In today’s sermon, we traverse the sermon titled ‘Strange Sufferings of the Saints’ as taught by Dr. J. Vernon McGee. Anchored in 1 Peter, Dr. McGee unpacks the biblical perspective on suffering, emphasizing its inevitability and purpose within the Christian faith. From ancient pilgrimages to modern testimonies, discover how suffering refines, challenges, and ultimately strengthens believers on their journey with God.
Why does He allow me to suffer? That’s a difficult question, isn’t it? But you know, it’s an honest one, and maybe one that you or someone you love might be asking today. Well, if that’s the case, you’ve come to the right place. So stay with us as God’s Word offers hope and understanding for all of us facing difficult circumstances in our lives. Welcome to the Sunday Sermon on Through the Bible with our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee. Go ahead and grab your Bible and let’s journey through one of the many passages in 1 Peter that talks specifically about suffering in a message that Dr. McGee called Strange Sufferings of the Saints. But before we begin our study with prayer, Greg’s here with us and we got some letters that we want to share with you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, and those letters are about the importance of prayer. And tying in, every so often, you and I like to remind all of us, ourselves in the listening family, that we have some core values that Dr. McGee laid down. And you as the chairman of the board and I as the president, we work with the board of directors and our leadership. We want to make sure that we keep those values in place. And one of the high values Dr. McGee has always emphasized in his teaching is the importance of prayer.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, absolutely. And it shows itself in our commitment to the World Prayer Team and sending out that daily email. You can sign up if you haven’t already done so. We’ve talked about that a lot. But also the thing that we appreciate is, and one of the measurements that we have when we translate the program into different languages, is what are those listeners coming back with us and telling us? And we’re hearing them talk about their prayer life in their letters. And that’s a validation that the translation is being done well and that the Holy Spirit is using that teaching to move in that person’s life.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes.
SPEAKER 01 :
Why don’t we start with the letter? Yes. This first one from Ukraine. This is Yelena. And those of you that know Ukraine, very difficult place to be right now, a war-torn country. Here’s her letter. i am from the ukraine i was completely lost i didn’t know how to keep living how to make a decision i loved my husband but he treated me poorly and my heart was broken i will spare you the personal details but i just didn’t know what to do some days i couldn’t get out of bed but as i listened to your programs i started to understand my situation more clearly i could see where he was in the wrong but i could also see where i needed to change in some ways too We haven’t worked everything out yet, but now I know what my next steps will be. Thank you for your prayers and for leading me to Jesus. Please continue to pray for me. Your friendship has given me hope.
SPEAKER 03 :
Such a powerful story that really anybody on earth can relate to this. A wife who is neglected and hurt by her husband, but understands that marriage is a two-way street and ultimately knows that she needs to bring this all to the Lord. It’s a beautiful picture of the power of prayer in the lives of our Through the Bible listeners in Ukraine. Now let’s go to a different part of the world, Turkey. A young man there shared this. I am 23 years old. My mother died when I was young. Oh. Oh. Wow. Wow. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I listen to your programs every day. It helps me a lot to understand the Old and New Testament. I believe that my father believed in Jesus Christ and I will be with him in heaven. Please pray for us. We still miss our father very much and our hearts hurt greatly.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, praise the Lord. And what a testimony and a good example of suffering is we don’t always understand how the Lord uses tragedy in our lives to impact others and to impact us as well. This man may never have trusted Christ had he not lost his father and found that Bible.
SPEAKER 03 :
And there’s just such a reality and an honesty to the dynamic there where he’s being influenced by finding his father’s Bible, but he doesn’t know why his father didn’t share. I just love the authenticity of these stories we hear from around the world.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, such an encouragement. Greg, why don’t you pray for us as we begin our study?
SPEAKER 03 :
Father, this is our dream that as we fling the seed of your word, that you will do all the work and transform lives and you’re doing it. And we just want to praise you because there’s so much evidence of your spirit at work in people’s lives. And we pray that even today as we study, your spirit would transform our lives. In Jesus’ name, amen.
SPEAKER 01 :
Here’s the Sunday Sermon on Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McKee.
