AMONG US: in our Suffering

Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by PulpitAI (with edits)

God’s Promise

Well this morning we’re talking about God among us in our suffering. Now that’s not always a fun topic to talk about, right? And luckily, again as we hold on to this incredible promise in Psalms 34:18, it says:

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
    and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

What a beautiful promise this morning to realize that, man, that God is with us, that Emmanuel is with us, that even when we’re dealing with pain and suffering—and last week we talked about doubt—that God is with us. Right? And he’s close to those that are brokenhearted.

And this morning we need to know that God never abandons us in our suffering. Can I hear an amen? Do you believe that? Doesn’t sound like it. Do you believe that? Amen, right? And so that’s a big thing. It’s a big deal for us to know that God will not abandon us. It’s important for us to have that locked up in our hearts and our minds and that we will actually believe that God is with us, that he is Emmanuel, that he is with us in our suffering, because when you suffer, when you go through trials and pain and challenges in life, then those promises matter. Because what are you gonna do when you are actually suffering, when you’re wondering, “Where is God in my pain and in my shortcomings and struggles?”

Suffering in Our World

Now, I know this is not always easy for us to think about suffering. Yes, many of us have experienced suffering, but I’m not talking about “first world issue” sufferings, like maybe this shot of me on the roof, right? It’s like, every time I have to clean snow—praise the Lord, we haven’t had to do a lot of that so far this year, right? But this is kind of suffering, right? For an African that’s somewhat of a suffering. But really, in the big scope of things, it’s not suffering. Right?

Maybe for us, when you’re in a new hotel or different traveling, and you’re looking at this image about wi-fi. It’s like, “Man, there’s wi-fi, but it’s free, and it’s slow,” and it’s like, well, that can feel like suffering, but that really, in the big scope of things, it is not suffering.

Today I want to talk a little bit more about more intense suffering. I don’t know if you have seen (if you can go to the next slide there) about what is happening. This is kind of breaking news right now of what is happening in Syria. Maybe you are aware of what is happening. The rebels kind of took over Syria, there’s some interesting things that happened with the leader in his plane this morning, and you can kind of go and Google all of that. But when you think about the Syrian people, for the last 50 years, some of the suffering that they have experienced. Now unfortunately, just because of what is happening in this country, I’m assuming that there will be more suffering ahead until they can figure out kind of a new government. But this is kind of breaking news right now, things that is happening in Syria. And so we feel for those people.

There’s a painting—I want to show you this painting. Who recognizes this painting? Okay. Where is it from? Who painted it? Pablo Picasso painted this, right? And so we can maybe look at this painting, and for most of us, we’re like, “Okay, that looks weird. What is he trying to communicate with us?” Well, when you go a little deeper, he was asked to paint this, in a sense, in a resistance against what happened in Spain. So I’ll just read for you.

On April 27, 1937, when Hitler’s powerful German air force, acting in support of Franco, bombed the village of Guernica [I think that’s how… Guernica?] in northern Spain, a city of no strategic military value. It was history’s first aerial saturating bombing of a civilian population. It was a cold-blooded training mission designed to test a new bombing tactic to intimidate and terrorize the resistance.

For over three hours, twenty-five bombers dropped 100,000 pounds of explosive bombs on the village, reducing it to rubble. Twenty more fighter planes strafed and killed defenseless civilians trying to flee. The devastation was appalling: fires burned for three days, and seventy percent of the city was destroyed. A third of the population, 1600 civilians, were wounded or killed.

Now just think about that suffering. One morning you’re still thinking, oh, you’re going to the bakery and getting your little Starbucks, and then for the next three hours it’s like, all hell breaks out in your city, and suddenly you’re just experiencing that devastation. And so then you kind of have to wonder, it’s like, “Okay God, where are you in all of this? Where are you?”

I think as a church, many times—especially the last five/ten years—when we have looked at all of the hurt and the brokenness around our world, and you see some of the things that is happening, the pain and suffering and abuse and war, it is easy for us to ask like, “God, where are you? Why are you allowing that in our lives?”

You know, my family had the opportunity to visit Germany, and we were able to go to Dachau Concentration Camp. Right? And that’s Venessa there at one of the gates. And as you walk through and you see all of the images—they have photos in the different buildings—and you actually see the pain and the suffering that actually happened—and again, it’s so easy for us to think about Jewish people, God’s people, and say, “God where are you in all of this pain and suffering that people experience?”

So maybe as we maybe come a little closer to home, and—in New York, we didn’t get a chance this time to go to the Memorial Pools, but we have been there before. It’s so peaceful, right? And you see all the names there at the memorial pools, and just people that have impacted, and you think about all of the families that have impacted—thousands of families and people that have impacted because of what happened on 9/11. And again, I mean, I think you—we weren’t in America at that point, but all of us kind of maybe wondered. We know that churches were full back then as people were wrestling, and like, “What do you do with this pain? What do we do with this moment?” And asking some of the hard questions, like, “Okay God, where are you? Where were you in the messiness of this moment for us as a country?”

