Suffering: A Divine Vocation - Surprised by Suffering with R.C. Sproul

0:01 There's a somewhat lesser known work of Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick and Billy Budd and a host of South Sea adventure stories. In one of his lesser known works, Melville makes this statement. He says, until we learn that one grief outweighs a thousand joys, that we will never understand what Christianity is trying to make us. Now, when Melville makes that statement, I don't think that he's simply being morbid or pessimistic, but he is echoing a sentiment that we find in Scripture itself. For example, the wisdom literature of the Old Testament declares that it is better to go to the house of mourning than to spend our time with fools.

0:59 That's just one more case in point where we see how closely related the God of Scripture is to the reality of suffering and of pain. And then in our last segment, the first segment together, I mentioned this word, vocation. And usually when we use this word vocation, we're referring to our career or to our life's work. Whenever I meet someone the first time, I ask them what their name is and where they live and then inevitably I'll say, what do you do? I'm inquiring about your vocation. We have vocational tests. We have vocational schools. So this word is a very important part of our vocabulary, but its root meaning, its classical meaning is taken from the Latin word that means to call.

1:59 And the idea earlier on in our history when we understood that God calls people into various tasks and various occupations, He doesn't just call people into the ordained ministry, the clergy and so on, but He calls people to be physicians, He calls people to be involved in jurisprudence, He calls people into productive enterprises of business and so on, that this idea of vocation has to do with the fact that we are confident that as the Lord of history and as the Lord of all of life, God places His call upon people to perform certain tasks. But we don't usually think of suffering or of dying. As a vocation. I haven't seen any vocational schools that give a diploma in suffering or a place where you can go and study how to die.

2:58 And yet if I understand what Scripture is teaching about the nature of suffering and about the nature of death, I think that it is safe for us to see that there are times in a person's life where the call of God upon that person may not be to banking or to being a doctor or to being a minister or whatever, but the call of God on the person's life for that portion of their life is to suffer. and perhaps even to die. Now, as I said earlier, that may sound far out to you and radical. So what I'd like to do in the rest of this segment is to explore together, just to rehearse some things that I'm sure everybody here is aware of to some degree, to show you something of the history of God's activity with people by looking again at persons whom we know God called to suffer.

4:02 Any time we even talk about suffering, usually the first name that comes to mind from biblical history is the name of, and I know this is going to look funny up here underneath this word vocation, it's the name Job, not job, although there's a link between vocation and jobs. I'm talking about vocation and Job. You know the story of Job, how that there's a drama that is unfolding in heaven where Satan reports to the divine architect of heaven and earth and he says he's been going to and fro all over all of the earth and examining the creation. He sort of comes back in gleeful delight at what he's discovered down here on this planet, and he's mocking God saying, hey, all these people down here, they're in my pocket, they're doing what I want them to do, nobody's listening to you, nobody's paying any attention to your laws and so on. God said, wait a minute, have you considered my servant Job?

5:00 The saint says, Sure, I've considered Job. I've seen him. He obeys you. He's upright. He's righteous. Stainless Job, we call him. He said, But why shouldn't he serve you? Does Job serve God for nothing? Look at what you've done. You've prospered him. You've put a hedge around him. You've given everything that a man could ever want. He said, Let me at him. Let me inflict pain on his life and we'll see how long he's faithful to you." Well, you know the story of all of the afflictions that come upon Job. He loses his property. He experiences financial ruin. Then his family is taken from him one by one, and then he is afflicted with incurable diseases that are excruciatingly painful.

6:07 And in the midst of this experience, Job is tempted to curse God. In fact, in the middle of his suffering even his wife comes and suggests that if he wants relief from his pain that what he ought to do is shake his fist into heaven and scream at God, and his wife says, curse God and die. I was in Los Angeles a couple of years ago, and out in Anaheim, California, there are two tourist attractions that provokes everybody's interest. One, of course, is Disneyland, and The other one is what's called the Crystal Cathedral, this church that's famous for being on television and so on, and you can see it for miles and miles.

