Enduring Hardships: The Basics of the Christian Life with Sinclair Ferguson

FERGUSON: We've been talking in these recent studies about some of the characteristics of growing as Christians, and I want us to turn in this particular study to the fact that as Christians we face hardships and difficulties. And it's very important for us, when we become Christians and as we grow as Christians, to realize that that is the case. Often, I think it's true that people come to their pastors or go to counselors because they find that a problem or a difficulty has arisen in their Christian lives that they didn't expect. And often what they are looking for is a quick fix to a particular challenge. And it's so important for us at the beginning of the Christian life, and as we go on as Christians, to realize God is not in the business of quick fixes. What God wants us to understand is the nature of the Christian life.

And the nature of the Christian life is it involves hardships. And one of the reasons it involves hardships is because the Christian life is hard. One of the other reasons it involves hardships is because the Savior we follow constantly had to endure hardships. And so if God is going to make us like His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, it shouldn't surprise us that the Christian life is filled with hardships. And we need to understand that as a general principle. Otherwise, we tend to spend our Christian life looking for easy ways out of difficulties in the Christian life. And if we do that, there are plenty of pseudo-Christian teachers, some of whom will appear on our television sets, who will tell us they can provide us with a rule for the Christian life that will ease all of our difficulties.

And if we don't understand the nature of the Christian life, we are likely to fall prey to these people, and we may end up as apparently vast multitudes of people do financing their false ministries. Sometimes, when I've watched religious programs on television, I've been astonished to see vast companies of people listening to someone who is essentially telling them that what God wants is that their lives will be filled with satisfaction and ease and plenty. And they are sitting there with Bibles on their knees that look as though they needed to buy a new SUV in order to get the Bible to the meeting. And they're nodding, and you think they don't realize that there is really no connection between that book that's on their lap and the words that they're hearing about the nature of the Christian life.

But when you turn to the Gospels and read the Gospel account of what it means to be a Christian, what does it mean? Jesus says, "Unless you deny yourself and take up your cross and follow Me, then you cannot be my disciple." He says, "I faced suffering and if you follow Me you will face suffering." "I have been opposed and if you follow Me, you will be opposed." Now that's not the whole story of the Christian life, but it is a very interesting thing that in the New Testament's teaching the joy that we experience as Christians is actually quite intimately related to the suffering and difficulties that we may encounter as Christians. The two are not opposite to one another. So for example, Paul says in Romans chapter 5, "We rejoice in our sufferings." Now this is a very different view of life from not only the view of life of the health, wealth, and happiness gospel with which we are sometimes surrounded.

It's a very different view of life from the non-Christian view of life. The non-Christian view of life is that suffering is horrible and the only thing we can do is try to alleviate it. What we need to understand is that the gospel view of hardship and suffering is that hardship is productive in the Christian life and is used by God in order to transform us more and more into the likeness of the Lord Jesus. Now, one of the New Testament books that speaks about hardship, difficulty, opposition, and suffering in the Christian life is the letter to the Hebrews. The people who first received this letter were obviously facing hardship of different kinds. Some of them had been disinherited because they'd become Christians. Others of them probably had lost their employment. Some of them had to leave their homes and their families because they'd become Christians.

And the author is writing to them what he calls, although it's 13 chapters long, "this brief word of encouragement," or exhortation. And as he comes to the end in one of the most famous passages in Hebrews, in Hebrews chapter 12, he begins to speak to them about what is necessary for their Christian lives as they face hardships. And there are three concepts he uses that stand out, three words he uses that I want us to think about a little together as we face challenges in the Christian life. The first word is the word "endurance." You remember how he says in Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 3, "Consider Christ who endured from sinners such hostility against himself so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted," and then again in verse 7 he says, "It is for discipline that you have to endure."

Now the word "endurance" here is a very interesting word. It means, at the foot of the letter, it means to remain underneath something. The picture that comes to my mind is when the Olympic Games come around every four years. One of the things I kind of enjoy watching is the weightlifting. Have you watched it? These men come on to a dais, and they are massive, their muscles are bulging, they're wearing these leotards and they pick up these vast weights. I mean the weights of several people, and they heave them up and they quake and shake underneath, and then they push them up and there must be a requisite length of time and a certain straightness in the arms that they have to hold up these weights, and then a buzzer goes and the whole thing comes crashing down because they have succeeded in lifting the weight.

