Saints and Suffering
II Chronicles 31:20-21, 32:1
He was a man of justice. He stood for right and proclaimed the truth to his people. He restored the true of worship of God. He saw to it that the nation obeyed the laws of God’s Word. He did all these things with his whole heart. Of all the leaders of the earth through entire world history, Hezekiah was one of the most righteous. Hezekiah pleased God and God blessed his reign. After all that Hezekiah had done to turn the nation of Israel back to God, suddenly tragedy struck.
A horde of soldiers under the evil King Sennacherib flooded the land. -- Why did God allow this to happen? Look at all the good Hezekiah had done. He didn’t deserve this! He was all out for the Lord. Why had this plague of enemy soldiers swept over his land?
The NIV translates this first verse of chapter 32 this way, “After all that Hezekiah had so faithfully done, Sennacherib king of Assyria came and invaded Judah.” Why? Why after Hezekiah had been so faithful to God did he now see this terrible invasion coming his way. Hezekiah’s quandary brings us to the question, “Why do the righteous suffer?”
On February 15, 1947 Glenn Chambers boarded a plane bound for Quito, Ecuador to begin his ministry in missionary broadcasting. But he never arrived. In a horrible moment, the plane carrying Chambers crashed into a mountain peak and spiraled downward. Later it was learned that before leaving the Miami airport, Chambers wanted to write his mother a letter. All he could find for stationery was a page of advertising on which was written the single word "WHY?" Around that word he hastily scribbled a final note. After Chambers’ mother learned of her son’s death, his letter arrived. She opened the envelope, took out the paper, and unfolded it. As she opened this last letter from her son which was a final voice from the dead, staring her in the face was this word, "WHY?"
We are all confronted with the question, “Why?” Why do good people suffer? Why does a good God allow pain, difficulty, hardship, tribulation, sorrow, depression, misfortune, disease, and even death to come our way?
From the example of King Hezekiah we begin to understand the answer to that question. Why does God allow saints to suffer? First, that we might bond together in unity.
Read verses 2-4 with me.
In the midst of an extremely difficult situation, the people of Jerusalem unified together in order to stop up the waters of the fountains outside the city. They were determined to leave no water available for the enemy.
I believe that there is an important lesson here. God uses times of great suffering and difficulty to bring his people together. God wants to unify us so that the enemy has no opportunity to destroy us spiritually, so He uses times of suffering to draw us together.
In 2002, Pastor Brian Line and his family were on the way home from a vacation to visit family in Kansas. Sister Rhoda Line, his wife, was driving. She fell asleep at the wheel. The vehicle drifted across the interstate to the median where it began to roll. It rolled again and again. When the SUV came to a stop. Pastor Brian Line, miraculously unhurt, climbed out of the vehicle and found his sons quietly sitting by the side of the road. His daughters were crying in the vehicle but they were not hurt. Pastor Brian Line discovered his wife unconscious. She had suffered a severe head injury. Paramedics rushed her to the hospital. She was near death.
When Pastor Brian Line’s church heard of the accident, they gathered for prayer. They unified in voice that God would heal their pastor’s wife. God, in His mercy, did spare her. Except for a hearing problem she is well today.
Something miraculous took place during the time of that accident. The people of the church were brought together like never before. Wayne Asbury, who attended the church during that time, later said, “What really brought us together as a church was that accident.” God can use incredible suffering to bring His people together. The Devil meant it for evil but God used it for good.
Second, suffering comes the way of the saints, so that they might repair the essentials of life which they have ignored. Let’s read verse 5. “Also he strengthened himself, and built up all the wall that was broken, and raised it up to the towers, and another wall without and repaired Millo in the city of David and made darts and shields in abundance.”
The wall, which had been broken down by previous battles, was now repaired. God uses tribulations that we might repair that which is broken.
A wall was the basic defense of a city. It was a great priority for any ancient people to have a wall around their city. It served as strength. It served as defense. It served to bring order to the city. It was an essential. But Jerusalem had ignored an essential part of their city, the wall, up until this invasion by Sennacherib.
In a time of crises, in a time of suffering, the essentials become important. We determine to repair in our lives those things, which are most crucial and of highest value. We learn that material things, are much less important than our relationship to God, our relationship to our family, our relationship to friends. When pain and suffering comes our way, when the tragedies of life occur, it jolts us into realizing what really matters in life.
David Watson was a minister in England who did not have long to live. He was dying of cancer. He said, “It’s sometimes only through suffering that we begin to listen to God. Our natural pride and self-confidence have to be stripped painfully away and we become aware for the first time of our own needs. Through the unexpected diagnosis of cancer I was forced to consider carefully my priorities in life and to make some necessary adjustments. I still do not know why God allowed it, nor does it bother me. But, I am beginning to hear what God is saying, and this has been enormously helpful to me."
