[Text: Hebrews 12] “Suffering and the City of God”

Before we begin today, I need to be very clear about what we’re talking about when we say “suffering” this morning. There are many types of suffering. There is suffering because of my own actions and suffering because of the actions of others. There is suffering common to human beings who lives in a fallen world and there is suffering that is peculiar to the people of God, experienced only because of love for Christ and for the Gospel. It is the latter type of suffering that we’re talking about today. I do not mean to diminish the significance or the reality of the other kinds. There is Scripture that speaks of each. But today we are talking about suffering as a follower of Christ because that is what the early Christians who first heard this sermon were experiencing. So listen to the Word of God and hear that such suffering is precious and purposeful in the eyes of God.

[Read Hebrews 12 and Pray]

Every journey worth taking involves some kind of suffering. To see the top of the world you’ll need to suffer the training it takes to scale Mount Everest. To see the wild beauty of Joshua Tree National Park, you’ll need to endure the hostility of the dessert. To see a friendship last into old age, you’ll need to suffer through some fights because close relationships are so often messy. But on each of these worthy journeys we endure because of the destination.

Hebrews 11 introduced us to the idea of the life of faith being a journey, a pilgrimage to a promised destination: the City of God. 12:1 adds another dimension to the journey imagery as we are called to “run with endurance the race that is set before us.” But there is another theme that precedes pilgrimage in Hebrews. It threads through the book and shows up in the life of the faithful throughout the history of the Church. It is the theme of suffering and the pastor who first wrote this message wants his friends to know that suffering and the pilgrimage of faith always go hand in hand.

For these early Christian pilgrims on their way to the City of God, suffering looked like public mockery for following a crucified King. I sincerely apologize if the tracing on the front of the bulletin has offended anyone, but I wanted you to see this image from the first centuries A.D. It’s ancient graffiti that says, “Alexander worships (his) God.” Alexander, a Christian, is shown worshipping a crucified man (an object of scorn in Roman culture) with the head of a donkey (an insult to the person of Christ). The graffiti mocks his faith and illustrates the scorn our brothers and sisters suffered from a culture that was hostile toward them and toward Christ crucified, which was always “folly to Gentiles” (1 Corinthians 1:23).

Suffering for the early followers of Christ looked like getting thrown in prison for being an “atheist” (being called such since they had no visible God or temple like the Romans). It looked like being expelled from Rome, their property plundered for the sake of Christ (10:32-34). Suffering meant that one’s own life could be taken at any time for saying that Jesus (not Caesar) was Lord. That was how suffering looked in their past and (it seems by the tone of this sermon) there was more and worse suffering on the horizon for them. They needed to hear that their suffering wasn’t in vain, that is wasn’t something outside the control – or love – of their God. They needed hope because they were losing heart.

And we need this, too, because even though we know every worthy journey involves suffering, we sometimes forget that following Christ is a journey. And so, when suffering comes it often surprises us, confuses us and makes us lose heart.

Maybe you’re thinking, “But I’m not suffering, at least, not like they suffered back then. Not like so many Christians suffer today around the world.” Suffering as pilgrims on the way to the City of God doesn’t always look like prison bars or an executioner’s blade. When we follow Christ in gratitude for the remarkable grace he has shown to us, suffering looks like a family that doesn’t understand your faith and calls your God-honoring choices foolishness. Suffering can come as we honor Christ in our callings as parents and workers and suffer the emotional stress that comes from being faithful to our callings. Suffering is the toll of loving those who don’t want to be loved, of making the hard-but-right choices as our parents grow older. Sometimes Christian suffering looks like being the lone voice in a marriage that says, “No matter what he does, I know that I’m supposed to be faithful to Christ.” Sometimes suffering still looks like bearing the mockery of a society that thinks putting hope in a man we’ve never seen is the definition of foolishness, as foolish as Alexander worshipping his God.

And like our brothers and sisters long ago, this suffering as followers of Christ can make us lose heart, lose the will to keep walking toward our promised destination; the City of God. Suffering can make us want to run away into things that will take away the pain of the journey; addictions to sex or food or comfortable living. Suffering can make us want to shrink back from the journey altogether, abandoning Christ altogether thinking, “If he really loved me, he wouldn’t let this happen.”

This passage tells us that, for Christian pilgrims, present or future sufferings need not discourage us on our way to the City of God. We don’t need to think suffering is the sign of God’s abandonment. Quite the contrary, suffering is the sign of God treating us as He treated Christ himself. And suffering – I say this knowing how many of you are suffering for the sake of Christ – suffering is the instrument used by our God to train us on this pilgrimage so that we may reach His city in the end. By the working of our faithful God, suffering is the means by which we will reach our promised destination.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we’re supposed to go looking for suffering. And if you are in the throes of suffering now, I know this may be difficult to hear. This concept of purposeful suffering is best learned before we’re in the middle of it. But, when suffering comes, we don’t have to lose heart. And we don’t lose heart because God Himself set us on this journey of suffering.