They have succeeded in remaining underneath the pressure of it for long enough to succeed and win the prize. And that's the picture that Hebrews is using here, that there are pressures in our Christian lives, and what we need to learn is to be able to endure them and keep standing. Remember what we said in our study of Ephesians 6:10 through 20, how personally when I read that "having done all you remain standing," when I was a young Christian, I thought that doesn't sound very exciting, but as an older Christian I think that's amazing. And that's what the author of Hebrews is speaking about. And it's interesting, isn't it, you don't learn to endure unless you experience hardships and difficulties that are not easy to endure.

It's a bit like people who, you know, someone flares up and then they say, "Oh, I don't know why that happened. I'm usually a very patient person." And you don't say anything, but you think, "No, you're actually an impatient person whose patience has never been tested." Because you're only patient when you experience realities that cause impatience. And in the same way, think of those great weightlifters. You know how they got there? They woke up in the morning, had their breakfast cereal, wandered along to the arena and signed a form that said, "My name is Joe Smith, and I want to take part in the heavy weight lifting." Is that how they got there? They got there with that ability, through endless hours of aching muscles, through endless hours of preparation, through endless hours of being built up in order that they could sustain the weight.

And the same is true in the Christian life. This is what God is actually doing in our lives. He is seeking to build us up so that when real pressures come upon our lives, we will be able to endure them. That He will be able to say to the angels of heaven, "Look at that little man there. Do you remember what he was like when he started the Christian life? A feather would've knocked him down. But do you see how in our providence we've built him up and what he is now able to endure?" And that's a great thing. I realize it's something that is demeaned in the Christian subculture today, but it is a great thing to be able to endure because it was a great thing that the Lord Jesus was able to endure. I came across a saying of John Bunyan's the other day that really struck me as rather interesting.

Bunyan says, "It is said that there are some countries where trees grow but bear no fruit. Because there, there is no winter". Now I don't know whether that's horticulturally true or not, but it's spiritually true isn't it? That one of the things that puts real character into a Christian is that he or she goes through experiences that require endurance because endurance is part of our Christian growth. And so when we experience hardships, this is the first thing that we need to think about. These hardships are coming my way not to put me into a panic, but so that I may be built up by responding in a gospel way to them and learn what it means to endure like the Lord Jesus.

The second word I want to pick out from this passage is a word that doesn't actually appear in our translations, but it's actually there behind our translations. "Endurance" is the first word. The second word is actually two words hyphenated. It's "child-training." Now if you're using, for example, an English Standard Version, you will not see the word "child-training," but it is the word that's translated in verse 5 as "discipline," in verse 6 as "disciplines," in verse 7 as "discipline," in verse 7 at the end as "discipline," in verse 8 as "discipline," in verse 9 as "disciplined," in verse 10 as "disciplined," and again in verse 10 as "disciplined." So you can hardly miss it. If you're one of those people who underlines your Bible or an old Bible that would be a good word to underline.

And when you do it, it will stand out. Oh, that's it. But the word that lies behind it is a noun or in some instances a verb that really conveys the idea of training up a child. And that's exactly what hardships are for in the Christian life. They are in order to train us up in the family of God and to make us like our elder brother, the Lord Jesus Christ. And I think I mentioned in a previous study that sometimes you meet young men or women who may have great ability, they've come from families with considerable resources. They've never suffered anything. They've never had any privation. They may never really have had to do anything for themselves, and they may have won all the prizes, but they've got very little character. And you see that, at the end of the day, is what lasts for all eternity.

You know, people often ask the question, "Will we recognize one another in the future?" Well, the resurrection body is related to the body that we have, isn't it? It's the self-same body of Jesus that was raised from the dead. And how God will do this is a mystery to us, but it's these bodies that will be transformed in the resurrection from the dead. And make no mistake about it, the same will be true of your character. And that's what God is really interested in. He's really interested in character. What a tragedy it is that our modern society is no longer interested in either character or characters. It's interested in success. It's interested in opinions, but it's very little interested in character. And perhaps, therefore, it shouldn't surprise us that alas the same has been true in the evangelical church. That we are so interested in people's positions or what they do or what they have or how well they speak, when in the New Testament the really big thing is the character.

