Shaped Down Here So We’ll Fit Up There

 Romans 5:3,4,5 3

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- April 10, 2005

We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they are good for us—they help us learn to endure. 4And endurance develops strength of character in us, and character strengthens our confident expectation of salvation. 5And this expectation will not disappoint us. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

Driving through Texas, a New Yorker collided with a truck carrying a horse. A few months later he tried to collect damages for his injuries. "How can you now claim to have all these injuries?" asked the insurance company's lawyer. "According to the police report, at the time you said you were not hurt."

 "Look," replied the New Yorker. "I was lying on the road in a lot of pain, and I heard someone say the horse had a broken leg. The next thing I know this Texas Ranger pulls out his gun and shoots the horse. Then he turns to me and asks, 'Are you okay?'"

In Job 5:7 we find this: 7People are born for trouble as predictably as sparks fly upward from a fire. These were the words of one of Job’s “comforters”. Trial and suffering are the common lot of man and no one will escape this heritage is what he tells Job.

The word for “sparks” in the Hebrew is literally, “sons of flame”. The fire of the hearth produces an offspring of sparks. Coming from a fallen Adam and Eve as we all do, there is nothing for us but the trials and sorrows, adversities and afflictions common to all men. We are by nature of the lineage of trouble. We are children of the flame. You will remember Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble, but have no fear for I have overcome the world.”

Paul tells us that these trials, tribulations, this trouble is good for us. Imagine that! Notice if you will, that there is a chain of some interesting links in this passage…problems and trials: * Help us to endure…that is develop patient endurance * Endurance helps strength of character within us…that is maturity of character * Maturity of character strengthens our hope in the glory of God…the hope of salvation

The concept of what takes place as we experience trials and trouble in this world comes from the Latin verb: tribulare which means to press, to oppress or afflict. The Latins had a threshing sledge called a tribulum that separated grain from the chaff. It consisted of a wooden platform studded underneath with sharp flints or iron teeth. As the instrument passed over the grain the wheat was separated from the straw. One can see how this concept might come into view when a man was undergoing such grinding pressure in tribulation, trials or suffering.

The Greek word that brings us this same terrible thought is expressed in a slightly different image. The Greek word is thlipsis, and it had the original idea of “pressing together, pressure”. The first time this word was applied to human suffering was in the New Testament. The Christians were the first to think of themselves as being in a vat like grapes of olives and being pressed to the point where their joy ran out like wine or oil. Oil and wine are the ancient biblical symbols of joy. For instance, oil was used as a cosmetic to make the face shine. Imagine getting up and as you get ready to leave the house in the morning, you take some olive oil and slather it on you face to make it shine! Psalm 104:14b-15 tells us this: “ You allow them to produce food from the earth— 15 wine to make them glad, olive oil as lotion for their skin, and bread to give them strength. In Numbers 6:24, 25 we read: “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee.”

The Lord of the shining face is the Lord of joy and peace for His children. The question for us is this: do we really have that overflowing, fullness of joy the Bible says is to be ours? Do we have olives but no oil and grapes and no wine? Consider olives and grapes. They produce oil and wine, but they are not oil or wine in themselves. Olives will shrink and wrinkle. A man will eat these olives and poor people put them in their food. But the richness has evaporated. Grapes that remain on the vine harden, and after a time they are pulpy and dry. Lay them out in the sun and you get raisins. They will keep for months and are nourishing, but the wine is gone. The olives and grapes can be kept in your storehouse, but they will never furnish the shining face or the merry heart. Oil and wine bring joy the Bible says.

Olives must be pressed to produce oil. Grapes must be crushed if there is ever to be wine. The finer the fruit, the thicker the skin and the greater the pressure that must be applied to burst those skins so that the juices may be released. If we are to be splashed with joy, we must be crushed. There are three steps to joy: First of all you have to have olives and grapes. The unsaved person can never have true joy because they have no fruit from which joy can be produced. All he has is thorns and thistles. Crush him and you get thorn juice or thistle juice neither of which can make the face shine or the heart rejoice. The unsaved can have the wildness of revelry and the froth of mirth, but never the shining of gladness or the depth of joy.

If you are in Christ, by the faith Paul speaks about in the beginning of this chapter, the Holy Spirit can produce His fruit. Only God can take the fruit of our lives and produce the joy Paul speaks about here. The second step to Joy is that we have to be dissatisfied with mere production of grapes and olives in our lives. God must be allowed to produce the fruit and then continue to process it into the oil and wine of joy. That comes when the third step to joy is taken. The grapes and olives must be crushed if there is to be that fullness of joy that God says can be ours. Philippians 1:6 speaks to us of the fact that what God begins He will finish: 6And I am sure that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on that day when Christ Jesus comes back again.

