The Part of My Sermon I Skipped

I preached on Sunday on Psalm 22 for the first sermon in our new series called Where Is God When Life Stinks? I could see that it was about 6 minutes to 12:00 and I wanted to be finished by 11:55 so that the worship team would have time to play a song as the children came upstairs and Communion would get started right at 12:00 as we recently agreed with Springboard to start doing. So I skipped a Timothy Keller quote.

I said:
Jesus is God’s ultimate answer to our suffering because He suffered so badly – and the physical pain was nothing compared to the spiritual pain of being separated from the Father.

And then I skipped this next part and just went right into my conclusion instead.

Timothy Keller has written the following profound insight:
There may be no greater inner agony than the loss of a relationship we desperately want. If a mild acquaintance turns on you, condemns and criticizes you, and says she never wants to see you again, it is painful. If someone you’re dating does the same thing, it is more painful. But if your spouse does this to you, or if one of your parents does this to you when you’re still a child, the psychological damage is infinitely worse. We cannot fathom, however, what it would be like to lose not just spousal love or parental love that has lasted several years, but the infinite love of the Father that Jesus had from all eternity. Jesus’ sufferings would have been eternally unbearable.

I thank Jesus for how he suffered and how that helps us to make sense of our own suffering and causes us to be assured that God cares so very much.