Matthew 26:36-45

&nb= sp;

God brings us through our trials

wi= th hope and faith.

A sermon preached by

Rev. William O. (Bud) = Reeves

First United Methodist Church

Hot= Springs, Arkansas

August 12, 2007

Nothing strikes fear into the heart of a paren= t like a sick child. Per Nilsen is a father from Burnsville, Minnesota, whose son, Bjorn, got sick = one night. His temperature shot u= p to 102.5, so they gave him Children’s Advil, and the fever soon came down. Later in the night, the= fever came back up to 104. He calle= d the emergency room at the local hospital, and they told him to bring his son in= as soon as possible.

As Per jostled Bjorn awake and tried to rouse = him enough to get him to the car, he told him that they were going to the hospital. The boy looked at h= is Dad with weary, sickly eyes, and asked, “Am I going to die, Daddy?”=

Immediately three thoughts went through the fa= ther’s mind. The common sense reacti= on to the question was, “No, of course not, we just need to get this fever down.” But then a frigh= tening thought also occurred to him: “How can I be sure?”&nb= sp; Visions of bizarre childhood diseases flooded his mind. Then there was a spiritual thought= : “Dear Jesus, cover him. Protect him. Heal him.”

Per had enough presence of mind to convey the = common sense approach to his son, and it was indeed just a childhood fever, quickly gone and forgotten. But in the aftermath, Per acknowledged that many parents around the world, without the benefit of doctors or hospitals or medication, would have to answer “Yes” to the question, “Am I going to die?” even wh= en the disease was not that bad.

Then there was the realization that at one tim= e in heaven there was a conversation between a Father and a Son, and the Son ask= ed, “Daddy, am I going to die?”&nb= sp; And in his great divine heart, the Father knew the answer was, “Yes.” [1]

For all of the joyful things he did, for all o= f the laughter, for all of the stories, for all of the good news he shared, Jesus Christ was also a man of deep sorrows.&nbs= p; Centuries before he was born, the prophet Isaiah predicted that the suffering servant of God would be “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”[2] When his friend Lazarus died, the = Gospel of John says simply, “Jesus wept.”[3] The Gospel of Matthew records= how “When he saw the crowds, he h= ad compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”[4]

Here in this crucial moment before he goes to = his crucifixion, we clearly see the sorrow of Jesus as he prayed to be spared the suffering = he was about to endure. Jesus wa= s at the end of his emotional and physical rope—exhausted from traveling a= nd teaching and dealing with crowds of people every day, anticipating the crue= lest torture ever devised by humans to be inflicted on his own body, and spiritu= ally carrying the weight of the world’s sin on his shoulders. It should be no surprise that he w= as in extreme anguish. What is surp= rising is that this sorrowful moment becomes for us a lesson in faith and hope and= can give us the power to deal with the sorrows of our lives.

Margaret Clarkson wrote these words several ye= ars ago: “Pain is pain, and sorrow is sorrow. It hurts. It limits. It impoverishes. It isolates. It restrains. It works devastation deep in the personality. It circumscribes= in a thousand different ways. Ther= e is nothing good about it. But the gifts God can give with it are the richest the human spirit can know.”= ;= = [5]

The gifts of faith and hope are so necessary t= o our well-being because sorrow is so real. Who here has not been touched with sorrow this week? We deal with sorrow on a daily basis. All you have to do is = watch the news on television or read a newspaper, and there are enough tragedies = to depress you for the whole day. On a more personal level, we have to deal with the loss of opportunities, the de= ath of loved ones, terminal illness, marriages that break up, family members th= at are estranged—the list goes on and on. Sorrow and heartbreak are very real. How do we deal with it?= How do we cope and continue to fun= ction on a day to day basis? How do= we pray in the midst of the trouble in our lives? Let’s look at Jesus and the example he gave us in the Garden of Gethsemane.

First= of all, we pray for the will of God to be done. We don’t always know what th= e best is. God does. Our prayers get all wrapped up in = our selfish desires and drives, and we usually end up praying for what suits us best, don’t we? One way= to prevent our prayers from becoming selfish is to always submit ourselves to = the will of God in everything—to pray our prayers, and then to say, “Your will be done.”

Three times in the Garden of Gethseman= e Jesus asked God to relieve him of the need to go to the cross. He knew what he was in for. Everyone had either seen or heard = about the incredible pain and suffering involved in a crucifixion. No sane person would desire to go through that, and neither did Jesus. Three times he prayed, “Father, let this cup pass from me.” But then three tim= es he also prayed, “Not my will but yours be done. Not what I want, but what you want.” Submitting to th= e will of God, Jesus allowed himself to be arrested, tried, tortured, and crucified. He gave up control= of his life in obedience to God, and through him the world was saved.

Especially in those out-of-human-control momen= ts, we can depend on God most of all. I have stood at the bedside of many a terminally ill person, when every inven= tion of human medicine has been used, and nothing worked. The only thing the family and frie= nds could do was to watch and wait and see what would happen. What do you pray for in those moments? For God to make the = person better, so they can live longer and suffer more? For God to take the person home to heaven and bring grief on a spouse or child or friend? What do you pray for? I’ve had this conversation w= ith three families in the last two weeks!

I usually find myself just praying for GodR= 17;s will to be done. If it’= s a miraculous healing, praise the Lord! If the doctors and medicine bring him or her around, wonderful! If God grants the person ultimate healing through death, we can deal with that. Whatever happens, pray for GodR= 17;s will to be done. Whatever cri= sis of sorrow affects your life, pray for God’s will to be done. Release control, give it over to h= im, and let God work it out for you and with you and through you.

