His Heart for Sufferers

So I want to start off with asking a question. Does unexplainable suffering in our lives mean that Jesus' heart for us has grown cold? When we go through dark valleys, which we will, and the valleys last a very long time and they're darker than we ever thought they would be, does that mean that Christ's heart has at the very least grown indifferent to us or at the very worst gone against us? Vaneetha Risner, we'll put her photo on the screen, she's a precious Christian sister who has been through a lot of suffering in her own life. Due to a doctor's mistake while she was a baby, she contracted polio, she suffers from post-polio syndrome, she's fairly crippled because of that.

When one of her children were born, because of the doctor's mistake her child also died as well. Her husband left her for another woman and she's been through a lot of suffering. She's a Christian writer and she wrote this in a blog online. She says, sobbing over my son's tiny casket was devastating. Receiving the divorce papers in the mail was beyond heartbreaking.

Hearing the doctor say that my body was deteriorating and then watching it happen was agonising. None of those trials felt redemptive. None of them could be celebrated. None of them even made sense. I never could have imagined that God would bring something beautiful out of my pain.

I felt that my pain was deforming me, that I would forever be marred by it. And I guess the question is, were those trials that Vaneetha went through, were they indicators that God had grown cold towards her, that Jesus' heart was not as warm as she might have thought? Or maybe you're here or you're joining us online, welcome if you are, and you're wondering whether there's even any point in becoming a Christian at all. Because if Christians suffer just as much as everyone else does, then what's the point? Why become a Christian?

Well, we're going to answer these kinds of questions as we delve into the final sermon of our series today, The Heart of Christ. We're in the third and final week and we've just been spending three weeks meditating on Jesus' heart, on who He is deep down. We've been letting His heart refresh ours. In our first week, if you were here, if you remember, and if you haven't caught some of these, can jump online, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, they're all available in audio and on podcasts. But in our first week we looked at His deepest heart.

We looked at how Jesus says, I am gentle and lowly in heart in Matthew 11. That is who He is, gentle and lowly. The second week we looked at His heart for sinners. We looked at the fact that God is holy actually means that He's far more merciful than we are. And we learned that Jesus will never ever let go or drive away His sinful people.

Now this week we're going to finish the series by looking at His heart for sufferers. How does Jesus feel about His suffering people? And we're going to break open the topic by asking three questions. And the first is this, how did Christ feel about sufferers on earth? How did Jesus feel during His ministry on earth two thousand years ago?

Well, we get a clear example of this with that story that Joanne just read for us earlier in Mark chapter one. Let me just read verse 40 for you again, where it says, and a leper came to Him, came to Jesus, imploring Him and kneeling said to Him, if you will, you can make me clean. Now, why does a man ask Jesus to make him clean? Why doesn't he just say, if you will, you can heal me? Well, there's a couple of reasons.

The New Testament usually uses this word "to make clean" for leprous disease when that comes up. But really this man had two problems. It wasn't just this horrific disease that, you know, if you've seen pictures of leprosy, it can cause horrific damage to your body. It wasn't just being healed of that, but it's also being restored to ritual cleanness. You see, being a leper in Jewish society, you would not just have to suffer with the pain of the illness and the disease, but you were considered unclean, you were very contagious.

God's law actually commanded that you would stay outside of the camp, couldn't come to church, you couldn't participate and worship at the temple. Who knows how many years it had been since this man had even been touched. And so that's why he's saying, you can make me clean. You can cleanse me of this disease and you can restore me to the clean community of God. You can bring me back into the worshipping people of God.

But there's also another thing, and I mentioned it, God's law actually commands that if you're with one of these unclean diseases, you're not meant to sort of be around the population. So he's actually breaking God's law. If you can imagine how offensive this would have been to that day and age, I want us to think about what it would have been like during the height of COVID in 2020. If you're at home during lockdown and you're staying home, you're minding your own business, you're healthy at that point, and someone comes and knocks on your door and walks in and they say, I've got COVID, and they start coughing in your face and saying, I just need some help, like, I need something for my dinner tomorrow. Would you not be incensed?

How foolish. I could get sick from this. Jesus and the disciples at least were probably furious that this man was coming up to Jesus so blatantly. And yet, how does Jesus respond? Well, we see in verse 41, it says, moved with pity.

