And let me say again good morning and let me express my gratitude to each and every single one of you for coming along this morning to the ‘Try Church’ gathering here at Greenview. Over these past few days I’ve seen the south side of Glasgow take a number of very significant steps towards celebrating Christmas. So as I’ve said already my parents are in Clarkston, they were in Stamperland before they were in Clarkston, I’m in Eaglesham so I’m regularly running that route up and down Waterford Road to get down there to see them.

(0:31 – 1:19)

I’m already seeing lights being stretched across town centres and across front and back gardens. I saw adverts for the first time yesterday advertising supermarket chains and soft drink companies. We seem to be on a collision course already with Christmas, it has snuck up on us once more, it’s that time of year already.

And it is a time of year that I think causes some of us, perhaps even most of us, to stop and to reflect on the past 12 months or so. Now we might do that on a bigger scale, thinking about our world, thinking about our country, and we might also do it on a personal scale. I do both, I imagine you do too.

(1:20 – 2:20)

We think about our own lives, our own circumstances, our own relationships, and much much more besides. Now there will be examples of times this year when we’ve seen real positive progress as a country. I’m sure some of us can think of science, medicine, other things that we’ve seen in our world and we’ve thought that’s good news, it’s great that that has happened.

And there will be examples of times this year I’m sure where we see positive progress in our own lives as individuals, either through employment, relationships, other endeavours, we think to ourselves it’s good that that has happened. But whether there are many of those examples or few that are flickering through our brains right now, it’s unavoidably true that we inhabit a world where there is suffering. And that suffering produces a degree of uncertainty.

(2:22 – 5:45)

So there will be examples of times this year when we’ve watched our screens, not in delight, but in horror, disgust, perhaps even fear. There will be examples of times this year when we’ve sat at home on our own with others and what we see on our screens and what we feel in our hearts brings us an anxiety. Anxiety for our own circumstances, anxiety for the circumstances of those close to us.

And at times it feels like life has a way of not really giving us much of a breather. It feels like one wave seems to hit us after the other and we don’t have time to find our feet between these moments. We live in a world where suffering is real and it produces uncertainty, questions, concerns.

And when it comes to Christianity we might feel a degree of scepticism. Scepticism that there is a good God out there or that there could ever be a good God out there given what we see and given what we experience, given the way that we suffer and given the way that the world suffers as it does. So if there is a God it seems like he either could do something about suffering but he chooses not to.

Or maybe he’d love to do something about suffering but he lacks the ability to do things. So perhaps he is actually in total control of everything as a God ought to be. But for whatever reason he leaves us to suffer.

He leaves us in our suffering perhaps in the way that we deserve or perhaps in a vindictive way. Alternatively perhaps he really wants to help and he tries to do what he can but he just seems to fall asleep on the job at times. Things seem to slip through the net when he’s not looking.

Is that the God of Christianity? Well let me pause and say two things at this stage. Firstly as somebody who himself is a persuaded follower of Jesus, if God were either unwilling or unable to do anything with our suffering, if he was unwilling or unable to deal with suffering, he is not a God that I would want to follow. No human being, least of all me, would be interested in following a God who enjoys evil, who enjoys injustice, or he’s too weak to put a stop to these things.

And I’m sure we would all agree with that as we gather here this morning. Secondly I begin this way to show that this is something that we as Christians, we as those who follow Jesus, this is something that we have done a lot of thinking about over the months and over the years of our own lives. We have thought a lot about the way, we are very aware of the way in which we individually and corporately struggle.

(5:47 – 8:04)

See throughout the years some have suggested that Christianity stands as a means of sugarcoating the worst parts of our world, that Christianity is a fairy story for those who are afraid of the dark. Now there’s loads that we could say about that. I hope it suffices at this stage to say that I don’t believe that’s true.

I don’t think there are many Christians out there who would believe that that was true. If you were to ask the Christian friends and family that you have, I think they would tell you of moments of real difficulty, real hardship, real struggle, real suffering. I don’t think I’ve suffered any less as I’ve grown older as a Christian.

I think perhaps if anything I’ve suffered more. It’s been the opposite. So what answers could Christianity possibly have to the suffering that you face, to the suffering that I face, to the suffering that we face in this world? What certainty amidst the suffering could Jesus provide for someone like you, someone like me, as we gather here this morning? Well just for the next 15 minutes or so, as we spend a bit of time looking at those verses that Lucy read out for us, let me just make two hopefully fairly simple, fairly straightforward observations.

The first one is that God sympathises with us in our suffering. God sympathises with us in our suffering. When I was an undergraduate student, I had a part-time job at a local pizza delivery service.

