Seeing Jesus: Authority and Suffering

Let's put those anxieties away. Okay. We're going to be good.

We're here. Let's enjoy it. We're going to have some food afterwards at the after party. It's going to be great. So if you guys would join me, I'd like to just pray for our time in the word and then we'll get going. Oh, so God, we thank you. We thank you for your goodness, for your grace, for your kindness to us. We thank you for your word spoken to us in scripture and particularly for these accounts, you know, these gospels, these good news about who Jesus is and what he's done.

God, we, this is not This isn't an old story, Lord. Thousands of years that we've been, as Christians, studying these accounts. God, yet there's so much truth and life and peace and joy and hope in them for us now, today. And so, God, we want to enter in. We want to have our eyes open to your word, Lord.

We want to be led by your spirit as a church, Lord, and to consider what it means that we would be people who are living a life in the kingdom, a life of following after you, Jesus, and all that invitation, fully what it is, Lord. So pray that we would have open eyes and you'd make us excited this morning and give us your spirit in Jesus' name. Amen.

Hey, so we're in the book of Matthew. You can go to chapter eight. We're going to be picking up in verse 16, which is sort of the end of where we left off last week. We just kind of get a running start into the chapter there, again, verse 16. We touched on this verse, like I said, but I wanted to look at it again because it helps us really get up to speed very quickly in what's going on here.

We're reading the gospel of Matthew, going through chapter by chapter, verse by verse, and we will for the next couple of weeks, probably get up to, I don't know, the end of chapter 10, maybe chapter 11, before we take a break and do something else. But what we're doing is we're reading through a gospel, and gospels are these accounts of Jesus's life. There are four of them in the Bible.

And Matthew is the longest. It tends to be, well, they're all equally authoritative, but it tends to be the most exhaustive account of Jesus. Most of the stories that are in the other gospels occur in the book of Matthew. And so it's really a very comprehensive picture of the person of Jesus, his ministry, and what he was up to. And so what we're doing, there's a lot that goes on, right? We've been seeing that this is a very plot-heavy section of Scripture.

We just spent a couple of weeks before, back in November, looking at chapters 5 through 7, which is known colloquially as the Sermon on the Mount, right? Which it's literally just a full sermon that Jesus gave on one occasion on top of a mountain. And chapter 8 picks up right at the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount. And last week, we looked at what happens right after, and what we see is that Jesus goes on a healing spree, right? Right.

So he gives the sermon, he comes down and then there's three consecutive healings and actually four if we if we count the one we're going to pick up in today. There's there's these healings in the first chapter, chapter half of chapter eight. We see that there's a leper who comes to Jesus right right as he's walking down the mountain at the conclusion of the sermon and he says. Bows before Jesus and he says, Lord, I know that you can make me clean.

Like you can cleanse my leprosy. You can take it away. And by speaking the word be made clean, Jesus heals a leper. Suddenly his leprosy is gone. He tells him to go and present himself to the priests as a testimony to them of what has gone on. And then, and then like we in, we see the later right after that, immediately after that, in response to a really faith filled Roman centurion, Jesus performs a long distance healing, right? He heals a servant of this Roman centurion.

The Roman centurion has come and asked him to heal him. He says, you don't even need to go see him. I know that you can just speak the words and he'll be healed. And Jesus is so amazed by this faith of this man that he goes ahead and says, yes, it's going to be done. Like he's going to be healed. And this man is healed. The servant is healed.

And then finally, you know, that's one, two. And then finally, Jesus heads to Peter's house where he's going to enjoy a Sabbath meal and he finds Peter's mother-in-law is in bed. She has a fever. It doesn't seem to be a terminal thing, but just doesn't feel great. Has a fever and Jesus comes in to where she's lying, reaches down, touches her hand, and immediately the fever's gone. She's healed. So he's gone on this healing spree. And I mean, it's significant that there's three right in a row.

We're really told that Jesus teaches with authority, and yet he also acts with authority. He can heal with authority, right? This is very clear thematic development here in Matthew. And so picking up in verse 16, right after those three healings, we read this. Still at Peter's house, when evening came, they brought many to him who were demon-possessed. He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick, so that what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled.

He took our weaknesses and carried our diseases. So Jesus is at Peter's house, having just given the Sermon on the Mount. Word is now circulating about Jesus, not only that he's a great teacher, but also that he is a healer. He's somebody who can cast out demons. He's someone who can cleanse lepers. He's someone who can cure fevers.

