Don't be Surprised by Suffering
Tom Shrader examines the reality of suffering in the Christian life, focusing on Romans 8:28 and its promise that God causes all things to work together for good. He challenges the prosperity gospel mindset that seeks to fix problems, arguing instead that God uses suffering to drive believers closer to Him and accomplish His purposes in their lives.
“God didn't give you problems to get them fixed, He gave you problems to drive you to Him.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Miscellaneous
Recorded: June 13, 1905
Duration: 39 min
Themes: suffering, tribulation, purpose, prosperity, trials, pain, promises, reality, facing hardship, questioning faith, new believer, experiencing pain, struggling with doubt, seeking purpose, dealing with disappointment, mature believer
Scripture: Romans 8:28, 2 Timothy 3:12, 1 Peter 4:12, 1 Peter 5:10, James 1:2, 2 Corinthians 4:16, 2 Corinthians 11:24-28, Romans 8:14, John 9, Acts 5, Romans 5
Theological Themes: providence, sovereignty, romans eight, prosperity gospel, sanctification, biblical promises, theodicy, divine purpose
Full Transcript
Introduction to Suffering in the Christian Life
This is unusual in the sense that we have a week between a series and getting ready to take a break. So what I thought I would do is talk about something that meant a lot to me and was helpful to me, and operate, maybe incorrectly, on the assumption that it would be helpful to you also.
Shortly after I became a Christian, I made my first trip to a Christian bookstore. I remember discovering these treasures that I had never seen before. Those of you that have not been to Christian bookstores in a while, maybe never, I encourage you to become frequent visitors, as there's marvelous material in there that you won't find in a B. Dalton or a Walden or a Bookstar or any of those. Marvelous stuff. There's also junk, and you have to watch out for that as well.
I was checking out that first day, and I found a book, a little book. I didn't buy it, and I'd seen it. In fact, I just was in a bookstore the other day, and there it was again. It's there all the time. It's called The Promises of God. You see those books all over.
I remember opening it up and looking at it. I hadn't been a Christian that long, and I was wondering and pretty excited by what I saw in the book, because it looked to me as though health and wealth and prosperity were just a month or two away based on these promises from this God who does not lie. Over a course of years, I saw that many of those promises in there needed a little bit of definition.
The Forgotten Promise of Tribulation
But here's what I discovered, and this is what I want to talk to you about this morning. I discovered promises that I found in the Bible that weren't in that book. Here's one: "In this world, you will have tribulation." Have you claimed that promise lately? Has that been a promise that you've clung to?
That's what I want to talk about. This whole idea of tribulation and suffering and pain, because it runs all through the Scripture, and it seems to me that we don't talk much about it. Yet it seems to me that it dominates not only Scripture, but it dominates reality.
I was in college. We would sit around, and I didn't like cigarettes then and don't like cigarettes now, and I never will. I cannot stand cigarette smoke. It just makes me gag, but I love cigars and cigar smoke. So they'd smoke their cigarettes, and I would smoke my cigar, and I would always win that battle, and we would smoke back and forth.
Here would be the dominant question that inevitably was at the core of every discussion that we ever had at the beehive, the beehive being the student union. This is St. Ambrose College. The stinging bees in the student union was the beehive. What else would it be? We'd be at the hive, buzzing around, talking about questions, and I remember puffing on a cigar saying some variation of, "What is reality?" We never did get an answer to that.
You know this: reality incorporates some element of suffering.
Biblical Testimony About Suffering
We could put verses up all morning for you, but this will give you a sense of it. Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:12 that all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. It's inevitable. It's bound to happen.
Peter speaks of it as a matter of fact. In 1 Peter 4:12, he said, "Don't be surprised at the fiery ordeals among you," the suffering, the pain, the hurt. In fact, as he closes out that little book, 1 Peter 5:10, he says, "After you've suffered for a while, then glory."
James probably writes the verse that we talk about and use most frequently. James says this in James 1:2: He said, "Count it all joy when you encounter various trials." I want to talk about it just a second to set up the discussion.
The Purpose Behind Suffering
James says, "Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials." It's inevitable. It's not if you encounter various trials, but when you do. Now, why in the world would James say, "Count it all joy"? What's he thinking about there?