The s= econd thing to pray for is strength in the trials of life. When the going gets tough, the= tough go to God, and God gives them strength.&nb= sp; In the garden, Jesus prayed while the disciples slept. At one point he came and woke them= up and said, “Stay awake and pra= y that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but = the flesh is weak.”[6] Pain and sorrow are times of trial= ; no doubt about it. They can turn= us toward God or away from God—you’ve seen it happen both ways. Anguish and anxiety can tempt us to abandon our faith altogether. We think, “If God is real, why am I suffering?” So we turn to other gods—fal= se gods—to ease our pain. = We try to feel good by using alcohol or drugs.&nb= sp; We try to find comfort in sexual affairs. We worship the almighty dollar and = try to accumulate enough things so the sorrow will go away. Guess what? None of that works!

What works is praying for strength to endure t= he trial and remain faithful and even grow and learn through the time of trouble. John Claypool was a = pastor who had a daughter who suffered from leukemia. At one point, she went into remiss= ion, and everybody thought maybe God had healed her. But then, on an Easter Sunday morn= ing, she went into a terrible and rapid recurrence. For two weeks, her body was wracke= d with pain, and her eyes were swollen shut. She asked her father, “Daddy, did you talk to God about my leukemia?”

Claypool said, “Yes, dear; we’ve b= een praying for you.”

She responded, “Did you ask him how long= the leukemia would last? What did God say?”

How do you answer your precious daughter when = you can’t help her, and God’s not giving you the answers? A few hours later, she died. The next Sunday, John Claypool got= into the pulpit to preach, and from the depth of his sorrow he preached one of t= he most powerful sermons of his ministry.&nbs= p; He took as his text Isaiah 40:31, which says, “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they= shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall = walk and not faint.” He = said there were times in his life when he felt like an eagle in flight; he was sitting on top of the world. = Then there were times he had run and not grown weary, just taking care of the ta= sks of life. But on that day it w= as all he could do to walk and not faint, and he was depending on the help of God = and the prayers and encouragement of the people.[7] Pray for strength in the time of t= rial, and you will not faint. You w= ill walk. Then you will run and n= ot grow weary. Then one day you = will mount up with wings like an eagle, and soar!

The f= inal thing to pray for in times of sorrow is for hope through the valley. The Gospel is always a story of hope, because we know the end of the story. We see the sorrow of Gethsemane. We watch in horror as Jesus is crucified. But when they lay = him dead in the tomb, we know what is going to happen three days later. He will rise from the dead; he wil= l live again! The One who walked thr= ough the valley of crucifixion will experience the glory of the resurrection. When we are in the valley of our o= wn darkness, that gives us hope.

Ultimately the hope we get from God does not c= ome through knowing the answers, but through having faith. We don’t g= et all the answers to life’s pain and sorrow and tragedies. What we get is the faith to know w= here to turn when we hurt. That fa= ith gives us the hope to carry on.

Job is the classic example in the Bible of som= eone who sought for answers until he found faith instead. Job, who had everything—wife, kids, ranch, livestock—lost it all in a matter of days. Then he got sick. Then his wife got mad at him. He was as low as a human being cou= ld go in the valley of sorrow. For = most of the book, Job debates the issues of suffering with his religious friends= . Finally God gets tired of the deba= te and grants Job the meeting he has been demanding. In the encounter with the living G= od, Job decides that maybe his questions weren’t that important after all. He becomes content not t= o have all the answers and have a relationship with the Creator of the universe instead. Hope comes through f= aith.

The book of Job has become very important to a couple named David and Nancy Guthrie. They live in Nashville<= /st1:City>, Tennessee. They are good Christian people, wi= th jobs in the Christian music and publishing industry. They have a teenager named Matt, a picture of health. But about = eight years ago, Nancy gave birth to a little girl they named Hope Lauren. It was then that David and Nancy discovered = that they both had a recessive gene for a devastating birth defect called Zellwe= ger syndrome. Severely handicapped physically and mentally, Hope developed seizures at three months and died at seven months old.

David, in the meantime, had a surgical procedu= re to prevent any more children being born. But surgery is not foolproof, and a year and a half later, David and Nancy stood before their church, Christ Presbyterian in Nashville, and announced that amazingly= enough, they were expecting a child, a little boy.= The congregation “oohed” and “aahed” and bro= ke into applause. Then David sai= d, “This little boy will be born with the same syndrome Hope had.” And the “aah’s” became gasps of horror and pain.

There is no easy answer to such sorrow. An article in Time magazine told their story and examined the issues—justice, punishment, grief—very well, but it gave no ans= wer. Because sometimes there is no answ= er! There is only faith. Let me share with you the closing paragraphs of that article:

“In Job’s 42^nd chapter,= Job, chastened, says to God, ‘My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes ha= ve seen you,’ and he surrenders his grievances. Where some readers see defeat, Nancy finds trium= ph. ‘God reveals Himself,’= she says, ‘and in that process Job’s questions disappear.’ Here is the classic evangelical understanding: suffering is not an injustice, nor a punishment. Rather it is a harrowing invitatio= n to a higher dialogue. Nancy has been working out some thought= s on paper lately. Job, she writes, was blessed through his brokenness, by his restless pursuit of God. He had a new, more intimate relati= onship with God, one he could never have found without pain and sorrow.

“‘In the darkest of days,’ s= he writes, ‘we’ve experienced supernatural strength and peace.R= 17; Like Job, ‘we often cannot see the hidden purposes of God. But we can determine to be faithfu= l and keep walking toward him in the darkness.’

“And so they do.”[8]

And so we do.= May your faith today give you strength for trials, hope through the valley, and a personal encounter with a God who will love you through your sorrow.

Amen!<= o:p>