 |
||
By Pastor Glenn Pease
1.
JOB THE RIGHTEOUS SUFFERER Based on Job 1:1
2.
SUFFERING IS NOT GOOD‑A STUDY IN JOB.
3. WHY TRAGEDY? Based on Job 1:6f
4. GOOD AND EVIL
Based on Gen. 3:6
5. GOOD AND EVIL II Based on Gen. 3:22‑24
6. A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO SUFFERING Based on John 9:1‑23
7. ACCIDENTAL SUFFERING Based on Acts 20:7‑12
8. THE SEVEN CAUSES OF SUFFERING Based on Luke
13:1-17
9. DEATH AND THE WILL OF GOD ACTS 7:51‑60
10. PART II DEATH AND THE
SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD
11. THE MYSTERY OF DEATH Based on I Cor. 15:51‑58
12. SUCCESSFUL SUFFERING Based on James 1:1‑8
13. GOOD OUT OF EVIL Based on Phil. 1:12‑26
14. GOOD OUT OF EVIL PART2 Based
on James 1:12
15. A BELIEVER'S RESPONSE TO
DEATH based on II Sam. 12:15‑23
16. DELIVERED FROM DEATH BASED ON PSALM 116
17. THE VALUE OF DEATH BASED ON
PSALM 116
18. THE RIGHT TO QUESTION GOD
Based on Hab. 1:1-4
1. JOB THE
RIGHTEOUS SUFFERER Based on Job 1:1
One of the first
impressions I gained at the Baptist General Conference annual meeting in Green Bay was that
Christians are perpetually suffering.
Every day we were reminded of leaders in our conference who are fighting
with cancer. Just in our small
denomination of 130,000 people there are hundreds who have cancer, and hundreds
more who suffer from other diseases. On
top of this, accidents are taking life, or leaving people injured and maimed
everyday. If this be the case in just
one arm of the body of Christ, how great must be the suffering of the whole
body?
A Russian pastor just recently released form prison for
exchange for some Russian spies spoke to the conference twice. He told of his great sorrow because of
fellow pastors and lay‑believers who still languish in Russian prisons,
not for being criminals, but for being Christians. (This was 1979). There is
no doubt about it, it’s a great day to be alive, but the facts are that
Christians are suffering persecution and martyrdom all over the world. In our part of the world where we have peace
we suffer from disease and accidents.
In conflict torn countries Christians face all of this plus the sufferings
inflicted by man.
It is no wonder that Paul prayed that Christians might be
strengthened in the inner man.
Christians need internal shock absorbers to keep on going in spite of
the blows dealt by life. The best shock
absorbers are right thoughts about suffering.
Wrong ideas and theories to explain it only adds to the burden. Helmut Thielicke, the great German preacher
and scholar, who has traveled across America many times was asked, "What
is the greatest weakness of American Christians?" He responded, "Their views of
suffering." American Christians
suffer one by one and have not gone through the holocost of war with its cities
bombed and thousands dying all around them.
The result is, most of the deepest thinking on suffering comes from
Christians in England and Europe where they have been through it.
They will not be comforted when you squeeze rose‑water
on their cancer. The facts of life have
forced them to rethink the popular simple views that Christians hold in sunny
times. Fortunately for us God has given
us another way to think deeply about the mysteries of suffering. We do not have to go through the fire to see
the light. The book of Job reveals the
debate on suffering as no other piece of literature on earth. Just as Jesus suffered for us that we need
not experience hell, so Job suffered that we need not go through hell on earth
to come to right ideas about suffering.
Thank God we do not all have to learn by experience. It is possible to learn much from the
experience of others. All of us will
experience suffering, but few if any will have to go the route of Job. His severe experience can help all of us
make our less severe journey smoother by giving to us the shock absorbers of
right ideas.
In the book of Job we learn from the mistakes of others. This is the path of wisdom, for we cannot
live long enough to make them all ourselves.
We can make plenty of them, however, and the fact is, many go on making
the same mistakes made by the friends of Job.
They were good and godly men, but are the great examples of how wrong
good and godly men can be when it comes to suffering. Their mistake was the common mistake still being made by
Christians. They tried to impose their
simple explanation on all of reality.
They followed the path of all who are dogmatic. In order to get all of the evidence to
support their theory, they just ignored the facts that didn't fit. They hated complexity. They demanded that Job conform to their nice
neat simple formula for explaining his, and all suffering.
Their simple formula was that all suffering was a sign of
divine displeasure. When men are good
and godly they do not suffer, for God blesses them. When they do suffer they have ceased to be good and godly. They have sinned, and all suffering is
punishment for sin. The beauty of this
formula is that anyone can grasp it. It
solves the mystery of suffering and explains everything. If you suffer it is just a reaping of what you have sown. There is really no mystery to solve. It has only one major defect‑it is not
true. This is what Job keeps saying
over and over in his defense.
Many Christians, however never read the book of Job, or do not
understand it if they do. The result is
that many Christians suffer great mental agony because they try to explain
everything by this simple but false formula.
They cry out in affliction saying, what have I done to deserve
this? This implies that all suffering
is deserved and is punishment for bad behavior. They may be conscious of some sin in their life, but there is no
way that their sin can be so great as to deserve such severe punishment. So they get angry at God and accuse Him of
cruelty and injustice. They know people
much worse than themselves who do not suffer at all. Their faith is often damaged, and they suffer mental and
spiritual torment all because they start with bad theology and a wrong view of
suffering.
If we learn nothing else from our study of Job, let's learn
the folly of trying to force all of the facts into a simple formula. There is a fascinating Greek legend about a
robber named Procrustes. He had a very
unusual way of treating guests who came to his home. He had only one bed for guests, and so everyone had to sleep in
it. Since he wanted each guest to fit
the bed just right, he would stretch short guests on a stretcher so they were
the right length, and, of course, if they were too long, he cut them off so as
to fit. Needless to say he was not a
popular host. His perverted practice
has led to the word Procrustean. It
describes the friends of Job perfectly.
It is a word that refers to people who will cut off facts, or stretch
the truth, or anything else that is necessary to squeeze all of reality into
the bed of their iron‑clad formula.
The book of Job is anti‑Procrustean, and it demands that
we stretch our minds rather than the truth.
It forces us to see life from a larger perspective, and to expand our
theology to cover a greater diversity of facts. The book of Job forbids us from getting a hold of a piece of the
puzzle and calling that the picture.
Let's look at some of the Procrustean beds which men have
tried to force all of the facts of life to fit into, but which the book of Job
rejects as inadequate formulas to explain suffering. You may not like this study anymore than Job's friends did, for
maybe you will find your pet theory among them. Don't feel too bad, however, for if there were not a lot of false
ideas about suffering, God would not have devoted so much of His Word to the
purpose of fighting them. All of us
will be forced by this book to reexamine how we think about suffering.
The first false view of suffering is:
1. Suffering is the result of the sin of the sufferer. It is agreed by numerous commentators that
the main purpose of the book of Job is to destroy this popular and almost
universal view of suffering. Most
religions of the world follow this formula.
The whole doctrine of reincarnation is built around this theory. If babies suffer and die they must have
sinned in a previous existence. If good
and rightous people have terrible diseases, it can only be explained by the
sins they committed in a former life.
The main purpose of the doctrine of
reincarnation is to force all of reality to fit this formula. Those who really believe this formula have
solved the problem of suffering by denying that there is a problem. If masses of boat people are drowning, and
thousands of children are dying, and disease is turning people into zombies of
affliction, there is nothing to get upset about, for they all deserve what they
are suffering. All suffering is
punishment for sin, and so all is fair and God is just. This theory enables those who hold it to
watch people die like flies without compassion, for they see no evil in suffering. It is all good because it is just punishment
for sin.
Believe it or not, this is the theory of suffering held by
Job's friends. No wonder those who add
to life's misery by this cruel counsel are called "Job's friends." They did not believe in reincarnation, but
they did believe that all Job was suffering was justified, and that it was
God's way of punishing him, and trying to get him to repent. They each take turns at trying to break Job
down so he will confess his secret sin.
The best arguments for their view of suffering that you will find
anywhere are right here in the book of Job.
As eloquent and forceful as they were, however, they never convinced Job
that he was being punished for sin.
They could throw at him Scripture verses by the dozen that say, whom the
Lord loveth He chasteneth. Job knew
that was true of much suffering, but he refused to accept it as an explanation
for all suffering, and especially his own.
Why? Because it just did not fit
the facts of life. You cannot just take
a truth, even a Biblical truth, and impose it on all of life's experiences.
It is a Biblical truth that men reap what they sow. It is a Biblical truth that sin leads to
suffering. It is Biblical truth that whom
the Lord loveth He chasteneth. No one
will deny that these are sound Biblical truths. Nevertheless, if they do not fit the facts of a specific case,
they are not true of that case. The
best of medicine is of no value for a sickness it cannot cure. Suffering can be educational, but this truth
is of no value to the man who is killed, or left in a coma, by an
accident. What the facts clearly reveal
about Job is:
No. 1. Verse 1 tells us he was blameless and
upright, and one who feared God and turned away from evil.
No. 2. In verse 8 God confirms this description and
adds, "There is none like him on earth."
It is established from the start that the man we are dealing
with is in the center of God's will. He
is as near perfect as any man named anywhere in the Bible. This means that any theory of suffering that
does not take into account that even the most righteous can suffer terribly is
false. Job was not being chastened by
the Lord, for the Lord loved him and held him up as the best example of
godliness. His suffering had nothing to
do with his sin, and, therefore, all of the arguments of Job's friends which
try to convince him he has angered God are themselves what made God angry. At
the end of the book they are only spared from God's wrath by Job's prayer and
sacrifice on their behalf. Their theory which was so false in relation to Job
was almost true for themselves in that they came close to great suffering for
their sin of teaching that all suffering is due to sin. This is a serious sin, for
God has gone to great lengths to make it clear that it is a false view of
suffering, and to be ignorant where knowledge is available is sinful.
Does this mean the righteous do not suffer because of sin? No,
it does not mean that at all. The Bible
is full of examples of saints who suffer due to their sin. Poor Peter weeping
because of his cowardly denial of his Lord is a prime example. It is not that
there is not truth to the formula that suffering is due to sin. It is just that
it becomes a false view of suffering when you try to impose it on all
experiences of suffering. A partial
truth made into a whole truth becomes a lie.
When you take something relative and make it absolute you are guilty of
idolatry and sin against God. That is
what the friends of Job did, and the book of Job exists to help us avoid their
mistake.
If you think all suffering is punishment for sin, you will be
forced to pervert the image of God into a cruel creator rather than the merciful
creator that He is. Imagine how cruel it would be to imply that all who have
cancer or some other fatal disease are suffering because they deserve it. Such cruelty is a sin that God forbids by
this book. The parents of a girl born
with a crippled foot were asked why they did not have the child's foot
straightened by surgery. They replied,
"If we had the foot straightened He'd find some other way of punishing
us." They looked upon their
suffering as God's punishment, and the result was they had a perverted and
pagan view of God. Had they understood
the book of Job, and that tragic things can happen even to the innocent, they
would have been motivated to turn to God in faith rather than from Him in fear.
We don't have time to look at other false views of
suffering. The main truths to grasp is
that the righteous can and do suffer, and wicked sometimes do not. These are the facts of life. The question of course is why? Why isn't it true that only the wicked
suffer, and that only the righteous prosper?
It seems like the friends of Job ought to be right. Why are they so wrong? They were wrong because of the cross. The cross was in God's heart and mind long
before Jesus came. The teaching of Job
was essential to prepare the way for the Messiah. No one could ever believe in a Messiah who was a man of sorrows,
and who would suffer crucifixion between two thieves if they were convinced
that only the wicked suffer and the righteous escape it.
Those Jews who never learned the message of Job missed God's
greatest gift, for they rejected Jesus because, like Job's friends, they said
he must be a sinner, for he suffers.
The poet said of Jesus:
The best of men
That e'er wore earth about
him was a sufferer;
A soft, meek, patient,
humble, tranquil spirit,
The first true gentleman
that ever breathed.
We can look at the cross and
praise God for our suffering Lord, and what He purchased for us by His
suffering. Those who believed, and yet
believe, that the righteous can never suffer, can never grasp the truth of the
cross and the fact that God Himself suffers‑the only absolute RIGHTEOUS
SUFFERER.
2. SUFFERING IS NOT GOOD‑A STUDY IN JOB.
We have special seats as we watch the drama of Job
unfold. God has, by this opening
chapter, invited us into the balcony to watch the whole thing from a heavenly
perspective. We get to see from the
view of God and Satan, and who knows how many millions of celestial spectators. It is a sort of cosmic, SMILE YOUR ON CANDID
CAMERA, set up. We are all in on it,
but Job has no idea what is going on. We know that all of the dirty tricks of
Satan are deliberately designed so we can all see Job's reaction. We also know that when the entertainment is
all over Job will be rewarded for being a good sport through it all.
In this analogy Satan is the Allen Funt of the spirit world
who goes about constantly trying to dream up new ways to reveal human responses
to trying situations. All of this could
be great fun if God would just call Satan off on account of unnecessary roughness. If Satan would have been less violent the whole drama could be
enjoyable. Had he just plotted for all
his possessions to be robbed, that would have been an interesting thing to
watch. But Satan pulled no
punches. He wiped Job out and without
mercy saw to it that the vast majority of his servants and all of his children
were killed. This spoils the whole show
for those who are not sadistic.
Many have felt that God made a bad deal with Satan. Robert Frost has God explaining later to
Job: "I was just showing off to
the devil." Job responds,
"That was very human of you."
Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist, goes so far as to say that God felt
guilty for what He let Satan do to Job.
The reason he says God sent His Son into the world to die on the cross
was because He felt so guilty about Job.
The cross was not only to atone for man's guilt, but for His own. This is certainly as extreme a view as ever
uttered, but what it reveals is man questions the justice of God in allowing
Satan to treat Job like He did. It just
does not set right with man that God would give this much freedom to the forces
of evil. He should have put more
restricted limits on Satan.
This is man's biggest problem with evil. Why does God in His sovereignty not stop
evil from being so powerful. The
feeling is, if God is forced to permit evil, He is not all powerful, and if He
freely permits it, He is not all good.
God is forced, it seems, to give up one or the other of these
attributes. Since all of Scripture
however reveals God to be both all powerful and all good, man is forced to try
to figure out how this can be when God permits evil to be as powerful as it is.
One of the answers to this dilemma is, God can allow evil to
be powerful if the end result is greater good.
In other words, God is justified in permitting any degree of evil that
He, in His sovereign power and wisdom, can turn to good. For example, God allows Satan to buffet Paul
with his thorn in the flesh, because that evil of suffering will help Paul
escape the greater evil of pride that could ruin his whole ministry. Here is a clear case of God giving Satan
freedom to do what He could use for good.
This means that the reason God does not destroy Satan and cast him into
the lake of fire is because, in a fallen sinful world, the works of Satan can
be used for the purpose of God. God
allows Satan freedom because it is useful for His own ultimate goals. God is in control, therefore, and evil will
not be able to do anything that God cannot overcome, and make count for good in
the long run. This being the case, God
is off the hook, and He is justified in permitting evil.
This truth is easily perverted into error. Some conclude that evil is not real. If evil is used for good, they reason that
evil is really a part of the good. If
the good can only come by way of evil, then evil is good. If good can come of evil then evil is not
really bad, and, therefore, not genuinely evil. This kind of thinking leads to the Christian Science conclusion
that evil is not real at all, but is the result of false thinking. The Bible makes it clear, however, that evil is real, and that it is bad and
not good. God can use it for good, but
it is evil and destructive, and not His will.
The fact that God is superior to evil, and able to counteract it's
negative power does not mean that evil is not real and awful. The fact is some evil will persist forever,
and that is why hell is a reality. We
must avoid the superficial conclusion that all is really good if we only
understand everything. Because evil is
real, there is much in life that is worthless and meaningless.
Those who think that evil is really good do not realize that
by denying the reality of evil they make God responsible for all that we see as
evil. The Bible makes it clear that
evil is real and God hates it, and is not the author of it. Sometimes Christians feel that God
sovereignty means that He controls everything that happens in this universe. If
that was the case, then there is no such thing as freedom, and God is totally
responsible for all evil. If God
controls all that we do, then all of our sin must be His doing, and, therefore,
His will. God then is responsible for
all sin, for it He controls everything, who else can be held responsible? Since that conclusion is totally at odds
with the Biblical revelation, we must go back to God's sovereignty and come up
with another view of it that does not make Him the author of sin.
God's sovereignty means that He is the only Person in the
universe who can take the risk of creating free willed beings because He is the
only Person who has the power and wisdom to make sure that the risk of evil
will not outweigh the good. He can end up with a universe of free willed
creatures and much good and love that could not otherwise exist. God's
sovereignty does not mean He does everything. It means that even though
millions of beings do things He does not will, He is able to work in all things
for good to those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose.
