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Big Idea: Expect to suffer, but trust in God to always keep his covenant promises.

You see it almost every day. It’s so familiar that we don’t even notice it every time. It’s the CN Tower, once the tallest freestanding structure in the world.

I don’t know if you’ve ever thought much about what you don’t see when you look at the CN Tower. One of the most critical components of the structure — anchors that hold steel cables that compress the concrete and give it its strength — can never be replaced, and so they were engineered to last 300 years. Twenty tonne lead weights supported on pendulums in the antennae mast move independently to slow down vibration. The base of the tower floats on bedrock more than 12 meters below ground. The tower sways by a few meters at the top, but you will probably never feel it. It could easily handle the winds of a category one hurricane, and it’s built to withstand an earthquake of 8.5 on the Richter scale. It’s engineered to last.

My question for you today is how we can engineer our lives to last. The CN Tower was built to withstand winds and earthquakes; how can we build our lives so that they will last no matter what comes our way?

This morning we’re beginning a series through an ancient book of the Bible called Exodus. I know that many people find the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, to be more challenging. But we’re going to discover the elements of great story within this book of the Bible. It’s compelling reading. And today in particular, we’re going to wrestle with the question of suffering. The passage we’re examining today poses the question of suffering, and how God’s people can stand up when things get really hard. It’s an important issue to face, because we’re all going to face suffering in our lives.

So if you have your Bibles with you, please turn them to Exodus. Let me give you a bit of background so that we can understand what’s going on. The first word of Exodus in the original language is “and” which implies it’s part of a story that’s already started. As we read this book, we’re already well into a story — a story that’s continuing today, by the way. We’re part of the story.

Here’s what’s happened so far. God created the world, and humanity has messed it up. So God launched a plan to fix what’s wrong with the world. To do so, he chose one family that would become a great nation, and through this nation he promised through a covenant to bless the entire world.

But already in Genesis, this family has come under threat. It looked like a famine would wipe it out. But God brought this family into Egypt, where it grew and thrived. When we get to the start of Exodus, we read: “But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them” (Exodus 1:7). God’s promise was coming true. This small, nomadic family of shepherds family was preserved and grew into a mighty nation.

But then things got bad. We read in verses 8 to 10:

Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.”

And so this nation became a nation of slaves, forced into harsh labor. They lost their identity as an independent nation. They lost their freedom. They lost their ability to live comfortably. And they also lost their influence: those who are lower in the socio-economic scale are less able to organize themselves, and therefore less of a threat. Verse 14 says, that the Egyptians “made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field…

For the past six weeks, we’ve been in a series called Life at Liberty Grace. We’re right on the cusp of launching our charter membership, and so we’ve been looking at how the church is a really big deal. We’ve been looking at the mission of the church. We’ve even been looking at some of the dealbreakers — things like gender and sexuality and church discipline.

And today we’re at the end. How do you finish a series in which you want to launch the first membership of our church? I feel the pressure to be profound and to close the deal. I’m not going to do that. Instead, I want to open my heart to you about this church.

You could call this message today my farewell sermon. No, I’m not leaving. But one day I will, and I hope it’s a long time from now. The day that I leave, I’ll want to share two things with the charter membership of this church. Here they are.

To tell you what you can expect from me, I want to look at a letter that the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica, a church that he had planted. Paul only spent a small amount of time there. We read about it in the first part of Acts 17. In fact, this is the passage that I used when I spoke at the very first vision night for this church.

Thessalonica was the provincial capital of Macedonia. It was a bustling trade city with a lot of diversity. It probably would have had some of the same feel as our own context — a melting pot of different beliefs and lifestyle choices within a busy community.

Here’s what happened. Paul visited there on his second missionary journey. We don’t know exactly how long he stayed, but we do know that he stayed long enough to see the church planted, for a lot of pagans to turn to Christ, and for them to get a sense of his life and character. However long it was, Paul’s time there ended in a riot, and so Paul and Silas were compelled to leave the city.

In 1 Thessalonians, we have one of Paul’s earliest letters, possibly his first. Paul wrote to them not too long after he had to leave them. Because he had so little time among them, he wanted to answer some of their questions and to encourage them. And in chapter 2, he opens up his heart about the kind of ministry he had among them. I want to piggyback off of Paul’s thoughts and reflect on the kind of ministry that I want to have among you.

Here are two things that you can expect from me by God’s grace.

Paul writes:

For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain. But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the midst of much conflict.

I don’t know how many of you know the story of the beginning of this church. Before we moved to Liberty Village, I was warned that church planting would be hard. Our director of church planting in the Fellowship warned me that we would go through more spiritual warfare in one year of church planting than in ten years of pastoring. I nodded, and of course, we continued.

But then we began our first year of church planting. We discovered that he was right. Within ten days of beginning the process of planting this church, we were going through one of the most severe crises we’d ever experienced. I wish I could say that it was only one crisis, but it wasn’t. Within the first year we went through three major crises, one of which almost cost the life of someone in our family. To say that we were battered and bruised would be an understatement.

One day I was complaining to Charlene. I told her that I’d hoped to plant out of a position of having it altogether and having something to offer. She said, “What if our suffering and wea…