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God's Grace and Suffering By John Paterson

When we talk about suffering, we're really talking about one of those subjects that you can know straight away touches everybody you talk to.
There'll be some people here this morning who've really suffered very seriously.
I'm sure there are some people who will soon suffer very seriously this year, next year, and there'll be others of us who will suffer very seriously perhaps later.
Not too many people get to the end of their lives without suffering seriously.
Could be the suffering of chronic pain, disease.
Could be the suffering of a bereavement, so that every day just thoughts crowd your mind of what might have been and isn't.
Could be the excruciating suffering of sexual abuse that just wouldn't stop.
And that's left its mark, something you suffer today because of what happened then.
Could be marital betrayal.
Could be the death of a child at the hands of a drunken driver.
Could be unloving parents.
Could be friends who've robbed you of your reputation.
And that doesn't even begin to touch the millions of people who this year will suffer because
of war and tsunamis and the AIDS epidemic.
The field is enormous and the depth of the result is huge.
What do you do with all that?
If you're an atheistic evolutionist, like Richard Dawkins, now Richard Dawkins is in the news now, he's put out his book that says God is nonsense, more or less.
He's been on television, he's got the press, the year of the press.
He really says all you can do in the face of all this stuff is really just shrug your shoulders.
He says, quote, in a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky.
And you won't find any rhyme or reason in it or any justice.
The universe that we observe has no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
I tell you, if your kids are run over by a car, don't go to him for help.
It's just a bit of bad luck and you can't explain it, there's no rhyme or reason.
There's not even any such thing as evil, he says.
If you're a Muslim, you've just got to resign yourself to the impersonal plan of Allah.
It's just fate.
I mean, there isn't a why to it, not a rhyme or reason, it's just the way it is.
And there's really no help if you're a Muslim in the middle of all that.
If you're a good post-modern Australian, you've only got the God that you can invent for yourself.
If you happen to ask the question why, goodness knows why you'd ask the question why if there
isn't any right or wrong or good or bad or God or not God.
It's up to you to work out an answer if you ask why.
It really seems to me that one of the ways that you can show the hopelessness of human
ideas and human philosophies, whether they're Richard Dawkins or Islams or anything else,
is to ask, has it got anything to say about evil and suffering?
And all those come unstuck on that very point, other points as well, but on that one at least.
It's got nothing to say.
There's no hope.
There's no rhyme.
There's no reason.
I suppose the more important question for us this morning is, does the Bible got anything
to say?
Does God of the Bible have any sort of place in what he's doing for awful, deep suffering
that's hard to comprehend?
And indeed, really the question I want to ask this morning is, does the grace of God
have anything to do with that?
If God somehow got it somewhere in here, how does his grace touch that?
And that's what we want to think about this weekend.
And it's important to think about, you see, because I think most Christians today really
haven't got any idea how God fits with evil and suffering.
I'm sure that's true.
That's a bit of a generalisation.
I'm sure it's generally true.
People, often Christians, I mean good Bible believing evangelical Christians, God gives
us the nice stuff, pleasant, easy, comfortable.
But the bad stuff, painful, arduous, heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching, well, that comes from the devil.
That comes from bad luck.
That comes from evil people.
And so you've got this idea that God's over here with all the good stuff and all the bad
stuff, the unpleasant stuff, the hurting stuff somehow is over here and God's got no connection
with it.
I didn't hear the interview, but one of the fellows here heard the interview on ABC Radio
after the tsunami of a couple of years ago.
And Tim Costello came back from visiting parts of Indonesia where he'd seen the destruction
of the tsunami.
Tim Costello, President of World Vision Australia for a time, President of the Baptist Union
of Australia, Melbourne pastor, brother of Peter Costello, et cetera, et cetera, you
know the guy.
He came back, he was interviewed on ABC Radio and the interviewer said to him, what do you
make of it all?
How does God fit with this?
It was a question to that effect.