God's will is not done on earth daily by millions, but because He is sovereign,
His will will eventually be done in spite of all the sin and evil and
rebellion.
This is one of the powerful messages of the book of Job. Satan
set free to do his worst was not able to destroy Jobs relationship to God, and
God's final reward and blessing of Job. Paul in the New Testament said nothing can
separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. The book of Job had
already made this truth clear. Life, then, from the Biblical viewpoint is a
comedy, and not a tragedy. A comedy is a story that, no matter how tragic the
events, ends well. Job is, therefore, a comedy, and all of human life is a
comedy, however many tragedies there are to endure.
Now all of this helps us to see suffering in a different
light. All of the values and blessings that come out of suffering are real
because God in His power and wisdom is able to use evil to bring forth good.
The suffering itself is evil. It has its origin in evil powers and wrong
choices, and it is evil in itself, for it will not be allowed to be a part of
God's eternal kingdom. Evil has no intrinsic goodness at all and so cannot be
eternal. The cause of suffering is evil, but the consequences can be good
because God can work in everything for good.
God is not the cause of any defect in the body, for the body
of the Christian is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Just as you would not come into the sanctuary of your church and
destroy the pews and the walls or windows, and just as you would not throw
garbage all over to make it a place of filth which would be repulsive to God and
man, so God does not smash His temple in planes, trains, cars, or bikes, nor
does He spread cancer and other diseases through His temple to make the body
repulsive. All of the good that come
from Christian suffering these things are because God will work in everything
(however evil and repulsive) to bring forth good. If men will cooperate with God, there is no evil that cannot be
overcome to produce good. But do not
conclude that this means the evil or suffering is good, or that God is the
author of it for good. Both of these
conclusions lead to the false concept that evil is not real, and that God is
the author of evil. Anything that leads
to these conclusions is not Biblical thinking.
God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. It is impossible for God to sin, or to tempt anyone else to sin.
There are some Old Testament text that lead to confusion on
this, for they seem to be saying that God is the author of evil. Amos 3:6 says, "Shall there be evil in
a city, and the Lord hath not done it?"
The prophet is simply pointing out that God does punish sin by judgment,
and that judgment is called evil, because it is from man's point of view the
worse thing that can happen. It is an
evil to come under the wrath of God, but when God does judge it is in reality
not evil but justice. God never judges
unjustly or unfairly, and so there is no real evil in His wrath, but the Old
Testament often refers to it as evil from the Lord. It is the result of man's evil, and when he reaps what he has
sown, it is an evil crop of suffering, but in no way does this mean God is the author of evil. He prefers mercy, but mercy rejected leads
to justice, and justice for the sinner is an evil consequence.
Understanding all of this helps us avoid the agony of misconception. So many Christians look at the tragedies of
life and Rom. 8:28, and struggle to figure out how everything works together
for good. They watch their loved ones die,
and suffer months and years of loneliness and heartache, and all the while wonder
how they are suppose to see any good in it all. This is a futile struggle and frustration based on the
misconception that evil is not real, but that all is good, and that all is of
God. You owe it to yourself, and to all
the body of Christ to avoid giving anyone this superficial view of life. Evil is real and it hurts, and it is not
good, nor can God Himself make evil good, but He will work in all things, even
the most evil things, to bring forth good.
But the fact remains, that is the back door to blessing. It is best to come in front door and
experience blessing without having to endure the evil. Many a man's drunkenness has lead him to the
gutter where he looks up for God's mercy.
That is good, but better is the way of man who seeks God's mercy without
ever ending in the gutter. Job had
great blessings when it was all over, but I wonder if Job would have had his
choice, what would he decide? Would he
choose to go on with his ideal family and wealth, and social prestige, and
right relationship to God, and avoid all he had to suffer, or would he choose
to endure the agony he did for the sake of possessing more? We don't know what Job would do, but most
people in his shoes would, I am sure, choose the easiest route and avoid the
battle.
Since we don't have a choice, however, we need to be ready for
the battle. But let's not be naive and
think the battle is not real, but only a good we don't yet understand. Evil is real, and life is a battle with real
bullets. It is not all a mere play
where we all go out to celebrate afterwards.
You have seen too many good people suffer too believe that. You have witnessed too many broken homes and
hearts to think that way. Jesus would
not have wept if all was for the best.
All is not for the best. He
tried to prevent the destruction of Jerusalem, but he was rejected, and he wept
over the folly of the people that would lead them to such great suffering. It was not for the best; it was evil. Suffering is not good, but thank God this
not good cannot keep us from God's best if we, no matter what, remain loyal to
Him. Suffering is not good, but thank
God He will work with us, even in that which is not good, to bring forth what
is good.
3. WHY TRAGEDY? Based on Job 1:6f
Elie Wiesel, who survived Hitler's blood bath for the Jews,
as devoted his life to telling the world of this tragedy that he feels
surpasses hell in its horrors. His books have motivated others to write so
that there now exists a holocaust literature.
There are books, plays, articles, and poems, about history's most
unbelievable tragedy, which is the brutal murder of six million Jews. Wiesel did not see the entire million
children who were killed, but he saw enough so that he was never the same. He wrote:
"Never shall I forget
that night, the first night in camp, which has
turned my life into one long
night, seven times cursed and seven
times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget
the little faces of the
children, whose bodies I saw turned into
wreathes of smoke beneath
the silent blue sky."
In another place he wrote that people tend to think that a
murderer weakens when facing a child.
The child reawakens the killers lost humanity and he can't go through
with it. But it didn't happen. "Our Jewish children had no effect upon
the killers. Nor upon the world, nor
upon God." The result was that
Wiesel did not respond like Job, but like Satan expected Job to respond. Wiesel wrote, "Never shall I forget
those flames which consumed my faith forever.
How can a Jew say anything religious thereafter?"
Wiesel survived the tragedy but his faith did not. He could not understand how God could allow
evil to be so powerful, and so he concluded that God does not care. This is the test that Satan put Job through
many centuries earlier. All ten of his
children were wiped out in one blow, and all of his wealth was destroyed the
same day. Job also endured a
holocaust. His dream world was
shattered by a nightmare, and his ideal family was instantly reduced to no
family at all.
There is obviously something wrong in a world where things
like this can happen. If tragedy was
just an isolated incident here and there, and limited to the bad guys, we could
go along with Job's friends, and the problem of suffering would be easily
solved. But tragedy does not have any
respect of persons. The Jonestown
massacre was not a mafia convention, but over 900 mostly innocent people. They were women and children, many of whom
were good and godly. The worse airplane
crash in American history did not go down with a load of pimps and prostitutes,
but with respectable citizens, some of whom were God's children. War, famine, and terrorism are snuffing out
the lives of thousands every year, and disease takes a terrible toll, and in
all cases the good guys as well as the bad are victims.
If the problem of suffering in this world does not bother you,
you are yourself suffering from hardening of the heart, of softening of the
brain. Those who study Job's
sufferings, and the tragedies of the world are forced to consider the subject
called Theodicy. Theodicy is the
justification of the ways of God to men.
There have been many books written on this area of theology. Joni's second book, A Step Further is a
Theodicy, and it is a good one. Many
feel that the book of Job itself is a Theodicy. A Theodicy strives to show that as bad as things are, God is good
and He is in control, and evil is not winning the battle. A Theodicy is the defense of God in a world
where evil often seems to dominate.
The book of Job opens up the window of heaven, and enables us
to see the problem of suffering from a broader perspective. Job himself did not see what we can
see. He had to go through his tragedy
believing that God was the sole cause of it all. Life is so much harder when you have only a partial
perspective. Most of the ways we
explain suffering are only partial, and none of them fit every situation. A wife comes to consol and you are not long
in listening to her story before you could watch her husband hang with a smile
on your face. Then he comes in and
tells his side, and you wonder why there is nobody taking a collection to hang
his picture in the hall of fame for endurance.
The point is, when you see life
only from one side you have a distorted view.
We have a distorted view of most of life, and especially life's
tragedies.
The first thing the book of Job does for us is give us an
insight into the conflict in heaven that explains some of the tragedy on
earth. God gives us a wider perspective
so we can avoid the partial perspective of Job's friends. Satan is no equal to God, for God is clearly
supreme. He sets the limits to how far
Satan can go. Nevertheless, He does
give Satan the authority to test Job within those limits. Who then is responsible for the tragedies
Job suffered. Is it God for allowing
Satan the freedom to test him, or is it Satan, for he is the one who actually
carries out the diabolical plot. He
motivates the enemies of Job to come and rob him and kill his servants. He produced the tornado and guided it to
destroy the home where all Job's children were. Satan masterminded the whole series of tragedies, and so he is
clearly responsible. God is only
partially off the hook, however, for He gave Satan the permission. That is why we need a Theodicy. We need to
explain how God can be good and just in doing this.
The book of Job is teaching us that God is soverign and is the
supreme authority so that even Satan can only operate by his permission. But yet there is great evil that results
from this permission to do that which God Himself would never do. If God in His sovereignty allows others to
do what He would never do, we can only conclude that God considers some other
values greater than the prevention of all evil. If God can prevent evil by His sovereign power, but chooses not
to prevent it, we are forced to conclude that either God is not good, or that
God permits evil for a greater good.
Weisel choose to believe the first, and Job choose to believe the
second. Job, of course, made the wise
choice, but we must still ask why? Why
is Job's choice the best, and how can God's allowing tragedy be justified.
Theodicy is the name for the answers to that question.
The classical Christian answer is the theodicy of
freedom. God could have said to Satan,
"Hit the road you cynic. Your
pessimism about Job farce. Don't come
back until you have developed the skill of possibility thinking." God could have used His sovereignty that
way, but instead, He chose to accept the challenge of Satan and allow him to
test Job. God gave Satan freedom to do
what was evil. Just as He gave man the
freedom to do what was evil. If God is
willing to let evil exist for the sake of freedom, then freedom has to be one
of the greatest values in all the universe.
When God made Adam and Eve He also gave them freedom to do evil. He warned them not to eat of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, but He gave them freedom to do so. He could have easily prevented it but did
not. We see that evil existed before
man.
As we examine freedom we discover that it is really the basic
source of all evil, and yet, it is the most treasured value of God and
man. The only way we can justify God's
allowing Satan to test Job, and Hitler to test the Jews, and all of the other
holocausts of history, is to grasp the theodicy of freedom. St. Augustine in the fourth century was the
first to put this into systematic form.
Ever since then it has been the traditional view of both Catholics and
Protestants. Most Christians hardly
ever consider it, but the book of Job forces us to do so. Since God created everything that is, and
said it is very good, even Satan was made good. God created no natures or creatures that were evil. If God had made Satan evil then God would be
solely responsible for the evil in the universe, but God made everything good.
How then could evil ever get started in a good universe where
all creatures and all things were good?
It came in by way of God's greatest gift to His highest creatures. It was by means of the gift of freedom. God could have prevented evil very simply by
withholding the gift of freedom. God
had the choice of making a world where no evil could exist, but He did not do
it. At least in our world He did not do
it. God may have created hundreds of
worlds where there is no evil because there is no freedom. There could be worlds where all is beautiful
and not one sin because all of the beings that inhabit it are programed to do
only what is good.
We live in a different kind of world than that. Those worlds are mere toys compared to our
world. For here everything is
real. There is life and love and
loyalty. But there is also sin and evil
and death because of the freedom of will.
Those who think God controls all that happens in this world have a
misconception of the value of this freedom of the will in God's value
system. It means everything to God to
have free willed beings to relate to.
They are not machines, but real persons who are able to fellowship with
Him. Their love and obedience is
priceless, because they are freely given, and not the automatic response due to
programing. Islam says all is
automatic, and God is the cause of all good and evil. Nothing can be changed for all is determined. This is pure fatalism and not the Biblical
view of the freedom of choice.
As on earth so it is in heaven; you get what you pay for. The cost of this type of world we live in is
enormous. The cost is the risk of evil,
for freedom to be real there must be allowance for the choice of evil. There is no way to have freedom and avoid
the possibility of evil. Satan was made
with the same freedom to chose good or evil.
What is evil? Since God is the
creator of all, and God is good, evil is any use of freedom which is contrary
to God's will, and what He would have His creatures choose. When any free willed being chooses to do
what God would not have programed them to do, had He made them robots, that is
evil.
These kinds of choices must be possible for there to be true
freedom. Where there is no alternative
there is no freedom. If you have to
vote for the dictator in power, and there is no alternative, you are not in a
free country. If you have to do the
will of God, and there is no way to do what He does not will, you are not in a
free world. What all this means is that
evil is a necessity in the kind of world we live in. It is God's will that evil be possible, but it is not His will
that it be actual. That is, God wills
that you have the freedom to choose evil, but He does not will that you make
that choice. God makes evil possible by
granting free will, but only free willed beings can make evil actual by their
choices. God makes man free to murder,
but He does not will that they do so.
In fact, He clearly wills that they do not and threatens severe
punishment if they do. Who then is
responsible for the evil? It is the one
making that choice.
This is what theodicy is.
It is a justification of the ways of God to men. There is no point in men getting angry with
God and accusing him of injustice and indifference because of the great evil in
the world. He is not responsible for it
since by definition evil is always that which God does not will. Not only does God not will evil, He is the
only one who has the power and wisdom to conquer evil, and even use it for
good. To forsake God in the holocaust,
or in any degree of suffering and tragedy, is to totally misunderstand the
origin, nature, and destiny of evil.
Evil is the by-product of freedom.
If you insist that freedom is not worth the cost, maybe God will grant
you the choice of being a rock, or some mindless creature of instinct. For those who prefer to be persons, however,
there is always the risk of evil and suffering.
In the light of this theodicy we can better understand what is
happening when God seems to be cooperating with Satan. God gives him the power to go ahead and put
Job to a brutal test. Why would God
ever do such a thing, and then have it recorded for all the world to read? Billy Graham gets criticized for having a
liberal on his platform, and here is God with Satan on His platform, and God
grants him an answer to his request.
God is determined to prove to all the intelligent beings in the universe
that man is truly free. Satan has
charged that Job is a slave and has no real choice between good and evil. God calls Satan's bluff, and says go ahead
and test him, for in doing so you will reveal to the whole universe just how
free man is. He is no puppet. He can choose good or evil, and Job will
prove it.
The fact is, none of the suffering that Satan could throw at
Job could penetrate his inner sanctuary of freedom. Evil can march around the gate and bang upon it, but it can never
enter and capture the freedom of man's will unless the bolt is lifted from the
inside. The same is true for the forces
of good, for Jesus stands at the door and knocks, and He will only enter a life
when the door is opened from within.
Man is truly a free being. He
can say yes or no to both God or Satan.
Man has the freedom to defy either of them, and he has the freedom to
chose the way of either. Neither the
power of good or evil can conquer man by sheer force. God knew that, but He had to prove it to Satan. After Satan did his worst to make God look
like a monstrous evil enemy, Job still chose to be loyal to God.
The observers around the council table of heaven could only
conclude that man is one of us. Job
gained universal respect, for he could do good and evil and be able to choose
the good and reject the evil. He
demonstrated the worthiness of man's place in God's eternal plan. Job became a universal hero. So great is the value of freedom that God
says it is worth any price. If is means
giving Satan opportunity to do evil; if it means the agony of Job; if it means
the torture of Hitler, and all of the diabolical suffering of history, it is
worth it. That would be easy for God to
say if He just sat in heaven to watch, but God did more than that, He got
involved. He did not make man take all
the risks of freedom. He said in order
to have the best I will share the cost of such freedom. That is why the cross was a part of God's
long range plans even before the foundation of the world.
God knew there would be hell to pay to produce a free being
like man, and so He committed Himself to be the greatest sufferer of all. He would endure the hell His own justice
demanded. The cross is the symbol of
God's commitment to human freedom. It
means everything to God, and the cross is the price God paid for man to be
free. A young boy was looking at a
picture of the crucifixion, and disturbed by its cruelty he said, "If God
had been there, He would not have let them do it." That is the feeling we get as we look at the
tragedies that struck Job. But God was
there, and God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself. The worst was turned into the best because
God was there and permitted the worst.
So with Job, and so with so much that we suffer in this world.
Evil is powerful in the world because man and spiritual beings
like Satan are not programed computers, but are real persons with real choices,
and they often choose that which is not God's will. Evil is so great at times that those suffering must wonder if
freedom is really worth it. Even when
we understand this classical theodicy that makes so much sense, we get a
gnawing feeling that maybe the cost is too great, even if God did pay the major
share on Calvary.
The book of Job reveals also the way out of this final doubt
that God can be justified for the world as it is. God is also free, and better yet He is sovereign. This means He can guarantee that His will
can be ultimately accomplished, and the history of man will end as the story of
Job ends, with victory over evil. P. T.
Forsythe said, "To justify God is the best and deepest way to fortify
men." This is what theodicy
does. It shows us that God is not the
cause of evil, but He is the cause of victory over evil. Job is a comedy, for in spite of all the
tragedy, it has a happy ending. So life
is a comedy. No matter how tragic life
becomes because of freedom, God will make sure that evil will be overcome, and
all its victories will be temporary.
