See All Sermons in This Series

Summary:

What answer do you have to our suffering world? How do you make sense of it? A hard and bitter heart? The idea that it's just the way it is so eat, drink and be merry and live a take-it-when-you-can-get-it life? What about religions? What do they say? The Christian good news is that God himself suffers. Wherever all of the suffering comes from, the Bible tells us that it is related to sin and human rebellion against God. Beyond that, whatever you think of the cross, the gospel tells us that it is God's answer to sin and to suffering. God takes on our sin in the cross so that our suffering isn't the end of the story.

Excerpt:

Christianity cannot lead you to a place of detachment from this world, a giving up of it, running away from it, but running towards it, because that's what God Himself does. An entering into the life of the aged man, and the disabled, and the sick, not running to the forest. And Good Friday, is at the heart of all of it. It is probably the greatest question that you will struggle with in this life is most, in my experience and the experience of countless others, is most is answered in a most satisfactory way, though not entirely, completely by Good Friday alone. And that is that Jesus suffers, right in this world.

God Himself comes into this world and suffers and suffers and suffers. When Christ comes and takes on flesh, he experiences every kind of suffering. I mean, we've even heard some of them in the short time we've been together tonight. I think he's betrayed by one of his dearest friends who spent three years with him. All of his friends abandoned him. One of his best friends denies him three times. Socially, he's just totally alone. Here's a mock trial where he's actually declared innocent multiple times actually we heard one of them by a soldier. And yet, he receives a criminal's death. He's He's stood up he's mocked, he's spat upon. You know, there's a crown of thorns pressed down upon his head. He's paraded through town, people jeering at him, he's having to carry for a while his own cross. Louise declared innocent he's hung to die with the guilty. And he's given one of the most horrific deaths that we know has ever happened in human history. I mean, literally the cross existed as a way of the Romans telling everybody else, this is what happens to those who go against us, and be put up outside of the city just as Jesus was on a road leading out and to, for people to say, this could be your fate if you go against us. Jesus entered into every kind of suffering. God himself in the flesh did so. What you get from the Gospels, if you read them, is a very clear picture, that Jesus was entirely able to come down on off that cross, he was entirely able to stop those soldiers from arresting him in the garden, he was entirely able to stand up to the chief priests and the elders to Pilate to all the rest. And he does so willingly.

This is the Christian message, that our Lord actually willingly goes to the place of horrific suffering, there is no other religion you will find, that will say that, that God willingly goes to the places that we run from. And it is only because of that, do we have any, any hope in a world is so full of reasons for despair. This is Good Friday: God, not detached. God who is love who runs towards the needy. God who is love who comes to the place of suffering. And because of this, he laments it all just like you do. He validates all of your sadness and all of your sorrow. He doesn't look upon any of your tears and laugh at them. When you cry in the midst of your own suffering, "God, why have You forsaken Me?" Jesus says, "I was right there with you." We're here tonight to focus our attention on the cross. I think it is important and I want you to listen to this. To say that I actually don't really think that the Bible always gives us all the answers we want. When we come face to face with suffering, ourselves, or simply acknowledge how deep it is in the world, I don't think the Bible gives us all the answers we want. Questions sometimes still remain. But there's no other place. There is no other religion. There's no other god who enters into like this. There is no other good news like this. God willingly goes to the place of suffering. And so I want you to remember, please remember this. When you find your place in yourself in despair, when you find yourself in the midst of the deepest sorrow you've ever experienced. Please, please have a cross right in front of you. And please focus on this reality that Jesus hung there when he didn't have to he could have come down. But he stayed there and he died. That is God's answer to the suffering of the world.

Previous Page