Trials and Suffering
Hal Molloy · May 23, 2004
Trials & Suffering (2004), No. 21
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826237291206

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 5. We're going through a study on trials and suffering and this is one passage that we're looking at in the course of our study. It says, Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. by whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also knowing that tribulation works patience and patience experience and experience hope. And hope make us not ashamed because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us. We got down through verses 1 and 2 last week, and we came down to verse 3. And in verse 1 and 2, we talked about our wonderful position that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ. the fact that we have been justified, and the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ has led us into God's grace in which we stand, and positionally we stand in God's grace, never ever to be taken out. And as it goes on into verse 2, that we are rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God. And then, without a skip, a heartbeat, in verse 3 it says, and not only so, but we glory in tribulations. And we started that last week to say, what in the world does that mean?

Because, you know, here's my question. Do you find that your experience in your Christian life? that you glory in tribulations. So, tribulation comes along and you're rejoicing, right? Okay. So, there's three important questions that I'd like to go through this morning. And the first question is this.

Does every believer glory in their tribulations? And if not, Why? That leads us into the second question. How do you live your life so that you do, and that I do, glory in our tribulations? How do we do that? And then the third question is, what does it mean in glorying in our tribulations? So let's hit the first one.

Does every believer glory in their tribulations? What do you think? Everybody was shaking their head, no, so you already gave me the answer. How about when you think about the Apostle Paul? When you think of him, do you think of him glorying, rejoicing in his tribulation? Well, but he did ask for the thorn and decided to take it away. Okay. Okay. And thank the Lord for Paul. Right?

So, turn over to 2 Corinthians for a minute, chapter 12. And look at verse 7, 2 Corinthians 12, verse 7. And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord, how many times? Three times. that it might depart from me. And so when we're faced with trials, suffering, tribulation, what's the first thing we ask for?

Lord, take it away. Right? Lord, take it away. Isn't it nice to know that Paul was no different than us? Isn't it nice to know? Yeah, but he only asked three times. Yeah, somebody said he only asked three times. Okay. So the fact that he asked, Lord, take it away, right? What he was saying is, Lord, I don't want this in my life. I don't want this trial, this suffering in my life. Take it away." Nothing happened. So, three times.

Well, then the Lord, of course, speaks to him, and look at verse 9. And He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you. Wow, isn't that power-packed? my grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me." And look at verse 10. He says, I take pleasure in affirmities and reproaches and necessities and persecutions and distresses for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong."

So what's he doing here? What's the difference? What made the difference in Paul's attitude? Think about it for a minute. We'll answer the question. But look at verse 11. He says, I am become a fool in glorying. OK. So now, here comes the tribulation. Here comes the suffering in your life. Here comes the trial in your life.

And can we be like Paul? That we can become a fool in glorying the Lord for all of that? What do you think? Sure. You know, if Paul can do it, who else can do it? Right? I mean, if this is the Lord's will for Paul, does the Lord have the same will for you and me? Absolutely. Absolutely. So we can become a fool in glaring or rejoicing. What does that mean? What does that mean when Paul says, I've become a fool in glorying or rejoicing in my trial or suffering? Isn't that really the perception of the world around him? Okay, excellent. It's how the world perceives that. That here he has this trial, he's going through this suffering, this trial, and he's glorying in it, and the world says, you're nuts. Right? We've lost it. You've lost it. You're crazy. Right. Since we're in 2 Corinthians, turn back to chapter 7. Now, in Paul's ministry, we just read in chapter 12 that he suffered persecutions, distresses. He suffered a lot in his ministry. And look what he says in chapter 7 in verse 4.

He says, Great is my boldness of speech toward you. Great is my glorying of you. I am filled with comfort. I am exceedingly joyful in all our tribulations. He's glorying, he's rejoicing in all his tribulations. There was, I don't know of any person, except the Lord Jesus Christ, that was put through the trials and the suffering and the tribulations than Paul, throughout his entire ministry. And yet he can say, you know, I'm glorying in all of this.

Okay, so here's the question. How was he living his life to be able to glory in these tribulations? How are you, how am I, to live our life so that when the tribulations come and the trials and the sufferings come, that we can glory in it, that we can rejoice in it. How do we do that? Well, we have to know His Word. Okay. Alright, we have to know His Word. Okay. Okay. We have to know who we are. Okay.

