"From your very first step in camp everyone will try to deceive and plunder you. Trust no one but yourself. Look around quickly: someone may be sneaking up on you to bite you. Eight years ago I arrived at Kargopollag just as innocent and just as naive as you are now. They unloaded us from two trains, and the convoy prepared to lead us the six miles to the work camp through the deep, crumbly snow. Three sleds came up beside us. Some hefty chap whom the convoy didn't interfere with came over to us and said, "Brothers, put your things on the sleds and we will carry them there for you. " We remembered reading in books that prisoners' belongings were carried on carts. And we thought, "it isn't going to be that inhumane in camp; they are concerned about us." We loaded our things on the sleds. They left. And we never saw them again, not even an empty wrapper."

So said the seasoned veteran in Soviet slave labour to newcomer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He asked, "But how can that happen? Isn't there any law there?"
"Don't ask idiotic questions. There is a law there. The law of the taiga, of the jungle."
[Gulag Archipelago, p.563]

This is the life of Soviet slavery.
Really not that different from slavery at any time in any society.
The law of the jungle. Slow but systematic dehumanization, destruction and death.
The law of the jungle. I wonder sometimes how different that is from life as an employee for certain companies which are no more than sanitized sweat shops. Where it's put out or you're out. Sort of an industry version of academia's "publish or perish". It's you or the next guy. Whoever can get higher faster first.
Sucking you dry.
Draining every ounce of mental and emotional energy possible out of you, and spitting you out when they're done.

Sometimes it seems that life itself is sort of a jungle. Particularly when we're faced with a tragedy in life, or in a moment of crisis, or a time of illness, or a season of grief. We feel as though darkness itself were swallowing us up. When life is sheer effort, a colossal fight, just to keep our head above water.
Been there?
Done that?
Wearing the scars?

And we wonder who could ever relate?
Where on earth could a way out ever be found?
And we look to heaven, feeling as though a thick dark blanket were drawn across the sky. As though we stood all alone.
That's how we feel.

In those moments, awful moments with terrible feelings, we need to have some rock solid truths stored up inside. Truths that we can count on, turn to, and gain strength from.

I'd like to read two items with you:

From our human hellish experience of life in the Gulag, or in the rat race of industry, or in the midst of suffering we are confronted with the Catechism that points us to the suffering of another -- of our Lord Jesus.

Jesus - who descended into the very pit of hell.
That's what we confessed earlier in the service with the words of the Apostles' Creed.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified dead and buried.
He descended into hell.

What does that statement mean?
What difference does His hellish experience make for the dark moments of my life?

Standing with the authors of the catechism, and our Reformed forebearers, we understand the reference to Jesus' descent to hell as referring to the final, awful struggle between Jesus and the forces of Satan;the struggle that occurred on the cross.
The cross - where all the powers of sin and darkness gathered together to try and smother the Son of God. That, for Jesus, was where he entered Hell.

Hell - do you know what it is...... ultimately?
How would you define Hell? I've talked about that with church school classes over the years and we've come to the conclusion that Hell is the place where there is the total absence of God. It is the place of banishment away from the grace of God;, the moderating, mediating care of God; the life-sustaining mercy of God. Where that is missing, Hell is found.
Jesus hung on the cross.
And, as the Bible narrates the story, the sky grew black. The air hung heavy. And through the darkness came the voice of Jesus - "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"Abandoned by God. And what happened next goes without saying. For the spiritual world, just like the physical world, abhors a vacuum. Jesus himself taught that when evil spirits find a person where the Spirit of God does not dwell, they dive in with relish. (Mt 12.45)

When God abandons a person or a place, utterly abandons them -- removing any vestige of His common, sustaining grace -- the devil is right there ready to move in.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
God left.
Satan came, with all his impish host.
And hanging there, suffering, dying -- Jesus was in the very pit of hell.

And it was there, in his greatest weakness, that Jesus had to face the greatest strength of Satan.
At the brink of death.
I've seen people face the prospect of death and recoil in horror. Fear. Uncertainty. You can be certain that Satan waved those prospects under the nose of Jesus. Trying to crush him with fear and anxiety.

I've seen people in times of pain. Resistance and tolerance levels go way down. To one degree or another I'm sure we've all experienced that. So did Jesus. And Satan swooped in.