4. GOOD AND
EVIL Based on Gen. 3:6
When Victor Hugo was at what seemed to be the height of his
fame he came into disfavor with Napoleon III and was exiled for 19 years. It was only natural that Hugo would consider
this as pure tragedy, but his immediate judgment was wrong. During those years he wrote far superior
books, and he became twice the man he had been before. The day actually came when Hugo looked at
that seemingly unhappy event and exclaimed, "Why was I not exiled before?" The evil that befell him actually resulted
in a greater good.
It may seem ridiculous to suggest that man's fall and exile
has also resulted in a greater good, but let me suggest it anyway. Biblical theology would seem to demand this
conclusion, for we know that God is sovereign, and that in spite of his giving
to man a free will, He will not end up when history is over with less than what
He began with. God could allow the
possibility of evil just because He is able to bring good out of it. Let us not get the impression that the fall
was good. It was not, but it was a very
definite and tragic evil. The point is,
God is in control and permits only that evil to be possible out of which He can
bring good.
It is often of small comfort in a tragic situation to say it
could be worse, but it is of great comfort at the point of the fall of
man. In one of Shakespeare's plays a
character is made to say, "And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, never
to hope again." This is exactly
what did not happen in the fall of Adam and Eve. They did not fall as Satan did.
He fell by his own choice to defy God, but they were tempted by external
persuasion. Therefore, their fall was
not final, but rather was one where God has plans to restore them to a state of
perfection. Without the fall we would
not have a Savior, and however pleasant our life would be, it would be less
than what we have ahead in eternity because of what Jesus accomplished for
us.
All this amounts to is the logical conclusion we must come
to as Christians because of our rejection of Dualism. We believe that God alone is sovereign, and He is the creator of
all. We do not believe that there are
two ultimate beings as the ancient Persians and Gnostics believed, with one
being good and the other evil. We
believe in a limited dualism in which light and darkness battle one another
with Christ leading the forces of light and Satan the forces of darkness. We believe the evil forces had a beginning,
and that they will have an end in defeat.
Evil we say is dependent upon the good for its very
existence. Good can exist alone, but
evil must have the presence of good to exist, for evil can have no meaning except
by contrast to a standard of good. It
would be impossible to ever do a thing in the wrong way if there was no right
way to do it. But one could do it the
right way even if it were impossible to do it wrong. Let me illustrate.
Suppose you have a puzzle all together except for one piece of a very odd
shape. There is only one right way for
that piece to go in. It is just because
there is a right way for it to fit that it is possible to try many wrong ways. You can hold it several different ways and
turn it over before you finally hit the right way. All the wrong ways can only exist because of there being a right
way. If there was no right way for it
to fit, there would be no wrong ways, for anyway would do. Wrongness is dependant upon rightness for
its very existence.
God and good are supreme and ultimate, but Satan and evil are
temporary intruders. This is confirmed
by the record we have here of the entrance of evil into the world. It got in by the misuse of that which was
good, and thereby established the basic nature of evil as being the striving
for a good by the wrong means. In other
words, just as God can bring good out of evil, so Satan can bring evil out of
good. C. S. Lewis said, "Badness
is only spoiled goodness." If you
examine any sin you will discover that some good is always the foundation of
it. This is why sin if often so
appealing. It appears to offer so much
good. The greater the good involved,
however, the greater the sin. If sex
perversions are high on the list of sins, it is only because normal sex
experience is so high on the list of God's blessings.
If bigotry is such a despised attitude, it is because
conviction is such an honorable attitude.
In other words, evil is basically a perverted good. Take orthodoxy for example, which means being
sound and right in your beliefs. None
can doubt that this is a good, and yet it has been the cause of so much evil
because of its being converted and made an end in itself. Mark Guy Pearce writes, "Look back over
the ages so far as we have any record of the world's religious history. We shall find that the cruelest thing that
ever came into God's world is religion without love. It has kindled more fires for the burning of martyrs, it has
invented more diabolical torches, it has wrought more dire and dreadful
suffering, then wars and strong drink put together.
Jesus as the risen and reigning king said to the church of
Ephesus that it was good that they tested men and found them to be false
apostles. It was good that they were orthodox,
but they had left their first love. He
warned them that if they did not return to that love all their orthodoxy would
be for naught, and he would remove their candlestick from its place. Christ stands squarely behind Paul's
statement that though one has no knowledge and faith enough to remove
mountains, but has not love, he is nothing.
Jesus says by His rebuke to this church, and it is backed up by all of
Scripture, and the pages of history reecho it that the end does not justify the
means. No end however good, even that
of being orthodox, can be attained or maintained by means inconsistent with
love. If it is, the good is perverted
and becomes an evil. The point that we
need to grasp is that any good is the source of potential evil, for evil can
only exist by perverting a good. This
calls for constant examination and renewed commitment lest we be subtly led
into sin in our very pursuit of the good.
This is what happened to Eve. God had made everything good, and there was nothing that was bad
or evil on earth. The only possible way
Satan could introduce evil into the world would be by some misuse of what was
good. The paradox of the fall is that
good surrounds it completely. C. Vaughn
said, "The fall is a greater mystery than the redemption." We have been studying the cleverness of
Satan in getting Eve to fall, and we have seen that Satan has used truth as one
of his instruments of deception. Satan
could not succeed without using good for his evil goal. We see Satan using wisdom and truth to
deceive Eve into disobedience. Now as
we look at the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which has by Satan's
subtlety became the object of Eve's attention, we discover again that good is
the only thing we can see, and that is all that Eve saw as well.
1. First she saw‑The tree was good for food. God had made all things good, and this
included the fruit of the forbidden tree.
It did not just look good, it really was good for food. The only possible way evil could arise out
of seeking this good food would be by gaining it in a way out of harmony with
God's will. That is exactly what
happened. We see, however, that the
good itself was good. It was only the
means to get it that made it evil.
Satan's success was in getting her to gain a good by an evil means.
God was the author of taste, beauty, and desire for wisdom,
and all of these are good. It is not an
evil to desire good food, but it is natural and good. All of these good factors combined to produce an evil simply
because they were directed toward a good but forbidden goal. Any good that has to be gained by disobeying
God is a good out of which evil will come.
To desire such a good when you know it cannot be gained in God's will is
an evil lust. Desire is not wrong, but
a lust for that which is forbidden is a desire that has gone out of God's
will.
It was Eve's lust for the good fruit that led to the
fall. Someone wrote, "Eve, with
all the fruits of Eden blest, save only one, rather than leave that one unknown
lost all the rest." Martin Luther
wrote, "How rich a God is our God!
He gives enough, but we do not heed this. He gave Adam the whole world, and that was nothing. He was only concerned about the one tree he
had to ask why God had forbidden him to eat of it. So it is today. In his
revealed word God has given us enough to learn. We leave that alone and search into His secret will, and yet we
fail to learn it. It serves us right if
we perish through such conduct."
What greater folly can there be than to forsake the abundance of God's
blessings and go in pursuit of what He has forbidden? The forbidden fruit was good for food, but then so was every
other piece of fruit in the garden.
Beware of being duped into pursuing anything just because it is good,
for a good pursued out of God's will is an evil.
2. It was a delight to
the eyes. Certainly no one would call
aesthetics evil. That means the
enjoyment of beauty. Beauty is God's
doing, and so also is the love of beauty in the heart of man. Yet this good can also be used to draw us
into the snare in gaining the good by a wrong means. Had the tree been ugly, and the fruit unappealing, and half
rotten, the chances of the temptation succeeding would have been slim
indeed. Evil we see again can only
succeed when it has a good foundation on which to build. It cannot stand alone. It can only enter where a good standard is
established. Adam and Eve could never
have been tricked into doing an evil in itself. The only hope for evil to succeed was by using the good. It is still Satan's most effective means to
get people to fall. If he can get us to
focus our eyes on a good goal that must be gained by disobedience to God, he
has a good chance of getting us to go ahead.
We are prone to persuade ourselves that as long as the goal is good the
means do not matter.
Many have fallen where they never expected they could simply
because they continued to gaze at the forbidden. The poet has said,
The ill we deem we ne'er
could do, in thought we dramatize;
What we should loathe, we
learn to scan with speculative eyes.
Alas! For ignorance profound of our poor nature's
bent!
The weakened sympathy with
wrong becomes the will's consent.
All that glitters is not gold, and all that is beautiful is
not thereby approved of by God. Joseph
Parker said, "A beautiful gate it is that opens upon ruin! It is well‑shaped, well‑painted,
and the word welcome illuminates it in vivid letters." We need to be fully conscience that evil's
best tools are the good, the true and the beautiful. Spurgeon said that the
serpent probably got Eve fascinated with it so that she liked it the most of
all the creatures. To her it was
beautiful and something to be treasured.
Satan often uses beauty to lead us astray. These are three values that all men desire. People who think sin is always ugly and
awful are usually very fine respectable people who will never be saved, for
they do not believe they are sinners.
We must be ever aware that evil is basically perverted good, for only
then can we spot the sins that trap us when we think we are being
righteous.
3. To be desired to make one wise. God certainly expected man to use
the brain He gave him, and to grow wise is good. Eve desired to be wise and her hunger for knowledge was not
evil. We see that a good was the object
and goal, which was made to bring about man's fall. She had three good reasons to justify her act of eating. If she put all arguments for and against
down in writing, there would only be one against it and three for it. This shows us the quantity of arguments is
not a valid basis. No number of
arguments weigh anything in the scale of decision when God's command is against
it.
Eve let 3 good goals tip the scale, and she chose to go
against God's command. Our interest in
this message is to stress the fact that evil could not succeeded without the
help of the good. Good is the
foundation of evil, and without it evil cannot exist. This shows us that good is the original and evil is an
intruder. All evil is a perversion of
some good in God's totally good universe.
One day the perverted will be destroyed, and all his perversions, and
all will be good again. Meanwhile we
need to grow in our discerning of good and evil that we might not be led into
evil by way of the good, but that we might overcome evil with good.
5. GOOD AND
EVIL II Based on Gen. 3:22‑24
Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "Pretty much all the honest
truth‑telling there is in the world is done by children." This does not mean, however, that their
truth telling is always pleasant.
Especially if you have guests, or if you are like the Sunday School
teacher who asked too many questions.
One Sunday she told the story of the Good Samaritan, and she made it
very vivid so the children could realize clearly what had happened. Then she asked, "If you saw a person
lying on the roadside all wounded and bleeding what would you do?" A thoughtful little girl broke the hushed
silence and said, "I think I'd throw up."
The truth is not only not always pleasant, but it can even
be used to promote evil. William Blake
wrote, "A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can
invent." Satan is the father of
lies, but he reveals right from the start that he recognizes that truth can
often be even more effective than lies in accomplishing his purpose. If you think the devil never tells the
truth, then you have not read Gen. 3 very closely. In verse 5 the subtle serpent tells Eve that when she eats of the
forbidden fruit her eyes will be opened, and she will be like God knowing good
and evil. No one can call this
statement a lie without also accusing God, for in verse 22 God says the
serpent's prophecy was literally fulfilled, and man did become like God knowing
good and evil. Satan is not fussy. If the truth can be used to get men to
disobey God, why bother inventing lies?
Truth is never an adequate reason to justify disobedience to
God's revealed will. Satan will use the
truth and nothing but the truth, and he will offer you the very best if he can
persuade you to get it by disobeying God.
Just because something is new does not mean that it is right, or that it
is God's will. Adam and Eve assumed
that if they could become more like God by disobeying God it must be the right
thing to do. They got a good thing, but
they paid too great a price, when by obedience they would have gotten not only
the knowledge of good and evil, but eternal life as well. There is no doubt that God intended Adam and
Eve to eat of both the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, but it was to be only in His good time.
This seems clear if we look closely at God's words in verse 22. These are really quite startling words, and
they have led to some very radical developments in the history of
theology.
God says, "Behold the man has become like one of us,
knowing good and evil." Many have
looked at these words and said that it doesn't sound like a fall, but rather a
rise. Man's first sin made him more
like God than he was when he was innocent.
That is an improvement, and it made man greater than he was before. Fallen man is more divine than innocent man,
and so the fall must have been good.
Many conclude that God intended man to fall just because it was the way
for Him to become more godlike. They do
not see tragedy in man's fall, but rather the beginning of the struggle of man
to climb to the heights of perfection.
What they are failing to see, however, is the fact that man got this
good by disobedience, and so fell from a perfect relationship to God. It is true that eating of the forbidden
fruit made them more godlike, and that is why it is reasonable to believe that
God would have let them eat of it eventually after they had proven their
loyalty to Him.
When God finished creation He said that all was good. That included the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. The tree was not evil,
nor was it bad to have the knowledge of good and evil. God has it, and no one can be like God
without it. Animals do not have it, and
so they are not moral beings. Man does
have this knowledge and is a moral being, and is responsible for choosing good
and avoiding evil. The Bible refers to
the knowledge of good and evil as a precious gift. God admits here that it is a quality of His own nature, and so to
have it is to partake of the divine nature.
In I Kings 3:9 Solomon prays, "Give thy servant therefore an
understanding mind to govern thy people, that I may discern between good and
evil." In II Sam. 14:17 it is said
of David, "...my lord the king is like the angel of God to discern good
and evil."
If it was a good
thing to have it, and if it made man like the angels of heaven and like God
himself, why then did God not want them to live forever, and, therefore, put
them out of the garden? The answer is
really quite obvious. If man lives
forever with the knowledge of good and evil, but with a will that is not
committed to good and loyalty to God, he will be an eternal rebel. God already has eternal rebels in Satan and
his fallen angels. He does not intend
to allow man to become like them, and so His act of expelling them from the
garden is an act of great mercy. If He
allowed them to stay and eat and live forever, He would be condemning them to
eternal separation from himself. But if
He cast them out to die as mortal, He can provide a way of redeeming them and
bringing them back into fellowship with himself. This way He can give them eternal life and win an ultimate
victory over Satan.
God's plan is not to have men who are living forever, but to
have men who are living forever in fellowship with Him. A Christ like person can have the knowledge
of good and evil, but chose to follow the good. If we were Adam like for all eternity, there would be guarantee
that we wouldn't sometime chose evil and fall all over again. In order to achieve the best God had to
prevent man from eating of the tree of life until after he was made completely
like Christ. When we become like Him in
eternity there will be no more chance of our disobeying God than there was of
Christ disobeying. He had the knowledge
of good and evil, but He always chose the good.
Death with the hope of eternal blessedness is certainly a
better plan than eternal life with a sinful nature. Satan is an example of everlasting evilness. If God had not prevented it Adam could have
become another Satan. Physical death
was a blessing in comparison to eternal spiritual death of separation from God. What we have here then is God's grace in
action. It may look cruel, but it is
pure grace. Man was losing Eden so that
God could redeem him and restore him to an even greater paradise. The devil can never die, but he is doomed
forever. We can die, but we can also be
delivered and live with God forever.
Death was not the worst fate man could have had. The worst fate would be eternal life with a
sinful nature.
Thank God for forcing man out of Eden. This was the greatest eviction that ever
took place, and because of it we all can have the hope of returning to paradise
through Jesus Christ. God did not
destroy the tree of life. He just made
sure that sinful man could not partake of it.
In verse 23 we see God sending them out to labor in the ground from
which they were taken, and to which they would return. They were driven out to die, for only those
who can die can be resurrected and restored to perfection. When the angels fell God cast them into hell
to await the judgment, but man is not put in a place of torment, but in a place
of toil, and with a promise of deliverance.
Verse 24 uses stronger language and says that God drove them
out. As tragic as the lost was men read
too much into it. Some poet wrote,
One morning of the first sad
fall,
Poor Adam and his bride
Sat in the shade of Eden's
wall‑
But on the outer side.
This was true, and the lost
was real, but to add to this that they lost their relationship and fellowship
with God is not true, for the next chapter goes on to show that they worshipped
God and thank Him for blessings, and they offered sacrifice to Him. There is no comparison between the fall of
angels and the fall of man. They fell
from within, but men fell because of outside pressure, and so there was a
radical difference in the nature of their fall, and in the nature of their
judgment.
God shut the gate of paradise to Adam, but the Second Adam
opened it again on the cross, and the very day of His death He promised a
sinner that He would enter with Him into paradise. The closed gate with the flaming sword of the angel guarding it
is no longer the true picture. Now
Jesus stands at the gate inviting all to trust Him and enter in. It was a terrifying experience for Adam and
Eve, for the cherubim were frightening looking creatures. They were not cute little baby angels as the
artist portray them, but they were great and dreadful creatures that would
frighten anyone. Adam would have tried
climbing over the gate at night to get a bite of that life‑giving fruit
if he was not scared to death of that cherubim. There is no way back to eternal life unless God takes away this
awesome guard.
The New Testament Gospel is the good news that this guard is
gone. Jesus now stands before the tree
of life, and He now offers man the chance to freely partake of the tree and live
forever. They need simply to yield to
His Lordship and accept His atonement for the cleansing of their sin. Christians need to let the world know that
the gate to paradise and eternal life is now open.
