The Breeding Ground of Hope Romans 5:3-5
God has a purpose for suffering and affliction. And that purpose is to bring out the patient endurance of his people for the sake of his name; and through that to test and prove and refine the reality of faith and allegiance to Christ; and through that sense of approvedness to strengthen and deepen and intensify our hope. (Piper)
The People Who Suffer we . . our . . . us
2 Tim 3:12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. John 16:33 you shall have tribulation. John 15:20 If they persecuted me they will also persecute you. Acts 14:22 through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. James 1:2 when you meet trails of various kinds, Phil 1:29 it has been granted to you that . . . you suffer for his sake. 1 Peter 4:12-14, 2 Cor 4:17
The Path of Suffering
v 3 knowing that suffering Prov 17:3, Ps 66:10
Truth of Suffering knowing- Gk eido to know, i.e. get knowledge of, understand, perceive of any fact. The believer is able to glory or boast in the trials because of the knowledge of the word that affirms that these are not meaningless events, but are purposefully designed to test and perfect our faith producing endurance, character, and hope. Hope emerges when we enable our faith by the application of the knowledge that God will produce this within us. So, we rejoice or boast of the greatness of God who will “work all things after the council of His will” and will “for those who love God work all things together for good” Rom 8:28 and we know James 1:3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces . . . :
Traits of Suffering suffering
Privileged Suffering – When it's righteous suffering, it's a privilege to suffer for Christ. You suffer for righteousness sake, you're persecuted, you're wrongfully accused and abused, you're misjudged, misrepresented, assaulted by the kingdom of darkness, assaulted by family and neighbors and coworkers and classmates and whoever else, you are falsely accused, that is a positive. We rejoice in that. Because it's an honor to suffer for Christ. . . It's an honor to suffer for the one who suffered for you. Not only that, it's a joy to experience sustaining power. It's a joy to experience sustaining grace. So righteous trouble is a cause for rejoicing. It's an honor. It's a privilege to bear the marks of Jesus Christ. It's a tribute to your faithfulness to do that. It's a joy to experience the sustaining grace and power of God in the midst of that. It's a privilege to see that drive you to knees and increase your prayer life and thus be enriched by the communion of prayer. It's a special blessing to have faith increased as you see the power of God expressed in your suffering. (McArthur)
Purging Suffering - When it's unrighteous suffering, it's purging us and sanctifying us and conforming us to the standard of holiness.. . . chastening because of sin . . . and a disobedient life. The Lord is going to chasten you. He's going to come to you like a loving father would come to a child that he cared about and he's going to bring about the necessary discipline. Heb 12:3-11; Three things: 1) Prove we are His, 2) Perfect us in Holiness 3) Produce fruit of righteous love. John 15:2 every branch that does bear fruit he prunes
The Product of Suffering produces endurance 4 and endurance produces character and character produces hope
The Effect – produces Gk katergazomai kata toward - ergazomai to cause to exist, produce- accomplish, achieve, to do that from which something results 1 Peter 1:3-9, (Deut 8:1-6)
The Elements
Endurance Gk hupomone, endurance. meno, to remain. hupo, - under. perseverance or literally to remain under. Iin the NT the characteristic of a man who is not swerved from his deliberate purpose and his loyalty to faith and piety by even the greatest trials and sufferings. To endure under circumstances and when you go through these sufferings, they produce endurance perseverance, or patient endurance. Those who have the Spirit of Christ the effect is patient endurance, because the fruit of the Spirit is patience. (McArthur) The point here is that until hardship comes into our lives, especially hardship for the sake of Christ and his righteousness, we do not experience the extent and depth of our devotion to Christ. Until times get hard, we do not taste and really know if we are fair-weather Christians. One great effect of tribulation is that it brings about patient endurance and perseverance in God's people, so they can see the faithfulness of God in their lives and know that they are truly his. (Piper)
Character Gk dokime means the experience of being tested and approved." It means to put something to the test for the purpose of approving it. If, when tribulations come, you persevere in devotion to Christ and don't turn against him, then you come out of that experience with a stronger sense that you are real, you are proven, you are not a hypocrite. The tree of trust was bent and it didn't break. Your fidelity and loyalty were put to the test and they passed. Now they have a "proven character." The gold of your faith was put in the fire and it came out refined, not consumed. (Piper)
Hope - The more you suffer in this world, the brighter your hope becomes because the greater will be your eternal reward (Rom 8:18) McArthur The Christian life begins with hope in the promises of God in the gospel, and it spirals up through affliction to more and more hope. Approvedness brings about more hope because our hope grows when we experience the reality of our own authenticity through testing. The people who know God best are the people who suffer with Christ. The people who are most unwavering in their hope are those who have been tested most deeply. The people who look most earnestly and steadfastly and eagerly to the hope of glory are those who have had the comforts of this life stripped away through tribulations. (Piper)
These trials come and they seem to be leading us away from such a hope and contradicting it. But they do not; they bring us back to it and they make us much more certain of it then we were in the beginning. Having gone through all this we are much more certain that we belong to God. . . having passed through the furnace of affliction, through the trails . . . I am much more certain of that than I was before. So my hope is greater than it was at the beginning. It is the same hope (v2), but I am more certain of it. (Jones)
