FHBC Sermon Notes

No matter what we face, we must endure.
These are responses to the situation of hardship. Three question that we often ask. The first is a reminder that we are to go to the Word of God, when there is joy or when there is hardship. In this we please God. For it lets us know how to praise his goodness in both situations.  The second question asks us why is there hardship anyway. We are reminded that we are born into a spiritual, even when before our eyes are opened we are unaware of it. Secondly we are reminded that this is God's perfect will for us, that we share in the sufferings of Christ, for in Christ we have victory. "...our coming to you was not in vain." v.1, v.2. Because of this people heard the word of God rightly and boldly proclaimed. So is hardship a nuisance to be shed as quickly as possibly, or a gift of God, to refine us, to make us in the image of Jesus?

1. What does it mean to endure hardship?
a. A faithfulness to God, his Word, and his call in the midst of conflict.
b. It requires intense, focused, exhaustive labor.

2. Why must we suffer hardship anyway?
a. At conversion, we step into a spiritual battle.
b. There exists a continuous, systematic opposition to Christ.
c. This is God's sovereign and perfect will for the church.

(see notes from last weeks on the above)

3. What kind of faith is necessary to endure hardship?
So we have the definition of hardship, and the why it exist. So therefore the question arises to ask us what is necessary to endure. This endurance starts with motivation.

a. A pure faith.
To endure there must be a purity of our motives. v. 3-6 Paul was being accused of being a charlatan. An accusation he just wanted power, and was a moocher. Yet, Paul faces this and declares openly his motivations and the evidence of that in the works that the Spirit was doing in him and the others.

Know this, if you are only able to please God, and no one else, then you will be able to endure. God is faithful to put in Paul's heart the desire to "labor and toil" (v.9).  He puts in Paul's head an "affectionate desire" for the people.(v.8). 

b. A gospel-driven faith.
A faith that is convinced of and anchored in the good news of Jesus Christ. This is what convinced Paul. For here was a man that had been on the other side and enemy and the very one pursuing the Christians.  A miraculous encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus is what stood center in his mind. It that thought, on the news that it made known. On that was he able to endure.

Perhaps you are reading this thinking, "I'll give God a try, I'll give religion a try. Maybe he will fixed my problems."  But God is not your therapist. He can save us yes, but he saves us first from ourselves, from our sin, but calling us to repent, to turn away.  But the God, who is judge and king, is loving and faithful himself. He has pursued us as a lover, to make a people for himself. To make us his children.  He judged his Son instead of us, laying on him the torment of our own punishment. In the acceptance of that, in turn our lives to him, there we find joy.  Not a "solution" to shed our problems, but a faith to endure our problems.

c. A bold faith
We sometimes think of a emotional quality.  It is something that allows us to boldly hold to the truth.  It is as my brother Doug says, a motivational quality.  It is a message that may bring hardship, but a message that is true. It is a truth that we discover in the doing of the work.  It is a truth we understand in the obedience to its truth.  We must be pure in our motives, driven by the truth of the good news, and bold in its statement to ourselves and to others. How else can we live? 

So, are you fearful of the gospel? Or are you inspired in boldness.

d. A forward-looking faith.
And so we see the result of this type of faith. It is a faith that looks to the end of our salvation. to the promise God has made to us in Christ. In this we are anchored, being pulled forward to the end of this struggle, a struggle and ends at the throne of God. It is for an eternal purpose that we live. That throne is more real, more enduring that anything we are seeing in this present age. Sometimes hard to accept, but truthfully as we press on and endure to the end of the goal, we will know that which is beyond our present understanding, and in that day find pure joy in the pleasing gaze of our Lord and Savior.

Amen.