6. A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO SUFFERING Based on
John 9:1‑23
One of the good things to come out of suffering is this: It forces
those who cannot see any sense in it to grapple with the mystery, and strive to
squeeze some meaning out of it. Almost
everyone who writes on suffering does so out of their own personal encounter
with this mysterious monster. In the book When It Hurts Too Much To Cry, Jerry
Fallwell begins with this account. He tells of Clifford who left his good
paying job to come to Lynchberg to study for the ministry. He had a wife and
two small sons. He was an excellent student, and Fallwell was proud to have
such a caliber of man in his school.
One Saturday night just after Cliff had finished with family
devotions someone fired a shotgun through the living room window and Cliff was
killed instantly. Fallwell arrived in a few minutes to see the most senseless
thing he had ever witnessed, and he could not help but question God, and wonder
why He would allow such a terrible thing to happen. He gave it a great deal of
thought, and the only conclusion he could come to was that it is an unsolvable
mystery with no sense whatever on any level known to man. In the light of this tragedy he rebukes
those who deal with suffering superficially.
He writes, "I think Christian leaders often do their people a
disservice when they spout glib and shallow cliches to people going through
some of these dark experiences!"
There are many people who do this. He has had others in this same category. One of their fine students was going home
and picked up a hitchhiker. The student
was killed and dragged into the woods where his body was found. He has other horror stories as well, but the
point is, you cannot look at the victims of serious suffering and not ask the
question why? The disciples of Jesus
could not help but wonder when they saw a man who had been blind from birth‑why? Why would any man have to enter the world
never to see it? Why is there such
meaningless suffering? It is the most
simple question to ask, but unfortunately, the answer is not so simple.
The disciples see no profound complexity in the
situation. They are confident they have
narrowed down the answer to one of two alternatives. Who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind? Jesus could have taken either, and they
would have been satisfied, but instead, he took neither, and said it was not
personal or parental sin that caused this suffering. Jesus through a monkey wrench of complexity into their simple
solution to the problem of suffering, and by so doing he taught them, and
teaches us, one of the most important principles we can learn on the subject of
suffering. The principle is this:
I. SIMPLE SOLUTIONS TO
SUFFERING ARE SUPERFICIAL.
Show me a simple solution to the problem of suffering, and I
will show you a heresy that will fit neither the revelation of God, nor the
experience of man. Simple solutions are
none the less the most popular and widely held by the intelligent and ignorant
alike. Here are the disciples of
Christ who are hand picked by the Master Himself, and they view suffering with
the same old worn out theory held by the friends of Job. They assume that such a terrible fate as
being born blind had to be the result of somebody's sin. It was so logical and obvious to them that
they did not even see the cruelty of it.
They are asking, who is guilty for such an awful thing: His parents or himself. In other words, who do we blame when this
horrible reality. What kind of parents
must they have been to give birth to such a monstrosity as a blind baby? Or what kind of a low life scoundrel must he
be that God would punish him at birth for the sins he foresaw that he would
commit?
I hope the disciples at least asked their question out of ear
shot of this poor blind man, for there are very few things more cruel than to
make suffering people feel guilty for their own suffering. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament
reject this theory to account for suffering, and it is superficial, but it is
still often promoted. Fallwell tells of
his personal friends Dr. and Mrs. Rudy Holland who discovered their young son
had a brain tumor. Surgery removed it,
but 11 months later it returned. This
time it was much larger and inoperable. They were told their son had less than
a year to live. They heard of a new
technique developed at Boston Children's Hospital, and they took their son
there. The surgery led to all kinds of
complications, and he was in the hospital for months. He did eventually come home but was kept alive by synthetic
hormones. Then a cyst that had formed
ruptured, and he was in a coma for 32 days.
After being out of it for a month he lapsed into it for another
month. He lost most of his memory and
was going blind. Fallwell says that you
can't put into words the kind of suffering this family had to endure. Imagine the cruelty of trying to figure out
whose sin it is they are suffering for.
We want life to be simple, and we want to have easy answers
that give meaning to life. We want life
to be black and white where the good guys are escaping suffering, and the bad
guys are getting their due reward of judgment.
If life was only like the movies, but it is not, and often the real life
story has the bad guys getting by with murder, and the good guys being the ones
getting murdered. So it was with Able,
John the Baptist, Stephen, and on and on.
Simple answers are not always false, but they are so often foolish and
cruel when applied to specific situations.
Do people go blind because they mix up a pile of gun powder
and then light it? Of course they do. Do they go blind because they stare at
the Sun too long? Yes they do. People go blind for all kinds of foolish things
they do. They cause their blindness by the choices they make. But to take what
we know to be true and make it the truth, and apply it to every blind person,
is to be cruel. If we see a blind child and say, I wonder what stupid thing
this kid did to become blind, then we are the ones being foolish. There are hundreds of reasons for why people
are blind. Those who assume that there is only one reason, and that is that
they did something evil or stupid, are
a part of the problem in the suffering of the world.
Simple answers are convenient, but they are often
worthless or cruel. Harold Kushner in
his book When Bad Things Happen To Good People writes, "I once read of an
Iranian folk proverb, ' If you see a blind man, kick him; why should you be
kinder than God?' In other words, if you see someone who is suffering, you must
believe that he deserves his fate and that God wants him to suffer. Therefore,
put yourself on God's side by shunning Him or humiliating Him further. If you try to help him, you will be going
against God's justice." It is
simple solutions like this that make so many religious people cruel and without
compassion.
It is true that many people become stronger through their suffering,
and they become great examples of how it can strengthen character. But it is a major mistake to try and apply
this to somebody else's tragedy. If a
family just hears that their teenage daughter has been killed in an auto
accident, and you try to comfort them by saying God wants to make you stronger,
you are being cruel. You have no
business trying to interpret other people's suffering. If they ask you for an opinion, you can
share your theory, and they can take it or leave it, but to impose your unasked
interpretation on people based on ignorance is to be a part of the
problem. It is as foolish and
superficial as someone standing at the cross asking, who did sin, this man or
his parents that he should meet with such a violent end? This question might fit the two thieves for
they were suffering as a direct result of their crimes, but Jesus was
innocent. You can say that two out of
three ain't bad, but it is bad when you apply a simple solution to a situation
where it is superficial and does not fit the facts.
This was just what the friends of Job were doing for days, and
they were making his life miserable, and they were completely wrong. Now the disciples are doing the same things
with this poor blind man. They were not
so cruel as Job's friends, for they did not spend days rubbing his nose in it,
and making him feel guilty. But they
believed the same simple falsehood that all suffering is connected with
specific sin. Old errors die hard, if
they ever die at all. They usually
become so ingrained in the minds of people that even after they are rejected
they continue to affect the attitudes.
The book of Job ends with God's rejection of Job's friends
simple solution to his suffering. It
would have ended with God's judgment on the friends had Job not interceded on
their behalf. God was angry with their
superficiality which they so dogmatically defended. Now we are seeing history repeating itself in our text. Jesus is again rejecting the simple solution
to specific suffering by saying it has no connection with any specific sin in
the sufferer or his parents. By doing
this Jesus shut down the number one most popular explanation for suffering of
all time. The vast majority of the
human race has always clung to this simple explanation of suffering, that it is
the punishment for sin. Let's consider
why‑
II. THE SIMPLE SOLUTION IS
SO SUCCESSFUL.
The reason for its popularity is its simplicity. It basically eliminates the problem of
suffering altogether. If all suffering
is a result of the sin of the one suffering, then where is the problem? All is as it should be, and justice is
being done, and all it fair. Everybody
is reaping what they have sown. Life is
no mystery at all, but is perfectly sensible and orderly.
That is why billions cling to the doctrine of
reincarnation. It is the simple
solution to suffering perfected in a system.
All that seems unjust and unfair when innocent people suffer is easily
explained. They are suffering for sin in
a previous life, and so there is no problem.
Every miserable situation you can imagine can be accepted by these
people, for even though they may be innocent babies who are suffering, it all
makes sense because they were sinful scoundrels in their previous life, and
their present tragedy is just what they deserve.
The simple solution allows people to live in the midst of
horrible suffering and feel no guilt when they don't lift a finger to help
relieve the pain, because everything is really just as it ought to be, for
suffering is the just punishment for sin.
The simple solution eliminates all mystery. There is nothing to wonder about and question, except maybe, is
it the sufferers sin or the parents sin that is being punished? In other words, the simple solution is a
denial of the problem of suffering.
There is no problem because there is no such thing as innocent
suffering. Once you eliminate the whole
concept of innocent, unjust, and unfair suffering you have, in essence, eliminated
evil.
The one thing all simple solutions to suffering have in
common is that they deny the reality of evil.
Like Christian Science they conclude that evil is just the result of the
wrong way of looking at reality. If we
look at it properly, they say there is no evil. Evil is an error of the mind.
Christians fall into the same trap when they try to justify all
suffering by quoting Rom. 8:28 and say, "All things work together for
good." They imply by that that all
things are good, and do not stop to realize that what they are doing is denying
the reality of evil. If all things are
really good, then there is no such thing as evil. This is pure heresy along with all the other simple solutions to
suffering. It calls evil good, and
makes a mockery of all the suffering innocent people have to do.
This theory makes it good for Judas to betray Jesus; good for
Christian men to have affairs; good for people to drink and drive killing
innocent people, and on and on we could go calling all evil good. This, of course, will not stand up in the
court of reality. Evil is real, and the
innocent do suffer, and there is no way to call it good. Rom. 8:28 is not saying that all is
good. It is saying that God will not
abandon us to evil, but will in every situation, even the most evil, work with
us for good. But no matter what good
comes out of the evil, it does not justify the evil. Any theory that rejects the reality of evil is not biblically
valid, and that is what all simple solutions to suffering do.
What we need to see is that because something is true, it does
not mean it is the truth. This is what
leads every simple solution to the level of heresy. It is a partial truth exalted to the level of an absolute where
it becomes a falsehood. It is obvious
that there is much truth to the idea that sin leads to suffering. Adam and Eve lost paradise, and began the
suffering of the human race because of their sin and violation of the will of
God. There is no end to examples of how
sin leads to suffering. This simple
solution, however, breaks down very quickly when we see Abel being murdered by
Cain. All of the sudden we see the good
guy dying while the bad guy lives. Now
we have innocent suffering, and the mystery of suffering begins. Abel did not die because of his sin, but
because of Cain's jealously. It was not
good, but evil, and it happened to a righteous man, and God did not stop it or prevent
it. The Bible very quickly thrusts us
into the problem of suffering, and just as quickly rejects the simple solution
to suffering.
The greatest sufferer of all time was Jesus, and He was
sinless. He was the only truly innocent
sufferer whoever lived. He suffered
completely because of the sins of others.
John the Baptist was the greatest born of woman in the Old Testament,
but he was still a sinner. But who
would have the audacity to say he was beheaded in his 30's by Herod because he
deserved it? He died because of the sin
of others in their opposition to righteousness. Stephen, the first Christian
martyr, was also a young man and a righteous man. He was still a sinner, but who would dare
suggest that he was allowed to be stoned by God because of sin in his
life? This tragedy had nothing to do
with Stephen's sin. Maybe he did lose
his tempter that week, and maybe he had a struggle with envy or lust, or any
number of sins, but nothing could be more superficial than to suggest that his
suffering and death had anything to do with his personal sin.
The most popular
solution to suffering of all time fails to make any sense in these and millions
of other situations. You will find it
still believed in high places, however.
The minds of the Apostles were sold on it until Jesus set them
straight. Jesus said the blind man was
not blind because of his sin or the sin of his parents, but that the work of
God might be made manifest in his life.
What a shock this was to the disciples.
Here was a man who was not sinless, but his sin had nothing to do with
his blindness. This is true of most
people who are blind, and most people who have any disease, handicap, or
affliction. The reason we have
compassion on these people in Christian lands is because we have rejected the
idea that people suffer because of their sin.
We recognize that they are victims of evil, and do not deserve their
suffering. If they did deserve it, then
all of our Christian compassion that tries to relieve their suffering would be
putting us in opposition to God's will.
This being the case, we need to reject another major false
concept that grows out of the simple solution of suffering. If all suffering is due to sin, then it
follows that the innocent will not suffer.
If all suffering is the deserved punishment for sin, there will be no
suffering on the part of those who do not deserve it. In other words, the simple solution promises freedom from
suffering to the innocent and the righteous.
This is the very thing which the Bible does not promise. The simple solution denies the reality of
evil, and that the innocent suffer. The
Bible, however, reveals that much suffering is unjust and unfair. Peter preaches the Gospel and 3,000 souls
come to Christ. Stephen preaches the
same Gospel and 3,000 stones come flying at him to knock the life out of
him. One gets souls, and the other gets
stones. There is nothing fair about
this. Many innocent people suffer the pains of life and do recover, but
many do not, and the simple solution does not deal with this aspect of reality.
It ignores it, and that is why it is so superficial. It is blind to unjust and
innocent suffering.
The Bible does not ignore this reality. It makes it clear that
this will be a major battle of life. God does not promise that life will be
fair. In fact, He promises that it will be very unfair because of the power of
evil. All He promises is that He will be fair, and that those who endure the
unjust suffering of life will be greatly rewarded. Jesus says we can even be
glad and rejoice in unjust suffering for we know that our reward in heaven will
be great. Jesus prepared his disciples
to expect to suffer for being righteous. It was just the opposite of the simple
solution that relates suffering to sin. He said much suffering will be related
to not sinning, and they will be persecuted because of their being godly and
not going along with the unholiness of the world. All through history Christians have had to suffer just for being
what God wanted them to be.
Christians have come to believe that they have some kind of
promise to be protected from the trials and tragedies of life.
This view leads to rebellion and rejection of God when it is proven
false by serious suffering. A mother
who lost a son in battle wrote this to her pastor. "I never intend to step inside a church again. It has failed me. It has lied to me. It has
taught me to believe that God would take care of my boy and bring him back in
safety as I prayed. I have prayed. My boy is dead. What do you have to say to me now? I hate God. He cannot be
trusted." This has happened to
millions of people who have swallowed the simple solution to suffering. They believe that only the sinful will
suffer. The innocent and godly will
escape suffering. When reality comes
crashing in on them they blame God.
Their false ideas of God lead them to be angry at God when they should
be angry at themselves for neglecting to read everything God has revealed in
His Word, which is a promise that in this world you will suffer.
The simple solution to suffering has created more atheists
than any other tool of the devil that I am aware of. You read the works of the great unbelievers, and you find that
the god they are angry at is the god that is created by the false and
superficial ideas of suffering. When
this spider web of theory cannot hold the weight of reality, they reject God
for not keeping promises He never made.
A good portion of the world's suffering is caused by this simple
solution to suffering. People believe
it is the truth, and when it turns out to be a lie they blame God. Mark Twain wrote a whole book blaming God
for the rotten things in this world. He
was raised to believe that God would not allow bad things to happen to good
people. When he grew up and saw it
wasn't so, he rejected God. Nobody had any right to give that false concept of
God to any child. It is a lie, and it
will lead to the rejection of God who is the only ultimate answer to the
problem of suffering.
False ideas about suffering are the cause of much
suffering. I agree with J. B. Philips
who wrote about the false idea that godly people will not suffer. He writes, "It seems to me that a great
deal of misunderstanding and mental suffering could be avoided if this
erroneous idea were exposed and abandoned.
How many people who fall sickly say, either openly or to themselves,
"Why should this happen to me?
I've always lived a decent life."
"There are even people who feel that God has somehow
broken His side of the bargain in allowing illness or misfortune to come upon
them. But what is the bargain? If we regard the New Testament as our
authority, we shall find no such arrangement being offered to those who open
their lives to the living Spirit of God.
They are indeed guaranteed that nothing, not even the bitterest
persecution, the worst misfortune, the death of the body, can do them any
permanent harm or separate them from the love of God. They are promised that no circumstance of earthly life can defeat
them in spirit and that the resources of God are always available for
them. Further, they have the assurance
that the ultimate purpose of God can never be defeated. But the idea that if a man pleases God
then God will especially shield him
belongs to the dim twilight religion and not to Christianity at all."
The fact is, the godly often suffer even more than the
ungodly. The poet put it,
The rain falls on the just
and unjust fella,
And sometimes more on the
just, for the unjust
Steals the just's umbrella.
There is no promise that life will be fair, but only that God
will. Jesus says in Luke 21:16‑17,
"You will be betrayed by parents, brothers, relatives and friends and they
will put some of you to death. All men
will hate you because of me." That
is not much of a promise of a fair life.
But then in the next verse Jesus says, "But not a hair of your head
will parish." This is His way of
saying that its an unfair world, and unjust suffering is inevitable, but in
God's ultimate plan no child of His will lose one minute thing because of the
power of evil.
