Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon on Suffering and the Beatitudes

That psalm of course is one of suffering but not a suffering for one’s personal sin rather suffering because of the sin of others. We return today to the subject of suffering in this third sermon on suffering in the season of Lent. The sermon text is Matthew 5. I’m going to read all the first 20 verses of Matthew 5 and then look more closely at the first few verses. So please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Matthew 5:1-20. And seeing the multitudes, he went up on a mountain. And when he was seated with his disciples, his disciples came to him. Then he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world, a city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a lampstand and it gives light to all who are in the house.

Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. Do not think that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches men so shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.

But whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you with unreserved thanksgiving in the midst of our sufferings. We thank you, Father, knowing that somehow you’re using these sufferings, whether they’re for sin, for other people’s sin, or just because that’s the way it is and we don’t understand why. We thank you, Lord God, that in these things we reflect upon the suffering of our Savior, the suffering of you, heavenly Father, as you redeemed us and as you suffer with us and are patient with us in our rebellion and disobedience. Bless us Lord God from this text of Scripture. Help us today to be encouraged as we suffer. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

## Suffering in Life

Suffering. I was mentioning earlier that maybe we shouldn’t celebrate Lent or think about Lent next year. It seems in my life at least that every season of Lent, my sufferings increase, physical, whatever they might be, financial. Certainly, the nation is in the grips of suffering and a fear of much more suffering in the days that lie ahead of us. Even apart from that, however, the human condition is filled with various sorts of sufferings.

We began this three-part series by looking at the suffering of the Father. Surprisingly so, the suffering of God. This was an important part of Luther’s theology. Him that thinks that God doesn’t suffer doesn’t know the Jesus who suffers on the cross and the Father who is being revealed in that Jesus. So we began with an understanding that our God suffers or has at times and we move from there to thinking about suffering for our sins. We looked at Psalm 32. There are seven penitential psalms and two of them, 32 and 51, are very much alike.

And we talked about suffering for sin and today we’re going to move on to think about suffering in a more general sense and some things the Scriptures have to tell us about that and how we’re to process that, how we’re to think about that. What does the worship service do for us in the midst of our sufferings? Do we just sort of blindly whistle past the graveyard or do we take it on head-on and understand its usefulness for the kingdom of God?

And so we’ll be talking about that in a couple of minutes. Next Sunday we’ll move on to Palm Sunday and so we’ll talk about the message of going into the city and then after that of course will be Resurrection Sunday and we’ll return to a different resurrection account. I have preached from Matthew, John, and Mark before, but I have not preached from the Luke text of the resurrection and we’ll do that in two weeks and that will be interesting for us as we once more will see women tell men what to do as the beginning of the new world, a new creation.

## Cinematic Meditations on Suffering

So today we’re going to talk about suffering. Now I always like to talk about movies during this time of year particularly. So many movies have this theme of suffering behind them because it is such a part of the human condition and I think that there are cinematic meditations on suffering that are useful for us to watch at this time of the year. Good Friday of course we’ll have a Good Friday service a week from this coming Friday. There’s a movie called Changing Lanes that actually takes place on Good Friday. It all happens in one day and suffering is all over the place in it.

It’s the sort of suffering that’s for sin. The two main characters suffer for their own sins, but then they’re brought through redemption of all that as they move through Good Friday. So that’s an interesting movie to watch this time of year or maybe even on Good Friday itself.

Wit is a movie that I’ve recommended over the years to many people. Emma Thompson, rather—Emma Thompson is the main lead in it. It’s a woman dying from cancer and she’s a college professor who lectures on the writings of John Donne, the great Puritan preacher and poet, and it really is about the conquering of death and the application of that to a woman who suffers greatly as she dies from cancer. Emma Thompson is in it—it’s an excellent movie. There are no, you know, I don’t recall language and certainly no nudity or anything. If your children, you know, if you want to put your children through the difficult task of watching someone slowly fade away from cancer in a hospital ward, there is that. It’s not an easy movie but it is a redemptive movie and there’s a wonderful ending to it that is so redemptive.

There are many sort of movies out that have this theme of suffering. Gran Torino is one that I don’t want to talk about but it is really about suffering and ultimately there is a connection to one’s own sins but a redemptive sort of suffering there as well.

There’s a movie I mentioned called The Return. This is a Russian movie and it’s sort of suffering without—as we try to figure out what God is doing. It’s more general suffering. Two young children and their dad has been off at prison. He comes back. That’s the return of the father. And the father takes the boys on a road trip. And they don’t know what’s going on. They don’t really know this man. They don’t know where he’s taking them. He seems gruff. He seems not to treat them nicely. Is he going to kill them? Is he going to beat them? What’s he going to do for them?

And so, in a way, it’s a metaphor for our relationship to the heavenly Father. We come to consciousness in our lives and the heavenly Father is in the driver’s seat and we recognize that as Calvinists and we don’t know where he’s taking us and we are tempted to doubt. That is the satanic deception—to doubt the goodness of the Father and misinterpret his actions toward us. And again, that movie ends with a series of days, three days I believe, in resurrection of the boys and I don’t want to give it away but again this is a cinematic treatment of suffering in relationship to theology, specifically the suffering of not knowing what God has in store for us and how do our lives—how can we interpret them.

