Even Though I Walk
Tom Shrader expounds Psalm 23:4, focusing on David's declaration that even in the valley of the shadow of death, fear is overcome not by personal courage but by the shepherd's presence. Drawing on passages from 1 Peter, John 14–16, and Job, he shows that suffering is an inevitable and purposeful part of the Christian life, designed by God to strip away self-sufficiency and deepen dependence on Him. The teaching closes with a call to welcome trials as instruments of growth, trusting that the rod and staff of the Good Shepherd provide protection, discipline, and comfort along the way.
“You can sing Jesus is all you need, but you will never know if Jesus is all you need until He's all you have.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Psalm 23
Recorded: 2007 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 54 min
Themes: suffering, fear, God's presence, trials, comfort, trust, dependence on God, shepherding, going through grief, facing death, feeling alone, struggling with fear, new believer, navigating hardship, dealing with chronic suffering, questioning God
Scripture: Psalm 23:1-6, Psalm 23:4, 1 Samuel 16:7, Amos 5:8, Job 10, Job 28, Job 42:5, Acts 14:21-22, Acts 17:27, Exodus 33:14, Genesis 28:15, Joshua 1:5, Isaiah 41, Ezekiel 20:37, Psalm 139:23-24, Psalm 142:4, Psalm 22, Psalm 27, Psalm 30:5, Psalm 56:3, Psalm 62:1, Psalm 94, Deuteronomy 31, Daniel 3:18, Hebrews 12:1-2, 1 Peter 1:3-6, 1 Peter 4:12, Ephesians 1:13, 2 Corinthians 1:3-5, 2 Corinthians 1:21-22, James 1:2-4, John 14:1, John 14:16, John 14:27, John 15:18, John 15:20, John 16:7, John 16:33
Theological Themes: theodicy, sanctification, becoming holy, providence, pastoral care, divine sovereignty, suffering in scripture, spiritual growth
Full Transcript
Opening Prayer and Announcements
We pray that everything we say and do brings glory to You. We pray that as the people of this world look at us, they see You. And we pray that at this season of the year in particular, when people are oftentimes hurting and lonely, that we might be Your feet and hands, that You might use us to bring comfort to the world around us. God, we pray that in Jesus' name. Amen.
Good morning. Good to see you this morning. Grab the bulletin, would you please? I do not think I say this to you very often, but sit back and listen. You would not — well, maybe you would — believe how much time we spend in the course of a year trying to figure out how we can streamline, especially the announcements. We are constantly looking for ways to cut them down and to make them precise, and today that is impossible. There are just lots of things that I need to talk to you about.
We are really conscious about announcements. We do not want to make them unless they need to be made, and these today especially require you to respond. So first of all, if you are with us as a guest, we would love you to complete the guest registry card and then drop it in one of the boxes as you leave the room today. On those boxes you will see little packets of information, and that along with a trip to the website will tell you an awful lot about East Valley Bible Church.
Christmas Giving Opportunities
It is obviously Christmastime, and that always means extra things for us around campus — opportunities for you. Let me start with gifts and toys. In the lobby of both the conference center and the chapel, you will see two different projects, and we invite you to be involved in both of them.
One is our annual joint venture with Prison Fellowship called Angel Tree. You come along, grab an angel — there will be a specific person and gift listed — bring it back next week, and we present that to the children of incarcerated men and women in your name and in their name and in the name of Christ. There are angels left. We had hundreds of them and some remain, so grab them.
The second table has on it a couple of sheets — one green and one white. The green is for the girls and the white is for the boys. Here is what we are doing with those. Ponte Vita, our Spanish-speaking church that has been meeting off campus for several years, begins meeting back on campus starting next Sunday at 1:30. One of the outreaches they have into the community is inviting needy families to come and purchase toys here on campus at a hugely reduced price, which gives us an opportunity to share the gospel. You provide the toys for that. I was just talking to somebody before the service and they said they grab three, four, five, six, seven, eight of these sheets at a time. All the details are on the sheet itself.
Both of those projects require a response from you. When the service is over, please do not go out the side doors — go out the back doors. You may have to stand in line just a bit, but that does prepare you for Christmas shopping. If you have any questions, they will help you out in the lobby.