So now we know, so we have the Word, and we know who we are in Christ, we know our position, So, because we know that, are we going to be glorying in our trials, in our tribulation? You lose your job, or you lose all your financial wealth, stock market crashes. You know the Word, are you going to be glorying in that trial, in that tribulation, because you know the Word? What is it that... I mean, it's critical that we know the Word, but what about the Word do we need to know?

It's true. That is true. That the tribulations are for His glory. Ah. Because He's always faithful. Okay, He's always faithful for His glory. And let's say we know that. We know that objectively. It's objective truth. We know that because, as we said, we need to know the Word. We need to know who we are. We need to know that these are for His glory. So now we know that objectively.

Now how does it become subjective? Where Paul can say, I'm glorying in my tribulations. And people look at you and know that you're crazy. You're nuts. You're a fool. What is it? What are you doing? Trusting Christ. Alright. Is there any other way? that we can glory or live our life to glory in our tribulations, but just to trust Him. So we walk by what? By faith. So the answer is just faith. Just total faith and dependence upon Him, upon His Word.

And so when Paul says, In Galatians 2.20, we all know Galatians 2.20, right? I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And listen to the next part. In the life that I now live in the flesh, I live how? By faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I live by faith in the Son of God. So faith has to have an object, right?

So it's dependent. So if we were to look at that, by the way, when we talk about tribulation, that's what tribulation it looks like, where we feel pressed in and we feel pressured by the circumstances in life, whether it be family, whether it be work, whether it be whatever, that there are pressures in our life.

So Paul could say, they're so looking for. Now, here's the key. In Romans 5, verse 2, it says, and we are rejoicing, and this little preposition, upon. We are rejoicing upon hope of the glory of God. And last week, I think we talked about it, this little preposition means, you have something, and that little preposition, upon, at P, means to be upon. So, to rest upon something.

So, we are rejoicing upon something, and it's hope, of the glory of God. We talked about hope is the fact that this hope is absolute certainty. It's not your hope, right? And your hope is that, you know, we used to, Lindy and I used to hope that Lisa would meet the right guy and get married someday, right? We used to hope that, right? But that wasn't an absolute certainty, right? And we didn't think it'd ever be a certainty. But when we're resting upon hope, hope here is something that's absolute certainty. And the source of that absolute certainty is the glory of God.

It's who He is. Who He is, what He's done, who you are in Him. Everything that the Word of God tells us about God and who He is and what He's done. So his glory, his essence in terms of who he is, his holiness, his righteousness, his justice, the fact that he's infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, and he's love, he's grace, he's mercy, all of those aspects are absolute. And somebody said that he's faithful. All of that is part of his essence.

So personal faith, is resting upon the essence of faith. We were talking about faith at the end of the class last week, and so we had a big discussion after class on faith. And so the question came up, okay, so what is faith? When we talk about faith, what is faith? So let me throw the question out to the rest of you. When you think of faith, what is faith?

Believing. Believing, okay. Believing in things unseen. Okay, believing in things unseen. Alright. Believing in receiving what God has revealed. Okay. Believing, receiving what God has revealed. Okay. Great. Trust is another good synonym. Okay. Trust. Dependence. Now, all of those responses are talking about what kind of faith? Whose faith? Our faith. Personal faith. Your faith. Our faith. Right? Talking about personal faith. So someone just mentioned something about Hebrews 11 that faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Is there another kind of faith? Is there different aspects of faith?

So if we look at like And we're just going to do a quick summary here, because we spent weeks on this a year or so ago. By the way, Roy's got some of this on the internet now. He's got this message on faith on the internet. But if we look at Hebrews 11, it says, Faith is, and this is an essence verb in the Greek, Faith is the substance, and that word substance means reality. that is real. And when we think of our personal faith, is it always real? Is our personal faith always in reality? We have faith in something that's not certain.

Exactly. You have faith in the Broncos winning the Super Bowl. Yeah. And I had faith that the Rockies were finally going to win last night. And they were ahead. But that's not a reality, is it? Faith in Hebrews 11 is reality. It's the substance or the reality of things, and in the whole context, it's the things of God. And then it says, hoped for. And that word hope, again, elpis means something that's in absolute certainty. All who God is, all who Jesus Christ is, all that God has done, is in absolute reality. It's a reality.

And so, that's the essence of faith. Our personal faith, then, is that as we hear through the Word of the essence of faith, then we respond by personal faith, or rest or dependence upon upon who and what God is, who Jesus Christ is, who we are in Christ, what the Word of God says. So personal faith is resting on the essence of faith. And then as you go through the New Testament, you know, faith is used with the definite article that we're to defend the faith And so when it says that we're to defend THE faith, what do you think it means here?