For all it would take was one word of denial. And his life would have been spared. One word and he would have been taken off that cross. One word of rage or rebellion against His heavenly Father.
Just one - and Satan would have won.
Christ would have fallen.
Our salvation would have been lost.
Eternity would have been his.

Would have been.
But it wasn't!!
For Christ resisted. Alone and in the darkness He resisted. With Hell swirling around Him He remained pure. He did NOT buckle. Satan could NOT gain the upper hand. Allowing Jesus to say some more things while on the cross."It is finished."
"Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."
It is finished - the time of suffering, of being ignored by God,
the swirling, whirling, black moments in hell facing the worst of human experience that was all finished. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit -- though there was a time of being all alone, there was now a reunion. The Father in Heaven, who had deliberately turned His divine back on His one and only Son, now deliberately turned around to face Him once more. And with the hands that had created the world He reached out to claim the life of His son from that cross.
Taking Him home.

So the war was over. The scattered remains of hell littered the road. Exhausted, scarred, bruised but victorious, Jesus turns to His Father and ours, and hands His life back to God.

Satan and his cronies, who had invaded God's good creation as an alien force bent on destruction, have been dealt the death blow.

All of which means a few things for you and I. First about those times when we struggle and suffer -- The experience of pain in life, be that emotional or physical pain, can virtually destroy a person. It can send one right over the edge of despair.
No one knows.
No one understands.
There's no way out; no end.
It's hopeless.

Or circumstances come up that leave us flustered. And we end up feeling so terribly alone. Sometimes terribly embarrassed.
When people ask us, "Hey, how's it going?" and we smile and say, "Not bad" when we want to scream at them "It's hell. Pure hell."

In those kinds of moments we can turn to the cross where our Saviour struggled.... and suffered..... went through hell, pure hell...... and came out the victor.
That victor Jesus now lives in heaven, watching, caring, providing for people who in their own ways go through their own times when they're ready to scream, "God, are you abandoning me too?" Jesus is watching. Not abandoning. And He is pleading with His Father, interceding for us --- with us in those darkest moments.

Not with us in some way like the Queen of England who may send a message of condolence and sympathy to victims of the ice storm from the warmth of Buckingham Palace, without the slightest clue of what these people are facing.
Not like that!
Rather, He intercedes and watches and provides as one who has struggled in all ways as we have.
Been there.
Done that.
Wearing -- even now in heaven -- the scars of the battles.

Meaning we can cry out in pain; scream out our questions; blurt out our frustrations and know for sure for sure for sure that we're being heard.
Really heard. And understood.
It also means that when we enter times of dead-end living.
Perhaps times where we feel trapped by a pattern of living we know to be sinful.
Perhaps caught in times when faith seems like a stretch and we're ready to throw in the towel.
Perhaps times when we just can't seem to put out in any sort of productive way.when we enter times like that and Satan's workers swoop down onto our minds and hearts and spirits and try to pull us away from the faith, to convince us we can't endure, to shake our confidence that God loves us...... or even pays attention to us.

When we enter those times we can remember that Satan's word isn't the last word. He can sneer all he wants. He could tempt all he wants. He can pull all he wants.
But in the eternal scheme of things Hell for us is simply a non-option. We're on the road to eternal life.
As Psalm 27 says, "I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord."
If you know that you're beat anyway you'll quit trying. Like in a hockey game when your team is down 8-0 and only 10 minutes left in the third period. The team gives up. You don't check as hard, skate as fast, or shoot with care. You've already quit.

Sometimes as people life looks like an 8-0 game, and we're on the losing end. Till we look at the cross and realize that Jesus won. The outcome has already been decided. It is Satan, not Jesus and not we who belong to Him that are on the losing side.

And with that knowledge we can gain fresh courage. We can dare to pray again. To plan again. To strive hard to resist temptation again. To even attempt to make a difference in society for the Kingdom of heaven again.
With that knowledge we can somehow find what is needed to carry on in spite of the pain again; in spite of the fact that the disability will not go away.
We can bear up better under the load and pressure of work, knowing that our value as a human being doesn't depend on our placement at work -- but in the sheer and simple fact that we're loved by Jesus.
And He's in charge. And we are His.