Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith. Like salmon swimming upstream, living the Christian life is going against the flow of culture. You can't help but make enemies. Suffering for Christ is not a popular topic, but it's part and parcel of what believers face today. How Paul faced it.
Stay with us from the Moody Church in Chicago. This is Running to Win with Dr. Irwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, not many of us would look forward to suffering. How did Paul handle it?
Well, Dave, I think the way in which Paul handled it is he looked beyond this present world to the world to come, and you know that's what is really transforming in the Christian life. You can endure a lot if you know that there's going to be an end to the suffering, and after the suffering, there is glory. That's why he emphasized the fact that we look not at the things which are seen, but the things which are unseen. And if we can do that, we can endure. And there are many brothers and sisters around the world who are suffering today.
We have a special resource available for you. It's a book entitled "Failure: The Backdoor to Success." Would you write down this contact info? Go to rtwoffer.com. That's rtwoffer.com. And following this message, I'm going to be giving you a further explanation of how this book will be a blessing to you, and I believe it'll be a blessing to others.
You stay tuned. My topic today is suffering for Christ, the legacy of a converted man. The reason I'm preaching this message is last week I preached from Acts chapter nine, Paul's conversion, and I was very much struck with this verse. That God gave to Ananias when he was asked to go visit the Apostle Paul, who had just been converted, and Ananias was afraid, reasonably so. And God says, "No, he's a chosen instrument for me to carry my name before Gentiles and kings and children of Israel.
For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name." That caught my attention. There are two kinds of suffering. There is suffering that comes to us because of the fallenness of this world—sickness, heartache, broken relationships, poverty. But then there's another kind of suffering that comes because we bear the name of Jesus, and that's going to be the primary focus of my message today. And you must listen to this message.
And you know there are people today who, when we speak about the persecuted church, I was speaking to someone who's interested in helping churches to pray for the persecuted church, and he said, "You know what we've discovered among pastors? People don't want an emphasis on the persecuted church." He said for two reasons. First of all, it's kind of a downer, and we come to church because we want to leave positive and happy. Happy, and who wants to hear about persecution? The second reason is because people are saying to themselves, "Well, because it's not about me, it doesn't really concern me.
I'm disinterested." I hope and pray that that is not true of the Moody Church, though it could be true of some of us. What an indictment of the church today! All that matters is me.
Now, what I'd like to do today, and I'll explain to you why I'm preaching this message. I have a friend who is connected, well connected to other pastors and places, and he was telling us. That in England, many Christians are being taken to court, and there's a friend of his who's an attorney who spends his time defending Christians. Christians are being taken to court for wearing a necklace with a cross. They're being taken to court because they're standing their ground on moral issues.
Perhaps they don't want their child to be indoctrinated with certain agendas in the schools, and so they are under persecution. And this man said that the Christians are not enduring it very well, and the reason that they aren't is because they do not have a robust worldview, biblical worldview, regarding persecution.
Now, when he said that, that caught my attention. Because you and I discover as our own freedoms are being taken away, and as laws are beginning to impose upon us regarding these issues, we will soon understand where they are at. And the question is, will we do any better?
Now, I'm preaching this message to prepare you and to prepare me for the days ahead. You may not need it today, though there are some of you who are going to need it today. As a matter of fact, I'm going to speak about different kinds of suffering, so I will include you in this message. But just know that this is a message that'll become increasingly important in the United States. And then, speaking of the persecuted church, when we stop to think of it, how terrible it is if we would leave them out.
You know the author of the book of Hebrews. You know we're not absolutely sure who wrote the book of Hebrews. He said this. He said, "Remember those who are in prison as being in prison with them." All of us know that we've been praying for Pastor Sayed, who is a pastor who's imprisoned in Iraq. At least at the time that this message is being preached, I think he is still a prisoner there.
But you know, he represents hundreds of other people. In fact, right there in Iraq, there are two unnamed pastors. And they had long prison sentences, and they came to the end of their sentence, and now they have been told that they have to stay in prison for another five years. Can you imagine the discouragement? I was going to read some statistics to you today, and just very briefly.
This could be a separate message, but according to the U.S. Department of State, in more than 60 countries, Christians face persecution from their governments or from their neighbors, etc. One of the worst countries is North Korea, where if you have a Bible and it's found, you could be executed. Same thing in different parts of China. Of the forty-one of the fifty worst nations for persecution, these are nations persecuted because they are nations that are Islamic, and Christians face persecution in other countries as well.
I don't have time to go into detail, but to simply remind you of the fact that the Church of Jesus Christ is a suffering church.
Now, let me tell you what we're going to do in this message. I'm going to begin by talking about Paul's suffering, but then as we progress, when we get to the end, I'm going to lay out some propositions, some foundational truths for a biblical view of persecution and suffering, because that's where we need to go, and we need to understand it from the biblical point of view when our day comes.
