When God Allows Pain
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How do we as Christians respond to the pain and suffering of the world? How do we respond to the pain and suffering in our own life?
INTRO
INTRO
Are you in Pain? Not physical pain, but emotional pain?
The stabbing in ATL by the mother of her husband and four children
A Mom in Gwinnett County - Isabel Martinez called 911 after she had stabbed to death her husband and four children. A fifth child survived.
The ages of the kids were 2-10
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/07/06/georgia-stabbings-4-children-man-found-dead-in-home.html
App: How many of us feel as if we are being beaten down or flogged. Maybe not in a physical sense.
How many of us are ridiculed for our belief and for our faith
How many of us are falsely accused - maybe at work, or within our own family
As Christians how do we respond when we have been wronged?
How do we react when the pain and the suffering, which is real, very real, comes down on us and is allowed to oppress us from a God who loves us?
The dilemma - The Problem of Evil
For the Christian - the problem of pain and suffering
We are not immune
DRAMA
DRAMA
God allowed Jesus to be flogged
God allowed Jesus to be flogged
Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him.
John 19:
Roman Scourging
A short handle and a whip with multiple tails and bones or sharp objects set in the end
He was beaten and whipped
God allowed Jesus to be mocked
God allowed Jesus to be mocked
And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands.
John 19:2-
A crown of thorns
A reed in His hand - he kneeled and mocked him - Matthew
Illus: Bored soldiers can come up with some creative ideas
God allowed Jesus to be falsely accused
God allowed Jesus to be falsely accused
Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.”
John 19:
Jesus responds to this uniquely
He does not defend his claim
He does not fight for his freedom of speech
He fully grasped Pilates authority, even more than Pilate did
God allowed all of this to convey His authority over all things
Jesus was flogged, mocked and falsely accused by civil authorities and is on his way to lay down his life and die for the sins of God’s children and to redeem the curse of the covenant.
App: How many of us feel as if we are being beaten down or flogged. Maybe not in a physical sense.
Illus:
Andrew Brunson - while this is not a 1-1 illustration it represents the realities of the sufferings of this world for Christians
How many of us are ridiculed for our belief and for our faith
How many of us are falsely accused - maybe at work, or within our own family
A Prisoner in Turkey accused of being a conspirator with known terror groups. The Turkish Prime Minister has accused him of: “being a national security risk”
He was arrested in October and remains there today.
As Christians how do we respond when we have been wronged?
How do we react when the pain and the suffering, which is real, very real, comes down on us and is allowed to oppress us from a God who loves us?
DOCTRINE
DOCTRINE
For clarity in this let’s look to Jesus response. This story is His story and is about Him.
Jesus is willing to go through all of these and even death because He knows that God is sovereign over all things
He is in control of ever circumstance and situation that you are in and have ever been
God’s Providence teaches us some basic principles we should consider when dealing with circumstances in our life:
God is in control completely and without exclusion
The Westminster Confession of Faith: Edinburgh Edition Chapter V. of Providence
IV. The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God, so far manifest themselves in his providence, that it extendeth itself even to the first fall, and all other sins of angels and men, and that not by a bare permission,p but such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering and governing of them, in a manifold dispensation, to his own holy ends
God allows His beloved children to feel the effects of sin and the pains of this world
The Westminster Confession of Faith: Edinburgh Edition Chapter V. of Providence
V. The most wise, righteous, and gracious God, doth oftentimes leave for a season his own children to manifold temptations, and the corruption of their own hearts, to chastise them for their former sins, or to discover unto them the hidden strength of corruption, and deceitfulness of their hearts, that they may be humbled; and to raise them to a more close and constant dependence for their support upon himself, and to make them more watchful against all future occasions of sin, and for sundry other just and holy ends.
God does this for two reasons:
1) To expose the hearts of men
2) To build in them a more humble and faithful heart
God allows all of this without being the author of sin nor being the source of sin
The Westminster Confession of Faith: Edinburgh Edition Chapter V. of Providence
yet so as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature, and not from God; who, being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin.
Many accuse God of then being the author of the evils of this world.
God is Holy and cannot be the author nor approver of sin.
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
James
For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.
1 john
For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.
DOXOLOGY
DOXOLOGY
Praise God for his active work in your life.
Even if he did leave us for a season or to encourage our spiritual growth then it is only temporary
King Hezekiah in
Hezekiah was a proud man
In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death, and he prayed to the Lord, and he answered him and gave him a sign. But Hezekiah did not make return according to the benefit done to him, for his heart was proud. Therefore wrath came upon him and Judah and Jerusalem. But Hezekiah humbled himself for the pride of his heart, both he and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah.
God placed His wrath on Him to humble Him
God left him temporarily to test him
And so in the matter of the envoys of the princes of Babylon, who had been sent to him to inquire about the sign that had been done in the land, God left him to himself, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart.
Praise God that there will be a resurrection Day
How is it that Jesus could lay down his life and be willing to suffer and die our death?
He knew that He would be raised from the dead. Death was not the end.
The pain and suffering we experience is temporary and under God’s control
App: We should take comfort in the fact that the things that happen in our life are under the providential hand of the God of Abraham and Isaac. The Creator of all things, who has power over every aspect, has control of the things that cause Pain and Suffering in your life. He had them over His own Son Jesus who He loved, He has them over you.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Illus:
How many of us are ridiculed for our belief and for our faith
How many of us are falsely accused - maybe at work, or within our own family
As Christians how do we respond when we have been wronged?
How do we react when the pain and the suffering, which is real, very real, comes down on us and is allowed to oppress us from a God who loves us?
You have within you, if you are a child of God, the Spirit of Christ.
God allows us to go through pan and suffering, not because he is a horrible and unloving God, no it os just the opposite. He does so so that we may Grow into Christ, who is the head.
Even in the midst of pain and suffering God is Sovereign.
This is important for us to remember as we experience the pain.
God is Sovereign and even the suffering and pain in our life are a witness to the work in our life.
Job - many of focus on the first half of that story. He lost everything. His friends could not console him, nor were good advisors during that loss. Yet, what do we read in the last seven verses of that book, by way of what God does in restoring him?
And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house. And they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him. And each of them gave him a piece of money and a ring of gold.
And the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. And he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. He had also seven sons and three daughters. And he called the name of the first daughter Jemimah, and the name of the second Keziah, and the name of the third Keren-happuch. And in all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters. And their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers. And after this Job lived 140 years, and saw his sons, and his sons’ sons, four generations. And Job died, an old man, and full of days.
Job
Brothers, and sisters we serve a loving and gracious God. It may not always feel like it.
God does not leave us in our misery, it is only for a time.
Be encouraged, there will be a resurrection
Maybe we have lo
When we think of the Lord’s Supper we think of HIs death. But, how is it that Jesus was able to lay down his life and suffer this physical pain and emotional pain of abandonment?
It was because He knew that there would be a resurrection.