Posts Tagged ‘theology of suffering’

Don’t be surprised at suffering

Posted: January 24, 2013 by Pam Larson in Acts, Devotionals/Commentaries, January
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The following excerpt comes from “Twelve Appeals to Prosperity Preachers” found in the new edition of Let the Nations Be Glad.(John Piper)with a reference to our reading for today, Acts 14.

Missing from most prosperity preaching is the fact that the New Testament emphasizes the necessity of suffering far more than it does the notion of material prosperity.

Jesus said, “Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours” (John 15:20). Or again he said, “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matthew 10:25).

Paul reminded the new believers on his missionary journeys, “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). And he told the believers in Rome that their sufferings were a necessary part of the path to eternal inheritance.

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (Romans 8:16-18)

Peter too said that suffering is the normal pathway to God’s eternal blessing.

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. (1 Peter 4:12-14)

Suffering is the normal cost of godliness. “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). I am aware that these words on suffering move back and forth between a more general suffering as part of the fall (Romans 8:18-25) and specific suffering owing to human hostilities. But I will argue later in chapter 3 that when it comes to God’s purposes in our suffering there is no substantial difference.

Prosperity preachers should include in their messages significant teaching about what Jesus and the apostles said about the necessity of suffering. It must come, Paul said (Acts 14:22), and we do young disciples a disservice not to tell them that early. Jesus even said it before conversion so that prospective believers would count the cost: “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33).

 

God makes persecution a launching pad for missions

Posted: January 22, 2013 by Pam Larson in Acts, Devotionals/Commentaries, January
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John Piper concludes a message from Acts 13:1-12 this way:

God is a searching and saving God; that he is a God on a mission; he has straight paths that lead to faith; he is still sending us “to seek and to save the lost.” He is not aloof or passive or indecisive. He is never in the maintenance mode, coasting or drifting. He is sending, pursuing, searching, saving. And he calls us to join him…

…. there will, of course, be people and situations that make crooked the straight paths of the Lord. There will always be hindrances. There will be persecutions and Herods and Elymases. But the point again and again is this: God makes persecution a launching pad for missions; he takes Herod out of the way; he strikes Elymas blind. He carries his advent emissaries forward along the straight paths of faith.

To read or listen to the rest of the sermon, The Straight Paths of the Lord, click here:

The grace of God in spreading the good news through persecution

Posted: January 20, 2013 by Pam Larson in Acts, Devotionals/Commentaries, January
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The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose,
(Acts 11:22-23 ESV)

John Piper preached a sermon, “He Saw the Grace of God and Was Glad,” from Acts 11:23. You can read or listen to the entire sermon at DesiringGod.org

The Grace of God Uses Suffering

In other words, the good news about Jesus Christ came to Antioch because of persecution. Barnabas saw this and called it the grace of God, and it made him glad. God’s grace becomes visible when it makes the anguish of persecution a means of spreading the good news of Jesus.

If anything is clear from the Bible it is this: the grace of God does not spare his people suffering in this age, but rather uses suffering to bring people to himself. The Son of God himself suffered to save people from condemnation. And now he turns suffering again and again for our good both in this age and in the age to come.

God’s Grace Among Koreans in the 1930s

God has been showing his grace in our own time the same way he did in Acts. For example, in the 1930s thousands of Koreans fled what is now North Korea when the Japanese invaded. Many of them settled in the USSR around Vlapostok. Many of them were Christians and so by the suffering of the Koreans the gospel of Jesus was being carried into central USSR. But the grace of God was just beginning to be visible.

Joseph Stalin saw the Koreans around Vlapostok as a security risk to the weapons manufacturing center. So he relocated them to five areas around the Soviet Union, spreading the Christians even farther into the Muslim areas of the USSR (just like the persecuted Christians that went to Antioch).

One of the places they were sent was to Tashkent the center of the 20,000,000 Muslim Uzbek people who had violently resisted western efforts to bring Christianity. Over the next decades these Koreans became an accepted part of Uzbek society. Then, with Glasnost and Perestroika, on June 2, 1990, the first open air Christian meeting in the history of Soviet Central Asia happened. God used this meeting to awaken the Korean Christians especially, and the upshot was that the decades of acceptance by the Muslim Uzbeks and Kazaks has allowed the spread of good news about Jesus far more widely than it could have with merely western influence.

In other words, the grace of God was at work in all this. God hasn’t changed. This is the same grace of God that used persecution to get good news from Jerusalem Jews to Antioch Gentiles.

Spreading, Setbacks and the Sovereignty of God

Posted: January 13, 2013 by Pam Larson in Acts, Devotionals/Commentaries, January
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John Piper, in a sermon “Spreading Power Through Persecution”

I want to encourage you this morning from Acts 8:1–8 that God rules over the sufferings of the church and causes them to spread spiritual power and the joy of faith in a lost world. It is not his only way. But it does seem to be a frequent way. God spurs the church into missionary service by the suffering she endures. Therefore we must not judge too quickly the apparent setbacks and tactical “defeats” of the church. If you see things with the eyes of God, the Master strategist (who cannot lose because he is omnipotent), what you see in every setback is the positioning for a greater advance and a greater display of his wisdom and power and love.

