"Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen"

Sermon by James Pardue, 2/20/94

    Every month we have plans to offer a special emphasis; this month the subject is on prayer.  Now, if you'll take your Bibles, please, and turn to the Book of II Thessalonians, Chapter 1, in just a few moments I want to speak to you on this theme:  Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen. 

    When I lived in Memphis, I stepped out of my church office one day into the hall, and I realized that someone was crying.  I stood for a moment trying to determine where the sound was coming from, and then I realized it was coming from a little room where people hung their coats.  So I slipped around, opened the door, and there, seated on the floor in a corner, sobbing his little heart out, was the five-year-old son of our Minister to Hispanics.  So I knelt down beside him and said, "E.J., what's the matter?"  Between the sobs he said, "Man, I've got trouble."

    The Bible says that trouble is our constant companion.  Job said that man is born for trouble.  This passage of Scripture is about people who are going through deep, overriding trouble; in fact, there are three words in this passage of scripture about trouble that's overflowing.  They were having so much trouble it was even damaging their faith in God because they had been taught that as the world came to the end there would be a time of great tribulation.  Just as a woman has birth pangs to bring a new baby into the world, so the Scripture says this world is going to go through pangs to bring a new world into being.  But they had also been taught that Christians are going to be exempt from that tribulation, that we're going to be snatched up and taken away and not have to go through that terrible tribulation.  But their trouble was so great they really thought that maybe Jesus had come and left them behind; they were wondering if they were Christians, or not Christians, or why they were going through all of this difficulty.  So what Paul is going to do is kneel down beside them, as I did by E.J., and try to help them to understand some truths of what God was doing in their lives.

    Now all of us in this room can identify with the subject of trouble because whether you are five or fifty or beyond, all of us have had those times in our lives when we realize that the pressures of life are really upon us.  We begin to feel that way, either with problems in our family, or in our work, or maybe crisis times within our lives.

    I left M.C.V. Hospital last night after ten o'clock with one of our families where the man had been undergoing extensive surgery.  He was going to the grocery store yesterday and somebody ran through  a stop light and hit him, and at times it was doubtful whether or not he would survive.  I remember that, as I sat there last night in the waiting room holding the wife's hand, she said, "You know, if we didn't have the Lord, how in the world would we be able to face trouble?"

    Trouble comes sometimes slowly, sometimes it is intense, sometimes it seems it is always with us, and so when we talk about the subject of trouble, it is something that everyone of us can identify with.  Now I want you to hear, as Paul kneels down beside these people and whispers in their ears, the word of God to you today when trouble comes to you.  So let me being reading for you in verse 3, when Paul begins to speak to them:  "We thank God always for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and your love one for another is increasing.  Therefore, among God's churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all of the persecutions and trials you are enduring."

    The first thing that Paul told these people was:    You need to look in the middle of your difficulty and know that God is accomplishing something good.  Now, that is the hardest thing in the world to believe. When we are caught in something bad most of us cannot believe that any good can come out of it; it is all dark and all black.  How in the world is there anything for God to accomplish through this?  And yet he says, "In the middle of your difficulty, lift up your eyes and understand that God is doing something good even in the middle of your trouble."

    Many of you have read the book that is now a classic in American literature, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?  I like the title of a newer book recently published entitled, How God Brings Good Things Out of Bad Things.  You see, that's what Paul was trying to say; even in the midst of the bad things in your life, God is working to do good things, and so you need to look up to Him.  Now that should help you to understand that many times the person who can least understand what God is doing is the one who is in the middle of it.  Someone has said that if you want to know about water, never ask a fish; the person who is in the middle of something can't get a perspective of what really is going on around him.  So what Paul is saying is:  You are caught up in this; you can't see any good; but let me tell you now what God is doing.  He listed several things.

