This sermon originally posted 11/1/2008.

Among the folks who are in my constant thoughts and prayers are those who always seem to be suffering in God’s dreaded “furnace of affliction.” You know the kind of people I’m referring to. They’re the ones who have been patiently struggling with a very painful ordeal, sometimes for years, with no letup in sight, and also those Christians who are constantly going through a seemingly non-stop series of awful trial’s, one right after another. Perhaps it’s someone who through no fault of his or her own, lost their job–again. The prospect of winding up behind that all too familiar financial eight-ball, and the miserable consequences, looms menacingly just beyond the horizon. The person may be having relationship problems, or is once again experiencing the painful heartbreak of having been deceived or betrayed by someone they trusted very much. Others remain in a state of shock and disbelief because according to the latest test results, their health appears to be headed south, apparently without the possibility of a u-turn. Then again it may be someone who is slowly recovering from the often devastating aftermath of an unexpected divorce, or the loss through death of someone they love dearly.

Center stage in the minds and hearts of many afflicted Christians are the nagging thoughts of the possibility that a person they love dearly remains adamant in their refusal to have anything to do with Jesus, or His love for poor lost sinners. Those very concerned Christians can’t seem to get rid of the gushing torrent of all those frightening what-if’s that keep flooding into their mind. And only God knows how much tossing and turning and sleepless nights are experienced by Christians who can’t stop thinking about a loved one who is enslaved by alcohol or drugs, and the awful price they may have to pay on this side of eternity and eventually the other. It could even be all of the above–at the same time!

Its life altering events such as these which have a way of leaving people numb and play havoc with their emotions. These folks are always struggling with some sort of affliction. Unlike most of their Christian friends who appear to enjoy relatively lengthy periods of respite from their trials, there are many who are caught up with relentless non-stop life dominating challenges, each of which have a way of testing their faith to the max, and draining them emotionally and/or physically.

I recently finished reading an outstanding book entitled POLISHING GOD’S MONUMENTS. I can’t recommend it too highly. It was published last year by a pastor named Jim Andrews who chronicled what he characterized as being “the fiery trials my daughter Julie and son-in-law Paul have endured since 1987 as they both struggle with the debilitating illness known as CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) and my daughter with MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivities).” (A) Speaking of just one of his daughter’s symptoms in a letter to friends, Julie’s father writes: “Julie describes the sensation as a kind of “temporary painful paralysis,” where every movement bathes her muscles in what feels like a paralyzing poison-causing pain, heaviness and intense pressure. Continued exertion increases the symptoms until she has no alternative but to lie still and rest until the toxins break up and leave her system. Only then can she attempt another movement, which starts the whole process over again.”

“… Julie is not simply “tired.” Imagine for a moment having the strength literally drained from your body so that the slightest exertion leaves you utterly exhausted and unable to move for hours or days. Imagine living in constant pain, when every movement you have the energy to make is agony. Add to that a devilish sleep disorder, which makes it impossible for you to sleep, sometimes for weeks at a time. Mix in the pain of being misunderstood, labeled as a lingerer, lazy, or simply depressed, making this whole nightmare somehow your fault and something you could fix if you simply had the will. Don’t forget the pain of seeing your dreams for the future vanish like smoke, as year after year, instead of growing stronger, your situation grows more desperate with each passing day. Ponder well these things and you will have only a glimpse of what Julie and Paul have been enduring.”

Continuing his letter to friends, Julie’s dad writes: “As if all that weren’t enough, things have intensified with Julie’s chemical sensitivities. She is now sensitized to any kind of chemical (especially phenol and formaldehyde which seem to be in almost everything.) She detects and reacts severely to odors that only animals can smell at such distances. It is now at a point where she even reacts to Paul if he has one of these chemicals on his person. Her condition and required care is almost beyond belief. It is a wonder that she, Paul, and my wife are in their right minds. If something doesn’t give soon, one of them may go over the edge.” As I’ve told many of you, the burning and searing pain in her veins and muscles that these reactions incur is out of this world.” (B).

Julie and Paul and her Mom and Dad are committed Christians. They take their God given faith seriously, and they struggle real hard to honor the Lord by yielding their will to His perfect one and patiently submitting to His infinite wisdom. After reading the account of these two long time sufferers, I have to say they continue to honor God magnificently in the manner in which each of them are coping with their divinely ordained hardships. Both of them are an incredible witness of the power of the grace of God working in and sustaining them. If their witness isn’t honoring God and pleasing Him, then I don’t know what is. Read this book and if you aren’t blessed, I’ll give the purchase price back to you. At the moment though, I’m curious as to what you folks think the following very comforting passages may mean to Christians such as Julie and Paul. In fact, what do they mean to you?