And so people come in the evening, right? It's probably the evening because this was likely the Sabbath was the day before where Jesus went to Peter's house to enjoy the Sabbath. But Jews can't travel on the Sabbath. You can't lift somebody up and carry them to get healed on the Sabbath. So when the evening comes, the Sabbath is over. The people start to come to Jesus because they've been talking. They've been hearing about this person.

And so they come and they bring their sick and they bring demon-possessed people, right? Gospels doesn't sugarcoat what that means. It means people who are possessed by demons. That's what demon possession is, right? We don't really have too many categories for that. But the Bible seems to believe that there's a spiritual realm. Like there's demonic possession, and that Jesus is able to deal with that stuff. No further explanation.

We'll talk a little bit more about that in upcoming weeks. But the point being that when it comes to sickness, natural causes, things like fevers or demon possessions, Jesus' approach is the same thing. He, through a word, can heal and make people right again.

And Matthew tells us what Jesus is doing, right? He tells us kind of why he's doing what he's doing here at the end here in Matthew 6, 8, 18. He's doing these things in fulfillment of the scriptures. He is, and this is like a big theme.

This is a big theme throughout Matthew. We've read, if you remember, I mean, like several months back in the beginning of Matthew, Matthew 1, 22 and Matthew 4, 14, this phrase, Jesus did this in accordance with the scripture, it repeats over and over and over again. He did this according to what the prophet said. It's this idea that Jesus was coming in as a person who was foretold by the prophets of the Old Testament is really clear in Matthew. Matthew's just hammering it home.

Jesus didn't show up from nowhere. He's not unexpected. In fact, the prophets anticipated his ministry because he is the Messiah. Because these ancient Israelites, they were obsessed with this idea and rightly obsessed with this idea that God was going to send someone, a person, the Messiah, they would call him, the Savior who was going to go ahead and deliver Israel from their oppression, from their sin, from their unfaithfulness.

Their whole faith was built around this expectation of the Messiah. And so Matthew is making it very clear. Through Jesus's healing ministry, he is demonstrating his messianic authority. Jesus is healing in keeping with what the prophet Isaiah said about the Messiah, and it's showing us that he is the Messiah. And the words that Matthew's quoting here are from Isaiah 53.

So if you're familiar with the book of Isaiah, it's probably one of the most thickly messianic books of prophecy in the Old Testament. And this chapter in particular, Isaiah 53, is just like this very vivid picture of what the Messiah is going to look like. This one who's going to heal Israel of their wounds. He's going to take care of all their unfaithfulness. He's going to bear their shame and give them forgiveness and peace instead. I want to just actually read you a quotation from Isaiah 53.

Okay, so it's in a different translation, so it doesn't really match up to the phrase that we have here. He himself took our weakness and carried our diseases. But that phrase that's translated there as he took our weaknesses and carried our diseases is right here from Isaiah 53. I'm just going to read 3 through 7. Okay, so this is, again, what was it, like 900 years before Jesus is here? Not quite that much.

Isaiah is speaking about this Messiah and what he's going to do. and this is what he says. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone who people turned away from. He was despised and we didn't value him. Yet he himself bore our sickness and carried our pains. That's the weakness and diseases. But we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted.

But he was pierced because of our rebellion. He was crushed because of our iniquities. Punishment for our peace was on him and were healed by his wounds. We all went astray like sheep. We all have turned to our own way and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughter and like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth.

See, Matthew makes it really clear that Jesus is this suffering servant, this messianic figure foretold by Isaiah in Isaiah 53. He is the one who is, as he makes clear, going to take our weakness and carry our diseases away. And so his healing work is in the context of what was foretold by Isaiah. And he's demonstrating his messianic authority by healing in this way.

We know that he's going to be someone who takes our healing, but he's also, like Isaiah explains, he's somebody who would take our punishment. He's going to, for the people of God, exchange their shame and guilt for his peace.

So Jesus is the Messiah that Israel was waiting for, and he's demonstrating his messianic credentials through healing. And people notice, I mean, people notice that there's something really special and unique about this Jesus character. And they flock to him in expectation, right? That's why the minute the sun goes down, people are showing up, they're expecting something because it's very clear to them that this Jesus has the power to heal. He has authority over demons, which was a big deal.

