When you go through the sufferings of life, God has a purpose.
His purpose is to manifest in you. The greatest pain that we feel is that inflicted on us by other people. And the closer they are to us, and the more we love them, the greater their ability to inflict pain and we're made for relationships by God.
We're made to enter into intimate relationships and therefore we have a high degree of vulnerability. That is precisely where we find the Apostle Paul when he wrote 2 Corinthians. He is hurt and he is hurt profoundly and he is hurt deeply, deeply enough to describe himself in chapter 7 of this epistle as depressed. I really believe that it was the point of Paul's deepest personal disappointment.
It was his deepest personal pain. Now the question is, what does God accomplish in the life of His own through suffering? Why did God allow this? We would assume today that if that ever happens, that's the devil, that's Satan, that's demons operating on their own and against the will of God, but not in the case and not always. God is allowing this to happen.
Why? Well, I'm going to give you five reasons why God allows suffering in your life and mine. Number one, God uses suffering to reveal our spiritual condition, our spiritual character. God uses suffering to reveal our spiritual character.
You really do not know the truth about someone spiritually when everything is going well, right? So God allows suffering to manifest our character, our spiritual character. Number two, God allows our deep pain as His way to reveal our spiritual character or our spiritual condition. Secondly, God uses suffering to humble us.
God uses suffering to humble us. And that's what was happening to Paul. I mean, Paul's greatest success was the building of these churches. I mean, this was sort of like his life work. This was his monument to his faithfulness and the excellence of his ministry. He had built the Corinthian church and now the whole thing is starting to collapse. This is a very humbling experience. But Paul needed it.
Number three, God uses suffering to reveal our spiritual condition, our spiritual character, our spiritual character, our spiritual character, our spiritual character. I mean, you can just imagine the scenario, can't you? Paul is talking to one of his co-workers and he says to him, Really?
Make the guy feel a little shabby, right? I mean, my soul teacher, no man taught me my gospel, the Lord Himself taught me. How about you? And the other one says, Yeah, I agree with him, Paul. How many times have you fellows been to heaven? None. Good.
We'll do my plan. I mean, you know, just the humblest of men would be exalted with that kind of experience. Paul had not only had a trip to heaven, but he had a revelation of Christ on the Damascus road and he had a further revelation of Christ when he came to Him when he was in jail in the land of Israel. He had a further revelation that God gave him when an angel joined him on a ship. The Holy Spirit came to him and testified to him about chains and imprisonment.
I mean, there was just this constant flow. We're not talking about the 13 epistles that he received by inspiration. We're talking about direct contact with heaven. And that's enough to make the best of men proud. But this whole mess in the Corinthian church, this whole deal over there was to humble Paul? That's right. You mean to say that God would allow one of Satan's demons to go in and tear up a church for nothing more than the humiliation of its pastor?
That's what happened. God's ways are not our ways, are they? You see, Paul was a very formidable person and his humility was very important to the redemptive plan. God wanted him humble and God did what needed to be done. For this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, to bring me to brokenness, meekness, humility, which is the highest virtue, the Lord allowed this demon to send those false teachers and tear up that church and produce that betrayal. That's a very, very humbling experience. But that's the purpose of God. He wants His servants humble.
Spurgeon said you have two choices. You can either be humble or humbled. Trouble is a humbling, humbling thing. Job was like that. Boy, Job was just humbled to ashes, wasn't he? Just humbled to ashes.
Spent the first part of his life building up this fortune. The Lord just wipes it all out, kills everybody in his family but his wife and then humbles him. It's just unbelievable humiliation. All that had to happen because God wanted to make His point that His servant would be humbled and never lose his faith. And then, of course, in his humility, Job says, I repent in dust and ashes. He was sitting in an ash pile full of repentance right where God wants us, isn't it?
