Feast of All Saints—Blessed Are You: Christ’s Compassion in Our Suffering
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you, and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for indeed your reward is great in heaven, for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.” (Luke 6:20–23)
From our conception and throughout our earthly lives, we are given so many precious gifts—body and soul, eyes, ears, and all our members, our reason, and all our senses; everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like. We know that our God and Father gives us so many gifts throughout our life. He also guards and protects us from evil in this life, but we also know from experience that our Lord often allows evil and tragedy to befall us.
We know that He often withholds good things from us, like children, a particular job, a particular prospective spouse, and many other good things. God even takes good things from us—like our children, parents, spouses, friends, jobs, and many other good things. The older we get, the more He seems to take from us our youthful vigor, our mind, our freedom, our mobility, our comfort, and finally He will take our breath.
Each of us must confess with Job, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:21)
Our Lord Jesus knows what it means to be a human being in this fallen world. He has intimate experience with coming into this world naked and leaving the same way. He knows from experience what it is like to receive gifts from the Father and to have them withheld or taken away.
So we should take Him very seriously when He says that we are blessed and fortunate when we suffer lack or endure severe attacks from others—blessed when we are poor, when we hunger now, when we weep now, when we are hated, excluded, reviled, and when our name is dragged through the mud for the sake of God and His Word. We should take it very seriously because He is the One who says it, and He is not far off, aloof from the sufferings of a human in this life.
Our Lord Jesus doesn’t speak these words as someone who is unfamiliar with suffering—someone who sits far off in luxury and tells the poor and downtrodden to “suck it up and get a job.”
He speaks these words declaring that we are blessed when God withholds gifts from us and sends us suffering as One who knows what it is like from His own experience as Man.
Our Lord was poor. Even at birth, our Lord was laid in a feeding trough instead of a bassinet.
As an adult, our Lord Jesus said of Himself, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” (Luke 9:58)
Scripture tells us, “Our Lord Jesus made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a slave, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.” (Philippians 2:7–8)
And, “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.” (2 Corinthians 8:9)
Our Lord Jesus hungered and thirsted. “When He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.” (Matthew 4:2)
And when He was about to die on the cross for the sins of the world, “Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, ‘I thirst.’” (John 19:28)
Our Lord wept and mourned. When He found out that John the Baptist had been beheaded, He attempted to depart from where He was by boat to a deserted place by Himself.
But when the multitudes heard it, they followed Him on foot from the cities (Matthew 14:10–13).
When Mary came where Jesus was, at her brother Lazarus’s tomb, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the Spirit and was troubled. And He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to Him, “Lord, come and see.” “Jesus wept.” (John 11:32–35)
As our Lord came closer and closer to the time when His own people would murder Him, He drew near to the city of Jerusalem, the city of the great King, and He saw the city and wept over it—because so many of His fellow Jews, His own people, would reject Him as their Messiah, and that city, that great city of the King, would be destroyed as a result (Luke 19:41–44).
And our Lord was hated, rejected, excluded, reviled, and had His name cast out as evil—even accused of being a blasphemer: God Himself accused of blasphemy for His Father’s sake.
The people He came to comfort and save thrust Him out of their city and attempted to cast Him off a cliff (Luke 4:29). They desired to kill Him for healing people on the Sabbath (John 5:16) and to stone Him for telling the truth that “I and My Father are one.” (John 10:30–33)
And finally, our Lord was sentenced to death on the basis of false witnesses (Matthew 26:59–60).
Our Lord is able to identify with us in our sufferings because He was afflicted like us in every way except committing sin (Hebrews 4:15).
And He is able to tell us with certainty that the suffering we endure and the good that is withheld from us makes us blessed—because He knows beyond any doubt what the end of these tribulations actually is.
He knows what it’s like to suffer as a human being because He became Man, and He knows the true end of those sufferings because He is truly God. He has insider knowledge from the bosom of the Father.
From eternity, He has been a witness to and participant in the hidden counsel of the Triune God, because He is the Second Person of the Trinity. He knows what it is to suffer as Man, and He knows what the end of that suffering is for the Christian beyond any doubt.
