THE GIFT OF SUFFERING

THE GIFT OF SUFFERING

PART FIVE

MIKE CUNNINGHAM

JAMUARY 18, 2009

I recently learned about a happily married Christian father of three children who, after a number of years discovered something awful about his wife Pat which, to use his own words he described as being “far beyond my worst nightmare,” (1). The devastated man said that had he known about it before they tied the knot, “I wouldn’t have married her, (2). I have to say if I were in that mans shoes and even though I love my wife more than anyone in this world, and increasingly so with each passing day; if I had discovered that about her, in all honesty I have to say I probably would not have married her.

These folks were and still are a couple of very committed Christians who were deeply in love with each other and took marriage seriously. So much so, that they prayerfully waited until, as the man said, “the Lord made it abundantly clear in various ways that He wanted us to marry,” (3). What this brother in the Lord learned about his wife was so awful that if you men knew such a thing about your wife before you got married, and as much as you love her now, I can’t help doubting if you would have married her either. Allow me to explain. Up until the time of his shocking discovery the man had no idea that “Huntington’s disease is a genetically transmitted disease involving the premature deterioration of the caudate nucleus of the brain. Symptoms are both physical and psychological. On the physical side, it involves the gradual loss of control of all voluntary bodily movement. Psychologically, it involves memory loss and depression, and as the disease progresses, it can lead to hallucinations and paranoid schizophrenia. Symptoms do not begin until around thirty years of age at the earliest, though some who have it show no signs until their later thirties or early forties. It is a slowly developing disease, but over ten to twenty years it takes its toll, and it is fatal. Currently, there are some medications to help with symptoms, but there is no known cure,” (4). “I would have to watch my dear wife slowly deteriorate and die. Maybe as the disease progressed, she wouldn’t even know me. Or possibly worse, she would know me but would turn against me as she imagined that I had turned against her.” “Ultimately, Pat would die, and yet it still wouldn’t be over. The same thing could happen to each of our children. I remember thinking that this threat of doom would hang over my family for the rest of our lives,” (5).

Can you imagine what it must be like to live each day in such a wide-awake nightmare? And especially if you are of the same biblical conviction as this couple is and which is what I have been speaking about for some time now? Back in eternity past our loving Creator planned, ordained and then by speaking His world into existence, predestined them to suffer and endure this horrible experience. It may be asked, why did God allow such an awful thing to happen to these two precious objects of His incomprehensible love? Why is it that back in eternity past He planned, ordained and predestined the man’s wife Pat to contract this horrible disease at the moment she was conceived just as He had the man who was born blind was,(John 9:1-7). And remember, He also ordained and predestined that man’s blindness to occur, every bit as much as He did what His only begotten Son was born to endure. ²³this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men, Acts 2:23 (ESV). ²⁷for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, ²⁸to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. Acts 4:27-28 (ESV)

As I said last week; it’s this teaching about predestination which some Christians including me and our young friend from the Navigators find to be “amazing” and “so encouraging,” while others hate it with a passion. They are revolted by it and denounce it as a “man made doctrine,” a “demonic theory,” a “twisting of Scripture,” “unbiblical,” “irrational,” “unjustifiable,” “unfair,” “immoral and sadistic.” One website denounces it as “the most evil doctrine the devil has ever come up with,” (6). Our friend Guy who we know is no stranger to prolonged physical and emotional suffering weighed in on the issue during the past week when he wrote: “I always enjoy reading explanations in regards to predestination. This is one hot tamale among Christians. Like the Navigator who wrote you, I love this doctrine, it is a great encouragement to me. Others hate it, and I think this is because they try to reconcile Predestination and Free Will (more accurately Free Agency). Or, to put it another way, God’s Sovereignty and man’s responsibility. The thought process goes something like this; if God has already predestined my eternity, then I am nothing but a robot, a puppet on a string, not responsible for my actions since God has foreordained everything. If I cannot believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior without God giving me the gift of faith, then I am not responsible for my unbelief. In this life we will never be able to reconcile these two truths. They are both True, God is absolutely Sovereign and man is absolutely responsible. We must live our lives holding fast to both of these truths and not try to reconcile one to the other,” (6). And, I might add, so too do the man and his wife I have been speaking about. They continue to be staunch believers and defenders of this doctrine and are an inspiration to fellow sufferers of the sustaining power of Christ working in them just as are Guy and his wife Carroll.

