Swift Current Corps on August 09, 2009
Corps 614 Regent Park on May 15, 2016
By Captain Michael Ramsay
As many of you here know when our children were just little (not that they’re so big now), we sold our home and our businesses and moved into North America’s poorest postal code - Vancouver’s downtown eastside - as full-time urban missionaries with The Salvation Army.
We have shared with many of you the excitement from our time there as we saw people who were turned from their addictive, destructive ways of life; transformed into new creations by the power of the Holy Spirit. It was exciting to open up our home and our lives to the miracles that indeed the Lord is still performing today and were, oh, so evident in that environment. We met people who have been cured of cancer, cured of AIDS, and completely cured of diabetes. We have seen and experienced the power of God (cf. Romans 1:4, 1:16, 11:23, 15:13, 15:19-20) first hand.
Our time there, as you can well imagine, wasn’t always rosy though. I remember one day – one morning, I was mugged. I knew better but I wasn’t paying attention. It was early in the morning and I was right on Main and Hastings – the most infamous intersection in this most infamous neighbourhood and I was on the pay phone with Susan who was out of town at the time.
Someone came running up behind me, grabbed my briefcase and tore down Main Street. In the briefcase was my laptop and all the information for the summer school programme I was running for the kids in the area; so, like anyone mugged in the depths of skid row, I’m sure, I…well, I chased the mugger.
I followed him down Main Street through Chinatown across busy streets and around the myriad of mazes that are Vancouver’s back alleys. Scaring rats, jumping over sleeping street folk, I pursued my assailant. When I was within reach of him… I fell right in front of a bus and though I escaped from in front of the bus with my life, the mugger escaped with my briefcase, my laptop, and the programme files for the kids.
It was when I was walking back, completely distraught and despondent from this incident, that I experienced the miracle that happened: I encountered an angel, a messenger of God, in the back alleys of Vancouver’s storied downtown eastside. I can still remember vividly; he looked like a ‘dumpster diver;’ he prayed with me and he offered me these words of encouragement from Romans 5:3,4 “...but let us also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” Inside I sighed. I knew he was right. God gave me these words to encourage me.
When the Apostle Paul recorded these words circa 55 AD in his letter to the Romans, he himself had already seen much suffering - he has already spent so much time under arrest, so much time in prison and even now he will be ultimately killed for his faith and tradition suggests that he was even beheaded by the Romans themselves.[1]
In the first few verses of what we now know as Chapter 5 of Paul’s letter to the Romans, Paul was not only warning the Romans about the persecution and suffering that was coming for him but he was also warning them about the suffering that was coming for them and ultimately the suffering that may be coming for us as we do the Lord’s bidding as well.
Now you’ll notice from our text today, that not only are we to endure our suffering but Paul says, depending on your translation, we are to rejoice and even boast in our suffering (cf. Phil 2:17; 1 Pet 4:6, 4:13). 1 Thessalonians 5:18 states that we are even to give thanks in all circumstances (cf. Phil 4:11) and Paul in Philippians 4:4 says, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice.’
So this is important: we aren’t supposed to lick our wounds when we suffer for doing the Lord’s work but we are to rejoice. Now we should think about what exactly God and Paul are saying here in the Bible for a moment because it does go against a lot of popular culture and indeed seems to oppose the so-called ‘prosperity gospel’ that is ever so prevalent in our affluent North American culture.
This prosperity heresy - the idea that wealth, health and prosperity come to those whom God loves but trials, tribulations and suffering on this earth come to those whom God hates - this prosperity heresy was apparently alive and well in Paul’s day as well but just like it was a lie then, it is not true now.[2]
Paul says that we should rejoice in our suffering because - if indeed our suffering is for the gospel of which Paul is not ashamed (1:16) -our suffering will produce perseverance (endurance) and you know what perseverance (endurance) is good for right? It gives us the ability to get through more suffering and difficult times and you know why God gives us that ability to get through more suffering and difficult times, because we’ve got more difficult times to get through still. So as we rejoice in our perseverance through these times we can rejoice because we will be ready for – the even more difficult times that are still to come but there is even more than that.[3]
Paul says that through this perseverance we will also develop character. And what is character? Character is what you get when you survive suffering (joyfully?)