His words were, I think almost word for word, God would have liked to have stopped it, but
couldn't.
Why, he said, he couldn't even stop his own son being killed.
I quote that, I think the last part, I know I have word for word, the first part I think
also.
You see, God's over here, nice God, the rotten things are over here and there's just no connection
between the two.
God would like to stop this here, but he's over here.
Now I want to tell you that I think that's probably a pretty common sort of view in different
shades or another, but that's nothing like the view of God that the Bible presents us.
It's nothing like it.
In the Bible, God is so big that he has everything to do with evil and suffering and his grace
has everything to do with it.
I want to try and show how this morning, the Bible says a lot about suffering.
I think when I was making my notes from preparing for this, I had 17 themes about suffering
and how the grace of God touches evil and suffering and I've settled on three of the
17.
So a lot will get unsaid, but that'll have to be because what we're saying I think is
the most important part, if I may suggest.
The first thing I want to say, the first major thing I want to say this morning is that God's
plan includes evil and suffering.
Murray talked this morning from Ephesians chapter 1 about the fact that God has a plan
and it's a plan full of wonderfully good things.
Now the trouble is, things in our world keep going wrong and so what most, not most, certainly
maybe it's most, certainly what a lot of Christians say is, well because things keep going wrong,
people sin, people commit, pastors commit adultery, houses fall in and kill people and
so on and so on, because these things go wrong, God says, oh, my plan was really good but
now it's being wrecked by all these things and so God has to invent a second kind of
plan that takes into account these things that are happening.
So he goes from plan A to plan B. And so plan B is humming along, oh, then something
else happens, that God sort of wasn't part of what he really wanted, so it's plan C and
plan D and plan E and so on and so on and so on.
Now that's the view I think that many Christians hold today, God has to keep resorting to something
else because evil and suffering keeps wrecking what he wanted to do.
Well that may be the way a lot of people see it but I'll tell you it's not even within
a bull's roar of what the Bible says, not even close.
Ephesians chapter 1 verse 11, we saw this morning, says, verse 11, in him we were also
chosen having been predestined according to his plan, the plan of him who works out everything
in conformity with his purpose.
Now folks I don't know what the word everything means to you, to me it's pretty encompassing.
It doesn't say he works out the nice things, the good things, the happy things, the positive
things.
It doesn't say the big things or the little things, it just says everything.
God works out everything in this world according to his purpose, according to his plan.
He doesn't go to plan B, what he does is always according to plan A, all that God does
in this world.
It's a plan that's eternal, we saw that before the world was made.
Chapter 1 verse 4, God planned this and this and this.
It's a plan before time and it's a plan that time won't diminish and won't wreck.
The cancer or the tsunami or the car accident doesn't take him by surprise folks.
It's always, they're always part of plan A. They're always part of the plan of God who
works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will.
Now I don't know what can be planned of them that to be quite honest.
We need to say more than that but boy we sure can't say less.
And if I said well where's his will going, where's his plan going?
Well again Murray told us this morning, God is working out everything so that it will
be to the praise of his glory, to the praise of his glory, to the praise of his glory.
It doesn't say he's working out everything so that we'll be happy, it doesn't say he's
working out everything so that we'll understand it all, he's doing it all so that in the end,
in ways that I can't really understand I've got to say, so I know for a fact that in the
end it will be to his glory, that in the end everything will be summed up under Christ
and Christ will get the glory, that's his purpose, to bring everything in heaven and
earth together under one head even Christ, that's where it's going, there will be glory
for Christ out of the tsunami, out of the car accident, out of the cancer, there will
be, there will be.
You say how can you see that, I'm not saying I can see it, I know it, God says that's the
way it is.