There’s a more modern story I’m not necessarily recommending. It’s called Shotgun Story—is an independent film, interesting, and it shows intergenerational suffering, the children suffering because of the sins of the father. Two sets of kids, ones with no names—boy, lad, sons I think—and the other kids after the man’s become a Christian and they have names. You know, it’s not going to bring you a lot of satisfaction but it does show a degree of redemption and it shows this intergenerational suffering. Some of the suffering that we go through is related to the sins of the fathers being passed on to the second and third generation and so intergenerational suffering is a common theme of the Scriptures and also of these cinematic meditations on suffering.

I saw a very difficult movie twice in the last few weeks as we sat around trying to recuperate from various illnesses and Christine’s back etc. She was repulsed by it and you probably would be too so I’m not recommending it. But it is a movie about suffering. It’s one of the most intense movies about suffering and nothing really, you know, the guy’s wife leaves him but, you know, the suffering is really the suffering of humankind who are cut off from a knowledge or understanding of God.

It’s the suffering without Jesus that is the common lot of men who won’t come to the foot of the cross. And this movie is, you know, no holds barred. It rips off all the facades and it rips off all the ways that people, you know, try to paper over their sufferings and shows them in full stark reality and there are scenes in it which are very objectionable even for adults. So I’m not recommending it but it is a movie, you know, for the if you’re faint of heart don’t watch it—if you’re strong of heart and can take that kind of stuff it will I think develop a sense of appreciation for the suffering of the world apart from Christ that should drive us then to reach that world for Jesus Christ.

Another movie I thought about as I read Psalm 102 this week was Cast Away. As the movie opens, that’s very important to see that the title of the movie is cast away. Cast away is something we think about. Okay, a guy’s on an island by himself. But cast away means he’s been cast away. And in Psalm 102, one of those seven penitential psalms, that’s talked about—how God has cast us away. That’s what the thing says.

Psalm 102 is an interesting penitential psalm because there is no reflection on personal sin in Psalm 102. You’d think the seven penitential psalms would all be really heavily penitential about our own sins. 51 and 32 were, of course, as we talked about two weeks ago, but really 102 doesn’t have that theme to it. There’s suffering going on, but really it isn’t primarily because of the sins of the psalmist himself. You maybe can see allusions to that, but the Scriptures are replete with examples of suffering that is not particularly related to our own sin and in some cases not to other people’s sin as well.

## Psalm 32 and the Nature of Sin

I wanted to mention, by the way, in terms of Psalm 32 in my sermon from that a couple of weeks ago. Remember as we leave this series on suffering for sin, you know, those three terms for sin at the beginning of 32 and 51—they culminate in deceit. The one whose transgressions and sins and iniquities are covered and taken care of are the one in whose mouth is no deceit. The summation of our sins is deceitfulness. The Satan was the great deceiver and deceit is at the heart, I think, in a summary fashion in Psalm 32 of what our sin is all about.

And then at the end of the psalm, what does it move to counteract deceit? Blessed are those who trust in the Lord. So deceit versus trust. And then specifically, whether you confess your sins or not. So deceit and trust are the two poles and a lot of times our suffering is a result of deceit and it’s a result of a failure to trust the Father in the driver’s seat, not believing that he’s necessarily got our good at heart.

If nothing else, may the Lord God grant us today to leave his worship service, to leave this particular place of meeting with us in corporate worship with a sense that the Father is in charge, that he loves us, and that our suffering doesn’t have to be ignored by us. It’s not ignored by him. He sees it. He cares for us. Cast all your care upon him because he thinks about you perpetually.

## The Relationship Between Psalms 32 and 51

So may the Lord God grant us that. Much of our suffering is intended to bring us to repentance, but a lot of our suffering isn’t. One other thing before we leave 32 and 51. 32 and 51 seem together—they’re linked together thematically as we talked about before. They both result in teaching the non-believers. They both use the same three terms for sin, many similarities. How they’re dissimilar is that 51 stresses the sovereignty of God. “Wash me and I will be clean.” Right? So, it’s a plea for God to move, to give him a sense of forgiveness and restoration. Whereas 32 is all about telling us, confess your sins, speak forth, don’t ignore what God has done to you. And so, in those two psalms together, we have this balance when we’re dealing with suffering for our sins of an understanding of God’s sovereignty but also human responsibility and those two things are wrapped up and we see those two psalms together.

## Types of Suffering in Scripture

So we want to talk today about other kinds of suffering than suffering for sin or even suffering for the sins of others. You know, in and again this is a theme both in Job and the book of Joel. We can sort of see these two together. Job we’re familiar. He suffers not for his sin. Not that everybody says—miserable comforters are telling him. There is some sin revealed. Where would it not be? Unless it’s Jesus that’s being examined. But that’s not why he’s suffering.

There are reasons we suffer that, you know, he would never imagine that Satan has gone to God and requested permission to see how faithful Job would be to God in spite of suffering. How could we possibly think that’s what’s going on? We couldn’t. And so that book is all about suffering for reasons that we can’t understand or believe in or know, rather. But it compels us to be submissive in the context of suffering. Not to curse God and die and not to be tempted to sin, but to acknowledge his care and his sovereignty for us.

It’s all about reminding us that what the devil told us in the garden is wrong. We can trust God in spite of the disciplines and sufferings that he brings into our lives.