He said, "Count it all joy when you encounter various trials, because the testing of your faith produces endurance." Ah, you mean there's a meaning to this? There's a purpose to this.
Paul's Credentials in Suffering
If Bo knows baseball, can I tell you Paul knows suffering? In 2 Corinthians 4:16, Paul says this: "Therefore the outer man be decaying, the inner man is decaying day by day for momentary light affliction."
Let me help you understand what Paul identified as momentary light affliction, because he tells us a little bit later in 2 Corinthians 11, beginning about verse 24. He said, "Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, I was shipwrecked a day and a night, I've labored in hunger without sleep, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers from the brethren, dangers in the city, dangers in the country, dangers in the sea."
Now put that knowledge back into this verse. So the outer man is decaying, the inner man is being renewed day by day for momentary light affliction. Now I don't tell you this so you go, "Oh wow, I know I've got pain and suffering, but boy, it doesn't compare to what Paul's got. I better just shut up and not say anything and just suck it up and go." That's not the point.
I want you to understand when Paul talks about suffering, he's been there. Who do you want to teach you about suffering? Somebody that doesn't even know about it, that's just read about it in a book, or a guy that's been beaten five times with thirty-nine lashes, three times with rods? That's who I want to hear from.
The Eternal Perspective
What's the key? Paul, how is it you hang in there? And here it is: "Momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory." See, there's the distinction, there's the issue. That's the edge, that's the dividing line. That's what separates the Christian from the non-Christian.
He goes on to say in verse 18, "For the things we see are temporal, the things we don't see are eternal." John MacArthur, picking on that same theme, MacArthur says this: "As followers of Christ, our suffering comes from men, whereas our glory comes from God. Our suffering is earthly,"
Our glory is heavenly. Our suffering is short, whereas our glory is forever. Our suffering is trivial. By that he doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, he doesn't mean to minimize it. He means it's trivial compared to limitless glory. Again, Paul said it in Romans 8, verse 14, we can't even compare the tribulation of this world to the glory of the next.
Our suffering is in our mortal, corrupted bodies. Our glory will be in our perfected, imperishable body. I take you through this whole exercise by way of introduction to help you see that suffering for the Christian is different than just suffering in general. That suffering for you and for me has meaning and purpose.
The way that I not just survive—some of you have set your standards way too low. You just want to survive through tough times? Maybe it's just a stiff upper lip, or maybe it's just a positive attitude. You just want to survive? That's not it. God never called you to survive. He called you to thrive. In the midst of all of this, He calls me to thrive. In fact, suffering is what God uses to bring us to a point of thriving.
A Familiar Yet Misunderstood Verse
That gets me to the verse for today. It's a verse that you'll see on a lot of cards that are mailed at the times of hurt and pain. It's a verse that you'll hear if you go up to the hospital today and listen. Here it is, Romans chapter 8 and verse 28.
Most of us know this verse as: "All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose." But here's what we had. We started with "all things work together for good." Most of us will start our memory of that verse right there. But we forget the part that starts the verse. "And we know."
See, this verse is not about you and I and our comfort. This verse is about God. It goes, "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good." And we know. We're not guessing. This isn't our opinion. This isn't intuition. This isn't the power of positive thinking. This isn't "I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope." And we know that God causes all things to work together for good.
The verse is about God. It's not about you and me. Ultimately, we're the benefactors of this. But the verse is about God.
What This Verse Tells Us About God
What is it we know about God? It says, "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose." What is it we know about God if He causes all things to work together for good? What does this verse tell us about God?
He's in control. He's sovereign. He's going to produce good. He's a loving God. He's involved. He's not reactive. He's proactive. He's always there. Always available. He's eternal. He's always working things together for good. He doesn't have a beginning or an end.
Just stop and ask questions like this, and you start to see what this tells us about God. God knows everything. In my Bible, I've got the word "fact" written by Romans 8:28. Because it is a fact. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.
God's Complete Knowledge and Perfect Power
It's a fact. And what it tells us is, we know that God must know all things. If this verse is true, God must know all things. And if He works everything together for good, He is not just a great historian who knows all of history. It's not just that His demographics are good, and His research is good, and He knows the present, but He must also know perfectly the future for this verse to be true.