Let me give you a few, let me give you two case histories, in the notes it says there
are four but I don't have time for two I'm sure, let me give you the case history first
of all of Joseph, you know Joseph, the man who occupies more of Genesis than Abraham
and anybody else in terms of space, Joseph, teenage Joseph, hated by his brothers, jealous
of him, I mean he provoked them and you can perhaps understand their jealousy a bit but
they very seriously wrongly consign him to death and they sell him off to slave traders
who are going to Egypt and that was a death sentence, I mean in a labour camp or even
working for some employer somewhere in Egypt you might last two years, four years, eight
years but it's a death sentence, they know he won't last and so it's off to Egypt with
Joseph and you know that when he's there by God's providence he's exalted, he's raised
up and he becomes virtually the Prime Minister of Egypt and God gave him so much wisdom and
insight during those years that when there's just heaps of crop, just beautiful, he stores
it all, wheat, corn, whatever it was, stores it into these silos and then the place is
just awash with grain because God has said seven years is coming after these seven good
years when there'll be nothing and so when the seven bad years come Egypt's got more
grain than it knows what to do with, it's going to last far more than seven years if
Egypt is the only consumer but what happens of course is that people from other nations
come and they say we here, you've got it stacked in here, you're loaded, share some with us
and some of the people who come for help are the brothers of Joseph who at least 15 years
before have sold him into slavery knowing that two years, four years he'll be dead.
They come and the person with whom they have to deal to get the grain to take back home
is Joseph, they're convinced he's dead, years have changed him, don't know what else happened
but they don't recognise him, they come and they ask him for a grain and in the course
of the conversations that followed with many tears Joseph reveals to them who he is and
in Genesis chapter 45 in verse 4 Joseph said to his brothers come close to me, when they'd
done so he said I'm your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt, now do not be distressed
and I'd be distressed if I were them, this is the Prime Minister, he's got soldiers behind
with swords and spears and here are the guys who tried to kill him, of course they ought
to be distressed, don't be distressed he says, don't be angry with yourselves for selling
me here because it was to save lives that God sent me here ahead of you, it was to save
lives that God sent me here, what did he say, it was because of your sin I ended up here
because it is as it were that he goes, he looks behind what you can see and he sees
what you can't see but which is more real, God sent me here, it was his plan, it wasn't
an accident, God sent me here to save lives and then he helped them and if you want to,
if the point's not even, it's not clear there, if you go to the last chapter of Genesis into
chapter 50 when his father, old Jacob has died and the brothers now think, oh dad's
dead, now he'll do us in, he's only keeping us alive because dad was alive but Jacob's
dead and now they're a bit worried I think but no, no, they need not have worried, verse
15, chapter 50, Genesis verse 15, when Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead they
said, what if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we
did to him so they sent word to Joseph, this is a great scheme they cook up, your father
left these instructions, this is what you're to say to someone, so they make this scheme
that somehow means that Joseph will be kind to them, Joseph said to them, verse 19, don't
be afraid, vengeance belongs to the Lord, am I in the place of God, you intended to
harm me but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving
of many lives, what was their intention, you meant, if we took the English standard version
which is a better translation, you intended, sorry, you meant evil against me but God meant
it, the evil, not your action, the evil, the evil that you did, God intended it for
good.
Now I don't know what could be playing out, let's ask the questions, let's review it,
was the action of the brothers evil, absolutely, did people suffer because of their action,
you bet they did, Joseph suffered, his father suffered, other people suffered, there's evil
and there's suffering, there's no question about that.
Was their action all part of the wise, perfect, eternal plan of God, you bet it was.
God sent me here, the evil that you did, God intended it, the evil, for good.
To preserve the people of Egypt, to preserve people in other nations, to preserve the people
of Israel so that the Messiah would come as promised.
Your action fulfilled the salvation of the people so that the Messiah might come if we
can put it like that, yes there's evil, yes there's suffering but over it all we'd ask
did their plan, did their action catch God off guard, did he have to change his plan,
did it wreck his plan, folks it was always part of his plan.
Now that's number one, just keep that one side of your brain, look at the other one,
we won't do Job and Judas, they'd be good case studies.
Jesus, Acts chapter 2.
