Cornerstone Mission Church, Sunday Sermon July 27, 2008
Let me show you a clip from YouTube. It’s a Nike commercial featuring Lance Armstrong.
I came across this question on www.scienceline.org, “How many cheeseburgers does Lance Armstrong need to eat?” Well, the article actually answers this question, “How much calories does it take to power all of the riders during 21 days and about 2,200 miles of bicycling?” The answer is the equivalent of 72,000 cheeseburgers. That’s a lot of cheeseburgers.
The New York Times has a section called The Climb. On the June 11, 2008, Robert Mackey wrote an articled titled, “Welcome to the Cult.”[1] Or, should I call it “Welcome to the Cult of pain.” Rob is a 41 year-old web journalist and novice cyclist. He signed up for L’Etape du Tour, the single stage of the Tour de France open to amateurs. To 25 days to L’Etape, he was seeking to understand the ability to endure the “suffering” as the most essential attribute of the riders who compete in the Tour. Mackey chronicled what people have been saying in the past about the Tour.
An article on the Tour in 1935 spoke of riders as “suffering in the dust of the roads and in the snowy climbs. There are masks of pain, the grimace of effort, the bitter smile of victory.”
A newspaper article in 1938 reads how the riders “accept suffering as if it was a condition of their occupation” and describes the faces of those who finished their race as “ravaged faces” and “their hollow cheeks, their yellow eyes, the froth on their lips.”
Raphaël Géminiani, who rode the Tour in the 1940s and 1950s, said that “the champion is the one who knows how to suffer the best.”
Bernard Hinault, a five time winner of the Tour, cycling “leads man beyond suffering... one of the only ones to combine so intensely suffering and danger to make them the daily lot of all those who puruse it as a high level.”
Now, Lance Armstrong we saw in Nike commercial was quoted by Michael Specter in The New Yorker in 2002, “the people who win are the ones willing to suffer the most”. Michael Specter commented, “Suffering is to cyclists what poll data are to politicians; they reply on it to tell them how well they are doing their job. Like many of his competitors in the peloton, Armstrong seems to love pain, and even to crave it.”
Armstrong wrote in his autobiography, “Cycling is so hard, the suffering is so intense, that it’s absolutely cleansing… The pain is so deep and strong that a curtain descends over your brain… Once, someone asked me what pleasure I took in riding for so long, ‘Pleasure?’ I said, ‘I don’t understand the question.’ I didn’t do it for pleasure. I did it for pain.”
Now, compare all these sayings with Acts 14:22. Apostle Paul and Barnabas said, “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” Something that is inherent in the gospel makes either a person to believe or reject. The gospel divides people either for or against it. And, the disciples are to anticipate hardships caused by the oppositions.
- How the gospel caused the divisions in human responses…
In chapter 13, we read about the positive and antagonistic responses from the people of Pisdian Antioch to apostle’s Paul’s message. You see in 13:49-51, while the word of Lord spread through the whole region, the word of Lord also caused persecution against Paul and Barnabas. And they were expelled from the region.
And, when they moved on to the next city, Iconium, they met very positive responses where a great number of Jews and Gentiles believed, but again they met a strong opposition from the Jews who refused to believe and stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers (v. 1-2).
And, what was Paul and Barnabas’ response against these who tried to poison the new believers? Verse 3, we see them spending considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, and to this God confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to do miraculous sings and wonders.
And, verse 4 we read what the gospel does to people. It divides! “The people of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews, others with the apostles.” Why did they experience hardships? It is because the messengers of the gospel of Jesus Christ is to some the smell of death, while to others the fragrance of life (2 Corinthians 2:15). Disgust is the natural human response to awful smell. And, to some the gospel of Jesus Christ is disgusting and intolerable. This is where the hardships came from for Paul and Barnabas.
Earlier in 14:3 we saw them boldly speaking for the Lord, but having learned the plot by these Jews to mistreat and to stone them, we see them in 14:6, fleeing Iconium to the Lycaonian cities of Lystra and Derbe and to the surrounding country. This was not a cowardly act, but a prudent response. What they were up against was the mop mentality of irrationality that couldn’t be reasoned. This gives credence to the exit strategies for the missionaries who may face similar irrational mop scene.
During my family’s stay at Maranatha conference center this past week, we met Mark and Stacy and their four children. They told us how they had to the eastern Africa when a civil war broke out. Their daughter Kaitlyn remembers how they each could only take one bag to carry with them.