Christmas Program and Christmas Eve Services
On Friday and Saturday nights, December 14th and 15th, we have our Christmas program here on campus. It is a night of praise and prayer built around Christmas music and lots of seasonal content, and the small children are involved. We encourage you to come. We try to break attendance down alphabetically across the two nights, but those are just suggestions. If you cannot make your specific night, come the other night, because we cannot wait to see you here on campus for that.
Now, Christmas Eve. We have been talking about this for over a year. We were smart enough to figure out last year that Christmas Eve was going to fall on a Monday this year. As a staff, we started asking: is it at all possible to staff everything, hold six services on Sunday, and then come back and do six services on Monday? We determined that we could not do that — not only in terms of capacity, but in terms of staffing and volunteers. So here is how we are going to handle Christmas Eve.
We are going to celebrate across six identical services, and you can see the times in the bulletin. There will be no morning services on Sunday the 23rd. Instead, there will be services at 3:00, 4:30, and 6:00 on Sunday the 23rd, and the same three times on Monday the 24th — six identical services total. You pick the one that works for you.
We are going back to a ticket system. When you look at all the tickets from a distance they can look the same, so here is what we are saying: if you are going to come and bring ten people with you, grab eleven tickets for that specific day and time. What we are trying to do is disperse attendance equally across all six services. My suspicion is that Sunday the 23rd will be preferred over Monday the 24th, but I do not know for certain. If you are willing to be flexible about which service you attend and want to help us balance things out, wait a week and I will help you figure out which service needs you most. But we do need you to take the tickets now.
Even Though I Walk
The 23rd Psalm is what we are looking at today — just verse 4. If you don't have a Bible, there is a pew Bible in front of you on page 405.
The first three verses read: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake." Those are the verses we have already looked at — the supply we find in Him, the rest, the restoration, and the guidance.
A Shift in Voice
In those first three verses, David is writing to us — with God listening, in a sense. But in verse 4, something changes. David is now speaking directly to God. This becomes very much a prayer, and now we are the ones who listen. You get a real sense of the intimacy that David has with his Shepherd.
Verse 4: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me. Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me."
Next week we will look at verse 5: "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You have anointed my head with oil, and my cup overflows." And then on the following week, verse 6: "Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."
The Valley of the Shadow of Death
David uses the phrase "the valley of the shadow of death," and he says, "I walk through this valley." There may be an operative word there — *through*. It is not a dead-end valley. He moves through it.
The picture, from a shepherd's perspective, is this: during late fall, winter, and early spring, the sheep would be in pastures down in the lowlands. But as late spring arrived, snows melted, and the highlands cleared, the shepherds would take the sheep up the mountainside — not directly up, but through the valley. It was a scary journey, a long journey. There were wild animals, poisonous plants, and narrow trails.
The shepherd alone was responsible for the security of the sheep during those moments. It was, in its own way, a very special and intimate time for the shepherd and the sheep.
David the Shepherd
Just by way of mention — this next point could be extra-biblical, so if it is, simply disregard it. In 1 Samuel 16, Samuel comes to Jesse looking for the one God has chosen, and ultimately that person is David. First Samuel 16:7 is one of those verses people often refer to without knowing exactly where it is found — now you will be able to write it down.
"The Lord said to Samuel, 'Do not look at his appearance, or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For God sees not as man sees. Man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.'" That is 1 Samuel 16:7.
Jesse then begins a parade of his sons before Samuel — not him, not him, not him — until Samuel asks whether there is anyone else.
The Valley Is a "Through"
He says, "Even though I walk through" — and if you mark in your Bible, you will want to mark that word *through*. That is an important word. This is not a dead end. This is through the valley of the shadow of death. It is a very scary place, but David is not afraid. Why? Because the shepherd is with him.
The Rod and the Staff
Then David uses the picture of the rod and the staff. Every shepherd would find a sapling or a stick, something that had roots to it, a little tree, and would pull it out by the roots. He would take the bulb and work on it as the knob at the end of the rod. The rod was ever-present with the shepherd, and it was an instrument used for protection — used defensively. These shepherds would actually have contests to see how accurately and at what distance they could throw it, and they could hit an adversary, even kill them. They would also use it gently on the sheep themselves, so it became both an instrument of protection and an instrument of discipline.
Ezekiel 20:37 talks about sheep passing under the rod. It was used for examination — the shepherd would work the rod down into the wool, pulling away the matted fleece to see if there was any flaw in the sheep. This calls to mind Psalm 139:23-24: "Search me, O God, know my heart, test me, know my anxious thoughts, see if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in Thy way everlasting."
