A Pain Free Paradise Series

If you are rich enough, you can even enjoy your own funeral. Colorado farmer Jim Gernhart

proved this over and over. It all began in 1951 when he decided to rehearse his own funeral. He

rented the Armory in Burlington, Colorado, hired a pastor, and had a lavish display of flowers and a

good meal for 1,000 mourners. It cost him over 15,000 dollars for this mock funeral. But he so

enjoyed it that for the next 22 years he had an annual funeral until he died at age 97. He earned the

nickname, the living corpse. This is certainly covering the theme-prepare to meet thy God-to an extreme.

For most people, even the rich, this would be a pain rather than a pleasure, to go through 23

rehearsals for your own funeral. But the story does reveal the complexity of dealing with the whole

issue of pain and pleasure. God tells us in Rev. 21:4 that there will be no pain in heaven. This is

certainly among the greatest hopes that the mind of any man or woman can hold. But it is a

challenge to the mind to deal with all the implications of this one promise of God. It raises many

profound questions like: 1. If pain is done away with, does this mean pain is evil in itself? 2. If

there is no pain in heaven, does this mean all the saints will love and enjoy the same things, and the

diversity of time will be eliminated? Right now it is a pain for many to sit through a symphony,

while others consider it one of their highest pleasures. Some Christians enjoy certain types of food

which others find distasteful. Diversity covers many areas of life. Will all this be gone in heaven,

and all Christians be alike?

Pain and pleasure are subjects that every human experiences, but they do not necessarily do a lot

of thinking about them. I want to challenge you to do so, for they are Biblical subjects and subjects

that are relevant to every life. The first thing I want to consider is-

I. THE PARADOX OF PAIN.

Pain is both a burden and a blessing. We don't have to spend much time establishing the negative

side, for all of us have had pain that was pure agony, and with no value of which we are aware. If

we go back to the earliest records we have of human writing, we go back to the cuneiform writing on

clay tablets from Nippur, and we read this prayer of the daughter of the king of Babylon: "Pain has

seized my body. May God tear this pain out." The study of man is the study of how to triumph over

pain.

Pain entered this world through sin. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God they turned a paradise

of pleasure into a place of pain, for God's judgment was that Eve would have increase pain in

childbirth, and Adam would have to suffer in painful toil to produce food from the cursed land. Pain

was the beginning of the end of paradise, and all through the Bible and history we see the damage

that pain does. Find one man or woman in the Bible who did not suffer negative pain. It is so

universal that it goes even one step beyond sin. When we talk of sin there is always one

exception-the Lord Jesus. But when we talk of pain He is no longer an exception, but rather, a

prime example of the curse of pain. He suffered the very pains of hell, as well as the pain of human

rejection and cruelty.

You cannot study any life in history where pain has not played its evil role. Columbus had his

painful attacks of gout. Luther and Calvin both had such migraine headaches they could scarcely

speak. Napoleon's gastric problem made him write, "The pain cuts like a knife."

Beethoven suffered horribly from gull stone colic. Moliere had such pain while performing his own

play that he died hours later. Maupassant inhaled ether during his attacks of headache.

The list could go on endlessly, for there are no famous people who have escaped the curse of

pain. But the paradox is, pain can also be a blessing, and this too is universal. The pain of

childbirth is negative, yet none of us would be here, and none of us would have the joy of children

and grandchildren without this pain. The very blessings of life, love, and family, come to us by

means of the painful route of childbirth.

Pain is also the route by which we grow. We call them growing pains. It is the pain of stretching

the muscles that makes them better muscles. It is by the pain of exercise that we become stronger