Please turn your Bibles to the book of Hebrews. This morning I said that I was going to give what may be the last of the series of messages on God's strange ministers. And as I said before, it was a series that I heard Pastor Ron Dunn give years ago, and I thought it was a brilliant, heartwarming, helpful series. But he was in situations where people did not know the doctrines of grace or were just coming to them, and he couldn't say everything he wanted to say. But I could, so I took some of his outlines and some of his ideas and embellished them and brought more scriptures in, and then I think his series was like 10 and mine was like 16 by the time I was through. So if you like these sermons, you can thank Ron Dunn, and if you thought that one was kind of crummy, then you can blame me. Hebrews chapter 3, we'll begin in verse 1. Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, think about Jesus, ponder Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession. That's all I'm going to read from that one chapter, but I want to emphasize the idea of consider Jesus, ponder Jesus. Who is the center of the Christian life? Our Lord Jesus Christ. who left heaven to rescue us, the Lord Jesus Christ, who earned perfect righteousness that was imputed to the believing sinner for our crummy record, Jesus Christ, who atoned on the cross and wore all of our sins in our place, Jesus Christ, who is praying for us now, Jesus Christ. We are also partakers of a heavenly calling. Consider, ponder Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession. Then turn over, please, to chapter 12, where there's some more of this to think about. Hebrews chapter 12 is a chapter mostly about chastening and fatherly discipline, but it begins by picking up the theme of chapter 11, which was some of the great heroes of the faith, the Hall of Fame or the Hall of Faith of brothers and sisters down through the centuries in the Old Testament who trusted God despite harrowing circumstances. Chapter 12, verse 1 says, Therefore, because of what I just shared from chapter 11, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses, the cloud of witnesses would be the saints from chapter 11, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, something that gets in your way, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. fixing our eyes on Jesus, or looking to Jesus, the author, the beginner, and the perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him, think about Him, who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Let's pray a minute. Our Father and our God, I believe everyone in this room has been around long enough to know that we live on a fallen planet. We live in a world of heartaches. We live in a world where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal. Where cancer and heart attacks and strokes take people's lives. Where people do unspeakable horrors to their fellow human being. And we could go on and on with the litany of all the things that are wicked and evil and sad about this planet. When you save people, you don't automatically immediately take them to heaven, but you have them stay here. You have them grow in grace. You have them bear witness. You have them testify to a watching world that Jesus is more precious than all the things they used to count important. And I'd rather have Jesus. Would you help us in this time to look at Jesus, to look at Him in all of our afflictions, He is the best friend a sinner could ever have. We pray in His name. Amen. This evening I do want to take you into looking at Jesus, and I've got five different areas where we want to look at Him. First of all, in the midst of your struggles and heartaches, which I said earlier we all have, you're coming out of one, you're going into one, one's coming down the road sometime. Look into Jesus on all of our afflictions. I once did a series, before I did this series, I once did a series over a summer entitled, Making God Your Refuge. And if you have a Bible concordance, one of the things you can look up with great profit is look how David uses the word refuge in the Psalms. How many times David says, the Lord is my refuge. I flee to the Lord as my refuge. Now, a person who does flee to a place of refuge is a refugee. And I grew up in the 50s and watching pictures of refugees during World War II fleeing Nazi Germany, fleeing Mussolini, fleeing the Japanese. I just grew up watching pictures of people who were refugees. And then over the years, refugees from Haiti, boat people, refugees from Vietnam, people who were fleeing someplace that was absolutely miserable. in the hopes that they could find a better place, a place where they could be happy and healthy and live the rest of their lives. And the psalmist makes a point of saying, you need to make the Lord your refuge, the one you flee to, the place you flee to. So this first point is looking to Jesus in all of our afflictions by looking to Him in His affliction. By looking at Christ in His affliction, there are lessons to help us in our affliction. What greater source of strength and courage can there be than thinking on all the stuff that Christ went through in order to not only earn the right to save us, but to be our example? If Christ suffered so much on behalf of His people, shouldn't I be able to endure in His strength whatever afflictions He sends me? He could endure what He was assigned to. And 1 Peter says that He did it, not because He had some jet power pack where He said, just a minute, and He pushed a little lever and He suddenly was in His divine mode. It says that He kept on entrusting Himself to His heavenly Father. 