One of the most difficult topics, in any study of God, is
the problem that suffering exists, in significant portion, for all people in
this world. We believe that God is
loving, that he created man in his image, and yet there is real and present
suffering in this world. As we are
confronted with the bible we want to laugh and toss it aside because, we say,
“How could a great and loving God allow me, us, to suffer?” Today I want to address the real suffering in
this world and offer a hope that only the grace filled God of the bible can
offer.
The danger is to think that what I will write will diminish
the suffering that we experience. The
danger is to think, “If I just read enough of this good book God will take away
my suffering.” God never promises
freedom from suffering. In fact he
promises the opposite. In John 15, Jesus tells his disciples to expect
suffering and persecution because they persecuted him.
God is sovereign in the midst of the suffering of his
people. God is not weak or absent in the
midst of suffering. The people of Israel
suffered greatly under the hands of their oppressors and we will see that God
was not absent in this. There are many
reasons and purposes for suffering. When
God is doing one thing he is doing a million things. And the scriptures give us a glimpse into
richness and depth of suffering allowed into our life.
We struggle with the reality of pain and suffering in the
world. Especially as a post-modern post-industrial
society. We want to believe that
everything is getting better and that we are going to figure out this pain
thing. At the turn of the 19th
century many theologians were declaring the end of evil and suffering, and
their faith was utterly destroyed by the atrocities of WWI and WWII. There is a significant amount of pain and
suffering in this world and we want to distance God from it. Or else, we want
to distance ourselves from God.
Some of the solutions of God and suffering look like this:
If there is a God and
he allows suffering he must be evil.
The danger with this view is that we war against God. We put ourselves as the moral superior to God
and we laughingly lecture God on how to run his creation. Secondly if God is evil then we have no
hope. The purpose of suffering fulfills
a demented deity.
There is no God. Suffering
often leads a person to believe there is no God. But this is not helpful because suffering now
is random. We are helpless in suffering
because this life is meaningless. We
lose all of our foundation to hope in the goodness of the future.
Suffering does not
exist. Sometimes the world does the opposite and says suffering does not
exist. This view says that we ascribe
the value of suffering to our pain. In
the end there is no pain or suffering because we choose not to believe it. This is not helpful either because it is a burry
my head in the sand approach to suffering.
Capricious Greco-Roman
gods who are helpless. The Greek and Roman gods were I think in part
developed to respond the problem of suffering.
The gods were capricious mean and also wrestling between evil and good. Even the “good” gods were driven by evil and lustful
actions. There was a fatalistic approach
to suffering because it did not matter what I did or how I perceived suffering
it was just the fate from the gods. Once
again no hope because suffering is random and purposeless.
There is a God but he
is helpless to stop it. One more thought is that there is a God but he is
helpless to stop evil and suffering.
Either he bound his hands or he was never powerful enough to stop
it. This is a weak view of God. This once again provides us no hope because we
then have to step in and help God in his weakness. And as we look at any cross section of human
history we see how terrible we are at trying to stop suffering.
There is one option that offers hope.
God is redeeming us in
suffering. Today I long to give hope.
Not only is God sovereign in the good times, but God is sovereign in the
times of suffering as well. As God gave
Israel the land, so did God allow the land to be taken, and ordained the
suffering of his people. We have hope
because God is in control, he allows his hands to get messy with pain and
suffering, so that we can know the true, real, and powerful God who is writing
history.
Read: Nehemiah 9:26-32
If you were to read the book of judges you would see this
brief section played out several times.
There is a cycle through the course of the history of the Old Testament. The people of Israel are given the land, they
harden their hearts to God; God sends judgment in the way of a physical enemy;
the people cry out; and God restores the people to their land; repeat. This cycle lives itself out many times
through the course of the bible. But here
in Nehemiah the cycle changes. As the
people are restored to the land their hearts are changed, and they cry out to
God with a new song.
The house of Israel fell into the hands of their
enemies. In every historical conquest
when one nation conquered another the people and identity of that nation was
destroyed. Yet, the chosen seed of
Israel remains to this day. By God’s
great covenant love, verse 31 tells us, he did not forsake his chosen
people.
We see that through the people of Israel that even in the
midst of their suffering God is with them.
He never leaves them. He allows
them to go through suffering. At the end of their suffering they declare that
he is good. Their pain brought about in
the life of the people of God redemption.
The God they once despised, despite his great provision, was faithful to
restore and redeem them. In the end the
thorn of sin was revealed and they learned to love the law that was going to
extract the infected thorn.
A few weeks ago I took a needle to my daughter’s foot. I poked the needle into her foot and it began
to bleed and it hurt her foot. If you
just heard this part of the story you would think me cruel father who delights
in the pain of his children. I assure
you I didn’t like doing it, but I made her bleed none the less.
If I were to tell you that she had a splinter in both of her
feet and that splinter was infected you may think differently of me. Her little feet were getting red and puffy
from the thorn that was infected. I
would not be a loving father if I did not take that needle to her feet. I needed one way or the other to remove the
splitter or else she would have suffered greater pain as the infection grew.
For the people of Israel here God uses their suffering as a
scalpel there is sin deep within his chosen people. They buck against their heavenly Father yet
he is faithful to remove the infection.
He keeps loving them even though he allows them to experience
suffering. The suffering they experience
as a people prepare them for this revival they are experience now with
humility, repentance, and joy. The
suffering gives a depth to their rejoicing and an honesty to their
repentance.