Joel is much the same way. You know, it’s interesting because people like to look at the minor prophets and talk about all the sin that was going on in Israel and Judah that they talk about. Well, there isn’t much of that in Joel. At the center of Joel, there’s this discussion of them returning to God, but it could just be an intensified turning to God that’s being described. Not that they’ve wandered away, but that the difficulty of the army of locusts or whether it was a real marauding army and fire and destruction that comes upon them may not have been for their sins at all.

Still, suffering, if it’s not for sin, is meant to give us an intensified direction and attention to God the Father. The temptation in suffering is to turn our eyes away from him. Right? But the purpose of suffering is to focus the mind and heart to have us return to turn in an intensified way to God in the midst of that suffering. So Joel and Job both sort of talk about that.

It’s interesting too because in Joel it could be an actual marauding army that’s being described like locusts or locusts that are being described as an army. But either way, there’s an invasion. And in the book of Job, of course, the difficulties, the suffering that Job begins to occur isn’t an invasion from outside. And so, in both cases, they have this common theme, you know, of being invaded from outside. Not necessarily because of your sins. At least that’s not the focal point or that’s not the purpose of the book of Joel. Rather, it’s to say that when these things happen, we fast in preparation for a turn of events and victory. Also important to remember.

So the Bible is filled with thematic representations of suffering for our own sin, also suffering for the sins of others, those that would invade our country and also just suffering apart from sin at all—just kind of a generalized treatment of suffering. And Job could be seen that way, and other texts describe that as well.

## The Beatitudes and the Significance of the Sufferer

So I want to turn now to the Sermon on the Mount and these Beatitudes that are mostly about suffering, right? If you think about it, the Beatitudes are all about suffering properly. And so, it’s a fitting theme for this concluding third sermon on suffering. And before we talk about the four kinds of suffering that I want to characterize here, I want to first of all talk about the significance of the sufferer.

So, the Beatitudes are set in a context and immediately after the Beatitudes, it tells the significance of those that suffer. Jesus comes to people that are hungry and destitute and they’re, you know, at the bottom of the heap. They’re been invaded. Their leaders are horrible people, their leaders aren’t righteous. The Romans aren’t righteous. Everything’s falling apart. Inflation is skyrocketing. Unemployment is probably 30, 40%. Inflation is rolling. People are starving in the streets. That’s the situation when our Savior comes.

And to those people in such a state, the Savior has compassion and he brings them this instruction on the Beatitudes. But listen to what he tells sufferers beginning in verse 13. You, you that suffer, you that hunger and thirst, you that mourn, you that are persecuted—you sufferers, what are you? Are you the scum of the earth? Looks like it. But Jesus says, you are the salt of the earth. You’re what’s going to preserve and beautify this world. Don’t lose your savor.

You are the light, he says. And then if we don’t quite understand that analogy, what does light do? And there’s been a lot of discussions about that, becomes quite clear what he’s saying to us in verse 14. You sufferers in your suffering. All right? And think about this. You personally, as you suffer, you are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

As you relate to the suffering properly in the context of the spirit of God, you’re the light of the world and you’re going to transform that world. You’re the salt of the earth. Sufferers have tremendous significance and importance in the expansion of the kingdom of Christ. No pain, no gain. Pain processed correctly, understood correctly, responded to in the power of the Spirit makes you the light of the earth and the salt of the world. Light of the world and salt of the earth.

You see, suffering is important for the providence of God. He’s decided to make it so that suffering is one of the primary means he uses to convert the world. Seems completely counterintuitive, but that’s what Jesus says.

## The Righteousness of the Sufferer

Now, notice also that he tells us about the righteousness of the sufferer. So he’s told us about the importance of the sufferer. Then he goes on to talk about the righteousness of the sufferer in verses 17 and following. “I did not come to destroy the law or the prophets. I came to fulfill it. No, not one jot or tittle will pass away from the law until all things are fulfilled.”

Now we know this verse well. This was the thesis verse for Greg Bahnsen’s book 25, 30 years ago, Theonomy: God’s Law and Ethics, or whatever it was subtitled. This says that God’s law doesn’t pass away. So he’s not talking as he talks to sufferers about some sort of thing that’s apart from lawkeeping. He says indeed you’re supposed to keep doing the law and if you don’t teach people to observe the law and if you don’t do the law you’re least to the kingdom of heaven.

So he tells them that while they’re very important in their suffering, that suffering—the right attitude of what happens to us in suffering—has to be linked with the objective standard of God’s law. There are people who say, “Well, we had law in the Old Testament. The New Testament, we’ve got the Beatitudes. Jesus on the mountain now, and he doesn’t give us ten commandments, so forget the ten commandments and worship. Now, we’re going to do the Beatitudes.”

I think that’s just all wrong because the Scripture immediately goes on to say that the Beatitudes are linked to the keeping of God’s law and the instruction in God’s law. The Beatitudes are the way one lives as a sufferer but also as a lawkeeper in a way that will bring light to the world, that will bring salt to the earth and that will result in the expansion of the manifestation of Christ’s kingdom.

So the sufferer will be tempted to walk away from obedience but he must not do that. We’re to suffer in obedience and lawkeeping and then the text goes on to say that the end result of this is that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

And Peter Leithart gave us an excellent exposition of that right at family camp. How does it exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees? It’s redemptive. It moves past, not entering into it, moves past the immediate context of the suffering for which we enter into and produces through our lawkeeping and our suffering and are not railing back etc. It produces conversion of the people that are actually persecuting us as one example.

