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"What Good is God?"
March 7, 2004 The Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson
Old John was catching more fish than anybody. Everybody else who went out only caught a few. John would bring back whole coolers full of fish. One day one of his friends, who happened to be a game warden, went fishing with John to find out what was going on. When they got out and they were in the middle of the lake he asked John, "How do you do it, John? How are you catching all these fish?" Well, John smiled a little bit, got a little box, opened it up, pulled out some dynamite, lit it, threw it out in the lake, and it wasn't long until it exploded. BOOM! A big plume of water came up. Just a little while later, some stunned fish came to the top. John got out his net and began scooping them up. Well, the game warden was horrified. He said, "John, I'm going to throw the book at you! I'm going to have you arrested!" and on and on he went. Well, John smiled again, got another stick of dynamite, lit it, threw it in the game warden's lap, and said, "Are you going to keep talking, or are you going to fish?"
We all have decisions to make--sometimes life and death decisions. And such is the decision Jesus had to make. The Scripture I want to read to you today is the story of the garden of Gethsemane. But the difference is that this decision was one decision Jesus knew was coming because He came to do what He was going to do: to suffer and to die. But as this choice appeared before Him, He grew fearful, like any human being. He didn't want to suffer. And He asked God if there wasn't another way.
Let me read to you the Scripture I have chosen, first from Isaiah--the next part after what we had last week--and then from Luke chapter 22. Listen carefully to God's Word.
Yet it was the Lord's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the Lord makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand. After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place, he said to them, "Pray that you will not fall into temptation." He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. When he rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, he found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. "Why are you sleeping?" he asked them. "Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation." While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and a man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus asked him, "Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?" When Jesus' followers saw what was going to happen, they said, "Lord, should we strike with our swords?" And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. But Jesus answered, "No more of this!" And he touched the man's ear and healed him. Then Jesus said to the chief priest, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders who had come for him, "Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come with swords and clubs? Every day I was with you in the temple courts, and you did not lay a hand on me. But this is your hour--when darkness reigns."
This is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
"It's not that I don't believe in God; it's just that I don't know what good He is any more." These are the words spoken by a friend of Phil Yancey, a noted author. And this man who spoke these words is himself a committed Christian--in fact, he has his own radio show in which he answers questions from people in the audience. But one of the questions that he ran up against that he could not answer for himself was this question of suffering, especially when he himself suffered. Because the reason he said this thing was he came down with a chronic illness and his prayers seemingly went unanswered--for God to help him, to heal him, to do something. And he came to wonder what good God was.
I sometimes wonder if Jesus had these thoughts (but probably not). But certainly He was faced with incredible suffering, faced an amazing thing. He knew what was going to happen to Him, and it made Him afraid. And so He begged God to help and, seemingly, God just sat there and said, "No."
I believe that suffering is a difficult subject. Sometimes preachers are told, "Don't deal with some of these hard things, like suffering. Or at least tread lightly." And yet, I think it's something on our minds. And what's amazing to me right now is that a movie which is entirely about suffering is going to be the biggest grossing movie that has ever been.
What do we do about suffering in this world, and especially in our lives? I think the story of the garden of Gethsemane has some things to tell us about it. Indeed, the whole Scripture talks about it. What are some of these things? I think the first thing we see in this particular story is that in God's economy of things, the innocent do suffer. A book was written many years ago asking the question, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? written by a rabbi. And, frankly, I don't recommend that book for Christians, though it has been recommended by many Christian pastors. And the reason is this: Because his answer is very troubling. His answer is that God cannot help it! His answer is that God loves you, cries with you when you hurt, but He can't do one thing about it. He's powerless.
And, frankly, I would rather believe in a God that I know could do something about it and doesn't than one that I thought couldn't. Because if He can't, what guarantee is there at all that suffering will ever end, that God is going to win in the end? There is none.
So we have a mystery to deal with, that we have to live with: that in the economy of God, God allows suffering even though He could stop it. Why does God do this? We don't know the total answer to that, but we do know some things. We know that God has given us an awesome and yet horrible gift. It is called freedom of choice. And that simply means that you and I yearly, daily, hourly, minute by minute, can choose God or not. We can curse God or love God. We can do what God wants us to do or we can reject it. And God allows that. And because God allows that, the world is a dangerous place indeed. In the economy of God's world, the innocent suffer many times.
