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Sermon
Learning to Suffer
By Jennifer Gale
Jennifer Gale is associate pastor of Evangel Temple Christian Center in Springfield, Missouri. She is originally from Washington State but moved to Missouri to complete her Master of Divinity degree from the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary. She and her husband Greg have two young sons.
We’re going to take a look at a passage of scripture that is unavoidable when talking about following Jesus. I feel compelled to look at it with you because it is as much a part of our reality as Christians as joy, love, peace, and hope. Recent events in the news, and tragic, difficult, and desperate situations in the lives of people connected with our church seem to press the point. Even as much as I knew this was our text for today, it was one of the last passages I wanted to study, because it involvessuffering.
I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to the Book of Matthew, chapter 16.
There are few disappointments in life worse than learning that things really aren’t as they seem. Have you ever seen an ad on TV or the Internet, bought that exciting product, only to find it wasn’t exactly what you thought, or worse, it didn’t work at all?
If you have, you are not alone. I found a Web site dedicated to listing all of the recalls that have gone out on various products recently. Consider some of the products that others had the misfortune of buying:
- Cameras with a flash that, when you take a picture, burst into flames
- Sprinklers that explode when you turn on the water (they can’t handle the pressure)
- Office chairs with legs that break when someone sits in them
- Pressure cookers with lids that pop off
- Shoes made for water that become hazardous when wet
- Treadmills that unexpectedly speed up or slow down without warning
I have to laugh when I think of someone sitting on an office chair and falling to the floor, but I’m sure that the people who bought these products weren’t laughing. Hopefully, no one was injured. At the very least, they were probably taken by surprise, but I’m sure at some level they were angry. No matter how good something looks, things aren’t always as they seem.
I remember the day I found out my parent’s marriage wasn’t what it seemed. I was 18 years old and my sister was 15 when our parents sat us down and told us they were going to be separating. They divorced one year later. I remember the sick, dark feeling that washed over me in that moment, and the tears that followed. Didn’t we have the perfect family? Didn’t my parents love each other?
I don’t doubt that every one of us in this room has, at some level, experienced feelings of shock, disappointment, or even anger when a person—whether a friend, parent, coworker, or leader—or when an organization, institution, or cause—whatever it may be—proved to be something other than what we thought. Things aren’t always as they seem. And the disappointment of shattered images can be heartbreaking.
I think that’s why Jesus said what He said to the disciples in our text today, Matthew 16:21.
They had been following Jesus for a while. They’d seen the miracles, they’d even done some of their own, they’d ministered to the crowd, and they tried to absorb His teaching.
They’d even—finally—all understood without a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the hope of Israel. In fact, right before our text, Jesus had asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter was the star student that day: “You are the Christ the Son of the living God!” And Jesus replies, “Blessed are you, Simon. God has revealed this to you.”
I can’t help but imagine that after this huge moment, some of the disciples later went up to Peter and said, “Good job, man!” “You got it!” Now that the secret was out of the bag with at least the disciples, so to speak, the excitement could really begin. I wonder if they thought, “Jesus is the Messiah, we’re following Jesus, so this is going to be good for us. Let’s get busy and get His kingdom coming.”
But Jesus had been with these guys for a while. He knew what they were thinking. He knew that somewhere along the line, they had put on rose-colored glasses of discipleship, and they weren’t seeing things the way they really were. He knew that if they were going to make it as disciples, then they needed to see clearly what it meant to follow the true Messiah.
Look at it with me in chapter 16, starting in verse 21. [Read]
This is one of those texts that makes me say “ouch” every time I read it. But in case you or I would be tempted to skip over the tough part, the “save your life and lose it” part is seen not only once, but twice in this gospel, twice in the Book of Luke, and once in both Mark and John for a total of six times. One scholar wrote that no other single saying of Jesus is given as much emphasis as this.
No matter how much we’d like to avoid it, skip over it, or skim through it, we have to look at it. Jesus says to His disciples, and He says to us, “If you’re going to follow me, I want you to see things as they really are.”
I believe as we look at our text, we’re going to see things a little clearer. And there is freedom when we do, because although we may not like what we see at first, we’ll find more hope, more joy, and more peace than we have ever known.