    He said, "First of all, your faith is increasing.  You're beginning to develop a more personal relationship to God."  You see, when everything falls away, then you begin to hold onto God in a more personal way.  You are beginning to find that He is more than a God in the head; He is now becoming a personal God who walks with you day by day.  He is more than a God in the know:  He is a God in the now; He is a God that you can experience, a God that you can know who is deep within your life, and as you have walked with Him, you begin to trust in Him and depend on Him more.  I know that's the hardest thing in the world for us to do.  Most of us want to hold on, and not let loose and trust Him.

    Most of us are like the man I heard about who was driving a truck through a mountain pass.  Unfortunately, part of the pass fell away and the truck went over and was going down the hill but he was ejected and able to grab hold onto a little bush on the side of the mountain while the truck went on down to the bottom and burst into flames.  As he held on, he said, "Oh, God, I can't hold on here very long," and he kept looking behind him, and hollered out in prayer, "Oh, God, is there anybody there?"  A big voice came across the mountain, "Yes, my son, I am here, and I will send on of my angels to help you."  He looked up and sure enough there was one of God's angels.  The angel said, "My son, God has heard your prayer and sent me to help you."  He said, "Oh, goodness.  Hurry up; I can't hold on too much longer."  The angel said, "Well, you must learn to trust God.  So what I'm going to ask you to do is let loose of this little tree, and as you fall, my wings are going to come under and catch you, and you will know that I'm there."  The fellow held onto the tree and looked down to the bottom, and asked, "Anybody else up there?"

    It's so hard to let loose; it's so hard to really trust; it's so hard to depend.  And, in the middle of difficulty Paul said, "That may be the lesson God is teaching you, that you need to trust in Him."

    The second thing Paul said is happening is that you are not even aware of what is going on.  He said, "You are beginning to love each other more."  You see, most of us are like marbles; we just kind of bounce off one another.  God wants us to be like grapes;  He wants us to share our lives together.  He says this is what trouble is doing; like fire, it is melting you so that you are blending your lives together.  You see, what God wants to do in a group like this is help us to get so we are sympathetic, caring, and sharing our lives with one another.  You don't know it but there are people in this room this morning for whom this is their first time back in church after going through much surgery, there are people in this room who are in the process of going through radiation and chemotherapy, there are people in this room who lost a loved one last week, there are people in this room who really don't know whether they are going to have a job tomorrow.  You may be sitting next to them, or in the row behind them.  You see, it's very easy just to come in and worship God and then get up and leave but listen to what He's trying to do; Paul says that what God is doing is sending enough trouble so that all of us will be sympathetic to each other.  The person behind you has a hurt; the person across the room from you has a need.  What He is trying to do is help us to be not like marbles, but to be like grapes, where we really can blend our lives together and trust in one another.

    You might remember - those of you who keep up with professional football - when in 1991 the Buffalo Bills were playing the New York Giants and the Giants were ahead by one point and there were four seconds to go.  The Bills had taken the ball down to the 47-yard line, and Scott Norwood came in with an opportunity to win the game for the Bills.  You remember that a time out was called and a man then took the snap and Norwood came forward.  It was long enough, but it went over to the left!  One of the most desolate signs of these fellows who make their living playing ball is holding their heads, sometimes in the last moments, recognizing that they've lost thousands of dollars for other people.  What you did not know was that the next day in Buffalo there was a parade for the Bills.  They went down to city hall; they recognized Jim Kelly and Thomas, the running  back.  Twenty-five thousand people were there, and they said this sound started in the back and you began to hear, "We want Scott. We want Scott!"  And soon there were twenty-five thousand people all yelling together, "We want Scott."  From the back there came Scott Norwood and stood at the front, and all these people clapped and cheered, and Norwood said, "The last 24 hours have been some of the most difficult times in my life, but I want to tell you that today I have never felt more loved than I do right now.  I can make it."  Do you remember that what God wants are people who can put their arms around each other and say, "We can make it, and you can make it," and if that can happen in the middle of trouble then good things are happening. 