And then lastly, kind of just in our visit now in New York, we were able to go to the Vessel. I don’t know if anybody have seen this picture. It is in I think the Manhattan area there, and they just recently reopened it, and I think there’s like a total of 2,500 steps if you try and do the whole thing. We did go up all the top; you don’t have to do all 2,500. But it was closed. This building was closed for several years because four people committed suicide from this building. And so for us, it was kind of, you know, it’s kind of a cool moment, and you look at the building, it’s like, it’s a fascinating, beautiful building, and climbing the steps, and now they have some safety nets on the different levels so that nobody can jump off those buildings. One of the last people that took their own life I believe was a 14-year-old, and his mom shared that he has tried to commit suicide before, and he jumped. He struggled with depression. And for that family, for us to be in awe, but there’s several families as they look at this building, they will always kind of maybe have hard questions, tough questions to ask as they deal with some of the pain of losing a loved one.

Our Response to Suffering

And so easy for us—just again as we think about suffering, most of us have experienced suffering. If you haven’t experienced deep suffering in your life, praise the Lord. That’s great, right? That’s a gift from God. But we know that when you live and you get to deal with different things that can impact your heart deeply, and it is in that moment, when we actually are face-to-face with pain and with suffering, then to say, “Okay, what does that look like for me now as a believer? How do I hold on? How do I really live this out, that I believe that God is among us?”

Examples from the Christmas Story

And I’m just sharing with you, even when we think about the Christmas story that we so love and we so appreciate in the church—even if you want to just turn with me to Luke chapter 2 [editor’s note: chapter 1], and we’ll start in verse 26. It says:

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

When we just think about the story, this is a story that is so well known to us.

We were driving in Nazareth, we really wanted to stop—there’s a Catholic church now on that kind of spot where people think that the angel appeared to Mary, but it was just in Nazareth, crazy parking, and we couldn’t stop there to actually go into the church.

But you think about that moment of Mary, just how everything in her life was gonna change in that moment. One moment, you’re still thinking about getting, you know, about marriage, and kind of what your future family is gonna look like, and then suddenly, there’s an angel that appears to you, and it’s like, “Okay, you’re gonna have a baby. And not just a baby, but this is gonna be the Savior. And by the way, really, you’re not gonna have a good way to explain this. The only way you’re gonna have to explain is that it’s by the Holy Spirit.” It’s like, just insane. And again, in our culture today, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. There’s maybe not the scandal and the stirring in the community that we have today with news like this. I mean, just when somebody maybe gets pregnant. But obviously, this would have been a profound impact in Mary’s life and in her family. A major scandal in her community.

I mean, it’s so bad that Joseph, in a sense, is saying, he’s like, “Hey, well, I’m gonna just quietly divorce her,” right, to protect her. And talk about suffering in that moment. You know, suddenly, it’s like your whole world is falling apart. You kind of had your 10-point plan here and your purpose and what you’re gonna do in your marriage, and then suddenly, it’s like, man, everything is turning upside down here. And the excitement, yes, you have the excitement of the angel appearing to you in that moment and saying you’re gonna be pregnant, but what about after the angel left her? Right? And then for her even to realize, like, “Okay, where is God in all of this?”

The beautiful thing is that she actually was giving birth to the Messiah, that nobody could actually see Jesus, but Jesus was there in her belly, and she was carrying him. She was carrying him. He was with her even in some of those hard moments.

And again, when we just look at the Christmas story, if you go to Matthew chapter 2. What a great story, but sometimes we just kind of read it, and we read the clean version of it all. Let’s read Matthew, chapter 2, starting in verse 1.

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. When he had called together all the people’s chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem in Judea,” they replied, “for this is what the prophet has written:

Verse 6:

“‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
    are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler
    who will shepherd my people Israel.’”

Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him.”

And we obviously know that that’s a lie, right? And so kind of a little bit of the story so far, just in what we’re reading here is: The wise men are trying to follow the star. They’re looking for Jesus, right? Then they show up with all the cool gifts. That’s kind of a cool moment, right, and that seems all pretty nice and exciting. But then there is, in a sense, persecution. They have a dream, there’s a warning to Joseph and his family, and say, “You now have to flee to Egypt, because King Herod is coming for you.”

Again, not quite a comfortable story when you think about all of the traveling and suffering that has happened already. I mean, we know that Joseph and Mary had to travel about 90 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Now, I’ve got a little bit of a sinus infection. I’ve heard giving birth to a baby, or being in labor, is a little worse than having a sinus infection. I don’t know, it felt pretty intense to me this morning. I can’t believe that, but I can imagine traveling, when you’re in the last stages of giving birth, to travel, I don’t know, by horse or donkey, right, from Nazareth to Bethlehem. That’s pretty intense, about 90 miles.

Now, I know from here to Hinckley is about 70 miles. Right? And so yesterday we went to HomeGoods. I was gonna go… we were driving to… I asked Venessa to drive with me. We went to Walgreens, I got some medicine, and she’s like, “Okay, let’s just stop at HomeGoods.”

