Suffering 17
Every pastor, indeed, most mature
Christians know what it is like to have someone turn a tear-streaked face
toward them and beg to understand why God is allowing them to suffer. “I don’t
know, “ is a bad answer. We do know. We may not know the specifics of God’s
reasoning in any one situation but He reveals several purposes for suffering in
His Word. We have already looked at some of them. God uses suffering to produce good that would not otherwise come into being. God allows suffering as a necessary adjunct to the exercise of free will. Suffering grows us; it is the school in which we are brought to
perfection. And suffering is sometimes necessary as the consequence of judgment on sin. Today we come to yet another reason God allows
suffering, perhaps the most important reason of all. It is this: God allows us
to suffer so that He may be glorified.
I know this for the basic reason I
know any spiritual truth. God tells me in His Word. Behold, I have refined
thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. For
mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it: For how should my name be
polluted? And I will not give my glory to another. (Isaiah 48.10-11) Everything
that happens in my life is designed to make God look good, and everything
includes that which I suffer. Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or
whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. (I Corinthians 10.31)
The lost man would view the last paragraph as indicative of a selfish God. In fact, they often hurl this at us in debates. “Your God tortures you so that He will look good; He says so Himself. What kind of an awful God is that?” To the contrary, however, this is not selfish or cruel or arrogant of God. It is not arrogant for God to demand glory for He absolutely deserves it. It is not selfish either for God is eminently gracious and thoughtful toward us in our suffering. It is not cruel for He does not stomp others down to lift Himself up; precisely the opposite, He raises others and that is what makes Him look so good. Put another way round, God does not do something to us in order to make Himself look better; He does something for us and through us, and that makes Him look better.
2
Corinthians 4.15–17
15 For all things are
for your sakes,
that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the
glory of God.
16 For which cause we
faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day
by day.
17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;
Over Christmas, a friend of mine from
college days breathed his last. He was my age, with a lovely wife and family.
Yet he struggled most of his life with various serious health issues, and in
the end his body was so eaten up with cancer he wasted away until he simply
stopped breathing. Through the blessing of social media, I was able to follow
along for the last few weeks of his life. People would show up to visit,
life-long friends. They would sit with him, pray with him, weep with him, sing
with him. Everyone knew death was waiting at the door. Yet to watch him in
those final days was to watch a man who loved His God deeply, praising Him for
His goodness as he began the climb through the ravine of the shadow of death.
Chad Vest 1973-2022 |
I watched it from hundreds of miles
away and I marveled. How could a man, struck down entirely too soon, leaving
ministry and wife and children, some still small, praise God so sincerely? What
grace. That man looked beautiful to me there on his deathbed. I admired him
more at the end than I had for the 30 years I had known him. But that glory
that rested on him was not his glory. It was reflected glory. God was the
source of it, the originator, creator, and author of it, and owner of it.
Ultimately, all glory belongs to God.
It is not as if I glorify Him as I suffer
and I receive nothing for it. I enjoy that reflected glory, but I also taste a
deep joy in the process. But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of
Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad
also with exceeding joy. (I Peter 4.13) To be counted worthy by Him of
suffering? What joy there is in that. (Acts 5.41)
In the next few paragraphs, I would
like to give you six ways your suffering produces His glory. In the process, I
want to encourage you that as you suffer you fulfill His plan for your life
exactly; you bring Him glory.
First, we see that God is glorified
when we trust Him in and through our suffering. Allow me to turn again to that
inimitable example of suffering, Job, to show you this.
Job 1.6-12
6 Now there was a
day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan
came also among them.
7 And the Lord said
unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From
going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.
8 And the Lord said
unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in
the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth
evil?
9 Then Satan
answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?
10 Hast not thou made
an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every
side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased
in the land.
11 But put forth
thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.
12 And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord.
Job
13.15
15 Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: But I will maintain mine own ways before him.
I am not saying that all of our
suffering is the direct result of a contest between God and the devil, but
those around you know Whom you believe in. They see how often you are at
church. They know how you are raising your family. They are well aware you are
religious. And it makes God look good if you maintain your confidence in Him
even when everything is falling to pieces.