David says he fears nothing because the shepherd has His rod — the instrument of authority, power, discipline, and defense. As we begin to apply this to our own lives, the rod is associated with the Word of God. How do we find protection, authority, and discipline? How do we examine ourselves? We go to God's Word. We hold it up as a mirror. The prayer every time the Word is opened should be: God, show me to myself. Let me see You. Let me see my heart. Search me.
The staff is different — a long, slender stick with a hook on the end, and it is really a picture of compassion. The shepherd would use it in a variety of ways. Sometimes when a little baby lamb wandered away from its mother, rather than the shepherd touching that lamb directly, he would simply hook it and gently move it back to its mother. It was used to move a sheep along a path. Shepherds are said to have sometimes walked with the hook resting on a sheep as they traveled together, almost as if walking hand in hand. There is an intimacy there, a oneness.
The Picture David Is Painting
So here is what David is saying — here is the picture he is painting. Just as a shepherd leads his sheep through the valley of the shadow of death, using those instruments, traveling with only the bare essentials — the rod for defense and the staff for compassion — David says, "Because those are with me, I find comfort, even in the midst of a very scary place." The shepherd is constantly there, leading the way, providing direction and comfort. He is ever-present, on guard, never fully resting. And as the sheep inevitably become confused and lost and could easily be destroyed, it is the shepherd who is there to rescue them.
We are the sheep. He is the shepherd. And if one word were to describe us as sheep, we are needy — desperately needy.
The Shadow of Death
Let us unpack the imagery a little further and see what God is saying in His Word. The phrase "shadow of death" is actually one word in the Hebrew. In Amos 5:8, it describes the darkness before creation. In Job 10, it speaks of a black hole that is the abode of the dead. In Job 28, it speaks of the thick darkness of a mineshaft. As you read it, there is simply this sense of something ominous, anxious, and potentially dreadful.
In Acts 14, beginning at verse 21, Paul has preached the gospel to a city and made many disciples. Now he is returning to Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples. He is retracing his steps, and here is what he tells them: "Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God." One of the wonderful things about Scripture is that it is so honest. God does not sugarcoat anything in His Word. If you have the idea that because you are a follower of Christ everything will be smooth and easy and essentially trouble-free, you did not get that impression from the shepherd.
There is a passage written by a man who is clearly a little older in life, and he writes: "I used to think that life was mostly green pastures with an occasional dark valley along the way, but now I realize it is the other way around. There are days of surprising joy, but much of life is a veil of tears. When people tell me that life is hard, I reply, of course it is." He finds that answer more satisfying than anything else.
The Difficulty of Life
Every year confirms my belief that life is indeed difficult and demanding, and any other view of life is escapism. The path by which God often takes us seems to lead us away from our good, causing us to believe we have missed a turn or taken a wrong road. But that is because most of us have been taught to believe that if we are on the right track, God's goodness will always translate to earthly good — that He will always heal, He will always deliver, He will exempt us from disease and pain, He will have money in the bank, kids that turn out well, nice clothes, a comfortable living, a leisurely retirement. In that version of life, everyone turns out to be a winner, nobody loses at business, marriages never fail, and we never live with hardship or poverty. That is just not the real world, though, is it?
What the psalmist is saying is that life is difficult — that whether you are a Christian or not, along the way you are going to hear things like "clean out your desk." You are going to hear doctors say that it is cancer, or a pediatrician say that a child will never be what we would call physically normal. You are going to find dope in your kids' rooms, daughters that become pregnant. You are going to hear a spouse say that they do not have the energy to put into the relationship anymore. That is real life, and you are not exempt from it.
Spouses die. I was talking to a lady in the first hour, and I asked how she was doing. She began to talk about her husband, how much she loved him, how special he is, and how difficult this time of year is. I tried to encourage her to reach out to other people rather than be absorbed in that grief — because it can become a sinkhole. But I do not want to minimize how lonely it is. Every time I talk to Sue Wright and ask how she is doing, she says, "I just want to go be with the Lord and with Larry." That is extraordinary.
Crying Out in the Dark
In the midst of that kind of hurt and pain, perhaps like David you would cry out, as in Psalm 142, verse 4: "No one is concerned for me. I have no refuge. No one cares for my life." Or as in Psalm 22: "My God, why have You forsaken me? Why are You so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? Oh God, I cry out by day, but You do not answer me." I find myself drawn to passages like these because I know from my own life, and from dealing with so many others, that these are the kind of words I need to hear straight.
