WHERE IS GOD WHEN IT HURTS?
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

INTRODUCTION

 

We have spent the last 12 weeks considering the place of suffering and pain in the world that God made, sustains and saves.  Here is the plan for this morning, our last Sunday on this important subject.  First, I have a number of questions that some of you have submitted and so I will seek to briefly answer each of them.  Second, I want to wrap up this series by summarizing what effect our understanding of God’s purposes in suffering should have in our lives.

 

I did not receive very many questions, but the ones I did receive are perceptive and quite frankly, each one could be the subject of an entire sermon.  Therefore, my answers while I hope truthful, will not be as exhaustive as some of you would wish.  For those of you who are troubled by these matters I would recommend that you keep reading your Bibles and reading solid Christian books on these subjects.

 

Does God give us suffering to strengthen and refine our faith or because he knows our faith is strong enough to handle it?

 

1 Peter 1: 6-7 says, “In this (salvation) you greatly rejoice, though now, for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in various kinds of trials.  These have come so that your faith, of greater worth than gold, may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”  In other words, God sends the trials to purify our faith so that we will experience the coming of Christ as a glorious and happy occasion, rather than a shameful and terrifying event.  The metaphor that is used here is that of the goldsmith who heats up the gold until it turns to liquid and then all the impurities in the gold burn off because they have a lower ignition point than the gold itself.  In the same way, God designs the suffering in our life to cause us to stop seeking our happiness in anyone or anything apart from him.  A “pure” faith would be a faith that never believes that sin or the created world is more certain to make you happy than God himself.  A “pure” faith loves God above all things and persons and only loves other things and persons in relation to God.  The trials then aim to convince us in greater ways that to be loved by God and to lose everything else in life is still gain.  The way that suffering does that is by removing the pleasures of this world and then allowing us to discover, in the pain of that loss, that we are still happy in Christ.

 

I think of a pastor in one of the Eastern Block countries when it was still under communist rule that spent a long time in prison, being tortured.  After being released from prison, he was visited by an American missionary.  To avoid the government eavesdropping devices in his home they were walking around the city where he lived and talking.  They hardly noticed where they were going they were in such an intense conversation.  Suddenly, as they began to pass a large and foreboding building the pastor stopped and went up to the building, weeping and he kissed the stones of the building.  It was the prison in which he had been incarcerated for many years.  Standing there, weeping, with his face pressed against the bricks, he thanked God for putting him in prison because it was there that he discovered that he needed only Christ.  He thanked God for the many hours of happy fellowship they had spent together in his lonely cell.  This is why God sends trials to us, to loosen our hearts’ attachments to the things of this world and to sin and to cause us to see that Jesus really is enough.

 

Now, at the same time we can confidently say that God only gives us what we can handle.  1 Corinthians 10:13 says, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.  And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.”  In 1 Peter 5:10 he says, “And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered for a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.”  God, who is infinitely wise and who knows you better than you know yourself, ordains the right measure of suffering for the right length of time to accomplish his perfect will in your life.  We need not fear that he will permit suffering that will destroy us into our life.  His purposes are all for our good and he carefully watches over us to ensure that we are not overly distressed.  That does not mean that we will not feel overly distressed.  After all, it was the apostle Paul who said that he was under such distress in Achaia that he despaired of life.  Yet, he was not tempted beyond what he was able to endure and after a little while he was restored and made strong, firm and steadfast.

 

Is the cause of suffering the same for believers and unbelievers?  Are the purposes and outcomes the same?

 

The ultimate cause of suffering in both believers and unbelievers is the same, the will of God.  God ordains the steps of every human being.  He is working out all things after the counsel of his own will. “Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it?  Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?” (Lamentations 3:37-38)  However, does God have different purposes for the suffering he sends into the lives of believers and unbelievers?  The answer to that question is yes.

 

In the case of believers, God never sends suffering because he is angry or trying to punish you for your sins.  That’s the whole argument of Romans 8 and Hebrews 12.  In Rom. 8:34 he says, “If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him graciously give us all things?”  If God did the hardest thing that could ever be done, kill his own dear Son for our sins, then how could he ever do anything but act in our best interests at all times.

 

However, if you are not yet a Christian, then you cannot really know for certain what God’s purposes are in the suffering he sends into your life.  There are two things that you can know if you are not a Christian.  First, God hates you and is storing up his wrath against you.  Psalm 5:5 says, “God hates all who do wrong.”  Romans 2:5-6 says, “But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath when his righteous judgment will be revealed.  He will give to each person according to what he has done.”    If you have not yet come to faith in Christ, then you do wrong every moment of every day.  God has in store for all the wicked a day of wrath and punishment.  He is opposed to all the proud and if you have not yet humbled yourself, confessed your sins, and taken Christ as your only hope of salvation, then God is opposed to you.