Yes, pain and suffering lead us to repair those crucial things which have been forgotten. A dying man or woman suddenly realizes that all the temporary material things that they lived for were small and insignificant. He or she now realizes that most of all they need to repair their relationship with God and their fellow man. Yes, suffering, leads the saints to reprioritize their lives so that the forgotten, broken walls are repaired.
Third, God uses suffering to raise up spiritual leaders. Read the first part of verse six with me. “And he set captains of war over the people…” In the middle of the greatest crises Hezekiah’s Jerusalem had known, suddenly a host of captains were raised up to take leadership in the crises.
Victor and Mildred Goertzel studied over 400 famous and exceptionally gifted people. They spent years attempting to understand what produced such greatness, what common thread might run through all of these outstanding people’s lives. Surprisingly, the most outstanding fact was that virtually all of them, 392, had to overcome very difficult obstacles in order to become who they were.
God uses trials and tribulations to raise up spiritual leaders. On a wall in his bedroom Charles Spurgeon had a plaque with Isaiah 48:10 on it: "I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." Charles Spurgeon wrote, "God’s choice makes chosen men choice men... We are chosen, not in the palace, but in the furnace. In the furnace, beauty is marred, fashion is destroyed, strength is melted, glory is consumed; yet here eternal love reveals its secrets, and declares its choice."
Do you wonder what God is doing in the midst of our pains and sufferings? He is raising up spiritual people to serve as leaders in a world where few people step up to lead the way to God.
Finally, God uses suffering so that His people learn to trust Him not themselves. Read verses 7-8 with me. “Be strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude that is with him: for there be more with us than with him: With him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the Lord our God to help us, and to fight our battles.”
The people of Jerusalem from the poorest man to King Hezekiah himself, realized that there was no hope without the Lord to help them. King Hezekiah shouted to the people of Jerusalem, “With us is the Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles.” King Hezekiah and all Jerusalem realized they needed God to fight their battle. Yes, God uses suffering so that His people learn to trust Him instead of themselves. He uses suffering to get His people deeply rooted in Him.
Parnell Bailey visited an orange grove where an irrigation pump had broken down. The season was unusually dry and some of the trees were beginning to die for lack of water. The man giving the tour then took Bailey to his own orchard where irrigation was used sparingly. "These trees could go without rain for another 2 weeks," he said. "You see, when they were young, I frequently kept water from them. This hardship caused them to send their roots deeper into the soil in search of moisture. Now mine are the deepest-rooted trees in the area. While others are being scorched by the sun, these are finding moisture at a greater depth."
Suffering causes us to dig deep. We no longer satisfy ourselves with some kind of shallow spirituality. We are now ready to go deep with God. We need real consolation. Help is our desperate need. Pain and suffering cause us to stop trusting in ourselves and go deep with God.
Do you wonder why God has allowed this thing in your life? He wants to use it to get you deeply rooted in Him.
B.M. Launderville wrote, "The vine clings to the oak during the fiercest of storms. Although the violence of nature may uproot the oak, twining tendrils still cling to it. If the vine is on the side opposite the wind, the great oak is its protection; if it is on the exposed side, the tempest only presses it closer to the trunk. In some of the storms of life, God intervenes and shelters us; while in others He allows us to be exposed, so that we will be pressed more closely to Him."
Yes, suffering causes us to go deep with Jesus Christ. He alone is our ultimate consolation. He is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He was tempted in all manner just as us, and He is familiar with suffering. We don’t serve some cold and forbidding God, but one who is kind and compassionate and calls us to put our trust in Him in our hour of pain.
John Stott wrote, “I could never believe in God, if it were not for the cross… In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering.”
Yes, we all wonder why suffering comes the way of the saints. Nevertheless, we can confidently put our trust in Jesus knowing that He has entered our suffering.
As we look at the example of Hezekiah, we see that God transforms the curse of suffering in four wonderful ways. First, God uses suffering to bind His people together in unity. Second, God uses suffering so His people will repair the essentials. Third, He uses suffering, so He can raise up deeply spiritual leaders. Fourth, God uses suffering to teach us to rely upon Him, the Man sorrows acquainted with grief.
The cry of man’s anguish went up to God,
“Lord take away pain:
The shadow that darkens the world Thou hast made,
The close-coiling chain
That strangles the heart, the burden that weighs
On the wings that would soar,
Lord, take away pain from the world Thou hast made,
That it love Thee more.”
Then answered the Lord to the cry of His world:
“Shall I take away pain,
And with it the power of the soul to endure,
Made strong by the strain?
Shall I take away pity, that knits heart to heart
And sacrifice high?
Will ye lose all your heroes that lift from the fire
White brows to the sky?
Shall I take away love that redeems with a price
And smiles at its loss?
Can ye spare from your lives that would climb unto Me
The Christ on His cross?”
My child, remember when you in pain are ready for self-pity,
I am fitting you as a crown jewel for that celestial city.