SPEAKER 04 :
We turn to the first epistle of Peter and this evening we have a text and it’s found in the fourth chapter, the twelfth verse. Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you as though some strange thing happened unto you. Our subject this evening is the strange suffering of the saints. And this is our text, but we need to change it just a little, for it gives the impression that the fiery trial is to be sometime in the future. But the ones to whom Peter was writing were then suffering these trials. And actually the present tense is used here. And so let me change it like this. Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is trying you as though some strange things were happening unto you. That puts it as you see in the present tense and speaks of what the saints were going through to whom Peter addressed this epistle. It was Savonarolo who said, a Christian’s life consists in doing good and suffering evil. I suppose that one of the most mooted questions with which the Christian has to grapple is, why do the righteous suffer? The problem of suffering is the oldest, and the most profound and most inscrutable mystery with which the human race is confronted today. And so when Peter writes here, he says to believers, Beloved, think it not strange. Think it not alien. Think it not something that is foreign that is happening unto you. This is not something that is foreign. It’s not something that’s alien. It’s not something that should be strained. But it’s something that is common that comes to believers. I remember that when I was pastor in Texas, that I visited in a home one afternoon where there had been a suicide. Nothing had been said about it and no one knew. that that was the way that the party died. And when I went in to comfort them, they were not members of my church, but the family were Christian. And they said these two things to me. Why did God let this happen to us? For it was a real embarrassment to those in a small town. And they said that this I suppose that we are the only people that have ever been called upon to go through this kind of an experience. I left that family. I got in my car. I drove across the railroad track. You know, in every little town in the rest of the country, there’s a railroad track. And you can be on the right side of it. You can be on the wrong side. I crossed over to the wrong side. I went to East Cleveland. And I went into a home. It was not nearly as nice a home. And the people were not near as well to do. And they met me at the door. They had a death. And it was a suicide. And it had not been publicly announced as such. And they said to me, why did God let this happen to us? And then they said as I left, I do not suppose. that there’s been anyone that’s ever been called upon to go through what we’re called upon to go through. And I could not tell them that I had just come from a family that was going through the very same thing in a town of 15,000. Two families were experiencing the same thing at the same time. And yet each one of them thought they were the only people that had ever been called upon to endure anything. Now, I realize that that is not the solution to the problem. But it does say this, that Peter is accurate when he says, think it not strange that this thing is foreign and that you are the only one that has ever experienced suffering and troubles and trials. And it’s also, I do not think this is another way of saying misery loves company either. But it is to say that what you and I think today is something strange that happens to us is actually the common lot of all believers. Now, Simon Peter, in this first epistle, he deals with this problem of suffering. That’s the subject, by the way, of this first epistle. Actually, the title of this first epistle ought to be Pilgrim’s Progress. Not Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, but Simon Peter’s Pilgrim’s Progress. For he’s writing to people who are pilgrims. That’s the way, by the way, he addresses them. He says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to the strangers scattered. throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. Strangers. That word strangers means, well, in the Greek it’s the diaspora. Those Jews that were driven out and were scattered away from Jerusalem. The Christians that had been driven out and were scattered. In other words, he’s addressing the wandering Jews who were Christians in that day. Or better still, He’s addressing displaced persons. And he’s saying that believers are displaced persons. That we are pilgrims down here in this earth. In fact, in this epistle, that’s the way he addresses believers. You see how different this epistle is from the one that Paul wrote to the Ephesians? When Paul wrote to the Ephesians, he talked about believers being seated in the heavenlies. And he talked about the rich and real blessings that they have there. But Peter… speaks of the wilderness journey that we have down here. He speaks of the heat, the burning heat of the desert. He speaks of the dangers. He speaks of the problems. He’s speaking to pilgrims that are making the journey down here. And so he says that they are the displaced person and that Christians are in the wilderness of this world. Then he says something else about them here, if you will notice. In verses 6 and 7 of chapter 1, he says, wherein ye greatly rejoice. And you’ll notice that rejoice is another theme of this epistle. Suffering and rejoicing go together for the believer. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness. And the word heaviness means pressure. You are in pressure through manifold testings that the trial of your faith. May I pause there to say just simply this, that we think that this is the only generation that’s ever known anything about pressure. We hear so much today about the pressures of modern society. The early church knew a great deal about pressures that were brought to bear upon them. And that is the thing that he’s talking about here, that the early church knew actuality and the reality of suffering. They knew what it was. They knew something of it. And I’m afraid something that we do not know today. If you want to know some of their suffering, he lets us know here. Let me call your attention to several things they were enduring. In chapter 3, verse 14, “‘But if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye, and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled.'” They knew what it was to be terrorized as believers. I have a notion most of us here tonight know nothing about that kind of suffering at all. Then they knew something else, having a good conscience that whereas they speak evil of you as of evildoers, Believers were called evil doers in that day. They had not built up the reputation that they have in this day by any means. And they were called evil doers. And that was another thing that they had to bear in that day. And so our text tonight tells us also some of these things that they had to endure. Will you listen again? Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial that is trying you, as if some strange thing were happening under you. These people were actually undergoing a fiery trial. They knew something of suffering. Now tonight, we are going to speak on this subject of suffering and the strange suffering of the saints. May I say to you that I do not think that we have all the answers, but we have some of them. And time tonight will keep us from dealing with many that we’d like to deal with this evening. Now, you know trouble, someone has said, is like bananas. It comes in bunches. May I say to you that it’s like oranges also. You need to sort it out. Have you ever been to an orange shed? And watch them put the big oranges here. Those are the ones that go to Chicago. And the little ones, they’re the ones we have to buy. They go in another place. They sort them out. And one of the reasons tonight that suffering is so strange and such a mystery to believers is simply because we don’t sort it out. And we need to sort out suffering. And so tonight, will you follow me very carefully? First of all, let me say that suffering is universal. No one is exempt and no one is immune. Every person on top side of this earth must know what suffering is. That is something that we all have in common. We all may not have one of these little foreign cards, but we all have suffering in common. We all may not have a mother-in-law, but we all have suffering, you see. We all know what suffering is. A young fellow that performing his marriage ceremony some time ago, he’s quite a bright boy, and he just was talking a blue streak. He says, isn’t it interesting, you can’t get married without getting a mother-in-law. And I said to him, I said, yeah, you can’t ever pick a rose without getting a thorn in there somewhere. And so you’ve got to have a mother-in-law, but you may not have one. But there’s one thing that is sure. You’re going to suffer if you’re in this world. That’s universal. It was Job, in the book of Job, you remember Eliphaz. Now, Eliphaz was not very helpful to Job, but he did say some things that were very true. He said this, man is born under trouble as the sparks fly upward. There is a law, they tell me, of thermodynamics, whereby that… When a fire is burning, there is an updraft created by the heat. And that when sparks are flitted off from the fire, they go up because they’re caught in that draft. That’s a law. And that man is born under trouble as sparks fly upward because, my beloved, there is the downdraft of sin. that pulls us down to suffering. The man is born to suffering as the sparks fly upward. The sparks go upward, but sin pulls man down. So you have here the picture that is given to us that sin or suffering is universal. Man is born under trouble as the sparks fly upward. You know, you and I, got into this when Adam and Eve sinned. That is what God told them when they brought sin into the world. He said to the woman, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception. In sorrow thou shall bring forth children. Thy desire shall be to thy husband. He shall rule over thee. Then to Adam, God said this, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground for thy sake. In Sarah shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Know that, my beloved, Horror and suffering and trouble came into this world through the sin of man, and man is born under that trouble just as the sparks fly upward. And everything in this life comes to us through suffering. The way you got into this world was because your mother suffered. You sat down today at the table to eat. May I say that what you ate came to you through suffering. If you had meat to eat, some animal had to give its life that you could have meat to eat. It had to suffer and die. And I know there are some folk here in Southern California, they’re going to say this to me. Yes, that’s the reason I’m a vegetarian, because I just don’t want animals to suffer. And I know what you want is to want people to suffer. Don’t you know, my friend? that the vegetables you eat come to you from ground that had to be cleared of thorns and briars, and that it took