But why is there such a difference of beliefs among fellow sisters and brothers in Christ? In his blog, Al Mohler states: “A recent report from the Barna Research Group “indicates that a majority of American Christians pick and choose doctrines, more or less on the basis of those they like as opposed to those they dislike. This certainly explains a great deal about the current shape of Christianity in America today. Specifically, it points to at least one fundamental reason that so many Christians—including a significant number who claim to be evangelical—no longer believe that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven. The reason: ‘Eternal punishment is not consistent with “the American experience” or “the American Way.” The God of the Bible, in other words, does not act in ways consistent with what many people consider to be American ideals. Sending people to hell is just not fair.” (6).

As we have seen earlier, there is another aspect to this doctrine of God’s Sovereignty specifically in the area of predestination that really has many American Christians going ballistic over and that has to do with “Suffering and the Goodness of God,” which incidentally is the title of the excellent recently published book I’ve been quoting from. This particular issue is addressed in another great book entitled, “Suffering and the Sovereignty of God” which was co-edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor. After citing several examples of the horrors of the Holocaust and other evils, Piper asks: “Why does God allow such things to happen? Referencing his question in a footnote, Piper writes, “I shall argue that God does not merely passively permit such things by standing by and not stopping them. Rather He actively wills them by ordaining them and then bringing them about,...” (7) which is exactly what I have been contending for some time now.

Piper continues by asking, “Where is God when human beings cause themselves and others such hurt? Why doesn’t God stop such things? There is one answer to these kinds of situations that I want to challenge right away. Many of us have heard about “open theism.” Open theism was developed to deal with these very situations. It does so by addressing how our free wills and our responsibility are related to God’s will and the evils that we suffer and see. Open theists want to take God off the hook for the kinds of evil that we do. They explain these evils by claiming that God can’t prevent them without restricting or destroying our freedom. But, they claim, God doesn’t do that because he takes our freedom to be so valuable that he is willing to pay the price of there being all sorts of human suffering that is caused by our misuse of it.” (8). One of their authors chooses to believe “that God had ‘no reason to suspect’ that Adam and Eve would sin, (9). Another insists that which, “Scripture portrays the crucifixion as a predestined event, it never suggests that the individuals who participated in this event were predestined to do so or foreknown as doing so. It was certain that Jesus would be crucified, but it was not certain from eternity that Pilot [sic], Herod or Caiaphas would play the roles they played in the crucifixion (10). Still another insists, “that God can and has been mistaken about some things, (11). What kind of comfort, encouragement and hope do you think will a suffering Christian who embraces such satanically influenced silliness?

I believe that a big part of the problem with the American church today is that Christians don’t spend much time meditating on how truly awesome their Creator is. All too many of us don’t discipline ourselves to take the time to just sit silently and read their Bible, and listen to what their Creator is communicating to them, and out of a twenty four hour day, they spend far less time in prayer that they do in watching the TV, listening to the radio, surfing the net, or reading a book, newspaper or magazine or whatever.

They have allowed themselves to be captured by and have become so preoccupied with the pleasures of this world while things are going fairly smoothly in their lives. In doing so, they deprive themselves of receiving many daily blessing which God desires them to have. But He will never force them to accept these anymore than He will the gift of salvation. They are not absorbing and storing up very much spiritual nutrition which will sustain them when they are once again thrust into God’s Furnace of Affliction and forced to endure physical and or emotional suffering.