The other thing to realize is that suffering is necessary. Now, I want you to hear this, but I want you to be very careful with it. Suffering and pain are necessary. There's a doctor named Paul Brand who was a Christian doctor. He became the first man to study leprosy, and he found something out very interesting. The popular conception of leprosy--and you know what that is if you watch movies and that sort of thing. You see it on Ben Hur and other biblical movies. We see lepers and they usually are just horrible-looking people because their skin is ravaged, and they are missing fingers and that sort of thing. And in biblical times when a leper came, they thought that this disease literally ate the flesh away. But that's not what leprosy does. Leprosy deadens the nerves in the extremities, as Paul Brand found out, so that a leper literally doesn't feel it when he gets hurt. When that person burns their hand on a stove, they don't feel it, and so they may burn it again. He met a man who literally had a nail go through his hand, casually took it and pulled it out--didn't feel a thing!
So what happens in our lives when we can't feel pain? We continually bump up against things, don't we? Scratches, and burns and things that hurt us. And we go "Ow!" and we don't do it again. But a leper doesn't know and their bodies literally get worn away because they feel no pain. Pain is a good thing. It's God's gift to us.
It's God's gift to us in another way as well because, let's face it. Let's be honest today. You and I very rarely do anything we don't have to do. Isn't that right? Unless the pain gets enough to do it. That's true a lot of times, isn't it? We will continue eating until we get too big until we finally diet. We will continue to have bad relationships until the pain gets too bad. We will either divorce or do something about it. We will continue to be sick until, finally, when the pain gets too bad, we will finally go to the doctor . . . guys? . . . and do something about it. (You women know what I'm talking about, don't you?) Our children sometimes won't do anything with their room until the pain gets too bad (or the dirt gets too high). That's the theory of training in the Army. They use pain to reinforce their teaching. It's not always the best teaching, but that's what they do. C. S. Lewis once said that "Pain is God's megaphone to a deaf world." And it teaches us many things. It teaches us that the world is set up so that if you do certain things, certain consequences are going to happen and you will feel pain. In my own life I didn't come to Christ until the pain got so bad in many ways, until I finally turned to Him and said, "I give up! I'm yours." That was my conversion experience. It was not, "Oh, I accept you, you wonderful God." I said, "I'm tired of you chasing me down!" In some ways He did. I'm glad.
And pain is necessary to be reconciled with God as well. Some of us probably know this illustration, but the fact is Jesus is sitting there in the garden going, "Why, Lord? Why do I have to do this? Is there not another way?" And a lot of us think, "Well, why couldn't God just kind of wave His hand and say, 'OK. Everybody's forgiven.' " Well, the answer lies in the character of God Himself, who is loving, but also holy.
And so the illustration that is often said is, pretend this hand [palm up] is me. And God sees me and loves me, but I have a problem. I have so many things I've done and thought wrongly. And if it's me, this book would be a lot thicker, but if you pretended all the things I've done and said and thought that were wrong were in this book [places book on top of hand]. God sees me, but all this is between me and Him. And so Jesus had to die because God, as Isaiah says, God laid our sins on Him [removed book from hand representing himself and placed book on hand representing Jesus]. Mysteriously, but in reality, pain was necessary.
But, you know, it's really not the fact that we suffer that's the problem. It's how we react to it. If I were to ask everyone in this room to raise your hand and ask you if you have suffered or not in this life, all of us would raise our hands. At least once we have suffered. But some of us continually suffer, because it means you're alive. But it's not the fact that we suffer. It's how we react to it.
And in this story we see the primary reaction of all of us to suffering and pain. Psychologists call it "fight or flight." And what do the disciples do when the soldiers showed up? They got out their swords. "OK, Lord, is it time to fight now?" Someone--some say Peter--cut off the ear of one of the servants. Or, there's flight. You know, this is one of the most heart-wrenching stories and scenes in the Bible. Jesus is surrounded by people He has been with, ministered to, loved, fed, and when the chips are down, like rabbits they became and they disappeared in the mist. I think the movie does a good job of showing that, by the way, if you haven't seen it. We find Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, and when the soldiers come, whoosh, they all leave, scared for their lives. And we do that, too.