We are blessed and fortunate to be poor. We are blessed and fortunate to hunger now. We are blessed and fortunate to weep now. We are blessed and fortunate to be hated, excluded, reviled, and to have our name dragged through the mud as evil for the sake of our Lord and His Word.
It’s a certain fact that we are blessed and fortunate in these things. We are blessed when our loved ones are taken from us, because they who die in the Lord are now resting in our Lord’s Kingdom—satisfied, laughing, and leaping for joy, knowing the wonderful purposes their God had in mind when He afflicted them in this life.
“It is good for me that I have been afflicted,
that I may learn Your statutes.”
(Psalm 119:71)
We do not yet have the knowledge in full concerning these purposes of our Lord, but Scripture tells us, “Consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: ‘My son, do not despise the chastening of the LORD, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the LORD loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.’” (Hebrews 12:3–6)
“If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.” (Hebrews 12:7–10)
“Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” (Hebrews 12:11)
It may be at least one of the reasons our Lord withholds the gift of children, or takes our children or loved ones away, is that He might train us to fear, love, and trust in Him as our highest and only good—and to grow in that and be trained into that more and more.
It may be, at least in part, that the Lord takes beloved pastors out of our lives, or places us in congregations with lesser men serving in that office, to train us to know that it is not the man holding the office, but our Lord Jesus, who works mightily through His Word through that office, that we are to entrust ourselves to, and never doubt.
And when it comes to the man, our Lord tells us, “Do not put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help.” (Psalm 146:3)
And it may be, to a certain extent, that our Lord takes us out of what feels like a real church—with a building and all the trappings we have associated with being church—so that He might train us to know what the Scriptures actually teach about the Church. Namely, that the Church is the gathering of saints and true believers, the people and only the people.
It is the gathering of saints in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments are correctly administered.
It may be that the good gift of a building to call our own is withheld for a time, so that the Lord might train us to give up the false teaching that everything would be better if we had our own building, or the false teaching that if we don’t have our own place, we aren’t a real church.
He may be training us to remember His Word that tells us, “You are God’s building.” (1 Corinthians 3:9)
Or, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16)
And, “In every place where I cause My name to be remembered, I will come to you and I will bless you.” (Exodus 20:24b)
And again, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20)
“Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we may boldly say:
‘The LORD is my helper;
I will not fear.
What can man do to me?’”
(Hebrews 13:5–6)
Beloved, listen to your Lord and follow the example of those saints who have gone before us. Remember what our fathers and mothers in the faith, our brothers and sisters in the faith, patiently endured—suffering, and even accepting when the Lord took away or withheld from them good gifts as they journeyed on toward their true home. Remember their example and follow it.
“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland.
And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.
But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country.
Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.”
(Hebrews 11:13–16)
All this creation has to offer surely passes away as vapor. Even the good things of this creation pass away as vapor. The departed saints looked forward to a home and a treasure that never perishes, never passes away.
Let’s keep our eyes fixed on that. There isn’t a single thing that befalls you in this life that our Lord isn’t carefully directing in such a way that is most beneficial to you—for your good in this life and eternal life in the age to come.
Our Lord tells us this for certain. We trust His Word because He never lies or deceives, and our beloved brothers and sisters who have been taken from us in this earthly life have had faith pass away into sight, knowing these promises of our Lord are fulfilled even as they await the fullness and the resurrection of the body, where we all will share together with them that knowledge by sight.
Let us pray. Lord Jesus, the poverty of our souls, hearts, and spirits is great. Our suffering and tribulation in this veil of tears is manifold. Make us, however, rich by grace, that we may seek heavenly goods from You, our Redeemer, with living faith; and grant us Your Holy Spirit, who may comfort, quicken, and bless us through the power of Your Word in the midst of all suffering and misery. Grant that, with meekness, we may endure in true patience our little crosses which You have laid upon us to bear, that, inasmuch as we have the opportunity, we may live peaceably and in unity with all; and that we may rightly partake of and make use of the precious daily bread and whatever else You have bestowed upon us for the preservation of this life in Your fear and blessing, under Your praise and honor and the service and benefit of our neighbor. For You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
For more about who we are and what we believe, visit the St. Thomas homepage.