The body of truth. Okay. So it's the whole body of truth. So here is THE faith. So THE faith is used, or faith is used in different ways in scripture. We tend to think of it only as one way. Personal faith. Okay. I was reading one of the writers who talked about faith, and he says this, it's dependence upon God. I was going to precede this with a question. Why do we have a problem with faith in our lives? So let me ask that question. Why do we have a problem with faith and total trust, resting, believing?

Because we want to see it. Alright, we want to see it. But it's the evidence of things or the proof of things not seen. Okay, good. Because we want to see it. What else? We depend on ourselves. Okay, and we depend upon self. Another thing is we have an outcome that we desire. Okay, so there's an outcome that we desire.

We have expectations, right? Like if you take our kids, right? We have expectations for our kids, right? And God forbid that any one of our kids is not a believer or not walking with the Lord, because how would that reflect upon us? Right? And so there are all these expectations. And listen to this. And faith is dependence upon God. And this dependence begins when self-dependence ends. That's key. That's key. When self-dependence ends.

And self-dependence only comes to its end when sorrow, tribulations, suffering, afflictions, broken plans, expectations, hopes, and hopes bring us to that place of self-helplessness and defeat. and only then do we learn the lesson of faith. Do you find that true in your life? I know personally in my life that that the Lord is always bringing me to the place, this place, to where I have to give up self, and see that this efficiency is not in me, but in Him. So, I oscillate between two passages in Scripture. Are you still in 2 Corinthians?

OK. Look at chapter 3. In chapter 3, in the first several verses, especially in verse 3, it's talking about the fact that we are epistles of Christ. I love that. We are epistles of Christ being manifested, being made known to the world. but not written with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tables of stone, but in the flesh you eat the tables of the heart. And such trust have we, or such dependence have we through Christ towards God. And here's my favorite verse.

Not that I, Hal Molloy, am sufficient of myself, to think anything of myself, but my sufficiency is of God." Now, how do I get that sufficiency? How does that sufficiency come about? that the writing of the Lord in hand to Moses is inferior to what He's done in you. Yeah, if you go on in this passage, the glory that's in the law cannot compare with the glory that's in us, that's being manifested through us.

Incredible. Incredible. So here's a truth, okay? that our sufficiency is not in ourselves, but it's of God. So now, how do we... And if you even take that further and you think about Moses and his dependency on the Lord on Mount Sinai, and then you compare that to what he's done to you in terms of his sufficiency, it puts things in the right perspective, doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And do we have glory in that? That's where we start glory, right? Do you find it true that we don't understand the glory that the Lord has given us?

You have to think of the movie The Ten Commandments and how graphically that was portrayed. Then you think about just the work He's done. our own hearts and souls and minds. And when you say that, Father, I think of John 17, 22, when Christ is praying to the Father. And this is the real Lord's Prayer in John chapter 17. He says, Father, the glory that you have given me, I have given them.

Isn't that incredible? And it's in perfect tense. And it's saying, perfect tense, it's an accomplished fact in time past, and it has abiding results up into the present and into the future, that we have the very glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was given to us time past, the moment we trusted in Him. The very moment we trusted in Christ, we're given that glory.

Okay, so flip over to 2 Corinthians now, chapter 9. Yeah, I'm oscillating between two verses in my life here, okay? And 2 Corinthians, chapter 9, and look at verse 8. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you." Now, that He has the might, that He has the power to make how much of His grace? Just some of His grace? All of His grace abound toward you, that you, some of the time, may have some sufficiency.

Did I read it right? 2 Corinthians 9, verse 8. Doesn't it say that God is able to make all grace abound towards you that you, some of the time, may have some sufficiency in some of the things in your life? Is that what it says? Look at it. I mean, look what it says. That He's able to make all grace abound toward you. That you always, always having not some sufficiency, but all sufficiency in how many things? All things. Everything in your life may abound to every good work.

We've been in Second Corinthians here this morning. It is a rich book and if you want to, this is a commercial now, if you want to see some of the other riches in 2 Corinthians, sign up for the 2 Corinthians class. So what it's saying is that, you know, we've got to come to the place where we see that we don't have the sufficiency in and of ourselves. Right. And that's, I think, the bottom line. OK. Yes. Just saying. figure it out, it's after the green light.