He stretched out His hand and touched him and said to him, I will, be clean. See that original Greek word for "moved with pity"? It means to experience great compassion and affection for someone. Jesus wasn't angry at all at this man for putting Him at risk of this disease. I mean, Jesus is also divine, but yes, for this man coming in and blatantly just sort of coming before Him like this so boldly, Jesus was actually moved to pity for this man.

And Jesus healed people with a word, but He very intentionally stretches out His hand and touches him. What a gift of compassion. Who knows how many years it had been since this man had experienced any affectionate touch at all. And Jesus says, I will. The original Greek word for "I will," it's not just what you choose, it's also what you want.

It's what you desire. So He's saying, I do desire to heal you. I want to, I will it. Be clean. It's a very clear picture of Jesus' heart for sufferers during His ministry on earth.

Jesus was moved to pity. He had compassion on sufferers. We don't even know if this man was a believer. In fact, after this Jesus tells him, don't tell anyone about this and the man disobeys. He does the wrong thing.

He goes out and tells everyone. And yet Jesus was moved to pity when He saw this man suffering under this disease. Now you may hear the story and you might be like, well, that's great for that leper, but I've been suffering from this illness for ten years. I've been suffering with dark thoughts all of my life and I don't have Jesus in front of me and He hasn't made me clean. He hasn't healed me.

So how can I know that Jesus still feels the same way? He feels so distant now. He's not in front of me. I can't feel His compassion. Well, let's explore that next with the second question.

We've looked at Jesus' heart for sufferers on earth and we're going to look at how He feels about sufferers from heaven. Let's turn to our reading from Hebrews chapter four. If you've got your Bibles, we'll spend the rest of our time in Hebrews now. And I'll read verse 14 again for us. It says this of Jesus, Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

Now if you're not familiar with the Bible, in the Old Testament, Israel used to gather to worship God at the temple and they had priests. Priests were mediators between the people and between God. So Jesus is our King. He represents God to us, but He's also our Priest. He represents us before God.

He gives us access to God. And the high priest in Israel could go right into the holy of holies only once a year. That was the hotspot of God's presence in the temple. He could go there once a year to represent the people. Jesus is our great high priest who passed through the heavens.

Now that Greek word for heaven, sometimes it means heaven as we think about it, where God's presence dwells. Here it's talking about the skies. He ascended through the clouds, He passed through the heavens and He's in the true heavenly temple, not an earthly copy of it. He's in the heavenly temple of God's presence as our great high priest. He is our mediator.

He represents us before God. But now that He's in this high and holy place, does He really care about our little pitiful needs down here? Well, the next verse makes it very clear for us. Verse 15, it says, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. See the word sympathize, it at least means that He deeply feels for us in our weaknesses, in our trials, but it probably more likely means, as my Greek dictionary says, to suffer with or to share in the sufferings of.

See Jesus, the fact that He's far off in heaven, you can't see Him, doesn't mean that He's more distant from your pain. He actually shares in it. He suffers with you. Think about it. Jesus didn't appoint us as a group of people and say, I'll lead you from afar in my CEO room.

Jesus calls you and I His body of which He is the head. We have been given God's Spirit, which is called the Spirit of Christ in Romans 8. We have been united with Christ. We've become one with Him. One of the favourite ways in the New Testament of describing believers is that we are people who are in Christ.

We belong to Him. We are His body and He feels our pain with us just as much as you feel the pain in your knee or the pain in your back. You feel it, you want to alleviate that pain. He is moved towards you and He suffers with you according to His human nature. He suffers with you. And it says as well that He was unable, He's able to sympathize with our weaknesses. You see Jesus has the same human weaknesses. Not our sinful weaknesses, but our human limitations. In His incarnation, Jesus took on a true human nature, not partly human nature, or not a full human nature that He just overrode through His divinity.

He didn't use His divinity to selfishly serve Himself. He submitted Himself to the full human experience. He knows what it is to be a limited human being, to face the pressures that we face, to get a cut on your knee or a bruise on your elbow, to sweat, to be hungry, to be thirsty, to be tired. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, has a true, full human nature as well. Jesus knows what it is to be like us.