Their suffering created in them an awareness of their thirst
and their need for water. On a moist
cool day you do not always know that you need water; you can dehydrate never
knowing that you need to drink.
Sometimes we need the desert to know how important water is to us. The same is true with suffering.
This means that suffering is not always a result of judgment. It is a result of sin but not as a result of
God bringing judgment. In 2 Corinthians
1:8-9 Paul writes concerning his trial,
“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”
Paul was in despair to the point of death yet he celebrates
his afflictions. He celebrates because
he knows this truth: his sufferings drew him closer to God. Paul did not do anything but be obedient to
God, and he still suffered. The sin in
this world and the enemy of God came against Paul, and God allowed it. Paul gave glory to God for the suffering
because it had its purpose to reveal Paul’s desperate need for Christ and he
drew nearer to God.
God is sovereign in the midst of or suffering. Our danger is in thinking that this is some
sort of cosmic Stockholm syndrome, where we are abused and caused to suffer so
that we fall in love with our abuser.
God never abuses any one. The
reason this is not an abusive relationship between God and our suffering is
that God got his hands dirty.
What I am about to say is an anathema to all of the other
world religions. God suffered for his
creation. This is a capital offence in
Islam, foolishness in Buddhism, Mormonism created another god to deal with this
truth. Every religion of the world
except Christianity cannot fathom the idea that God suffered.
God became a part of his creation. God became a living breathing human being
born of woman and suffered the painful effects of sin along with the
creation. We see Christ’s struggle with
sin and death become more than a head knowledge. More than a three day
nap. When Jesus was preparing to face
the cross he knelt down in Gethsemane and in agony began to sweat drops of
blood.
This was not just a small, “oh I am dead and rose again
suffering meant nothing to me,” act.
This is Jesus, Christ the Creator God of the world, suffering greatly at
the hands of his own creation. Suffering
willingly at the hands of the heavenly Father, so that the world, in the midst
of her suffering, would be redeemed.
The cross of Christ was so profound that even as we see
images, of the resurrected Lord in heaven, in Revelation 5:6 and 19:13, he is
marked by his wounds. He is marked by
his blood. Jesus suffered greatly so
that his creation would be redeemed. This
means that in the midst of our sufferings God is not absent. He suffers alongside us. When we say that God knows our suffering it
is not just an academic, omniscience. This
knowledge is a lived out, actual suffering, that he experienced on your
behalf. He knows your suffering because
he experienced it and so much more suffering.
We do not love an absent God.
Jesus says come to me all who are heavy burdened, because he is going to
take up the cross, and take upon himself the final suffering that we
earned.
Please do not think for one moment this is just some academic
head game. This is not academic! I held the letter in my hand as tears caused
the ink to run. I loved my aunt Patsy. One of the few moments in my life were I
experienced deep and unselfish love, she held me as an 8 year old boy. I had an ear infection and was in crippling pain. She held me through the night in her loving
arms until the pain past. She
surrendered her night’s sleep and I knew I was not alone.
As I read the letter from my mom sitting in my room in Iraq,
far from my friends and family, and I read, word by word, the letter from my
mother how my aunt was losing the battle with cancer. She told me how she cared for her own sister
who was too weak to do so on her own. She
told me how they laughed and cried together as they found restoration. They became deep friends and sisters. I loved my aunt but I could not go to the
funeral I was over 6000 miles away. The
cancer took her body but Christ Jesus had her soul. When I returned I returned to a smaller
family with a hole in it.
It was the year of loss and near loss that lead into the
moment in seminary where the word of God became an oasis, a cold spring in a
desert land, for me. In my loss and
brokenness God taught me about his grace for me. God taught me to love his words to me. God taught me about his suffering for
me.
God does not leave us in the face of complex and painful
emotions. When our hearts are raw and
painful and the suffering is too much to bear.
When our first daughter was born she lost her aunt. My sister-in-law’s funeral took place a few
hours after our daughter took her first few precious breaths. We held her our long awaited daughter and
whispered sweet memories to her of an aunt she will never know this side of
heaven.
In a moment that should have been marked by rejoicing, the morning of
sorrow was heard. In a year where firsts
were supposed to be praised, lasts were remembered. And the house crumbled down
around a family, yet the foundation was not shaken. The God who gave us our daughter and her aunt
will always remain in control. And he used the confluence of pain and joy to
redeem a family to be His family.
God is not absent when we cry! He is alongside his children. He is redeeming their pain. He is bleeding for them. No other answer can satisfy. God allows suffering so that he can redeem,
for himself, a people from a broken and sinful world. God allows suffering because he himself
suffered. We have a savior who is marked
by blood. Do you find it interesting
that we use the sign of the cross as a symbol of healing? The cross was one of the most evil torture
devices ever created. And we wear it
with pride and humility knowing Christ in his suffering redeemed a symbol of
torture and pain, and he made it a symbol of grace and healing. Imagine the great things he will do in our
life when we suffer well for God.
Our hope rests in this.
Even in the midst of the greatest suffering we are not alone. We who are in Christ are never alone. God is doing a great work in our pain to
redeem us out of a broken world that is falling apart. We have hope because even the greatest of
sufferings is not without meaning or purpose.
We have hope that, as we experience the storm and tumult of suffering,
we have a firm foundation. When we are
in Christ we shall not be shaken. Suffering
hurts. Suffering is no fun. But when we suffer well, in Christ, our
suffering is redeemed to create a rich joy and delight in the beauty and
majesty of God.
On those shoulders
The cross was placed,
Death doled,
Yet we call it grace.
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