See, there's another thing. We use the word "control." We also mean "power." How pathetic would it be if you had this almighty creature who knew everything, knew the past, knew the present, knew the future, knew exactly what you needed, knew exactly what needed to be done, but couldn't do it? Wouldn't that be pathetic? What a pathetic thought that would be!
Every once in a while, you watch one of those movies where somebody, it'll be a 1989 movie, and somebody will find themselves somehow in a time machine, and they'll wake up back at Pearl Harbor, December 6th, 1941, the day before the attack, and he'll be running around trying to get everything together and alert everybody, and the generals will say, "No, we have a tea time, we're not going to be here tomorrow morning," and boom, it comes. How pathetic is that creature as he runs from place to place to alert everybody there's a war coming, and nobody responds. Imagine a God like that.
Now, the reason I belabor this point is most people strip God of His sovereign control right at that point.
A few years ago you probably read a book that you passed on to other Christian friends, saying it had been very comforting to you. Most heresy is designed to do that. Morphine is very comforting to you as well. It was a book called "Why Bad Things Happen to Good People," filled with heresy but very comforting. Certainly made me feel good.
I think it was chapter 7 that was entitled "God Can't Do Everything, But He Can Do Some Very Important Things." Most of us, although we may chuckle, have a theology that's pretty much like that when it comes to practice. This was written by a rabbi who, as I remember the story, lost his son in an accident. The son died, and he's trying to say the God that I love would never allow this to happen, so it must be somehow out of the control and realm of God.
God's Sovereignty Over All Things
Don't you ever think it for a second. Everything that comes into your life, and therefore into this world, is either caused by or permitted by God. He is not the author of evil. No evil comes from God—may it never be. God forbid, He didn't produce sin, but He could have stopped it if He wanted. All things work together for good.
Many of you are missing the depth and the richness and the beauty of suffering. You're missing what God has for you. You're missing the depth of what suffering is—that suffering is part of God's sovereign, designed, declared, organized plan and purpose for the world. God uses suffering in a marvelous way, and that runs absolutely contrary to how we think and feel.
The Church's Misguided Approach to Problems
Almost every expert will tell you the church at large is in a pathetic condition today, and I think here's one of the reasons why. The church has been trying to solve people's problems. Get this, because I don't think you're going to hear this very often, but I think it's true: God didn't give you problems to get them fixed. He didn't give you problems to get them solved. He gave you problems to drive you to Him.
He didn't give you problems so that you would come up with five effective ways to do this, or seven methods for this, or twelve steps for this. He gave you problems so that those problems would drive you to Him—not to a program, to Him; not to a recipe, to Him; not to a system. Almost instinctively, when problems come into our lives, or we come in contact with somebody who has problems, we want to get them fixed. God didn't give them problems to get them fixed. He gave them problems to drive them to Him.
A Personal Encounter with Suffering
Let me give you an example. I taught on suffering down in Tucson a couple of weeks ago. I know nothing about suffering. I've had some hardships in my life, and I will tell you the last three or four years have been pretty rugged, but that to me is kind of life. I kind of figured that's the way it is.
I'm leaving there. I've done my gig. I'm on my way out. I've got to get to the hotel to get changed—they make you wear a tie down there—to get changed out of a tie into shorts, to get into the car to get back, to get up here to get showered and dressed because I've got to be back up here by 3 o'clock for church. I'm coming around the corner and there's a lady in a wheelchair. She's sitting there. She is paralyzed from neck on down.
I've just spoken about suffering. I come around the corner and I make eye contact with her. All I can think is she's got to be thinking to herself, "Listen to this arrogant, obnoxious jerk prance around the stage and talk to me about suffering." That's the first thought I had.
The Lady's Perspective on Her Condition
I said, "How are you?" She said, "I'm pretty good, thanks." All of a sudden I detect there wasn't that bitterness that I would have anticipated toward her. So what's going on?
She said, "Well, let's show him the new invention." Her grandfather, as I remember the story—it could have been father—had drilled a hole in the top of her joystick that ran the wheelchair. He drilled a hole in it and had a long piece of flat metal that came out with a hook in the end. Then had a stick, a long stick—I say long, maybe 18 inches—with something for her to bite on so she could hold it in her mouth. On the other end was a flat piece of metal with a hole in it.