1 Peter 2 at the beginning of chapter 3. He kept on entrusting himself to his Heavenly Father. He is our example. He didn't resort to his divine being in order to pass tests. He kept on entrusting himself to the Father even as we're to entrust ourselves. Is there one affliction I must bear that he's not already endured in some manner? Micah the prophet says in Micah 2.13 that the Lord is the opener of the breach. almost a military term, like a battering ram, like a tank going through a berm, or like you see police sometimes having these big battering rams and they'll break in a door before they rush in to arrest somebody. Well, the Lord is the opener of the breach in order that we, his people, can follow after him. He opens the breach and we follow after him. Did he have a life of suffering? Yes. Did he make it through it? Yes. And we're to follow him. Christ has always led the way for us, He's always opened the way for us, no matter what may come. In Hebrews 4.15 it says that He was tempted in all ways as we are, yet without sin. Now sometimes people say, yeah, but. He wasn't tempted in this way, or He wasn't tempted in this way. Actually, He was tempted more than any of us were. English New Testament scholar B.F. West got observed in his commentary on Hebrews years ago, that eventually, no matter how mature you are, no matter how much you know the promises, no matter how mature you are, you eventually give in to some temptation and you fall at that point. But if you never gave in, and the person who's trying to tempt you is ratcheting up the temptation each time he returns, how incredibly high can that power of that temptation be? Christ never gave in, so the devil kept ratcheting up the power behind the temptation. You name it, and he faced it one way or another, and he never gave in. You know, that's encouraging because we don't look to some naive, untested pretty boy who's the head of our faith. He's not ignorant of hard times and he's not ignorant of hard people. Jesus Christ took the worst the devil in this world could dish out and he never gave in to sin. Ironically, and I'm being a very slow person, I was probably a Christian 20 years before it dawned on me, what a title for the king of glory that his title would be a man of sorrows. that Christ didn't come with great glory and pomp. People didn't go, whoa, here's the king from heaven. They just treated him as nothing. And one title for his life might be a man of sorrows. And we sing the hymn, Man of Sorrows. There's a line in Isaiah 53, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, meaning familiar with grief. I know what it's like to be sad. I know what it's like to be hurting. He lived with us down in the filth and degradation of this world, and he knew full well the sorrows that we have on a fallen planet. Have you ever been rejected? He was rejected. Have you ever been despised? He was despised. Have you ever been deserted? He was deserted. Have you ever been betrayed? He was betrayed. Have you ever been spiritually attacked? He was spiritually attacked. Have you ever been physically attacked? He was physically attacked. Have you ever been psychologically attacked? He was psychologically attacked. You ever been hungry? He was. Thirsty? He was. Tired to the point of exhaustion? He was. I've been in small boats before. I don't know if I've ever been in a small boat in a raging storm, but you know, the fact that you could be so exhausted that you sleep through a storm in a small boat means you're really tired. Wounded? Yes. Tortured? Yes. Killed? Yes. Christ has so much endured the afflictions we go through that he really is someone that I can go to and first of all know that he knows exactly what I'm feeling and going through and that he can give me help. One night several years ago My wife and I were going through a very painful situation where some people that we really loved and had been close to for years just turned their back on us and would have nothing to do with us. For four or five years, they wouldn't answer phone calls, emails, wouldn't talk to us. It was a very hard and sad time. And one Friday night, I decided to have a pity party. Nobody came. It was just my own party. I invited all these people to come to my pity party, but pity parties are usually one-man parties. And I went in my study and sat down and just started to weep. And the Lord graciously brought Psalm 31 to mind, so I turned to Psalm 31. And he wasn't just deserted by one or two people. He was deserted by everybody. And finally, even his father turns his back on him, and so Christ cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He was made to be sin. And I realized that he, of all people in the planet, in the history of the planet, could give me comfort and succor and encouragement and knew what I was going through. And I didn't feel so bad because he had it worse. You