And it’s like, “I don’t want to stop at HomeGoods. I’m sick.” Right? “I want to go to bed. I don’t feel great.”

Now again, imagine just Mary, it’s like, man, she is about ready to give birth, and now they have to travel 90 miles. That’s some suffering. That’s another level. And then it doesn’t stop there, right? It’s like, okay, you just kind of settled in Bethlehem, and now you hear again about persecution, and somebody’s coming for your child, and you have to flee again and run into Egypt, and a lot of unknowns, and the suffering, and you’re staying out there, and suddenly, and now you even hear about King Herod killing all of these babies. Just think about the stories. Think about the suffering and how that impacted so many families in that region.

And then finally, Joseph waits, and they hear another message from God, and it says, “Okay, it’s time. It’s fine, you can go back.” And just as he’s ready to go back and probably to head back to Bethlehem, they hear about another incident: King Herod is dead, but now actually his son took over, and his son is just as bad. Actually, when you go and read stories of Josephus, he actually talks about how he killed three thousand people at the Temple. Passover was canceled. And so Joseph’s like, “Okay, we’re not gonna go in that direction. Again, we’re gonna go in a different direction.”

So when we think about the Christmas story, it is not just this cute little “kumbaya” moment. There’s a lot of pain and suffering in this story, and in the midst of it all, we see God. And even in the bigger scope of things, as people are wondering, “When is this Savior coming? When is this Messiah coming?” Nobody had an idea. Nobody—obviously, for maybe the shepherds and the wise men, kind of knowing, like, “Here, the Messiah is here. Here is the baby.” And people are still wondering as they’re dealing with persecution from the Roman Empire, and they say,
“Where is Jesus in all of this? Where is the Messiah?”

And then again, we don’t know a whole lot about Jesus kind of growing up. All we know is now they’ve traveled—when we read the end of that chapter, they traveled back to Nazareth, and I’ll just read there, verse 23:

… and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene.

Right? And so prophetic word that comes into fulfillment again. And with all of this traveling, all of the persecution, all of the pain, all of the suffering that happened, if we just kind of read this one chapter. And for people to kind of wonder, it’s like, “Where is God? Where is the Savior in all of this?” And the beautiful thing is that God was already among them.

God is Among Us Today

And so even today for us, as we deal with different challenges and stuff in our lives, the reality is, a lot of times we maybe don’t see God physically. We don’t always feel him, his presence, maybe always in the same way (his manifest presence) the way that we want to feel him when we’re dealing with stuff. But actually to know that when we look at God’s promises and when we look throughout Scripture, we see Jesus’ faithfulness through it all. And so this morning is just a reminder that God is among us in our suffering. God is among us in our doubt, right, and in our struggles. And next week we’re looking at “in our waiting.” God is with us.

Our Response to Suffering

And two things this morning. Just, you know, we have to hold on. Kind of, what do we do? What do we do in those moments of suffering? I think it is just to continue to reach out, to draw near to God. It was part of what we were singing and worshiping this morning. It is to reach out and to draw near to God in those moments and to hold on to his presence and to know that he is Emmanuel and that we have his Holy Spirit with us. Right? That’s the great and wonderful promise that we see in Acts chapter 2, where Jesus was communicating like, “Man, you’re gonna have the great gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit, that is gonna be with you.” And so even though you maybe not feel it all the time or maybe even believe it, the Holy Spirit is among us. And even for us then in those moments of pain and suffering to actually be quiet, to go back to God’s Word, and to hold on to those promises, that God is near to the brokenhearted.

Jesus Can Relate

Nothing that you are going through is a shock to Jesus. Nothing that you are dealing with and maybe will deal with is too overwhelming. Jesus will be with you and with us in those moments.

Isaiah 53, our last verse for today, says:

He was despised and rejected by mankind,
    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
    he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain
    and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
    stricken by him, and afflicted.

It is so meaningful even this morning to know that Jesus took all of our suffering. He can relate. When we read the chapter in the book of Hebrews, we see that we don’t have a High Priest that is not able to identify with our pain and sufferings. Right? Jesus experienced a lot of pain and suffering. He experienced and he took that all on him this morning.

And so this morning, this is our hope and our joy as we hold on to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, right, that yes, we will deal with pain, we will deal with hard stuff in this world, but we have the victory, and that we don’t have to deal and don’t have to walk through that alone.

Now, a lot of times when we’re dealing with things and hard things, it is so easy for us to just try and say, “I’m just gonna walk through that. I’m just, you know, not gonna deal with the pain,” or, “I’m just gonna stuff it.” And none of those things are healthy. We have a Messiah. We have a great Comforter. We have a great Counselor that wants to minister to us in those moments of our pain and suffering. And so what a great place for us, where we can actually bring all of that to him. And that might just mean for us to actually become quiet, and again, to realize that God is among us. When you’re leaving here today, you are not leaving on your own. The Holy Spirit is with us and with you.