Of course someone had to be there to put the stick in her mouth. But if you put the stick in her mouth and with a lot of luck and a little bit of help, she could hook the flat piece over the hook on the joystick. Then she could say, "Oh, yes, I'm going to show her off." That's what's new in her life. That's what's happening.
God's Purpose Versus Our Desire to Fix
So I said, "Well, are you doing okay?" Here's what she said: "God is really teaching me patience."
Let me tell you what you would think when you saw her. You would see her in the wheelchair and the first thing you want to do is run her down to a Benny Hinn crusade and get her healed. Because you're looking at her and you're saying, "What she needs to do is be fixed. Her problem is she can't walk. Her problem is her arms don't work." And God says her problem is she needs patience.
Now that may sound very cold to you. That may sound very harsh to you. But understand this: if God wanted her to walk, she would be walking. God doesn't want the problem fixed as much as He wants you to draw close to Him. That's the issue. That's the issue on suffering.
God's Purpose Through Suffering
God accomplishes His purpose through suffering and through pain and through hardship. While we want to run from it or help other people out of it, God says, "I gave them this for a reason. For a purpose. For My purpose."
This is not a message that says don't help people. Good grief, you know that's not the message. That's not the point. The point is, why is the suffering there? Sometimes fixing it involves you missing the whole point of the suffering. The whole point of the hardship.
pain and the labor. This touches everybody because it's absolutely universal. Why does God bring these things into your life? Not to solve them. What causes them?
Let me be clear. Sometimes, that suffering is a result of sin. We've got clear illustrations of that in the Scripture. Paul just tells us sometimes there are some people who've in fact died. God has even taken them away because of their sin. And there's a graphic illustration of that in Acts chapter 5.
Sometimes Suffering Comes from Sin
Remember that? Acts chapter 5. Remember who's in there? Ananias and Sapphira. And for years, I thought those were Marvin Gaye's backup singers. But they're not. Those are two biblical creatures that we find right there.
Acts chapter 5. Ananias comes running in and they say, wait a minute. Have you sold a piece of land for such-and-such? And he says, yes, and I want to give it all to the church. And Peter says, you're lying to the Holy Spirit. What kind of a clown are you? Bam! And he dies. And the Scripture's interesting because it said the young men came and took him away.
Hours later, unaware of what had happened, his wife comes in and he says, did you sell the property for such-and-such? And she says, yes, we're going to give it all to the church. And Peter says, what are you doing lying? And bam! She dies. And it says the young men's feet come and take her away.
We have no way of knowing this for sure, but many scholars believe that this phrase to the young men and the way that it was done indicates there was actually an office in the early church, that this occurrence, though not frequent, was regular that God would move this way in the church. Imagine that. Hello. Imagine if you knew we were going to do this next Sunday at church. No metal detectors at the door. Just a little lie detector that you walk through. Beep! Beep! Beep! And as people came in, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep! See?
Well, God sometimes moves that way. God does discipline sin and sometimes He does it physically.
But Not All Suffering is Because of Sin
But to say that's always the case? That you have sin in your life and the reason that you have problems is because of that sin? The apostles were forerunners of this. In John 9, they come upon a blind man and they say to Jesus, who's sinned? This guy? Or his parents? And Jesus said, neither one. Parents didn't sin. This guy didn't sin. This guy is blind, so the power of God might be displayed. I'm going to heal him.
Every time I go into a department store and I see a display case, every time I think of John 9, all of us are display cases for the power and the work of God. Just like that man was in John 9.
Job says, listen, He can slay me and I'm not going to change my mind. His friend said, wait a minute, Job, you must have sinned. Think about your life. Take a look at your life. His wife said, curse God and die. Job said, there's no way I'm going to do this. He starts to waver, but in the end, in chapter 42, verse 5, he said, look it, up to this point, I had heard about you, God, but now I've seen you work.
What is it that allowed Job to see God? It was suffering and pain and hardship. And His relationship, the ultimate relationship, the most important relationship that you or I have, his relationship to the divine Creator was enhanced by the suffering and the pain. And so will yours be.