 

At the very same time that God is opposed to all who are not in Christ, he is, at this moment, being enormously kind to you.  He gave you life and he is giving you life.  He provides you with food, clothing and shelter.  He fills your heart with the joys of living like, the happiness you feel when you get a raise, the joy of being greeted by your child when you come home at the end of a day, the joy of your team winning, the joy of sleeping in on a Saturday morning, the joy of watching a movie or enjoying the company of your friends.  He is being kind by telling you that he has provided a Savior for you in the person of Jesus Christ.  He killed his own dear Son so that if you will acknowledge your sin and how right it would be for God to punish you for your sins and if you will call upon Christ, he will save you and adopt you as his own beloved child.  In spite of your hostility to God and his ways, every day God is showering you with kindness.  Yet every day you continue to live as if you have given these things to yourself or you credit some false god with providing you with these things.  Every day you refuse to give thanks for all you have been given. You fail to mourn over your sin and flee to Christ as the only one who can save you from your sins.

 

So God sends you suffering as an expression of his displeasure with you.  “Why should any living man complain when punished for his sins?” (Lam. 3:39)  Yet even in the suffering he is sending you there is kindness because he is, by the suffering, seeking to warn you of a much greater suffering that is yet to come.  We see this mixture of wrath and kindness throughout the Bible.  Listen to Jeremiah 5:1-3, “Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem, look around and consider, search through her squares.  If you can find but one person who deals honestly and seeks the truth, I will forgive this city.  Although they say, ‘As surely as the Lord lives,’ still they are swearing falsely.  O Lord, do not your eyes look for truth?  You struck them, but they felt no pain; you crushed them, but they refused correction.  They made their faces harder than stone and refused to repent.”  Also, consider Isaiah 9:13, “But the people have not returned to him who struck them, nor have they sought the Lord Almighty.”  God’s purposes in the suffering he sends to non-believers is both an expression of his anger and an instrument of his grace.  He is trying to awaken fear and cause men and women to repent of their sins and flee to Christ before it is too late.  He is giving out small tastes of the terror of his wrath in order to frighten us and cause us to repent.  This is what Jesus says in Luke 13: 1-4 when a group of religious people come to him and ask him what he thinks about the religious people who were killed by Pilate while they were obeying God in worship.  Read Luke 13:1-4.  When you think of the World Trade Center you should not ask, “why did God let this happen to all those innocent people?”  Rather you should ask, “why has nothing like this befallen me?”

 

Is all suffering good for a Christian—all causes and instances?

 

Yes. Romans 8:28, Hebrews 12:5-6.  However, that doesn’t mean suffering feels good.  In fact, the Bible is quite clear that all God’s discipline of suffering is “painful at the moment”.  It is “afterwards that it yields the harvest of righteousness and peace for all those who have been trained by it.”

 

If a Christian isn’t suffering (as far as they can tell), is that a bad indicator?

 

The short answer is “maybe”.  It could be a bad indicator.  Hebrews 12:5-8 tells us that if you are not experiencing the Lord’s discipline in your life, then you are an illegitimate child.  Now, in the context the discipline being referred to is primarily the discipline of painful suffering.  In addition, Paul says to Timothy that everyone who wants to live a godly life will be persecuted.  It seems clear in the NT that when Christians engage in a life of active love for Christ and for people, they are going to encounter the pain of rejection, hostility and ingratitude, just like Jesus.  They will suffer the loss of earthly comforts and pleasures.

 

However, one of the things that the NT also makes plain is that the amount of suffering and the timing of it is in God’s hands.  In Hebrews 12:1 we are told to run with endurance the “race that is marked out for us.”  In other words, the obstacles we have to overcome and the length of the race is not in our hands, it is determined by God.  In 1 Peter 3:17 we are told, “It is better, if it is God’s will that we suffer for doing good, than for doing evil.”  And in 1 Peter 4:19 it says, “So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.”  We are not to go looking for trouble or pain.  Rather we are to pursue a godly life.  We are to eagerly do good and be devoted to Christ.  God is the one who determines the timing and amount of suffering that each of us must endure.

 

How do prayer and suffering interact?

 

One of the chief purposes of God in our suffering is to teach us to rely upon him for all things.  When there are no threats in our lives and no pain, we usually do not turn to God.  It is no surprise that the Scriptures often link pride and wickedness with affluence and ease.  There are numerous warnings in the Scriptures against becoming complacent and proud when our experience of earthly pleasures increase.  Therefore, God often sends threat of pain and the experience of pain into our lives so that we will pray.  Just listen to a few of the places this is made clear:

 

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, that transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  (Phil. 4:6-7)

 

“When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate, when he suffered he made no threats, instead he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.”  (1 Peter 2:23)   “So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should entrust themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.” (1 Peter 4:19)  Then in 1 Peter 4:7, in the midst of a passage about suffering he says, “The end of all things is near.  Therefore, be clear minded and self controlled so that you can pray.”