The Messiah Must Suffer
So, what is the first thing the disciples need to understand? We read about it in verse 21 of our text. Jesus explained to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that He must be killed, and on the third day, be raised to life.
Jesus wants His disciples to understand that the Messiah must suffer. Jesus must suffer.
This wasn’t the first time Jesus had spoken of His death. He had done so several times before. But now that Peter made his confession—“You are the Christ!”—He began to explain it to His disciples. The Book of Mark says Jesus spoke plainly about these things.
Whether or not they had picked up on it before, they now knew without a doubt what Jesus meant. Suffering? Death? I think that’s why Peter responded as he did. Peter, who had had the “special revelation” from God a short time ago, now thought he’d straighten out the Son of God.
I can see him listening to Jesus, shaking his head and thinking, “No, no, no … Come on here, Jesus. We need to talk.” Verse 22 says Peter took him aside to rebuke Him. And that’s exactly what he does. Scholars say this is some of the strongest language recorded in the New Testament.
“Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you!” He’s passionate, he’s adamant, but he’s wrong. He’s walked with the Messiah for months, and now, standing face to face with the will of God, that Jesus must suffer and die, he says “No way! This cannot be!”
Isn’t that exactly how we feel sometimes when we’re faced with the will of God and we don’t like it? We want to shout at God, “No way! This cannot be!”
Sometimes God doesn’t meet our expectations. We think God’s going to do something, and He doesn’t. We expect one thing from God, and instead, get something very different. I think if all of us would admit it, everyone of us has, at sometime or another, been disappointed by God. Maybe some of you feel that way now. Maybe, like Peter, we’ve been looking through the wrong lenses.
We’re disappointed when reality doesn’t meet expectations. We get angry when the rose-colored glasses are removed. But I’m here to tell you that the reality we find in God is better than whatever expectations we could dream up. And God wants us to see the truth more clearly. The Messiah must suffer. That doesn’t sound like a “better reality.” But let’s look a little deeper.
The “must” is a divine must. It is part of the plan. Jesus’ suffering fulfilled the prophecy foretold in Scripture. “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering (Isaiah 53:3). “After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear there iniquities” (verse 11). And there are many others.
The Messiah had to suffer. Not only did prophecy require it, but God’s love demanded it.
I don’t pretend to understand the mystery of a God who suffers with us, the mystery of a Messiah who willingly bears unjust, completely undeserved suffering. But I do know this: our God is a God who loves until it hurts. He is the God that wept over Jerusalem; He is the God that mourns, and He is the God who grieves. He is the God whose heart breaks over our sin.
Now I don’t think God enjoys suffering any more than we do. If there was a way around the Cross, God would have answered Jesus’ prayer in the Garden and done something else. But there was no other way. The Messiah had to suffer. And because He suffered, He is fully present with us in our suffering. He can not only sympathize with us in our weaknesses, but he is with us in our weakness. In fact, He is made strong in our weakness.
Peter couldn’t see all of that when he pulled Jesus aside. So he probably didn’t see the rebuke that came right back at him. “Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus said.
Wham. It came out of nowhere for Peter. It’s harsh, but the language reveals how serious Jesus is. Peter, in trying to protect Jesus from suffering, ironically, in that moment, causes Jesus to suffer. This is a real temptation for Jesus, one he has to resist. Oh, Jesus would willingly suffer and die, but that didn’t mean He was looking forward to it.
The Messiah had to suffer. Jesus knew He had to go to the Cross, but His suffering means He is present in our suffering. We are not alone. Even when the suffering is the result of our own failures and our own mistakes, we are not alone. That is the first thing I believe we need to see clearly.
We Must Suffer
The second may be a bit more difficult. Because we learn from our text that we will suffer if we continue to follow Jesus. Let’s look at it in verse 24: “Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.’
“If anyone,” Jesus says. That includes all of His disciples, and it includes us.
The imagery is startling. Remember, the Cross isn’t yet a religious symbol for followers of Jesus. For the disciples, it is a horrendous, tortuous punishment for criminals condemned to die. It is shameful and it is cruel. Every one of those disciples had seen people die on crosses. Every one of them had passed bodies as they hung on crosses. Guaranteed, none of them wanted to die on one. I imagine the impact of what Jesus was saying took the disciples’ breath away.
“Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.” Talk about removing the rose-colored glasses.
There’s something that every one of us who were raised in Western culture probably hold as a value, and that is, that things should be fair. We believe that when a game is played, it should be fair. The referees should make good calls, and everyone should play by the rules.
We learn early on what it means to be fair. If my ice cream cone isn’t as big as my friend’s, it’s not fair! If I only get one ride on the swing, and my brother gets two, it’s not fair! As we grow up, we realize that life isn’t fair, but that doesn’t stop us from feeling hurt or passed by when we don’t get what we deserve. If it’s coming to us, and we don’t get it, “It’s not fair!” Bad things happen to good people, and we say, “It’s not fair.”
I feel a little bit like this when I read this text. “It’s not fair” since the disciples are the good guys. They’re the ones leaving home and families and following Jesus day after day. Why do they have to suffer? Why do we have to suffer? The obvious answer is that we suffer because Jesus did. After all, didn’t Jesus say, “A student is not above his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you”?
Do a quick study in the New Testament and you’ll find that Jesus’ early followers did indeed suffer.
- In 1 Peter, suffering was on the social level and included loss of friendships and business dealings, and feelings of reproach and shame.
- In Revelation, suffering takes on religious and political dimensions with believers facing death, imprisonment and economic hardship because of believer’s faith.
- In Acts, suffering comes out of jealously from the established religious community which led to mocking, arrests, imprisonment, expulsion, stoning, beheading, and more.
- In Hebrews, suffering stems from transition from one belief system to another, experiencing a crisis of faith as they walk out belief in Christ.
- In James, suffering involved social pressures including injustice against the poor, withheld wages, legal exploitation, and lack of food and clothing.
I bring this up to show the many, many ways Jesus’ early followers suffered. We know we’ll suffer too, but still it doesn’t seem right. Let’s think about that earlier thought, “It’s not fair.”
Why did Jesus say He came? He said, “I came that they may have life, and have it to the full.” If this is true, then life and taking up the cross are related. That losing our lives, somehow, in some way, really leads to us gaining life. There is a suffering that leads to life, and life that is full.
Now as soon as I say this, I want to say that there is tragic, senseless, evil suffering. There is suffering wrong and is destructive, and I’m not talking about that.
What I read in our text is that there is a suffering that leads to life and denial of self. “Deny yourself,” Jesus says. What does that mean? That’s the saying “no” to me in order to say “yes” to God. That’s the stepping aside to let Christ be the center, and the sliding over into the passenger seat to give God the driver’s wheel.
We should not be fooled. We don’t have to go out and look for this kind of suffering. We don’t have to add it on to what we currently face. Because some of the deepest “suffering” we will undergo takes place right in our own hearts. Waging the war against sin is costly and it is painful, and in some cases, agonizing. Some of you know because you’re fighting that battle right now. You’re suffering as you stand against temptation.
There are individuals and families I know that are suffering right now as they try to do the right thing. They are faced with pain for which there is no cure and no relief, yet struggle to keep their trust in God. There are those faced with deepest loss and heartbreaks, yet still trying to love anyway. They who have to make decisions that no person should have to make, faced with bad news on one hand and bad news on the other, yet they have to make a godly decision anyway.
Sometimes, many times, it hurts to love, it hurts to give, it hurts to obey, and it hurts to try to do the right thing. If we follow Christ, we will suffer.
We don’t have to look for it. It is already here. Jesus says, “Pick up your cross.” He implies that we all have one, and we know exactly where it is. We can stop tripping over it, stop hiding it, and pick it up and get on with it. It doesn’t go away unless we carry it, and follow Him.
Peter must have eventually figured this out, because he later wrote to his own church, “Don’t be surprised at the painful trial you are now suffering, as if something strange is happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:12,13).
God doesn’t want us to be surprised. Although in a sense, suffering always takes us off guard, He says, “Don’t be surprised. See following me for what it really is. It is the way of the cross. It is the way of suffering.”
But it is also the way of life. He says, “I am with you every step of the way.” Hear that. God says to you, “I am with you every step of the way.”
