With Easter done and dusted for another year, it’s kind of easy to forget about the Cross, Christ’s suffering, the resurrection and the empty tomb … and just get on with life. What do all those things have to do with what I have going on in my life now? But that sort of attitude can get us into a lot of trouble. 

It’s funny how we build rituals into our lives that we repeat year after year. There’s Christmas, then New Year’s. For those in the southern hemisphere, that normally means some sort of summer break. Then all too quickly, Easter rolls around, but that happens so quickly that if you blink, you miss it. Although for those in the northern hemisphere, Easter is a sure sign that their summer break is just weeks away. That’ll always give you a bit of a sense of anticipation.

Yeah, Easter is a bit of a marker in the calendar, but for many, that’s all it is. It happens and just as quickly as it came. It disappears again. And I think if that’s how we treat Easter, then we do so at our own peril because there are some lessons in Easter, there are some vitally important truths in the Easter story that can sustain us and bless us all year round, particularly if that year is not looking like it’s going to be a particularly good one.

I was having coffee with a young man the other day. He’s kind of in his mid-thirties, which may seem young from where I sit somewhere on the other side of fifty, and this young man has it all. He has a successful career as a speaker and an author and a business coach. He earns lots and lots of money, a lot more than me, certainly; and he’s a good-looking guy. Emotionally he has it together; he has everything to live for: A beautiful wife, a happy marriage, the ability to travel all round the world to all sorts of fantastic places, and his wife gets to come with him sometimes. We’re also friends on Facebook, and forever I’m seeing photos of him white-water rafting in Thailand, and popping up in London and New York, and he doesn’t fly at the back of a plane either, I have to tell you.

My point is this: If ever there was a guy that you and I would point to and say, ‘Wow! God’s blessed that person’, it would have to be this guy, without a shadow of a doubt. And yet there’s one hurt in his life. He and his wife haven’t been able to have a child yet. They’ve thrown money at the problem; in vitro fertilisation; they’ve prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and still, nothing.

You see, it doesn’t matter who we are; where we live; what our circumstances are. It doesn’t matter how incredibly blessed someone is; there is always something in our lives that isn’t to our liking. There is always something in our lives that we want to be able to change. There is always something in our lives that causes us pain.

You and I, we would look at this guy’s life, then look up at God and say, ‘Yes, please, Lord. I’ll have one like that, thanks.’ We keep thinking that if only I could earn a bit more money; if only my husband, or my wife as the case may be, would love me just that little bit more; if only I could find the right job; if only my children would grow out of this difficult stage that they’re in at the moment; if only I could lose a few extra pounds; if only I could afford that little bit of cosmetic surgery; if only, if only, if only … then I would finally be happy. That’s a lie that most people tell themselves most of the time.

Of course, if you had a quick look back at the cross for a moment, and saw this Jesus who’d never done a single thing wrong in His life hanging there, nailed to His cross, hands and feet, gasping for air, slowly dying that excruciating death, we’d realise that bad things happen to good people all the time. Suffering happens. God didn’t even spare His own Son from that.

And while sometimes we suffer as a result of our own mistakes and stupidity, more often than not, the suffering that hits our lives is completely unfair; no rhyme or reasons. It just happens, and while we’re asking ourselves why, while we’re asking God why and when will it end, it’s in the middle of that place that we need to know beyond any shadow of a doubt. It’s right in that dark place that you and I need to be able to declare, ‘My Redeemer lives’.

Sure; that’s the title of a great worship-song – “My Redeemer Lives”; quite a happy-clappy song as I recall, a great one to sing, but for me, it’s way, way more important to be able to mutter through gritted teeth as I’m dealing with pain and uncertainty and fear in my life – ‘My Redeemer lives!’ And that’s what we’re going to be talking about on the programme today and through the course of this week.

Those words were first uttered by a man called Job in the Old Testament. Now Job was a wealthy, successful man, just like the one I described earlier. He’d never set a foot wrong in his life, always honoured God, and then one day, whammo! Have a listen to this.

One day, the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. The LORD said to Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’

Satan answered the LORD, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down upon it.’ 

And the LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’

Then Satan answered the LORD, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house, and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land, but stretch out Your hand now and touch all that he has, and he will curse You to Your face.’ 