It's not easy, and we can't just wait until we have this experience where we fail. You know, this could take 5, 10 years for any given believer. See what I'm saying? Are we saying that a person can only, will only believe you know, he goes down. You've got to get down before you can go up. Because that doesn't seem to be consistent with the verses where Paul admonishes the believers to walk by faith right now. That's an imposition. Right now. Okay. Everybody understand Josiah's question?

Very good question. And his question is, does this mean that we can't walk by faith unless we go through these failures? You know, that we go through this, that we see our failure in terms of sorrows and tribulation and suffering, etc., and our self-helplessness. that we've got to go through that experience before we can have faith. What do you think? Excellent question.

Maybe a person that hasn't had the trials or tribulations yet when we're younger, we're not as apt to have them so that It's just really maybe it's facetious to say that we need to have patience there as well. Are you talking about younger age-wise or younger spiritually or chronologically? Chronologically. I'm a believer that chronologically, I mean as we're young, We don't have the health problems, we don't have the loss of family members when we're younger, but later on we will. Okay. So there are circumstances in life, in a younger life, that aren't present as you get older. Okay.

But we still need to ask the question, do we need to fail before we can put our trust and dependence upon Him? Shouldn't we be able to reckon on the Word that tells us that we're failures already? I mean, the Bible tells us that. So isn't that something in itself that we should believe? And I think the Holy Spirit can definitely be gracious and show us that in Himself. But I don't think we need to base it on experience. We should be basing it on the Word of God.

Okay. So, Bob, you were going to... Well, the principle of the Lord is always life out of death, is it not? I mean, the idea that... I mean, I don't know. Have you checked out what's going on? like five minutes ago. I mean the issue is it's not life itself a trial and tribulation the idea that we're on a foreign planet here.

In a sense from whom's power are we walking here, right? I don't know about everybody else but I'm constantly reminded that I have a fleshly body around me and a sin nature and that ultimately my faith must be in being raised with him in new life rather than walking in the old. So, even though Josiah makes a good point, the idea is we're always demonstrating His glory by life being born out of death, are we not? So the tribulations don't need to be measured with a yardstick. My citizenship's in heaven, this is a foreign turf, right? Right. And so the question is, are we always walking in our citizenship? And do we need to have failures in our life here to realize our citizenship there.

Well, you said it well in verse 5 and chapter 3 in 2 Corinthians, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, right? In a sense, that's a trial in its own right, isn't it? Absolutely. I mean, I don't know, but our sufficiency is of God, so I guess, I don't know.

It seems that the principle, again, is played out every minute of every day. Yeah, I think having trials in your life, if you truly know the Lord and know what Christ did for you, it's easy to kind of coast along when things are seemingly going well. But, you know, every day I struggle. And if you have children, you see it in them, too. We all struggle. Well, they're not that perfect, but Grandma would say that.

But, you know, it does highlight that, you know, It's not of ourselves, but when you are faced with a trial, I think that's kind of where the rubber hits the road and it accentuates the fact. And I know in my life, I still struggle with that sometimes in a trial, but I hope to get to the place someday where almost my first reaction is glorying in my tribulation, not saying, oh, poor me, oh, look what happened now. But knowing that Christ is, you know, it's to his glory that So it may accentuate it, but I don't think you necessarily have to have a trial before you can have faith. I think it just brings it to the foreground if you have the proper perspective. Okay. And think about it. And think about your heart at any moment.

Isn't your heart Desires to walk by faith. Because we know that without faith it's impossible to please God. And don't we really want to please God in our life? Right? I mean, we all have that desire to please Him. And so we want to walk by faith. Our desire is to walk by faith. But here comes the trial. And here comes the circumstance. And the question is, Do we always respond by faith in Him? Or do we respond by faith in self? That we'll handle this, we'll tackle this.

Now, again, Lord, thank you for the Apostle Paul. Here's the Apostle Paul. His desire is to please God, is to walk by faith. But then, here comes this little subtlety in his life, in terms of the Law. And Paul, look at the Law, in terms about keeping the Law. And Paul says, I can do that. And he gets sucked in, and he's now walking by faith in self, and trying to do the things of the law, and he finds out he can't do them, and not do the things that the law prohibits.

And he can't do that either. And so he comes to the place, if you will, of failure in self, doesn't he? Comes to that place. So the answer to Josiah's question, do you have to get to that place? I don't think so. But I think normal experiences that we do, because we have the sin nature, and it's so subtle, that it sucks us in, it draws us in. And Paul did the same. The same thing happened with Paul. Then he got to the point and he said, and he realized, a wretched man that I am, right? Who? Who shall deliver me from this body of death?