Biblical Examples of God Using Suffering for Good
The Bible is filled with these stories. Now, Joseph, sold into slavery, does the right thing. He's now CEO of Potiphar Enterprises and in that position, comes in contact with Mrs. Potiphar. And Mrs. Potiphar says, I want you, I want you. He says, no, he does the right thing. He doesn't sin. He runs away. What's his reward for that? Into the dungeon. Not the dungeon, but the bowels of the dungeon, the worst part of the dungeon.
And we'd have been sitting there saying, this isn't fair and this isn't right and we've got to go to the governor and we've got to get him out and we've got to fix it. If God wanted it fixed, he'd be fixed. And it got fixed. When God wanted it fixed, and now Joseph was ready to become the second most powerful man in the world.
And when his brothers came to him and he revealed himself to his brothers, his brothers said, oh, we are in trouble. And Joseph said, no, no you aren't, because suffering has accomplished its goal in me. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good and that's what it was supposed to do.
Now, is that the way you approach suffering and pain? God works with us in that area.
The False Prosperity Gospel
That's why the theology you see on Christian television and oftentimes on the radio, more on television than on TV, is so insidious that somehow says, God wants you wealthy, not poor. God wants you healthy, not sick. God wants you to be victorious, not struggling. I've got news for you. You may enjoy that, but that's not biblical.
God may want you sick, not healthy, and poor, not wealthy, and struggling, not cruising. Why would a guy who loves us want us sick? Because you learn better when you're sick than when you're healthy. Why would He want us to struggle financially? Because you are more, I would say, more in a position where you'll listen when you're poor than when you're wealthy.
You know what happens when you're wealthy? You take on a different type of spiritual attitude. Things are going good. You're smiling and you're saying, God bless me. But under your breath, you're saying, and why wouldn't He? Because look at me. He's not going to bless this smuck over here? No, he's going to bless me. Praise Jesus. And that's the undercurrent of all of that.
When things are going good, are you coachable? No. How do I get your attention in hard times?
Suffering Teaches Us Hope
Martin Luther said this, until a person experiences suffering, he can't know what it means to hope. If you don't know suffering, you can't know what it means to hope.
R.C. comments on suffering and says, to remove God from human suffering is to quit the pilgrimage of faith. God majors in suffering. He displays His holy involvement in all suffering. See, God is sovereign
and with a plan, so that our life is not a series of random, unrelated, uncontrolled circumstances. What a depressing thought that is.
We're just about a month away from sending these little tykes back into the school system. If they go to the public school system, they're going to be taught that all of life is chance, random happening, unrelated, no creator, no one in control, no final authority. What kind of a creature does that produce? I'll give you one. Ernest Hemingway. The kind of creature that, at the end of their life, paddles out in a boat and puts a bullet in their brain because it's hopeless, because this is all there is.
Or Sartre or Camus, who just look at the world and say, this is just folly, it's silly, it's an evil play because there's no God. Even the great atheists say, we must live as though there is God, because otherwise there's no meaning to life. Why is the generation you're looking at... Tom Brokaw, last night, did his report on the lost generation. Why is this generation lost? Well, this is easy, because they've been told no beginning and no end. They came from nowhere, they're going nowhere.
Now, you tell me, how do you find meaning when you're here, if there's no reason for you being here, and you're an accident? You're an accident. First it was goo, and then to the zoo, and now it's you, and that's the way life is, and that's the whole summary of it. You're just one giant cosmic accident. Do you find meaning in that? No. That's why the world is hopeless.
God's Purposes in Our Suffering
I'm going to give you this now. Some of you type A's are about to go nuts, because you're going to try to write these down. Rather than try to accomplish writing 25 of these things down, just get the sense of what He's saying. How come I suffer? What are some reasons? Well, here's at least 25 of them.
To produce patience, and joy, and maturity, and righteousness. To silence the devil. To teach us. To purify our lives. To make us Christ-like. To glorify God. To prevent sin. Hopefully we learn from that. To make us confess our sin. To chasten us for sin. To prove our sonship.