We don’t lose heart because God Himself set us on this journey of suffering. For some, this may seem like small comfort. Or it may seem like some cruel, divine joke. But what this word tells us is that the suffering of Christians is to be understood in light of the voice of God calling us His sons.

In vv. 4-11, the pastor reminds his friends that the intensity of suffering is soon to rise saying, “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” Though they had already endured suffering in the past (seen in 10:32-34), the coming hostility was going to be stronger. But in case that coming suffering should make them lose heart, he immediately draws their minds back to the Word of God, reminding them of what they have forgotten. If they suffer – even to the point of shedding blood at the hands of hostile men – if they suffer it will be God’s loving and purposeful treatment of them as his children.

Verse 5 calls suffering “discipline.” Verse 6 says it is a mark of God’s love and evidence that we are received by Him as we follow the central call of Hebrews and “draw near” to God by faith in His Son. We see the comparison between our earthly fathers and our heavenly Father and are asked to understand that even if our earthly fathers blew it sometimes (since they only disciplined us “as it seemed best to them”), our heavenly Father only ever “disciplines us for our good” (v. 10).

“Yes,” the pastor says in v. 11, “discipline is truly painful in the moment.” But what the discipline accomplishes in time is beautiful and necessary for pilgrims on their way to the City of God. Verse 10 says, “he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.” Read that in light of v. 14 as we are called to actively participate with God’s work in us. We are to “(s)trive…for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” What we are called to strive after – holiness – is the very thing that the discipline of God that comes through suffering is meant to give to us. That holiness is the “set apart-ness” of the pilgrim who understands that though he lives in Rome, Rome is not his home. That holiness is the life of a committed pilgrim who is willing to follow after his God and listen to Him and obey Him in the face of a culture that says such a life is ridiculous. As we suffer and must look in faith to our God and High Priest, Jesus, for help, this text tells us that such suffering is how we are made partakers in the holiness of God. And see the effect that a life of such suffering produces. “(L)ater,” v. 11 says with a long-range view in mind, “it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

When God puts suffering in our path, we must submit ourselves to our loving God and Father and learn to see our suffering from His perspective, not forgetting that He is only treating us as His sons whom He loves. We must learn that when we suffer and call out to Him, drawing near to Him by faith in Jesus, His Son, we are drawing near to Him in the way that He loves. And when we draw near to Him with our confidence in Christ, Hebrews has already told us that we will “receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (5:16).

If God means for me to suffer and tells me that there is a reason for it, that the suffering will produce in me a deeper commitment to Him because of my deep need for Him, then I don’t have to lose heart when the suffering comes. If it is true that suffering is God’s loving discipline, then that helps me respond to that truth in the way the Word says in vv. 12-13.

You and I can lift up our drooping hands and find new strength for our weak knees and begin clearing the debris of fear from in front of our feet. We can even have the hope that there is healing from God even for those of us who have been left lame by our suffering. If you, brothers and sisters, feel like you can’t take another step on the journey to the City of God because your legs of faith don’t work, then take hope that your God means to heal your lameness and help you to walk again as He reminds you of His loving care and gift of holiness that comes by faith in Christ. That gracious work of God is meant to draw out the response of active faith in us. And vv. 14-17 we see what that response is supposed to look like.

In the face of hostility, it looks like “(s)triv(ing) for peace with everyone.” Our Savior himself said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:44) And he prayed on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) When you and I encounter suffering from our culture or from our own family, what is our response? Is it the response of faith that strives for peace? Or is it the response of hate for hate that forgets that we, too, were once enemies of God until Christ made peace for us?

But lest we think that striving for peace means conformity to culture, we see the words attached to the same verb – “to strive.” “Strive…for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” This teaches us that we have a responsibility that comes from the grace that has been shown to us. God has sent Christ to die for our forgiveness. He has given us the gift of faith and set us on the way to the City He has prepared for us. Will we continue to run away from Him? Though we must all live by grace, repenting and believing in Christ when we depart from the path of faith and walk the brambles of disobedience, the call here that we must be diligent in our commitment to God. And in verses 15-17, the pastor fleshes out how that looks.

It looks like watching out for each other, helping each other live in the grace God has shown to us. It looks like being on guard against the bitterness that comes so easily to people who suffer, developing a victim-mentality instead being matured by the suffering as sons of God.

And committed pilgrimage looks like honoring God with our entire selves, especially our sexuality. In Ancient Rome and in the United States, the allure of sexual sin in all its forms can be a powerful temptation for pilgrims. But here, to eat one’s fill from that table is to trade the promised destination for a single meal like Esau. Hear and believe that there is forgiveness for that kind of disobedience – thank God! – but hear also that to continue in that unbelief, refusing the warnings, counting the holiness of God as some small thing, trampling the blood of Christ shed for such sin leaves one in danger of being left at that table of scraps forever. It is possible for one to eat at that “banquet in the grave” and forget that there is a feast prepared in the City of God for pilgrims who walk with an active faith, enduring in the grace of God that makes us holy and striving ourselves for that holiness to more and more typify our lives here.