And what follows here, the righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees is a righteousness that is the light of the world, that is the salt of the earth, that is transformative of the whole world. That’s what Peter taught us and I think he’s absolutely right. That’s what’s being said here. The Pharisees were concerned with internal purification. Jesus says, “No, we’re concerned with, you know, a righteousness that is more productive than that because it transforms the world.”

So in general terms, if we look at these statements of suffering in the Sermon on the Mount and put them in context, it keeps us from some silly things like disobeying the law or thinking that the law isn’t important or thinking that suffering is just kind of agnostic suffering through till the end of the journey and then we’ll get to go to heaven or Jesus will come back and it has nothing to do with transforming the world.

Jesus says that your suffering transforms the world when connected to this right attitude about observing the law and applying it to your life and then entering into relationship with the exterior world that converts it, that changes it and transforms it—a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees.

## Four Kinds of Suffering

All right. So let’s look at four kinds of suffering from these Beatitudes themselves.

### First Kind: Generalized Suffering

First, verse 3: “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” and then “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.” This is a generalized statement of suffering. This, you know, later he’ll talk about those that suffer for persecution, right? He’ll talk about the meek who have to suffer to achieve maturity. But this is a generalized suffering that’s described first. There’s no—we don’t know why they’re mourning.

We’re not given that reason. We don’t know the reason for the suffering. But Jesus begins by talking to people who are generally suffering. Now, that is who we are. When we suffer, we can find ourselves when we’re mourning, whether it’s mourning for our own sin, mourning because of the persecution of other people persecuting us, mourning because of what difficulties we have in the context of our land, whatever it is, mourning because we don’t have friends, mourning because our relationship to our wife or husband is, you know, is hit a brick wall.

Mourning because we’re so tired of doing whatever it is we’re supposed to do at work. Whatever kind of mourning we enter into, suffering, Jesus addresses that kind of generalized suffering in these first couple of verses. Now remember this is tied to right attitude toward trusting God the Father, toward keeping his law and toward having a goal of transforming the world, being the light of the world. So we don’t want to abstract it out of that.

But to those who are poor in spirit who recognize their own personal poverty of spirit, to us is the kingdom of heaven. To those who mourn, those who suffer, in other words, who suffer so much that they mourn in their suffering, they shall be comforted. So Jesus says that, look, I’m not ignoring the sufferings. I’m not ignoring the causes for your mourning. I know you’re hungry, literally, and you’re hungry for righteousness, as he’ll say in a few minutes.

I know that you’re poor, as he says in Luke. In Luke, some of these modifiers aren’t there in the Luke version of this in Luke 6:20. He says, “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you who hunger now, you shall be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you, and when they revile you and cast you out, cast out your name as evil.

For the Son of Man’s sake, rejoice in that day and be exceedingly glad.” So here he doesn’t have the qualifiers. Here he just says—he doesn’t say poor in spirit. He says, blessed are you poor. He doesn’t say who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are you who are hungry now. Blessed are you who weep now or who mourn now.

Now, we understand that Matthew helps us to interpret those things. He’s not a class guy. If you’re poor economically and have hunger because you won’t work, you’re not blessed. So, he goes on to clarify that in the Matthew text, but we don’t want to take away the other side of it. He’s talking about real suffering. And he’s not necessarily talking about suffering for sin. He’s just talking about suffering. He’s just talking about people that weep. He’s just talking about people that mourn.

And so this covers all of us. Whatever suffering you had this last week that you wept, mourned, were disconsolate about, depressed over, close to giving up hope about—whatever that was, that sort of suffering. Jesus says that as you work through that in a godly fashion, you’re blessed. The kingdom of heaven is yours.

So Jesus first addresses generalized suffering. And what happens to Job at the end of that book? Well, he gets twofold back or sevenfold, whatever it is. He gets more back than he had at the beginning. His righteousness exceeded that of the scribes and the Pharisees. He wasn’t just interested in maintaining things. He was interested in expansion of the manifestation of the kingdom of God through children, dominion, etc. And that’s what happens to him. He’s the model to us of what this says.

As we mourn properly and we mourn in trust, as we sorrow in trust, the cross precedes the empty tomb, right? So the pain comes first and then the end result of doing those things, responding correctly is great gain to us.

So first of all, there’s suffering that’s generalized. It’s so important for us to appropriate this in our lives. No matter what the suffering is you have, God says that the end result of doing that correctly is actually not just you’ll be okay. You’ll be blessed. Yours is the kingdom of heaven. You shall be comforted by God himself and by others as well.

### Second Kind: Suffering for Maturity

Secondly, there’s a suffering that accomplishes maturity. Verse 5: “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” Now meek means broken to harness. When you take a horse and you break him to a bridle, he suffers. That’s the way it works. He’s wild and strong but harnessed means he’s got to suffer. Now I know this is implied. It doesn’t say that the meek are those who have suffered, but that’s the only way you get meek is through the sufferings of God.

And so in this section of the Sermon on the Mount, I think Jesus can be said to be talking about those who suffer and the suffering produces maturity. Even the suffering for sin described in 32 and 51 produced maturity. It produced the ability to instruct sinners about the ways of God and the ways of forgiveness.