Jesus says in John 16:2, "A time is coming when anyone
who kills you will think he is offering a service to God." Jesus did not hold back any punches. He told His disciples there were no
guarantees that they would escape anything by following Him. He ends the chapter by saying in verse 33,
"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
Jesus was so realistic about life, and that is why He promised
trouble. But He was also reassuring,
for He promised final victory and present peace in Him.
Paul was a great sufferer of all kinds of unjust pain, and it
was not because of sin, but because he was a servant of Christ. He writes in II Cor. 11:23‑29 that he
was in prison frequently, had been flogged often, been exposed to death many
times, received whippings, and was beaten with rods, once was stoned, three
times shipwrecked, and suffered frequent dangers and pressures. Who sinned,
was it Paul or his parents that he should have to suffer so much pain? The simple solution to suffering will gladly
accept either alternative just as long as sin is the cause of his
suffering. The biblical answer,
however, is like the answer of Jesus concerning the blind man. The answer he gave is neither. Paul's suffering was unfair and unjust, and
not punishment for sin. It was the
price he paid to do the will of God in taking the good news of salvation to a
lost world.
Are we to conclude that suffering is not due to sin, but
instead due to being an opponent to sin, as Paul was? Not at all, for this would be to replace one simple solution with
another, and when it comes to suffering all simple solutions are superficial.
7. ACCIDENTAL SUFFERING Based on Acts 20:7‑12
The Cherynoble nuclear accident in Russia was one of the most
headline grabbing events of the 20th century.
But what we do not realize is that many accidents are not spectacular
explosions, fiery crashes, or powerful events of violence. There are also very silent accidents which
are equally deadly. For example, back
in 1983 two employees at a hospital were clearing out a warehouse where a worn
out cancer therapy machine had been collecting dust for 6 years. They had no idea that in the case of this
machine were 6,000 pellets of radioactive cobalt. They sold it for scrap metal for $10.00. Some of these pellets fell out into the
truck they used to carry it to the junk
yard. At the junk yard the pellets were
scattered all over the place as the magic picked it up and dumped it in a pile. These 6,000 pellets were mixed with metal
that was sent out to a company that made legs for tables in fast food
restaurants. Others found their way
into metal rods to reinforce concrete.
Nobody was even aware that a dangerous accident was in
progress, for there was no noise or explosion.
Many people, however, were being exposed to high levels of
radioactivity. It was not until a truck
carrying a load of this radioactive material pulled into a government project
that anybody became aware. Radioactive
detectors set off alarms, and the Nuclear Safety Commission immediately went
into action to trace these rods back to that junk yard. Then they had to trace where all the scrap
had gone. They closed down the leg making
factory, and they found the truck that delivered the machine in the first place. It was very hot, and it was hauled away, but
research learned that up to 200 people could have touched it or been near
enough to be exposed.
2,500 table bases had to be returned from 40 states. People eating at these tables were getting
the equivalent of a one hour lung x‑ray.
The hottest legs of all were found in a downtown Chicago hotel. The point is, there was no big exposition by
which to identify this accident, or series of accidents. It was quiet and not dramatic, and so there
was no way to trace how many people were affected by it. Nobody was doing anything evil to cause this
accident. The two men who started it
all were acting in ignorance with no intent to harm anyone. Yet they may have done harm to thousands of
people.
In this message we are looking at two other men who were
involved in an ancient accident that only temporarily left one of them dead,
but we can see that though the scale is smaller the same principles are at
work. A study of them will help us
better understand the causes and cures for suffering in the world. There is only one permanent cure for the
suffering of any person, and that is to get a body that is no longer subject to
pain and death. The only way to get
such a body is by faith in the risen Christ who died and rose again that all
who trust Him might have just such bodies that will live with Him forever. But until that day of total victory over all
suffering there are millions of pains we are to strive to prevent in time. The only way we can be effective in
preventing suffering is to keep learning more and more about the causes. That is what the study of all branches of
medicine is about. If you find the
cause for suffering, you have a good start toward conquering it or preventing
it.
Let's look at this accidental death of a New Testament
teenager and see what we can learn about the cause and cure of suffering. Keep in mind that this account is being written
by Dr. Luke who is an eye witness of the event. Dr. Luke is not being super spiritual here at all by writing such
things like: It must have been the will of God, or demons made it happen. He takes the very scientific approach that
says there were perfectly logical and natural causes for this accident. If it was planned by God or Satan it would
not have been an accident, but there is no hint that this event was intended by
anyone. All accidents have causes, however, and Dr. Luke gives us an excellent
diagnosis of the causes of this particular accident. We want to look at it through the doctor's eyes, and see his
account of the cause, and by inference, his prescription for the cure. First look at‑
I. THE DESCRIPTION OF THE
CAUSE.
Dr. Luke describes two basic causes for this accident
which fits the majority of accidents in life.
The two are circumstances and choices.
For example, look at the circumstances.
It was a pressure situation because of time. Verse 7 says that because Paul had to leave the next day he went
on talking till midnight. When you have
a lot to get done, and very little time to do it, you are in a high risk
environment. It is a perfect setting
for miscalculation and poor judgment. I
reflect on times I have cut myself, and most, if not all, were due to being in
a hurry. Speed kills and injures
millions.
In our case study here Paul was not doing anything too fast,
but because of the time factor he was trying to do too much in his limited
time. The result was that he did not
know he was literally boring part of his audience to death. It is a speaker's job to talk, and the
audience's job to listen, but sometimes the audience finishes their job before
the speaker. I do not know if any of us
have had to listen to a speaker until midnight, but most of us can sympathize
with Eutychus. I have had to endure the suffering inflicted by a speaker who
could not find the terminal. I have not
only struggled with sleepiness, but with whether or not I should just leave. Eutychus did both. He went to sleep, and he left by way of the window. The going to sleep was not serious, but the
unconscious exit from a third story window was a radical remedy to his
dilemma. But the point is, it never would
have happened had Paul ended his message at 11:30. Dr. Luke makes this clear in verse 9 where he says that Eutychus
sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. Dr. Luke is describing a scene of endurance. He implies that Paul was being excessive in
his speech. He hints that he too may
have been eager to hear Paul's amen.
Eutychus had gotten himself into a situation where he was a
captive of somebody else's agenda. But
let's notice that the circumstances alone did not cause this accidental
death. There were also choices that
were made by the people involved, and they were the primary causes of this
suffering. Paul made the choice to push
his audience to the limit of their endurance.
Eutychus made the choice of setting in an open window to listen. Here is the crucial choice, and the primary
cause of the accident.
Others may have been sleeping too, but they were safely
snoozing away on the floor or some piece of furniture. A little girl once told the preacher that
she went to sleep during his sermon and had the most wonderful dream. She meant it as a complement. Sleeping in church is not always
dangerous. Ben Kenchlow of the 700 club
tells of his church sleeping in his book Plain Bread. He went to a Catholic school as a boy, and every morning at
chapel he noticed one of the sisters kneeling with her elbow on the pew in
front, and her head down in her arms.
He decided to copy her.
He writes, "I soon realized her very worshipful posture
was conducive to dozing, and one morning shortly after that I heard sister
snoring softly. She wasn't praying, she
was sleeping! I had fought like crazy
against dropping off to sleep in those early, dark mornings. I had assumed God was watching, and He'd see me there sleeping, and hit me with one
of those bolts of lightning people talked about. But then I said, "If she can sleep though mass....I can,
too." From then on, I slept
through most of the masses I attended the rest of my 4 years at St. Peter
Claver's Academy.
A pastor was once showing a teenager the brass scroll on the
back of the church with names inscribed.
The pastor said, "This is the list of our church members who have
died in the service." The teen
responded, "Was it the morning or the evening service?" Not too many people die by falling asleep in
church, but there is a history of this kind of experience, and so Eutychus will
have a lot of people to talk to in heaven about their church naps.
Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography tells of his first
visit to Philadelphia. He saw a group of
well dressed people, and he writes, "I joined them, and thereby was lead
into the great meeting house of the Quakers near the market. I sat down among them, and, after looking
round awhile and hearing nothing said, being very drowsy thro' labor and want
of rest the preceding night, I fell fast asleep, and continu'd so till the
meeting broke up, when one was kind enough to rouse me. This was, therefore, the first house I was
in, or slept in, in Philadelphia."
One of the greatest missionaries of modern times was C. T.
Studd. His fiancée became quite ill in
China, and he had to nurse her back to health.
When the day of their wedding came he was so tired from the strain of
caring for her that he fell asleep during his own wedding address. It was before the day of tape recording too,
and so he never did hear what the pastor had to say, but he woke up and had a
great marriage.
The Puritans were prepared for people going to sleep in
church. They had an office just for
this very common event. Their sermons
lasted for 3 hours, and so I suspect that even the most devout would at
sometime feel the temptation to drift off to dreamland. No such trip was permitted, however, for the
tithingman had a staff with a sharp thorn on the end. It was his job to jab those who gave evidence of being present in
body, but not in spirit. Obediah Turner
gives us this eye witness account from the first Sunday in June of 1646.
"As he strutted about
the meeting house, he did spy Mr. Tomlins
sleeping with much comfort,
his head kept steady by being in
the corner, and his hand
grasping the rail. And so spying, Allen
(the tithingman) did quickly
thrust his staff behind Dame Ballard
and give him a grievous
prick upon the hand. Whereupon Mr.
Tomlins did spring up much
above the floor, and with terrible
force did strike his hand
against the wall, and also, to the great
wonder of all, did profanely
exclaim, "Curse ye, woodchuck!"
He dreaming, so it seemed,
that a woodchuck had seized and
bit his hand. But on coming to know where he was, and great
scandal he had committed, he seemed much but did not speak. And I think he will not soon again go sleep
in meeting."
Even the great D. L. Moody had a problem on one occasion. He was in Dr. Edward Kirk's famous Mount
Vernon Church. He was one of the most
eloquent men Moody had ever heard, but on this occasion as the sermon got long
Moody fell fast asleep.
The point is, there are millions of people who have slept
through messages that did not get injured.
Eutychus could have been among these snoozers had he not chosen the
place where he sat. His choice to sit
near the window is in harmony with his sex and his age. He was a young man, and young men suffer in
ways that other people seldom do because of their risky choices. The reason insurance is so high for young
males is because they are more likely to take chances. Young men are not conservative, and this
leads to a higher rate of accidents.
Winston Churchill was playing in the tree with his brother
when he was a young boy. He decided to
swing from branch to branch like a monkey.
He lost his grip and fell 30 feet.
He was unconscious for 3 days, and bedridden for 3 months. It was a year before he was back to normal. This is a frequent type of accident for
young boys that seldom happens to girls, and very rarely to adults. Can anyone really believe that God has
something against young boys, and that He discriminates against them? The reason they have these kinds of
accidents is obvious. They are the ones
who make risky choices. If girls and
adults made these same risky choices, they to would have more accidents.
So in the setting of our text it is less likely for a girl or
an adult to be setting in a window during a church service. The teenage boy is most likely to make such
a choice, and the result is Eutychus was the one who fell out. Maybe he was the best teenager in the
church. Maybe he was the one with the
best testimony, but he made a risky choice and paid the price.
No where does God promise to protect us from the consequences
of our choices. In fact, He promises
just the opposite, and that we will reap what we sow. If we take chances, and do high risk things, we will likely
suffer for those choices. This does not
mean we should never take risks. Paul
suffered enormously by taking risks for Christ, and this is what suffering for
Christ is all about. We should risk
sticking our neck out to be identified with Him. But when it comes to suffering that is the result of unwise
choices, there is little to commend for such suffering. Even though there was a miracle to restore
Eutychus to life there is no big deal about its spiritual impact. People were comforted that he survived, but
there is no hint that he was made some kind of hero. This accident never should have happened, and there is no hint
that it did happen for any good reason that was a part of God's plan. It was preventable, and Dr. Luke records it
with this attitude in mind.
Notice how in verse 8 he describes another contributing factor
to the accident. There were many lamps in the upstairs room where they were
meeting. Why such a trivial detail? It is because Luke in his scientific
evaluation of the circumstances is looking for all the clues he can to explain
this unfortunate incident. He is saying that the room was too worm and stuffy
for the number of people. This would explain why Eutychus went to sit in the
window. He wanted some fresh air. The window was open and there could be no
better place to sit for some cooler air.
We need to see Dr. Luke describing the situation like a
detective reconstructing a crime scene. He is putting the clues together so
that we see there is little mystery surrounding this accident. The combination
of circumstances and choices make it a very understandable event. Dr. Luke does not hint that it is anything
other than a natural event. It is all
explained by the laws of nature. Men at
a late hour in a hot stuffy room with a long winded speaker will tend toward
sleep, and if they happen to be setting in an open window on the third story
the law of gravity will encourage a fall.
You can blame the devil if you wish, but Luke doesn't. There is no evil intent here on the part of
anyone involved. The choices being made
are unwise for the circumstances, but there is no sin. Dr. Luke gives us a totally scientific explanation
of this accident. Now let's look at the
implications for our second point.
II. THE PRESCRIPTION FOR A
CURE.
The point of this whole incident is not that we don't have to
worry about risky choices because you
can always count on a miracle to get you out of the mess. The fact is, most accidents are not undone
by a miracle. Carelessness cannot be
justified by the hope of a miracle. To
even hint at such a view of life is to encourage irresponsibility, and
guarantee increased accidents and unnecessary suffering.
The primary prescription for the prevention of accidents is
awareness of, and obedience to, the natural laws of life. This is equivalent to cooperation with God's
will as we understand it revealed by the laws of nature. For example, keep medicine out of reach of
children because they will eat anything.
If you go back over the events leading to the accident in our text, you
could easily prevent it by changing the circumstances and the choices. There was freedom to do all sorts of
things. Paul could have accepted the
limitations of time and stopped talking sooner. Eutychus could have asked his parents if he could slip out before
he fell out, or he could have sat down by the wall and safely fallen to
sleep. The entire accident could have
been prevented in a number of ways, and that is our first responsibility, for
we can prevent accidents by wise choices.
God gave Paul the power to fall on Eutychus and restore him to
life. This means the accident was not a
part of God's plan. Miracles are not
used to counteract the will of God, but to assert the will of God in the face
of negative consequences because of human sin and error. Hunger is not the will of God in the sense
that He enjoys people being hungry.
That is why Jesus fed the hungry crowds by a miracle. Disease and injuries are not the will of
God, that is why Jesus used miracles to heal the diseased, and restore the
injured to health. Death is not God's
will, for he is the author of life, and one day will destroy death completely,
and so Jesus used miracles to restore the dead to life. Accidents fall into the
same category with all of these other negative of life that will one day be
eliminated from the universe.
Accidents are primarily negative events in life. This is not to say that God cannot use
accidents for the good of those who suffer them, and for His own glory. There is no follow up on Eutychus to see if
he was a better Christian because of his fall and restoration to life, or if
anyone else benefited from the miracle.
Dr. Luke does not record any moral with the story, or pretend that it
was good that it happened. Even if he
had it would not relieve Eutychus of the responsibility of his choices.
Sometimes God does use accidents for good. Dr. Albert Schwietzer had a magazine from the
Paris Missionary Society put into his mailbox by accident. It was suppose to go to his neighbor, but he
looked at it and read an article about the need of the Congo Mission. He was so impressed that he went to the
Congo and gave the rest of his life to meet that need. It is was an accident, or mistake, or human
error, but it lead to that history making decision, and many people were
blessed because of it.
It would be folly, however, to conclude that every mistake
made by mailmen is the plan of God. It
would take a lot of people off the hook if this was so, but since very few of
these mistakes lead to any good, and mostly to some degree of pain, there is no
way to shift the blame for all the inconvenience to God. Even when God uses human error it does not
justify the error and make it good. God
could just as easily have lead Schwietzer to visit the neighbor and borrow the
magazine, or receive it in the mail as a gift from a friend. God is never locked into needing human
mistakes and accidents to do His will.
It is foolish to assume that He has no alternative if man does not
somehow blow it and make mistakes. God
does not have to count on human error just because He can use them for His
purpose. He is more likely to use man's
wisdom, knowledge, and cooperation with the laws of nature to accomplish His
will. There are five books of wisdom in
the Bible, but no books of human error.
That should be a clue as to what God's will is.
A mother who lost her teenage daughter in a car accident was
grateful that a couple of her friends responded to the Gospel at her funeral,
but she could not believe that this was the purpose of the accident. She said that many young people came to
Christ each year in her church, and nobody had to die to make it happen. She could not believe that God planned the
tragedy as a method of evangelism, for it is counterproductive. More youth die by accidents then are saved
because of them, and more people rebel against God because of accidents than
come to Him. It is not an efficient nor
effective means of evangelism, and on top of that it is totally
unnecessary. Jesus has already suffered
and died paid all the price necessary for anyone to be saved.
God will use tragedy for good, but to accuse God of planning
the tragedy and accidents is to deny His infinite efficiency in the cross. His Son died once for all that there might
be atonement for all sin. There is no
need for anyone else to die, or get injured, or suffer in any way for anyone
else to be saved. God in His
sovereignty does use accidents to change lives, but the accidents are not
necessary, for people can make the right and wise decisions of life without
accidents. Most people who come to Christ
do not do so because of the injury or death of someone else.
