What Good Can Come of This? - 2 Corinthians 1:3-11
Care Home and Hospital Service – February 2012
Read 2 Corinthians 1:3-11
Those words were written nearly 2000 years ago by a man named Paul. Paul was what we call an apostle and he was a man that God used to do great things during the years following Jesus’ death and resurrection. He was a man whom God worked through in a mighty way. But Paul was also a man who understood what it meant to suffer and to be in need. And we could hear that in his words. He talked a lot about suffering, and a lot about being comforted, during those times of suffering.
And he writes as one who knows those things firsthand. We just catch glimpse into his life as we read God’s word but we know that Paul knew hard times. At times he suffered from hunger and thirst, at others from the beatings and stonings and floggings he had received. At least once he had been battered and bruised and left for dead outside the city walls. He faced angry crowds and survived shipwrecks. He was imprisoned and chained. He had been abandoned by friends and despaired even of life at times. Paul is a man who understood what suffering means. But he’s also a man who never lost his hope in God despite all the things he endured.
Today we don’t have to look far to see that suffering still exists. There are earthquakes and floods, avalanches and accidents, wars and famines, homelessness and unemployment. There are sicknesses and diseases, shattered dreams and hopelessness. People are hurting. People are suffering. People are grieving. And maybe today you are one of them. One of those who is hurting, or grieving or despairing; suffering in some way. If that is you today, I want you to know that you are not alone. Suffering comes in different forms, to different people, but it comes to everyone of us at one time or another – often when it’s least expected.
Your pain, your trial, your suffering, is different than mine, just as mine is different from yours. And I can only speak to you from my own experience with trials. And if I were to share one with you it would be one that came upon me unexpectedly many years ago. It was a time in my life when I faced an uncertain future and when the doctors had no answers for me.
It had started with numbness, and then tremors and weakness, in my hands and feet and legs. Over a period of months it went from merely irritating to debilitating and was affecting my ability to do my job and to take care of my family. It got to the point that on some days I couldn’t hold my hand steady enough to even write my name. Then other parts of my body began to be effected. I had always had great eyesight but during this same time period I began to have troubles with my vision – so much so that I struggled to read anything smaller than those big neon “Exit” signs you see over doorways. One night I woke up out of a sound sleep to discover that I could not see anything out of one of my eyes.
After about half an hour the eyesight gradually returned but it had been a disturbing experience. I remember thinking to myself, “What on earth is happening to me? How bad is this thing going to get? Is it ever going to get better? Is this my life now?”
And I think those are pretty common questions that we ask when trials come our way. When something unpleasant comes into our lives the question on our minds is, “Why me? Why did this have to happen to me? Why did this have to happen to my family? Why did this have to happen now?” I think of a friend of mine who lost his sister and her husband in a car accident a few years ago. It was a single vehicle accident on a lonely road. Somehow they lost control of the car, went off a bridge and ended up upside down in the creek. For months the question that the family asked over and over was, “Why? Why did this have to happen? Why did it have to happen to them?” We long for an answer to that question, don’t we? And I imagine you have probably asked it yourself at some point in your life, maybe it’s a question you’re even asking yourself now, “Why me God? Why has this suffering, or this trial, or this sickness, or this disease, - why has it come into my life?”
We long for answer to that question but the truth is that even if we did get it, it wouldn’t satisfy the hurt we feel. It wouldn’t take away the pain. It wouldn’t change our circumstances. Makes me think of a man named Job whose story we find in the pages of the Bible. I call it a story but it’s not a story in the sense of a fairy tale. It’s more than that. It’s the testimony of events that actually happened to a man who actually lived and walked the earth as we do. And his story is troubling because his life is filled with great joy but also with great sorrow – much as our lives are apt to be.
Now Job was a very wealthy man. He had a good life. People looked up to him, respected him. He had worked hard and God had blessed him with many things that were important in his culture – he had oxen and camels and sheep and great wealth. He had ten children that he just adored and a wife who loved him. He was healthy. He had everything in life that a man could want, and then, through no fault of his own, he lost it all. In less than 24 hours all his livestock were stolen or destroyed, his workers put to death, and all ten of his children killed as the building they were in collapsed. This man who one moment had everything the heart desires – the next moment had nothing but shattered dreams and empty memories.
I don’t know about you - you might have had your own share of grief and sorrow to carry in this life, but for myself I can’t imagine how someone would be able to bear so much grief and sorrow all at once. I can’t begin to imagine how we might react if something like that were to happen to us. But we know how Job reacted. He wept and he cried out to God and He praised Him. Job said those words you might have heard before: “The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised.” Some people might have cursed God in that day, some might have turned away from Him – people do that all the time today. Hardship comes into their lives and they turn their backs on God – they turn away from God when they need Him the most. But not Job. In the midst of his hurt and his pain and his broken dreams he still honored God.