"I will walk through the valley of the shadow of death." There is no avoiding it. I know how some of you think — you believe you are the exception. Let me help you out: you are not.
A Letter from a Family in Crisis
I received this email this morning, and I want to share part of it. The writer begins: "Little did we know when you began this series how much comfort it would be to us, and how quickly." He has a son and his family living out of the country — you would need a passport to see them. In the best of times, separation and distance from them is hard, to say the least. In difficult times, it is almost unbearable.
"A week ago at three o'clock in the morning, we received a phone call that every parent dreads. Our son had been in a serious car accident, striking a power pole at over fifty miles an hour. By God's grace, he survived the initial impact. Dazed and confused, he tried to get out of the vehicle, not realizing that four high-tension wires had fallen on his truck. He immediately came in contact with one, was electrocuted, and thrown about twenty feet, knocking him unconscious."
"That night, during our prayer time before going to bed, God placed a real burden on our hearts to pray for His protection. We did not know why then. We do now. When we received the call, we almost fell apart. In addition to the shock of the phone call, the realization of the miles of separation hit us. Then immediately, all of your words from the previous week and the verses of the psalm came to mind. We began praying the 23rd Psalm."
"Through the long and dark night, He did let us lie down in green pastures. He did lead us to still waters. He did restore our souls. I had always thought that the verse, 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,' referred to my death. That night we walked through the valley of the shadow of our son's death, and we knew He was with us."
"God truly performed a miracle. We learned later that when the paramedics arrived at the scene, our son was conscious, walking around, still wearing a burnt shirt from the contact with the wires. The paramedics told our daughter-in-law that they had never seen anyone receive this type of shock and survive, much less walking around. They said he is a walking miracle. These verses of the Bible are true and relevant for our time, and they have impact on us. When David wrote those verses, given to him by God so many years ago, he could not have imagined how comforting they would be to a family in a land so far away and in a time so different from his."
When There Is No Happy Ending
I love that letter. But if there is one part of it I cringe at, it is that it has a happy ending — because it does not always have a happy ending, does it? For every story like this one, there seem to be five or six or seven where they do not survive the crash.
That is what I love about the account in Daniel, when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are about to be thrown into the fire. Nebuchadnezzar asks who is going to save them. They speak about God and who He is — and then there is that wonderful passage, and I think...
Suffering Is Part of the Path
Daniel 3:18 records the words, "But even if He doesn't," affirming that suffering and hardship do not change who God is. Alexander Solzhenitsyn writes, "Suffering ripens our soul." Ephraim Meir observed that God doesn't cushion the journey — He lets life jolt us. We should keep that idea in mind when the way seems difficult and long. If we've been told that we're supposed to be on a bumpy track, every jolt along the way simply confirms the fact that we're still on the right path.
In the chapel this morning, we sang "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," and some of the verses stopped me. "And yea, beneath life's crushing loads, whose forms are bending low, who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow, oh, rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing." This is God's plan. God has a plan for your life, and that plan includes suffering and hardship. It is unavoidable. It is inevitable.
A.W. Tozer writes, "It's doubtful whether God can bless a man until He's truly hurt him deeply." Chuck Swindoll writes that pain, when properly handled, can shape a life for greatness. History is replete with stories of those whose struggles and scars form the foundation for remarkable achievements. In fact, it was because of their hardship that they gained what they needed to achieve greatness.
There is a phrase many of us used for years. When someone told you about a hardship, you would say, "That's life." When my girls were small and they would start to whine a little, we would say, "Hey, that's just the way it is." A phrase has replaced that in my vocabulary, and I don't know that it's a particularly comforting phrase, but I find myself saying it almost as a reflex. Susan has encouraged me to find another way to say it, and I try — but the phrase is simply this: it is what it is.
I don't mean by that that I don't care. I'm simply saying there are certain things in life that I cannot change. That doesn't mean I don't pray to God about them. It doesn't mean I don't pray about a child who's hurting, or any of the things you know from your own litany of concerns. What God says in His Word is that suffering is a given. What is not a given is our response to it.
The Presence That Casts Out Fear
I have, in a sense, a choice in how I am going to respond. Look at David's response: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil." My sense is that many people in the midst of trials, tribulation, sorrow, and pain do fear. But David says he doesn't. Why?