You know, I don't mean to harp on about this but sometimes you watch preachers and teachers of various kinds on television, and one of the things that really sticks out to you I think is this, if you've any discernment, there's something not right about their character. It may be that they are so obviously full of self. It may be the way they parade themselves. It may be that they have gifts of speech, but they don't seem to have the gift of grace. And at the end of the day, those things are of marginal significance. God is not going to ask me or be very interested in me in terms of, "So, how many books did you write, or how many conferences did you go to?" He's much more discerning than that. What he's really interested in is what kind of person were you.

What was produced in you by the Word of God and the Spirit of God? How well trained were you as My child? And this is a wonderful thing, really. I think it's such a helpful thing for us when we face hardship to remember that hardship in the Christian life is not always to be thought of negatively. The author actually says, you know, child-training is not always pleasant. If you had good parents, they made life unpleasant for you from time to time, didn't they? They said, "No." I don't know how many times my mother would say to me, "I want never gets." "Well, you never give me anything." She gave me plenty, and the heavenly Father gives us plenty, but He also makes sure that there are times when we don't have because, as in so many other things in life, it's when we go through hardship that we actually grow and if we don't go through hardship, we don't grow because as Christians these hardships are part of the heavenly Father's training of our lives, because He wants to transform us more and more into the likeness of the Lord Jesus.

And you'll notice this is not just a New Testament principle. This is something that the author of Hebrews picks up from the book of Proverbs, "My son do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him." So these are two mistakes we can make when things get difficult. We say, "Ah, it's really nothing." It's not nothing. You go through hardship, you must never say at the end, "I'm glad that's over." You must say, "What was it the Lord was teaching me?" But by the same token if you do that, you will not sink under the discipline and become discouraged. Why? Well, look at what he says in verse 6, "Because the Lord disciplines," or child-trains, "the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives." In fact, he goes on to say, doesn't he, you know if a child is not disciplined by his father that really raises a question about the relationship between the son and the father.

A real father who cares for his son will always child-train him, and the heavenly Father is exactly the same. Indeed, he goes on to use very interesting language in verses 10 and 11. He says, "Our fathers disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but God disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness for all those who have been trained by it." Now it's interesting that here he uses the language of the gymnasium. A church I served in Columbia in South Carolina had a building that was known as the Family Life Center. It also happened to be the gymnasium, and I thought to myself whoever thought this one up was thinking biblically, even if they didn't realize it at the time, that the Family Life Center is always the gymnasium in which the heavenly Father is training us so that more and more we will be like the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that's actually the third big word I want you to notice. Endurance, child-training, and then the word "holiness." Do you see how it appears here? "Our fathers disciplined us for a short time. God disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness." So he urges us to "strive for the holiness," verse 14, "without which no one will see the Lord." You understand this principle, I'm sure you do, that God's desire for me is not first of all my happiness; it is my holiness in order that I may share His happiness, because I cannot share His happiness unless I first of all share His holiness. Now, "holiness" is a big word, what does it really mean? Well, it boils down to this.

It means being like Jesus, His holy Son. It's not some cold, abstract concept in the New Testament. It's a very personal, familial concept. It's being like His holy Son or, to use language the New Testament uses, that God has had His heart set upon us from the very foundation of the world that we might be conformed to the image of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps like some of you, I followed an elder brother through school. I was two or three years behind him. And on one occasion for a year, I think it was, I had a teacher that my elder brother had had before in elementary school, and she used to call us out to the front of the class to go through the cleanliness discipline, and I'd always get dirty hands, and my shoes were scuffed from playing soccer in the school playground.

And she would dismiss us back to our seats in the order of cleanliness, the cleanest first until she got to little Sinclair Ferguson. And I remember one day in exasperation she screamed at me, "Ferguson," she said, "You're nothing like your elder brother." And it stuck with me. And it stuck with me after I became a Christian, and I've thought often since I became a Christian, "Yes teacher, that's true, but one day I will be like my elder brother, because the Father is child-training me to be like Jesus."