Suffering is Not for Nothing: The Message

i entitled my first talk the terrible truth and this second one is entitled the message i look upon suffering as one of god's ways of getting our attention in fact c.s lewis calls pain god's megaphone he said god speaks to us in our conscience i think i've got that wrong sue c.s lewis said god whispers to us in our conscience speaks to us in our joys and shouts to us in our pain pain is god's megaphone and i'd like for us to think about some of the things which god needs to say to us that he needs to get our attention for first of all and it's interesting to me it's of great significance i think that as far as we know the oldest book in the bible the book of job is the one that deals most specifically and head on with the subject of suffering you remember that job was called a blameless man that righteous man god himself said that job was a blameless man and if the morality of those days was that a good man would be blessed and an evil man would be punished then job's experience seemed to turn that completely upside down and job lost everything you remember that there was a drama that went on behind the scenes that as far as we know job was never given a clue about where satan challenged god in heaven and he said of course job trusts you but does he trust you for nothing try taking away all those blessings and then see where job's faith goes and god accepted satan's challenge and here we have a mystery which we cannot begin to explain in fact it was god who called satan's attention to that individual job and he gave satan permission to take things away from job and so he lost his flocks and his herds and his servants and his sons and his daughters in his house and finally even the confidence of his wife and as he sat on his ash heap and his health had been touched by that time and he was scraping himself with potsherds and in utter anguish and misery he kept silence for seven days as his friends as they were called sat there and looked at him and apparently didn't say anything either for seven days and when job finally broke silence he howled his complaints at god we hear job called a patient man but if you read the book of job you won't really find a lot of evidence that he was patient but he never doubted that god existed and he said some of the very worst things that could possibly be said about god and isn't it interesting that the spirit of god preserved those things for you and me god is big enough to take anything that we can dish out to him and he even saw to it that job's howls and complaints were preserved in black and white for our instruction so never hesitate to say what you really feel to god because remember that god knows what you think before you know and certainly knows what you're going to say before you even think it so for some samples of these dreadful things that this patient man job said to god how about job chapter 3 verses 11 19 and 20 where he says why was i not still born why did i not die when i came out of the womb why should the sufferer be born to see the light why is life given to men who find it so bitter you see you see job here dialoguing with god there is no question in job's mind throughout this entire book of the existence of god he knows that it is god with whom he has to deal somebody is behind all this he's saying and the question why presupposes that there is reason that there is a mind behind all that may appear to be mindless suffering we would never ask the question why if we really believed that the whole of the universe was an accident and that you and i are completely at the mercy of chance the very question why even if it is flung at us by one who calls himself an unbeliever or an atheist is a dead giveaway that there is that sneaking suspicion in the back of every human mind that there is some body some reason some thinking individual behind this and then job addresses god directly in the 10th chapter and he says can't you take your eyes off me won't you leave me alone long enough to swallow my spit you shaped me and made me now you've turned to destroy me you needed me like clay and now you are grinding me to a powder anybody ever felt like that does that ring any bells out there god is grinding me to a powder he doesn't give me a chance to swallow my spit and then of course his friends who are very orthodox they never say a word that is not theologically sound they begin to accuse him of foolish notions a belly full of wind they say job is utterly lacking in the fear of god and he is pitting himself against the almighty charging him head down like an angry bull then job calls eliphaz a windbag this is you know the pot calling the kettle black but his friends and enemies he says can't hold a candle to god who has quote set upon me and mauled me seized me by the neck and worried me he set me up as his target his arrows reigned upon me from every side he is pitiless he cut deep into my vitals he spilt my gall on the ground now can you top that would you dare to say such things aloud and then job asks god question after question after question and at one point he says if i ask him a thousand questions he won't even answer one of them and he was right remember that when god finally breaks his silence god does not answer a single question god's response to job's questions is mystery in other words god answers job's mystery with the mystery of himself and he starts right in snowing poor job with questions where were you when i laid the foundation of the world have you seen the treasures of the snow have you walked in the great deep do you know where the wild ass gives birth have you presided over the doe in labor and he goes on and on and on question after question after question but what he's doing is revealing to job who he is and as i said in my first talk god through my my own troubles and sufferings