Now it is not natural for us to undergo suffering and endure it patiently. It is natural for us to whine and sigh and cry for relief. The child of God does not go looking for suffering, but faces it with calmness, and the assurance that God means it for good and that out of it will come rejoicing and the possibility of giving Glory to God in the middle of that suffering. We know that God never makes a mistake. We know from Paul that “all things work together for the good of those who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28 Jeremiah 29:11 tells us: “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans not to harm you, but to prosper you, plans to give you a hope and a future…” Some suffering is corrective. Just as a child receives discipline, so some sufferings come to a believer because he has stepped out of the will of God.

Paul tells us that there are some people who have abused the Lord’s table who are sick and some who have died. That is an example of the corrective sense of suffering. Then some suffering is constructive. The Lord desires to form Himself in us. He sees what we can be. We are like a diamond in the rough. God begins chipping away to reveal the beauty within. Suffering and affliction can be instrumental to our growth. Some times it is the refining fire that purifies us. The fire is not a pleasant place to be, but the result is the burning away of the dross of our lives. No doubt you have heard this one but it is worth repeating for obvious reasons.

The value of courage, persistence, and perseverance has rarely been illustrated more convincingly than in the life story of this man (his age appears on the right): Failed in business 22 Ran for Legislature--defeated 23 Again failed in business 24 Elected to Legislature 25 sweetheart died 26 Had a nervous breakdown 27 Defeated for Speaker 29 Defeated for Elector 31 Defeated for Congress 34 Elected to Congress 37 Defeated for Congress 39 Defeated for Senate 46 Defeated for Vice President 47 Defeated for Senate 49 Elected President of the United States 51

That's the record of Abraham Lincoln.   Think of what it took to make the man who could lead this nation through the American Civil War! The third phase of suffering is suffering which God sends in order to prove to the invisible world that He can win and hold the allegiance of His children, even though they are surrounded by Satan’s host and wooed by all the seductions of the flesh, the world and the Devil. God chooses some of his children to suffer for reasons of His own, entirely apart from any sin in their lives, even with no apparent constructive purpose.

Go back and re-read Job and you will see that Job suffers for no apparent personal reason or sin. God is working out his eternal purposes and he has never made a mistake. Go back with me if you will to our text: “…tribulation produces patience; and patience produces character and proven character produces hope. The first virtue produced in the lives of believers is this patience, persistence, endurance, steadfastness. The idea implied here is that of something that continues. This is the characteristic of a Christian who is unswerved from his deliberate purpose in following Jesus, and his loyalty in faith to Him even when undergoing the greatest trials of sufferings.

The Christian’s sufferings lead to perseverance because they are connected to his hope. There is a connection between the fire and our future. The sufferings of the present hour are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us Paul says in Romans 8:18. Suffering and trials cause the believer to look more eagerly toward the glory that God has promised us. Our hope is tested and strengthened by the suffering we experience. Suffering is designed to help us develop endurance and the endurance produces character and the character produces hope. This endurance is not just tolerance…the “I can take it!” a bowing down to the inevitable. It is the proving out of the power of God which is made perfect in our weakness. All of this is the result of the truth found in Romans 5:1 that we are justified by the Grace of God in Jesus Christ. Our overcoming all the adverse affects of suffering, trials, adversity comes from the fact that Jesus died on the cross for our sin so that we might be brought back to God.

As we experience the troubles of this life, God wants to show the world the sufficiency of his grace to us who believe. Let me close with this thought: A famous evangelist told the following incident: I have a friend who in a time of business recession lost his job, a sizable fortune, and his beautiful home. To add to his sorrow, his precious wife died; yet he tenaciously held to his faith -- the only thing he had left. One day when he was out walking in search of employment, he stopped to watch some men who were doing stonework on a large church. One of them was chiseling a triangular piece of rock. 'Where are you going to put that?' he asked. The workman said, 'Do you see that little opening up there near the spire? Well, I'm shaping this stone down here so that it will fit in up there.' Tears filled my friend's eyes as he walked away, for the Lord had spoken to him through that laborer whose words gave new meaning to his troubled situation.

Isn’t that what God is doing in your life and mine? He is shaping us down here so that we will fit up there! It will all be for the praise of His glory!

--Dennis Gleason