Presented to Nipawin and Tisdale Corps on April 20, 2008; Swift Current Corps on August 09, 2009; Corps 614 Regent Park on May 15, 2016; and Alberni Valley Ministries on February 16, 2025 by Captain (Now Major) Michael Ramsay
This
is the 2025 Alberni Valley version. To view the previous version, click here: https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2008/04/romans-534-hope-and-angel-on-downtown.html
I have shared
this story with you previously:
When our oldest
two children were just little, we served with The Salvation Army in North
America’s poorest postal code - Vancouver’s downtown eastside. 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 – that most
infamous intersection in this most infamous neighbourhood and I was on the pay
phone with Susan (remember those things!) 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 program 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 my 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 had 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.
In the first few
verses of Chapter 5 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 he
was warning us about 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; we are to rejoice. Now we should think about what exactly God and
Paul are saying here 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.
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 and you know what perseverance is good for right? It
gives us the ability to get through more suffering and you know
why God gives us that ability to get through more suffering:
because we’ve got more difficult times to get through! 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.
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:
Character is what you get when you survive suffering (joyfully?)
… In my home growing up the phrase ‘It will
build character’ was always the answer to the question. “Why should I do that?
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 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 because living is Christ and even to die is
gain because there is the resurrection ahead. We really have nothing to lose!
To die is gain and to live, to live is Christ! (Phil 1:21)
Paul had a lot
that was building his character with all his time in jail and the Roman
Christians had great opportunities to develop character as they faced lions in
the Coliseum 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.
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 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 was 2 at the time suffered seizures in front
of our eyes, our car stopped working; we ran a transition house out of the DTES
then: a person in our home was struggling with heroin addiction, the police
visited our home and encouraged a roommate of ours to leave and so many more
things that even a chain of attacks straight from the Enemy. We were serving
the Lord, openly and abundantly and we were suffering as we did so and there
was more to come.
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 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.”
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). John Stott writes that Thlipseis is “almost a technical term for
the suffering which God’s people must expect in [these] last days.” This
suffering is something that we can expect as we do the will of God in these
last days. 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
God and 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. 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 (Romans 3:3,4).
Jesus Christ
himself suffered and he rose again on the third day. Jesus Christ himself
endured and he is the reason for our hope. And what is our hope in that grows
through this suffering, this perseverance and character-building experiences?
What is this hope? This hope through Jesus Christ is in the power of the
gospel, the power to transform us all (Ro 1:16), our hope is in the Lord Jesus
Christ who will never leave us nor forsake us and 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. We will be in
paradise with our Lord but more than that: 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. I remember when we were serving in Nipawin and Tisdale,
Saskatchewan a father and son perished and another family lost their home in an
explosion and fire that rocked the Nipawin.
Now our pets are
often a source of comfort. 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, just before
7am when I was bringing the firefighters and SaskEnergy people 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.
(Some
of the work you do at the Army here, btw, the Lord uses to provide that hope to
people too – last week alone in this small community you served people 868
Breakfasts, 877 lunches, 946 dinners at the Bread of Life and 3942 meals to
the shelters and from the food truck. We have had 265 overnight guests at our
shelter, and so much more)
The enemy will
attack with 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. 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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