has not given me explanations but he has met me as a person as an individual and that's what we need who of us in the worst pit that we've ever been in needs anything as much as we need company just somebody perhaps who will sit there in silence but just be with us job never denies god's existence never imagines that god has nothing to do with his troubles but has a thousand questions and so do we and let me just tell you a story or two that comes out of my first year as a missionary i thought of myself as being very well prepared to be a missionary as i told you i came from a strong christian home my parents had been missionaries themselves and we had dozens probably hundreds of missionaries traipsing through our house we had a guest room which always seemed to be full we had suitcases bumping up and down the stairs all the time and we listened from our earliest memories to many many missionary stories at our own dinner table and i went to a school for missionaries children which was here in orlando as a matter of fact and i heard thousands of missionary talks i looked at tens of thousands of terribly bad missionary slides and sort of lived eight breathed drank missionaries and turned out to be a missionary myself as were four of my other brothers and sisters there were six of us in the family five of us turned out to be missionaries of one sort or another and the sixth is a professor in christian colleges anyway i thought that i was probably god's gift to the mission field as a missionary and had all this training behind me i went to a bible school and i had some home missionary work and canadian sunday school mission etc etc but within the first year god saw fit to give me three major blows to what i thought was a very well founded and very sinewy faith and the first of these was that a man by the name of macario who was my informant as i was attempting to learn an unwritten indian language in the western jungle of ecuador the language of the colorado tribe a very small tribe who had never had any written language and therefore had none of the bible in their language i had prayed that god would give me an informant someone who would be prepared to sit down with me and go over and over and over what for him was the easiest language in the world and have the patience to deal with this apparently foreigner and god answered my prayer by sending me this man by the name of macario who was bilingual which was an enormous advantage he spoke spanish and colorado and i had had to learn spanish as the national language of the country and so we worked together very happily for about six weeks or two months i've forgotten exactly what it was and i was on my knees one morning in my bedroom as was my habit reading my bible and praying and i happened to be reading in the third chapter or the fourth chapter of first peter and these were the words think it not strange concerning the fiery trial that is to try you as though some strange thing happened it happens to give you a share in the sufferings of christ and at that very point i heard gunshots there was nothing unusual about gunshots in that particular clearing of the jungle we were surrounded by indians who hunted with guns that they had bought from the white man and there were white people also in that clearing who hunted as well so we often heard gunshots but these particular ones were followed by yelling and screaming and horses galloping and people running and general pandemonium so i rushed outside to hear that macadio had just been murdered now it would be very nice if i could tell you that i was e i easily found another informant but the truth was that macadio was literally the only person in the world who was capable of doing the job that he had been doing with me nobody else knew both spanish and colorado so i was faced for the first time in my personal experience with that awful why like job i didn't doubt for a second that god was up there that god knew what he was doing but i couldn't imagine what he could possibly have in mind and god's answer to my why was trust me no explanations just trust me that was the message now if i had had a faith which was determined that god had to give me a particular kind of answer to my particular prayers that faith would have disintegrated but my faith had to be founded on the character of god himself and so what looked like a contradiction in terms god loves me god lets this awful thing happen to me what looked like a contradiction in terms i had to leave in god's hands and say okay lord i don't understand it i don't like it but i only had two choices he is either god or he's not i am either held in the everlasting arms or i'm at the mercy of chance and i have to trust him or deny him is there any middle ground i don't think so and i thought of daniel in the lion's den i remember the picture that we had on our wall at home a painting when i was a child i often gazed at that painting and daniel is standing in the den of lions there's a light on his face and he stands very tall and straight with his hands behind his back and just very faintly in the dark you can see these glowing eyes of the hungry lions and i realized that the painting is telling me that here's a man whose faith rests in the character of god now of course i wouldn't put it in those terms as a child but that picture spoke volumes to me god was there in the pit he was not making it unnecessary for daniel to go into the pit any more than it was unnecessary for joseph to go into that pit where his jealous brothers threw him or to be put into prison as were paul and silas and peter and many other people in scripture john the baptist who got his head chopped off it was necessary for shadrach and meshach and abednego to go into the fiery furnace because god had a message not just for shadrach meshach and abednego but also you remember for the king he