This is why it says, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Now that Greek word for tempted, it can mean to be tempted to sin or it can mean just to be tested. Not necessarily to sin, but just put in a trial. And I think the writer's chosen a word with this range of meaning to kind of indicate both. Jesus has been tempted as we are, tempted to serve Himself, tempted to skip around suffering, tempted to disobey God, tempted.

But He's also been tested. He's also gone through immense suffering that wasn't anything to do with, you know, being tempted to sin. He had to go through suffering on our behalf. Jesus knows in every respect what it is to be tempted and tested as we are, yet without sin. Now you might say to me, well Ben, I'm a young mother.

As far as I know, Jesus is a male. He hasn't had kids. He doesn't know what it is to take care of little kids. Or you might say, Ben, I have cancer, and Jesus hasn't been through chemotherapy and how can you say that He understands what I go through? Well, Jesus may not have been a young mother, but He knows what it is to have so many responsibilities and to have so many needs coming at Him that He didn't even have time to eat.

In fact, Jesus wasn't responsible just for a few little ones, He's responsible for countless souls and their salvation. Jesus may not have had chemotherapy or gone through cancer treatment, but it says in Matthew 8:17 that He took our illnesses and bore our diseases. Jesus is one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, and tested as we are, yet without sin. See, Jesus doesn't just understand our trials, He knows them at a far deeper level than we will ever know. And yet, His heart cares for even our smallest difficulties.

In every sorrow, we have a friend in Jesus. Dane Ortlund, in his beautiful book, Gentle and Lowly, writes about the sorrows and the sufferings we experience, and he says, When the relationship goes sour, when the feelings of futility come flooding in, when it feels like life is passing us by, when it seems that our one shot at significance has slipped through our fingers, when we can't sort out our emotions, when the longtime friend lets us down, when a family member betrays us, when we feel deeply misunderstood, when we are laughed at by the impressive. In short, when the fullness of the world closes in on us and makes us want to throw in the towel, there, right there, we have a friend who knows exactly what such testing feels like, and sits close to us, embraces us, with us, solidarity. So how do we respond to this incredible truth? Well, verse 16 tells us, Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

You can be sure that when you approach Jesus in prayer, He is not disinterested. He's not going to say, I heard this before, and roll His eyes. You again. Okay. I've had enough.

He has been tempted in every way. He is actually full of compassion for you. He's actually united you to Himself. He suffers with you. He absolutely wants to hear from you.

His heart goes out to you. And so the upshot of this is that He's calling on us through Hebrews 4:16 to draw near to the throne of grace with bold confidence because you draw near to a great high priest who really cares for you, who wants to extend mercy and grace, who will give you help in your time of need, or that Greek word means He will give you timely help. Help at just the right time when you need it. You can ask Him for the smallest things and the biggest things. He cares for you in them all. And He doesn't just care, He suffers with you.

The fact that Jesus suffers with us is deeply comforting. But it's not what guarantees the end of our suffering. It's not what Jesus suffers with us, but what Jesus suffered for us that guarantees the end of our suffering one day. And let's take a look at that now. Our third and final question.

How can Christ's suffering save us from our own? Our passage from Hebrews 5, so just in the next few verses later. It says this in verse 7, In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears. Now these loud cries and tears are likely referring to Jesus the night before He died in the Garden of Gethsemane. If you're familiar with that story, Jesus was feeling crushed and He was saying to the Father, Father, if it is possible, remove this cup from me, the cup of wrath, the cup of judgment, yet not as I will, but as You will.

And this text actually reveals to us that there were tears, there were loud crying going on in that place. In Luke's Gospel it tells us that He sweat blood. Modern day medicine tells us that actually there's a condition, I forget what it's called, you can Google it, that you actually sweat blood when you're under such extreme stress that your capillaries burst and blood enters your sweat glands and when you sweat, there's blood. So Jesus was under extreme agonising duress. Loud cries and tears.

He knows what it is to carry burdens that feel unbearable. Actually, He knows what it is to carry the most unbearable burden. And this is what the writer means when he says, Although He was a son, He learned obedience through what He suffered. The writer is not saying that Jesus wasn't obedient beforehand, but He learned to be obedient after this. The writer of Hebrews is saying that He understood obedience by experiencing it in its most costly form.

