This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Misc. NT sermons” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, August 6, 1978.
About this sermon
Suffering gets careful definition here, both what it is and what it isn’t, traced all the way back to Genesis 3:15’s enmity between the serpent and the woman’s offspring. Revelation 11’s two witnesses supply a further picture of suffering woven into the church’s own calling. A postmillennial view that expects suffering to simply diminish over history gets a direct refutation.
Sermon transcript
2 Corinthians, Chapter 4, Verses 13 and 14. I know that some of you will have comments to make about working backwards, backwards through a chapter, or whoever did that. But here we are in Verses 13 and 14 of 2 Corinthians, Chapter 4. 2 Corinthians 4, 13 and 14.
But having the same clear faith according to what is written, I believe, therefore I spoke. We also believe, therefore also we speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you.” Lord, we must await You and Your word, for there is no word given to man that is wise except Your word. And therefore, our God, we would wait upon You and that word, having received life and desiring to continue in that life, that our life themselves might be conformed to the word of life granted to us in this word and in Jesus Christ, the word of God incarnate. Now strengthen us, our fathers, and may we be open to what You have to say to us. Reform ideas in us that are not according to Your words. Grant us confirmation in those thoughts and sentiments in that spirit that is according to those words which You have granted from the Lord. This is great. This is You.
We’ve been looking at the matter of affliction and suffering, and how much that plays a dominant part of it.
In the workshop, we looked at the thirty-first song a couple of weeks ago, And there we try, in ourselves, to wrestle with that problem of how it seems that our own concepts of suffering and affliction oftentimes are all before us in what the words themselves say. There it seems to be that we encounter that occasion wherein the scholar puts back-to-back an affliction that seems to be due to an enemy, and an affliction And how often we have confused all of this, how we confuse it by suggesting that the affliction that we suffer is, after all, something that has to do with some sort of personal warfare going on inside of us, dealing with our own sin and ignorance. That’s fully his sense of that suffering and affliction that we endure in our day, placing it on the level of a battle with our own unsanctified aspects of personality. Now, of course, all of this is not to make light of that internal struggle, because we all know that it is much too real in our experience, spoken of by the Apostle himself in many portions of his letters. how it’s true that the spirit soars against the flesh, and vice versa, and how it’s important for us to understand that continuing problem of is-while-you’ve-been, as it has been taught, But in looking at the perspective of the psalmist, especially given to us in Psalm 31, we then realize that it wasn’t so much that the psalmist was equating his affliction with his sin, but rather to say, in effect, that his affliction due to his enemies was gaining the upper hand because he was exhausted by his own initiatives.
And because of that sin, he found himself worn out, unable to fight the fight, to resist, to endure, to hold out in the battle with the real enemy. But victory will come with triumph. But triumph has been realized in me. And there, not only is the one sinning, but also the sacrifice bearing upon himself and his people, according to the power of resurrection, over the enemy, bringing strength to even those above. We know our iniquities and sins were exhausted by the time we came to the end of the group of degrees.
We went on from there and considered the momentary life afflictions of the second group in four-seventeen. Remember what we said about that. The momentary life affliction there is not the day-to-day aches and pains that we experience as we get out of bed at morning. Yet, as I said with regard to a little bit of transgression, this is not to make light of those everyday aches and pains.
If God is unconcerned with us, he certainly is concerned with us. We have laughter, compassion, and disdain showered upon those who are stuck with us. Peter’s mother-in-law has a theme. And Jesus has compassion and heals him. We have the instructions of the Apostle James, that if anyone here is sick, let him call upon the elders of the Church, and they will lay their hands upon him and pray over him.
Sins will be forgiven, and the sick will be healed. is concerned about the everyday aches and pains that we undergo, and the sicknesses and infirmities that we experience. But we need to learn something. of the death and peril of the Christian experience is what? What exactly were we getting into when we become Christians? By considering the death of this concept and description of affliction as it comes to us in the Word of God. Can I say something to you this morning?
The affliction spoken of by the psalms in the 10th verse of the 116th Psalm The affliction spoken of by Paul in verse 17 of 2 Corinthians 4, the context in which the statement occurs, I believe, therefore, All these things—indeed, practically the whole tenor tone of Paul’s Second Synthesis is concerned yet with that element of Christian spirit which in this life there will not be any alleviation of.