said has your god whom you serve been able to deliver you and you remember that his challenge before he threw them into the furnace do you think your god can deliver you and those ringing words of faith our god whom we trust is able to deliver us but if not be it known unto you o king that we will not bow down or serve you but if not and that is the lesson that has to come to all of us at some point in our lives every one of us i'm sure sooner or later has to face up to that painful question why and god is saying trust me if your prayers don't get answered the way you thought they were supposed to be what happens to your faith the world says god doesn't love you the scriptures tell me something very different those blesseds of the the those blessed of the beatitudes paul's word it is my happiness to suffer for you we don't know the answer but we know that it lies deep within the mystery of the freedom to choose when god created man adam and eve he created them with the freedom to choose to love him or to defy him and they chose to defy him adam and eve abused that freedom and c.s lewis says in his book the problem of pain man is now a horror to god and to himself and a creature ill-adapted to the universe not because god made him so but because he has made himself so by the abuse of his free will and lewis goes on to state this knotty problem in its simplest form if god were good he would wish to make his creatures perfectly happy and if god were almighty he would be able to do what he wished but the creatures are not happy therefore god lacks either the goodness or the power or both so answering the question depends upon our definition of good an ancient man thought of goodness in moral terms modern man equates good with happiness if it ain't fun it ain't good the two things almost seem to be mutually exclusive they put it the other way around if it's good it ain't fun you know that commercial for some kind of cereal i can't remember what it is but two little kids have heard that it's natural and it's good for you so they said well let's get him to try it he'll eat anything he doesn't know it's good for you so the little kid eats it because he doesn't know any better the other two kids wouldn't even try it because it's good for you and you've heard the saying everything that i like is either illegal immoral or fattening or something like that a notion that the world has that the two things are mutually exclusive if it's good it's not fun it has nothing to do with my happiness moral man was concerned primarily with moral goodness if we learn to know god in the midst of our pain we come to know him as one who is not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities he is one who has been over every inch of the road i love that old hymn from i think the 17th century by richard baxter christ leads me through no darker rooms than he went through before i love those words i have some dear friends who are missionaries in north africa he was one of the many seminary students who have lived in our house and i had a letter from them about a year or so ago to tell me that they had just lost their baby girl i think it was either at birth or just within a few hours after birth and their letter was filled with the anguish that that cost them and of course i wanted to answer the letter but i've never lost a baby i only have one child who was 10 months old when her father was killed and so i couldn't write to phil and janet and say i know exactly what you've been through but i've read the wonderful letters of samuel rutherford that scottish preacher from the 17th century who seems to have been through just about every imaginable human mill and he had lost at least one child and i had his letters in my study and so i looked up one of his letters to a woman who had lost a child and this is what he wrote to her and i quoted these words to phil and janet after saying to them i don't know what you're going through but i know the one who knows and i sent them samuel rutherford's words he had lost two daughters i have here in my notes this is what he said grace rudeth not out the affections of a mother but putteth him on his wheel who maketh all things new that they may be refined he commandeth you to weep and that princely one took up to heaven with him a man's heart to be a compassionate high priest the cup you drink was at the lip of sweet jesus and he drank of it and janet wrote to me these words the storm of pain is calming down and the lord is painting a new and different picture of himself and i saw in her experience that the very suffering itself was an irreplaceable medium god was using that thing to speak to janet and phil in a way that he could not have spoken if he had not gotten their attention through the death of that little child now i don't mean to simplify to oversimplify things as though that explains it that god had to say something to those two people because if i know anything about godliness i know that phil and janet linton are both godly people and that raises another painful question doesn't it we often say why did such and such have to happen to her she's such a wonderful person why did he have to go through this he's such a wonderful person well again the word is trust me back when i was a college student i was dabbling around in poetry as i suppose most teenage girls do at some point but i wrote some words that later on seemed to me to be almost prophetic i wrote these words and i really don't remember exactly whether there was any particular reason why i wrote them at the time but something had given me a clue that there could be some loneliness ahead for me and so these were the words that i wrote perhaps some future day lord thy strong hand will lead me to the place where i must stand utterly alone alone o gracious lover but for thee i shall be satisfied if i can see jesus