But they are also surprised and disappointed by him in some ways, right? I mean, we get that sense in Isaiah 53. We know that he's being pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our sins. We know he's carrying away our weaknesses and our diseases. And yet still we consider him stricken, cursed. Like what a contradiction we see in Jesus. And that contradiction begins to come out in the book of Matthew.

Early days, we start to see this contradiction. Yes, great authority, great power to heal, obviously sent from God. And yet also a bit confusing and a bit disappointing to Israel, who is expecting just the parting of the Red Sea and everything being resolved and like victory and power and glory from God coming down through the Messiah. They also meet this Jesus and he's a bit strange to them.

We read about it. Continue on in verse 19. Okay, here's Jesus disappointing the people, right? So people have come, they are seeing him heal, doing all these things. And then it goes on in verse 19. When Jesus saw the large crowd around him, he gave the order to go to the other side of the sea, right? So he's like, I don't want these people around me. I'm going to go to the other side of the water. And a scribe approached him and said, teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.

And Jesus told him, foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head. And Lord, another of his disciples said, first, let me go bury my father. But Jesus told him, follow me and let the dead bury their own dead. So we see here early on in the book of Matthew, this, I mean, this, the seeming contradictions. So we have Jesus who everyone who would expect would come in triumph and glory.

He'd show up as the Messiah and just, man, he would set everything right. He's going to take care of the Romans. He's going to take care of our diseases. He's going to restore Israel to its rightful place. And yet, and everybody thinks, man, this Jesus, he's probably the guy because he has this great authority. And yet he's also saying things like this. he's discouraging his disciples along the way. And I mean, they're like quite confused by what he's up to.

One scribe like comes up to him, person who says, I'm gonna follow you wherever you would go. You think if you're the Messiah, you'd be like, all right, finally, people are getting in line. This is gonna happen. He says, comes up to him, I'm gonna follow you wherever you go. And Jesus says, I don't think so. Because let me remind you, let me remind you what it's gonna be like. If you follow me, you're gonna have to live the way I live. And sure, like birds have nests, foxes have dens.

You, Scribe, you have a nice comfy home to live in. You've got a recognized authority in this culture. People look at you and they're impressed by you. You have a title and a position. But I, if you want to follow me, I don't have a place to lay my head. You think, I'm the Messiah, and I am. I've got all this authority. I've got all this power. But this is what it looks like. I'm a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief.

I'm a person who's not afraid to suffer. I'm willing to do whatever God wants, even if it means that I have no home, even if it means that I have little comfort. And we don't hear much from the scribe after that. I don't know what happens with him, right? But it's interesting that Jesus would discourage him this way. And another one comes up to him and says, Jesus, I want to follow you, but if you just give me three days, I've got to go take care of this thing.

My father died. I've got to go bury him. I'm sure you understand. And of course, you would think that Jesus would understand this because in ancient Jewish culture, like for a man, the most important obligation you had, the thing that was just like no questions asked. I mean, even probably in today in our culture is if your father dies, you go and bury him. There's a rabbinic tradition, rabbis would teach that even if your father dies, don't say your prayers.

Don't stop and say the Shema, right? This prayer that ancient Jewish people would say every day. He says, don't spend any time doing that. Go straight and bury your father. It was an understanding that this was absolutely your responsibility in this culture. And so, I mean, it's a very reasonable request to make. And what does Jesus tell them? He says, no, if you want to follow me, you follow me now. You let the dead bury their own dead. I mean, it's kind of a disturbing response.

It's perplexing to the people who hear. And we see this thing get developed throughout the book of Matthew, where great expectation and yet some disappointment and confusion about who Jesus is. See, Jesus is coming in triumph, demonstrable power, demonstrable authority, authority over demons, authority over sickness. And people are excited. But he needs those who are going to follow after him understand the kind of authority he has and what it's going to look like.

And so he deliberately disappoints. And T. Wright, who I get to see later this week, I'm really excited about. He's like the Taylor Swift of theologians. So I knew that was going to work. That was a good joke. Yeah, that's right. If you've ever seen N.T. Wright, you think, okay. He does play the guitar, though, and sing. He's not good. So N.T. Wright, sorry, N.T. Wright points out what Matthew's doing here. I really like this.

He says, somehow in Matthew's picture of Jesus, we find all this role together. Authority through healing, healing through suffering. Authority and suffering are strangely concentrated in this one man who nobody at this stage could quite understood but who everyone found compelling.