I won’t say which one because I know we all have our favourites. I don’t want to lose half the room. We at this pizzeria would, I can’t call it a pizzeria, it wasn’t a pizzeria, we would occasionally have visits from our area managers.

Now from memory, our area managers were our boss’s boss’s boss. That was kind of where they sat in the hierarchy and when they came to do an inspection, they always decided to come during the busiest parts of the week. Now I assume that was deliberate.

(8:05 – 14:03)

It certainly didn’t help to keep everybody calm, least of all our managers. Now there were two very distinct styles that our area managers would take when they came to do a store inspection. One manager would come in with a clipboard, pen in hand, he would stand in the corner of the kitchen area, he would watch us at a distance, he would tut and shake his head whenever we got something wrong and he never had anything positive to say about anything that we did.

And then there was another who would come along and this manager had a very very different style. See this area manager would put on his apron, he would roll up his sleeves, he would sanitise his hands and he would help us out in whatever way we needed. And see some of us I imagine might think that God, if there is one, is much much more like the former of those two approaches.

As he looks at a chaotic world like the one in which we live, he doesn’t want to get too close if he’s being honest with you. And so he keeps his distance, he hangs back and he shouts instructions at us from afar as to how we might get better, as to how we might improve. But actually the God that we meet in the Bible is so much closer to the second of those two approaches that I mentioned earlier.

We read of a God who, if you like, rolls up his sleeves, steps into our mess, comes into our world, steps into our brokenness, steps into our suffering and sympathises with us. These verses that we read earlier, they’re written around 2,600 years ago and they speak of the arrival of somebody who matches and meets a really really specific description. So we read in verse 2 of a man who had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

We read in verse 3 of a man who was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, someone who is familiar with pain. And we read again in verse 4 of a man who took up our pain, bore our suffering. And then 600 years later, after these verses are written, a man walks on the earth in the area of Judea and Samaria.

And this is a man who claims to be the son of God. He claims that he is truly God stepping into our world, born as a baby, born to experience the aches and pains of this world, born to know what it is to live in a broken world, to be betrayed by those closest to him, to suffer the greatest injustice imaginable as he dies as an innocent man executed on a Roman cross. Now these are all things that humanity would naturally howl at, betrayal, injustice, the death of the innocent.

And yet this man, Jesus, experienced them all. God the Son becomes a man and steps into our world to sympathise with us in our suffering, knowing a degree and a depth of pain that I most likely will never know. Now if that is true, let me suggest two really quick observations here.

Firstly, if Jesus really is the son of God as he claims to be, if he really did suffer in the way that history tells us that he did, then suffering in our world is not a direct consequence of what someone deserves. So I’ve heard one or two people express in moments of difficulty over the years, and maybe you’ve felt this as you sit here this morning, you feel like karma has finally caught up with you, that you’re finally being punished for something that you have done historically. I know one or two people who have spoken to you about this very subject who have suggested that.

Can I say with clarity that is not the message of the Bible, that is not the gospel that Christians believe, that is not what Jesus came to share. See if Jesus is truly God, he is perfectly pure, perfectly good, perfectly holy, and yet he knows and suffers some of the most horrible ways of suffering imaginable. He is breathing the air of a broken reality throughout his entire life, as you are and as I am.

He has plunged into an imperfect world as you are, as I am, but his suffering is not because of something he did or didn’t do. We mustn’t think for a minute that our God is out to get us, and that is why we suffer as we do. Our God is not out to get us, our God is out to help us.

(14:04 – 14:37)

Which leads me on to our second quick observation. See if Jesus really was the son of God as he claimed to be, if Jesus really did suffer in the way that he did as history tells us, then God knows firsthand how hard our world is. God knows firsthand how hard our lives can be, and God offers us firsthand support and strength in these moments of difficulty.

(14:38 – 16:01)

It means that a Christian can turn to Jesus in the midst of whatever he or she is going through and say to Jesus, I find this really, really hard. This is really difficult for me. I don’t know if I can bear this or not.

And rather than our God standing at a distance, shooting us a quizzical look, not quite understanding what we’re going through, instead we meet a Jesus who is gentle, who is caring, and who says, I know, I know what that is like. I experienced that for myself. I know how hard that can be.

I know what it is you’re going through, and I’m here to help. See, as a Christian, I can draw a tremendous amount of comfort from what stands as the objective reality that Jesus identifies with me in my struggles. So I can safely dismiss the idea that God doesn’t care that we were thinking about earlier on.

(16:01 – 18:21)

I cannot read the accounts of Jesus’ life as he is born, as he grows to become a man, as he goes about his earthly work. I cannot conclude that he is indifferent to the aches and pains of this world, not when he experienced them himself, willingly, in order to sympathise with us, his people. Instead, I can draw a tremendous amount of comfort from the objective reality that Jesus knows every single intricate detail of what every single one of us is going through.

