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University SDA Church- East Lansing

Jesus On Religion

Jermaine Gayle

Jesus on Doctrine

Jesus on Scripture

Jesus on Shame

Jesus on Suffering

Jesus on Justice

Jesus on Exclusivity

Well, tonight we're talking about Jesus on suffering.

Before we begin, I'd just like to offer a word of prayer and I invite you to bow your heads with me as we begin.

Father in heaven, we plead with you now, asking Lord that you help us to comprehend your word.

We ask you dear Father that you may be our teacher tonight and that you may guide us through these portions of scripture that we'll be looking at.

We pray that your witness may speak and We ask you dear father that we may come now at your feet and learn from you is our prayer in Jesus name.

Amen Many of you probably already recognized that I'm a reader.

And some of the students sort of joke around every now and then saying, Pastor Germain is bound to recommend another book for them to read.

And I was reading this particular book not so long ago about the story of 2 missionaries.

The Burnham family, They had been there in the Philippines for several years and they were working with some of the tribes there.

They had flown to different portions or different places in the Philippines.

In their 40s, they decided that after they received a short break that they would take a short vacation to celebrate their 20th anniversary.

They went to an island, sort of a deserted island, actually 18th anniversary, and it was an island in the Philippines.

They were there staying in rooms that were on stilts, they were actually on the water, when 1 morning they heard a loud knocking at the door and they figured it might be room service.

They were captured, kidnapped while celebrating their 18th anniversary.

Missionaries kidnapped in the Philippines.

I have on the screen, this is actually 1 of the news articles that was published during that time and this 1 I was able to snatch it from Christianity Today, when they were talking about the experience, the ordeal, when it finally ended, actually ended a year, a full year later, they were taken captive for 365 days walking through the jungles of the Philippines.

The article stated that on the day that they were rescued, there was a gunfight.

And on that very day where they were supposed to experience freedom, the husband got shot and killed, and only the wife survived.

We see it every day, we hear about it, and while I'm on the subject I think of some friends even who were recently, their helicopter went down in the Philippines.

And we're still praying for and still hoping that we can find those individuals.

It seems to show up every now and then, doesn't it?

And the world has busied itself trying to figure out or find an answer to this great ordeal, this experience of suffering.

By the way, I'm going to recommend the book because I think it's a very good read.

It's called In the Presence of My Enemies, a book that will both challenge and encourage your faith.

Their experience is just so profound, so deep and so powerful that some of the questions that are raised in the book really points your attention to a deeper study and a deeper experience with your God, the Lord you serve.

Because really we don't experience these kind of sufferings.

Sometimes if you were to measure yours compared to what others are experiencing, you realize how small your sufferings are.

And so I like reading these stories because they remind me that The world is much bigger than my small space.

This is what she said, from Gratia Burnham.

While she's walking through the jungles of the Philippines, walking behind these Taliban, these soldiers who were Muslims, taking her into these crazy places, daily gun battles.

There were actually about 20 people taken, if I'm not mistaken, and they're among the 20.

And those who had money were freed earlier.

But these 2 missionaries were poor, so they had no money, and they ended up staying for a full year until they were rescued.

In fact, they were among the last to be rescued because there was no ransom money to be paid.

She says, I realized that when everything is stripped away from you and you have nothing, You find out what you really are down deep inside.

What I was starting to see, she says in myself, was not pretty.

Her experience of suffering for her became a mirror through which she could see the depths of her soul and her experience.

And by the way, it is when we suffer that we find ourselves asking the question, does God really exist?

Isn't that usually when we ask that question?

You look deep inside, even people of faith who trust and worship God for many years find themselves asking, does God exist when I suffer?

What's so profound about suffering that everyone tries to make sense of it?

I figure life is like a plant in a desert.

1 of the craziest places on earth, as far as deserts are concerned, is the Sahara.

Did you know temperatures go up to about a 136 degrees Fahrenheit in the Sahara desert?

Did you know that in the Sahara Desert, there's only 1 inch of rain every year?

The Sahara Desert is not just brutal for its temperature.

The Sahara Desert is actually brutal because of the wind as well.

And in fact they said every year about a hundred ton of dust is picked up from the Sahara Desert and blowed over the ocean and oftentimes in other countries.

The Sahara Desert this is where I feel like, this is a perfect example I feel of the world in this place that you find yourself in the middle of chaos, losing control.

And I wonder, I wonder why the story of deliverance for the Israelites actually happened in a desert.

Sort of an illustration of how our life is sometimes.

The wind may blow, the heat may rise, and the nights can be bitter cold when we experience trial.

Everyone tries their very best to either make sense of suffering or to find escape from suffering, or both.

By the way, this picture you might notice there's a tree in the middle of the desert.

Does anyone know what kind of tree this is?

By the way, that was the tree that God used in the sanctuary.

By the way, the acacia tends to grow in these arid, dry places, and they're very hard wood.

For some reason, they developed the capability to live and abide in these desolate places.

And I wonder if God is teaching us to be like the acacia sometimes, where He uses us for His own glory when we suffer.

If you were to adopt the worldview of a Hindu, how they view suffering, they say suffering is punishment for the deeds done in a previous life and the way to escape it is settling your accounts, in other words the previous life is whatever comes back to you is the karma that you deserve.

And what you need to do in order to escape suffering, you need to settle your accounts or paying the past misdeeds.

The soul's next reincarnation will be more enjoyable if you pay off your debt.

That's how Hindus try to work out or reconcile suffering.

Buddhists, they say, that we suffer because of spiritual ignorance and our inaccurate perceptions of the world and of what it means to be human.

The way to escape this ignorance, they say, is to get past suffering by not clinging to material things, not even your relationships.

The Muslim says that suffering is there so that you may learn to submit to the will of Allah.

The way to escape it is by good works and when you get to paradise you'll realize how good life is having done your very best in this life.

The Sikhs tell us that when you suffer it is because God is trying to teach you to not be self-centered and therefore the ways to escape it is to try to be fearless and active in your revolt against cruelty and injustice in the world and perhaps by doing that you can escape suffering.

There are others who still believe that suffering is brought into the world by religions and so they say in order to get rid of suffering you need to purge the world of all religion and that would remove suffering.

That America could be a better place if there were no religions at all.

Series

Jesus On Religion

Jesus on Suffering

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

God's First Book, Our First Classroom

5. Connecting with the Creator in His Creation

1h 7m

Reasons for Hope: The Case for Faith in a Secular Age

Reasons for Hope: The Case for Faith in a Secular Age - Part 4

1h 12m

Personal Encounters with Jesus

3. Seeing Is Believing: The Man Born Blind

57m

Plenary

Friday Morning: Wings of Legacy

33m

Adam Ramdin: The Reformation’s Revolutionary Impact

Prophetic Prediction of Change

1h 5m

Seminar: From Darkness to Light: Overcoming Sin and Addictions

Loving as Jesus Would

56m

God Is Not Santa Claus

38m

Prophecies of Hope

3. Revelation’s Mother of All Battles

45m

Encounters With Jesus

Jesus Encounter at the Wedding Feast

39m

The Atheist Who Found God

1h 25m

Michael Carducci Weekend

02 All Wrapped Up and Where to Go?: Who’s Salvation Is It Anyway?

1h 13m

When God Shows Up - Advent HOPE August 2019

When Waves Begin to Roll

35m

Sound Doctrine