7:03 It's made of glass and so. I had the opportunity to go and visit the Crystal Cathedral, and I was given a tour of the outer grounds of this church. And what I noticed, not so much with the opulent edifice itself, but some of the artwork that adorned the outside of this church. And as I came into one of the gardens of the Crystal Cathedral, I was told by the person who was guiding us that they had just unveiled a new piece of artwork that had been commissioned by a Scandinavian artist who was a sculptor, and he had made this piece of work for the church. So, I was brought up to this piece of artwork and it was a sculpture of Job.

8:00 It was magnificent. It was reminiscent of the style of Michelangelo with the taut and tense musculature and the whole idea of contortions and twisting and activity sort of frozen for a second in, suspended in space there in that stone, but it looked as if like any second this emerging figure coming out of the base of the statue was going to come alive. But the position of this person was one in which they were writhing in agony. And I thought, never has an artist captured more graphically the fullest expression of human pain that I've ever seen. And then my eye caught the base of the statue and chiseled in stone at the base was a verse from the book of Job from the Old Testament. The verse said this, Though He slay me, yet will I slay.

9:00 serve him. And I thought, How could anybody endure this much grief and this much pain and still refuse to blaspheme God? Job had a lot more than patience. Job had an understanding and a confidence of God even when he was shaken to the very foundation of his being. We know that the worst thing that happened to the man was that in the midst of his suffering, when he looked to his friends for comfort, his friends came to him not with comfort but with accusations. The friends were sort of self-appointed theologians, and they came to Job and they said, never have we seen a person suffer like you have suffered.

10:00 And that can only mean one thing, Job. You must be the most miserable sinner on this planet because the people thought this way. They read the Bible. They understood that the reason why there's pain and the reason why there's suffering, the theological reason for tragedy in this world is because of evil. That's the theological answer. You want to know why there's pain in the world? You want to know why there's suffering? You want to know why there's death? But the Bible says the reason why these things afflict the human race is because the human race is fallen. Now, what Job's friends did was they said, oh, well, if the reason why there's pain and suffering and death in the world is because there's sin in the world, then there must be a direct mathematical equation between the degree of suffering that a person endures and the sinfulness that they have experienced in their life.

10:58 Have you ever read David where David said, How come it is that the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer? And so, the friends all came to Job and they said, Job, there must be some unconfessed sin in your life. Not a whole lot of comfort. Until finally Job turned to God and he experienced the whole roller coaster of human emotions even with God. He struggled with God. He screamed at God. He was mad at God. He was afraid of God. He didn't know whether to repent or to rejoice or what to do in the midst of all this pain. He said, I don't know what's happening. He said, God, will you please explain to me why I'm enduring this suffering? And what happened? Did God come down and say, well listen, there's three reasons why you're suffering, Job. It's because you yelled at your wife last week or because you stole some tomatoes from somebody's garden.

11:56 No, no, no, no. You know God never answered His question. Instead, He started asking Job a lot of questions. He said, Job, you want me to answer your questions first? You answer some of mine. He said, Job, tell me, where were you when I established the foundations of the world? I don't know. It beats me. Come on, Job, speak up. I want you to answer these questions. I'll be happy to answer yours, but first you answer mine. Job, do you send the lion after his prey in the jungle? Do you send the bird south in the winter? Job, can you unbutton the belt of Orion? Can you set the limits of the Pleiades? Can you do these things? Can you set the tides in heaven? And all this final examination that Job's getting, all Job can say to God is, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. No, but it's almost as if God's bullying him, as if God is saying, you can't do those things, Job, but I can.

12:49 Well, what was the answer that Job got? He didn't get an answer. What he got was a person. He got a person. God said, look at me. I'm not going to answer your question right now, but I want you to understand that I control the universe. I control the Pleiades. I can pull the Leviathan out of the oceans with a five-pound test line. Job, trust me. And he did. because it was his vocation. Because Job did not suffer because of his sin. Job suffered for the glory of God.