And he offers you strength this morning. He offers you comfort, often through a community of other battered and bruised believers, often through the company of other flawed followers of Jesus. He helps us, directly sustains us through all the ups and downs that our world throws at us.

But that’s not all that our God offers, and that leads me on to the second heading this morning. And with this, I’ll begin to draw things to a close. So not only does God sympathise with us in our suffering, he also saves us from a world of suffering.

So over the coming Christmas period, I imagine there will be a number of attempts made to build something out of a box for a child, a grandchild, a niece or a nephew. I’m sure you know the sort of thing I’m talking about, a Lego model, a Duplo model, a kid’s kitchen. I’m sure at some point there will be instruction manuals littered across a carpet somewhere, and just bits and pieces all around, some getting knocked under the sofa where they will remain for a number of months.

And every year for me, there’s that soul-crushing moment when you look at the blueprint for how something should look, and then you see what it is that you have standing in front of you in reality. Now, I’d like to say that my attempts to build these sorts of things are often fairly good. My father was an engineer, and I like to think I have some sort of engineering blood residually pumping its way through my veins.

(18:21 – 22:15)

But with an alarming regularity, when I look at the Lego model or the kid’s kitchen, it tends to just lean slightly one way or the other. Now, I’ve tried to explain multiple times that that’s exactly how it’s supposed to look. I’ve taken the box and tilted it slightly so people can see that that’s how it’s supposed to look.

I’ve taken the instruction manual and just tilted it slightly so that people see that that’s how it’s supposed to look. Nobody’s ever fooled. They know that the final product that they have in front of them is not how it’s supposed to be.

And I think we feel that same innate sense as human beings when we look at our lives, when we look at our world. We get little flickers at what the world could be. We see little glimpses as to what the world could look like.

We might even have a sense of what we think the world is supposed to look like, but the reality is very, very different. And the God of the Bible agrees with that. He agrees with that sense in us that something is wrong.

See, in his original design for the world, there was no suffering. It’s not something God ever wanted for us to experience. It’s not something that God ever intended for us to experience.

We read at the start of the Bible story of a perfect world where there is beauty, where there is plenty, where there is complete harmony between humanity, complete harmony between God and humanity. And the world is then broken. The world is then marred.

It’s scarred when humanity decides that we want to become like God, that we want to reject his laws, push him away from our hearts, and we decide for ourselves what is good and what is evil. Somebody once described it to me as if you complete a jigsaw puzzle on a table, and someone comes along and smacks the side of the table, and the jigsaw ruptures into different bits and pieces, you can still see a glimpse of what it should look like, but it’s now broken and needs to be fixed. And that is the world in which we live.

And the cause is the human rebellion against the God who made us. And these are actions that carry continuous consequences for our world, for our lives, that so often leads to the suffering that we experience in our day-to-day lives. We’re separated from the God of life, and so we know a world where there is death.

We’re separated from the God of love, and so we now know a world where there is hatred. We’re separated from the God of truth, and so we now know a world full of lies and deceit. We’re separated from the God who is good, who cannot have anything to do with evil and sin, and so we now know a world that contains both, as do our hearts.

And so what is God’s response to this? Well, he diagnoses the problem, and he offers us a solution. So verse 6 of chapter 53, he says there, we all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way.

(22:17 – 23:08)

That’s true of you as you sit here this morning. It’s certainly true of me as I stand here this morning. There is that tendency in each and every single one of our hearts to shy away from the God who made us, to push him away from us, perhaps because we want autonomy, perhaps because we don’t want him to interfere in our lives, perhaps because we think we’re good enough without him.

And yet we see from our own lives, we see from our world, and we hear Jesus saying to us that we are not better off without him, but actually we really desperately need him. And so he offers us a solution. Verse 6 again, the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

(23:10 – 24:20)

And then again in verse 8, by oppression and judgement he was taken away, yet who of his generation protested? He was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgression of my people, he was punished. See, we deserve to be separated from our God.

That would be right. But God sent his son Jesus to suffer so that we can be made right with him again. God sent his son Jesus to suffer to take the consequences for our sin upon himself so that we can be made right again, so that we can know our God again, so that we can be restored to the relationship that we were made for.

Again in verse 5, look down with me, it says there that he was pierced for our transgressions on that cross. He was crushed for our iniquities on that cross. The punishment that brought us peace was on him instead.

(24:20 – 25:22)

And by his wounds, we are healed. See, 2,000 years ago, Jesus offers every single human being a swap. He offers to take our sins and the consequences for our sins, the times when we’ve rejected God, rejected his laws upon himself.