Having fled Iconium to Lystra, we see Paul ministering to the crippled man just like Peter did in Acts 3 by healing him to stand on his feet. When the Lystrains saw the crippled man jumped up and began to walk, we see them worshiping Paul and Barnabas as though they were Hermes and Zeus, gods.
Here were Paul and Barnabas, telling them to turn from the idols and gods they believed, from these worthless things to the living God, the true creator who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them. Now, they faced the very opposite of what they wanted to see; instead of seeing them turn to the living God, they now faced these people turning to them as though they were gods, the idols.
Verse 14, you see them tearing their clothes, rushing out into the crowd, and shouting, trying to get them to see the true living God. But, it wasn’t working too well. They seemed determined to sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas.
And, here were the Jews from Antioch and Iconium inciting this crowd against Paul and Barnabas, against their call to turn to the living God from the false worship.
And, now look at verse 19 with me. These Jews and the crowd wanted nothing to do with the good news brought by Paul and Barnabas. Once ready to make Paul and Barnabas their gods, now they want to get rid of them. They decided to go after Paul, the main speaker, stoning and dragging him outside the city. Seeing that they thought Paul was dead, he probably lost his conscious.
And, verse 20, we see a beautiful picture of the disciples gathering around him, helping him to his feet and going back to the city. To be hanging around with the guy who got stoned by the crowd isn’t exactly the kind of thing that your mom would want you to do. But, here they were putting themselves out there in danger and surrounding Paul and caring for him.
Paul and Barnabas left Lystra for Derbe next day. Again, we see them going at it in verse 21, preaching the good news and wining a large number of disciples.
Now, we are finally back to 14:22, the verse we began earlier. “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” They were making their ways back to the cities they were driven out and almost got killed. They did this to strengthen and encourage the disciples to remain true to the faith.
- Since the gospel causes division in human response, to remain true to the faith in the gospel requires training and enduring through hardships.
Jesus said in Matthew 10:34-38,
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn “a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law- a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”
The gospel divides people. Jesus Christ is not after the halfhearted, compromised faith that struggles to maintain peace with the world.
Jesus pushes for the decision from us, either to learn from him and stand for him or reject him and stand against him.
Jesus wants to raise up his disciples who will stand for the gospel at all cost, even to be stoned to death, even to be marginalized for intimacy, with Jesus and belief in him.
A simplest definition of “disciple” is “learner.”
What will determine you and me to be good disciples or not hinges on how well you and I learn from Jesus. If Jesus shied away from pain, suffering, humiliation, rejection, death, there would be no greatest story to be told; there would be no salvation, forgiveness, eternity; no new heaven and new earth. Without Christ suffering, carrying the cross, going way out of his comfort zone, we would have to face the sheer terror of God’s wrath against our sins.
So, as disciples, learners, we need to learn that pain, inconvenience, being stretched way out of comfort zone, hardships are all part of what it means to follow Jesus.
Phil 1:28-30 says, “not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him.” 1 Thess. 3:3-4, “no one should be unsettled by these trials. You know quite well that we were destined for them. In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way as, as you well know.” Luke 9:23-24, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
As with Jesus, pain is not the end of the story. If pain, misery, suffering, incontinence, hardship is to define the conclusion of my life, that is truly sad and terrible story. But as Jesus’ pain and suffering resulted in joy, we are called to the same thing.
Romans 8:17 says, “We share in his sufferings in order that we may also hare in his glory.” 2 Timothy 2:12, “if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us.”
Lance Armstrong said, “I didn’t do it for pleasure. I did it for pain.” Yet, if the reality was that all his pain mounted up to nothing, not finishing any of Tour, no glory of winning the Tour de France, but just plain pain, nothing but pain… well that would have been a pathetic, miserable life. But, the reality was that training and enduring through pain got him in the winners’ circle. Yes, he is right that he didn’t do it for pleasure, but for pain. But, the truth be known, pain didn’t have the final say. It was the joy of winning, accomplishing. It was the finish line that motivated him to push through pain to keep paddling till he arrived and finished the race.
We must ask. If we are called to the journey of pain, to learn pain and suffering as Jesus did and to experience the true joy, why do we shy away from training and enduring through pain!
