|
Introduction
We have been parked in the driveway of
Philippians 3 for three weeks now and made a study of this most
important passage from the apostle Paul. Here, under the guidance of
the Holy Spirit of God, the great apostle/missionary has revealed
some of his personal history, his reflections on his life and some
of the core stuff as regards his mission for Christ. Before we move
on to the last third of the Philippian epistle, I wanted to return
just one more time to this passage, because there is a topic I
believe we need to explore.
That topic is suffering. In
verses 10 and 11, Paul emphatically says he wants to know
Christ. He uses the verb
GNOSKO which emphasizes the deep way in which he wants to know
Christ. This verb has to do with more than studying the facts about
Jesus; it has to do more with experiential knowledge. He wants to be
thoroughly acquainted with Jesus, as an avid follower, a devoted
disciple, a companion and a committed worshiper.
To be that
intimately acquainted with the Lord Jesus, Paul adds some
detail—that he wants to be familiar with the resurrection power of
Christ, but he also wants to join Him in the kinds of sufferings He
endured. Read text of
Philippians 3:10-11.
While we apply ourselves to
understand what Paul meant by the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings,
my prayer is that we will learn a good deal more about the nature of
suffering, and how it benefits us as followers of Jesus Christ.
First, we need to understand that we will suffer, and there is no
avoiding it. We rehearsed this truth in the passage from
1 Peter 3 that we read earlier.
Jesus warned that in this
world we would have tribulation; in fact, He made it clear that to
follow Him would mean to insure that our suffering in this world
would be even worse, because the world hated Him and would most
certainly hate us who love and serve Him also. Did you notice that
Peter also wrote that believers suffer “according to the will of
God”? Listen, Christian, if you are being taught that because you
follow Christ you have the right to live in a kind of perennial
victory that keeps you from any kind of suffering or troubles, you
are getting something very different from the New Testament.
If having faith in Jesus Christ is a protectant from suffering, it
didn’t work for the apostle Paul and the apostle Peter. And if you
are a follower of Christ, your experience has taught you, too, that
life in this world is hardly ever fair or easy. Suffering is a part
of life in a sin-scarred world. And it is a part of the life of
Christians as well, and that by the very plan of God.
1 Peter 4:19 says that our suffering is very often “according to
the will of God.”
And don’t forget that back in the
first chapter of this letter, verse 29, Paul told us, along with
our Philippian brothers and sisters: “For it has been granted to you
on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him,
but also to suffer for him…
I
want to tell you this: when you go through suffering—even very harsh
and brutal times of trial—it does NOT mean your faith is weak or
your relationship with God has soured, or He doesn’t love you any
more. In fact, some of our suffering is actually evidence that God
loves us. “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as
sons . . . God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his
holiness.” (Hebrews
12:7, 10)
Paul’s deep desire is to “know Christ”, and in
order to fully experience Jesus, he knew he had to participate in
the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. We’ll see in a moment or two
how we are brought into a deeper, more intimate relationship with
Christ through our bearing burdens of suffering. That’s one reason
Peter said, “rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of
Christ” and Paul said, “I want to share in the fellowship of his
sufferings.”
Let’s look at this issue of wanting to share in
the fellowship of his sufferings. Have you ever known someone who
truly puts his life on the line in order to serve Christ? Someone
who has given it all up for the Lord? They’re different, aren’t
they? They’re stronger, they’re deeper, they know Jesus Christ
better. When you give up pleasures, protections, privileges for the
sake of serving the Lord Jesus, you get closer to Him. Usually that
involves suffering. You move into a whole new level of fellowship
with Christ. You share in the fellowship of His sufferings.
When you suffer for the Lord’s sake, you are drawn closer to Him.
Dr. Bruce Waltke told of 2 personal experiences with his daughter.
He said that they once rescued a wren from the claws of their cat.
The bird’s wing was broken, but even after he got the bird away from
the cat’s grasp it kept struggling to escape His hands. He
contrasted that story with the time when he took his daughter to the
doctor. Her strep throat meant a shot was necessary. Frightened, she
cried, “No, daddy. No, daddy. No, daddy.” But all the while she
gripped me tightly around the neck. Pain should make us more like a
sick child than a hurt bird.
If you want a deeper love for
Christ, step off into a dangerous assignment of obedience to Him.
Say “yes” to him even if it means you are setting yourself up for
suffering as a result. Because the longer-range and more important
result will be that you will have learned to love the Lord in a way
you could never have reached any other way. Paul knew this secret
passage to a deeper love for Christ, so he prayed for opportunities
to share in the fellowship of His suffering.