The LORD said to Satan, ‘Very well. All that he has is in your power, only do not stretch out your hand against him.’ So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. (Job 1:6-12)

What a rotten thing to happen to this guy, Job. What a rotten thing for the devil to do. Hey, what a rotten thing for God to do! Right? Everything’s going along swimmingly well and then, throughout the book of Job, we discover how he loses everything: Everything – his property, his children, his health, everything – from rooster to feather duster in one fowl swoop.

So let me ask you: When you hit a patch like that in your life, as we all inevitably do, when you have that one bit of suffering in your life, how do you react? What does it do to your sense of self-worth, to your sense of wellbeing, to what you think of God?

Let’s see what else happened to Job, starting in the very next verse:

One day, when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the eldest brother’s house, a messenger came to Job and said, ‘The oxen were ploughing and the donkeys were feeding beside them, and the Sabeans fell upon them and carried them off and killed the servants with the edge of the sword. I alone have escaped to tell you.’

While he was still speaking, another came and said, ‘The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them. I alone have escaped to tell you.’ 

While he was speaking, another came and said, ‘The Chaldeans formed three columns, made a raid on the camels and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword. I alone have escaped to tell you.’ 

While he was still speaking, another came and said: ‘Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people and they are dead. I alone have escaped to tell you.’ (Job 1:13-19)

That’s the sort of suffering that strikes from time to time, and it’s rarely just one thing. More often than not, it comes in groups of three or four, so when that happens, how do you respond?

I’ll leave that question hanging there for you to consider. We’ll come back to that again after the break, because it’s right in the middle of a situation like that, that you and I need answers. Suffering happens, wow. Someone should turn that into a bumper sticker, right? Suffering happens. It happens, and when it does, God has answers – some real answers that make a real difference.

There are two equal and opposite mistakes that we can make when we’re suffering. We can over–spiritualise our situation, or under–spiritualise it. Mostly, it’s the latter. Mostly, we just look at the conditions and circumstances as they present themselves. But actually, all too often, the devil is behind it all.

When your life hits a patch of suffering, as every life on this planet does from time to tome, how do you react? How do you respond? Mostly we go to God and we ask Him why and when is it going to end, right? We desperately want to know why this is happening to us, and we desperately want it to end. Those are the two compelling forces that drive us forward in suffering.

It was certainly like that for Job: A good man, a righteous man (whom we meet in the Old Testament), until the devil comes after him with a pickaxe. Let’s have a listen.

One day, the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. The LORD said to Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’

 Satan answered the LORD, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down upon it.’

And the LORD said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’

Then Satan answered the LORD, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house, and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land, but stretch out Your hand now and touch all that he has, and he will curse You to Your face.’

The Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well. All that he has is in your power, only do not stretch out your hand against him.’ So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD. (Job 1:6-12)

Now this is a fascinating passage of Scripture because it goes to the issue of over-spiritualisation and under-spiritualisation that I mentioned a bit earlier.

See, all too often, something bad happens to us and we look at the physical circumstances – the people; the issues; the troubles we’re dealing with, and we completely forget about the spiritual realm.

The apostle Paul, many years later, put it this way. Ephesians 6:10-11:

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His power. But put on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against rulers, against authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Make no mistake about it. There is a spiritual battle going on in the heavenly places for your soul. If we miss that, we end up completely missing what’s going on when it comes to suffering that we’re going through. But there’s something incredibly odd that happens here in that passage about Job where the devil goes to God. Did you pick it? Here it is again. The devil says:

But stretch out Your hand now and touch all that he has, and he will curse You to Your face.’

So the Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well. All that he has is in your power, only do not stretch out your hand against him.’ So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.

Did you notice that the devil has to go to God to ask Him permission to ruin Job’s life? Because according to the devil, God has put a fence around him and his house and all that he has on every side.

That Hebrew word for fence literally means a deep thick hedge of protection, like the ones that shepherds used to grow out in the pastures. At night, they would put their sheep in it and they would sleep across the entrance to protect their flock from wild animals and thieves: A thick, dense, impenetrable hedge; a hedge so thick that Satan can’t break through it. And with God standing at the entrance, the devil can only enter with God’s permission.

Listen up. If you love Jesus, then you belong to God, and as with Job, He has put a hedge of protection around you. When the devil attacks you, he can only do it with God’s permission.

Have you ever felt spiritually attacked? Sure you have; so have I. What do you imagine God’s doing when the devil comes after you with a pickaxe? Has God fallen asleep? Has He wandered off somewhere? Has the devil overwhelmed Him? No! None of those things. God has given the devil permission to attack you. Now that may sound crazy to some. ‘What? Why would God do that?’