Ajith Fernando has this to say about Christian life; “a reason why they have not suffering is that they are being disobedient to God… the cross of suffering is something we take on through obedience or something that we can avoid if we wish.”[2] Pain and suffering works as refiner’s fire, “through which their faith is strengthened and their motives purified.”[3]
Look at apostle Paul’s life. He didn’t have to keep going at it with the gospel, after being driven out, being pushed, shoved, inconvenienced and worse stoned viciously and hated. Why not just ignore and reject the world for it is perishing? Why not simply say, “It is not my business.” Yet, he wrote about “troubles, hardships and distresses, beatings, imprisonments and riots, hard work, sleepless nights and hunger in 2 Corinthians 6:4-5 as a faithful learner after Jesus.[4]
In “Joy Will Come in Its Own Time,” A. W. Tozer wrote:
Christ calls men to carry a cross; we call them to have fun in his name. He calls them to forsake the world; we assure them that if they but accept Jesus the world is their oyster. He calls them to suffer; we call them to enjoy all the bourgeois comforts modern civilization affords. He calls them to self-abnegation and death; we call them to spread themselves like green bay trees or perchance even to become stars in a pitiful fifth-rate zodiac. He calls them to holiness; we call them to a cheap and tawdry happiness that would have been rejected with scorn by the least of the Stoic philosophers… We can afford to suffer now; we’ll have a long eternity to enjoy ourselves. And our enjoyment will be valid and pure, for it will come in the right way in the right time.[5]
- Conclusion
I’ve been working out for the last several months. I am beginning to understand what Armstrong said about doing it for pain.
Five minutes of running, my leg muscles stiffen, pain shoots up to my brain, and I want to stop, I want to quit. But, then I remember that if I push through this pain, I could run little longer.
I lift that weight off my chest, once, twice, third, forth… oh, it is getting heavier, sixth and it hurts now. Again, I want to rest the weight and stop the pain. But, then I remember that last two or three lifting with real pain is what builds muscles. So, I push through pain.
Strangely, now I find myself craving for pain, craving for my muscles to be stretched, my lungs to be stretched with fresh air. I begin to understand how training through pain gives you satisfying result!
Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:25, “Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.”
To young Timothy, he wrote, “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”
For having to preached again and again in spite of the great humiliation, pain, suffering, and being stoned, for the disciples to surround the wounded Paul even though it was dangerous to do so, to remain true to the faith under pressure, trials, hardships, it requires training and enduring through pain.
This is why Jesus said in Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” You enter the kingdom of God by going through many hardships!
You must ask, “Does the prize of knowing God, being known to him, does the prize of getting things done for his glory, does the prize of winner’s crown, the does the prize of joy of Christ worth training through and enduring pain?”
Let’s go for race!
[1] http://theclimb.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/ready-to-edit-and-publish-welcome-to-the-cult/
[2] Fernando, Ajith. “Contemporary Significance” In NIV Application Commentary, New Testament: Acts. By Ajith Fernando, 408. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, © 1998.
[3] Ibid., p. 408
[4] Fernando, Ajith. “Contemporary Significance” In NIV Application Commentary, New Testament: Acts. By Ajith Fernando, 408. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, © 1998.
[5] Fernando, Ajith. “Contemporary Significance” In NIV Application Commentary, New Testament: Acts. By Ajith Fernando, 409. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, © 1998.
A.W. Tozer, “Born After Midnight,” pp.141-142, Christian Publications, 1989:
“Strange, is it not, that we dare without shame to alter, to modulate the words of Christ while speaking for Christ to the very ones for whom He died? Christ calls men to carry a cross; we call them to have fun in His name. He calls them to forsake the world; we assure them that if they but accept Jesus the world is their oyster. He calls them to suffer; we call them to enjoy all the bourgeois comforts modern civilization affords. He calls them to self-abnegation and death; we call them to spread themselves like green bay trees or perchance even to become stars in a pitiful fifth-rate religious zodiac. He calls them to holiness; we call them to a cheap and tawdry happiness that would have been rejected with scorn by the least of the Stoic philosophers.
In a world like this, with conditions being what they are, what should a serious-minded Christian do? The answer is easy to give but hard to follow.
First, accept the truth concerning yourself. You do not go to a doctor to seek consolation but to find out what is wrong and what to do about it. Seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Seek through Jesus Christ a right relation to God and then insist upon maintaining a right relationship to your fellow man. Set about reverently to amend your doings. Magnify God, mortify the flesh, simplify your life. Take up your cross and learn of Jesus Christ to die to this world that He may raise you up in due time.
If you will do these things in faith and love, you will know peace, but it will be the peace of God that passes all understanding. You will know joy, but it will be the joy of resurrection, not the irresponsible happiness of men who insist on carnal enjoyments. You will know the comfort of the indwelling Spirit which will often spring up like a well of water in the desert, not because you have sought it but have sought rather to do the will of God at any price.
We can afford to suffer now; we’ll have a long eternity to enjoy ourselves. And our enjoyment will be valid and pure, for it will come in the right way at the right time.”