David is not saying this because he is a man of extraordinary courage. He is not saying this because he has great self-discipline and self-confidence. In fact, it's just the opposite. David knows he cannot pull this off on his own. He fears no evil — and then you see it. Why? "For You are with me."
God said to Moses, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest" (Exodus 33:14). To Jacob He said, "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go" (Genesis 28:15). To Joshua He said, "As I was with Moses, I will be with you. I will never leave you or forsake you" (Joshua 1:5). To Israel He declared, "Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with My righteous right hand. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. When you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned. The flames will not set you ablaze" (Isaiah 41). And then He says to you and me, "Surely I am with you always, to the very ends of the age. I'll never fail you."
Friends will fail you. Spouses will. Counselors will. He won't. We see this in Jesus' own life. Go back and read the account of Jesus in Gethsemane — read the agony in that garden, the intensity of it. In the midst of it, Jesus simply prays, "Father, if You are willing, take this cup of suffering from Me. But if not, Your will be done."
There is your model. Jesus doesn't say, "No big deal, I can handle this." In His humanity He is sweating drops of blood. However anxious or afraid you have ever been, you have never been that afraid — humanly speaking. What does He do? He doesn't pull Himself up by His own bootstraps. He turns to the Father.
Eyes on the Shepherd
In the midst of whatever God brings into our lives, the solution is the Shepherd. The answer is to get our eyes off of ourselves and off of our circumstances and onto Him. Hebrews 12:1–2 says, "Let us run with endurance the race set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith." Psalm 56:3 says, "When I am afraid, I put my trust in You."
The question really isn't whether we are going to have these valleys of the shadow of death. The question is how we are going to respond to them.
A Living Hope in the Midst of the Valley
Let's unpack this a little further by going to the New Testament. First Peter, chapter 1, verse 3 — nearly all the way to the back of your Bible. Peter writes, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, thereby to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away. It is reserved for you in heaven. You are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."
The Unbreakable Relationship
God saved you. You have been saved by His mercy. In verse 3, He has caused us to be born again to this living hope. He is writing to those of us who are followers of Christ, who know Christ in an intimate way, and the result of that intimacy is not initiated by us, the sheep, but by the Shepherd. He is the One who caused us to be born again.
With this comes an inheritance. It is imperishable. It will not fade away. We are protected by the power of God. In Ephesians 1:13 and 2 Corinthians 1:21–22, Paul uses and links together this same idea. He says we have been saved by the power of the gospel, and sealed by the Holy Spirit.
That word "sealed" is a picture, and it would have meant a great deal to them. They would take a document with some soft, hot wax on it, use a signet ring, and seal it. That stamp represented authenticity and ownership — this is the genuine thing. You were sealed with the Holy Spirit.
Trials Are Necessary, Not Surprising
In this life there will be difficulty. See where Peter goes in the very next verse. First Peter 1:6 says, "For in this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials." He says, you have this relationship, but if it is necessary — and that is why the trials come, because they are necessary — do not let that mislead you. Do not be distressed by these various trials.
Turn back to chapter 4, verse 12, where Peter returns to the same idea. "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you." Eyes wide open, relationship unbreakable — but that does not mean life is going to be smooth and easy. There will be testing, hardship, difficulty, and challenges of all sorts and all shapes.
James says it the same way. In James 1:2, he says, "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance." The word translated "various" there means multi-colored, meaning God is going to bring into each of our lives exactly what He, the Shepherd, knows we need.
There will be difficulties and there will be challenges. Though your instinct is to push them away, He says welcome them. Consider them. Consider it joy. Why? Because God is doing something in your life. God is building you up. God is producing endurance in your life. Everything in us wants to run away from the sorrow, and He says, no — face it head on.
The Helper Who Stays With You
Turn to the Gospel of John, and this will sound familiar to those who were with us four or five months ago when we worked our way through John 14, 15, and 16. Jesus is literally saying goodbye to His disciples. It is the night before the crucifixion. John 14:1 — "Do not let your heart be troubled" — and then He explains why, talking about going to prepare a place and coming to get them again.
Look at chapter 14, verse 16: "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper." It is the Spirit of truth. It is the Holy Spirit. He is saying, I am not going to leave you alone. He returns to this same idea in chapter 16, verse 7: "I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you."
Here is what He is saying: do not let your heart be troubled. Why? Because there are going to be troubling times. There are going to be difficult times. Chapter 14, verse 27: "Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful." Why would He say that? Because troubling, fearful times are coming. But you have this other, this Helper.
