And he preached it, and it did not go over well.

And they kicked him out of his own church. They took him away from the pulpit. They let him still preach, but not one single congregant, not one single member of the church would go. Do you know who went? People off the street.

People who needed the Lord. At the end of his days, he was stripped of all those good things. He had so much success. And at the end, he died in relative obscurity. Was he bad?

Was he a bad person? I don't think so. He said this, and this is so incredible. God is the highest good of the reasonable creature. The enjoyment of him is our proper happiness.

It is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven fully to enjoy God is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here, better than fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of all my earthly friends. These are but shadows, but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams, but God is the fountain.

These are but drops, but God is the ocean. When Paul says to live is Christ and to die is gain, what he's saying is that Christ is most magnified when we are most satisfied in him. And Christ is most magnified when we suffer. So that means not only should we not avoid it, we have to chase after it, and we have to strive to be most satisfied in the midst of it. Paul said, at my death, Paul said, I cannot do that.

Thank you. I want to be crucified like Christ. Because I am most satisfied in that moment with Him. And why was He satisfied? It's like this amazing circle.

It's like a paradox, a bootstrap. I love science fiction. So you're at your happiest and most satisfied because Christ is most magnified. And Christ is most magnified because you are at your most satisfied. It's this just never-ending cycle.

Which also means that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. When we say, I exist only to enjoy you and nothing else. You, my Lord, apart from you, I have no good thing. We don't have to choose, guys, between happiness and glorifying God in our sufferings because God's glory is revealed in that happiness because it's in Him. Suffering exists so that the grace and glory of God can be revealed in us and that Christ can be magnified.

but all of it is so that we can enjoy God to the full and enjoy Him forever. So I would just ask you today when these things happen, and some of you in here have experienced some of the worst suffering that is possible. It was not for nothing. It did have meaning. It has a purpose.

And its purpose is to conform you to the image of Christ. And its purpose is to magnify Jesus as the name above all names. And its purpose is to show other people that they can have the same thing. Maybe your pain and your suffering and your purpose is what will transform a life and someone else will live in eternity because you suffered. Is it worth it?

That's worth it to me. If somebody else comes to know the Lord through my pain and my suffering, is there anything else that magnifies Christ? But we're not going to be able to be able to endure it, guys, if even in the small things, we can't endure that. When we're cut off in traffic, when we don't get the promotion, when we break a bone, when the small things happen, we've got to learn to discipline ourselves so that when the big things do, we can glory and redeem that suffering for Jesus. But I do think it starts in those small things.

Just use that discipline. Use those small things. And I believe God is going to come in and give you a supernatural ability to handle the big ones. He's not going to leave you alone. And us, we're not going to leave one another alone.

We will weep when each other weep, right? We will be together. Suffering creates community. And it should be done in community just as joy should be. So that's my prayer today.

Amen. That's really it. That actually was it. That was a good point to the end. So if you are here today and you're not a believer, unfortunately, by and large, this probably does speak to believers more.

But you know what? I think in your heart, you know these things are true. That this world, in this world, there will be suffering. But take heart because Jesus has overcome. And he overcame the world.

And he overcame the world before time began. It was done. We're just playing our parts. We're really just in this amazing play. And we're just kind of going along.

I love it. I'm like, yes, I'm just I'm just along for the ride. Jesus has already won. I mean, Satan's over there still trying. He knows he's beaten.

I don't even know why he bothers. You know, and Jesus, it says he triumphed over at the time of the cross. He triumphed over you. We just get to go along for the ride. Why?

Because our destiny is heaven. Woohoo! And you can have that too. All you have to do is believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord of Lords and he is your redeemer. And if you want to do that, ask anybody here to pray with you.

They will. In fact, let's do that together. Father in heaven, we love you. You are my Lord. You are my Lord, as the psalmist said.

My personal, personal God, me, Miranda's God. And apart from you, I have no good thing. All good things come from you. God, please help me cling not to the things of this world and look only at your son, Jesus, so that I can magnify his name by being satisfied in him as I glory in his sufferings alongside him. And I ask everybody here today, God, that you would protect them and bring them your good things and your favor, God, that you would make their days long on this earth.

But I also ask that if they experience pain, you would give them the supernatural ability to find joy and glory in that pain so that they know that your unmerited favor was really your salvation and the cross. That's the thing we didn't earn that you gave to us freely anyway. We love you for it, God. You are so good. Apart from you, there is no good thing.

Thank you, God, for loving us for all eternity. Thank you that the cross was always the point. Thank you that there was no plan B. We love you. And it's in the name of your son, Jesus, we pray.

Amen and amen.