groaning and sweating to fertilize it and to bring forth the produce that is there, and you never sit down at a meal. What somebody had to groan and sweat and suffer in order that you might eat. You can’t escape it. And where you turn in this life, then, my beloved, our Lord suffered. We are told here in the second chapter of 1 Peter, verse 21, for even here unto where ye call, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye should follow his steps. Christ also suffered. Our Lord suffered. Fact of the matter is, Peter calls the death of Christ not what Paul calls it. Paul calls it the cross of Christ. But Peter calls it the sufferings of Christ. He had to suffer in order that you and I might have redemption, my beloved. So tonight, none can escape. Rich in hope, high in love. Suffering makes sense. And it’s the thinking man’s experience, if you please. They all experience supper. Now, let’s move a point or two. We’re moving down the orange shed. Now, they’re all oranges we’re looking at. There are no lemons in this. Christian supper. I was interested in what Peter had to say. For even here unto were ye called. He said you were called to supper. I know there are going to be some folk going to have trouble now with election. You were elected, my brother, to suffer. All Christians are to suffer. No one’s immune. No Christian is to escape that. May I say to you, Peter did not write his epistle to show Christians how to escape suffering. He wrote his epistle to show Christians how to endure suffering. He didn’t write his epistle to show us how to miss suffering, but how to make it meaningful in our lives. Beloved, make it not strange concerning the fiery trial that shall try you as if some strange thing is happening unto you. It’s not. It’s the thing that comes to believers, if you please. Now, I know that this is contrary to the popular conception of being a Christian. Somebody says, well, I thought that when I became a Christian, well, that meant that all the stones would be removed from my pathway and all the thorns would be removed from my roses and that from now on I’d be on a bed of roses without thorns. My beloved, God saved you in order to give you a little trouble. That’s what he says. Will you listen to this very carefully? I’m reading now 1 Peter 4, 16. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf. And Paul will confirm Simon Peter. If you think those two have disagreed, you’re wrong. They agreed on everything, but they agree right here. They say, Paul says, yes, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution, not if and perhaps but, but shall suffer persecution. No escape. The early church knew what suffering was. And when persecution first broke on those believers, they went to God in prayer. And this is something, I’ll be honest with you, and not only almost me, but it puts me out of fellowship with the early church. I’m afraid I would not have been a very worthy member of that first group. Do you know what they prayed for when persecution came? You know what I would have prayed for? I’d have said, Lord, turn off the heat. I would have said, Lord, I’m your little pet down here. Don’t let me suffer like this. It’s just not right. Isn’t that what you would have done? Will you listen to what the early church prayed? Here’s their prayer. And now, Lord, behold their threatenings and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak thy word. They didn’t say, turn off the heat. They didn’t say, we are your little particular pets, and you ought to be nice to us. They said, Lord, we don’t know why it’s coming, but it’s coming, and we just want to be able to stand for it. We’re out of fellowship with the early church, aren’t we, today? Because this is something we try to avoid. We’d have certainly got us a tranquilizer pill when this thing broke upon us. And we would have said, Lord, if we got to go through it, we certainly want to be fortified. Now, may I say again, we’re moving down the orange shed now, and we’ve come to this. All Christians suffer. All Christians suffer. All Christians suffer. So we’ve got all the oranges together. We haven’t made a division. Now let’s make a division. There are two kinds of sufferings for Christians. There is that which is deserved and that which is not deserved. You know, there is certain suffering that you and I deserve. Oh yes, there is. Peter mentions that. Will you listen to him? He says in 1 Peter 2, listen very carefully, For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? If we are buffeted and made to suffer for our own faults, Peter says that’s no good at all. And then he’s very explicit. He says, but let none of you suffer as a murderer or as a thief or as an evildoer. And notice this, as a busybody in other men’s matters, he puts murderers and busybodies together. And he says, let none of you suffer like this. Now, sometimes, friends, and oftentimes, we suffer because we’ve acted unwisely or we’ve sinned. And may I say to you, we deserve that suffering. Sometimes we talk too much. We say something we should not have said. And it gets us into trouble. Heard the story of the old bachelor. that he’d been probably a little too particular, but he hadn’t gotten married. And the reason was he thought women talked too much. Of course, he was wrong, but he’d never met one that he didn’t think talked too much. And finally, he met, oh, a jewel. She didn’t talk. And, oh, he thought she was wonderful. And after he’d gone with her for quite a while, one night he decided to propose. And he proposed to her. And she accepted. And then she started