Peter is preaching on the day of Pentecost, speaking about Jesus, Acts 2 verse 22, how
wonderful was the life and the work and the ministry of Jesus.
Verse 23, this man, Jesus, was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge
and you, you Jews, with the help of wicked men put him to death by nailing him to the
cross.
Now ask the same questions, was their action evil, yes.
It was sinful, yes there's been no greater sin if I can speak like that than their action
in murdering the Lord of life.
Was their suffering because of their action, yes there was, no one has suffered as much
as Jesus suffered on the cross, there was great suffering, evil and suffering, absolutely
yes.
How did that happen?
It happened according to God's set purpose and foreknowledge, all according to plan A,
with all its evil, with all its suffering, a plan that meant great things but along the
way involved much evil and much suffering.
Go over to chapter 4 of Acts please if you would to verse 27.
Not Peter this time, this is some of the believers praying, it wasn't just some sort of heady
idea that an apostle had somewhere, this is the common belief of the Christians.
And they can speak about the way in which Jesus was conspired against, verse 27 and
verse 28 they say, they, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Gentiles, Jews, they did what your power and
your will had decided beforehand should happen.
Now put that in your pipe and smoke it, they did what your power and your will had decided
beforehand should happen, now folks what could be plan A?
Evil?
Yes, gross evil, suffering, enormous suffering, part of the plan of God that goes back before
eternity.
Now let me be very clear, or as clear as I can be, am I saying that God is evil?
Or am I even saying that God does evil from an evil heart?
No I'm not, we know full well the Bible says that the God of the judgment of the earth
always does what's right, there's no evil in God, it's impossible for God to do evil.
He does not do evil, but he plans it and he brings it, we've seen from the cases how he
brought it, but we know that God himself is not evil, there are hundreds of places
in the Bible we could look at the way in which God sent an evil spirit to King Saul, we could
see the way in which he sent suffering and disease, because there are hundreds of things,
God's all the time sending evil that results in suffering.
I'm not saying God is evil, the Bible denies that very emphatically, nor am I saying God
intends evil, but boy it's part of his plan which is always good.
Was the tsunami or 9-11 beyond his control, was it something in the sense that he said
well I'm really doing these things here, but boy I'd like to stop these Muslim terrorists,
I'd like to stop these forces in the ocean, but really it's not like that folks, it's
not like that, that's part of the plan.
God's plan includes everything, he works out everything in conformity with the purpose
of his will, Ephesians 1-11, everything, everything, everything, he doesn't do evil,
but boy does he bring it, and he brings it for the triumph of his plan.
Now folks I'm not saying to you for a minute, and I hope you hear me here, I'm not saying
for a minute I understand how what happened to you or your child or your neighbour works
for God's glory, I don't, mind you I don't need to know how it's going to work if I'm
running the world, but if I'm not running the world I don't need to know how it works,
I've just got to trust that God knows how it works, and he's running the world.
Now don't ask me to answer questions that I can't answer, I'm trying to answer the ones
I can, and God is so clear about the way in which evil and suffering are a part of his
plan, but we need to know that because Satan's not running the show, and some Christians
just go through life cringing, and so somehow the devil or his demons or something else
and green things on the roof are somehow going to get hold of them, and it's all going to
sort of fall apart, Satan's never been running the show, not yesterday, not last year, not
at the beginning, not ever, God's always been running the show, it's not as though evil's
out of control, all these dreadful things happening, oh what are we going to do, no
no evil's never been out of control, Christians need never panic, whether it's personal things
or national things, physical things or emotional things, Satan doesn't hold, it's not in his
hand, he's not controlling things, he's not running things, there are no no go areas with
God, God's in every area, you got it, thank you for that nod at the back, he's in every
area, there are no no go areas with God, so whether today for me is wonderful and tomorrow
is full of sadness, that's from the hand of my Heavenly Father, and that's why I say if
God is for me, what can possibly be against me, you say but look at these things happening
to, I said they're not going to wreck me, they're not going to take me away from God,
because God has all these things in his hand, they're part of his will, and his will is
always good.