James 1 is another text that would talk about this idea of suffering correctly. In James 1:2, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience, and let patience have its perfect result, perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

So, we’re told in James, again, James doesn’t specify the sort of suffering. We can probably assume that some of it was persecution for the faith, but the text is written in such a way as to say whenever you fall into various trials and testings, count it joy. So when we suffer, we’re supposed to reckon it as joy. It will produce the sort of maturation that makes us meek and which will make us then inherit the earth. That’s what happens to the meek. They inherit the world.

So in this particular text, we have a suffering that produces maturity.

Now, Romans says the same thing in Romans 5. He says, and it’s important the context for this, “Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He’s talking to those who have been justified by faith, not of works. Okay? They’ve been justified by the faith of Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we now stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

And not only that, but we also glory, Paul says, in tribulations, in tribulations knowing that tribulations, as James says, produces perseverance, character, hope, and hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. So both in James and in Romans and I think implicitly in the description of the meek in the Sermon on the Mount, we have a suffering that produces maturity.

It is the providence of God to produce maturity in us through sufferings. And somebody that’s never suffered all their lives probably are not very mature because God says the normal way this works is you get character and patience and hope through your suffering. You’re not suffering for nothing. In the midst of your suffering, you may not understand it. You may be in the backseat of the car that God is driving.

You may doubt: what is he doing with my life? What’s my purpose? What is going on? You know, be at peace. God says to you that he is causing your character to develop. And while you can’t see how that works or how it’s going to work out in terms of ministry and transformation of the world, God has that all in control. That’s why he’s doing it. He’s producing character and perseverance and patience and hope. He’s producing a meekness in you that means you will be part of that group that inherit this world.

So, suffering in a generalized sense for maturity should be linked in our minds to hope. Hope is how both these texts in James 1 and Romans 5 move toward, and the hope of the meek is that they shall indeed inherit the world. So the Scriptures tell us that there is a suffering for maturity, for meekness as it were.

Philippians 3, Paul talks about the same thing. “What things were gained to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ.”

Oh that might be our response to the sufferings that God brings into our lives. We don’t have enough money. We don’t have enough possessions. We don’t have enough friends. Whatever it is, fill in the blank. If our attitude is to count all things as loss, that God is sovereign and he’s brought these boils upon our flesh or this pain to my back or this hacking cough to my lungs, whatever it is, the Lord God is sovereign and we’re to count the ability to not cough and a good night’s sleep as loss for the exceeding sake of Christ. Do you understand?

Now, long term the idea is healthiness. Long term the idea is fruitfulness. The sufferings for a season, but it is explicitly tied to the causes of Jesus Christ in bringing your character to maturity. A person probably, you know, what is going on? I slide down this hill and I end up in a hospital. My legs broken, painful. You know, we’ve all gone through things the last 6 months. And this is to be our attitude. We count good health taken away for a season as loss for the sake of Jesus Christ. For the sake of his kingdom. We’re becoming meek. We’re becoming more profitable.

And there’s something else that we’re doing. Goes on in verse 9 to say, “And be found in him, not having my own righteousness which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.” Sufferings bring us to a point of humility and drives deeper into our lives the knowledge that we’re saved by grace.

But then very importantly, the very next verse: “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.” There’s a cash value to suffering. It makes us meek. It makes us inherit the world. But there is a bigger cash value almost. There’s an additional cash value that doesn’t result at the end of it, but results in the context of it. We know the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ. Some of it, not all of it. We enter into a fellowship with Christ in his sufferings. That’s what we should do. That’s what we should think of.

Ultimately, I suppose we could say that most of these things we suffer are the result of sin and the fall. And Jesus Christ takes upon himself the full brunt of guilt and sin in the fall and his sufferings for us on the cross and going to the cross. And God says, “You get to join in the fellowship of his sufferings.” Oh, that we would live our lives that way. Then we wouldn’t need Lent to remind us about suffering once a year.

Then we would recognize what it is in the context of our lives. May God grant us that this year. May he grant us to know in the midst of our sufferings that he’s creating maturity in us. And that maturity is a result of knowing Jesus and his sufferings and also a result of him maturing us, taking us away from things that could be idolatrous to us, that we be restored back to them in a proper sense of stewardship and might exercise the strength of Christ as meek warriors for the Lord Jesus Christ, inheriting the earth.

So there’s a generalized suffering that is talked about. Then there’s a specific suffering that produces meekness, the ability to inherit the earth. Meekness.

### Third Kind: Suffering from the Absence of Justice

Third, there’s a suffering, the absence of justice. Boy, we should relate to this one right now.

Verse 6: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

We hopefully—it’s one thing nice about what’s happened politically in the last month or two is the tension has been relieved. Is he going to govern from the left, the center, a little bit right? Well, now we know it’s full tilt left. So that tension’s been resolved. Now there’s an anticipation of great difficulty which is coming down the pike as the country moves more and more in terms of state worship, Moloch worship.

You know, we have now increasing transformation happening at so faster a pace you can’t keep up with it. I’m a news junkie and I can’t keep up with it. I try to keep on top of this stuff but every day there’s some new reach of the government into some broader area of the economy or our lives.

So we respond to that I hope and say look we hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness. That’s what righteousness means. Justice in the context of the earth. We hunger and thirst for the market to work in the way it’s supposed to work, rewarding and punishing people in terms of their behavior. We hunger and thirst for people who own property to be able to own their property and people who have agreed to a particular price for their wage to get that price for the wage without the government coming in and being the referee of the whole thing.