    The third thing Paul said is we don't recognize what is happening is that there is perseverance coming into our life.  Perseverance is courage that looks at difficulty and doesn't blink.  Perseverance is the ability to stay in a circumstance until God does His work in it.  Now the problem with most of us is that when difficulty comes, we want to get out of it; we run as fast as we can.  Therefore, God can't put all of the pieces together.  Sometimes He wants to teach us things then that He can't teach us any other way; but we run so fast He can't teach us anything!  Paul said that what you are learning in the middle of all of this is that God wants you to stay in there and gives you courage and faith and tenacity to hold on until He can do something for you.

    I heard recently about a man who decided to take his son on a rafting trip down the Colorado River.  He said that every time they'd go through one of those big falls or rapids, the leader would say, "This is going to be a good one."  He said that they got down to Kermit Falls, which is a  37-foot vertical drop in abut 75 horizontal feet, and the fellow said, "This is going to be a real good one."  He said he was very nervous and he was nervous about his son, and he felt that the man had made a mistake, that the raft had gotten away because, instead of hitting the falls straight on he had turned the raft sideways; and he knew that the thing was out of control; he knew that they were getting ready to be swamped; and he said he knew that he and his son were getting ready to meet the Lord.  He said he almost took his son and jumped out of the raft, but just about the time they got into the middle of the falls that man kicked  the motor on and put that raft right around . . . because right in the middle of the river there was a big boulder that had fallen and if they had gone straight they would have hit it and died; but the leader had carefully taken the raft around the side and on to safety.  The man said that then he understood that sometimes he wanted to jump out too quick.  "Sometimes I think that God has let the raft get away, and sometimes I want to take things in my own hands; but when I stay in there, then I begin to understand that God has a plan and a  purpose for me if I will just hang on."

    Now, some of you are in the middle of great trouble.  You really can't believe that any good can come out of that.  One of the greatest points of faith is that even in the middle of bad things God can do good things.

    The fourth thing Paul said you need to remember is that God has His eye on you sand one day God is going to settle the score.  Listen to what Paul said:   "All of this is evidence that God's judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the Kingdom of God for which you are suffering.  God is just; He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and will give relief to those of you who are troubled, as to one who is well.  This will happen when the Lord Jesus Christ is revealed from Heaven in blazing fire with His powerful angels."

    All of us know life isn't fair.  Sometimes things happen to you that you didn't expect, sometimes things happen to you that you know are wrong.  You have been mistreated, and part of your difficulty this morning is because you have been caught in a circumstance from which there's no way you can extricate yourself; and you've looked up and said, "God, life isn't fair to me."  Well, hear the word that comes back:  "I know that, but you need to know that one day I will settle the score."  If you want illustrations in the Bible, it's full of them.  You remember when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt and Pharaoh came one day and said, "What I'm going to do is kill every Jewish baby; I'm going to drown them in the river," and by the thousands he drowned them.  One of those little babies was rescued out of the river and grew up to be a man we know as Moses, and he came back and said, "Let those people go."  They began to walk across Egypt, and the first thing they ran into was the Red Sea, and you remember God opened up that Red Sea and those million and a half people walked across on dry ground; and Pharaoh and all his army came over that hill and saw those walls of water, and they said, "We'll go over there and we'll get them," and they went rushing into the Red Sea but they were all drowned!  He who lives by the water dies by the water.  God one day brings justice. 

    The best illustration, of course, in the Bible is Jesus on the cross.  Was He there because life is fair?  Not at all.  Was He there because people had mistreated him?  You are exactly right.  Was He there because God had somehow forgotten Him?  Of course not, because three days later God took Him off that cross and rose Him out of the grave, and what He wanted to say is, "One day I'll settle the score."