And friends I suppose I ought to say this before I just go to the second point, as we
talk about the way in which God's plan includes evil and suffering, what have I done, ultimately
it means that suffering and evil are not about me.
You know we have such a pathetic view, many of us, now I'm not saying, I haven't suffered
very much, I've got to say that, not yet, a bit, some is emotional, some is physical,
the child that dies, the illness, also that's the normal sort of thing that happens to lots
of people, but I haven't suffered lots, I've got to say that to be honest with you, some
people have suffered a lot more than I have, I know that, but I'll tell you what happens
when we suffer is that sometimes we think our world becomes so small and it's almost
as though everything is about us, it's all about me, how I get through, what's happening
to me, well I will ask what's happening to me and I will ask what lessons I can learn
from what God's doing, I ought to do that, but ultimately it's not about me.
God's working out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will to the praise
of his glory, and I can relax, whether I see the purpose or not irrelevant, whether I feel
good about it or not, in a sense it's not the question, God does it all for the praise
of his glory, not about me, but what happens is always the best, because God does always
what's right, the judge of all the earth does what's right, it's always been like that,
I can trust him.
Well God's plan includes evil and suffering, and secondly I have to be brief here, God's
grace works through suffering, two ways, you know our suffering so often can take us
to Jesus and always is meant to take us to Jesus, you know there's some pain that medication
doesn't touch, you know that, and some of you can say you know if I told you my history
as a child, there's no way a doctor can go where I was, in my head or in my heart, and
I still carry that with me, you've been disappointed, somebody you loved failed you, some gross
person just about destroyed you, that's serious stuff, and your friends, even your best friends
don't really understand what it's like, they can't, and the pain just won't go away.
Well friends let me tell you some of it's not meant to go away, some of it's not meant
to be fixed by medicine or doctors, God means to hurt you, in other words God means you
to feel the pain, so that you'll get something better than relief from the pain, so you say
I can't do it, and so like Paul says look we endure this and this that we might learn
not to rely on ourselves, my friends can't help me, and why does he do that, so that
I'll go to the one who alone can help me, I'll hear the words of Jesus, come to me
all who are weighed down and burdened, and I'll give you rest, don't drink at the
wells where there's no water, come to me and drink, and God means our pain to take
us that way, God means the evil and the suffering that results in the pain to take us that way,
it doesn't mean that your past changes when you come to Jesus, you can't change
your past, but I tell you you'll learn not to have to live in it, and you won't be
able to change your future, but you know Jesus is the one who orders the future, you know
that the hand that holds you is the hand that holds the world, it's a great place to be,
God means us to feel the pain of a fallen world, he means us to see that there's
something wrong with everything, so as Peter says we'll commit ourselves to a faithful
creator, not just saying chin up, press on, no, no I'm not talking about that, not saying
just grit your teeth and get on with the job, commit yourself to your faithful creator,
you call out to him for what you need, and you trust him for what you need, and you actively
commit to going his way, whether you understand it or not, you know when you're hurt there
are some choices to be made, we all do it, whether we list the choices or not, some people
pretend it doesn't hurt, they're fools, it's meant to hurt, don't pretend it doesn't,
some people try and just tough it out, some people spend their life looking for fixes,
some people just cave in and go self-absorbed, well the other choice is in your pain and
in your suffering you can run to Jesus, you know suffering is like the effect of the sun,
the effect of the heat of the sun, same sun, same heat, hardens the clay, melts the ice,
suffering is meant to melt me, whether it's suffering I see in you or in Indonesia or
somewhere else, meant to melt me so I can say who can explain these things, who can
actually touch our hearts and our minds in the middle of them, only Jesus, my best friends
won't even get close, my spouse won't get close, only Jesus, so why on earth would you
tough it out when you can melt into the arms of Jesus, the arms that hold the world, our
suffering takes Jesus and lastly Jesus takes our suffering to himself, some of us have