No trust. No trust in his flesh, no confidence in himself, helpless, hopeless, clinging to the mercy and grace and power of God. He was at the end of all his resources. And then God opened up the floodgates and a greater blessing fell on him than he ever knew even before. So God uses suffering to humble us. And listen, folks, if need be, He'll use Satan to do it. That's why it's so foolish for these people running around chasing demons. They're under the illusion that the demons respond. That somehow they have authority over demons. Christ did and the apostles did. Nothing in the Bible indicates that we do. But even if you did, you might be chasing away the demons the Lord sent. You don't understand kingdom purposes. People running around binding Satan here and binding Satan there, unsuccessfully I might add.
It's an illusion. And it might well be that if they could do that, they would be interrupting the work of God. Who for his own purposes allows Satan access to his own, such as Job and Peter.
And in the case of Paul too, a messenger from Satan to do what he did in that Corinthian church, to bring that kind of pain and sorrow and brokenness to Paul in order that that man would be humbled. Let me tell you something, folks. God blesses us. But while you're in there praying for blessing and blessing and blessing and blessing, you better realize that the more you're blessed, the more likely you are to need to be what?
Humbled. So the backside of all this blessing you're pleading for may be painful. Now if I was Paul and I had any choice, I'd have said, Lord, can you do me a favor? Forget the trip to heaven and forget the thorn in the flesh. I'll just stay right where I am.
The price is a little too high. You know, you go rushing into ministry. Oh, I want success, success, success, success. Get ready. I look at my own life and I don't like to use personal illustrations, but as I look at my own life and I see God's blessing on my life, I just always walk in anticipation of a disaster. I do.
I'm never surprised. You know what? I'm almost relieved when it happens because then it'll get over. You know, the Lord blesses and blesses and He blesses the teaching of the Word and He blesses the church and He blesses the ministry. And there are lots of things that people don't understand. People sometimes question you about this and question you about that. And some things you can tell them and some things you can't.
And so you get attacks that you can't ever answer without betraying a confidence or undermining someone else or whatever. And you just hope and pray that you can stay on an even keel and continue to be used and God blesses and blesses. And you know that somewhere down the road your flesh is going to say, look at all this success, look at all this blessing, and the Lord is going to have to send a messenger from Satan to drive a stake through your otherwise proud flesh, right?
So you expect it. And it comes and it's necessary and it's sort of a sweet experience because humility is a sweet grace to taste. Trouble does reveal our spiritual character and trouble does humble us.
When the best and most beloved of our accomplishments start to fall apart and we can't do anything about it, that's very humbling. And it's painful but it's purposeful. One more point, God uses suffering to draw us to Himself. God uses suffering to draw us to Himself. That might have been the purpose or one of the purposes.
That's the right response. He didn't go to Timothy or Titus. He didn't go to some of his buddies. He didn't go to his friends. He didn't go to somebody with an earthly formula. He didn't find a therapy to fix his pain. He didn't look for a technique. He wasn't after human wisdom. He didn't try to find the path of comfort when the delight of his life was gone, the joy of his service was lost. He didn't go to any human resource.
Furthermore, it's no good. Notable, he didn't start messing with the demon. He didn't run over there to Corinth and start chasing that demon.
He didn't bind Satan, quote-unquote, or try to cast that demon out. He just went to God, directly to God who controls men and demons. I entreated...the word entreated is used frequently in the gospels for the appeals of the sick. He sees himself as a man in deep sickness here and he's crying out to God. This is a pleading, begging, crying out to God.
This is too painful, Lord, please. It may well have been that he prayed some imprecatory psalms like, you know, kill those guys over there in Corinth. Kill them.
They're tearing up your church. He did it three times on three separate occasions. He prayed to his Lord and he asked him to remove it. He said, I can't take it. It's too painful.
It hurts too much. I love them so greatly. I love the church. I love the truth. I love the gospel. I hate false doctrine. I hate the kingdom. I hate the kingdom of darkness.
I hate the demons and all their evil deception. I can't endure this. It's depressing. I can't bear this, Lord. Take it away. Take it away. Take it away. Take it away. Take it away. Take it away. Take it away. Take it away. Take it away. Take it away. Take it away. Take it away. Take it away.