know, it's like the old saying, I felt bad I didn't have a pair of shoes and I saw a guy who didn't have a pair of feet. And I put my lack of shoes in perspective. There's an old Negro spiritual that I think the slaves sang with meaning that we at times don't appreciate. Nobody knows the trouble I've seen. Nobody knows but Jesus. And that's true. The most sensitive pastor, the most sensitive spouse, the most sensitive Christian friend compares no way to Jesus Christ. Look to Jesus in your afflictions. He knows what you're going through and He can give you comfort and succor and understanding and help. He made it. He'll help us to make it. Number two, looking to Jesus in His authority. I had originally the word power, but I changed it to authority. Looking to Jesus and His authority, He said at the beginning of the Great Commission in Matthew 28, 18, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. All authority. Everything is under Jesus except the Father. He has authority over demons, over the devil, over every human being, whether they're kings or emperors or dictators. He has authority over every plant and animal, every particle of dust, every bit of pollen, every microbe. He has authority over all governments and powers, local, state, regional, national. The creation and all that happens in what the world and the weatherman calls nature, or mother nature, in God's creation, all of these things are under His authority. Is there a drought? It's His drought. Is there a flood? It's His flood. Is there a pestilence? It's His pestilence. Is there a tsunami? It's His giant wave. Is there an avalanche? He's there. Is there a tornado? He caused it. Is there a hurricane? He's behind it. Is there a lightning strike? He caused it. Are there storms and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. In all our afflictions, we are to look to the one who controls all these things and the one who in the end is the one who assigned them to us. If we had to live through a tornado, it was his tornado. God has so assigned your afflictions that you are to look to Jesus for His power to bear up under them. He has the power to help you get through this test and trial, whatever it is. There's a difference between the word power and the word authority. Authority means the right to rule and to exercise power to bring about compliance. You know, here's a policeman, he's wearing a blue uniform and he holds out his hand and says, stop. You go, well, I'm not going to stop because my car is bigger than your little hand and I'm just going to plow right through you. Now, you might think that's a wise thing to do, but he carries a gun on his hip and his friends who wear blue also have guns in their hips and there's judges and there's a whole system which stands behind him. You know, he has authority to wield power to force. your compliance, your obedience. And the Lord can help you, and he can give you grace to bear. Charles Spurgeon, as you know, was one of the great preaching geniuses, and as a person was just very gifted. But to keep him humble, God afflicted him with several maladies, physical ailments. And one of them was Bright's disease, sometimes called gout, a very painful disease that makes you feel like your nerve endings in your body are on fire. And in the 1860s, 70s, and 80s, and 90s, there was no cure for gout. There was no painkillers. You could either get drunk. You could take laudanum, which was a combination of opium and alcohol, which was like a really weird way of treating yourself. You could smoke. Smoking actually gave you some relief, but there was very little to help you. You were just miserable. And one day he was lying in bed crying because he was so miserable. And it was a work day, and some days he was so sick he had to work from bed. He was lying on his side crying. He asked his wife if she could leave the room for a minute. He asked his secretary, who was a man who took notes and was really kind of his administrator, he asked him if he would leave the room. And he did business with God, and he said, Lord, I'm not a better father than you, but if my son came to me and he was in abject misery and said, Dad, can you do anything for me? I would do it. I'm not a better father than you are. I'm not asking you to take the pain away. I'm just asking, would you make it bearable? Boom. It dropped. He was never pain free the rest of his life. But he never had it that bad ever again the rest of his life. He could bear it the rest of his life. But to remind him that I made you great and I'll keep you, he always had this pain from the scout. The ironic thing of that day was when he started, he was crying because it hurt so bad. He did a 360 degree rotation to try to find a less excruciating place, and he came back to the original place because it was the least excruciating of all the other excruciating places that he was trying to find to get comfortable. But God heard him, and God answered his prayer. One of my heroines is Corrie Ten Boom. If you saw the movie, you read the book The Hiding Place. A 51-year-old woman who had not married grew up in the suburbs of Amsterdam, Holland. The Nazis invade her country and suddenly her idyllic world, helping out in her dad's watchmaking shop, is shattered. She