How about this? That's one of my favorites. To reveal ourselves to us. The implication is that we don't see ourselves otherwise. This is how I think golf and suffering are very similar. Golf is not a character builder. Golf is a character revealer. Golf just shows you what is there. That's what suffering does. Suffering is the perfect mirror that you can hold up and look into, and see you, and your life, and see how you really are.
Suffering Qualifies Us to Help Others
It helps our prayer life. It makes us examples. It qualifies us as counselors. What do you mean by that? It qualifies us as having compassion with one another.
Just a little less than two years ago, I had this thing in my hand. Some of you were around for this. It was so sore, and so raw on the top, that I could not put my hand into my pocket. The cloth rubbing across the top of it was so painful that I couldn't put my hand in my pocket. At night I'd sleep, and the sheet would just move over the top of it, and I would be up.
I'm left-handed, and I had to write, and there's no way I'm not going to make notes to be able to come here and teach. I'm not going to miss teaching, if at all possible. So I'm writing three or four minutes at a time, and then resting. I'll tell you, up to that point, if I met somebody and they said, I can't put my hand in my pocket, I'd have said to them, what? You can't put your hand in your pocket? Suck it up, and stick your hand in your pocket, grab the pen, and let's go. That's what I'd have said to them.
Now, when they say to me, my hand really hurts, I say, you want to talk about hurt? Let me tell you about October of '91, I'll tell you hurt. And that's the way we learn through suffering. I do have an element of compassion for physical suffering that I never had before, in a funny little way, with my hand.
Now you talk about big things. Now you talk about somebody that's lost a child in an accident. They can relate in a way to somebody going through that, that you and I could never, ever possibly fathom the depths of. It furthers our witness. You know, when you endure suffering, the world looks at you, and they're attracted to that. They want to know how that works.
It makes us ultimately conquerors. It allows us to see God's nature, and to drive us closer to Him, to prepare us for the work He has, to get us ready for the reward and the kingdom, and ultimately to show that God is God. That's the point. There is evil in the world. Did God cause it? No, He did not. Could He stop it? Anytime He wanted.
The Process of Spiritual Growth
Now we go back to that verse we started with. When you encounter all joy, when you encounter various trials. Why? How could that possibly be? Paul gives you the answer, Romans 5. He says this, we know this, suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, character, hope.
You and I grow. Our suffering and our pain is our spiritual aerobics that takes us to the next level of growth. And to try to avoid it is to miss something that God has for you. Now, you don't go out and bring suffering on yourself. That's not the message. You don't have to do that. The world will take care of that. Just keep breathing and that will solve itself.
The question is, how do you respond when the suffering comes? And the message is clear. The suffering is there for a reason, and the pain and the hurt and the hardship is there for a reason.
A Promise for Christians Only
By the way, just make this delineation. We have no time left. This is not a universal promise. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good. For the whole world? No. To those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Who are they? The Christians.
This isn't a promise to the Buddhist or the pagan or the Hindu. No. If you're here today and you
If you don't know Christ, hey, you ought to be worried. You ought to be uptight. Things aren't going to work out well for you. Even if you slide through this life, you're going to die and face the judgment of an angry, wrathful God who will judge the sinner and the sin. No bad thing can happen to you.
Closing Prayer
Well, let's pray. Get you on your way.
Father, thank you. Thank you for the truth of this. We cannot always comprehend this. This is difficult for us to understand. In a room this size with this many people, we have stories of suffering that we could spend the rest of the day listening to. Pain and hurt and suffering and anguish.
God, this is not a message that tells us to pretend it doesn't hurt. This is a message that says to us, You are there to strengthen us. You're there to hold us up. You are there to see not just that we survive, but that we thrive in the midst of this pain and suffering and hurt.
Father, we turn to You and we ask You not to take this stuff away from us if it's not Your will, but give us eyes to see our lives as they really are, and the courage to face life as it is, knowing that You're in control, that everything is under Your jurisdiction, and that all that comes into our life is either caused by or permitted by You. With it comes to the strength to endure, persevere, and thrive, knowing that one day we will be with Your Son Jesus in heaven forever, and that that glory cannot even be compared to what we endure every day, the momentary light affliction.
God, give us the eyes to see this. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.
See you September 9th.