“How Can A Loving God Allow the Suffering of Good People?”
I Peter 4:12-19
This past week has been a time of suffering for many people in America. Evil hearts resulted in killing friends and family members in San Francisco and Sacramento. Evil hearts planned for months to strike at the heart of America in New York and Washington DC. Thousands lost their lives. This past week thousands in America have suffered for freedom in America.
Many of us have thought that terrorism of this magnitude would not happen in our lifetime. The visual pictures of airplanes flying into the World Trade Center is etched into our minds and caused our hearts to skip a beat. September 11th, 2001 will be remembered in all history books.
The question is on the minds and hearts of many: “How can A Loving God Allow the Suffering of Good People?”
Suffering. It’s not a pleasant subject to discuss, but a necessary one.
A dictionary defines suffering as the state of anguish or pain of one who suffers; the bearing of pain, injury or loss (The New International Webster’s Comprehensive Dictionary).
Suffering plagues our world. In its many forms it affects us physically, psychologically and emotionally. Whatever its manifestation, extended suffering can crush the body and spirit.
Suffering falls on the just and the unjust. It afflicts innocent victims. This uncomfortable fact makes it difficult for us to reconcile such obvious unfairness with the existence or fairness of a loving God.
What is the answer? Why is suffering so indiscriminate? Why isn’t it meted out only to those who deserve it? Why do the innocent suffer from actions and events over which they have no control and often cannot foresee?
Why doesn’t God stop suffering? Where is God in situations of tragedy? Doesn’t God care?
Only in God’s Word do we find answers to these questions.
I. Suffering Is Part of A Fallen World.
Sin and rebellion changed a world-like paradise into a world of evil and suffering. Jesus said that in this world there would be tribulation and suffering.
Suffering strikes rich and poor, religious and irreligious, small and great. In this life virtually everyone will experience it. Disease and health problems seem to strike most people at some time or other.
In centuries past common diseases caused immense suffering. But in spite of advances in medical science that have greatly lengthened the average life span, we know we will still die. Rather than having our lives cut short by the killer diseases of earlier years, now many of us will expire at an older age from such debilitating afflictions as cancer or heart disease. Many will lose their mental faculties long before their bodies wear out.
Many assume God angrily intervenes to punish us whenever we step out of line, when in reality He generally allows us to suffer the consequences of our own selfish, shortsighted behavior. Jeremiah 2:19: “Your wickedness will punish you; your backsliding will rebuke you. Consider then and realize how evil and bitter it is for you when you forsake the Lord your God and have no awe for me, declares the Lord the Lord Almighty.”
Most people fail to recognize that God doesn’t have to directly intervene every time we sin; the laws He set in motion are self-enforcing, bringing their own punishment when we break them.
We reap what we sow
The conclusion should be obvious. Much of the suffering is caused by wrong choices. The Bible offers guidance as to how we should live. Yet as far back as Adam and Eve people have repeatedly spurned God’s instruction and brought enormous pain and sorrow on themselves.
God reveals that suffering carries with it a noble purpose: It should help us to grow in brotherly love. “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ,” writes Paul (Galatians 6:2).
II. God Has A Purpose in Suffering
When our concern flows out toward others, suffering, as undesirable and painful as it is, can be a profitable experience. We learn the reality that “no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11, NIV).
Pain has an important purpose
A year ago eight of us from the Willow Vale Church visited Hong Kong and China on a mission trip. One of our side trips was to a Leprosy Village in China led by Free Methodist Missionary Nurse Ruth Winslow. Leprosy is a dreaded disease. The disease takes away pain wherever the disease is located. Without pain a people can burn their hand without knowing it.
Philip Yancey in his book, Where is God When It Hurts? Tells about the medical work of Dr. Brand. Dr. Brand worked for years treating leprosy patients in India and America. During his labors he arrived at an astonishing conclusion concerning the pathology of leprosy.
Leprosy victims suffer the curse of having their extremities—fingers, toes, feet and even nose and ears—deteriorate and waste away, but no one knew why. Before Dr. Brand’s research, doctors assumed lepers were cursed with “bad flesh.” Dr. Brand’s remarkable discovery was that the problem lies in leprosy bacilli, which attack the nerves of body parts, triggering a process that leads to the death of the nerves. When this occurs, a patient who incurs the slightest wound—even a bruise—to an afflicted area feels absolutely no pain. Consequently he continues to use the damaged body part. This repeated use aggravates the wound. Eventually the tissue becomes so damaged that the flesh actually dies and falls off.
Dr. Brand began treating the wounds of lepers by protecting them, sometimes with casts. The wounds would often heal and not suffer further damage. The protected flesh would become sound again, even though the leper did not regain sensation in the affected body part because the neural tissue had permanently deteriorated.
Dr. Brand concluded that pain is a gift from God that alerts us to the fact that something has gone wrong.
The doctor’s determination applies to most diseases, not just leprosy. When we hurt, we should respond to our body’s signals and take measures to relieve the pain and eliminate the underlying cause.
Don’t let trials overwhelm you.
You should not suffer if you can avoid it. But, when you cannot avoid it, you need to learn how to deal with suffering and, if necessary, accept it. If you do not learn to do this, your trials can lead to greater problems.