And He does not let the point go. Chapter 15, verse 18: "The world hates you. It hated Me." Verse 20: "If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you." Then in chapter 16, verse 33, He ties all of this together: "These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world."
Growing When He Is All You Have
You have been sealed. There will be trying times. Do not be surprised by them. God causes them or allows them so that you will grow spiritually. And frankly, we grow spiritually when He takes away all our other options. That is how we grow best. As long as there is a hint of self-sufficiency, we will never grow to the depth we can grow when we rely on Him and Him alone.
We can sing that Jesus is all we need. But we will never know if Jesus is all we need until He is all we have. Richard Foster says it this way: God becomes a reality when He becomes a necessity.
We have a Savior, a Shepherd. Dostoevsky, writing from Siberia, put it this way: "And yet God gives me moments of perfect peace. In such moments I love and believe that I am loved. In such moments I have formulated my creed, where it is all clear and holy to me. And the creed is simple. I believe there is nothing lovelier and deeper and more sympathetic and more rational and more manly and more perfect than the Savior. I say to myself with jealous love that not only is there no one else like Him, there could be no one else."
You Are Not Alone
God has a perfect love for you. So often, through this journey — through the valley of the shadow of death — there is a sense of loneliness. But you are not alone. Loneliness does not come from being alone. It comes from feeling that we are alone and from failing to understand that God will never leave us.
Consider the words again. In Acts 17:27, Paul says, "He is not far from each one of you." David says, "You are with me." God says, "I will never leave you. I will never forsake My people." Psalm 94 declares, "The Lord will not abandon His people."
From Classroom to Laboratory
God will never leave you or forsake you. God loves you. Job 42 — the end of that story — brings together what we have talked about so often with the classroom and the laboratory. We can sit in here and study and study and study, and we should, and it is good. But then somehow we have to go out into the laboratory, and then it becomes real.
Now we have that hurt or pain or that trial or that hardship, and all of a sudden we see this is not just words on a page. This is real. All of a sudden you are beginning to experience in your life those things that you said, "I don't think I could ever" — and then you fill in the blank. And then all of a sudden, not only can you, you do, and you realize it is not you. It is Him. Why? Because the words that David wrote are true: "I'll fear no evil. Why? You are with me."
At the end of all of Job's anguish and pain and suffering, he says this: "My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you." They were just words on a page until now. Now it is real. David wrote in Psalm 27, "Though my father and mother forsaken me, the Lord has taken me in." Psalm 62 verse 1: "My soul finds rest in God alone." Psalm 30 verse 5: "Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning." Sorrow has a time, but all of a sudden the psalmist has a perspective.
Eight Reasons We Go Through Suffering
About a year and a half ago, I taught on trials and suffering, and someone gave me a note about it. After one of those lessons they came and started talking about the suffering they were going through and what God was teaching them. I said, "Why don't you write that down and send it to me?" The next week I received a handwritten note listing seven or eight things. Let me mention them, because you could easily be sitting there asking, "Why would I be going through this?"
This is a list. You can make your own. You can add to it.
**First, the testing shows and demonstrates the strength of your faith.** The midst of a test allows you to take an inventory of your faith and reveals who you really are. One of the ways I like to say it is: suffering reveals ourselves to ourselves. You can talk a real good game, but if you have never had a test, that is all it is.
**Second, trials come to humble us.** One of the great things about trials is that we come to understand we are done — we are at our limits. There is nothing we can do. We cannot fix it. All we can do is rely on Him.
**Third, suffering weans us from earthly things.** In the midst of suffering, all of a sudden a lot of things do not seem as important, do they? I enjoy — and that is probably the wrong word, and you will find a better one — visiting people who are in hospitals or who are really sick. It is so interesting in the midst of that. Rarely do they say, "Did you see the game?" They want to talk about the big picture.
**Fourth, it calls us to an eternal hope.** When I have been around people who know that death is near, they tend to talk about faith, family, and friends. If they talk about possessions or trips, it is in the context of faith, family, and friends. All of a sudden we become very heavenly-minded. That is happening to me as I get a bit older. I find myself yearning more for heaven. I wish it were purely spiritual — it is more a desire to get out of here. I pray every day that God would make me yearn more and more for His presence, and that desire does grow.