Some of us don't like to deal with hard things. Some of us shut up and say nothing . . . guys, we're good at that. I think women talk about it a lot easier than men do. We just shut up and don't say a thing. I remember--and you'll hear me tell about this over the years many times. Several years ago I got kind of a wild idea and I wanted to go to Airborne School in the Army. I wanted to go jump out of perfectly good airplanes, so I did. And the first jump--the first day, we were on this C-141, crammed in like sardines, and up we went. Well, the wind was wrong, or something was bad, and they wouldn't let us out. So around, and around the field we went. And you should have seen the terror in that airplane. Fear was a friend that day. It was a friend to me, but I was the chaplain! I wasn't supposed to show it, but I did. In the midst of all that, I ran. I couldn't go anywhere, but I ran. You know what I did? I went to sleep! I literally went to sleep. I couldn't take it, so I went to sleep. In the end, I woke up and I was better for it and wound up making the jump. But we run away, don't we?
And the disciples did. What does God ask us to do in the midst of facing hard things? Well, I think Jesus is a good example for us, to face it with courage, and trust, and "Thy will be done." And I'm not talking about just giving up and saying, "OK, your will be done." It's more than that. And it's a trust based on experience. Because another reason we suffer in our lives is because God is teaching us again, and again, and again that He is trustworthy. You see, Oswald Chambers said that much sin is propagated in the world by the suspicion that God is not good. Did you hear that? We suspect, in the end, that God is not good, and is not going to take care of us, and we take care of ourselves. We see that in the garden of Adam and Eve, don't we? Satan says, "Did God really say He's not going to let you eat of that fruit? Boy, God's a bad guy, isn't He?" And so it happens in our own lives. We're supposed to trust God, but in the end we try to trust ourselves, and it just doesn't work.
So what good is God? Well, the answer to all of this is that God is good, and we must believe it even when the appearance of it doesn't look like it. A few weeks ago John preached a wonderful sermon on Psalm 23, where David declares that "The Lord is my Shepherd." I often wonder about David and how he wrote his psalms. David has an interesting story. It was declared that he was going to be king at age 15, but he wasn't made king for 15 years. He was 30. And he spent most of those 15 years running for his life from another king who didn't like the idea that he was going to get replaced. His name was King Saul. Saul chased him all around the desert, and David had to be wondering, "OK, God. What's going on?" Until, finally, God had taught him--after scrape after scrape--that I am your Shepherd. And so David can say, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. . ." Why? ". . . because thou art with me." And in the end, that's our answer.
Now, that's not the answer for every situation we're in, or why particular people suffer particular things, why things happen. But the answer that God gives us--which has to be enough--is that "I am good and I am with you." "I am good and I am with you. Trust me because I will prove it to you again and again."
And that, my friends, is what we're left with. And it's a good thing. It's a powerful thing. God consistently does not give us all the answers. Truly. We have enough answers, but we don't have all of them. What we do have is Him, and He is enough. So as we go through this Easter time, it's good to reflect on the suffering of Christ and what it means. It's good to reflect on the deep issues of life, and death, and resurrection and suffering. And I would encourage you to think about these things. They're hard to think about, but think about them. Think about them in terms of the love of God, and what God has done and will do, and your relationship with Him.
Are you a person who is shaking your fist at God because of something that's going on in your life right now? Or have you simply run away and don't want to think about it? Let me encourage you to have courage, a courage based on who God is, and His strength, and His love, and who He is. He is our God and loves you so much. And truly there is nothing you can do about it, because He loves you in Jesus Christ. In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Let us pray together. Our God, we come before you with many questions on our hearts and minds. We ask you to help us learn, through experience and through the Scriptures, that you are trustworthy, that you are with us, and you will bring us through to the very end because you are God and you will win and are winning. Give us strength and courage. Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson Senior Pastor Faith Presbyterian Church Minnetonka, Minnesota
[Transcribed from an audiotape of the 9:00 a.m. worship service on March 7, 2004.] |
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