Accidents are caused by human error and ignorance, and they
are preventable. It is the sin of
presumption to be careless in the hope that God will rescue you, or use the
accident you may cause for good. Jesus
refused to jump off the temple, for that would be tempting God, and we all need
to refuse to take high risk choices with our own lives and health, as well as
that of others. Part of our commitment
as Christians is to live in harmony with the natural laws that God has built
into creation.
Clovis Chappel, the great Southern Methodist preacher, tells
of the mother in his church who gave her teenager a car, and he tore up the
road with it. One day he lost control, hit a telephone pole, and was thrown
through the windshield. Chappel was
called to the hospital, and the frantic mother grabbed him and asked, "Why
did God let it happen?" Chappel
said, "Hold on, don't blame God for this accident. If our Lord were to snatch a telephone pole
from in front of your son when he was driving recklessly, He might set one in
front of me when I was driving carefully.
In that case none of us could drive intelligently."
I am convinced that Chappel was right, and we are held
accountable for our unwise choices that will lead to suffering. Christians often do not like this side of
reality. It is so much easier to blame
God or the devil for life's pains.
Eutychus could blame Paul and the poor circumstances, but he has to bear
the heaviest burden of responsibility himself for his accident. We all need to recognize that our ignorance
can lead to bad choices and suffering, but the good news is, we can also by
wise choices prevent suffering.
Accidental suffering is preventable suffering because the
cause of it is almost always due to ignorance and folly, and both of these are
out of the perfect will of God. Nobody
plans an accident, but we can plan so as not to have them, or not to cause
them. This is a key to preventing much
suffering in the world. Because of the
reality of accidents, and human responsibility for them, the Christian is to
be committed to
prevention. God's people are to fight
all unnecessary and accidental suffering by means of prevention.
The practices of smoking, drinking, using drugs, and immoral
sex are fought by Christians because they hate to see other people suffer when
it is not necessary. When people make
foolish choices that do not have to be made, they add so much preventable
suffering to the world. We are
constantly teaching our children as to what to avoid in order to prevent them
suffering harm. We do it because we
know if they make the right choices they will escape much suffering in their
lives. We practice in practical ways
the belief that accidents are not the will of God, but are caused by human
ignorance and foolish choices. Jesus
said we are to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, and when we are, we
are forces in the world that eliminate much accidental suffering.
8. THE
SEVEN CAUSES OF SUFFERING Based on Luke 13:1-17
Someone has said that half truths are whole lies. One of the
greatest causes for conflicts and misunderstanding among Christians through the
ages has been over enthusiasm for a half truth. People will take an idea that
has a portion of the truth and wrap it up in a box and say it is The Truth. For
example, there are those who say suffering is an illusion, and not a part of
reality. This is the view of the Christian Science people. The fact is, in many
cases they are correct. It is a proven fact that the mind can cause all kinds
of suffering by worry or fear which has no basis in reality. Some people are
habitual worriers, and if they cannot find anything in the past or present to
worry about, they can always find something in the future. The result is
ulcers, indigestion, and a number of other nervous disorders. We must admit
there is some truth in the idea, for much suffering is an illusion. But to make
this the whole truth is to make it a lie, for there is so much suffering that
is no illusion. Who would call the sufferings of Christ on the cross, an
illusion. And who would call the sufferings of war and cancer illusions?
Another popular idea among Christians is that God's will is
behind most or all of the suffering of the world. He is the one who ordains all
accidents and deaths. When a persons time has come God causes some accident or
sickness to take them out of the world.
It is a theory that grows out of the mystery of why some die and others
do not. A woman's parachute does not open and yet she survives the fall. Others
are in terrible crashes and live, while others in minor crashes are killed. One
man goes through the battle field with bullets flying everywhere, and yet he
lives. Another does not leave the safety of the camp, but is killed by one
sniper bullet. To account for these mysteries man has come up with a simple
theory that when your number is up you will die no matter what you are doing,
and if it is not up, you will live no matter how dangerous a situation you are
in.
This theory is based on a false assuption, and a logical
conclusion that is impossible to accept. The false assuption is that death is the
servant of God performing His will. Scripture represents death as God's enemy,
and the final enemy to be destroyed, and not the servant of God. God declares
that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He is not willing that any
should perish. There are judgments where God does take the lives of men, but
most death is not His judgment.
If we think God appoints all death, then we make all the
tragedies of life the will of God. Why blame Hitler for killing millions of
Jews if God ordained they had to die then. If Hitler had not killed them in
large groups, they would have to have died in millions of separate accidents,
and so he just made the judgment of God more effecient. This is the ghastly
conclusion this theory comes to, and it is totally unacceptable in Christian
thinking, for it makes God the author of all evil. This theory eliminates the
work of Satan in the world by making God the author of all his evil deeds.
We need to look at suffering from the point of view of the
great Christian thinkers of the centuries, and not lock ourselves into any one
simple theory that ends up making God the culprit. That God is the cause of
some suffering is true, but when we see the whole picture we discover that to
be just a small part of the issue. We want to look at the full picture which
deals with what Christians have come to see as the seven basic causes for all
human suffering. The combination of these seven will account for most, if not
all, the suffering we can imagine. The whole picture will prevent us from
putting the blame on God, and help us see our own role in the issue of
suffering. Here then are the seven.
1. THE WILL OF GOD.
This is simple, but hardly a satisfying or biblical
answer. People who believe God is the
cause of all suffering end up angry at God for things He hates even more than
they do. Jesus spent a major portion of
His ministry fighting suffering.
He had compassion on people
who suffered, and He healed them, because He saw much suffering as the work of
Satan, and He came to destroy the works of the devil. We read in Luke 13:16 where Jesus said, "Then should not
this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen long
years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?"
When people have the attitude that suffering is the will of
God, they lose the motivation to fight it and overcome it like Jesus did. In India, for example, they would throw
garbage down on the lower caste because they believed all suffering was the
will of God, and you would not suffer unless God willed it. Christianity changed this, and many other
foolish practices that brought suffering that could be avoided. They simply recognized that God was not the
author of human foolishness.
Unfortunately, even Christians have been guilty of believing that
suffering is God's will.
In the 19th century, the greatest physican of the day was Sir
James Simpson. He was made senior
president of the Royal Medical Society at age 24. He was driven by Christian compassion to relieve suffering in
operations. He had doctors come to his
home on Monday evenings, and they would burn chemicals, and breathe in the
fumes. One day the burned a crystal of
chlorophorm. One by one they sank under
the table. When they awoke they
realized they had found what they were looking for. They had found a way to put people to sleep during surgery.
But he was attacked by God
fearing people who accused him of interfering with God's will. They said, if God wanted men to sleep during
surgery He would have given them a switch.
Simpson went to prayer.
He asked God to give him a clear revelation from His Word that what he
was doing was right. He started to read
the Bible, and very soon came upon the verse that says, "And the Lord God
caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam."
With this verse he refuted his critics, for in the first operation in
history, God put Adam to sleep. God did
not want Adam to feel pain when He removed the rib. He made man with the capacity to suffer, but He did not will that
he suffer unnecessarily. Pain is
inherent in the human body. It is part
of being a creature with a nervous system.
Adam was without sin, but he still would have felt great pain had God
not put him to sleep. The possibility
of pain is built into us by God, but the nervous system is also the source of
all our pleasure. Pain has a positive
side, which we will not explore now, but simply say, that the lack of pain
destroys the warning system God built into us.
Leprosy is a curse because it destroys the whole pain system.
The point I am making is that relief from suffering was God's
first concern, and this was the concern of Christ in His earthly ministry. Where the spirit of Christ is there will be
compassion to fight the evil of suffering.
History reveals that where the Gospel goes there soon will be hospitals,
doctors, nurses, and all forms of research to discover ways to prevent and to
cure suffering. Most suffering is not
the will of God. When it is His will,
it is for two things: Discipline and
judgment.
These are only His will in a
secondary sense. His first will is that
there be no discipline because there is obedience, and it is not needed. His first will is also that there be no
judgment, because there is no rebellion that needs to be judged. So suffering is never the primary will of
God.
2. PUNISHMENT FOR SIN.
This is in close connection with the first one, but it is
distinct. Here again, there is a
truth. Suffering does result from sin,
and it is the will of God that sin result in suffering, but not in the sense
that God gives cancer to people who sin.
All sin will result in some suffering, but not all suffering is the
result of sin. The suffering from sin
may not physical at all. Wicked people
may live to ninety and not suffer a tooth ache, but their soul suffers hardness
and blindness, and they are without God and without hope, and they are storing
up wrath for the day of judgment. God
does not make this life the time of His major judgment. This life is a time of probation, and a very
evil person may not experience as much suffering as a righteous man.
When Christians sin, God may cause some form of suffering as a
way of discipline. As a father I cause
pain in my children's bodies in order to teach them, but I never cut off an
arm, or gave them poison that would destroy vital organs. God's discipline is also to help get people
back on the right path. It is never
designed to do permanent damage. Here
in our text in verses 2-4, Jesus used contemporary events to teach that tragedy
and suffering are not God's punishment for particular sins. If He were speaking today, He might say, do
you suppose that young girl who died in a plane crash trying to travel around
the world was mor wicked than others?
Jesus referred to people who died tragically as not being worse sinners
than those who did not so die. The
Pharisees had the false idea that people who died in violence must have been
wicked. The friends of Job had the same
philosophy which said, "you suffer because you sin. We are not suffering, because we are
righteous."
There is a danger of Christians doing the same thing. Our wicked neighbor may be cutting his grass
on Sunday and get his foot cut off. We
say that is the judgment of God, but when we cut off our foot on Monday, we
call it an accident.
The facts of life and the
teaching of Scripture do not support the theory that suffering is always connected
with sin. In fact, Jesus says a great
deal of suffering is the result of not sinning. He said, "If you were like the world they would not hate
you, but because you are not of the world you will be hated and
persecuted."
The amount of suffering Christians have endured because they
have refused to sin is emornous. But
Jesus said, "Blessed are those who suffer for righteousness
sake." Suffering is often due as
much because of salvation, as because of sin.
The point is, you dare not link suffering to sin, for it is a theory
that will not hold water, except in clear cases, such as the bank robber who
gets shot while robbing the bank. Most
suffering, however, does not have a clear connection with any particular
sin. So if God is opposed to needless
suffering, and most suffering is not directly connected with known sin, where
do we look for the answer to so much suffering? The next most common answer is-
3. THE DEVIL.
It is obvious that the universe contains an evil force that
opposes all that is good, and poisons all that is pure. The Persians came to this conclusion on the
basis of natural revelation. They saw a
negative for every positive, and for every good there was an evil. The battle of light and darkness convinced
them that the cause of all evil was the Evil One. We call him Satan or the devil.
We see this battle everywhere.
For the criminal element there is the police force; for fires there is
the fire department; for disease there is the medical profession; for germs
there are the white corpuscles, and for a lost world there is a Redeemer. Written into every structure of reality is
this battle of good and evil. Paul
speaks of principalities and powers with whom we struggle. In this larger cosmic struggle we find the
greatest clue to the mystery of suffering, but it also is not the whole answer.
Satan is the cause of much suffering, but he is not
responsible for a good deal of it. If I
eat soup that is very hot, and I burn my tongue, this is not God's will, nor is
it punishment for sin, and neither can I blame the devil. Jesus in the parable of the sower (Matt.
13:1-9, 18-23) said that Satan is only responsible for some of the seed that
does not grow and produce fruit. To
blame the devil for everything that causes suffering does not fit Scripture or
reality. I can drive 90 miles an hour
trying to get to church on time. It is
not God's will that I crash, and the devil can't make me do it, for if he
could, he would have done it long ago.
This was a choice I made, and so there are other causes for suffering,
and you cannot say the devil made me do it.
We want to look now at the four other causes which added to these three
account for all the suffering we can imagine.
4. NATURAL LAW.
Cold freezes, fire burns, and matter falls with impartial
mathematical precision. If you hold a
match to your finger it will burn and cause much suffering. God does not want you to hold a match to
your finger; Satan cannot make you do it, and so if you do it, they are not to
blame, but you are for trying to defy a natural law.
Gravity is a law necessary for the existence of our
universe. God is the Creator of that
law, yet it is gravity that brings planes to the ground so fast and hard that it
kills. It is gravity that causes a
child to fall down the stairs and be injured.
Possible even for life. Without
this law you would eliminate this suffering, but at the cost of eliminating
life all together. All would be chaos
without this law.
The uniformity of
nature is one of our greatest blessings.
It gives a world we can count on.
All of science is based on it.
What kind of a world would it be if one day when you stepped out of the
house you began to float up into the clouds?
What if when chemicals are mixed one day and you get sugar, and the next
day the same chemicals make dynamite?
Life would be a nightmare. We
count on the laws of nature not to change.
When you try to break a natural law, it breaks you. We see then that the very thing that is good
and necessary for our life and pleasure is also the source of much of our
suffering. We have to accept the
liabilities along with the assets. This
kind of world makes pain not only possible but inevitable. Thank God for minds that are able to
understand these laws, and prevent much suffering. But our cooperation is not always perfect, and so every time we
allow a child to ride a bike we are taking a chance on causing suffering due to
a fall caused by gravity.
Almost everything we do
carries the risk of being hurt by not obeying some natural law. Again, God does not want us to break these
laws; Satan cannot make us, and so this leads us to the fifth reason for
suffering.
5. FREE WILL.
You can blame God, as many do, for making us persons instead
of puppets; men instead of machines.
God made man a causal agent and not merely a pawn. We can make free will choices, and the
result is, we can choose ways of acting
that make suffering inevitable.
I can choose to ignore a detour sign and get stuck, and have to get out
and push the car. I may fall and break
a rib in doing so, and then cry out to God, "Why did you let this happen
to me?" In other words, why didn't
you make me with wheels and a track so I could only go where I should go? We blame God because we use poorly this
great gift of free will.
God says, do not steal, and so we know what His will is, but
people can still choose to steal, and they do.
Everyonce in a while I hear someone bring up the idea of God's
permissive will. This is a greatly
misunderstood concept. People come to
think that if God permits something, that means He must will it. Not so!
God permits everything that
He forbids. All of the Ten
Commandments, and every other thing God forbids, are laws that are broken every
day many times over. God does not will
what He forbids, He hates what He permits.
To say, because God permits something that it is His will is a great
perversion. He permits murder every day, but He hates it and forbids it upon
great judgment. God permits evil
because He respects man's free will. He permits them to use it to make very bad
choices, but it is folly to blame God for these bad choices which He forbids.
The Sun has no interest in blinding anyone, or in giving them
sunburn or strokes, but these things happen all the time because people make
unwise choices. I once spent a whole afternoon in the hot sun spearing carp in
a lake with some other teenage friends.
I was having great fun, and did not realize I was getting too much
exposer to the sun. I ended up sick in
bed with severe burns because of it. It
was not God's will, nor could Satan make me do it, and it was not due to any
sin. I was just making a foolish
choice. Much of the suffering of life
is due to such choices. Someone told me
of a pastor who was blind because as a kid he bet his brother he could look at
the sun longer than his brother could.
He won his bet, but lost his sight.
This leads us to look at the next reason for suffering.
6. HUMAN IGNORANCE.
This is a combination of two others. It is the use of your free will in relation to the laws that
govern the universe. Jesus told of the
foolish man who built his house on the sand where it floods every year. His house fell flat when the rains came
down. The wise man, on the other hand,
built his house on the rock, and he avoided the foolish loss of the other. Jesus was saying, a lot of suffering in this
world is caused by human ignorance. The
foolish man was not necessarily wicked at all.
He was just not very well informed about an intelligent place to build a
house. His ignorance cost him
plenty. No doubt Satan was glad for
this ignorance, but you cannot blame the devil for it. God does not want us ignorant, and so it is
never His will that we do stupid things, but we are free to do them, and pay
the penalty when we do not know what we are doing.
The world is full of deformed babies caused by people taking drugs,
and it is tragic suffering caused by human ignorance. The plagues that killed masses of people were caused by garbage
and sewage carelessly thrown in the streets.
History is full of suffering people have brought on themselves by their
ignorance. Some have argued that this
was the will of God, but others suspected it was due to the ignorance of men,
and they decided to abolish the filth.
The church took the lead in helping
people become educated, and avoid suffering caused by ignorance. Everytime you tell a child to wash his
hands, or cover his mouth when coughing, you are cooperating with God in the
fight to eliminate suffering caused by human ignorance. Before it was understood that germs cause
disease, doctors were spreading disease from one patient to another by not
washing their hands. Ignorance killed
many, but when knowledge replaced that ignorance many were spared.