N.T. Wright points out and explains what Matthew is clearly developing, this paradoxical concentration, great authority, great power, I mean, obvious, like Jesus can heal, he's clearly the Messiah, and yet, in seeming contradiction, he's a nobody.

And we'll see throughout the Gospels, like, he seems not interested in the crowds, he seems not interested in the fanfare, he seems not interested in any of this, and I mean so much so that he's willing to go suffer a shameful death upon a cross, which stands, especially for Christians right after the crucifixion, like all the people who don't believe in Jesus say, how could this be God? He died this way. He died under a curse.

He died under the authority of Rome. How can you say he has authority over heaven and earth when he subjected himself to these powers of Rome? Like how do these two things, his suffering and his authority go together. It doesn't make any sense. And yet Jesus is trying to make it clear very early on to his disciples that you might not get it, but this is what the Messiah looks like. He can heal. He has authority to do that.

And yet his suffering is absolutely a part of what it means for him to be who he is, the Messiah, the Savior sent by God. This Isaiah 53 suffering servant. It's that tension that's developed in the gospels. And it's interesting, right? It's like a whiplash thing. Great authority, all this healing stuff, disappointing phrases. And then we see right after this, go right into the gospel of Matthew, continuing on in verse 23.

Another great scene of great authority. It's the book ended. It says this in verse 23. This is a scene you know from Sunday school if you ever did that. He got into the boat. His disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm arose on the sea so that the boat was being swamped by the waves. But Jesus was sleeping. So the disciples came and woke him up saying, Lord, save us, we're going to die. And he said to them, why are you afraid? You have little faith.

And then he got up and rebuked the wind and the sea. And there was great calm. And the men were amazed and asked, what kind of man is this? Even the winds and the sea obey him. These disciples, like they spend their whole life with Jesus. Like that's what a disciple did. They would follow Jesus around anywhere. That Jesus was, waking or sleeping, the disciples were nearby. They were watching, they were observing, they were learning what it looked like to live like Jesus.

They were close to him. They would see his whole life. They would see that he sleeps and eats and spends, he has a pretty normal life just like them. And yet, and they also have a front row seat to Jesus's obvious authority. They go out into a boat in a storm. Jesus is just casual. He's asleep. He's probably getting wet. I don't know. I couldn't sleep through that, but. And Jesus, like, he gets woken up by the disciples. They're afraid.

And he just speaks a word. and the wind and the waves suddenly calm down. And everyone in the boat is totally amazed. And they say this phrase, what kind of man is this? I love it. What kind of man is this? And this is the question that hangs over the book of Matthew.

This is why we have these gospels, these biographies of Jesus, so that we can answer this question, what kind of man is this? What kind of person is this? Who is this Messiah? And the answer, which we get as the story progresses, is that he is this messianic king. He is this one, this suffering servant. He's the one rejected and despised by men, and yet with full authority and full triumph and full victory.

He's the one whose suffering and shame is the price he willingly pays for the sake of saving people who don't deserve salvation. To pluck people out who have no interest in him, to pluck people out of death and bring them into life. The writer of the book of Hebrews, considering this kind of paradoxical picture, this seeming contradiction between Jesus' authority, his authority and his suffering, talks about Jesus this way in Hebrews 2, 8.

It says, and I'm skipping a little bit of section in the middle so as not to be too confusing. It says, For in subjecting everything to him, he left nothing that is not subject to him. Speaking of Jesus, it's all subject to Jesus. As it is, we do not see everything subjected to him, but we do see Jesus made lower than the angels for a short time so that by God's grace, he might taste death for everyone. Crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death.

For in bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was entirely appropriate that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. Jesus also shared in these, so that through his death, he might destroy the one holding the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who are held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death. For it is clear that he does not reach out to help angels, but to help Abraham's offspring.

So the writer of the book of Hebrews looks at the fact that everything, all things, the demonic, everything in the spiritual realm, the wind, the waves, all the physical world, it's all subject to him. He has authority over all of this. And yet still, he is somebody who has subjected himself to death. Why is it? Why does he suffer? Well, because as the writer of the book of Hebrews says, because it's entirely appropriate.

It's entirely appropriate for what he came to do, which is to save people who don't have great authority, who don't have power, who actually find themselves stuck in an evil world, stuck in their own sin, incapable of saving themselves. For him to save those people, he would have to come and subject himself to the power of death, the same death, the same power of death that we are stuck in without him.