I spoke at the
Belleville Exchange Club’s God and Country Dinner last week. As part
of my remarks I complemented the club for their honorable goals and
the good work they do for the community. I could tell in an instant
who their best members were—the ones who worked the hardest. They
were the ones whose eyes misted over as I spoke of dedicated service
beyond the call of duty. They are the ones who love the organization
and give selflessly. You learn to love what you work for.
There is another important benefit that comes with suffering for
Christ. You become a better witness for Him. Ask people about what
influenced them when they became Christians. Very often you’ll hear
something like this: “Well, here’s how it happened. Someone in my
department at work became a Christian, and I was suspicious, because
I knew him. But I watched him, first for a month, then for six
months, then for a year, then for two years. Every time something
bad happened to him he took it in stride. Over time I saw in his
life what I needed in mine—an inner strength, a ballast, a purpose.”
When someone who knows Jesus suffers with dignity and
demonstrates that quiet confidence in Christ the Holy Spirit
whispers to those who watch, “This is a miracle. This is what I
am all about—this is my power perfected in weakness. This is my
grace sufficient for you.”
I tell you, you can go over
the four spiritual laws and rehearse the gospel with someone for
years and seemingly not get anywhere, but when they see your faith
at work when the chips are down, they know you have found something
deep in Christ. The fact is that growing deeper in your faith
through the trials and difficulties that the Lord allows to come
your way, is really the fast track to Christ-likeness. Suffering
does certain things in us that really could never happen in any
other way.
Suffering prepares us for greater service for Christ,
because it toughens our faith and builds strength in us
1 Peter 5:10. One of the reasons suffering makes us better
servants is we learn by experience that God will not abandon us when
the going gets tough. We learn that He is faithful to help us in
times of trouble-- not to keep us from them, but to help us in them.
We actually learn to overcome fear and trust in God’s sufficiency
for us.
Few things evoke fear like the great white shark.
This powerful predator seems omnipotent, with its ability to rip and
tear any foe. Any foe, that is, except a small, delicate flatfish
that makes its home in the Red Sea area. It looks like any other
ordinary flounder or sole. But the innocent-looking “Moses Sole,” so
named by the Israelis, is in reality a giant killer.
In
experiments conducted by researchers with the National Geographic,
the huge shark would race directly at the “Moses Sole” with its
saw-toothed mouth gaping open, ready to devour the helpless little
fish. But its great jaws never snapped shut. Instead the great white
would race away frantically shaking its head with its powerful jaws
frozen open, while the little “Moses Sole” would continue swimming
around contentedly as though nothing had happened.
The Moses
Sole secretes a milky poison from secret glands. The toxin is lethal
attacking the muscles and nerves of predators. The secretion shoots
into the water and shrouds the tiny fish with a halo of protection.
Jesus has already conquered every enemy of ours, including the last
enemy, death. He is our defense against anything that would truly
harm us. And He said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Many never learn to trust His power to deliver and help them
because they always run from situations that threaten them, even
though they may know the Lord is leading them. So they never
experience what the Lord can do for them. When we undergo trials and
suffering, ennobled and enabled by His grace, we learn to trust Him,
to rely on His power to not only keep us from anything outside His
perfect will for us, but also to make every situation work out for
the good of the kingdom.
It was in His suffering, the Bible
says, that Jesus learned obedience (Hebrews
5:8) and it was in His sacrificial death that He won the
ultimate victory over Satan and evil. Jesus’ greatest moments were
not when people oohed and ahhed and thanked Him after He worked
miracles, nor was it the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, because the
very ones who praised Him called for His blood two days later. The
crowning moment of the greatest life in human history was when He
suffered infinitely more than we can imagine, and died, rejected and
alone on the cross.
This is the fellowship Paul said the
Christian is called into—the fellowship of
sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.
Paul knew the Lord in this way, so he prayed and stretched
himself to a place where he longed for more of the fellowship of his
suffering. Paul challenges us, “Do you really want to live for Jesus
in the extreme? Are you willing to get elbow deep in ministry for
Him? Take a few risks? Break out of your comfort zone, which too
often is a euphemism for a disobedience zone?
If you will
courageously declare with the apostle Paul, “I want to know
Christ…and to share in the fellowship of his sufferings”, you will
not lead a comfortable life, but you will also not lead a dull life.