7. THE TOGETHERNESS AND INTERDEPENDENCE OF MAN.
All sports accidents are due to the fact that we play sports
with other people, and we can run into them and get hurt. But the risk is taken because there is so
much pleasure to be gained. We know
that suffering is always a possibility, but we risk it for the blessings. We have to use the same highway with drunk
and reckless drivers, and this leads to the possibility of innocent
suffering. All of the communicable
diseases are also due to our association with other people. We are social beings, and this means the
suffering of some can lead to the suffering of others. But the blessings make it worth it, for all
of our food, clothes, books, medicine, and a host of other good things come
from our togetherness and interdependence.
Weatherhead said, "If some people were not farmers all of the time,
all of us would have to be farmers some of the time." We need other people.
One man can get angry at his boss, and do a sloppy job of
tuning up a plane. This can lead to the
plane crashing and killing dozens of people, all of whom have dozens of relatives
who will suffer. Hundreds of schedules
will need changing, and appointments canceled, and anxieties created. There will be funeral arrangements, and long
range fighting over wills. A fireman
called to the crash sight gets injured, and ends up in the hospital. His daughter counted on him being home for
her birthday party. Her heart is
broken, and in anger she hits her little brother. He goes off crying, and kicks the cat. And so you see a chain reaction of suffering from that one man
that cannot be calculated, and it may run its course to the end of time.
The only way to avoid this kind of suffering is to live a
totally isolated life. You would have
to keep your children at home, and not let them play with anyone, or do anything
with risk. You may avoid suffering of
one kind by so doing, but then you will have to endure the suffering of
loneliness, which can even be worse.
CONCLUSION.
What is the value of seeing the seven causes of all
suffering? The value is, we do not then
have a limited view that leads to folly.
It is folly to blame God, as many do, for suffering that is not His
will, and which He hates and wants His people to fight. It is folly to blame Satan for that which is
a matter of human choice, and let men be excused for their folly. It is folly to blame sin for everything, for
this is a slam to those innocent suffers who may be suffering because they did
not sin. The point is, a limited view
of suffering will make you a part of the problem rather than a part of the answer. People suffer a lot because of stupid views
of suffering, which lead them to hurt other people with their false
concepts. This is what the friends of
Job did, and they added greatly to his suffering.
There is popular view among some Christians that we are to
praise God for everything. I've read
several books that sound very persuasive, but the problem is, they go beyond
Scripture and ignore the teaching of the Bible that does not fit.
This is the problem of all
good ideas that pretend to be the only idea acceptable. A partial truth made
into a total truth is blown out of proportion and becomes a falsehood.
The Bible does teach that we are to rejoice evermore, and in
everything give thanks. The positive
spirit is there, but this is often twisted to mean that everything is God's
will, and everything is good. This is
folly. Jesus did not practice any such
thing Himself. On the cross He cried
out, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me." Should we condemn Jesus for not praising God
and giving thanks? No! We should use our heads and common sense,
and recognize the reality of evil. To
legalistically tell people that they must praise God for everything leads to a
state of confusion where they can no longer make a distinction between good and
evil.
Evil is real, and God hates it, and we are never to praise God
for evil as if He did not hate it. In
evil situations we are still to praise God, but we are not to praise Him for
evil. Paul never praised God for the sin
and folly of the Christians to whom he wrote his Epistles. He rebuked them, and he urged them to change
their behavior, and he never once said to them to praise God for their bad
behavior. He did not write to the
Corinthians and say, "I praise God for your immature fighting which is
causing divisions in the church."
People who get so wrapped up in this idea of praising God for everything
become worse than silly. They become
immoral. I read of one pastor who
counseled a man whose wife was being unfaithful, and he told him he had to
learn to praise God that she was sleeping with another man. Others are told to praise God for one
tragedy after another. Some good
results can come because of a positive spirit, but in the end it leads to
confusion by blurring the distinction between good and evil.
The person who praises God for everything has to believe that
God is the author of everything, and so there is really no such thing as
evil. It may not seem like it, but if
you are praising God for it, it must be good.
So this whole practice leads to the elimination of evil, and so, to
superficial theology. This can be
avoided by a common sense theology of listening to the plain teachings of the
Bible that make it clear, much in this life is not the will of God. The world is full of things that God wants
us to prevent, and not praise Him for.
This whole idea leads people to the conception that all suffering is the
will of God. This has done more harm
than any other idea I am aware of.
When you look at the seven causes of suffering you discover
that none of them are good. There is no good suffering in itself. It can lead
to good if responded to properly, but that same good would be better reached
without suffering. All the good that comes out of the suffering that God wills
in discipline and judgment is better arrived at without suffering. A child who
rebels and gets a good spanking may be a better child for it, but it would be
an even better child if it never rebelled and avoided the spanking. Every other
form of suffering is also bad in itself, for none of it will be in heaven where
God's will is complete, and no suffering of any kind is any longer permitted.
If it had any inherent value it would continue, but it is totally eliminated.
All suffering is ultimately evil, and can have to part in the final kingdom of
the redeemed.
Over the years I have met so many people who are angry at God
because they blame Him for the things they have suffered. My first day in the ministry I made two
calls where people had suffered tragedy, and in both cases they blamed God.
That motivated me to do the
research that lead me to discover these seven causes of suffering. We are part of the answer when we see that
much suffering is preventable with education and cooperation with God. If we are suffering, our interest should not
be in the issue of who to blame, but in the issue of finding ways to prevent
and eliminate such suffering. Jesus
came into the world to fight and overcome the forces of evil, and this is the
calling of all who love and trust Him as their Savior. We are to overcome evil with good, and be
ever seeking ways to add to the world's pleasure rather than its pain. May God help us to be suffering fighters.
9. DEATH AND THE WILL OF GOD ACTS 7:51‑60
The Cruel Sea is the title of a World War II story about a
German U‑Boat loose in an American convoy. It had already sunk several ships, but a destroyer escort had
finally picked it up on the sonar. As
the destroyer prepared to launch its depth bombs, the captain saw that the U‑Boat
was taking a course where dozens of American men were in the water as survivors
of one of the sunken ships. It was a
clever maneuver and the captain of the destroyer had to make an agonizing
decision. Should he plow ahead and kill his own men and get that U‑Boat,
or should he veer off, saving the men in the water, but loose the U‑Boat
which would be free to sink other ships.
He decides to go ahead, killing the men in the water, but destroying the
U‑Boat. He choose what he thought
was the lesser of two evils. It was not
good those men had to be sacrificed, but he felt it was better that they die
than have the U‑Boat free to kill others.
This story represents the actual decisions that men must often
make that determines the life and death of other people. There is a popular theory that says God in
His sovereign will determines the precise time of every man's death. If this is true, it takes a great burden off
men, for it relieves them of the responsibility of their decisions. This theory is also a great comfort to those
who loose loved ones in tragic ways, for it gives some meaning to what
otherwise seems so meaningless. If God
willed their death, then even as tragic as it is, the will of God is being
fulfilled. The important question, however, is not, is it a
comforting concept. The doctrine of reincarnation
is a comfort to millions. Is that the
basis on which we are to determine truth?
Is anything true because it is a great comfort? Almost all illusions are comforting, and
people follow false prophets because they offer what is comfortable. No, the
question is not, is the concept comforting, but for the Christian, the question
must always be, is it true. Or put
another way, is it Biblical.
To answer this question, I want to look at Dr. Luke's account
of the death of Stephen‑the first Christian martyr. It is of interest to note that this first
Christian to die in the New Testament died as did the first man to ever die,
namely Able. Able and Stephen were both
Godly men, and both died by violence at the hands of angry men who were jealous
of them. Murder and mob violence were
the means by which their lives were ended.
One's immediate impression is that murder and mob violence do
not sound much like the will of God.
In fact, they sound very definitely like things out of His will. As we
look at the details of Stephen's death, it is confirmed that the entire
proceeding was contrary to the revealed will of God. In chapter 6 verse 11, we are told that the Jewish leaders
secretly instigated men to lie and bare false witness against Stephen by
charging him with blasphemy. In verse
13 it says again that they found other false witnesses to lie before the
council. It is clear that men are
making decisions to eliminate a life they do not want in total disregard for
the laws of God.
In his defense speech, Stephen is brutally frank in his
denunciation of their injustice. He charges
them with the same crimes as their fathers who murdered the prophets, and they
now have murdered the Prophet of all prophets‑the Messiah. You would have a hard time convincing
Stephen that the Lord called his prophets home. The Jewish leaders would like that theory, for it would take them
off the hook. But Stephen tells it like
it is, and says, not that the Lord called them home, but that hardened and
blind leaders thrust them out of this world by violent murder, contrary to the
will of God.
In other words, the prophets did not die because God had
appointed a certain time for them to die, or because they have fulfilled their
purpose in life. They died because evil
men made decisions to take their lives, just as Cain decided to kill Able. It
may not be a pleasant thought that evil can be so powerful, but Jesus did not
say that pleasantness shall set us free, but that the truth shall set us
free. It is always better to know the
truth about death than to cover it over with pleasant illusions. I am convinced that the idea that you can
only die when it is your appointed time is just such an illusion.
Jesus taught the very same thing that Stephen said in his
defense. He taught that Godly men die
because of the wicked decisions of others to resist the will of God. Jesus told the parable of the man who rented
out his vineyard and went to a far country when the harvest came he sent his
servants to collect the rent. The
wicked tenants beat them, stoned them, and killed them. Other servants were sent, and they were
treated just the same. He finally sent
his son, for he thought they would respect him, but they even killed the son. So evil and unjust were these men that the
owner had no choice but to come and put these wretches to a miserable death,
and rent his vineyard to those who would be honest. When the chief priests and Pharisees heard this parable they knew
Jesus was speaking about them, and they hated Him, just as Stephen was hated
for saying the same thing to the Jews in his day.
The point is, we are kidding ourselves if we think God in any
way approved of the death of His servants.
He held men accountable for their decisions to kill them, and the idea
that the Lord called them home because He had appointed the day of their death
is repulsive, for if true, it would make God the author of the very evil He
condemns. If God wanted His prophets
killed, and willed that they die when they did, then the Jewish leaders were not
disobedient at all, but fulfilled the will of God. The theory that God's people only die in His will is great cover‑up
for the wickedness of men.
I can just imagine the leaders of Israel telling the gullible
people that the Lord must have needed the prophets for greater work elsewhere
when they were found dead. It may have
been a great comfort to the people, but it was a cover‑up of murder. I can just hear Cain using this theory as he
came home and Adam would ask, "Where is your brother?" Cain could say, "I last saw him lying
in the field very still. I think the
Lord has called him home. Apparently
his number was up, and he had fulfilled his purpose in life." Now, if you agree that would be a cover‑up
of his own wicked deed, why is it any more justified to speak that way today
concerning the tragic deaths of God's people?
If a missionary is murdered on the field, by what authority do
we dare declare that the Lord called them home, or assume that their work was
complete? In my mind, a modern murder
is no different than the ancient murder of the prophets‑It is an act of
evil contrary to the will of God, and not an act that fulfills His will. If evil is real, and death is an enemy, then
we have to face the facts, and stop the cover‑up. Christians can die in many ways that are
not God's will. They not only can be
murdered like Stephen, but they can be killed by less personal means such as
cars, airplanes, or cancer.
Is cancer more friendly than Cain? The only difference I can see between cancer and Cain is that one
kills by an act of the will, and the other by impersonal laws of nature. Both are killers, however, and when they
strike there is no more reason to think that cancer does the will of God then
Cain. You might just as well say the
Lord called Able home as to say this of a cancer victim. Nature has fallen just as man has, and there
is much in nature, just as in human nature, that is defective, and which does
not function as a part of God's perfect harmony.
All of the true comfort is
unchanged by facing the reality of evil in both nature and human
nature. The Lord did not call Stephen
home, but that is where the Lord took him.
He did not die because God appointed that day, but that day he was with
Christ in paradise. The truth does not
alter our hope and victory at all‑It
just gives us a more realistic view of evil and death. The believer goes home to be with Christ
regardless of how he dies, but to say all death of the believer is the Lord's
calling is to make a confused mess out of what otherwise is easy to grasp by
common sense.
Common sense tells us death is an enemy, and that is why we
rejoice when we or a loved one is spared.
That is why we spend a fortune to fight all the diseases that kill. That is why we spend a fortune to provide
safety equipment to prevent accidents that kill. All of life is based on the basic idea that death is a foe to be
fought, and escaped as often and as long as possible. The Bible supports this common sense view of death. It nowhere encourages Christians to court
death as if it was a friend. If the
theory is correct that God appoints the day of death, and all His children die
in His will, then death must be seen as a friend, and always the best thing for
us, for it always does the will of God just when He wants it to. Death, according to this theory, is the
perfect servant of God. And if this is
the case, one can only wonder why God treats it so unjustly, for when history
is over God casts death and hell into the lake of fire, and makes sure it has
no place in His eternal kingdom. A very
strange judgment indeed, for such a loyal servant. One can only conclude that death is not a loyal servant, but a
rebel power that deserves destruction and damnation because it has done so much
evil in the course of history. This is
the logical and the Biblical view.
Some may look at this account of Stephen and say, God
certainly wanted him to deliver this scathing speech that lead to his death,
and, therefore, he died in the will of God.
It is true that God willed for him to tell the truth even if it cost him
his life, but it was not God's will that the Jews respond as they did. He wanted them to repent, but they chose an
evil response, and if you say God willed their evil response that led to
murder, you have destroyed the distinction between light and darkness. John says that God is light and in Him is no
darkness at all. If God willed both
Stephen's speech and the hated response, then God is on both sides of the
battle, and Jesus said a house divided cannot stand. The whole theory that God wills all death is a contradiction to
the Biblical revelation of the battle of light and darkness. Stephen, as he was dying, kept this
distinction clear. He saw his death,
not as the will of God, but as the result of the sinful wills of men.
In verse 60, he prays that God will not hold this sin against
them. Stephen identifies the cause of
his death as sin. If God willed it,
then God willed sin, and you have eliminated all meaning to the Biblical
revelation. The theory that God wills
all death is not only not true, it is a dangerous error, for it actually links
God to evil, and makes Him the responsible agent behind the greatest tragedies
of history. If the murder of Stephen
was a sin, and it was, there is no way you can justify saying the Lord called
him home. He saw Jesus and did go home,
but not because his time was up, and not because God willed it, but because
evil men chose to disobey the will of God.
If the first Christian died out of God's will, it is likely many others
all through history would do so also.
This means evil is real and has real power, and the battle of good and
evil is not fake, but very real.
Now this is the common sense view of Scripture and the facts
of life. Many Christians who are
unwilling to face up to the reality of evil and its power go on assuming that
all death is the will of God. By so
doing, they make God the author of all the tragic things that happen to
Christians. They assume that everything
has a purpose, and this includes murder, rape, stealing, and every other form
of evil. It is so hard to get people to
see that facts do not cease to exist simply because they are ignored.
We stayed in a motel one time that was on road under
construction. Just beyond the motel it
was totally blocked so that a tank could not get through. Three or four blocks down the other way
there were signs on both sides of the road saying the road was closed. In the space of two minutes we saw four cars
drive past those signs and go until it was obvious that the road was
closed. When we went out for supper we
met another car which had passed the four conspicuous signs. He rolled down his window and asked us if he
could get though ahead. I told him you
just as well turn around here for you can't get through. In the few minutes that we were in that area
we saw five people who were hoping to change the facts by ignoring them. I would assume that dozens of people every
day keep driving past those signs until they confront the facts, and have to
back up.
This is what we see in the realm of theology on this issue of
death. You can ignore the signs and
evidence of Scripture, and chose to hold to your own theory, but the facts will
not change however they are ignored.
Let me share some of the facts that nothing can alter.
In Hebrews 2:14, Jesus is said to have taken on human nature
so He could die. It says, "That
through death He might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the
devil." The fact is, death is not
a tool of the kingdom of light, but is a weapon of the kingdom of darkness. That is why resurrection is the great weapon
of the kingdom of light. Resurrection
overcomes death. Every time Jesus
raised someone from the dead He did not reverse the will of God, but, rather,
the will of Satan. Death is the devil's
doing, and Jesus demonstrated that He was superior to the devil by conquering
death.
If death was God's appointment, and people died because God
had set the time, then resurrection was
a reversal of His will. Jesus would not
than be destroying the works of the devil by resurrection, but he would be
destroying the works of His heavenly Father.
The theory that God appoints all death reverses the major facts of Scripture, and reduces the great power of
the resurrection to an in‑house conflict between the Father and the
Son. This is in total conflict with the
Biblical picture of the victory of the Prince of Light over the black tyrant of
darkness‑the devil.
Death is an enemy that we are fighting, and our only hope of
victory is in Jesus Christ, who has conquered this foe. If it is a fiend to be defeated, how can we
call it a friend by saying it is a faithful servant of God doing His perfect
will by taking His people home to heaven at His appointed time? As much as I love paradox, and see it often
in the word of God, I cannot believe that death, which is the last and ultimate
enemy of man, so directly connected with sin and Satan, is also the faithful
servant of God doing His perfect will.
This is not a paradox, but a clear contradiction. It contradicts the very instincts God has
built into us.