That’s something that Job asks God over and over again. He runs the line with God. ‘Hang on, Lord. Aren’t I a good guy? Haven’t I obeyed You in every part of my life? So why are you punishing me like this? Why are you doing this?’

And God’s answer to Job is, in effect: ‘Job, it’s none of your business.’ Years later, James put it this way in his New Testament letter.

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but pure joy because you know that the testing in your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4)

God always has a purpose for allowing the devil to attack us, and to bring suffering: Always. It’s not something that He does lightly, and the devil (far from having overwhelmed God) is simply a tool in God’s hands to knock off the rough edges and smooth the surfaces, like a piece of sandpaper. And when God’s done with him, He’ll throw him into the lake of fire.

That’s the important thing for you and me to know when we’re suffering, especially when we have that sense that we’re being spiritually attacked. God is in control! My Redeemer lives! That’s something that Job knew deep inside in his being because when he lost everything, this is what he did. Job 1:20-22

Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshipped. He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.”

So let me ask you again, how would you react? How do you react? Because how we react say everything about what we believe, and who we are, and our relationship with God.

It feels somewhat unnatural to worship God in the midst of suffering. In fact, not somewhat unnatural – completely unnatural because when we’re suffering, our hearts and our minds start to turn away from God. We question Him; we put Him on trial; we demand answers, like a prosecuting attorney. And when He doesn’t give us any, we give up on Him and focus on our suffering. Fear creeps in; uncertainty and worry creep in, and at that point … Listen to me. At that point, the devil is winning.

God opened the gate for the devil to enter to see what we would do; how we would react. God’s plan is to test our faith. God’s plan is to allow the ravages of the devil to give us the opportunity to exercise our faith. What He’s looking for in you and me, through gritted teeth, is to utter those words that Job uttered, ‘My Redeemer lives’.

What God’s looking for is for us to worship Him; to completely trust our lives into His hands, despite what circumstances are screaming at us. Just like Job, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’.

We don’t really know that our Redeemer lives until we’ve come to know that in the place of suffering. That’s when the unjust suffering of Jesus starts to make sense in our own experience. That’s when the empty tomb has its most powerful effect in our lives. That’s when our faith, all of a sudden, becomes real. And when we come out the other end of it all, having exercised the muscle of faith, all of a sudden we discover that our faith is much, much stronger for having been through it.

So, when suffering comes your way, how will you respond?

It seems that when you’re down, some people, instead of encouraging you, want to kick you. Have you ever been disappointed by your friends? You know, you think to yourself, “With friends like this, who needs enemies?” Well today, we’re going take a look at dealing with friends like that.

Some years ago, I was interviewing a man about some difficult times that he had been through in his life, and he spoke of many “dark nights of the soul”.  Hmm what a powerful phrase. Dark nights of the soul.  He didn’t need to explain what he was talking about. It’s something I understood … instantly.

Dark … nights … of the soul. I wonder what that means to you. I can tell you what it means to me. There have been those nights, over the years, when I’ve lain in bed, with fear racking my very being. Whether it was over a relationship issue, or my job, or finances … whatever it was … I could only sleep in fits and starts, because in the middle of those dark nights, things seemed so bad, so hopeless, that the despair consumed my whole being.

I remember one such night in a hotel when I was travelling for business back in February 1995, it was so bad, that I came this close to taking my own life the next morning. I remember it as though it were yesterday.

Fortunately, most of us tend not to have too many of those dark nights, but when you’re in the middle of a patch of suffering in your life, they become very real. And it’s no good saying to someone, ‘Well, you know, if you believed in God, everything would be fine. You wouldn’t feel like that.

Well, Jesus did. That night that He went to the garden of Gethsemane to pray, we’re told that:

He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.’ And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.’ (Matthew 26:37-39)

Even Jesus was deeply grieved – even unto death. That right there, is a dark night of the soul. And, just as is always the case, when you’re having one of those, His friends were of no use to Him.

I remember back to those times in my life and God put some really, really good people around me. I thank God for them. But it seemed that nothing that they were able to do or to say, could touch my soul deeply enough to make a difference.

You look back on Easter – you hear the old, old story of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest and the trials and the beatings and the crucifixion and then the resurrection – and sometimes it’s easy to imagine that those things don’t have anything relevant to speak into our lives for the rest of the year. We go through Easter the ritual, but then we put it back in the cupboard and forget it for another year.