The call of chapter 12 is to endure through suffering as Christian pilgrims because it is God Himself who set us on this journey of purposeful suffering. But what we see in this text is that, ultimately, we are able to endure because…

…God himself has gone before us on this journey of suffering (repeat). As you and I make pilgrimage through suffering, we are to walk (actually run 12:1 tells us) with our eyes “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.” And as we see him, we’re supposed to recognize that God does not put anything on us that He did not put on Jesus.

Throughout the book of Hebrews, we’ve been shown a suffering Savior time and again. 2:10 tells us that “…it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.” If Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith was made perfect through suffering, then we should expect that suffering will have a perfecting result for us, too, so that the holiness and cleansing already accomplished for us by Christ will continue and be brought to completion through the purifying fires of suffering. But the fire will not consume you, Pilgrim. That is the promise of God to you in Christ! Christ suffering was purposeful; it perfected Christ and won freedom and cleansing for us! So, too, is your suffering purposeful. Though redemption has already been accomplished, God is using suffering to perfect you, to shape you into the image of His Son and to teach you more and more to direct your faith to Christ alone.

And as you look to Christ, walking the way of suffering he walked ahead of you, you are walking to the same destination to which Christ has gone before you.

Throughout the Scriptures, Christ is the Suffering Servant, the “Man of Sorrows” with no home, plenty of enemies, who was unjustly condemned and endured the shameful death of the cross. And he walked that path of suffering, says 12:2, “for the joy that was set before him.” You and I are so used to seeing suffering and not being able to see beyond it. But what God set before Christ, He sets before us, too.

Vv. 18-24 are the pastor’s way of helping us to see beyond what is in front of us to the joy that God sets before us. It’s the same joy that God set before Christ and helped him endure in this pilgrim suffering. It’s a vision of the City of God.

[read vv. 18-24 again]

It’s the contrast between Mount Sinai and Mount Zion, between the inability of sinners to approach the holiness of God and the holiness that God Himself gives to those whose faith is in Christ. By faith in Christ, their sin is forgiven because of his sacrifice. By faith in Christ they have been set apart as holy priests in the service of God! By faith in Christ they may draw near to God with confidence. Indeed, as the Church worships our faithful God we “have (already) come,” verse 22 says, to the same joyful presence to which Christ went before us.

This is your promised destination, pilgrim. And you will arrive there in the end as you hold fast to Christ by faith. So, do not fear the suffering you see nor think it to be the displeasure of your God. Listen to the Word of Christ that tells you what you have in Him cannot be taken away from you. You have the Father’s love because of Christ. You have been given a clean conscience and restored to the service of God by faith in Jesus. You are a pilgrim walking by faith in Christ to the promised destination; the City of God where Christ is. All the sufferings you see and the threats that face the children of God will be shaken away by our God in the end. But the City of God will remain forever because the Son remains forever (1:11). That is why 12:28 urges us to “be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus [that is, by being grateful] let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”

We do not know much about Alexander, whose faith was mocked so long ago. But it seems as though he did offer grateful worship to God in the face of suffering. I say that not because of the picture on the front of the bulletin (though that might be testimony enough) but because in the chamber beside the one marked with the mocking graffito, there is written in a different hand two words in reply, it seems. It says, “ALEXAMENOS FIDELIS” – Alexander is faithful.[1] In someone’s eyes, Alexander’s worship of Christ was seen for what is really was – the faith-filled worship of a grateful heart willing to endure suffering for the sake of Christ.

And you, pilgrim, will be called faithful by your God as you receive by faith what He gives to you. And though you often receive purposeful suffering for now, He gives you the promise that it will not always be so. The suffering of today is “…light momentary affliction [which] is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18) So, we suffer and look to the City of the Living God and to Jesus in the sure hope that soon and very soon we will reach our promised destination.

[Pray – Father, we praise you for your loving discipline and faithfulness in treating as sons. We ask you, Father, that you would encourage our weak hearts because this present suffering makes us so prone to forget. Help us to endure all that you have for us with eyes fixed on Jesus, trusting Him more that what our eyes can see. Our desire is to live in gratitude for the redemption He has accomplished for us – to strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness with which we will see your loving face. Help us, forgive us, have mercy on us – all for Christ’s sake. And lead us on in faith, Father, as we run the race of suffering you have set before us, going toward the City where we will live with you forever. There we will not be so enamored of what we see as much as who we see, for there we will see our Savior, Jesus, face to face; the Savior who suffered for us so that we might enter into your joy. In His name we hope and pray. Amen.]

[Transition to the Lord’s Supper]

Charles Spurgeon said, "We must bear the world’s scorn. It breaks no bones. God helping us, let us be bold, and when the world rages let it rage, but let us not fear it.” If we would live this way, enduring mocking and all suffering for the sake of Christ, then here is the help God gives to pilgrims along the way. Here is the nourishment you need and the strength for the journey. Here is the body and blood of your faithful Savior to be received by faith alone. He endured suffering greater than we know to rescue us and by this meal he assures us that what he began he will finish. He died for you and he will lead you home to where he is. Believe him and eat, pilgrims.

[Benediction, from Hebrews 13:20-21]

“Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”

[1] Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004, p. 244.