We are made to fear death and do all we can to avoid it and
prevent it. This instinct of self‑preservation
would be a defect in us if death was God's servant doing His will. If that was the case, we should desire
nothing more than to embrace death. The fact of our natural repulsion from
death, and the facts of Scripture that shows resurrection to be a victory over
death will not change no matter how often you pretend death is good by saying
the Lord called someone home.
Peter Kreeft, in his book, Love Is Stronger Than Death,
writes, "When the Christian church collaborates with a pagan culture by
covering up death, it seals its own death warrant. For the whole reason for the church's existence, its whole
message, is a good news or gospel about a God who became man in order to solve
the problem of death and the problem of sin, which is its root...... The resurrection is the heart of every
sermon preached in the New Testament.
For the church to cover up death is for it to cover up the question whose
answer is its own meaning. Nothing is
more meaningless than an answer without a question. The good news of Christianity claims to answer the bad news of
death..... The Sermon On The Mount does
not answer the problem of death. The
resurrection does. But the answer
presupposes the problem, presupposes facing death as a an enemy."
What He is saying is that if you say death is not an enemy
then you have eliminated the need for the good news of the resurrection, for
death itself becomes the good news.
Death is good if it fulfills God's will, and takes us home to
heaven. Death replaces the
resurrection, and ceases to be an enemy.
Such thinking may sound very pious, but it undermines the gospel which
is the good news of Christ victory over the enemy of death. No theory can change the fact that death is
the final enemy to be destroyed. There
are numerous facts about death that cannot be changed by being ignored. Here are a few‑
1. Death came into the world as a result of sin, and the rejection
of God's will. It was not a fulfillment
of His will.
2. Death is always associated with evil. Even when it is a result of God's judgment it is in no way good,
for God's judgment is always the result of evil, which He in no way wills. God has no pleasure in the death of the
wicked.
3. Scripture and history are full of the evil works of men who
murder and destroy life. None of this
can be attributed to God without making Him the author of evil.
James makes it clear that any
theory that links God as a cause of evil is false. In James 1:13‑15 we read, "Let no man say when he is
tempted, I am tempted of God: For God cannot be tempted with evil and He
Himself tempts no one. But each person
is tempted when he lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives
birth to sin, and sin when it is full‑grown brings forth death."
What this means, in the light of our theme, is that a born
again Christian may die as a direct result of his own folly, or the folly of
others. His desire for fame may drive
him to a life‑style that leads to a heart attack at age 45. His desire to conform to the world could
lead him to have a few cocktails and be killed on the highway because of poor
judgment. The point is, a Christian can
die by natural causes or by accidents, or by the violent forces of evil. Seldom to never do they die because God
says, now is the best time, the precise time I have appointed.
10. PART II DEATH AND THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD
On December 7, 1941 bombs fell on many sons in Pearl Harbor,
and hundreds of families had their hopes and dream shattered. On December 8, a man who had been up sobbing
all night because he lost his son confronted his pastor in anger and said, "What kind of a God did this? If you
God could have stopped this and didn't He must be a terrible God. And if He couldn't have prevented it, He
isn't worth the time of day." The
father's feelings were not unusual, but represent the feelings that millions
have had as they are confronted by the reality of tragic death. This kind of anger is misdirected however,
for it assumes God is responsible for sin, and all of its evil consequences,
such as war and death.
This misconception, that leads so many to become angry at God
for life's tragedies, is encouraged by those who declare that God is the one
who sovereignly appoints all death. The
confusion arises because Christians do not think though what they mean, and
what the Bible means by the sovereignty of God. If you mean by the sovereignty of God that God controls
absolutely everything that happens, then you have a fatalistic theology like
that of Islam. Everything is the will
of Allah, and there is no way it can be
different than it is. Whatever will be
will be, and no amount of effort on man's part can change it. All is determined, and all is a matter of
fate. This is not the Biblical view of
reality.
In the Bible we see that God has limited His sovereignty by
the freedom He has given to man, and to other free willed beings. Jesus could say to the Jews, I would have taken you under my wings but you would
not respond. And so He wept over
Jerusalem for their choice meant death and destruction that He did not
want. The Bible reveals a God who cries
out, "Why will ye die when you can choose My will and live." The Bible puts the responsibility for sin
and evil, and all of its consequences upon those who choose to defy God, and
not upon God, who gave them their choices.
God made sin and evil a possibly by His sovereign power of
creation, but He is not responsible for it.
An analogy can make this clear.
The highway department puts up signs such as, cross over ahead, dead
end, slow down, bridge out, 35mph, etc., and yet drivers will ignore these
signs and go 70mph and crash through a barrier and get killed. If you want to apply the thinking of
theology to this event, you could say the highway department is responsible for
that death. They built the road in the
first place, and had they never done so this driver would not have been killed
by driving on it. They are the ultimate
cause of this tragedy because they are the ultimate source of the road's
existence. Not only that, they also
made the crossover,
or had the bridge closed for
repairs, and built the road only to handle 35mph safely. They are the ones who
by their power and wills made all of the tragic deaths on that road
possible.
But, is it true that they willed his death? They made it a possibility, but the fact is
they did not will that possibility to be a reality. They proved their will was against it happening by doing all they
could to prevent it. They put up signs
warning of all the dangers so people could make wise choices and avoid
suffering and death. When a driver
refuses to heed the warnings, and chooses instead to take the risk of defying
what is good for his own protection, he must bare the responsibility for the
consequences himself. Who could be so
blind that they would accuse the highway department of being cruel and blood
thirsty in planning for all of the deaths that happen on the highway.
This is precisely what men do when they accuse God for being
responsible for tragedy, and blame Him for allowing, or not preventing, the consequences
of sinful choices. You might just as
well blame the highway department for the road as to blame God for making men
with a free will. In fact, you just as
well blame the reckless drivers mother because had she prevented her pregnancy
he never would have been alive to die in his tragic wreck. Or, she could have kept him chained to a
wall in the basement and prevented the whole thing. We could go on and on showing that it is nothing but folly to try
and pass the buck for life's evils back to God'S sovereignty.
God will not allow us to escape by this trick, for He makes
it clear that in His sovereignty He does not ever will sin or evil. Since sin or evil are a very definite part
of reality, we must face the fact that it is the result of foolish choices on
the part of man, and other free willed beings such as satan and his
demons. Satan entices men to make all
kinds of decisions that lead to tragedy and death, and it is an added evil when
men say these tragic things are the will of God.
How then are we to see the sovereignty of God in the events He
does not will? If so much happens that
is not God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven, then in what way is
He superior to the forces of evil that seem to get their will done on earth as
it is in hell? Stephen's experience
reveals this clearly. The hatred and
bitter rejection of the truth that led to his unjust and violent murder was
clearly a victory for the forces of evil.
Sin was in control and an innocent life was taken from the earth, even
though it had great potential for many years of faithful service in the kingdom
of God. It was a day of darkness for
many Christians who rightfully mourned Stephen's death.
The sovereignty of God is seen in the fact that when evil has
killed the body that is all it can do.
That is real and terrible, but it is only a temporary victory for evil,
for death is now under the control of Jesus Christ. He has the keys of death and hell, and not satan, and so Stephen
went immediately into the presence of his Lord. Death was robbed of its sting because it could not hold a child
of God. Death was made a mere door to the Father's house. God's sovereignty is seen, not in His
appointing the day of His children's death, but in that He appoints the day of
their death, whatever be the cause, to be a day of joy and celebration as they
are welcomed home. The day of death for
the believer is always a day of victory, even if the cause of their death is
the power of evil. The power of evil
ends at death. That is the worst it can
do, but do not fear it, said Jesus, for when it has done its worst it only
thrusts you into my hands.
Evil men rocked Stephen to sleep with a motive of hate, but
all they succeeded in doing was to send him on a perpetual vacation to
paradise. The evil is real, and the
death a tragic loss to the church, but in the sovereignty of God the total
picture is one of victory. The
Christian then must look on tragic death from the perspective of Jesus. He must
weep with Jesus in that it is truly tragic that evil should have such power to
ruin life on this earth. It is right
and normal for Christians to grieve over the folly of wicked men who bring
about so much unnecessary suffering and death.
It is a shame that men have to endure a world where the forces of evil
are so entrenched, and where good and godly people have suffer and die at their
hands.
The first Christian to die in the New Testament was Stephen,
and he died a violent unjust death. The
first deaths in the New Testament, however, were the Jewish baby boys who were
murdered by the heartless Herod who was trying to get rid of the Christ
child. This was one of the most cruel
and barbaric acts in all the Bible.
They were totally innocent, but they died because evil powers are real,
and they often care nothing about justice and fair play. Will anyone let Herod off the hook by saying
that God must have appointed these babies to die on that day? If that was true then Herod was doing the
perfect will of God and was God's servant rather than God's enemy. This theory has to be rejected for Herod
was clearly the enemy, and what he did was evil and not the will of God.
But God could have stopped it, could he not? Yes He could have, and that is what most
people think God's sovereignty means, that He can do anything to get His will
done. That is why people look at the
tragedies that evil produces in the
world and say God must have had a purpose in it. Behind this thinking is the idea that since God permitted the
tragedy when He had the power to prevent it, there must be some reason or
purpose behind it. In a way they are
right. God does permit evil for a
purpose, but this is not to say that
every act of evil is planned or permitted by God for some specific
purpose. Evil is permitted because that
is the only way God can have a truly free‑willed being who can choose
good rather than evil. God in His
sovereign power could stop men from choosing evil, but to do so would be contrary
to His ultimate purpose.
The tragedy is when people do not understand God's purpose in
allowing evil, and begin to try and make evil good by assuming the sovereignty
of God is behind all that is. This kind
of thinking is what produced Job's friends and made them such a big pain in the
neck. One of the finest books I ever read on suffering was, If I Die At Thirty
by Meg Woodson, the mother of 13 year old Peggy, and Joey her younger brother,
both of whom had Cystic Fibrosis. This incurable
disease kills 50% of children who have it before their 15th birthday. The book is largely conversation between the
mother and her daughter after she discovers she will not likely live many more
years. If you enjoy a good cry this
will be your kind of book. I don't
especially enjoy it, but could not help it as I read this true story. But what impressed me most was the profound
maturity of 13 year old Peggy. Listen
to her words of response as she listened to a local radio talk show dealing
with parents of mentally retarded children.
"Why did God make my child retarded? Why did God send that tornado? Why
did God give me Cystic Fibrosis? Peggy
mimicked as she turned off
the radio. Why do people
always say that? God didn't do any of those
things." The
mother writes, "Quick
tears burned my eyes. How care‑
fully I'd refrained from
bringing up the question of why
Peg had Cystic
Fibrosis.....Somehow I'd felt I couldn't
bear it if she pointed the
accusing finger at God. But here
she'd brought up the subject
herself, and the only finger she
pointed was at the people
who pointed the finger at God.
"Don't they know He's
not like that?" She cried,
indignantly.
"He planned everything
to be good. He wouldn't do mean
things like that. They say God did this or that mean thing
to make them better
people. That's dumb. You know there's
one thing I hate about
Cystic Fibrosis camp. Half the kids
there don't even believe in
God. I don't know about Joey's
side, but on the girls side its like they've said, God gave
me
Cystic Fibrosis‑goodbye God."
Here was a 13 year old dying teenager who had already learned
from life the negative effects of a false theology. People who feel God in His sovereignty is the cause of suffering
tend to forsake Him and blame Him. It
is one of Satan's most cleaver tricks to get people to think that his evil
works are the will of God. God forbid
that we add to the problem by promoting such a view of His sovereignty. Let us
promote the Biblical view of Christ who reveals God's will to be one of victory
over evil and suffering. When His
sovereign will is finally and fully fulfilled all suffering and death will be
no more. This is a true picture of the
sovereignty of God.
11. THE MYSTERY OF DEATH Based on I Cor. 15:51‑58
A librarian commented concerning a woman just leaving her
desk that she could get more out of a mystery novel than anyone she knew. "How is that?" asked her co‑worker. She replied, "She starts in the middle
so that she not only wonders how it comes out, but also how it
began." This illustrates what a
great many people are doing with life today.
They have no idea how things began, or of how things will end up. All they look at is the middle of the
story. They see the contemporary scene
only, and the result is that they have too much mystery on their hands, and
life is confusing. They have what we
could call spiritual amnesia, which leaves them stranded in the present with no
roots in the past, or goals in the future.
Mystery in itself is not only valuable, it is essential for making life
an adventure, but to live in this much mystery is to be miserable. One has to have some basic answers.
When mystery reigns fear is on the throne as well. Henry St. John said, "Plain truth will
influence half a score of men at most in a nation, or an age, while mystery
will lead millions by the nose."
The unknown is always frightening and so it becomes an ideal basis for
controlling people and their money.
Religion in general and cults in particular take full advantage of
people's ignorance about life after death.
Since people do not know the unknown it is impossible for them to prove
any claim to be false, and so in fear they bow down to those who speak with
authority. The witch doctor had such
power over whole tribes because of his claim to know something about the
darkness, which the masses do not know.
One is always at a disadvantage when he is ignorant of the
enemy. Nations know this, and that is
why the intelligence forces our vital to survival. We try and find out every possible move of the enemy. We use spies and reconnaissance planes to
keep current of enemy movements. Not to
do is to give the enemy the advantage of surprise. Death is an enemy, and we ought to know all that can be known
about this enemy, and not be content with leaving it as a total mystery. In order to protect believers from being at
the mercy of mystery mongers who sell their ignorance God has given, through
Paul, some clear answers concerning the mystery of death. They are not answers reserved for the elite
and spiritually superior. They are
public information for the benefit of all.
There is so much revealed in I Cor. 15 alone that it would
take a whole series of messages to expound it.
This does not mean that there is no more mystery. There will always be some mystery simply because
we are finite and cannot comprehend infinite truth. Some poet has written,
Shall my gazes see with
mortal eyes,
Or any searcher know by
mortal mind?
Veil or after veil will lift‑but
there must be
Veil upon veil behind.
As long as we are in these bodies there will be veils, but
it is our responsibility to lift those veils and remove them where God has
given knowledge. There is no merit in
being ignorant of that which God wants us to see concerning death. Paul begins the final paragraph of his long
discourse on death and resurrection by saying in verse 51, "Behold I show
you a mystery." Henry Vaughn
wrote,
Dear, beauteous death, the
jewel of the just,
Shining nowhere but in the
dark;
What mysteries do lie beyond
the dust,
Could man outlook that mark!
Paul is saying that is exactly what we are going to do. We are going to look beyond the dust into
the realm of ultimate destiny. Not,
however, because we have any faculty capable of grasping the unknown and
reducing it to the known, but because God has revealed it. It is a mystery that Paul is going to show
us, and a mystery is a truth that cannot be known except by revelation. In other words, if it is not revealed it
will remain in the realm of the unknown beyond the powers of man to
discover.
The first aspect of the mystery is that we shall not all
sleep. Not all Christians will
die. There will be those who enter the
realm of eternity directly from this life without going through the valley of
death, just as Enoch and Elijah did in the Old Testament. In the case of the Christians, however, it
will not be because they are such unique servants of God, but simply because
they live at the end of history. The
pattern of what is normal is not followed at the beginning or the end. The first of God's children on earth, who
were Adam and Eve, were not born, and the last of His children on earth will
not die. Both are dwelt with by God
directly and uniquely. He is the alpha
and omega, the beginning and the end.
He is the source of life and the goal of life. In between the beginning and the end God established a pattern
guided by natural law. All people come
into the world by birth and leave it by way of death. Only the last generation will leave this world without sleeping
the sleep of death.
The New Testament often refers to death as sleep, and this
is a real revelation of the Christian attitude. Sleep describes death as simply becoming unconscious to this world. Byron wrote, "Death, so‑called,
is a thing which makes us weep, and yet a third of life is past in
sleep." Natural sleep, however, is
pleasant even to the beholder, for one knows the sleeper is at rest gaining
strength to rise again and be active.
Death is a sleep from which the body does not recover, and so there is
no more communication. Even the
certainty of seeing them again does not eliminate the fact of a real temporary
loss. Therefore, though death is sleep
for the Christian, it is still a sad lost for those who are left behind.
The paradox of the sleep of death is that though it appears
to be a permanent sleep to those alive, it is really the end of all sleep for
the one who is dead. It is the last
sleep from which one wakes to sleep no more, for never again will there be a
need for daily recuperation. The
paradox is that all our lives we are dying, but at death we cease to die if we
are in Christ. The unbeliever has
another death to die called the second death, which is the death of the spirit
when it is eternally banished from God's presence.
A German proverb says, "As soon as we are born we are old enough to die." All our lives we are dying even as we live. About every 7 years we have an entirely new body. The old one is dying and disappearing on a daily basis. Our baby body dies and is replaced by the body of youth. It dies and is replaced by the body of adulthood. It dies and is replaced by the body of old age. When this last earthly body dies then we receive a body that is immortal, and which shall never die. Death for the Christian is the end of death and the beginning of life without death.