Here are some comics that give us Bill Waterson’s perspective:[4]
Character is what you get when you survive suffering (joyfully?)
…in my home growing up the phrase ‘It will build character’ was the answer to the question. “Why should I do that? It’s not fair? Why do I have to …rake the leaves, mow the lawn, clean my room, take grade six band? ...It will build character. Well more or less this is what Paul is saying.
Paul, however, really does say that we should enjoy our character building experiences. (They are a means to the strength of the Lord.) In Philippians 1 Paul says that whatever happens, everything will be okay indeed as living is Christ and even to die is gain because there is the resurrection ahead. We have nothing to lose right? To die is gain and to live, to live is Christ! (Phil 1:21).[5]
Now Paul had a lot that was building his character between all his time in jail and the Roman Christians had great opportunity to develop character as they faced the lions in the Coliseum[6] and my mugging on the downtown eastside wasn’t our first experience with loss nor was it our last but it was directly related to our work for the Lord and this period was extremely significant in our lives and its results echo to this day in our souls.
When I was mugged and my laptop containing all the information for The Salvation Army’s tutoring ministry was stolen it was only the beginning. My foot was also injured, my hands were inexplicably painfully swollen, my eye was injured (so painfully that I couldn’t even get up for days) and it was later re-injured too- I required surgery; Sarah-Grace, who had recently turned 2, suffered seizures in front of our eyes, our car stopped working, a person in our home was struggling with heroin addiction, the police visited our home and encouraged a roommate of ours to leave, my in-laws’ computer and camera were stolen on subsequent nights spent in our home and this last event unleashed a revealing chain of attacks straight from the Enemy and his servants. We were serving the Lord, openly and abundantly and we were suffering as we did so and there was more to come (cf. Mark 3:20-35).[7]
And knowing all this was still to come, after my mugging the Lord sent His messenger - the angel in the form of a downtown eastside resident - to encourage me to endurance, to perseverance. He told me specifically from Romans 5:3,4, to “...rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”
So what is Paul saying about suffering here? He is saying we have to rejoice in it but is he talking about any kind of unpleasant event? Any suffering? Not necessarily. The Greek word here (thlipseis) refers to, more literally, ‘pressure’ that is applied to Christians from the world, from God’s opponents (cf. John 15:18, 16:20).[8] John Stott writes that Thlipseis is “almost a technical term for the suffering which God’s people must expect in [these] last days.”[9] This suffering is something that we can expect as we do the will of God in the last days before the end.[10] When we serve the Lord, there is opposition both spiritual and practical and though the war is won, the battle rages fierce.
As we fight in this battle that is our life, there are people, powers and principalities who oppose us. As we fight in this battle, it develops our perseverance, it develops our character, we become like battle-hardened veterans experienced in engaging the foe.[11] We are no longer green. Our character is being built. We know that we can endure. We know that we may live up to what has already been obtained (cf. Phil 3). We can be bold for the gospel (cf. Phil 1). We know we can be counted on to persevere through even more of whatever opposition, whatever pressure the enemy throws our way. We know we can, like Paul says here, we can have hope - because God will never leave us nor forsake us.
Jesus Christ himself suffered and he rose again on the third day. Jesus Christ himself endured and he is the reason for our hope? What is this hope? This hope through Jesus Christ is indeed in the power of the gospel which is the power to transform us all (1:16), our hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ who will never leave us nor forsake us and our hope through the cross and the empty tomb, our hope is in the resurrection of the dead.
Paul knows, as we know, that when our bodies fade away it is not the end. Indeed we will be in paradise with our Lord. Indeed there is the hope of the ultimate resurrection of the dead. We will rise again.