Now Paul lays out all of the persecutions that he has been through in Second Corinthians, Second Corinthians chapter eleven, and I'm going to summarize for you chapter ten and eleven in really just a very few moments. Second Corinthians chapter ten and eleven. What's going on there in the text? Paul is defending his apostleship against false teachers. False teachers have come into the church in Corinth, and they are destroying Paul's ministry.
And they're saying he's not a true apostle. What you should really do is to listen to us, because we're the ones that have the truth.
Now let me give you three or four criticisms that these false apostles had for the apostle Paul. For example, one thing they said was that you know he writes great letters. He's well educated. He can write, but his physical presence—if he were here—he'd be like a wimp. You know, he he doesn't have much stature among us.
Paul notices that in verse ten of chapter ten of Second Corinthians, for they say, speaking of the false prophets, his letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech of no account.
Some people translate that speech that is contemptible. You see, the false prophets—they delighted in rhetoric. They loved to speak, and they're saying we're better speakers than Paul is. Not only that, if you read the next chapter, you discover that they criticized him because of the Jesus whom he proclaimed. They proclaimed a more tolerant Jesus that was very welcome in the Corinthian church, with all of its struggles with immorality.
And so they were upset with Paul because you know you proclaimed Jesus and we proclaimed Jesus too. Paul opens the chapter eleven and says, "I'm a fearful that you are being moved away to another Jesus." And oh, there are plenty of Jesuses. Years ago, I preached a message on how to identify false prophets. There are all kinds of Jesuses being proclaimed to us today that are not the Jesus of the New Testament. And then another criticism, if you can believe it, is Paul didn't charge for his ministry.
He was a tent worker, and he made his money along the side. And when he didn't have enough money, he went to some other churches. He took nothing from the Corinthians, lest somebody would say he's in it for the money. And the false prophets said, "You know what? In light of the fact that he doesn't charge, he must not have anything very important to say." We charge money because we really do have the truth.
So that's the persecution that Paul took from them.
Now I have to skip huge bodies of text here and get to Second Corinthians eleven verse nineteen. He says, "For you gladly bear with fools." By the way, Paul here uses both sarcasm and meekness all the way through. When you read this, you need to keep that in mind. He is saying, "For you bear it." Verse twenty: If someone makes slaves of you, devours you, or takes advantage of you, or puts on airs, or strikes you in the face, to my shame, I'm too weak for that. Paul says, "I can't compete with these false apostles because they have ways of raising money.
They." Hold you in contempt, really, but they strike you in the face and they take advantage of you. When I was in Dallas, Texas, as a student there, we went to a tent meeting with seven thousand people to hear a very famous false prophet who is now dead. In fact, several offerings were taken. We noticed that people were putting their wristwatches into the. Offering baskets, and he had the nerve to say, "We are really fleecing the Lord sheep here this afternoon." Now, many people who get involved with false prophets and our televisions are filled with them.
Of course, not everybody on TV is a false prophet, but all of the you know, send me the seed money, send it to me, and God will bless you. Don't give it to your church. What you need to do if you want a real seed that is going to gain this wonderful harvest is send it to me. You know the lingo. When you get involved with them, you'll discover that you can fleece sheep many times, but you can skin them only once.
And once you've had that experience, you understand that indeed they are false prophets.
So Paul is persecuted from them, and then what he does at the end of the chapter, just so that you understand the context. Is the Apostle Paul begins to list all of the trials that he went through? Why? He's saying I can't compete with these false prophets. You know they do miracles.
Now they do them in the power of Satan. Paul says there in verse fourteen. But and I can't compete with the false prophets. We here at the Moody Church we don't have little flasks of water from the Jordan River that we give to people that is going to provide healing. We don't have handkerchiefs that are blessed that will that will rid you of any disease that you have.
We can't compete with all the false prophets out there.
Now we do have the gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation. But. But what Paul is saying in this text is, you know, there's something I can do that you guys can't. I can suffer well. I can suffer well.
That's why he lists all of his sufferings. I'm going to pick it up now. Oh, about in verse 23, are they servants of Christ? I'm a better one. I'm talking like a madman.
With far greater labors, Paul is saying, "You know, if I have to debate you, I just want you to know that I've got a better agenda, a better resume than you. Look at what I've been through—far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, often near death. Five times I received from the hands of the Jews the forty lashes, less one." Paul, are you serious? In the law, it said that you can beat somebody forty times, but no more, lest he die. And so the Jews always beat someone thirty-nine times, one less than the forty.
Are you saying that you went through beatings like this five times? Once would be plenty for me. And people today undoubtedly would write a book about it if they were beat beaten. Forty lashes, less one. Three times I was beaten with rods.
Once I was stoned. We have to explain to the younger generation that actually means that he had rocks thrown at him. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and the day I was adrift in the sea. On frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city.
Danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers, in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure, and apart from other things, there's the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak. I'm going to emphasize that in a moment.