So what this writer is, I don't think this writer is saying that you must fail. I think what he's saying is that our typical experience is that there will be failures because the sin nature is so subtle in our life and we don't have a clue. You and I don't have a clue how subtle the sin nature is. You don't have a clue and I don't have a clue in some of the sins of the sin nature that you have no awareness of. You don't even know it's sin. You don't know it's sin. The only way you know it's sin is as you come to know Him. As you come to know Him and who Christ is, and the more you know Christ, the more you're going to understand what the sin nature is all about and what sin is.

I don't know if that answers the question, Josiah. Josiah, talk back. I mean, I, you know, I fail, like all non-believers, because I do have a sin nature too, and I depend upon it and not deserve it. Right. But, I don't know, I could be wrong, but I think there's danger And when we work with other believers...

Let me say it this way, Paul doesn't beat around the bush when it comes to the believer's response to the Lord's truth. In his epistles, you don't find that. You find Paul tiptoeing around the believer's response of faith. Nothing more than walking by faith. He calls on faith constantly.

And what I think happens sometimes is, maybe not purposefully, but we're afraid to talk, to admonish other believers to walk by faith. Because we don't want them to do something until they're ready, or if they haven't gone through a pause, or if they haven't gone through all these failures yet, we don't want them to I don't want them to be involved until it's time, but I don't see the Apostle Paul or the Lord spelling that out. I'm not denying that we go through experiences where we do learn more, but we have to see ourselves and the sufficiency of the Lord for sure. I don't know, maybe I'm not making any sense. I understand what you're saying, and just because we say that we do not respond by faith, and we respond to self and self-dependence, doesn't mean that we're not saying, that we're not admonishing people to walk by faith. I think we are.

There is no other way to live the Christian life. Right? No other way to live the Christian life than by faith. You cannot live the Christian life except by faith. Don't you think too, though, kind of addressing what Josiah said, a lot of times people respond by faith and then they're hit with these trials and I think they think more than anyone else thinks that they must not be living by faith because now they have all these trials and they don't understand that trials and suffering are going to be part of their Christian life. I think, if anything, we don't share that part of the fact that believing by faith, yes, that's their initial salvation, but the Christian life is full of trials and tribulations, and I think people get very disillusioned as new believers because they don't understand. They're going to have all that. I think it's more their fault they're feeling. Okay, so let's continue on with that thought. That introduces the next question.

What does it mean by glorying in our tribulations? What in the world does that mean that we glory in our tribulations? And so, is it saying that we glory or rejoice in the tribulations themselves? Oh, it's so wonderful that my wife is sick. It's so wonderful that my car broke down. I'm just rejoicing in the fact that I lost my job yesterday. Is that what it means in rejoicing in tribulations? Absolutely not. It doesn't mean that. What does it mean? And it's what Bonnie said.

We are rejoicing because we know the purpose that God has in the tribulations that He presents to us in our life. Right? We know that He has a wonderful purpose. What's His purpose? To reveal His glory. Okay? To reveal His glory, to share His glory, to declare His glory, and to be glorified. Right? That's His eternal purpose.

And He does that through trials, through tribulations in our life. And so we're appointed then, right? We are appointed to these trials. Divine appointments. So, how does that all look out with just what you said in understanding tribulations, Margaret?

So, here we are rejoicing upon hope. The hope is the absolute certainty of the glory of God. And, then what comes into our lives are tribulations. And look what it says. We are glorying in the tribulations also. But now we're in the tribulations, we're resting upon the glory of God, but we're glorying in the tribulations.

Why? Because our rest, our rest and our dependence is here. So it doesn't matter what is happening outside of us. Does that make sense? No. And so we're focused. We're focused here. We're focused upon the object of our faith, who is the Lord Jesus Christ, His glory, the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're focused here. Yes. The bell has rung. Let's close.

Our Father, in your Word, there are these wonderful truths about faith, dependence upon you, about trials and circumstances and tribulations in our life. And Father, they all go together. And we just thank you, Lord, that in each and every trial and circumstance in our life, that we can just rest and depend upon you in terms of who you are. and your sufficiency, and not ours, in each of the trials. And knowing, Father God, that you are mighty to provide all the grace for all the sufficiency that is needed in all things, in all the tribulations, in all the trials, in all the sufferings, in all the circumstances that are in our lives. And we just thank you for it. Thank you for the one who is our very life, the Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.