Purposes in suffering

Posted: December 19, 2012 by Pam Larson in December, Devotionals/Commentaries, Job
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John Piper, in a sermon on Job 38-42

What we have seen so far, then, is that Job’s suffering has a twofold explanation: its purpose at the outset was to demonstrate God’s value and glory, and its ongoing purpose was to refine Job’s righteousness. His suffering is not punishment. It is not a sign of God’s anger. Job’s pain is not the pain of the executioner’s whip but the pain of the surgeon’s scalpel. The removal of the disease of pride is the most loving thing God could do, no matter what the cost.

Remember the words of the Lord: Better to suffer the excruciating pain of a gouged out eye than to let any sin remain in your heart. If this does not seem obvious to you—namely, that sanctification is worth any pain on this earth—it is probably because you don’t abhor sin and prize holiness the way God does and the way you should. Let us examine ourselves carefully at this point.

A Gathering Storm and God’s Rebuke of Job

Toward the end of Elihu’s speech (32–37) a thunderstorm had gathered and filled him with awe. It is as though he senses the approach of God in this storm and brings his words to a close. And sure enough, somehow, out of the whirlwind comes the voice of God to Job (chapters 38–41).

In 38:1–2 God begins: “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?’” Someone might think that God is criticizing the words of Elihu here, but that is not the case. He is speaking to Job and criticizing Job.

We know this because in 42:3 when God is through speaking, Job quotes these words from 38:2 and applies them to himself. He says, “Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?” That is a quote from God in 38:2. And then Job responds (in the second half of verse 3), “Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”

So the words of God in chapters 38–41 are not a rebuke of Elihu. Nowhere does God rebuke or criticize Elihu. Elihu had been right. Job listens in silent agreement. And when Elihu is finished, God speaks to Job and not to Elihu. And so now we want to know what more God has to say to Job. Let’s look and see.

Listen to the rest of this sermon at Desiring God:

On a leash

Posted: December 16, 2012 by Pam Larson in December, Devotionals/Commentaries, Revelation
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   And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven. Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation, and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. —Revelation 13:5-8 ESV

Notice here in Revelation that the beast had authority given to it.  (We also read in John 19 today that Pilate’s power and authority was given to him by God, and Jesus submitted meekly.) It was allowed to do certain things.  This beast is on a leash, and God hold the leash.

leashSatan has been on a leash.  We’ve seen this as we’ve been reading through Job the last two months.

Satan is still on a leash. We’ve seen this in the tragic events in Newtown, CT this week. Unspeakable horror. Tremendous grief. Yet, God is still on His throne and Satan is on a leash. In times like this, people question, “Where is God?” John Piper preached a sermon on the anniversary of 9/11 in 2005, “Where is God? The Supremacy of Christ in an Age of Terror” that is very helpful if you are struggling to come to grips with the sovereignty of God and suffering.  In this sermon, Piper asks,

So we ask: Why, Lord? Why is the world you made like this? If you are God—if you are the Christ the Son of the living God—why is this world so full of terror and trouble?

Here is what I believe the Bible teaches in answer to this question. I will give two answers that are not the reason such a world exists, and then four answers that are the reasons such world exists. I deal with each very briefly and point you to the Scriptures where you can search God’s word for yourself.

Listen or download this sermon

Piper: ” How Does Jesus Come to Newtown?”

Posted: December 16, 2012 by Pam Larson in December, Devotionals/Commentaries
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In this time of Advent, we remember and rejoice at the coming of Jesus.

In this time of  tragedy and mourning as a nation, we mourn with those who mourn, but we also remember and rejoice that our suffering Savior comes to us.

This is from a post by Pastor John Piper, posted at Desiring God:

The world needed a suffering Sovereign. Mere suffering would not do. Mere sovereignty would not do. The one is not strong enough to save; the other is not weak enough to sympathize.

So he came as who he was: the compassionate King. The crushed Conqueror. The lamb-like Lion. The suffering Sovereign.

In addition to reading the rest of Piper’s article, you may also download other resources to help you care for people who are suffering and hurt. (21 Ways to Comfort Those Who Are Suffering)

 

Suffering Refines the Righteous

Posted: December 16, 2012 by Pam Larson in December, Devotionals/Commentaries, Job
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John Piper explains Elihu’s view of suffering in Job 36:6–15

The helpful thing in these verses is that Elihu makes clear that there is such a thing as a righteous person who still has sin that needs to be revealed and rooted out. To call a person righteous does not mean that the person is sinlessly perfect. There is a “righteous sinner.”

This is helpful because God himself called Job a righteous man in 1:1, and Job won his argument on the basis of his reputation as a righteous man. And yet at the end of the book Job repents and despises himself. So Job is righteous (by the testimony of God!) even though he has sin remaining in him. He is not among the wicked.

Elihu looks at these two groups of people, the wicked and the righteous, and he distinguishes the different roles that suffering has in each. We’ll start reading at verse 6:

He does not keep the wicked alive, but gives the afflicted their right. He does not withdraw his eyes from the righteous, but with kings upon the throne he sets them for ever, and they are exalted.