    I love what my daughter told me this week.  She has a little two-year-old son, and they were sitting down watching this now world-famous video called "Jesus," which is the life of Jesus.  Timothy was circling through the room, and each time he entered he'd catch a part of it.  Part of it was when Jesus was on the cross, and Timothy came through and looked at Jesus on the cross and hollered out, "Jesus, get off the cross."  He circled back a couple more times, and Jesus was raised from the dead and was standing up blessing His disciples.  The two-year-old said, "He did get off the cross, didn't He?"  Exactly!  He got off, but who got Him off?  God!  God raised Him up.  And what was He saying?  This world will not always be unfair.  The people who mistreat others one day will have to answer, and if it's not done in this life, one day the Lord is going to come from Heaven.  Why?  Because God is just.  And He can assure you that one day the books are going to be settled.  That's the reason you don't have to try to settle them:  "Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."  You don't have to settle it.  God will do that.  And in the middle of your difficulty you can find hope and encouragement because God hasn't forgotten you and He will one day settle the score.

    The fifth thing, beginning down in Verse 11:  "With this in mind we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of His calling and that by His power you may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act be prompted by your faith.  We pray that the name of the Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you."

    Now, let me tell you what are the choices you have when trouble comes:  you can either be resentful, or cynical, or you can blame God; or, you can take trouble as a challenge and say, "I'm not going to let trouble form me.  I'm going to take trouble and transform it so that God can accomplish His purpose in my life."

    You see, in this room the same thing can happen to two different people; one person can walk out and curse, the other one can walk out and say, "Dear God, I don't understand it but I will let it be used to help me to become the kind of person You want me to be."  Inside of you there is a chemistry factory.  All kinds of things will come into it.  The key is:  do you have that ingredient of faith that can take what happens and help that to become something different?  You are aware that your outlook pretty well determines your outcome.  Chuck Swindall says that ten percent of the things that happen are largely determined by the attitude we take towards them.  If you become bitter and cynical and hard, then God can't do anything with the trouble, but if you come to the point where you take faith and say, "Dear God, I don't know what You want to do with me, but I know this, I want You to form in me a person like Jesus Christ," then there is no limit to what God can do.  My friend, there is no such thing as power without pressure; and you will never become a person of weight and worth and power unless you are willing to let pressure be put on your life to help you to be formed and molded to be what you need to be.  What is the challenge?  To let this bring in you God's glory!

    The people you read about and admire are not the people who have escaped trouble; they are the people who have looked trouble in the face and said, "Now, I will use you to be better."  That's the challenge that all of us have.  Let me ask you:  from all of the difficulty that has come in your life, do people see a sour, cynical, sitting-on-the-sidelines sort of person?  Or do they see a person that's becoming like Jesus?

    Maybe the best illustration I've heard is a famous story of Anthony Campollo.  Dr. Campollo is one of the world-famous teachers and speakers in Philadelphia.  He was telling about a youth camp he went to several years ago, and he spoke to several thousand young people for a week.  The last night came and he said, "I think it would be good if all of us would just share what God has been doing in our lives this week."  All of the beautiful people got up to speak - you know, the young jocks for whom things were going well and whom God was blessing, and the beautiful young women who were just talking about how good God was.  Tony said he sat there and he said he recognized how hollow, how simplistic.   But he had seen a young teenager that week named Jeff.  Jeff had cerebral palsy.   He noticed that he couldn't walk very good, and the fellows - the jocks - made fun of him.  When he tried to speak he couldn't speak very clearly, and sometimes he'd noticed that the young girls tried to mimic the way he talked.  In the middle of the testimony time, Tony said, "I looked out into the group and there was Jeff."  He said it was hard for him to get up the three steps, but he finally made it.  Then he came to the stand and thought a moment about what he wanted to say.  With difficulty, he said, "I...love...Jesus," and then he said, "And...Jesus...loves...Jeff."  Tony said that all across the room the beautiful young people began to weep and cry, because they saw that here was a person who was never going to get physically better, but had taken what life had given him, and while he didn't look like it on the outside, he was the most beautiful person there.

    "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen," but the next verse says, "Nobody knows but Jesus."  What do folks see when you come out of turmoil and difficulty and trouble?  Do they see somebody who is becoming like Jesus?