So Paul says, "I went through persecution from the false prophets, from the Jews, the Gentiles. In Lystra, he was stoned, for example, as was mentioned, and they dragged him out of the city, apparently thinking that he was dead. He went through all of those experiences, suffering from the churches. In other words." Even though he was going through all this, the burden and the weight of the churches was upon him. He was constantly thinking of others, and that was his experience as he was going through all of these sufferings.
By the way, it's very hard to identify where exactly all of them happened, but as you know, Paul had three missionary journeys, and some were more tolerable than others. But he went through his share of difficulties.
So those are the things that the apostle Paul went through, but now what I want to do is to give you three foundational principles for what we could call a theology of suffering, a theology of suffering. We have to see this in perspective. Let me begin by saying that I'm not the best person to preach this message because I really have never suffered for Jesus. But what qualifies me to preach on this is to simply quote the scripture, so that you and I begin to think differently about suffering, and we begin to see the honor that it is to suffer for Jesus Christ. That's where this is going.
In America, here we have the narrative in evangelical circles that if we just were a better church. If we were more faithful to the Lord, we would have no suffering at all. Christianity would largely be in charge here in the United States, and all of these laws that are being formed against us—they wouldn't happen, and we'd have smooth sailing.
Well, some of that responsibility rests with the church, but not all of it. You've perhaps heard me say it would be wrong for us to say now Jesus were a better preacher, Jerusalem would have repented and received him. There are some things that must come to pass. Many years ago, about twenty-five or so, I preached an entire sermon on the little word "must." Jesus said these things must happen.
So what I want us to do is to understand now God's purpose in suffering, and to see the larger picture. And by the way, we'll include your physical suffering in this as well. Number one, here we are. We are called. We are called to suffer.
What I'm going to do today is to read passages of Scripture one after another. Because we need to be reminded of the biblical view of suffering, so that when it happens, we are ready mentally and spiritually for it. For example, in John chapter fifteen, and I'm beginning now at verse eighteen. John fifteen eighteen, Jesus is speaking. If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it has hated you.
If you are of the world, the world would love you as its own, because you are not of the world. But I chose you out of the world. Therefore, the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they'll persecute you.
If they kept my word, they'll keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you on the account of my name. Because they do not know Him who sent me. You know what Jesus is saying here: Who do you think you are? Are you better than I am?
You know, here I was. I mean, I was healing people, I was feeding large multitudes, I was stilling storms, and they hated me and ultimately nailed me to a cross. And you're my follower, and you think. That the world is going to love you? Of course not.
You're not greater than I am. A servant is not greater than his master. Expect it. Expect it. Philippians chapter one verse twenty nine.
I won't turn to it because I happen to know it by memory. But it says this: To you it has been given on behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him. Bonhoeffer said that we like the first part of that verse. To you, it has been given in the name of Christ not only to believe on Him but also to suffer. Suffering is part of our responsibility as believers.
It is a privilege, as we shall see in a moment, that God gives to His followers.
So we believe on him, and we suffer with him. In fact, there are special rewards, as we shall see in a moment, if we suffer well with Jesus.
Now, the other day, I was in a cab, and the driver happened to recognize me. That does not happen very, very often, but this time it did, and he quoted this verse. How many times do you have a ride in a cab? You are quoting verses back and forth. I don't know that that's ever happened.
Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, says the Apostle Paul. While evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
Well, my friend, this is Pastor Luther. I want to ask you a question: If you're suffering for Jesus Christ today, is He along with you suffering in the sense that He is giving you the strength to be able to endure? I believe that He is, and you know what God is able to do is to take even our failures and turn them around and use them for His glory. And once we begin to understand that, and we begin to understand the depth of God's grace, we keep moving forward, despite the struggles and all that happens in our lives that is so unpredictable. I'm holding in my hands a book I've written entitled "Failure: The Backdoor to Success." In this book, I take illustrations from Scripture as well as real life today, and I show how.
How God uses failure. Perhaps I'm talking to someone who thinks that they have married the wrong partner, or you are in the wrong job, and sometime in your past you made a wrong decision. This book is going to give you hope. It shows how God has taken failure. And even the greatest of failures, for example, Israel in the desert, they did not go into the land as God had commanded them, and He judged them by letting them be in the desert for forty years.
But notice this: He even took care of them in the desert. Hope that you have a pen or pencil handy because I'm going to be giving you some contact info so that this book can be yours. Here's what you do: go to rtwoffer.com. Of course, rtwoffer is all one word, rtwoffer.com, or pick up the phone and call us at one eight eight eight two one eight. Ninety-three thirty-seven.
Running to Win exists to share the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ around the world and to encourage believers so that they might run the race successfully. Right now, go to RTWOffer dot com. You can write to us at Running to Win, sixteen thirty-five North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois six zero six one four. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. It is given to us to believe in Jesus and also to suffer for His sake.
Many Christians like the abundant life, but cringe at the suffering part.
Next time, more on our calling as believers. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Irwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