We hunger and thirst for that kind of operation in our land. We hunger and thirst for righteousness, justice to be done to unborn babies. We hunger and thirst on the other side for justice to be done to people that so flaunt the image of God that they engage in open homosexual activity or transsexual activity. I mean, we live in a nation that should increasingly boil our blood. And you know, it’s a weird view toward the Christian faith that thinks we just passively go through of all this.

This text tells us that one of the sufferings we should be able to relate to in spades right now and increasingly as we go into this next year or two is the suffering that results for a hunger and a thirst for righteousness in the land. We should hunger and thirst for that. That’s a good thing. That’s not a bad thing. It’s not bad to be discontent with injustice, unrighteousness, murder, vile acts, economic transactions that are deeply driven by greater covetousness and an overreaching state.

We have state worship at a level in this country we have never seen before. We were warned by our forefathers in the faith 20, 30 years ago. It’s coming. It’s coming. It’s coming. And it is now here. People trust the state to take care of their problems. That’s Moloch worship. That’s a belief that the state is the mechanism that God will use to provide for everything that we have as opposed to looking to God directly.

There should be a hunger and thirst for righteousness. We should want to be peacemakers bringing God’s order to this world.

Again, if you look at the last 2 or 3 months, there’s lots of opinions and lots of things being said. But you know, the one voice that is virtually unheard in this public uproar of the last few months, the church. Oh, the Roman Catholic Church has said some stuff, but where is the church informing—you know what are wise financial practices? Informing what the privatization of contracts, how the contracts should be maintained according to the Scriptures. How land is to be given in stewardship to individuals, not to some collective estate. Where’s the voice of the church? It’s absent. We’re irrelevant to the process.

Now, we know from Jeremiah 29 that we’re to seek the peace of the city there. You know, very interesting. Michael L. gave me a column by Steve Dean from the Oregonian a few weeks ago, and he was talking about the Serve Our City campaign overseen by Louie Palau. Then he was talking about some other things that are going on as well in terms of serving the city. And I guess Palau that day at the training session for 600 pastors or whatever it was going to preach from the Jeremiah 29 text. Seek the peace of the city, the place that God has placed you.

When we were in Houston last year, what did Steve Wilkins preach on at our worship service? Jeremiah 29. What did I think John Ridenour, before he died, some of the things that he was talking about at the end of his life—Jeremiah 29. Everybody knows we’re not in Kansas anymore. And the question is what do we do about it?

And a lot of what we do is simple life, common life, but part of what we do is actively seeking for and praying for the peace of the city. And we’ll talk about this next week, Palm Sunday. I like to stress, and I won’t do it every Palm Sunday, but I like to stress in Palm Sunday, Jesus enters the city. The city Jerusalem, the worship capital, commercial capital, cultural capital of the world—well, at least of Israel at that time. By implication, the world. Jesus enters that city. And it’s important for us to recognize we in Christ have the same sort of spirit-empowered movement as we leave worship.

You’re going to enter your portion of the city tomorrow as you leave worship, the day of rest. How do you do it? You should do it with a renewed sense of seeking the peace of the city.

There are some discussion, not a lot I don’t think, but there’s some discussion here about, well, if we’re talking about planting churches long term at this church, maybe we should plant a church in Portland because after all, we’re supposed to seek the peace of the city and we’re supposed to transform the city, etc. That’s a good instinct for people to have. Need to talk about that.

There are, you know, there are efforts, we’ll talk more about this next week, but let me just say now that we’ll have a meeting. We’re having an open house at our home next week after the dinner for those who are particularly interested in talking about this idea—about how do we reach Portland, maybe establishing some sort of RCC-sponsored work in Portland as another one of the options as we look over the next few years to plant churches.

You know, that’s a good instinct to have. Has to be worked, matured, developed. People that have it have to be meek, made strong, strong, broken to the harness, but harnessing strength, not losing strength. Got to have wisdom about how you do it. And some of the efforts that have been made in that area in Portland have been good and some have not. We’ll talk more about that next week. But the overall emphasis is good.

There should be a suffering that we think about—that Portland is a dispenser of a pagan, foul culture, a statist culture, an immoral culture, a sexually lenient culture, a culture of oppression in various forms. That’s what Portland has become. Now, if we don’t hunger, if we don’t suffer as we think through that, then there’s something wrong with us. And you don’t get the blessing.

Then it says here, you know, that we’re blessed if we suffer in that way. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are the peacemakers. They shall be called sons of God.”

If you don’t have a heart-filled desire, spirit-motivated desire, you have to question your sonship because Jesus saw Jerusalem, went into it not approving of it and took action. He changed, turned over the money changers’ tables, cleansed the temple, etc. Looked at the Greeks and we’ll talk more next week. That’s Jesus. And if we’re a son of God, like Jesus is the Son of God, we’re going to want to have that same approach in terms of the city.

So, we’ll talk about that more next week. But that’s a kind of suffering that we enter into, right? We suffer because of the lack of justice. We hunger and thirst. If you suffer when you’re starving or don’t have enough water, it’s the same sort of imagery that Jesus is using for the suffering of us as we hunger and thirst for that kind of righteousness in the place God has placed us, in the city in which God has placed us.