So if you don’t have the stomach for it, this isn’t the place for you. If you don’t have the heart for it, there will be no glory. This is the matter. This is the matter about which the comfortable American Christians cannot understand and cannot implement into their views of the gospel, because their tendency is to psychologize or to spiritualize every kind of reference to a glitching found in the Word. They become guilty of turning affliction into an internal battle, instead of a real conflict between ourselves and real souls. A conflict between the righteous and the wicked. I’m not embarrassed in using those terms.
For the Word of God uses those terms. And why you can go so far as to say that it is this, the affliction of the saint, that characterizes them as saints, as the people of God. suffering not because of their own inequity, not because of some sort of emotional and psychological imbalance, suffering rather because they are put upon by those who are wicked and unrighteous, who know not God, and have no use for the things of the spirit. There is every kind of promise in this world, and in many ways, I suppose, a Christian can stand and be a part of those promises, and even glean from those promises, raise the wife and comfort her. These are the promises of the world, the promises held out for us that eventually, through genetic engineering, we’re going to experience the perfect humanity.
What will we alleviate? It will be negative suffering, sickness will be overcome. There will no longer be any cancer in the world that is spoiling political life. We’ll be able to revitalize ourselves, regenerate ourselves biologically by organ transplants. We will be able to prolong life indefinitely.
I being a Christian, do I have to step back and say these things are impossible? No. That the kind of suffering that is experienced in humanity in general is something that is beyond the capability of the science to resolve. Do I have to say that? I don’t think so. But one thing I can say to you with absolute certainty is that they will never come short of glory in which the saints will not be perfected. That suffering will always be there.
This is why I have a great deal of impatience to see with the post-Moravians. The post-Moravians envision a day when that persecution and suffering will come to an end. This side of the world—I don’t read that in my Bible—the invitation of the Gospel will always be, until Christ comes again, one of union with Him in His suffering, so that we might be raised up in glory to Him.” What kind of evangelism is that? The kind of evangelism that we are accustomed to. and tell you what kind of experience is in store for you when you number yourself with those who believe that.
Agony. Nothing less than agony. As said, there are a number of misinterpretations of what exactly the affliction and the suffering of the saints is in this world. And oddly enough, many of those misinterpretations are coming from the Church, or from Christians, who spoke about emotional or psychological trauma.
That is a brilliant view here. This doesn’t mean we can’t be sympathetic, or that we can’t minister. It merely means that we be impressed with what the intent of the Word of God is saying. And if we’re going to apply things, apply things in the way He intended.
We have interpreted affliction in terms of fluid. We have interpreted affliction in terms of the environmental condition of mankind, as if the condition of man is the enemy. Yet, essentialists, or some of them, have interpreted the affliction as being restraint. That which keeps me from making offensive decisions for myself on my own terms.
Then there’s Thorin Kierkegaard, that Danish philosopher of the last century. If there was ever a man who had a philosophy of suffering, it would soar in his ear to God, but yet not a philosophy according to knowledge or according to the Word, even though he used the scriptures to support his views. He wrote a book entitled The Gospel of Our Suffering, but his understanding of suffering was this, to quote him, to walk alone and to walk on one’s own. Affliction, therefore, suffering, is equated with the life of loneliness. Some of you who know something about the life of a storyteller realize that, to a large extent, his philosophy was the result of unequated love. She wouldn’t marry him. The affliction and suffering, then, of an obstacle is not the life of loneliness. It isn’t illness, it isn’t psychological trauma, it isn’t environmental issues of man, it isn’t restrictions that are allowed.
The affliction is ultimately traceable to Genesis 3.15, and the enmity, the hostility that has been placed, solemnly by God, between the feet of a woman and the feet of a servant.
It is the hostility that arises in that warfare, Satan himself having been lacking in this world. who are intent upon resisting, and destroying, and oppressing, and making light of, and exploiting the righteousness of God and His Christ.” Psalm 2. Many of you know that by heart, but if you refer to it in your mind, that’s what’s in view. Literal oppression and affliction due to righteousness. the fact that, yes, there are kings in the world who are intent on stamping that righteousness out. It’s not just merely being indifferent to it, but resisting it in such a way as to obliterate it.
Do you think that that kind of spirit is only abroad, in the socialist countries of this world? Do you think that that spirit is unfounded in this country in which you live? Please don’t be naive. You who think are more a minority than you imagine. even in this country.