Big whup if you worship a god when
things are going well. But when they are not? And you still kneel prostrate at
His feet and weep of His goodness? Well then, that is different; it shouts to
all and sundry what an amazing God He is. When you still love Him, still follow
Him, still worship Him, still trust Him, and still serve Him even though He has
allowed pain entrance into your life you are a powerful testimony of how
wonderful He is.
Second, we see that God is glorified
when He turns bad into good.
It is undeniable that God turns suffering into good. Joseph said, But as for you, ye thought evil
against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this
day, to save much people alive. (Genesis 50.20) As a pastor, I struggle to
turn good into good, yet He spins suffering into beauty and does so
effortlessly. It is wondrous to see and a direct evidence of how amazing He is.
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love
God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. (Romans 8.28)
The third way God is glorified in suffering is when His power is displayed. Think of the blind man in John 9, for example. He suffered for an entire lifetime so that Jesus could look amazing in healing him.
Christ Healing the Blind Man Sebastiano Ricci c 1716 |
John
9.1–3
1 And as Jesus
passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.
2 And his disciples
asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was
born blind?
3 Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.
I reiterate, this was not some macabre
torture. It is a gracious kindness that the God of the universe would stoop so
low as to use our suffering for the grand purpose of revealing or manifesting
Himself. I am sure if you asked that blind man decades later if it was worth it
he would have unhesitatingly agreed. “I was blind – so Jesus could heal me.”
What an honor. He got to be the living, breathing example of the power of Jesus
Christ.
Fourth, God is glorified when we are
justified.
Suffering is rooted in loss, and loss
is rooted in sin. In short, all suffering is somehow connected back to sin.
Suffering exists because sin exists. Yet in spite of the power of sin, God is
more than able to legally declare us justified in every action, thought, or
deed. How should man be just with God? (Job 9.2). Society bends itself
into a pretzel trying to find a way to cure the sin problem and the effects of
sin. It throws money at it. It attempts to educate man out of sin. It gives him
a new environment. Others descend in hopelessness to drug abuse. Governments mandate the mirage of shared prosperity that is socialism. The
wealthy seek to insulate themselves from the effects of poverty and crime.
Others turn to psychology or penance. False gospels abound. Yet nothing works;
man is still haunted by his sin and the effects of it. …until Christ washes us
in His blood and presents us entirely justified before His Father’s throne.
Glory!
Fifth, God is glorified when we are
sanctified. I have previously written an entire post about this. God
uses suffering to form the image of Christ in us.
Sixth, God is glorified when we are
glorified.
Let us meditate on Paul’s explanation of this in Romans 8.
Romans
8.17–23
17 And if children,
then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we
suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.
18 For I reckon that the
sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory
which shall be revealed in us.
19 For the earnest
expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
20 For the creature
was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath
subjected the same in hope,
21 Because the
creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the
glorious liberty of the children of God.
22 For we know that
the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
To go from so low, denizens crawling through the sin-reeking swamps of Earth, to so high, citizens of Heaven. To go from so bad to so good. To go from so wretched to so glorified. To go from entirely wicked to wholly pure. Someday I will be glorified. Yes, that will be glory for me, but it will be more glory for Him. After all, He is the one Who has done it.
God could have stopped the devil at
the very beginning. He could have stopped the devil at every moment since. In
preventing or stopping sin God also would have prevented or stopped all the
loss and suffering that flows from sin. But He chooses to allow it to continue
so that, amongst other reasons, there is a proper green screen on which He can
display His love, His grace, His wisdom, His justice, His longsuffering, His
mercy, His compassion, His care, His faithfulness, His power, His
understanding, His knowledge, can display Himself. That we, as awful and
low-down as we are, could be glorified, could reign with Him at His side, could
be entirely and permanently and perfectly cured of all ill and wrong, that all
sorrow and sighing and death could be done away… What a God He is.
Beloved, He washed our eyes with tears
so we could see. See what? The glory of God.
Wonderful truths. I will print and share w some folks today. Appreciate your work.
ReplyDeleteMark Rasmussen
Excellent post!
ReplyDeletePraise the LORD.
ReplyDelete