It is appropriate because he's come to save not just anything, but us in particular, the sons of Abraham, people who would live by faith, who would trust him, trust God with everything. Since we know death and we're subject to him, since we know what suffering and pain is, he has come and he subjected himself to those same things, those same weaknesses for a time for the sake of, like the book of Hebrews says here, the sake of pioneering our salvation.

What does a pioneer do? They make a trail through a place there's no way through already. A pioneer comes and, you know, it's like cutting the way through the jungle. But for one who goes first, like if you're stuck in and you can't get around, they take their machete out and they just make a path.

Jesus Christ understood where we were at. We are people stuck in sin, stuck in death, lost and alone, stuck in, like we talked about last week with the book of Galatians, stuck in a world that's just present evil age, this terrible place that we live in, a world of sin, in order to save us from that kind of place, he had to come here and then make a way out for us.

And it's on the cross, through his suffering, through his death and resurrection, that that way is made, that we might find our way out of death, this present evil age and into the kingdom of God, into a life with him. It's entirely appropriate. If Jesus just came in authority, he could do many things, but he couldn't ransom us from death, which is the way Timothy talks about what Jesus does. He comes and he meets us and he leads us out by salvation, through grace. It was entirely appropriate.

Last week, we looked at this little diagram. I'm not going to walk through all of it, but I just love this. This is a helpful kind of theological roadmap for me and the word for the theological point this is trying to make, and I mentioned this briefly last week and because I'm a nerd, I like to share these things. This is inaugurated eschatology. Okay, so I'm going to explain. Eschatology comes from the Greek word eschaton. Eschaton is just the end times, right?

So a lot of times when we talk about eschatology, we're thinking about, oh, the second coming of Jesus, right? That's truly like what we're anticipating is going to happen ultimately. But inaugurated eschatology, that word inaugurated comes from a word that's familiar with us in the last month or so, like inauguration, which means the start of something. So what we see here is this, is that Jesus went around preaching about the kingdom of God.

He said the kingdom of God has come near. That is his essential message, particularly in the book of Matthew. I mean, it's the refrain that we see repeated over and over again. He says, repent for the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of God kind of uses those interchangeably. It's come near, which means that God's rule and reign, his power and authority, which will be finally demonstrated on his second coming, has been inaugurated now.

There is this early sign, this early action, this premature, if you will, manifestation of the kingdom and power of God right now for those who would believe in Jesus Christ, for those who by faith trust in him. Those who by faith trust in him, though they live in this present evil age, like you continue to live in this world, you start to experience, because of what Jesus Christ has done, the power of the kingdom of heaven.

You can start to live a life where God's peace and his love and his spirit and his presence is a normal part of your life, even though you continue to live on in this world, which is still full of pain and suffering and death. Right. Not ultimately. Right. But what we see is and kind of have this middle part is that those of us who are by faith, like we start to live in this place of tension, but it's a good kind of tension.

It's the kind of tension that Jesus had where he had ultimate authority from over all things. And yet he also suffered.

We start to live in that kind of a place. We have great authority, great power, empowerment by the Holy Spirit, great expectation that God is going to do things in our lives, great expectation that God can and will heal, great expectation that he's going to use us to pray and to bring about his kingdom and to do great things and to bless the world. Yet we don't have any expectation that this world is going to become heaven.

We realize that we still live in a world of suffering, and yet we still have great faith in the power of the kingdom of heaven. And so we pray along with Jesus the way he taught his disciples to pray, that kingdom come, that will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We live in this tension and we manage that tension and the life of faith is just like wide-eyed to that reality, to that tension.

That we live surrounded in a broken world, that we are ourselves still suffering some of the effects of that brokenness, including things like health issues, right? And mental health issues and pain and suffering. And we lose loved ones and people we care about. And that in no way contradicts this great hope and this great invitation to the kingdom of God. We manage those things. I've got another slide here, I think. Oh yeah, so yeah, I mean, there's this kingdom thing that through faith,

we are empowered for mission and we are worshiping as well. I got one more there, Sky. But this is really where I wanted to kind of land today because we're talking about healing, right? Because this is the context of this section. We've been talking about the reality that, I mean, we'll talk about it more and more.