The Perspective on Suffering we rejoice in our sufferings
James 1:2 Count it all joy . . . when you meet trails . . . Matt 5:11-12 Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you . . . Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven. 1 Peter 1:6 In this you rejoice, . . . if necessary, you have been grieved by various trails . . . 4:13, 19 rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s suffering, Col 1:24 I rejoice in my sufferings . . . Acts 5:41 Then they left . . . rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. This is the same word that is used in v 5 (Gk kauchaomai to glory in or on account of a thing – to boast ) notice it says “in” The Christian’s reaction is not merely to put up with a trail, it is not just to be happy in spite of it, it is not to be happy in the midst of it; it is to rejoice on account of it, because of it Jones We can rejoice or boast in tribulation because our faith enables us to view them in such a way as to realize that far from working against our hope, they actually promote it, and indeed further it. Jones The moment trials come we realize a new and fresh need for our Lord, We have been going on in the Christian life rather thoughtlessly, thinking that we knew everything, and that we had everything. But suddenly we are confronted by these trials . . . and at first we are taken back and do not understand. But if we have true faith, that will make us turn back to Him. This is the test. We are not just looking at the problems; we will remember what He has said and what He has promised. So we turn to Him about them. (Jones)
The four purposes of suffering that I have in mind are:
1) the moral purpose, because suffering refines our holiness and hope (Romans 5:1–8),
2) the intimacy purpose, because in suffering our relationship with Christ becomes deeper and sweeter (Philippians 3:7–14)
3) the missions purpose, because God calls us to complete Christ's afflictions as we extend the worth of his through the reality of ours (Colossians 1:24)
4) and the glory purpose, because this slight, momentary affliction is working for us an eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:16–18).
So the reason we exult in tribulations is not because we like pain or misery or discomfort or trouble (we are not masochists), but because tribulations produce . . . a stronger and stronger sense of hope which comes through the experience of patient perseverance and a sense of being approved, the tree shaken by the storm roots itself more deeply. We talk so much about closed countries today that we have almost totally lost God's perspective on missions—as though he ever meant it to be easy and safe. There are no closed countries to those who assume that persecution, imprisonment, and death are the likely results of spreading the gospel (Matthew 24:9). Until we recover God's perspective on suffering and the spread of the gospel, we will not rejoice in the triumphs of grace that he plans. (Piper). Obedience in missions . . . has always been costly, and always will be. . . . Miango, Nigeria, there is . . . a small church called Kirk Chapel. Behind the chapel is a small cemetery with 56 graves. Thirty-three of them hold the bodies of missionary children. Some stones read: "Ethyl Arnold: September 1, 1928–September 2, 1928." "Barbara J. Swanson: 1946–1952." This was the cost of taking the gospel of Nigeria for many families in recent years. Charles White told his story about visiting this little graveyard. He said, "The only way we can understand the graveyard at Miango is to remember that God also buried his Son on the mission field.” And when he raised him from the dead, he called the church to follow him into the same dangerous field called "all the world." But are we willing to follow? Brother Andrew told the story of sitting in Budapest, Hungary, with a dozen pastors of that city teaching them from the Bible. In walked an old friend, a pastor from Romania who had recently been released from prison. Brother Andrew said that he stopped teaching and knew that it was time to listen. After a long pause the Romanian pastor said, "Andrew, are there any pastors in prison in Holland?" "No," he replied. "Why not?" the pastor asked. Brother Andrew thought for a moment and said, "I think it must be because we do not take advantage of all the opportunities God gives us." Then came the most difficult question. "Andrew, what do you do with 2 Timothy 3:12?" Brother Andrew opened his Bible and turned to the text and read aloud, "All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." He closed the Bible slowly and said, "Brother, please forgive me. We do nothing with that verse."
Are you sure that God wants you to continue your life in this comparatively church-saturated land? Or might he be calling you to fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, to fall like a grain of wheat into some distant ground and die, to hate your life in this world and so to keep it forever and bear much fruit?" (p. 21).If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings (Adoniram Judson)
So as the Lord refines us and refines us through persecution or through chastening, he is more and more causing us to be able to endure and to be shaped into proven character.. That's what's so wrong about much of the emphasis today. People seem to think that the Christian life should be a path in which you escape tribulation. Somehow everything needs to be immediately fixed. Whether or not we're supposed to go to some miraculous path to find the miraculous answer to fix our problem or some counselor to fix our problem or some alteration of circumstances. The fact of the matter is it is the very trials and tribulations of life that God uses to shape us and we should embrace them with joy because they produce a greater and greater hope. They make you long for heaven more and they'll make eternal heaven even more glorious by increasing your eternal reward. 1 Thess 3:3 puts it this way. "So that no man may be disturbed by these afflictions." For you yourselves know that we have been destined for this. (Piper)
http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/books Let the Nations Be Glad,
The Swans will not be Silent series (Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ), Individual books: Adoniram Judson, John Paton, David Brainerd, Don’t Waste Your Life,
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