talking. And for two hours, she did not let up. And after two hours, she noticed he hadn’t said anything and that he was looking very discouraged. And she turned to him and says to him, why don’t you say something, John? He said, I’ve said too much already. You know, sometimes we say too much and it gets us into trouble, you see. And I had an interview some time ago with a young lady that when I first came to the church of the open door, came in to talk to me about getting married. Wanted to marry an unsaved fellow. And she got angry because I said it was unscriptural. And she walked out and left the church and married the fellow. She came in to see me some time ago. She says, I’m in awful trouble. I talked with her, tried to counsel with her. Then she concluded on this kind of a note. Why is God letting me suffer like this? Well, I guess my husband, this unsaved man, is just my cross. And I’ll just have to bury and I’ll do my best. I said to her, I said, he’s not your cross. I said, you chased him for six months. He’s not your cross. You don’t chase a cross. You try to avoid a cross. You walked into this girl and everything you’ve gotten you deserve. And I says, you better talk to God on that kind of basis. You go to him and tell him you deserve this. But ask him to get you out of it because you know you’re wrong now. I said, don’t you give God this pious note that you will bear the cross. No cross. You know, a great deal of our suffering is discipline. God will discipline his children. Whom the Lord loveth, he child trains. And if you can get by with sin, you’re not God’s child. He punishes his. He didn’t read these new books. He never did read John Dewey. And he doesn’t go for Freudian psychology. God rejects all of that. And God disciplines those that are his. And a lot of our suffering we deserve. Then there’s undeserved suffering. And may I say this is the choice this time. Will you listen to him here as he talks about this type? For this is thankworthy. If a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it? When ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently. But if when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. Now, there is suffering that comes to us and there’s no rhyme or reason for it. You can’t explain. No person is to blame. It’s unexplained and it’s undeserved. Now, when we suffer and we’ve played the fool, we can sort of grit our teeth and bear that. And we say, well, boy, I’m getting what’s coming to me. But the hardest suffering in the world to endure is that suffering which comes to us that we say we don’t deserve. And we don’t. And my beloved, this is the sweetest kind of suffering, for this is the kind of suffering that has value before God. This is the kind of suffering that he can use in our lives. Now I’m ready briefly to answer the question, why do Christians have to endure undeserved suffering? Now the big oranges are falling out. Why is it that Christians have to endure undeserved suffering? First, to displace, or to display, I should say, before God’s created intelligences, the agencies that he’s made and created. Those we know so little about tonight, but that angelic host is watching us this evening. May I say to you that we have a great deal of scripture on this. Peter mentions it in 1 Peter 1, 12, unto whom it was revealed, not unto themselves, but unto us, they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, which things the angels desire to look into. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, says, For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last as it were appointed to death, for we are made a spectacle unto the world and angels and men. We’re made a spectacle to angels. And he mentions to Timothy, I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus and the elect angels that you do certain things. Because the angels are watching you, Timothy. I want you to do this thing. You see, Satan is a busybody. And he went in and said to God, does Job serve God for naught? He’s a time server. And God had to let the whole world fall in on Job. And trouble came to Job and he did not deserve it. He didn’t deserve a thing that happened to him. But he came to it. But he proved what God said would be true, that there were creatures who in the midst of suffering would still say, though he slay me, yet will I trust him. And I want to tell you, when Job said that, the angelic hosts on God’s side shouted the hallelujah chorus. There was joy in their presence. Because here’s a man, down here on earth, a little creature man, It’s choosing God. I tell you, there’s more to suffering than you and I think, and I think of the multitudes of saints tonight listening to this program laid aside, many of them not understanding why. I say to you tonight, my friend, many of you, the wonderful letters you write indicate that the angels are learning a lesson from you. We may preach to mortals, but you are preaching to the angelic host. The second thing that it does, it develops faith, spiritual stamina. You know, God wanted to see if we’d live for him. You may have faith to be saved, but some of us don’t have faith to live. God not only gives us grace to be saved, he gives us grace to live. And the writer to the psalm says in Psalm 66, 10, Thou, O God, hast proved us, thou hast smelted us as silver is smelted, and he puts us into the furnace. And Peter says here that though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of the Lord Jesus. And God has to try us, and some of us haven’t been tried enough. And some of us tonight are not even ready for the