And instead he offers us peace, peace with God, peace with God’s people. He promises us healing, a solution to our suffering, a world where there is no more evil, no more estrangement, no more dying, no more death, no more disease, no more suffering, no more sickness, no more struggles. See, Jesus promises that he is coming back one day, and he is going to make everything new again.

(25:25 – 25:37)

And as you read the accounts of his life, you’ll see that there is plenty of reason to trust him. There are plenty of reasons to trust his words. There are plenty of reasons to trust his promises.

(25:38 – 26:20)

We see the miracles that he shows his people again and again, as you read through one of the accounts of his life, as he heals those who have sickness, as he forgives those who have sinned, as he raises people from death to life. All of these things are just little windows, just little glimpses of the world that is to come, the world that he is working on, the world that he will one day come back to share with everybody who trusts in him. See, I said earlier on that we can’t read these accounts of Jesus’ life and conclude that he doesn’t care about us, because he’s willing to step into our world to sympathise with us in our suffering.

(26:22 – 29:31)

Well, nor can I read the accounts of Jesus’ life and conclude that he can’t do anything about it, because he does, time and time again, the biggest evidence of which is an empty tomb three days after he died, where Jesus has come back to life. And so the big question that I end with is, well, why hasn’t he done something about it yet? If we believe that Jesus is coming back to remake the world, to be free from all of these things that haunt us in our heads and in our hearts, why hasn’t he done something? Well, in order to do what he is going to do, Jesus is going to make everything new again. He is coming to put sin and evil to an end once and for all.

And if there is sin and evil in our hearts, we don’t deserve a spot in that new creation, not if we have turned away from God, as we all have. And so that swap that we mentioned earlier on, Jesus hasn’t returned yet because he is waiting. He is waiting for you, and he is waiting for me to turn to him and to ask him for a place in that brand new creation that he offers, a place that he is so willing and so able to give you.

I’m getting married this coming summer, and we’re at the stage now where we’re just beginning to send out invitations and put pictures on the invitations and come up with a wedding registry and a gift list, which always feels like a really horrifically awkward thing to do, to just ask a group of people to buy you things because you love someone. Now, Ashton and I, we could get married tomorrow. We could get married on Monday the 17th of November.

Let me tell you, nobody would be there. What we want to do instead is to wait, send out the invites, wait for people to accept so that they’re there. And that is why God waits for us now.

He has sent out the invites through Jesus. He sends out the invites as every single Christian turns to someone and says, hey, do you want to find out more about Jesus? He is giving you and giving me a chance to turn to him and to ask him to be a part of that eternal project that he is working on, a world free from suffering where we will be with him forever. And so his patience for now is an opportunity for you to turn to him and to ask him for a new life.

(29:32 – 29:52)

For forgiveness. That gives me as a Christian so much hope for the present, that in the midst of everything that I face, in the midst of everything that we face, this world is not the final chapter of my story. And it doesn’t need to be the final chapter of your story either.

(29:53 – 30:14)

That this world, full of suffering as it is, is as bad as it gets. And actually there is the promise of a brand new world that is coming. Now if that is even perhaps possibly true, that is an offer that I have to take very, very seriously.

(30:16 – 31:13)

If that’s perhaps possibly true, I need to respond. And so this Christmas, as we celebrate the Christmas lights, we’ll probably at one point hear and see the words Emmanuel come up, perhaps on the Christmas card, perhaps we’ll sing it in a Christmas carol at some point. That word Emmanuel simply means God’s with us.

Jesus was born as a baby and God stepped into our world to sympathise with us in our suffering. He came and died on a cross so that we would have an invitation to one day go to a world that is free from suffering, a world that he will remake. And in the meantime, he waits so that as many of us as possible accept his invitation.

(31:15 – 32:16)

And so my plea to you this morning is to ask him, ask him for forgiveness, trust in him to give you what you need as he sustains you through a life where we do suffer, a suffering that he knows, and then gives you all that he promises for the future, a brand new world where these things will be no more. I’m going to stop there and I’m going to pray. I’m going to pray a very, very simple prayer in response to everything that we’ve looked at this morning and then I’ll hand over to Zach.

Let me pray. Father, we thank you that Jesus knows what it is to suffer and in him we have somebody who has suffered in the ways that we have and so many more ways besides. Thank you, Father, that you’re not indifferent to our suffering and thank you, Father, for the promise of a world one day which is free from all these things.

(32:17 – 32:33)

Help us to understand how important it is that we are there and help us to understand how important it is that we are forgiven by you so that we can be there one day. Give us everything we need to understand this for ourselves, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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