The Apostle Paul suffered from a physical infirmity. He prayed for deliverance and healing but God did not hear. Paul said: He was given the assurance from God, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9)
Most of the Psalms were born in difficulty. Most of the Epistles were written from prison. Most of the greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers of all time had to pass through the fire. John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress from jail. Florence Nightingale, too ill to move from her bed, reorganized the hospitals of England. Semi-paralyzed and under the constant menace of apoplexy, Louis Pasteur was tireless in his attack on disease. During the greater part of his life, American historian Francis Parkman suffered so acutely that he could not work for more than five minutes as a time. His eyesight was so wretched that he could scrawl only a few gigantic words on a manuscript, yet he contrived to write twenty magnificent volumes of history.
Can we make sense of human suffering? Do you believe that in every situation and circumstance God is love? In every situation God cannot act contrary to His Nature.
The Bible says that God is love.
God could have created a world without the possibility of evil. But to take away choice is to take away human freedom. To take way human freedom is to take away humanity. A world without evil and hate would be a world without love.
Real love for God and for one another involves a choice. Take away choice and you take away the possibility of love.
God’s purpose for your life goes beyond pain and suffering. God has a much larger view in mind. God’s primary purpose in this life is not comfort, but training and preparation for eternity. Through suffering we learn obedience.
Suffering can lead to repentance.
Every time we suffer our suffering contains the potential and opportunity for good. Suffering and grief that comes when a loved one dies can be a time of renewal of our faith in the Lord.
#When I was involved in a car accident when in High School the accident was a wake-up call to rededicate my life to Jesus.
Jesus Understands Suffering.
You might ask: “Why would God allow His own Son to suffer and die a cruel and violent death as a criminal when He had done nothing wrong. From a human standpoint Jesus didn’t need to die. Jesus said that he came to earth to “give his life a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45 The prophet Isaiah stated Christ’s mission: “He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)
Only in the Cross of Christ does suffering take on meaning
III. God’s Ultimate Victory – Suffering Will Cease
The Bible tells us that God allows suffering to serve a divine purpose. Christians know that their Savior, Jesus Christ, suffered and died for them and that they must follow in His steps, which include suffering (1 Peter 2:21). Jesus endured agony and died so God could forgive us of our sins and give us eternal life, during which we will reign with Christ (Revelation 5:10). Knowing this can enable us to better come to grips with life’s struggles.
“If we endure,” Paul reminds us, “we shall also reign with Him” (2 Timothy 2:12). Christ will return to earth to rule— and eventually bring an end to sadness and suffering.
The good news is that God has not given up on humankind. Just as He allowed Adam and Eve the freedom to choose, so He lets the nations and the nations’ inhabitants go their own way. He allows the world to suffer to teach us we cannot find lasting peace, security and contentment without Him.
We are learning the hard lesson that we cannot rightly govern ourselves apart from God and His laws. The Bible offers practical advice on virtually all aspects of life. Many of its principles reveal how to avoid—and to some extent relieve—suffering.
Dr. Brand tells how he prepares for the worst: “The best single thing I can do to prepare for pain is to surround myself with a loving community who will stand beside me when tragedy strikes” He notes that “suffering is only intolerable when nobody cares” (p. 257).
Learning to depend on God
We should realize that, although God allows trials, He is not indifferent to us when they come. God is a Father. Even more than a loving human father, He finds no joy in seeing His children in pain. How does He feel toward us at such times? “You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, because you are his personal concern” (1 Peter 5:7, The New Testament in Modern English). These words let us know that sometimes we must depend entirely on God for the strength to endure.
When we hurt, God wants us to come to Him. He promises He will help us when we do. Paul wrote that God comforts the downcast (2 Corinthians 7:6), but we must ask Him for that help. He promises that He will not allow us to be tested beyond our limits and will provide us either with the relief or the strength we need to endure (1 Corinthians 10:13). We need to take God at His word and go to Him with this promise, especially when we sense we are near our breaking point.
Will the picture change?
When Jesus Christ came to earth two millennia ago, He saw His share of misery. He witnessed the plight of outcast lepers, widows in need and people with debilitating mental disorders. He reacted with compassion to alleviate misery.
Jesus’ concern and compassion were evident when He wept openly as He approached Jerusalem for the final time (Luke 19:41-44). He could foresee the anguish that warfare would bring on the beloved city and its people in A.D. 70 when a Jewish rebellion would result in Roman armies laying siege to the city, with horrible consequences.
He proclaimed that part of His mission was “to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18). Such a time has not yet occurred for all mankind, but God promises He will bring an end to suffering in general during Christ’s millennial reign and will eventually banish it (Revelation 21:4).
Jesus Promises to be with you in times of suffering.
Before Jesus ascended into heaven he promised His disciples before his departure: Matthew 28:20 – “…And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Hebrews 13:5 …”God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
In low points of your life you may cry out, “Where is God?” Jesus is there sitting beside you in the lowest places of your lives. Are you broken? He was broken, like bread, for you. Are you despised? He was despised and rejected of men. Do you cry out that we can’t take any more? He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Do people betray you? He was sold out himself. Are your tender relationships broken? He too loved and was rejected. Do people turn from you? They hid their faces from him as from a leper.
Does Jesus descend into the depths of your despair? Yes He does. From the depths of a Nazi death camp, Corrie ten Boom wrote: “No matter how deep our darkness, he is deeper still.”
Suffering Is Part of A Fallen World.
God Has A Purpose in Suffering
God Will Have the Ultimate Victory and Suffering Will Cease
Commitment:
1. Thank God for the freedom’s we enjoy in America
2. Pray for the families suffering the loss of loved ones
3. Thank Jesus for his love and suffering on the cross of Calvary in your place. Thank Jesus that He died for you.