But these things are not ever can get us down. How interestingly, at the very beginning of the conquest, our God can make such promise that the head of the serpent will be crushed beneath the feet of his people. That promise being realized is what In the midst of it, in our response to these laws of incomprehension, I don’t understand why all these things are happening to me. I don’t understand why the Church is in this position. I don’t know why the Saints have to undergo all this kind of impunity. I can’t quite grasp it.
Don’t be foolish. These are the very things that Christ told you to have. He has promised it to you, but He has also said that you, on the basis of your death and resurrection, can’t help certainly that through that secondary preservation, and that’s why you can never despair. That is why the apostle himself doesn’t despair. Turn to the first chapter of 2 Corinthians and listen to what he says there. He says in verse 8, for we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction.”
There it is, our affliction, which came to Washington up in Asia, that we were burned excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despair even of life. Indeed, we have the sentence of death within ourselves in order that we should not trust in ourselves. God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will yet deliver us, he on whom we have set our oath.” Our situation is then not questioning God in His power, why is this happening to us, why are conditions this way, but instead rejoicing that our God, in all our afflictions, hears us, and answers us, and delivers us, if it is only with the resurrection.
So we die. The issue, you see, Sam, is never one of survival. The issue is never survival in this world. I look at our congregations. The issue for this small, little flock is not survival. Everyone has sinned. It’s not whether we’re here five years from now. That’s not the issue.
The issue is, do we love God? Do we obey Him, and do we affirm? in our faith in His poverty and in His Father’s power, that our thoughts can raise the dead and us included. That if the Church suffers in this way, the day will come when all things will be righted, and its glory will be seen, and it will be vindicated before the world.
I hear this hope of that. Not with some sort of spirit by thinking that I’ve associated myself with a loser. And I don’t want to be a part of such a thing. I’ll go down with it because, you see, the more I descend into that suffering and affliction that comes upon us because, yes, because we are maligned. The more I am assured that I am conformed with Christ, and the more that I am assured that I am conformed with Him, the greater is my faith that I shall be raised up in the name of the Father. If I share in His Son, I shall also share in His resurrection.
Now, this isn’t only an individual thing, and I want to say this to you in conclusion. And I must say to you that I do have a rather unique perspective on Revelation 11, and if you don’t know about Revelation 11, I encourage you to go home and read it. That is actually about the two witnesses. I understand those witnesses not so much as individuals, but as the Church in a twofold aspect.
Christian culture, the Christian city, and the Christian cult, or the Christian service of worship. The people of God is worship, and the people of God are God’s Word. The faith of the Church is the faith of her Lord, and as the Lord dies, so the Church shall die. And the world shall sing songs of praises and delight and merriment in that day, when the Church is here no longer and the effects of the Church are no longer felt in the culture and in the religious community of this world.
But God, as Revelation 11 tells you, will raise up His witnesses in all the nations. And how it has been in every generation. The Church does, in conformity to her Lord, in no other time better than when she perceives the intent of her Lord’s work. Her life is no longer precious to her. She gives it up willingly. in conformity to Christ, casting herself completely upon Him, knowing that He will raise her up. And that is our vindication. Do you understand what I’m saying? The issue isn’t our sin. The issue is our faith. I believe, therefore I spoke. What did I do wrong? And even in my affliction, in my suffering, God heard me and helped deliver me.
And you know that inside yourself, okay? Is this what you carry about with you? Yes, this is the dying of Jesus in your body, so that you might pray about Him. Is this what you’re like? Oh, you need this. You need this because it’s dangerous. If you don’t have it, the day of the Lord will bring change. Change. It’s terrible this way. It is. It means nothing.
Lord Father, we pray that Jesus might become all-embracing, attractive, warm, even in suffering. And though no one would look upon him, this born being, without affectiveness, ugliness, twistedness, yet may we embrace him, even in his pain, that we conform to him. For righteousness, and that also, Father, we might have that power from the Lord whenever trial comes our way, and not place our faith in our survival, but in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and our resurrection and our new station before Him very strong. That, our God, is what we need. holy praise and thanks, Father, that you might mercifully flow us with your grace, pouring into our spirits the fullness of your love, into the fullness of your own Holy Spirit, that we might be those who exhibit the rewards of God in this perverse, wicked, adulterous generation. Holy Father, we pray unto you. Our final hymn is hymn number 223, 223.
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