Wednesday, July 09, 2008
On Suffering
Toby Brown, The Classical Presbyterian, recently reprinted a 1989 sermon from John Piper. This is how it begins:
So often we love Christ and each other out of our own interests. Maybe it is because we feel like we are supposed to, so we love for the sense of satisfaction. Maybe we love to be loved in return, heck for that we may even love sacrificially, because we want some one else to sacrifice for us! And yet, that is not the model that we have presented to us.
I know, we tend to think of God in those terms, God sacrificed Himself for us, so we could love Him, but do you really think that God, creator, sustainer, TRIUNE God, needs our affections - if you must think of Him as needing anything at all, certainly He has fellowship within the Trinity. We are unnecessary in that equation.
In order to grow in love, we must grow in humility, for love is selfless. Says the Apostle Paul:
Which brings us back to trial and tribulation - they are an expression of God's love for us, for they are an attempt to break us and teach us this kind of humility.
Have you ever met someone that refuses to be broken? People that will never, under any circumstance, admit they have a problem or made a mistake, even in private. I find such people personally, extraordinarily angering. For one they usually blame someone else, often me. And often they profess their love for you (me!) while they do it. And yet, there is no love there, there is only self.
My confession today is that I currently view such people as the enemy. They obviously cannot be trusted for they only have their self-interest in mind. But that does not make them enemy, just untrustworthy. But their profession of love is the big lie, and it is that deception I cannot get past. They attempt, with their constant profession, to warp reality, and that is where I get so upset.
I want to love them, but I cannot, because they make living the big lie a condition of relationship.
How did God do this?
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In April, 1831, Charles Simeon was 71 years old. He had been the pastor of Trinity Church, Cambridge, England, for 49 years. He was asked one afternoon by his friend, Joseph Gurney, how he had surmounted persecution and outlasted all the great prejudice against him in his 49-year ministry. He said to Gurney, "My dear brother, we must not mind a little suffering for Christ's sake. When I am getting through a hedge, if my head and shoulders are safely through, I can bear the pricking of my legs. Let us rejoice in the remembrance that our holy Head has surmounted all His suffering and triumphed over death. Let us follow Him patiently; we shall soon be partakers of His victory" (H.C.G. Moule, Charles Simeon, London: InterVarsity, 1948, 155f.).What a wonderful phrase "downward in humility and upward in adoration of Christ." Oh how many seem to only know the second half of that formulation. It raises and interesting question - Can we adore Christ without humility?
So I have entitled this message, "Brothers, We Must Not Mind a Little Suffering." I have a very definite Biblical aim in choosing this theme and this man for our meditation. I want to encourage you all to obey Romans 12:12: "Be patient in tribulation." I want you to see persecution and opposition and slander and misunderstanding and disappointment and self-recrimination and weakness and danger as the normal portion of faithful pastoral ministry. But I want you to see this in the life of a man who was a sinner like you and me, who was a pastor, and who, year after year, in his trials, "grew downward" in humility and upward in his adoration of Christ, and who did not yield to bitterness or to the temptation to leave his charge – for 54 years. [emphasis added]
So often we love Christ and each other out of our own interests. Maybe it is because we feel like we are supposed to, so we love for the sense of satisfaction. Maybe we love to be loved in return, heck for that we may even love sacrificially, because we want some one else to sacrifice for us! And yet, that is not the model that we have presented to us.
I know, we tend to think of God in those terms, God sacrificed Himself for us, so we could love Him, but do you really think that God, creator, sustainer, TRIUNE God, needs our affections - if you must think of Him as needing anything at all, certainly He has fellowship within the Trinity. We are unnecessary in that equation.
In order to grow in love, we must grow in humility, for love is selfless. Says the Apostle Paul:
1 Cor 13:4-5 - Love is patient, love is kind, {and} is not jealous; love does not brag {and} is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong {suffered,} [emphasis added]Said Christ:
John 15:12-14 - "This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. "You are My friends, if you do what I command you.Have we done likewise?
Which brings us back to trial and tribulation - they are an expression of God's love for us, for they are an attempt to break us and teach us this kind of humility.
Have you ever met someone that refuses to be broken? People that will never, under any circumstance, admit they have a problem or made a mistake, even in private. I find such people personally, extraordinarily angering. For one they usually blame someone else, often me. And often they profess their love for you (me!) while they do it. And yet, there is no love there, there is only self.
My confession today is that I currently view such people as the enemy. They obviously cannot be trusted for they only have their self-interest in mind. But that does not make them enemy, just untrustworthy. But their profession of love is the big lie, and it is that deception I cannot get past. They attempt, with their constant profession, to warp reality, and that is where I get so upset.
I want to love them, but I cannot, because they make living the big lie a condition of relationship.
How did God do this?
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