1 Samuel 2:30 (ESV) ³⁰ … those who honor me I will honor.

Psalms 91:15 (ESV) ¹⁵ When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.

Can you imagine how folks such as those I’ve been speaking about must feel, when their persistent pleas for deliverance seem to fall on deaf ears? How can these followers of Jesus help but wonder about the truthfulness of the Scriptures and God’s faithfulness in keeping His promises? As I said a moment ago, Julie and Paul have been patiently struggling very hard to honor Him in their various illnesses—for twenty two years, and the end of their horrific ordeal still isn’t in sight. What are they and you and me, and especially those of our other brothers and sisters in Christ such as our friends Guy and Carroll to whom I’ve dedicated this message; what are all those folks whose permanent dwelling place in this world seems to be in that dreaded “furnace of affliction; what are we and each of those sufferers to make of the power of prayer apparently not being true in certain cases? What can folks enduring such awful hardships expect from God?

There are many other followers of Jesus who also struggle very, very hard to put Him first before anyone or anything else in their lives. In other words, they have been truly seeking His kingdom and His righteousness, just as Jesus tells all His followers to do, (Matt. 6:33). And they still, as many of their fellow suffering brothers and sisters in Christ do, remain trapped in that horrible furnace which they would give almost anything to get out of.

Folks who have heeded the command to add biblical knowledge to their God given faith know they have been given the gift of righteousness through the one Man Jesus Christ, (Romans 5:17) and that the righteous shall live by faith, (Gal. 3:11). Each of those folks know that “the prayer of a righteous man or woman or boy or girl is powerful and effective,” (James 5:16). They are also keenly aware of the fact that “the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry, (Psalm 34:15). They know what the righteous can expect from God. For instance,

Psalms 34:17-19 (ESV) ¹⁷ When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. ¹⁸ The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. ¹⁹ Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

King David was no stranger to suffering and knew where to turn in his anguish, and so should you and I and every other Christian. David said:

Psalms 121:1-8 (ESV) ^1”… I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? ² My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. ³ He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. ⁴ Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. ⁵ The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand. ⁶ The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. ⁷ The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. ⁸ The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.

Those of His suffering children who have saturated themselves with His Word will have their memory jogged by the Spirit living within them. The Spirit will bring to their remembrance passages such as those we just read as well as the following ones: Hebrews 13:6 (ESV) ⁶ …”The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” I certainly don’t hesitate to cry out to Him whenever I’m in trouble and I know you folks don’t either. I do it expecting an answer. In other words, I expect Him to keep His promises. Listen as He speaks through me these other comforting ones the He has made to His hurting children:

Psalms 50:15 (ESV) ¹⁵ “… call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

Psalms 91:15 (ESV) ¹⁵ When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.

Some of my most memorable moments of experiencing intense joy and serenity occurred while I was enduring great distress. So much so, that I literally cried out to the Lord in my anguish, and He immediately blessed me with a keen awareness of His presence. During those times He inclined me to think about His eternal love for me. He also inclined me to realize He was aware of the fact that above everyone and everything else; I had at long last been sincerely seeking His kingdom and His righteousness, and had been struggling very hard to honor Him in my every thought, word and deed. I constantly marvel at His eternal love for me and His faithfulness in keeping the promise He made through His brother James who reminds all of us to, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you, (James 4:8 ESV). He constantly makes His presence known to me, and I have good reason to believe He also does to many of you folks as well. I’m aware of His presence many, many times during the day. Even when I get up during the night, I know He’s right there with me. The Bible tells us on what conditions we can expect Him to grant our prayer requests.

John 15:7 (ESV) ⁷ If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

1 John 5:15 (ESV) ¹⁵ And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.

1 John 3:21-22 (ESV) ²¹ Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; ²² and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.

So what are we to make of all these divine promises? How do you and I connect all the scriptural dots I have sprinkled throughout this message? Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that all the prayers you and I, of our own free will have already made, or ever will make before we leave this world. Every single one of them without exception was heard by God before He spoke it into existence. Let that thought sink in. Think about it and continue worshiping Him with your mind by meditating on it throughout this Lord’s Day. On the other side of eternity, and in accordance with His perfect plan, (Ephesians I: 11) He who is infinite in wisdom and who possesses a love so awesome that no human being can even begin to comprehend the magnitude of it; He took each of our prayers into consideration and anticipated them being spoken by us as well as what His response would be. Each of our prayers and His response, have been factored into His perfect eternally conceived unchangeable plan. Bottom line—they, and everything else that occurs in the course of time have been foreordained before Creation and therefore were predestined to occur at a precise moment in human history.

