Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRO

Church family it is so good to be back here with the opportunity to share with you from God’s word.

It has been a long time!

Before we jump in to the text this afternoon, I want to take just a minute and express some gratitude.

These past two and a half months have been the hardest of my entire life and I will share more about that later on in the sermon.

But during this time I want to say how thankful I have been to you as a church family and the prayers you have offered and the encouragement I have received.

The texts, emails, food, ect have been comforting to me.

I know that God has used your prayers to lead me through this time.

I am thankful for all of the people who have stepped up and filled gaps in all of the areas that are needed here at CityLight.

This is what it means to be the body of Christ.

I want to say from the front how thankful you should be to have elders like John and Rich and their families.

Their leadership has been an enormous encouragement to me and I know they have led well in my absence, and will continue to lead well.

Finally I want to publically say thank you to my wife.

She is the strongest, most faithful person that I have ever met.

And in my dark days, when things were unknown, she has been a strength for me, she has been a picture of Jesus to me, over and over again.

What is God doing in difficult times?

Today I want us to turn our attention to a passage in the New Testament.

But before we get there I want to ask you this question.

For a Christian, what should hard times do in our lives?

What should hard, difficult, dark times do in our lives?

Scott shared last week how in difficult days God gives us permission to lament and to bring our complaints before the Lord, but today I want to focus on what the Lord accomplishes in our lives in difficult times.

Main Idea: Difficulty develops spiritual growth in our lives.

Hard times can produce holy lives.

As one author put it, the bitter can make us better.

Difficulty Destroys Self-Sufficiency

Treasure:

What is the treasure?

Jesus.

The Gospel.

We have been given this treasure.

What difficulty can do is burns away all of the other treasures in your life.

Comfort, health, your family, and brings you to this place where you see that your relationships with Jesus is the greatest treasure that you have.

Suffering “burns the fat off(燃燒脂肪)” our souls.

I have had days where I struggled to pray.

Where I could not feel God’s presence.

Where my faith was being attacked.

In those difficult moments, I can tell you, what was most important to me was not my health, was not my status, it was my relationships to Jesus.

My treasure.

If you had treasure where would you store it?

Maybe you have an heirloom wedding ring, or some kind of expensive object.

Where would you store it?

In a safe?

In a nice box?

Where has God placed this treasure?

In weak, clay vessels.

Why did God do this?

Paul tells you why.

“to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.”

In Paul’s life his weakness was a platform for the glory of God.

His weakness, his suffering, was a platform to display the power of God.

Reminded of Mary who broke the vessel at Jesus’ feet: in the same way how is God’s surpassing power shown?

Many times it is through the breaking of the vessel.

It is the breaking down of the idol of self sufficiency in our lives.

“We ARE”

Paul is speaking to us today as a fellow sufferer.

afflicted in every way:

perplexed

persecuted

struck down

These words have to do with both mental and physical suffering.

There is something comforting how Paul comes to us as a fellow sufferer.

He has experienced suffering that none of us will have to experience.

Look at us Paul says:

if you feel this way today.

If you feel perplexed, if you are going through suffering, if you are mentally attacked or physically in pain, Paul says welcome to the club.

This is what it means to be a clay vessel.

This is the normal Christian life.

A few weeks ago I was talking to a few people about the last few months in my life.

I was sharing how there have been some dark days, and as I was sharing he took out some medicine in his pocket and said oh this is what I take for this issue, and began to share some other stuff, and said, “we’re all broken”.

That’s right.

We are all broken.

We are all jars of clay.

God does His impressive work through very unimpressive people.

But you will not believe that unless you allow God to destroy your self sufficiency in times of difficulty.

What they did to Jesus they do to us.

We are identifying with the sufferings of Jesus.

We have a Savior who suffered for us, but we also have a High priest who suffers with us.

He can empathize with us.

He knows.

Remember that He knows.

Even though our self sufficiency is being destroyed something else is coming out.

The life of Jesus.

Paul is making a contrast between what is happening to the vessel and what is happening to the treasure.

As the vessel is being broken, the treasure is coming out.

death is at work: through the fallenness of the world, through the attacks of Satan, through our struggle with sin.

This is at work and it is destroying self sufficiency in your life

But something else is at work too: because of the treasure, Jesus’ life.

Only God can bring life from death.

Need application and illustration

church in the midst of covid, easy to put trust in our programs ,ect but what do we do now?

Get on our face and say Jesus we can do nothing apart from you.

Faith Delivers Us Through Difficulty

How do we live this way?

How do we embrace difficulty believing that God’s glory can be displayed?

Since we have the same spirit of faith:

Paul quotes this verse from the Psalms:

In this Psalm David was experiencing suffering, and yet in his time of suffering he said I still believe that I will see the goodness of God.

Faith is not positive thinking.

It isn’t saying “okay well everything will be okay, I’m gonna be okay.”

Faith is a confidence a trust in…??