Now if he had stopped there, he would have sounded exactly like Eliphaz: the wicked suffer and the righteous prosper. There is a sense in which this is true in the long run. But the question plaguing Job is why the righteous suffer in the short run. So Elihu goes on in verse 8:

And if they [that is, the righteous] are bound in fetters and caught in the cords of affliction [so Elihu admits right away that the righteous are not always with kings on the throne; they do suffer], then he declares to them their work and their transgressions, that they are behaving arrogantly. He opens their ears to instruction, and commands that they return from iniquity.

In other words the righteous are far from sinlessly perfect. There is much of the old nature left in them, and from time to time this old nature of pride breaks out in actual sinful behavior—as it did with Job when he accused God of being his enemy. This is what Job repents of at the end of the book.

Suffering Refines the Righteous

Elihu’s teaching, then, is that affliction makes a righteous person sensitive to his remaining sinfulness and helps him hate it and renounce it. Suffering opens the ear of the righteous (v. 10). The psalmist said the same thing in Psalm 119:71, “It was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes.” There are dimensions of godliness that the righteous can only learn through affliction.

So the new slant that Elihu gives is that the suffering of the righteous is not the fire of destruction but the fire that refines the gold of their goodness. For the righteous it is not punitive but curative.

The Saving Purpose of the Great Physician’s Knife

Posted: December 12, 2012 by Pam Larson in December, Devotionals/Commentaries, Job
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For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men while they slumber on their beds, then he opens the ears of men, and terrifies them with warnings, that he may turn man aside from his deed, and cut off pride from man; he keeps back his soul from the Pit, his life from perishing by the sword.

Man is also chastened with pain upon his bed, and with continual strife in his bones. —Job 33:14–19

John Piper comments on Job 33:

At least part of Elihu’s understanding of why the righteous suffer has to do with this residue of pride in the life of the righteous. We see the first explanation of his view in . He describes two ways God speaks to man: by his word and by suffering. These were the days before Scripture, so the word of God takes the form of visions and dreams….

Not to Punish but to Save

So Elihu puts the pain of sickness and visions of the night side by side as two ways that God speaks to man for his good. Verse 17 describes God’s purpose: “That he may turn man aside from his deed, and cut off pride from man, and keep back his soul from the Pit.”

In other words God’s purpose for the righteous in these dreams and in this sickness is not to punish but to save—to save from contemplated evil deeds and from pride and ultimately from death. Elihu does not picture God as an angry judge but as a Redeemer, a Savior, a Rescuer, a Doctor. The pain he causes is like the surgeon’s knife, not like the executioner’s whip.

Sticks and stones may break my bones…

Posted: December 6, 2012 by Pam Larson in December, Devotionals/Commentaries, Job
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sticks-and-stones

“…but words will never hurt me?” Really? Dr Riddlebarger says that the accusations made by Job’s friends may have hurt more than the sores on his skin. He comments on Job 29, our Bible reading for today:

Chapter 29 of Job is very poignant, given what Job once enjoyed in light of his current suffering. Job’s opening comments about the days in which he enjoyed God’s favor reiterate what was said of Job in the book’s prologue.

“Job continued his discourse: `How I long for the months gone by, for the days when God watched over me, when his lamp shone upon my head and by his light I walked through darkness! Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God’s intimate friendship blessed my house, when the Almighty was still with me and my children were around me, when my path was drenched with cream and the rock poured out for me streams of olive oil.”

We can imagine a nostalgic tone in Job’s voice and tears filling Job’s eyes as he looks back upon his life. He’s lost so much. His suffering is so great.

Given the fact that he now resides on the town dunghill and is an object of the scorn of all his neighbors, what follows beginning in verse 7 is especially moving.

“When I went to the gate of the city and took my seat in the public square, the young men saw me and stepped aside and the old men rose to their feet; the chief men refrained from speaking and covered their mouths with their hands; the voices of the nobles were hushed, and their tongues stuck to the roof of their mouths. Whoever heard me spoke well of me, and those who saw me commended me, because I rescued the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to assist him. The man who was dying blessed me; I made the widow’s heart sing.”

The ultimate humiliation is that children now laugh at Job and people are grossed out by the sight of him.

Job’s faith in the God of the promise was clearly manifest in his conduct. In verse 14, Job declares,

“I put on righteousness as my clothing; justice was my robe and my turban. I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy; I took up the case of the stranger. I broke the fangs of the wicked and snatched the victims from their teeth. . . . `Men listened to me expectantly, waiting in silence for my counsel. After I had spoken, they spoke no more; my words fell gently on their ears. They waited for me as for showers and drank in my words as the spring rain. When I smiled at them, they scarcely believed it; the light of my face was precious to them. I chose the way for them and sat as their chief; I dwelt as a king among his troops; I was like one who comforts mourners.”

Job had done none of the things his friends had implied or accused him of doing. He was a blameless and upright man, who feared the Lord and shunned evil. Everyone knew it. The accusations made by his friends, who were trying to stir his conscience so that Job would repent of these supposed “sins,” were nothing but cruel lies, and, no doubt, inflicted more pain than the open sores on his skin.

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