But how about Julie and her husband Paul? And what are we to make of the incredible suffering their parents are enduring, and why won’t God let them out of His painful furnace in the first place? Why has God put them in that very horrible thing? Have they somehow done it to themselves? In other words, did they made some very poor choices in their past so that they triggered the onset of great suffering, and which is now the normal result of “what goes around comes around?” In other words, are they reaping what they have sown? One thing you can be absolutely certain of is the fact that Satan will persuade ignorant black and white insensitive professed Christians to make this cruel heartless accusation, adding fuel to the flames in the furnace and intensifying the sufferer’s pain, just as Job’s friends did to him thousands of years previously. Julie and Paul have been patiently enduring a living nightmare. I have only shared a very small portion of their unrelenting suffering–of more than twenty-two long hard years. Many other brothers and sisters in Christ have been tormented in the furnace for longer, much longer periods of time, and they and the folks who love and care about them cry out to the Lord, sometimes day and night, pleading with and begging God to let them out–and He doesn’t; not because He can’t–but because He won’t.

The great Apostle Paul provides us with a key with which each of us and all of God’s suffering children can unlock the gate through which they can gain a partial understanding of some of the dynamics of what we have been considering this morning. You could say Paul experienced a little bit of hell on earth, and you wouldn’t be exaggerating. For instance, the One who is infinite in wisdom and perfect in love, back in eternity past, and for His own glory and Paul’s ultimate good, planned, ordained and predestined that Paul would suffer incredible persecution, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights and hunger, (2Cor. 6:45). But by the grace of God and only by His grace, Paul didn’t let them cause him to do a number on himself and become bitterly angry and discouraged, because he knew what God was accomplishing through his afflictions. Please accept this key and use it for God’s glory in your own life today, and each of your tomorrows.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (ESV) ¹⁶ So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, ¹⁸ as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Viewed from an eternal perspective; in comparison to the pain and anguish the Christian suffers through what Paul refers to as being a “slight and momentary affliction’s,” which each of us must endure with patience, have all been designed by our Creator for our ultimate good and are preparing us and making us capable of receiving and enjoying “an eternal weight of glory” which is so wonderful it is beyond our comprehension and wildest imagination. For instance, commenting on these verses, Jonathan Edwards, famed American theologian and philosopher of the 18^th century explains [in the interest of clarity, I have taken the liberty of modernizing his language].

“There are different degrees of happiness and glory in heaven…The glory of the saints above in heaven will be in some proportion to their growth in holiness and good works here on earth [i.e. trusting God by struggling to be patient in our afflictions]. Christ will reward everyone according to their works. He that gained ten pounds was made ruler over ten cities, and he that gained five pounds over five cities (Luke 19:17-19). “He that soweth sparingly, shall reap sparingly; and he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully” (2 Cor. 9:6). And the apostle Paul tells us that, [just] as one star differs from another star in glory, so also shall it be in the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15:41). Christ tells us that he who gives a cup of cold water to a disciple in the name of a disciple, shall in no way loose his reward. But this couldn’t be true, if a person wouldn’t have a greater reward for doing many good works than if he did just a few.”

Julie’s pastor dad offers additional insight. “…we live in a purposeful world with a linear movement to a grand climax. Thousands of sub-plots unfold enroute to the grand finale. Behind your life is an unseen and unfathomed blueprint where every experience is purposeful. Within this divine plan we are not robots, but responsible moral agents. We make choices and we are responsible for those choices. But God, in a way that you and I will never fathom, integrates into his plan our choices long before they are ever made.” (D) And I might add, it would be impossible for these most precious children of His to be able to enjoy such inconceivable happiness and glory in fellowshipping with Christ in heaven, if God didn’t bless and bestow upon him or her while they made their way through this dark sin infested world with what I would describe as being, “the gift of suffering.

We don’t have enough time this morning to deal with all the unanswered questions and thoughts I hope are racing through everyone’s mind. But, Lord willing, next week…

(A) POLISHING GOD’S MONUMENTS, © 2007 BY James Andrews, Shepherd Press, Wapwallopen, Pa 18660, pp. 54.

(B) Ibid, pp. 55-56

(C) The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume Two, The Banner of Truth Trust, PO Box 621 Carlisle, Pa. 17013, pp 902.

(D) POLISHING GOD’S MONUMENTS, pp. 198.