We’re to be peacemakers. That involves suffering—the absence of peace. You’re not going to make peace if you don’t recognize the horrendous truth of the absence of peace and the results of idolatry in our land.

### Fourth Kind: Suffering from Persecution

Fourth, there’s suffering as a result of persecution, of course. Verses 10, 11, and 12: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

So there’s a suffering for persecution’s sake. Now that’s something we don’t normally experience. It is something that Christians in other parts of the world are experiencing and if a successful work is mounted in the context of Portland, we can expect that. We don’t try to create that but we try to be overt about our peacemaking activities and that will produce some degree of opposition.

So there’s a suffering for persecution.

Related to this is Colossians 1:24 and following. “I now rejoice, Paul said, in my sufferings for you and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of the body which is the church.” Odd verse, lots of different interpretations, but I think what Paul is talking about here is the suffering that he suffered for persecution. And it he says he’s filling up what wasn’t fully there in the sufferings of Jesus Christ.

What could this possibly mean? Well, it could mean lots of things. And I don’t want to get off on a rabbit trail, but let me throw this option out at you. One of the reasons why you read so much about this kind of thing in the New Testament, I think, is because for 40 years after the resurrection of Jesus Christ and then the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, the church is in a sense filling up the eschatological sufferings of Christ.

Now, now listen, Jesus on the cross said, “It is finished. It is done. His sufferings have accomplished all of that stuff. Okay. So, there’s nothing lacking in Christ’s sufferings. And yet Paul can say that he’s filling up those sufferings. Why? Because the church suffers in union with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Did Jesus suffer after the resurrection? What do you think? Well, was he persecuted after the resurrection? He was on the road to Damascus. What did he tell Saul? Why are you persecuting the church? Why are you persecuting me? Jesus is identified with the church. And when the church suffers persecution for the cross of Christ, Jesus suffers persecution. They’re persecuting him.

And in an intensified way, I think that those 40 years in which the church filled up the sufferings as it were of Christ was sort of like the birth pangs that are described in the New Testament of the new creation coming into existence. Well, you know, you can either go with that or not. And I’m not saying this is gospel. I’m not, you know, saying thus sayeth the Lord. But I do think that there’s things to commend that view as we look at this difficult verse.

But the importance of the verse is that suffering for persecution is real. And just like suffering for maturity, it’s something that we are actually to glory in and to recognize that somehow the purposes of Jesus Christ are being fulfilled in that suffering.

## The Compassion of Christ for the Sufferer

So the Sermon on the Mount talks about suffering a lot. It teaches us a lot of lessons about suffering and I want to close with finally the compassion of the sufferer. The importance of the sufferer—you’re the light of the world. The righteousness of the sufferer—you got to be beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees, transformative to the world. The different kinds of sufferings—we’ve just talked about four different kinds.

But then finally, I want to talk about the compassion for the sufferer on the part of Jesus. And while it doesn’t say it here, later in Matthew’s gospel, read in Matthew 9:36, when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them. Jesus, as he addresses the Sermon on the Mount, the multitudes that are gathered, I think has this same attitude that’s described later in another discourse he gives to people.

And that attitude of Jesus Christ is compassion. It’s important that you know that you recognize the compassion of Jesus Christ for you as you go about suffering in a way that is either for maturity, persecuted for his sake. If you suffer in the way the Beatitudes tell you to suffer combined with righteousness and the observance of the law, Jesus looks at your suffering. He sees your suffering and has great compassion for you.

So again, whatever it was this last week or two, physical difficulties, social difficulties, economic difficulties, political difficulties, simply a suffering because you read the paper too much—no matter what it is, the Lord Jesus Christ has compassion for you.

You know, there’s another strange verse about suffering in Jesus in Hebrews 5. Here’s what it says. Who—talking about Jesus now—and this is related to Jesus being a priest after the order of Melchizedek. So we had that song about Psalm 110 at the beginning of the service.

“Who in the days of his flesh when he had offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death and was heard because of his godly fear. Though he was a Son, yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered.” He learned obedience through the things which he suffered.

Now, there are depths of mystery to that text that I cannot plumb. I’m not—I can’t wrap my head around how the eternal Son of God and I know the explanations that commentators give and I know that if you read a commentary on this verse, that’s what you read about—is all the explanations of what that means. What does it mean—you learned, you know—but they sort of miss the point. If we get too wrapped up in trying to figure out what that meant, we miss the whole point of the text.

If you look at the structure of that text, the balancing verses for that are found in verse 2. “He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray since he himself is also subject to weakness.” The point of the sufferings of Jesus Christ and learning obedience are not some sort of metaphysical exercise on our part to figure out what that means. It’s so that he is sympathetic with our compassion.

Not so that he can be demonstrated as already having that sympathy, but somehow this equips him to be the great High Priest who makes intercession for us who suffer because he suffered in like ways in the incarnation.

The tremendous truth is that in the midst of our sufferings, we have a great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. As we meditate on his sufferings during Lent, we understand that he came that we might understand his compassion for us as a compassion fully informed by the human condition. He takes that human condition upon himself and he suffers and as a result of that suffering, the Scriptures say he is this High Priest who has compassion for us.