 

2 Corinthians 1: 9-11 says, “Indeed in our hearts we felt the sentence of death.  But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.  He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us, as you help us by your prayers.  Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.”

 

The difficulty we have in the experience of suffering is that we can never be sure if it is God’s will to glorify himself by  removing the suffering or by enabling us to live in joy and peace in the midst of it.  That is why Romans 8: 26-27 is so important.  After Paul describes the inevitability of suffering in this fallen world he says, “In the same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  We do not know what we ought to pray, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.  And he who searches our hearts, knows the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to God’s will.”  We often do not know what to pray because we don’t know what God’s will in the particular circumstance is and so we cry out to God for deliverance from the suffering.  We know that the Holy Spirit groans with us in our suffering and asks the Father to do his perfect will in our case.

 

The rest of the questions all have to do with the same basic subject.  What is the relationship between God and evil?  I want to be very careful as we discuss this because it is a very complex issue and it is easy to go wrong by overemphasizing certain truths and ignoring other truths.  Some try to overcome the difficulty of God’s sovereignty and the presence of evil by limiting God’s sovereignty.  Others diminish human responsibility by overemphasizing God’s sovereignty.  There are two things that the Bible clearly teaches that we must never minimize or set against each other.  The Bible asserts that God is good and sovereign over evil and that humans are responsible for the evil they do.

 

Is all suffering a result of the sin in Eden?

 

Yes, all suffering is the result of the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  However, how did Adam and Eve’s sin result in a world full of evil and suffering?  I want you to look with me at Romans 5:12 and 8:20-21.  In Romans 5:12 we are told that death entered the world through one man.  This is referring to Adam and his sin.  Death is not merely the actual physical death of biological life but the entire principle of death that governs this world.  Sickness, accidents, famine, pestilence, war, tornadoes, all of these agents of death entered the world when Adam sinned.  This principle of death came into the world through Adam and all humans live under the reign of death because of their own sin.  However, Romans 8:20-21 tells us that the whole creation was subjected to this principle of death and decay by the decree of God.  It is by God’s design and decree that decay and death have entered the world.  He is the one who permits sin to run riot and who decrees disaster as his judgment upon human sin.  So it is not an impersonal process that brings suffering into the world because of sin, but the personal and purposeful decree of God.  This is why God tells Moses, “Who gave man his mouth?  Who makes him deaf or mute?  Who gives him sight or makes him blind?  Is it not I, the Lord?”  This is why Isaiah says, “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.”

 

We are surprised and shocked that there is evil in the world.  We are horrified that men fly airplanes into office buildings.  We complain that God permits babies to starve to death and millions of people to be slaughtered in acts of genocide.  But what the Bible is surprised by is that any human being ever experiences a moment of happiness.  The Bible is shocked that God is kind to this world of human beings when we are such an offense to his holiness and justice.  How would you feel if your mother or sister was raped and brutally murdered but when the criminal was caught, rather than being thrown in prison, the judge ruled that the state had to pay him a million dollars a year and make him governor of the state you live in?  He was given a life of ease by the very person who you thought was supposed to uphold justice.  You’d be furious and rightly so.  This is what is going on in the world.  God is being kind to criminals and even promising some of them that they will reign over angels with him.  What’s shocking is not that there is evil in the world.  What is shocking is that any of us ever have any joy and that some humans are going to live forever with God in infinite joy.

 

If God is the indirect cause of sin, why isn’t he the cause of sin?  Doesn’t that make him responsible?

If God wills that we suffer and has good purposes in it, does he also grieve over the evil we suffer?  Is he angry with evil, even when it is his will that it happens?  If he is angry with it and is going to punish all who do evil and yet he wills it, how can that be?  In your sermon on Job 1&2 you said that Job did charge God with evil and yet he wasn’t wrong when he did so.  Verse 22 says that he didn’t charge God with evil.  What did you mean by saying that?

 

I’m going to do three things.  First, I’m going to show you that God forbids men from doing evil, hates those who do evil and is going to punish all who do evil.  Second, I’m going to show you that the Bible teaches that God permits or ordains that men do the evil that he forbids.  Third, I’m going to show you that God cannot be charged with doing evil because evil is done by the willing choices of evil men.  God never does evil and is always just in punishing evil.

 

The amount of Biblical evidence for these three assertions is voluminous.  What I’m talking about here is not some minor doctrine tucked away in some corner of the Bible.  I’m going to trace through a very specific example of God forbidding something that he then ordains and then holds men accountable for.  I would presume that everyone in here knows that God forbids murder.  In Genesis 9: 5-6 God says that anyone who murders has forfeited his right to live.  In Exodus 20 the fifth commandment is “You shall not murder.”  In numerous places in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy God commands that anyone who murders is to be sentenced to death and then executed.  In 1 John 3:11-15 we are told that no murderer has eternal life in him.  God hates murderers and promises to punish all murderers with hell.