suffered a little, others of us have suffered greatly, I tell you if we put all our suffering
together in this room it would be peanuts compared with the suffering that Jesus endured,
it would be nothing by comparison, mocked as a bastard, misunderstood by his family,
hated for telling the truth, judged on the basis of trumped up charges, by a prejudice
jury, betrayed by his closest friends, tortured, dying in agony and cut off from his father
with whom he had always been one since all eternity, no one has suffered like Jesus suffered,
why was it his father's will that he suffered so, well I tell you folks he suffered the
greatest suffering so that I might escape the second greatest suffering, he suffered
most but I might not have to suffer the most suffering that a human can suffer, which are
the pains of hell, when they hurled their insults at Jesus he didn't retaliate, when
he suffered he made no threats, instead he entrusted himself to him who judges justly,
he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, by his wounds you've been healed,
by his greatest suffering, I won't suffer the greatest suffering it's possible for
any human being to endure, I should be cut off from God but he was, I should suffer my
sins for my sins but they were placed on him, I should go to hell where there's weeping
and gnashing of teeth day after day after day after day after day it never stops, but
he suffered, he suffered so I won't, folks you know when we suffer we lose perspective
so easily but if ever there was a time we need good perspective it's when we suffer
and this is part of what we need to think about, as painful as my sufferings are and
as I say mine I haven't been very great I acknowledge that and I'm really trying
hard to be sensitive this morning, yours may be much greater but I tell you that when you
suffer as great as they are, they are nothing compared to what you might have suffered if
you went to hell, you say my sufferings are gross, yep I hear you, I tell you hell is
gross to the nth degree, of course it hurts now and sometimes it hurts very seriously
and very deeply but when I know that Jesus has taken that suffering which is so much
greater by far it is perspective. Now friends I'm just about done, if my suffering is
enough now to make me despair of helping myself and I pray it does so that I come to Jesus
for what I need and if coming to Jesus means I don't suffer then don't you reckon that's
great grace, don't you reckon that's wonderful grace in the midst of pain and evil and suffering?
What if you were to die, what if you were to leave this earth and you did not belong
to Jesus, what if for you there is hell just there where there is crying and gnashing of
teeth day after day after day after day after day, what if it was you and you know you don't
belong to Jesus? Well I tell you Jesus is saying to you, Jesus is saying even by the
things that go wrong in our world, see how awful it is, don't go there, whatever you
do don't go there, that's grace that you should speak to us through the suffering and evil
of this world and if you do leave this life belonging to Jesus, well I can tell you the
Bible says that when you leave this life and you are with Jesus he will wipe away every
tear from your eye. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the
old order of things has passed away, Revelation 22 4. I have some friends and I just think
every day must be so painful for them because of mental illness, they can't escape from
these awful thoughts that crowd in, they can't find purpose, they can't get answers, everybody
is a suspect. What do you think it's going to mean for those people on the day when Jesus
wipes away those tears and takes away that illness and all those days of tears finished?
Aren't they wonderful? You've suffered because your husband cheated on you and every day
you look at your wedding photo and you cry and you cry week after week after week after
week. The day will come when Jesus will take his sleep and go like that. There will be
no more pain, no more weeping, no more evil, no more suffering. If Jesus has taken your
suffering to himself there is a bit now, there is a bit. Compared to what is then in
hell it is just light and momentary, as gross as it might be. God tells us that so we won't
go there but instead we will make sure that we belong to him. Friends there is a lot more
we can say but God's grace is intimately involved in suffering, evil and suffering
part of his plan, you bet, for good purpose. That he might be glorified, that we might
go to Jesus and that we might see that our greatest suffering is taken by him. Some great
books in the book store, if you would like to read further please do, take a book there,
I would love to talk to you, if you think I have spoken insensitively or you would like
to speak about something personally I would love to do that with you.