Now that’s the conclusion of part three of the movement of the book of Hebrews. And part four, the center of the center is he has become a High Priest of good things to come. So he tells us in our suffering we have one who is compassionate with us because he has suffered and he is a High Priest who will move us past the suffering.

He’s the High Priest of good things to come. That’s what Hebrews is about. Continue steadfast. The High Priest is compassionate and sympathetic with your sufferings. He’s suffered and he is moving you now into the future. He is the High Priest of good things to come. Jesus Christ is with you in your sufferings. He is at the right hand of the Father with—really the focal point of what he does is making intercession for you with groanings, sympathetic with your suffering.

Whatever that suffering is for, we should recognize the great truth of it is that Jesus is compassionate toward us. And in Hebrews it says he learned that obedience through the things that he suffered. But you know, it’s like the cross and we see Jesus suffering on the cross and we see behind it the Father suffering the loss of relationship with Christ his Son etc. We can see the Father behind it but we see the Father behind the compassion of Jesus too.

## Jesus in Gethsemane

Now let’s turn to last text—we’re almost done. Turn to Luke 22 quickly please. Luke 22. I think this is really interesting stuff and it’s so encouraging to us I think. Verse 39.

If we want to talk about Lent and suffering, meditation on the sufferings of Christ, we have to go to the garden of Gethsemane. Right? We go there. Verse 39.

“Coming out, he went to the Mount of Olives as he was accustomed. And his disciples also followed him. When he came to the place, he said to them, ‘Pray that you not enter into temptation.’”

Now look down at verse 46. “And he said to them, ‘Why do you sleep? Rise and pray, lest you enter into temptation.’” Those are bookends. They match up. There’s a movement into and then immediately he’s followed by betrayal, a movement out of this place. And the bookends are the disciples being tempted to fall into temptation.

Now look down at verse 41. “He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s throw, and he knelt down and prayed.” And then matching that, look at verse 45. “When he rose up from prayer and had come to his disciples, he found them sleeping from sorrow.” Note, by the way, they’re not lazy. They’re suffering. They’re sleeping from sorrow. But the point here is again there’s bookends, right? He kneels down to pray. Now he rises up from prayer.

The text is taking us to something significant at the middle of the sufferings of our Savior. Look at verse 42 now. “Father, if it is your will, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.”

And then look at verse 44. “Being in agony, he prayed more earnestly. Then his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” Cup, blood. They match up. When we come to this table, we should remember that he sweat drops as it were like blood. And he was concerned that the Father not make him drink of that cup so that we could drink of that cup and the blood of Christ and get blessing. That’s the purpose of it.

But he was agonizing over this separation from the Father. That meant and so and so now we’re at the center in the midst of Christ’s sufferings where he’s sweating things that look like drops of blood. This is the intense suffering of the Savior recognizing his coming separation from the Father, grieving deeply in his soul over that.

And at the middle of the suffering of Gethsemane we find then verse 43. “An angel appeared to him from heaven strengthening him.” The Father sends a minister to Jesus in the midst of the garden to strengthen him.

Now this word strengthen—this is only used twice in the New Testament. It’s an intensified form of the normal word for strengthening and I’ll talk in a little bit at the table about the other occurrence and it has to do with food. Strengthen means to eat, to be stiff, to have energy again, stiffened up in your body, get good and strong and all that stuff.

So an angel comes and ministers to Jesus. Now it might be food. We don’t know what it is. That’s not the point. The point is that we’re united to Jesus Christ. And Jesus has compassion for us in our sufferings. And the Father in like manner had compassion for the Son in the midst of his difficulties in Gethsemane.

He sends servants, angels to come to strengthen him. Now I’m telling you, in the midst of your sufferings, the Lord God has sent messengers to you in like fashion. The Holy Spirit comes to you in intensified form to strengthen you. You’re not suffering alone. We’re suffering as those who have the compassion of the Father and the Son looking at us, empowering us, strengthening us to maintain the right attitude, the right actions in our suffering.

You know, a lot of times he does that messenger thing not with angels but with other angels. They say Howard L. was our angel. He came and helped us out so much when we bought our home. We’re angels to one another. We go to people in suffering and what do we do? We strengthen them. We eat food with them. Somehow there’s something mystical about that. We eat food and we encourage them. We have communion.

You’re those messengers one to the other in the midst of suffering. And even if the messengers of the church all fail you, the work of the Holy Spirit sent by Father and Son is to strengthen you in the midst of suffering.

So church of the Lord Jesus Christ, suffering is a wonderful thing. It is the way we accomplish the righteousness of the world, either through maturation, through turning us away from our own sins, building up our character, helping us to love Jesus and his sufferings and have the fellowship of his sufferings more. There’s no way to get to this peace of the city, to be peacemakers in the world without some degree of suffering.

May the Lord God grant us a knowledge of his care, the importance of who we are as sufferers for the kingdom, his care and compassion, and may he grant us strength from on high in the midst of our sufferings.

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for the work of Jesus in that garden. We thank you for the wonderful way the text is written to bring us to that center—that in the midst of struggle, the worst struggle we can read about in the Scriptures. What do we see? We see your compassion, your ministers coming to your beloved Son. We thank you Lord God that we are in that Son. That we are your beloved as well.

Forgive us for not believing that you have sent your ministers to us in the midst of our suffering and that we’re somehow cut off and without your presence. Bless us, Lord God, with that knowledge in our sufferings. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.