The strength it must have taken Him to obey the Father's will here is unimaginable. It is more than we can fathom. To bear up under the load, which is actually the judgment due for our sin, not His. He didn't have any. And it is because Jesus was obedient to suffering on our behalf that He can save us from the suffering we still endure.

Verse 9, And being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him. Now, being made perfect, that needs to be explained. That Greek word also means to be complete, and so it's not that Jesus was imperfect and became perfect, it's that He was now the complete salvation for us. Because He actively obeyed God throughout His life, He passively obeyed God by submitting Himself to death and the cross, and because He obeyed God, He became the complete and perfect source of salvation for sufferers and for sinners. He can save us from our sin and He will save us from our suffering.

See this means, because of what Jesus has done, that your suffering will end. He is the source of salvation not only for your sins, but also for your sorrows. He is the one who has secured a future without suffering for His people. We read about it in Revelation 21. Look, these words just wash over you because they are your future as God's people.

It says this, and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be His people. And God Himself will be with them as their God. Listen to this. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more.

Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. You see, one day there'll be no more temptations, no more temptation to sin. You won't wrestle with that. I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel like I want to sin and it takes a lot of effort not to. That wrestle will be gone. There'll be no more pain, no more broken bones, no more tears, no more terrible things happening in the world.

No more mourning, no more loss of loved ones. That is your fixed, it's not something we're hopeful for. That is your fixed future in Christ. He has purchased it for you. He is reigning from heaven right now.

He has secured it for you, and He will bring you all the way to the day of salvation. This is your future as God's people. Now, I mentioned at the beginning that if you're exploring faith, you might wonder, why become a Christian? If Christians can suffer so much, maybe even more than I do right now, why become a Christian? Well, the answer is because trusting in Jesus, when you trust in Him, you get a friend and you get a future.

You get a faithful friend. You are not alone in your sufferings and you get a perfect future promised to you, a future without suffering or pain. Jesus offers us both these things. And besides, He's just worth it. He gave everything for us.

How can we not give our lives to Him? Church, Jesus' heart is so moved by your suffering that He not only suffers with you, He suffered for you to end your suffering. And this is the truth which comforted our sister, Vaneetha Risner, as well. I mentioned her at the beginning, but I didn't tell you how her online article ended. And let me just read a little bit of her ending as I finish our time.

She says, At first it seemed like nothing was happening. Nothing but disillusionment and defeat. It honestly felt like Satan was wrecking my life. Similarly to the disciples on that terrifying Friday, it must have seemed like Satan was victorious. Their Saviour was crucified.

Their dreams were dead. Their hopes had unraveled. Maybe evil really had won. Similarly to the disciples on that terrifying Friday, it must have seemed like Satan was victorious. Their Saviour was crucified.

Their dreams were dead. Their hopes had unraveled. Maybe evil really had won. And then everything was silent for two long days. It may have seemed like nothing was happening.

Nothing but disillusionment and defeat. But in the wisdom of God, when life looked darkest, it gave way to the dawning of the purest, most brilliant light. Much of what is really happening is unseen. While it may look otherwise in the moment, Satan will never be victorious and evil cannot win. God always has the last word.

What Satan means for evil, God means for good, always. So if you feel forsaken and have no idea where to turn or what to do, trust that God is using that very struggle. If life looks like a hopeless mess and every day is a fight to survive, trust that God will one day gloriously prevail. And when He has, when you are on the other side, trust that God will have done an incomparable work in your soul. Beautiful words from our sister, from someone who has suffered much.

See, in our time together, we've learnt that Jesus' heart is for us. His heart is so much for us that He not only suffers with us in our earthly trials, but He suffered for us at the cross to end all suffering. Let's give thanks to Him now in prayer. Jesus, we cannot fathom the unbearable weight You endured to save us from our sins and our sorrows. We just praise You.

We can't repay You, but we praise You, we love You, and we just ask, Father, that You will give us everything we need. Your mercies are new every morning, and so we pray and ask that You would refresh us today and refresh us tomorrow and sustain us the next day all the way until we reach our home in the new creation. We commit ourselves to You and we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.