13:46 In the New Testament, some folks brought a man to Jesus and they wanted to stump Jesus with a difficult theological question. The man had been blind from the day that he was born. He spent his whole life in darkness. And so they bring this man to Jesus and they say, Jesus, tell us, unravel this theological mystery for us. Whose sin was it? Was it this man's sin or his parents' sin that made him be born blind?" Now those of you who are students of philosophy may be recognized in this question that is brought to Jesus what's called the fallacy of the false dilemma or the either or fallacy. It's a fallacious way of thinking.

14:41 reducing something to two options when there may be three or four or five or six options, saying that you have to have either peanut butter or Cracker Jacks, and I'll say just the same I'll have popcorn. I don't want either pox on both of your houses here on these either or business. But these people came to Jesus and said, the man is blind and there's got to be a reason for his blindness. Either it's because he's a sinner and God afflicts him with blindness or his parents were sinful and therefore he's born blind. And that's the question brought to Jesus, and Jesus said, neither. This man was born blind that the work of God might be made manifest. Do you hear what He's saying? saying this man was born blind so that the majesty of God would be made plain.

15:42 But now we say how in the world is the majesty of God made manifest through human suffering? Well, we're talking about it right now. Do you think that man ever dreamed that 2,000 years after he met Jesus, people would be gathered at MD Anderson Medical Center talking about his experience with blindness and his experience in meeting one who touched his eyes and gave him his sight back? That the reason why he was born blind was that from all eternity God purposed that that man would be there at that place on that day when His Son would come by and give Him His sight back to demonstrate to the whole world of the power and the magnificence of Christ. Do you think that that man today can rejoice in his blindness?

16:44 He'd be happy to come right back to this planet and spend forty, fifty, sixty more years in darkness if he could be used of God to show the world the magnificence of Christ. But he didn't know that when he was blind, and most of us don't see the reason for our suffering in this world. But the message of Scripture is that God stands over and above all human suffering and that it is a divine vocation. Now we've talked about Job and we've talked about the man born blind, but there was one man who was born who had one purpose in his whole life, one vocation. The whole reason why he was born in the first place wasn't to be blind, wasn't to suffer, boils or the loss of family or cattle as Job was.

17:40 The whole purpose for this man's suffering, his vocation was to do one thing and that was to die. And His name was Jesus. I'd like to read a passage that you're all familiar with. from the New Testament. From the 26th chapter of Matthew's gospel, beginning at verse 36, where we read this, When Jesus went with His disciples, to a place called Gethsemane. And He said to them, Sit here while I go over there and pray. And He took Peter and two sons of Zebedee along with Him. Now listen to this. And He began to be sorrowful and troubled. And then He said to them, My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me." In theology we like to use Latin phrases and Latin expressions, and one that I've always found particularly meaningful are the words passio magna, which means the great suffering. We speak of the grand passion of Christ, that it was Christ's vocation from the very moment that He was born that He was called of God to suffer and to die.

19:22 Do you remember His mother Mary when Jesus was just a baby and Mary and Joseph took Jesus into the temple for circumcision, for purification, and they met this old prophetess there and this old prophet that God had said that he wouldn't die until he had seen the Lord's Messiah. His name was Simeon, and Simeon sang the Nukta Minas, the song. He said, Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen the glory of Israel. And then he broke out in the prophecy and talked about how this baby of this woman was going to be established for the rising and falling of many in Israel and would be a sign to the nations and so on. And then at that very beginning of Jesus' life, this ancient prophet said, but Mary, a sword is going to pierce your soul. The announcement to the mother of Christ in the first two weeks of his life was that this child was destined for death and for suffering.

20:35 We don't know at what point in Jesus' developing consciousness He became totally aware of His vocation. We know when he was twelve years old and he went to Jerusalem and he was astounding. The doctors in the temple and his parents were missing him and they were frantic. They thought they had lost him and they came rushing back and they found Jesus talking to the theologians in the temple and amazing them all with His knowledge and they rebuked their son and said, you know, what are you doing? We've been looking all over the place for you. You've cost us no small amount of consternation. And he said to his parents, don't you know that I must be about my father's business? had a sense of vocation. But what was that business? It wasn't until he was about thirty years old that he began his public ministry and he sort of kept a low profile of what the theologians called the Messianic secret. Jesus didn't go around and display His power all at once to everybody.