and her family hide Jews in a false area in the inside of the house. You couldn't tell from looking at the house that it had, there was a room here, but you couldn't tell there was a space that wasn't accounted for. And they hid Jews there. They hid many Jews there. But after a couple of years, they were revealed, they were caught, and she and her family were all sent to concentration camps. All the rest of her family died in concentration camps. She was the only one who made it. In the book, she and her sister Betsy are assigned to Ravensbrück concentration camp, and Betsy's the heroine. Betsy has faith, Betsy gets the scriptures, Betsy walks close to God, Corey's just, nuke them all and let God sort it out. I hate these Nazis, I hate what they're doing. She had a bad attitude. And one day she just blurted out, I am so sick and tired of the lice. and the fleas in our building here. And she was just starting to murmur like she did most every day. And her sister Betsy came up to her and put her hand on her arm and said, Cory, Cory, think about it. What is the one place in this entire camp the guards will not come? We can talk to each other. We can pray. We can have Bible study. We can do almost anything we want to in here. Why? They won't come in here because they don't want fleas and lice on their beautiful Nazi uniforms. It's our safe haven. These are God's lice. These are God's fleas. They keep the Nazis out. She and her sister had made a pact that if either of them would get out alive, they would go all over the world telling people, no matter how deep a hellhole you find yourself in, Christ is deeper still. A few days later, Betsy dies of pneumonia. And the light kind of seems to go out in that dark place. And then Corey is weirdly released. A typist in the office was typing numbers of people and mistyped a number, and that was her number. And she's pulled out of the line, and she's given her clothes, and she's told she can go. Confused, she leaves. The next day, they gas all the women who are her age in the place. She's the only one who survived, the only one, on a Claire Claire. But she spent the rest of her life into her 80s going all over the world telling people, I don't care how bad a hell hole you find yourself in, Christ is deeper still. These are God's lies. These are God's fleas. He'll be with you. All authority in heaven and earth is Him. He controls everything. Why were those lice there? Because God wanted them to be there. Why were those fleas there? God wanted them to be there. They were an annoyance for the prisoners, but they were absolutely something to keep the Nazi guards back, and they wouldn't come in. Look to Christ and His sovereign authority. Did you know the devil has to ask permission before he can touch you or do anything to your life? Read the first two chapters of Job. The devil has to ask permission to do anything toward you. He is God's lackey. He only does what God lets him to do and God has him do it for your good and God's glory. Look to the one who controls everything. Third, looking to Jesus in his presence, in his presence, in his being with you. Christ is never absent from me. He's never away from me. There's no time when Christ isn't with me. One of God's attributes is that He's ever-present or omnipresent. Even when you can't see Him, He's still there. Now, there are times when our faith is weak and we don't see or lay hold of His closeness. God, You don't seem close. I don't sense You. And maybe there are times when he wants us to grow up and walk by faith and not by sight and so he doesn't give us his normal tokens of his presence. His felt presence isn't always there to cheer us. Puritan Thomas Watson had a great illustration of this. He said the normal Christian life is walking down a country road with your father and he's holding your hand. And you're talking and you're looking at all the things and the birds and the trees and talking about life and you're just having a sweet time walking down the lane with your father. But sometimes he stops, and he picks you up, and he smothers you with his kisses, and he tells you how much he loves you. Those are times when God gives you special tokens of his love for you. But it's not all day, and it's not every day. And because you haven't had one for a while, it doesn't mean you can't walk by faith, because you haven't had a felt token of his presence today. Is he still there because you can't feel him? Is your ability to feel the arbiter of reality? I once read a book by Gloria Gaither. You've heard of the Gaithers, and they sing gospel songs. And she's from Indiana. And when I lived there, she wrote a little book called Make Warm Noises. It was about raising children. And when you're raising children, you need all the help you can get. So I read Gloria Gaither on some child-rearing things. And she said a brilliant thing from the title. She said, when children get to be about three, they can go into another room and not see you, But believe me, you're around the corner. They can't see you, but you're around the corner. And they can be spatially separated from you and not be insecure. But most of the times, kids have to be able to see you. Are you right? OK, I'll be around the corner. Are you sure? OK. Well, one