God wants us to see things clearly, to see things for what they are. The Messiah had to suffer. We, His followers, will also suffer.
But Our Suffering is Not in Vain
Look at it with me in verse 27, “For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.”
Do you know what this verse says to me? That God sees everything. He sees everything and He knows everything. He sees our sacrifice, our pain, and everything we give up in order to say “yes” to Him. Not one thing has been overlooked and not one thing has been missed. You think no one knows what you’ve given up, the grief you’ve faced, in order to serve the Lord. But God says, “I’ve seen it all and I will reward you.” There is an eternal reward for Jesus’ followers. That truth is given to encourage the Church.
That might not mean so much to us now in the United States, but according to International Christian Concern, “More Christians have been persecuted and martyred for their faith in this past century than all previous centuries combined. Nearly two thirds of all Christians alive in the world today suffer persecution in varying degrees, including the loss of freedom, discrimination, imprisonment, slavery, torture, and even death.”
It is almost impossible to comprehend suffering like that. When I hear stories of those persecuted for their faith, a part of me wonders, “If that were me, could I do it? Could I keep following Jesus? All the way to the end? How do they do it?”
I believe they would say, “I can do it because God is with me in my suffering, and this life is not all there is.”
There is an end to all of this. Paul wrote that our “momentary trials are achieving for us a glory that outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17).
Now what I think this means for all of us today, all of us who sit in this room, who are trying to live our faith daily as best we can is that we don’t need to run and hide from suffering. Not when we see it in ourselves and not when we see it in others.
We live in a society that is committed to eliminating human suffering. We want to do something about it. We believe in managing and alleviating pain and we believe in helping the sick and the poor. We’re working to stop the spread of AIDS and to rescue those addicted to drugs. And all of that is good, and it is right.
But, at the same time, suffering is hidden. We don’t see it every day. The persecuted church is “over there.” The mentally ill are in institutions, the drug addicts are in rehab, the kids with handicaps are in special schools. Then, if we ourselves suffer, we usually hide it. Cover it up with a smile and try to deal with it on our own. If we see suffering in others, it makes us uncomfortable. We’ve got enough of our own stuff to worry about, and so we pass on by.
If Jesus suffers with us, what do you think He wants us to do for others? If Jesus weren’t with us in our pain, in our suffering, then we could never make it through, much less even think about entering into the pain of others. But He is with us, so we can be with others. That is part of the plan.
I believe this is part of the truth God wants us to see clearly. The gospel goes forward with power, not only through preaching, not only through signs and wonders, but though the presence of Christ that you and I bring with us when we enter into the suffering of others. We can bear their burdens because Christ bears ours. We can walk with them because Christ walks with us.
Christ wants to set us free to be the Church—the Church that follows Jesus, that suffers for Jesus, and that suffers with one another.
He wants us to see things as they really are. He doesn’t want us to be fooled or misled. He doesn’t want us to be surprised because our faith doesn’t meet up to our false expectations.
Jesus suffered. We will suffer. But our suffering is not in vain.
This is a message that I’d rather not preach, but I feel a great sense of passion in my heart because this is the heart of God. Our God is a loving and long-suffering God. He doesn’t want us to be surprised at what we face, but instead to rejoice at the glory that will be revealed.
I invite you to stand with me as we close in prayer, and I invite the musicians to come back to the front.
There is a lot of pain in this room. If the veil could be lifted, and you and I could see what each of us has faced and is facing, we would be stunned and amazed. There is a lot of suffering in this room, and even more beyond the walls of this building. I want us to take a few minutes to call out to God, not only on our behalf, but also on the behalf of others.
The writers of the Old Testament weren’t bashful about telling God their pain. Look in the Psalms. They cried out to God in their agony. And God could take it. We can cry out to God on behalf of our own suffering and on behalf of others.
Maybe some of you need to know that God is with you. You can say to God, “God, I need to know. Speak this into my heart. Show me you are with me.”
If you know of someone who is hurting right now, take a few moments and lift him up before the Father. Pray that God will show himself to be with him in his suffering. Then, maybe you want to call them later and say, “I prayed for you today. I am with you today.” Let them know that you are with them in their suffering.
We’re going to take some time to pray. If you want to come forward for prayer, there will be people to pray with you.