furnace because tonight we’re such babes and we don’t even have faith to walk with him. God wants to test us. You know, that’s the reason people are frustrated and neurotic today. What they need is to have a little sandpaper rubbed upon them and have God put them into the furnace that he might make them come forth. Job says, I’ll come forth as gold. My beloved, God wants to refine you. And that’s the only way you can do it. And then, my beloved, briefly now in closing, and I have only a minute, the destiny of man is in view. You see, suffering is just for a moment. Let me just give one scripture here in closing. It’s in the fifth chapter of the tenth verse. But the God of all grace who has called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that you’ve suffered a while, make you perfect, establish strength and settle you. It’s just for a moment down here. You see, it’s temporary. I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which is to be revealed in us. Suffering is just for a time. And God uses it, my beloved, to draw us to himself. And then our Lord Jesus suffered. Our wonderful Savior suffered down here for us. Have you ever noticed in the second chapter, and I turn now to it, for even here unto were ye called because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that ye should follow his steps. Now, you and I can’t suffer as he did. How can you and I enter into his sufferings? Listen to this. Who his own self by our sins in his own body on the tree that we being dead to sins should live under righteousness by whose stripes we are healed. By faith, you and I enter into his sufferings when we see that he’s guiltless. He didn’t deserve it. He was innocent. He was without sin. He went to the cross, and he bore all your sin and my sin. And you and I, by faith, can enter in. And then God will use suffering to sweeten our life. I remember when I was a boy in school, and that’s a long time ago now, but I… played hooky one april fool i was a good boy but i got with the wrong crowd and they led me astray and when we got to school that april fool morning they said let’s play hooky and who am i to say not to play hooky and i just by chance had a fishing line in my pocket that morning and we went we went fishing and uh So we didn’t have much luck that day. The creek was up, but we fished, and we had a wonderful time. Then we decided that after school was out, when we returned home, that we’d come by school, pick up our books, and then go home, and nobody would be any of the wise, at least at home they wouldn’t be. The professor of the school, the principal, had an idea that’s what we’d do. At least he was there waiting for us. When we walked in the room to get our books, he walked in after us. And he said, boys, come to my office. And he knew nothing about this new psychology of not punishing. He said that he was going to whip us, each one of us. There were about six or seven of us. And he went out of the room to get some hickory switches, these long, thin ones that he kept somewhere. He hid them. Nobody knew or we’d have gotten them beforehand, but he had them hid somewhere. And while he was out, one of the fellas who had been in there many times, he said, look, he said, when he starts using that switch, don’t move away from him. He’ll worry you out. Every time he hits, you just take a step toward him. And the closer you get to him, the less it’ll hurt. You know, that was the best advice I think I ever got. When he came back, he picked me first. I was hoping he’d wait till he got sort of worn out, but he picked me first. And I remembered what that boy said. The first lick he hit, it hurt. He caught me with the end of the switch, but I moved in on him. I just took a step toward him. He hit me again. I took another one. By the time I’d taken three steps, he wasn’t hurting me at all. You know, friends, I’ve learned that that’s a wonderful lesson as far as God’s concerned. If you start running away from him and get on the end of the switch, it’s going to hurt. When God starts disciplining you or letting you suffer, start moving toward him. It won’t hurt. You see, when the children of Israel were going through the wilderness, they came to the bitter waters. They called them Marah. They were bitter. But they put in those waters a tree, and it made them sweet. That tree is the cross. And the sufferings of this life can be made sweet. Peter says rejoice. Rejoice. May I say that’s not a cheap sentiment? That’s only the Spirit of God giving you a frame of mind. Rejoice, he said. And those sufferings can be made sweet when you come to him. My friend, you can trust him. You can trust this wonderful Savior. He says, come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. I’ll rest you. You know what it is to bring your burdens, your sorrows, and your sufferings to him.
SPEAKER 01 :
To explore more about what the Bible has to say about suffering, you can visit ttb.org and check out our free booklet downloads. I’m thinking specifically of one that’s called Why Do God’s Children Suffer? But there are others there as well for you. Again, find us at ttb.org or call 1-800-65-BIBLE if we can help you find it. I’m Steve Schwetz, praying Matthew 1128 over your life, that you’ll bring your burdens to Jesus and rest in Him.
SPEAKER 02 :
Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain, he washed it white as snow.
SPEAKER 01 :
Join us each weekday for our five-year daily study through the whole Word of God. Check for times on this station or look for Through the Bible in your favorite podcast store and always at ttb.org.