day, her three-year-old went around the corner to play and said, Mom, I'm going to play in here. And I want you to stay here. But I want you to make warm noises. What does that mean? I want to hear you clanging pots and pans. I want to hear you doing stuff. I want to know that you're here because that will give me my security where I can't see you. God gives us many warm noises. And he promises like, I will never leave you or forsake you. May I cease to be God if I don't fulfill my covenant promises to you. I will be your God and you shall be my people and I will never leave you nor forsake you. In Hebrews chapter 9, I believe, the author of Hebrews does two things. He says, God has promised to never leave you or forsake you. Yeah, but how do I know he's really going to do it? The Bible says everything must be confirmed by two witnesses. God says, well, there's nobody higher than me, so I solemnly swear by myself may I cease to be God if I don't come through with these promises for you. Is God trustworthy? Is Christ trustworthy? Now, to be truthful, you can be in the dark furnace of affliction and things can be so awfully black, they're terrifyingly dark and you can't see a thing in your imagination. Did I really hear that or was that inside my head? But Psalm 139, 11 and 12 says, if I say to myself, surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day to you, for darkness is as light with you. I'm dealing with God here, not just another person. Just because things seem absolutely dark and I can't see what's going on, doesn't mean it's dark to God or he can't see what's going on. Your mediator is always at your side. Christ is called our mediator. He's the go-between between man and God. Well, that means he really is there between us. Your high priest is always interceding for you. He's always interceding for you with his eye upon you. You know, one of the great things about Christ is he's God and man. I'm doing good to pray for myself and pray for my wife and pray for my kids and pray for my grandchildren, pray for the people of church. But, you know, I can't pray for everybody in the whole world or pray for all the believers, but Christ can. He's always interceding for you with His eye upon you. He's always interceding for you with His high priest heart. He's always bearing you on His high priestly shoulders, so to speak. It says, you're engraved on the palms of His hands. That's not going away. It's not like a bad tattoo that maybe you could somehow get it removed. You can never remove the engraving of our names, so to speak, from the palms of His hands. In Hebrews 7, 24 and 25, it says, He ever lives to make intercession for us. Christ holds the priesthood permanently because He continues forever. Consequently, He's able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him since He always lives to make intercession for them. At the right hand of the Father, there's human flesh and deity combined. And as long as Christ exists, he will be the mediator between God and man. And a billion years from now, as men count time, God's not going to go, you know, come and think of it, this has really been a crummy arrangement for me, and I'm just going to nuke you all. No. At the right hand is the God-man, Jesus Christ, who bears our human flesh but without sin, and is also very God of very God, and He is interceded for us. Father, and here's to the whole method of mediation again, as long as Christ exists, we're safe. And all of what Christ has done is done out of love for you. You know, we sang a hymn this morning from John Newton. I don't know if you noticed it was a John Newton hymn that Robin picked. One there is above all others, well deserves the name of friend. Could we treat anybody else like we treat Christ and expect them to love us very long? No. We forget him all the time. I mean, yeah, he's great and wonderful, but, you know, I got stuff to do. And all it takes is stuff to do and he's a million miles away. But He never forgets us. He never takes offense. I can be cold-hearted, but my elder brother and Savior is always warm-hearted toward me. That's why in Proverbs it says, there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. And even when I cannot see Him or feel Him with my physical senses, I need to learn to walk by faith, but He's right here and He's holding on to me. The Christ who saw you through yesterday's heartache is still present with you today to give you today's portion of strength. In Matthew 6, verse 34, it says not to be anxious for tomorrow, for each day has enough things to be concerned about. Trust Christ for today's trials and afflictions, and guess what? Christ is still there tomorrow, and you can trust Him tomorrow for tomorrow's trials and afflictions. I will never leave you nor forsake you. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. My fourth point, looking to Jesus in his perseverance. The perseverance that Jesus practiced for us, for saving us, is the perseverance that he wants us to show in our Christian lives. Some afflictions that are sent by the enemy of our souls are so painful because, frankly, they just seem to last so long, forever and ever. When will this ever end? It can't last another day. It can't last another week. It can't last another month. It can't last another year. but it does drag on. You begin to wilt. You begin to lose heart. Job faced his initial shocks of affliction well, but gave in to the slow dripping of his friend's bad counsel and worse accusations. Then the evil one comes along and whispers in your mind's ear that it's never going to end and you'll never be able to endure it, so why don't you just crumble and quit and perish? but our Lord persevered in the most awful afflictions all the way to the end. He drank the cup of suffering down to the dregs, the very bottom of the cup, so to speak. He endured hostility and suffering right up to the very end, right up to crying out, Tetelestai, it is finished, he was enduring suffering. He earned the right to be your strength in your affliction. He earned the right to be your strength in your affliction. All of the afflictions, no matter how long they last, Christ can help you bear one more day of misery. Christ can help you take one more step in pain. Christ can help you live one more day full of tears. Think about, for example, how he persevered in the Garden of Gethsemane. His best friends don't get it, and they're just sleeping. And it's so intense, and you have enough awareness to go, you're about to go to hell, you're about to be punished for the sins of all the saints for all time. In Luke's gospel it says that Christ was so weakened and overcome by what he was facing that God dispatched an angel to come and encourage him so he could finish the job. I've read that in J.C. Rowling, oh no, surely, how did I miss that one back, sure enough, that's what Luke says. An angel was dispatched to help Christ make it through. J.C. Ross said, you know, after I die and I go to heaven to be with the Lord, I want to thank him for all that he has done for me and all that he is. And then I want to make a beeline to that angel, thank him for what he did for Christ. He persevered at the stone pavement of Gabbatha where Pilate held court and was interrogated, found innocent, but still handed over to his enemies by this cowardly politician. He persevered at Golgotha, despising the shame of being crucified naked, being counted the ultimate sinner so that he could be damned in our place. John 13, 1 says, having loved his own, he loved them to the very end. Blood droplet by blood droplet, muscle cramp by muscle cramp, agonizing breath by agonizing breath, for six long hours he poured out his life that you and I might have life. He never flinched from his duty, he never answered his mockers, he never responded when he was baited with taunts. He loved us to the very end. And it's through the persevering strength of Jesus' grace that you and I have endured this long. How did you make it this far? How did I make it? Are we the more superior examples of American Christians? Whoa, look at them, they are so incredibly outstanding. I can see why they're so going strong. That's not true. Not if you have any sense of reality. How did you bear those sleepless nights when the dawn never seemed to come? How did you survive the misery and heartbreak that lasted so long? How did you keep your cool when taunted by your enemies? How did you stay silent when your enemies challenged your love for Christ? How did you stagger on when all of your strength seemed to be gone? How did you ever give a get up all those times when you fell? In the 1970s, a woman wrote a poem, or a story, so to speak. It sold in the millions, and it wasn't until about the year 2000 that someone came forward and claimed ownership. It was called Footprints in the Sand. Many of you have read it, and if you've read it, you've loved it. But the story goes this way. This person comes to Christ, and Christ says, I'll never leave you or forsake you, and I'll always be with you, and great. And then this person, as they walked along the beach of time, began to notice that Well, sometimes there wasn't two sets of footprints. There was only one set of footprints. And Christ said he'd never leave me or forsake me. And it seems like the times when there was one set of footprints were the times when they were the worst times in my life. What's going on here? So he takes the Lord to task. Lord, you promised never to leave me or forsake me. And just look, look at my life. There were times when I don't know how I made it, but I don't see your footprints. I don't see any footprints but one set. Where were you?" And Christ says to him in the story, well, my dear son, my dear daughter, I would never leave you nor forsake you. Those times when you saw only one set of footprints and they were the worst times in your life, those were the times I carried you. You didn't make it because you're so great. You made it because I carried you this far. Christ leaves no man behind. Paul said, I am what I am by the grace of God alone. He was not naive about how far he had to go spiritually, but he was amazed that he had even still stayed in the race and God had kept him. Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones had a man come to him in 1948 or 49 after our service and he'd been in the British Navy and he'd been in the submarine in the Mediterranean and the Mediterranean is not a very deep body of water and they had been discovered by Nazi destroyers and through a depth charge or something their ship was damaged and sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean. They were under 90 feet of water and there was a whole ship full of British sailors. And the man was telling the story so poignantly, he goes, down, down, down. We went to the bottom of the Mediterranean, 90 feet of water ahead of us, above us. And Lloyd-Jones goes, okay, I got that. How did you get here? Down, down, down we went. I could make this stretched out, but the point is several times the guy rehearsed this down, down, down thing at the bottom of the Mediterranean. And Lloyd-Jones patiently stood there and listened to him. He finally goes, look, I get it. I get it. It was horrific. But how did you get here? You're here today. You're not at the bottom of the Mediterranean. You're not dead. You're alive. How did you get here? The guy just got stuck. on his scary memories of being at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. God doesn't want us to get stuck. He wants us to look to him. How did we get here? We may have had some horrific things we've passed through already. But we're here tonight, aren't we? We're not at the bottom of the Mediterranean. We're still not back in the muck of that other thing. David persevered for 16 years avoiding Saul's attempts to kill him after he'd been told, you are going to be the next king. Oh, by the way, you might want to start running now. And 16 years. Joseph persevered for 17 years of terrible circumstances after God had told him that he was to be the favored son and was to be in charge of all the other sons. And you might want to start running too. Jesus Christ persevered for 33 and a half years Every single person Christ met, and it never dawned on me, but we once had a guest preacher, Dr. Roger Nicole, and he said this in a line, and I've thought about it over the years, he said, every single person Christ met, without exception, was a sinner, was a rebel, whose sins were an affront to Christ and his deity. And Christ didn't go off on anybody. He didn't nuke anybody. He didn't spit on anybody. He was affronted by every single person he had to deal with every day. Christ has persevered through too much for too long to save us, to let us slip from his grasp and lose us now. Jesus said in John 10, I give them eternal life and no one can snatch them from my hand. The Father has them in one hand, and nobody is stronger than my Father. I'm never going to let you go. They shall never perish. No one can pluck them out of His hand. So we need to learn to look to Christ and His persevering grace and say, Lord, You made it. You promised to help me to make it. It's grace that's what brought us safe thus far, and grace will lead us home. Whose grace? God's grace in Christ. looking to Jesus and His victorious final end. The end of our Lord's afflictions and misery and humiliation was eternal glory. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted him and bestowed upon him the name which is above all names so that the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father. The end of all of his suffering and humiliation and torment was eternal glory. The Bible says that we're to undergo momentary and light afflictions. You go, well, hey, Bob, it doesn't seem momentary and light to me. You're not going through what I'm going through. It doesn't seem momentary and light to me. Paul says, compared to eternity, it is momentary and it is light. Jesus' victory in eternal glory was not for himself alone. Christ returned to heaven and to his Father, but he was different than when he left. When he came to earth, he was God, veiled in his deity. When he goes back to heaven, he's now the incarnate Son of God, holy God and holy man. He forever sits at the right hand of the Father. He's returned, having won his blood-bought bride to church. And he's seen to it, according to Ephesians 1.6, that all the church of God has been saved, and that he's taking his bride to heaven, and that we're already seated in the heavenlies. It's a done deal. So, you know, for example, Christ says, in my Father's house are many mansions. If it weren't so, I wouldn't have told you. But I did tell you, didn't I? Just now. I told you in my Father's house are many mansions. I'm going to prepare a place for you. I'm not lying. I'm not joking. This is the real deal. I had to go through hard times to win you. You're going to go through hard times to get there. But it's momentary and light afflictions. We must think more of Christ's end and the end that he's bringing us to, to endure some of our afflictions. Our trials are but for a few days compared to the eternal weight of glory to an eternity. Why was it that Paul lived so different? I used to think about that. Paul was obviously kind of a different kind of guy. But then you realize, well, you know, he did have this Damascus Road experience to start out his Christian life. And later in 2 Corinthians he says, well, I don't know if it was a vision or a dream, but I was taken to heaven and I got to see heaven. I got to see the eternal state. Half the stuff I saw, I can't really explain to you. I don't know how. There's not human analogies in our culture that I can explain what I saw. And the