I enjoyed reflecting on a comment one celebrity made about Sarah
Palin. In the same breath she said, “She’s boring” and “She is
dangerous.” It strikes me that, no matter who it is, if she’s
dangerous, she is certainly not going to be boring!
Here’s
what Paul is saying: there is something to fear that is worse than
suffering or death—and that is a wasted life—a life that could have
advanced the cause of Christ with its gifts and opportunities, but
didn’t. Here is the point at which the follower of Christ is
perfected and moves into the image of Christ—when he says, “Jesus is
Lord” and whatever sufferings I must endure in order to enter the
fellowship His sufferings, I welcome them.
Suffering does not
destroy Christians; it perfects them. During the 19th century the
only way to ship fresh North Atlantic cod from Boston to San
Francisco, where there was a high demand was to sail around South
America, a trip that took months. Putting the fish on ice failed
miserably. They tried placing the fish in holding tanks full of
water and shipped them live, but the fish were pasty, tasteless
after so long without exercise.
Then there was a stroke of
genius. “Why not put some catfish in with the cod?” The catfish were
the cod’s natural enemy. Sure enough, they add a few catfish and the
cod remained alert and active, and they arrived in perfect shape and
wonderfully tasty. Christians are at their best when there is an
enemy to be watchful for, when there is persecution threatening them
and when temptation and trials crowd them. Why? Because it is then,
when they most acutely realize their own limitations and lack of
strength, that they turn to their Lord .
As he closes
verse 11, Paul ties the goal of knowing Christ through the
fellowship of His suffering to the hope of the resurrection.
One chapter ago, Paul celebrated the fact that because of
Christ’s obedience to the point of death on a cross,
therefore God exalted him to the highest
place and gave him the highest name and eternal glory as
Lord. And so it is, in similar fashion, for us who follow Christ. We
know that by the promise of our faithful God, it will be worth it
all.
Paul wrote in
2 Timothy 4, I have fought the good
fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is
in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the
righteous Judge will award to me on that day—and not to me only, but
also to all who have longed for his appearing.
It will
be worth it all on that day. But we need to understand that for Paul
the full meaning of the resurrection is not just in the glory that
is coming; it’s also in the resurrection power that is now available
to the Christian. In
Ephesians 1, he prayed that they eyes of the believers’ hearts
would be enlightened in order that you may
know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious
inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us
who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength,
which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead…
In November 1964, anarchy broke out in the Belgian
Congo. Assemblies of God missionary J. W. Tucker knew he was at risk,
but he stayed where God had placed him. One day, a mob attacked and
killed him with sticks, clubs, fists, and broken bottles. They took his
body, threw it in the back of a truck, drove to the Bomokande River in
what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and then tossed his
corpse to the crocodiles
J. W. Tucker had risked everything, yet
he seemingly had nothing to show for it. But 30 years later, the truth
of how God used that missionary's sacrifice emerged. The Bomokande River
flows through the middle of the Mangbeto tribe, a people virtually
without the gospel. During a time of civil war, the Mangbeto king became
distressed with the violence and appealed to the central government in
Kinshasa for help.
The central government responded by sending a
man called the Brigadier, a well-known policeman of strong stature and
reputation who came from the region of Isiro. J. W. Tucker had won the
Brigadier to the Lord just two months before he was killed. The
Brigadier knew the only real way to peace was through the gospel. So he
prayed that he might present it well.
He heard of a Mangbeto
tradition that said: "If the blood of any man flows in the Bomokande
River, you must listen to his message." This saying had been with the
Mangbetos for generations. The Brigadier called for the king and all the
village elders and he told them: "Some time ago a man was killed, and
his body was thrown into the Bomokande River. The crocodiles ate him up.
His blood flowed in your river. But before he died, he left me a
message.
"This message concerns God's Son, the Lord Jesus Christ,
who came to this world to save people who were sinners. He died for the
sins of the world; He died for my sins. I received this message, and it
changed my life." As the Brigadier preached, the Spirit of God descended
and people began to fall on their knees and cry out to the Lord. Many
were converted.
Since that day, thousands of Mangbetos have
committed their lives to Christ and dozens of churches have opened as a
result of the message from the man whose blood flowed in the Bomokande
River.
For those who want to be like Paul, those who want,
like him, to be like Christ; for those who want to know Christ, to
experience Him fully; for those who are willing to follow Him in
obedience no matter what level of suffering may be involved; for those
who want to enjoy the power of his resurrection then and now; for those
who want to experience the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings,
becoming like him in his death; for those . . .
They will
receive, as Peter put it, a rich welcome into
the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
|