But for me, somehow, knowing that God understands my suffering, not just because He’s God and He knows everything, but because He’s actually been in my shoes. And He’s lived His own dark night of the soul, well that’s a huge comfort. It means I know that I know that I know that I’m talking to a God who totally gets it. Who doesn’t judge me in my pain, but whose heart aches for me. That’s a huge thing.

Now I wouldn’t wish a dark night like that on anyone. Not even on my worst enemy, yet they’re an absolute inevitability. I had the privilege and the pleasure to catch up with a man who is one of the giants in my life. He was the Pastor of the first church that I attended after I became a Christian. His name is Phil. And he showed me a photo of himself as a young man.

He was lying on a stretcher, after a car accident in which he’d been badly burned by an exploding fuel tank. After rolling in the dirt and the dust to put out the flames, he was unconscious, bandages all over him. He had not been a Christian all that long, and he was telling me what it was like to be there in the hospital, alone, doctors and nurses talking about whether he’d make it or not, and the septicaemia that was attacking his open wounds, the skin grafts that he would need.

Phil was a trained surveyor, and as he lay in that hospital bed in that dark, lonely place – a dark night of the soul if ever there was one – He spoke of God’s presence. He was thinking about the rest of his life, if he had much of it before him, and he came to the conclusion that God didn’t want him to be a surveyor for the rest of his life. It was in that place that he decided to become a pastor.

Now, many years on, at the retirement end of 40 plus years of pastoring, he can look back on a life in which he has touched so many people, so many lives with the love of Christ.

Those dark nights are often very important times in our lives, where God can connect with us in the most amazing way. Where our hearts, wounded and raw with pain, are open to receive something incredibly powerful from God.

We’ve been travelling a bit of a journey with Job, and it was a terrible time for him. Back in the Old Testament book of Job, we see how God gave the devil permission to strip everything away from the man. He was a good guy, a righteous man, who honoured God in everything he did.

Yet, God allowed his faith to be tested by letting the devil strip away one by one, each of the blessings that God had given him. His children, all his possessions, his wife, his friends, his reputation, even his health – he suffered in every sense of the word. He gets to a point finally where he says this to God, Job chapter 10: 1 to 4:

I loathe my life; I will give free utterance to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. I will say to God, ‘Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me. Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favour the schemes of the wicked? Do you have eyes of flesh? Do you see as humans see?’

Pretty direct, don’t you think? He is telling God exactly what he thinks and feels. He’s laying his perspective right out there, in front of God. I think sometimes we think that we have to sanitise it for God, that somehow, before we go to God we need to put on our Sunday bests and put a smile on our face and go and tell God how rosy things are.

But in the midst of those dark nights, things aren’t rosy. They don’t look rosy, they don’t feel rosy and putting on a false face for God is just about the dumbest thing that anyone can do.

I want to encourage you in the middle of those places to pour out your heart and your soul to God. Tell Him exactly what you think; exactly what you feel. I want to encourage you today, that in the midst of your despair, your God is the one constant on whom you can rely. He is the one person who is faithful beyond all others.

When God’s judgment falls on Jerusalem because His people had sinned against Him (for centuries) yet again, when He allowed the city and the temple to be destroyed by the Babylonians, when God’s people were taken into captivity as slaves, the writer of the book of Lamentations was standing in the midst of this devastation, surveying the complete destruction of the great Jerusalem and the temple of the living God. But after lamenting the destruction and the loss, this is what he said (Lamentations 3:20-26):

I thought of my affliction, my homelessness, is wormwood and gall; my soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. ‘The LORD is my Portion’, says my soul; therefore I will hope in Him. The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, the soul that seeks Him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. 

With all the devastation and destruction that we see in our lives (sometimes), you and I can know that the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. In fact, they are new every morning, and that’s what we would know in the midst of devastation if as men and women of God, we took the time to get ready for it.

And as your soul seeks Him and waits quietly for His salvation, know this: He is doing a mighty work in you. He is doing things in you that you cannot begin to imagine. The greatest transformations of your life will almost always happen on those dark nights of the soul, and it is good for you to wait quietly for His salvation.

When the whole world seems to be arraigned against you, when the people who should be your friends are criticising you, when God seems to have deserted you, right in that place, it’s time to take a stand and declare: “My Redeemer Lives”.