And Job asked that question just like we do, “Why God? Why did this happen?” But Job never got an answer. He was never told. He was left to wonder. We know – because the Bible tells us – that Satan was testing him to make him break and turn from God. But Job never knew what was behind the suffering he faced in his life. And sometimes we will never know the answer either. Why do bad things happen to good people? Well, there is no easy answer to that question, is there?
And as much as we’d like to have one, we really don’t need the answer to the question of “why” we might be going through a difficult time in our lives. What we need to do is to meet with Jesus in the midst of our suffering – to turn the hurts and the disappointments and shattered dreams over to Him – so that He can bring something good out of them. That’s what the Bible says – that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him. And that’s challenging – because it doesn’t say that God works only through good things for the good of those who love Him but the inspired, holy word of God says that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him. And what that means is this: No matter what you are facing, no matter what heartache or hurt or trial has entered your life, God can bring good out of it. He can bring life from death and hope from despair.
Let me give you an example from the pages of the Bible, the gospel of Mark.
Then a leader of the local synagogue, whose name was Jairus, arrived. When he saw Jesus, he fell at his feet, pleading fervently with him. “My little daughter is dying,” he said. “Please come and lay your hands on her; heal her so she can live.” Jesus went with him, and all the people followed, crowding around him. Mark 5:22-24
So there’s the hurt, there’s the need, there’s the suffering. Jairus’ little girl is dying and there is nothing he can do for her. But there’s hope because he’s meeting with Jesus and Jesus is going to come to his house. Maybe Jesus can make her well. But on the way something else happens.
A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had been healed of her terrible condition. Mark 5:25-29
So there’s another hurt, another need. This woman has been bleeding for 12 years. The doctors haven’t been able to help her – in fact she had just gotten worse. She was living without hope. She was hurting and desperate and needy. She was suffering. But she’d heard about Jesus. She’d heard that Jesus came to bind up the broken hearted. She’d heard that He came to heal the sick, to make the lame to walk again, to make the deaf to hear and the blind to see. He came to turn the mourning of sorrow into the joy of life. He came to restore hope to the hopeless and joy to those who grieve. He came to comfort the hurting and to console the brokenhearted. This is what she’d heard and so she comes to Jesus in her time of need and thinks to herself, “If I just touch his cloak I will be made well!” And she does, and she is! She’s healed. Her life has changed but it’s going to change even more because before she can sneak away Jesus turns to the crowd and asks, “Who touched me? Who reached out and grabbed my cloak?”
And she confesses to Him. She pours out her heart and tells Jesus her whole story. And right there, in the midst of her hurt and her need and her suffering, Jesus meets with her and heals not just her body - but her heart and her soul. She leaves there as a new woman knowing that Jesus has the power over hurt and pain and sickness and despair.
But while all this is taking place tragedy strikes. Jairus’ daughter dies. Jesus delayed too long in talking with this woman and a little girl has died. Jarius’ heart is broken – the light of his life is gone. But Jesus has other plans. He goes to where the little girl lies, surrounded by the wailing and the weeping of the family members. He tells them all to go but her parents and a few of His followers. And then He does something wonderful – He brings the little girl back to life! She is restored to her family and there is weeping and rejoicing and celebrating and Jairus sees that Jesus not only has power over sickness and hurt and pain and despair but also over hopelessness and death itself.
Friends, in the midst of our suffering we don’t really need an answer to the question “why?” – what we need is to meet with Jesus because He is the only true source of comfort and hope. I have no idea what you might be facing today. No idea what struggle you might have in your life. No idea what hurt or pain or sorrow you bear. But God does. And Jesus wants to meet with you in the midst of your darkest hours to bring light and life and to restore hope. In Revelation 3:20 Jesus says, “I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me.” Just another way of saying – that if we open our lives to Him He will come in and walk with us that we might know the comfort and the peace, and the hope, and the help, that He alone can bring.
See, the Bible tells us that in our suffering God longs to comfort us. That word comfort means “to come alongside and help.” In your time of greatest need, God wants to comfort you – to help you – to strengthen you – to sustain you – to walk by your side and help you. A lot of people never find hope or comfort or help in the midst of pain and suffering and heartache because they never let Jesus in. We need to be willing, like Jairus, or like the woman who had been bleeding, to seek Jesus out and open our lives to Him. I don’t know about you but I’m comforted by the words of Psalm 23 where it says “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for YOU are with me.” No matter what we might face the promise of God is to be with those who turn to Him. And so as we close this afternoon, I just want to pray for you, that, if you haven’t already, that you would open your life to Jesus that you might be open to the comfort, the help, the healing of body, soul and spirit that He has in store for you who suffer.
Let’s pray …