The disciples are sent out with the same kind of authority that Jesus has, right? Like there's a need for us to have great expectation. And yet still we live in a world where we have to be, I wanted to say realistic about what's going on. But of course, realism is just the cynics way of baptizing their bad attitude, right? I know that as someone who can be a bit of a realist sometimes. I'm also an optimist. But we have this tension that we have to manage, right?

We have two things, and I've just kind of laid them out. I like graphs like this. We can have expectation, and we're also called to resiliency. So expectation is this just idea, this expectation that God is going to show up, that we are going to experience the supernatural power of God in our lives. Now, I don't know where you're at, but everybody's on a spectrum. Either you have high expectation or you have low expectation, right?

You also are going to have to, because we live in a broken age, you're going to have to have resiliency. Resiliency is like perseverance. Like we're called to things like perseverance, to continue on and persist in faith, to continue on through difficulty. Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have difficulty? When heaven comes to earth, when all things are wrapped up, when Jesus comes back, we won't any longer have those difficulties. Yet we live now in this tension-filled place.

But I think faith, kingdom faith, the kind of faith that Jesus demonstrates, the kind of faith that's appropriate to the life that we live, it has high expectation and high resiliency. So we need both of those things. I mean, with low expectation and low resiliency, you're just going to feel defeated all the time. You're going to say, I don't think anything's going to change. I don't think God's going to show up in my life.

And I don't have any kind of perseverance. And so you just might as well give up. Some of us are living in that place where we just feel defeated. We feel defeated by life. We feel defeated by circumstances. Maybe we're stuck in grief. Maybe we're stuck in loss. Maybe we don't know what to do. Can I just say that I think our calling is to cultivate and develop and disciple ourselves and to, what am I trying to say here?

To like point our hearts and our hopes towards higher resiliency and higher expectation. But not resiliency or expectation alone. I mean, there's a lot of people, you maybe know people who are just like, they're determined in their faith. Which is to say they're just going to go on no matter what. And that is admirable. I mean, honestly, that is a very valuable thing for Christians to just be determined, to just keep pressing on, to keep honoring the Lord.

But you can get into a place where you just become cynical, where you are just white knuckling your faith and you have no expectation that God's ever gonna change anything. You have no expectation that God's gonna show up. Or you can do the other sort of person, right? who just, oh, God's going to break through. I'm going to put no effort in. I'm just not going to move forward. I'm just going to be sad when things don't go the way I want immediately.

But I've got high degree of faith, high expectation that God's going to do things. And those people end up, well, they end up defeated pretty quick. And I'm not trying to discourage you. If you've got high faith, that's great. Add to your faith resiliency. Because I think part of life in the kingdom is understanding is that we have great authority. We have a great calling. We have great expectation. We have great promises in scripture. And yet we are called to endure difficulty.

We have to do both those things. Kingdom faith is faith that is developed in suffering and in authority, in expectation that God's going to move. And so I'm just, I wanted to encourage you guys in that it's winter time. Oh man, my least favorite time of the year. I like the skiing, but I just get down, right? And I could get into seasons of life where I don't feel like I'm going anywhere, right? And I'm pretty good at determined faith. I'm a good plotter. I can just keep going forward.

My optimism is usually enough that I think I can manage most things in life. But I will tell you, I can get into this place where I'm determined and yet expecting very little from God. And so that's what I need to repent of, right? That's where I need to add greater expectation that God's going to do things.

So maybe you're discouraged, maybe you're determined, maybe you're defeated.

Can I just invite you into a kingdom kind of faith, that can say both, yes, I am highly confident that God is going to move, that he can move, that he's going to show up in my life that he's going to put people in my path who I can share Jesus with and they're going to be saved that he's going to put people in my path that I can pray for healing for them and they're going to be healed that I can just overcome the difficulties

in my life and I am going to pray and expect his kingdom come and his will be done in my life you can say I'm confident that God's going to move and yet also can say I am going to be persistent even when and until he does, I'm just saying that we need both of these things. We need to be the sorts of people who can go through difficult times and yet maintain a high degree of faith and expectation. Jesus shows us what it is to be a person who has both of these things, right?

He came and he shows us what it is to be people who live in between these two things, you know, living in a saved people, people who walk into the kingdom. It's awesome. It's beautiful. We need to expect great things from God. And yet he also shows us what it is to still be people who suffer and who have difficulty.