 

There are dozens of places in the Scriptures where we are told that God ordained the murder of particular individuals.  Let’s just look at two of those places.  In Job 1: 14-15 we are told that the Sabeans came upon Job’s oxen and stole them after they killed Job’s servants who were with the oxen.  Then in v. 17 we are told that the Chaldean’s did the same thing to Job’s servants who were with his camels.  In v. 21 Job says, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.”  In 2:10 he says, “Shall we accept good from God and not evil.”  In other words, Job says that God is the one who sent the Sabeans and the Chaldeans to steal and murder.  The author of Job tells us in 1:22 that Job “did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.”  In 2:10 he says, “In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.”  What Job said is that it was God’s will for the Sabeans and Chaldeans to break God’s command not to murder.  Yet, God did not do wrong in doing that.  I know that this makes no logical sense to you and I’m going to give you a solution in one minute.  It is right here that people get in trouble.  They try to make God and his ways fit into human ways of thinking rather than allowing the Bible to say what it says and then trying to see how the Bible fits it all together.

 

Let’s consider one other example.  In Acts 2: 22-23 Peter says, as he preaches the first Christian sermon, “Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.  This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.”  Then in Acts 4: 27-28 the disciples while praying said, “Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed.  They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.”  It was God’s will that Herod, Pilate and the Jewish people murder Jesus.  Yet, God is not guilty of doing evil because Pilate, Herod and the people of Israel willingly killed Jesus.  They willed with an evil will what God willed with a good will.

 

How can this be?  Is God schizophrenic in that he commands what he forbids?  First, I want to say that there is a mystery here that we will never fully understand.  However, God has revealed enough truth for us to have some understanding of how it is that he ordains the evil actions of evil men in such a way that he is not guilty of doing evil and men are responsible for the evil they do.  The entire issue is wrapped up in what it means for you and I to be free moral agents.  What is the nature of the human will?  Jesus says in Matthew 12, “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad for a tree is recognized by its fruit.  You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good?  For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.”  Evil men cannot say anything good.  Why is that?  Evil men can only do evil because that is all they want to do.  The nature of human freedom is that we can only do what we want to do.  You cannot do what you do not want to do.  Did everyone in here want to come to church this morning?  Absolutely yes.  If you did not want to come to church you would not have come to church.  Did everyone come in here by there own free will?  Absolutely yes.  Why did you come to church this morning?  There are lots of reasons some good and some bad.  Some are only here because they didn’t want to make their parent or spouse mad.  Others are here because they want to worship God.  Your reasons for being here may be good or bad, but the fact is that you wanted to come and so you came.  Now, let me ask you this, could you have not come to church this morning?  Were you free to choose to stay home?  The answer is absolutely not.  You could not have stayed home this morning because you cannot do what you do not want to do.  You are here this morning because you want to be here.  You cannot choose against your own will.  Everyone is free to do what they want to do, you are not free to do what you do not want to do.

 

Did Pilate want to sentence Jesus to death?  Of course he did.  Could he have done otherwise?  Not at all because he, for a variety of reasons, both political and personal, wanted to sentence Jesus to death.  Should he be held accountable for sentencing an innocent man to death?  Of course.  Did he do exactly what God wanted him to do?  Yes.  Did God make him do it in the sense that he forced him to do something against his will?  NO.  Pilate freely did what he wanted to do and he did exactly what God wanted him to do.  So, God did not do evil because Pilate chose to do it.  The Father delights in the death of his Son and he is made justly angry by the death of his Son.  Both things are true.  I know there are many questions and mysteries here but this is the clear teaching of the Bible.

 

How does knowing that God ordains all the suffering that comes to me help me?

 

Understanding God’s relationship to suffering and evil ought to have two effects upon us.  First, knowing that God ordains all things for our good keeps us from losing faith and hope.  Satan designs the suffering he sends into our lives for the destruction of our faith.  God ordains it for our good.  It is my prayer that one of the results of this series in your life is that you will “be self-controlled and alert because your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.  But resist him, standing firm in the faith, since you know that your brothers around the world are undergoing the same kind of suffering.”

 

Second, it is my prayer and goal by talking these twelve weeks about suffering to set you free to live a life of suffering love; risking the comforts and pleasures of this world in order to love God and people.  When we know that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ and that God is working all things, even all the evil, for our eternal good, then we are truly free.  We cannot be harmed and all the harm that is done to us is only going to result in more glory in heaven.  God is never angry with those who are in Christ and is always working for their good.  We know this because of the cross.  We do not know this without the cross.