21:32 And on one occasion he drew aside with his disciples and he sort of gathered them around with Peter, James, and John and he said, tell me now, you're out and about with the populace here. What's the scuttlebutt? about Me? Who do men say that I am?" And the disciples began to respond and they said, well, some of them say that you're, you know, an incredible prophet. Some say you're Elijah. Some say you're John the Baptist. They're confusing you with him and so on. They're giving all these answers as to what public opinion polls were saying about Jesus. And finally Jesus said, oh, that's fine. That's interesting to know what they're saying. Who do you think that I am?" You remember Simon Peter. Caesarea Philippi looked at Jesus and He said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. You're the Messiah. And Jesus looked at Simon and He said, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah, flesh and blood hath not revealed that to you.

22:33 This isn't something that you penetrated through your unaided speculation here. flesh and blood hasn't revealed this to you, but my Father has revealed that to you. It was a wonderful moment. This was Peter's greatest moment, and Jesus renamed him right there. He said, and thou shall be called Petros, Peter, meaning rock, and on this rock I'm going to build my church. You can just see Peter's beginning to swell in pride, you know, and that compliment from Jesus. Five minutes later, if you remember the story, Jesus looked at Peter whom he had complimented and said, Get thee behind me, Satan. Remember that? He wasn't talking to the devil. He was talking to Peter. And he looked at Peter and he called Peter the devil. He said, Get thee behind me, Satan. Why did he do it? Because in that five minutes something very significant took place in the conversation. After Peter said, you're the Messiah, Jesus said, okay, I'm the Messiah. Blessed are you for understanding, but I have to, there's something you must learn, and that is as the Messiah, I have to suffer many things.

23:47 And Peter said, God forbid. You know what his words were? In the text there we read this, that Peter looked at Jesus and he said, far be it from you, Lord, that you should suffer. Imagine that. I mean, if anybody should have understood that God majors in suffering and that God can make this vocation to call a person to suffer. It should have been a Jew of the first century. But even at that point, Peter was saying, this is unthinkable. Our Messiah is a Messiah who will come, and He certainly won't suffer. Jesus said, you've got to understand that the only way I can be the Messiah is by walking the Via Dolorosa. I have to suffer, and I have to die, because that's the call of God on my life.

24:49 You see, Peter wanted Christ to remove himself from suffering, to be the Savior some other way. That's why I say at the very heart of the Judeo-Christian faith is the reality of suffering and of death. It would be nice to say that when the moment came for Jesus to fulfill His destiny, He smiled, He saluted the Father and said, okay, I'm ready now. Let's get on with it. Uh-uh. We read here in this text that when Christ went into the Garden of Gethsemane, it said, this was the beginning of His sorrow and He entered into great distress. And He said, my soul is exceedingly sorrowful. Those of you who are on beds of pain and those of you who are ministering to those who are dying.

25:43 Let them grieve. Let them cry. God incarnate expressed and articulated His fear and His pain. He went over here into the garden. When His friends went to sleep, He went over and He began to pray, and the Scriptures tell us that as He went through His agony in Gethsemane, now let's just stop for a second. Sometimes I think like this. I think, well, Jesus suffered, yes, but it It was over in a couple of days. He didn't have to go for 10 years like Judy Greasy. Actually, His death only took a few hours on the cross. And we hear the preachers tell us on Good Friday, you know, this is the worst possible death to be hanging on a cross and be stretched and nails and all of that gory stuff that we hear about, which indeed would be extremely painful.

26:41 But there are people in this hospital right now today who have endured a lot more physical suffering than that. and over a longer period of time. But, ladies and gentlemen, Jesus was afflicted not with nails and hammers and wood, but the Scriptures tell us with every disease there is, that it was His destiny to have terminal cancer, to have a stroke. All of the sin, all of the disease, all of the pain that is under heaven was placed upon him at one time, and that was his vocation from the beginning of his life. And is it any wonder then that when he went into the garden and he went in to pray, he said, God, if there's any other way, let this cup pass from me.

27:40 I certainly don't want to volunteer for drinking a cup like that and I don't want to