In closing, I want to share an example of what I’m getting at. Although I haven’t finished reading ‘Conformed to His Image’ by Kenneth Boa, I have already been blessed by this man’s insight and I hope you will be, too. Boa writes, “Human nature is a web of contradictions. We are at once the grandeur and degradation of the created order; we bear the image of God, but we are ensnared in trespasses and sins. We are capable of harnessing the forces of nature but unable to rule our tongue; we are the most wonderful and creative beings on this planet but the most violent, cruel, and contemptible of earth’s inhabitants. In Psalm 8:3-4, David’s meditation passes from the testimony of children to the eloquence of the cosmos: “When I consider your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; what is man that You take thought of Him? And the son of man that You care for him?” From the time David wrote those words until the invention of the telescope in the early seventeenth century, only a few thousand stars were visible to the unaided eye, and the universe appeared far less impressive than we know it to be. Even until the second decade of the twentieth century, it was thought that the Milky Way was synonymous with the universe. This alone would be awesome in its scope, since our spiral galaxy contains more than 200,000,000,000 stars and extends to a diameter of 100,000 light years (remember that a light second is more than 186,000 miles; the 93,000,000 miles between the sun and the earth is 8 light minutes). But more recent developments in astronomy have revealed that our galaxy is a member of a local cluster of about 20 galaxies and that this local cluster is but one member of a massive super cluster of thousands of galaxies. So many of these super clusters are known to exist that the number of galaxies is estimated at more than 100,000,000,000.

What is humanity indeed! The God who created these stars and calls them all by name (Isaiah 40:26) is unimaginably awesome; his wisdom, beauty, power, and dominion are beyond human comprehension. And yet he has deigned to seek intimacy with the people of this puny planet and has given them great dignity and destiny: “Yet You have made him a little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty!,” (Psalm 8:5). These words are applicable to all people, but they find their ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ as the quotation of this passage in Hebrews 2:6-8) makes clear. Our true cause of rejoicing should be in the fact that if we have placed our trust in Jesus Christ, our names are recorded in heaven (Luke 10:20). “What is man that you take thought of him” And the son of man that you care for him?” The infinite Ruler of all creation takes thought of us and cares for us, and He has proved it by the indescribable gift of His Son (2 Corinthians 9:15; I John 4-9-19). In the words of C. S. Lewis, glory means “good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.” Let us exult in hope of the glory of God,” (13).

I would like to encourage each of you to make the time to ponder the thoughts I have shared this morning. And keep on thinking about them and remind each other of these Biblical truths so that when you and they are going through the storms of life, regardless of how long they may last, the Lord will cause you to remember the things I have spoken about in this message. Human beings are mere specks in God’s infinite universe. And yet, He loves them so much that He invaded history and took on human form and allowed Himself to experience unimaginable suffering because of His incomprehensible love for them, so that everyone who believes in Him does not have to perish but will enjoy eternal peace, contentment and happiness in His presence. And there is no power in heaven or on earth which will compel anyone to accept this gift, nor is there any power which will prevent anyone from doing so. It’s our choice. I hope and pray that each of us and our loved ones will choose to accept Christ’s love and enjoy eternity together with Him.

^3
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. ⁴For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will-- ⁶to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. ⁷In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace ⁸that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. ⁹And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, ¹⁰to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment--to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ. ¹¹In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,” Ephesians 1:3-11 (NIV).

^9
“And do not forget the things I have done throughout history. For I am God—I alone! I am God, and there is no one else like me. ¹⁰Only I can tell you what is going to happen even before it happens. Everything I plan will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish,” Isaiah 46:9-10 (NLT).

And may it please the Lord to make this message a blessing to everyone of you folks who just heard it and those who may read it later.

(2)Ibid, page 217.

(3)Ibid, page 218.

(4)Ibid, page 215.

(5)Ibid, page 216.

(7)Guest book entry #

(8)The “American Experience” and the Death of Evangelism, www.AlbertMohler.com, January 16, 2009.

(10)Ibid, page 36-37.

(11)Ibid, page 67, footnote 52.

(12)Ibid, page 53, footnote 39.

(13)Ibid, page 40, footnote 10.

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