half that I did understand, I don't have permission to tell you. But I do know it's made me a different man. And Paul lived differently than other people. He lived with this Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, I don't care what the problem is. Christ is greater than any problems, and glory is greater than anything we have to face. You know, when the Lord takes us through our afflictions, He weans us from this world. I can remember my father-in-law was a great golfer, a great athlete, and it was hard for him to adjust to aging. But see, he didn't start aging until he was 80. I mean, he was like, incredible, 80. And it's like, wow, this is hard. And I used to tease him, what, did you think you were going to have X number of years of perfect health and just die? No, but I didn't think it'd be like this. And so the Lord took me aside and said, look, Buster. And the Lord calls me Buster. I know good things are coming. What about you, Buster? What if I afflict you with some things? You've never really been a sick person. You've played sports. You've done things all your life. How about some affliction? It's momentary and it's light. Are you going to complain? Are you going to gripe? Are you going to call me names? Affliction is Christ's way to pave our way to glory. This world is not so bright as it used to be. Living here forever is not my last best hope. As much as you're a great people, I don't want to live with you the rest of my life. I want to live with Christ and I want you to join us. If I beat you, I want you to join us. But I don't want to stay here forever. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4.17, for our light and momentary affliction, which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Now if Christ said, you've never given up anything in this planet that I'm not going to repay you for a hundred times over, probably heaven will be where most of it comes because you're not going to get all of your payback for whatever you may have lost here on earth. Houses or lands or family or whatever he says, I'm no man's debtor and if you lose stuff because you're following me, I'll pay you back a hundred times over and eternal life. Our rainy days on earth are nearly over, so let's not overestimate them. You know what I mean by a rainy day when things seem to be going wrong and nothing's quite right? When I'm tempted to have a pity party, I think I'll call up Steve Martin and see if he wants to come. Nah, he doesn't want to come. But to think on my coming crown as a member of the royal family, as a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem, without sin, without pain, without disappointment, without shame, It makes my affliction look different. If I think of the eternal communion I'm going to have with the Father who chose me for salvation despite my sin and depravity and rebellion, that's going to be special and precious. To think about my eternal communion with the Son who purchased my salvation at the expense of His own glory and comfort, that will be precious. To think of eternal communion with the Spirit who has supported me and kept me for Christ and kept me united to Christ all these years. That will be precious. Think of the holy angels who serve in the presence of God and the saints who have gone on ahead of us. What an incredible reunion awaits us. Puritan pastor and theologian John Trapp said, he that rides to be crowned will not be bothered by it being a rainy day. If I'm on my way to glory to be crowned, it won't bother me that it's a rainy day that I'm riding there. We are but renters here. Our mention is reserved for us there. One of the first promises that dawned on me in the Bible was in 1 Corinthians 2, 9. Paul told the Corinthians, your eye has not seen, your ear has not heard, neither has it entered into your mind all the wonderful things that God has in store for you because he loves you. You've never seen it, you've never heard it, it's never entered into our pea brains, all that God has for us. David said, wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart. Wait, I say, on the Lord. Brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ is the best friend a suffering saint could ever have. Let's pray. Our Father in Heaven, this morning we saw something of Your Son's glory. And we were astounded to be reminded of how great and wonderful your son is. But your son, besides being God of God and light of light, is also a man, the most sensitive, the most powerful, the most persevering, loving, compassionate man the world has ever seen. And he is wholly committed to us. He is our mediator. He's our best friend that sticks closer than a brother. Would you help us to face our trials, looking to Christ in all of our afflictions, because He alone is worthy to help us make it through our afflictions. He alone is worthy of our trust. He alone is worthy of our prayers. Lord, please help us to make it to glory. Don't let us deny you, say things under our breath, think thoughts that are unworthy of you. Help us to honor you in our momentary and light afflictions. For there is an eternal weight of glory coming, and Christ has promised it, and He's never lied. He's taking us there now. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.