only i do not know thy plan for years to come my spirit finds in thee its perfect home sufficiency lord all my desire is before thee now lead on no matter where no matter how i trust in thee i began keeping journals back when i was about 16 or 17 and so i've been keeping them ever since that makes quite a few years and as i went back to re-read some of those earlier journals in preparation for these talks i thought well you know i really better go back and see whether i know anything about what i'm talking about and as i said in my first talk i don't think i know very much by comparison with others but i found a few little things in the journal and one of the things which i did feel was significant was the fact that again and again i quote hymns about the cross hymns which were favorites at different times and one of them that i learned in college was oh teach me what it meaneth that cross uplifted high with one the man of sorrows condemned to bleed and die one of the hymns that we learned as very small children in our family prayers we used to sing hymn every morning in family prayers was jesus keep me near the cross my daughter has taught some of those hymns to her own children and i don't think i will ever forget seeing little two-year-old jim violently swinging his newborn baby sister colleen in one of those little canvas swings and singing in the cross in the cross be my glory ever till my raptured soul shall find rest beyond the river and here's this little boy just violently swinging this infant who was having the time of her life and singing this profound him about the cross and i could go on and on with hymns that i could quote beneath the cross of jesus has always been a favorite of mine but as i came across those in my journals i thought what did i imagine would be the answer to the prayers that i was praying in those hymns what kind of an answer did i really expect god to give me did i expect some kind of a a miraculous revelation perhaps some deep original insight into the meaning of the cross did i expect god to make some kind of a spiritual giant out of me so that i would have mysteries at my fingertips that other people didn't know anything about well i have the slightest idea of what i really thought i suppose it was all very vague and mystical in my mind and i didn't know what god would do by way of answering that prayer but i can look back over these 45 years or so and see that god in fact is in the process of answering those prayers teach me what it meaneth that cross uplifted high what is this great symbol of the christian faith it's a symbol of suffering that is what the christian faith is about it deals head-on with this question of suffering and no other religion in the world does that every other religion in some way evades the question christianity has at its very heart this question of suffering it comes the answer to our prayers teach me what it meaneth in the cross be my glory ever beneath the cross of jesus the answer comes not in the form of a revelation or an explanation or a vision but in the form of a person who comes to you and me in our sorrow and he says trust me walk with me i have to insert in here another little grandchild story and you're going to have to bear with me you know grandmothers do tell grandchild stories but they seem so appropriate so often and in this particular case my little four-year-old granddaughter christiana had had to be spanked four times three times in one day for the same offense she had not come running quickly when she was called and my daughter like my mother treated as as my mother treated delayed obedience as disobedience valerie tries to do the same thing and so christiana was spanked three times on that particular sunday so sunday night when it was time to go to church and she was called she came charging out to the car tears pouring down her face her arms full of a bible a notebook a pen four years old mind you on her way to church had to have a bible notebook a pen her barrettes her her necklaces her bracelets as her bracelets her hair ribbons who knows what else was essential all this stuff falling out of her arms she was tripping over things tears pouring down her face and she stopped and she said oh mama if only adam and eve hadn't sinned now that child was suffering because she lives in a fallen world and you and i live in that same fallen world we have to look at these awful facts the fact of sin and suffering and death the fact that god created a world in which those things were possible the fact that he does love us that means he wants nothing less than our perfection and joy that he gave us the freedom to choose and that man decided that his own idea of perfection and joy was better than god's and believed what satan told him and therefore sin and suffering entered into the world and now we're saying why doesn't god do something about it and the christian answer is he did he became the victim a lamb slain from before the foundation of the world george herbert another 17th century poet wrote this afflictions sorted anguish of all sizes fine nets and stratagems to catch us in and then george mcdonald a 19th century poet said this pain with dog and spear hounds false faith from human hearts two different expressions of what god is up to fine nets and stratagems to catch us in to give us this message and as the psalmist said in psalm 46 though the mountains shake and be carried though the earth shake and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea god is our refuge and i speak to you as one who has desperately needed a refuge and in that same psalm he says be still and i'm told that it's legitimate to translate that shut up and know that i am god that's the message you

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Length: 31min 42sec (1902 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 20 2020