There was an article — I am not even sure where I was reading last week, perhaps Newsweek, perhaps something online — about the people working for Google, going around the world, working around the clock. The average person there is getting four hundred emails a day. And I just thought: why? I am not saying do not work — you understand that. But is that what is driving things? Suffering reveals what we really love. It shows us what is truly important to us.
**Fifth, suffering shows the value of blessing. Sixth, it enables us to help others who are going through the same thing.**
Comforting Others Through Our Own Suffering
Suffering is a wonderful process. Let me read 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 3: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all afflictions, so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. Just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is in abundance through Christ."
I mentioned that a lady came in last week and asked me to pray with her, and I did. This morning I saw her husband and then her, and indeed they did the biopsy and it was cancer. It sounds like a grueling regimen — she has surgery Wednesday and then ten radiation treatments over five days. She came up and said something that I have heard Susan say a hundred times.
I realized, standing there, that I have something I can offer her — I can pray with her — but I cannot say, "I know what you are thinking. I know what you are feeling." So I said, "Here is our home number. Call Susan. She will be there after eleven this morning. You do not need a long story — just tell her what you just told me right here." I can guarantee that conversation will begin and there will be a wonderful moment. God will use Susan in a strong way in that. You know why? Because she is going to be able to say, "I have been there. I have done that. We are on our fourth round right now." Physically this has been the most demanding, and I would say spiritually the most rewarding — yet it is there every day.
God Develops Endurance Through Testing
God develops endurance through testing, and through it we become useful. I believe it was Tozer who said that God cannot use you significantly until He hurts you deeply — not in a malicious way. He is not a sadistic God trying to destroy you. He brings these things into your life for your benefit, so that you can grow and so that He can use you in a significant way.
How do we survive life? How do we walk through the valley of the shadow of death? There is only one way: knowing that He is with us, and that His instruments — His rod and His staff — are there to protect us, to help us examine ourselves, to discipline us, and to comfort us.
As we close, my prayer is that God would bring suffering into our lives for a reason and for a purpose. Rather than do what comes naturally — which is to run — I pray that you would embrace it, that you would welcome it, that you would, in James' words, consider it all joy. One of the paraphrases puts it something like this: that we would welcome these trials as friendly intruders.
Why welcome them? Because they have a purpose. To go through suffering with no purpose — to be laying there in all that pain with no meaning behind it — that would be truly hurtful, harmful, and discouraging.
Suffering Connects and Qualifies Us
Somebody the other day was sharing a problem they were having with one of their kids, and I said to them, "I can pray for you, but I cannot relate. We never had that with any of our kids." But I knew someone who had been through that valley. He had walked through it, and I connected those two people. They talked on a whole different level. When you are hurting right now, God will use that in a significant way.
You are going to come out the other end and say, "Isn't He amazing?" You are going to see how weak you are, how limited you are, and the more that self-sufficiency is stripped away, the more clearly you see it. All those degrees — they are not going to help you now. All that skill — that is not going to work now. All that money — it is not going to help you now. All that physical strength — it is not going to help you now. All that beauty and those good looks — they are not going to help you now. All that sharp tongue — it is not going to help you now.
And all you have is Him. What a wonderful place to be, because now you have the opportunity to see God work.
Closing Prayer
Father, I pray for the men and women, students, and children who are here today who are really hurting. How encouraging this is — and it would not mean much if these were merely my thoughts, but this is Your Word. "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil" — why? "You are with me. Your rod, Your staff, they comfort me."
God, thank You that You will never leave us or forsake us. Thank You that Your perfect love casts out fear. Thank You that You are not far away and that You will not abandon us. What You want from us is to trust You, and the only way we will trust You is if we know You, and the only way we will know You is to study and to read Your Word.
God, You are trustworthy. These are not just words spoken by someone who cannot fulfill a promise. When You say You will not leave us, You will not. When You say You will not forsake us, You will not. When You say that these trials and difficulties and this journey through the valley of the shadow of death will produce endurance in our lives, it will.
God, get our eyes off ourselves. Get our eyes off the circumstances around us and fix them onto You. Help us understand that we are not facing whatever it is — disease, hurt, pain, death itself — alone. We fear no evil because You are with us.
God, thank You for hurt and pain and suffering, because You use it so significantly in our lives. We pray that what we say and do as we encounter the valley of the shadow of death would bring honor and glory to You. God, we know that You become a reality when You become a necessity. God, use us. We pray, we ask, we beg You — in Jesus' name, amen.