So wherever you're at, I just wanted to encourage you. Would you continue to get your eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith, who enduring the shame of the cross, like didn't despise it. He went right through it. He had great faith in the midst of all these things. We have to stir up faith. Nobody's going to have faith for you. Nobody's going to have this resiliency and this hope for you. Actually, I'll say that. I'll say this. I mean that only halfway.

The people around you right now, who you're your brothers and sisters, they can help you have faith. They can help you and encourage you. So men, you know, we got some Bible studies going on. You want to be encouraged? Show up, talk to people, get in the word together, be encouraged together. Women, I know there's some plans for some women's Bible studies coming up, I think. I heard some talk about that. We got small groups coming up in a little bit.

There are things happening. You want to be encouraged. You want to be encouraged to have great expectation and yet go through difficulty and be persistent when things are difficult. Get around people who encourage you. Grow in those things. And I would say grow too in a confidence that God cares for you. That's what Jesus had above all things. He, and we'll talk about Christology a little bit, like what was Jesus like,

right? Because he's fully God. And yet Philippians 2 tells us that he sort of surrendered some of his authority, his prerogatives, his power, right? And he let the Holy Spirit like lead him and guide him, right? Which is still God. Some theology. I don't want to get there today. I want to just leave with one word of encouragement. I really loved this. As Christians, we trust ourselves to God. Faith is saying, I know my God cares for me. I know he has a future and a hope for me.

I know that I can go through difficult times and yet still persist. And a lot of that is because we believe in the sovereignty of God. We believe that God is going to see us through. And there's a lot of different understandings of What does sovereignty mean? But it's a very biblical idea. Sovereignty and providence are related. And I just want to share this little quote. This is from a theologian. I read this this week. It was such a comfort to me. I just had to share it with you.

It says this, to inhabit a providential world, that is to say a world where God is sovereign, where God is going to deliver us and care for us in the midst of difficulty, is to inhabit a world in which for any action, whatever, the whole series of events following from that action terminates in something good. God lets his creatures do their things, but ensures that all that they do results in something good.

That is the hope of providence. God will ensure that nothing in the end has ever been done wholly in vain or accomplishes finally evil ends.

See how did Jesus go through his life great authority and yet saying you know what I'm gonna give myself over to the Romans I'm gonna let my brothers this the Jewish Sanhedrin sentence me to death and then they're gonna kill me on a cross and at the end of that you know what's gonna happen at the end of this terrible thing I'm gonna be I'm gonna rise from the dead I mean what kind of mentality is that?

Well, it's such a confidence that God can take things that people intend for evil and bring about good. This is the kind of attitude I think that we need for resilient faith, particularly in the realm of resiliency, of understanding when things are down. Because resiliency is not lying to yourself that all these things that are painful and grievous and like discouraging are no big deal. That's not what resiliency is. Resiliency is saying, I know who my God is.

I know that he led Jesus even to a place of suffering on the cross. And yet he brought resurrection on the other side of it. He's the sort of God who can change my worst day into my best day. He's the sort of God who can give me hope in the darkest moment of my life because he is the one who is managing things and bringing good even in the midst of a broken and dark world. And so I just wanted to encourage you guys that have great, hopeful expectation.

And we're going to talk more and more about that as we get more into these passages on healing. Yet also understand this. God will finally accomplish good. He is able to. And Jesus understood that as he went to the cross. All right. Hey, worship team can come up here. I want to just pray for us. We'll see how much it's snowing yet. Continuing to snow. Lord, thank you so much. Lord, thank you for your faithfulness.

Thank you for your goodness, Lord. Thank you that it is wholly appropriate for you to come in, God himself, taken on flesh and yet dying for us. God, you hold the world in your hands. You know it's beginning. You know it's end. You know how we're going to get through the challenges that we face. Lord, and you are so faithful.

Lord, would you remind us, would you, Holy Spirit, well up within us, both a hope and expectation that you're going to miraculously move in our lives and also a kind of persistence and a confidence that comes from knowing that you're the sort of God who can take things that seem evil and seem painful and seem difficult and you can turn them to good. God, you bring beauty and peace even in the midst of our pain and our weakness and our suffering.

God, you are so good. Lord, teach us to say that with our whole self. Lord, teach us to worship you in that way in the midst of the greatest moments. And yet in the midst of difficulty, we want to be people who are always expecting you and yet always persisting, no matter what, God. Teach us to be those sorts of people we pray. Amen. Hey, let's just stand up. Let's worship the Lord together.