And as the Lord has conquered Sin and Death, He will indeed continue to conquer our own sins that lure us to death and we can have confidence, we can have faith, we can have hope in the resurrection.
But even more than that - now I know that there are some serious struggles that each face us each here today. The other day there were some serious losses in Nipawin here as a father and son perished and a family lost their home in the explosion and resulting fire. There is uncertainty in our daily lives. (The explosion from the leak could have happened in any of the downtown businesses.) There are questions and we don’t necessarily realise what the Lord is doing but no matter how bleak things seem we can still have that hope.
Now our pets are often a source of comfort to many of us. Our cats and dogs offer us comfort when we are in times of need. The family whose house was lost in the explosion, they had a dog. The dog didn’t escape. The house exploded and fell in on him. The fire raged and ravaged the site all day and in the night. In the morning at just before 7am when I was bringing the firefighters and SaskEnergy people their coffee, we heard it – barking. The dog was barking. You should have heard the firefighters cheer. You should have seen the excitement on their faces. They pulled the dog from the rubble and he wasn’t even hurt, not a bit. The Lord saved the dog. This provided hope for the fire fighters, hope for the SaskEnergy guys, hope for the Emergency Operations Centre staff, and comfort and hope for this family who had already suffered such loss. The Lord provides hope in our suffering.
We have received serious, vocal, practical and even litigious opposition from the Enemy through people very close to us not only when we were on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside but also when we were in Winnipeg’s North End and now that we are in Nipawin and Tisdale. We have had to consciously protect even our children from harm as the foe is relentless. The enemy continues to attack us through whatever Thlipseis (pressure) he can muster.
The Enemy does and will attack those of us here that serve the Lord. There is pressure but we must not give in to the temptation to surrender to the pressure. We must not surrender. Instead we must boast in our sufferings, experience our new found endurance and character so that we too will continue to experience the faith, the joy, the hope that is in Christ Jesus.
Let us all, as Romans 5 says, “...rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” And this hope will never disappoint us (v.5).
Let us pray.
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[1] Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible - commentary on Acts 28:31. Cited on-line 14 April 2008: http://www.biblestudy.org/question/sauldie.html Cf. also http://misslink.org/chapel/askaminister/bible/paul.html
[2] Cf. The entire book of Job. See also Paul J. Achtemeier, Interpretation: Romans. John Knox Press, 1989. P 92. and John Phillips, Exploring Romans. Moody Press, 1969. P.90.
[3] Cf. RCH Lenski, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. P 338.
[4] From http://enthronedarkness.blogspot.com/2005/06/building-character-yet.html
[5] Cf. Michael Ramsay. “Be Bold for the Gospel: a look at Philippians 1:1” in The Journal of Aggressive Christianity. Issue No. 54: April – May 2008. Available on-line: http://www.armybarmy.com/jac.html Cited 16 April 2008.
[6] Tactius: "Nero punished a race of men who were hated for their evil practices. These men were called Christians. He got a number of people to confess. On their evidence a number of Christians were convicted and put to death with dreadful cruelty. Some were covered with the skins of wild beasts and left to be eaten by dogs. Others were nailed to the cross. Many were burned alive and set on fire to serve as torches at night." Cited On-line. 16 April, 2008. http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/rome_and_christianity.htm
[7] Cf. Michael Ramsay. “On the Job Experience.” Available on-line: www.sheepspeak.com/job.htm. Cf. also Michael Ramsay’s “The Family of God.” Available on-line: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/02/mark-320-35-family-of-god.html
[8] RCH Lenski, p. 336.
[9] John Stott, Romans, IV Press 1994, p. 140.
[10] NT Wright, NIB X: Romans. Abingdon Press, 2002. P. 516: “The NRSV’s ‘endurance’ and the NIV’s ‘perseverance’ both bring out aspects of the same idea, which is not so much of a pressing ahead in adversity as simply staying put without dismay”
[11] RCH Lenski, p. 336.
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