Take it away. And, you know, your first thought is, Lord, you want to check that list again? You sure you got the right name on this one? And he said, but the next eight days you're going to be going over to the Frank Norris Cancer Center over at the L.A. County Hospital, USC Medical Center, you're going to go over there every day. There are going to be a series of tests. We're going to try to determine the nature of this tumor and we're going to put the best guys on this.
And you take him over every day and at the end of that time we're going to tell you about the results. That catapulted me immediately into intense prayer. This is my son. This is my heart. And also into fasting and prayer, I had nothing to eat for those eight days.
I had no appetite. It was not some sacrifice. I was just lost in importunity before the Lord and I was praying on behalf of Mark. I didn't tell him this. I just said, they're going to test for these headaches, that's all, and we're going to try to find out what it is.
He's not dumb. He knew it was fairly serious to be going down there eight days in a row and the kind of stuff they were sticking in him and poking around and putting him under and...but nonetheless we had these conversations back and forth but never said what the situation was. Very guarded and yet we enjoyed the fellowship and I thought this is probably the last I'll have with my son, so just poured all the richness I could into it and prayed and fasted through those days. And you start out sort of praying, Lord, save him, spare him, spare him, and then a few days in you're saying, Lord, do whatever you want, do whatever you want. You're in the presence of the Lord incessantly, unbroken.
Even sleep is interrupted by this. And finally at the end you're saying, take him to heaven, Lord, get him out of here. Why should he have to endure this world anyway? Take him into your presence. Heaven is a better place.
And by the way, take me with him, will you? You know, I mean, there's just this big transition that takes place. There's just a shift and you just spend all that time in the presence of the Lord and it's just...
So on the eighth day, it was a Wednesday evening and I was supposed to get a report on Monday they were going to bring all the guys together and they had a whole team of experts that were involved in this and they were going to give me this call and let me know the next day, Thursday morning. And so I was in my office up there and church had closed down the office and it was just before the 730 events started around campus so it was dark and I was just sitting up there. I began to feel a peace in my heart that I hadn't felt in this whole process and actually welled up into a joy in my heart and I had released him to heaven and I actually had tried to visualize him there in the presence of the Lord. And I was at complete peace and there was joy in my heart and I remember it was a tearful time but I found myself singing and then I started to feel hungry and I wasn't sure how to break the fast, you know, you just can't go down to In-N-Out or something, it's just too, you know, it's too crass, you know. So I was just sitting there thinking, you know, I could probably eat something and then I heard a knock on my door and I'm thinking, who is that? And I opened the door and there was a lady there. And she said to me, she said, oh, pastor, I hope I'm not disturbing you.
I said, no, how did you get in? She said, oh, I don't know, the door was open, I just came in, I hope I'm not bothering you. I said, no, she said, well, you know, I was just thinking about you and I saw your light on and thought, well, maybe you're hungry so I made you a sandwich. She handed me a bologna and cheese sandwich.
And I don't know what I said, probably something like, huh, you know, just sort of a shocked reaction and I think I said thank you. That lady had never been in my office. She never made me anything, never given me anything.
She's never given me anything since, to be honest with you. So I don't know what was going on on that one moment, but I'm standing there looking at a bologna sandwich thinking to myself, God is so intimately involved with my prayers that when the fast is over, He delivers the sandwich. That's a pretty heavy thing and I'm not mystical, but I was overwhelmed and I thought I was eating manna from heaven.
In fact, since then, bologna has a special place in my life. I went back to my desk rejoicing and ate that little sandwich and the next morning the doctors called and said, well, he has a benign epidermoid which is some kind of skin down there that's inconsequential, has nothing to do with his headaches, probably having headaches just because he's growing and because he's out in the sun and he's working out and playing baseball and whatever and don't worry about it, we think he's going to be fine, the report is all good. And all of a sudden everything changes because I've already sent him to heaven and now I get him back, you know. But I was so thrilled, I went out to school, he was out at the college and threw my arms around him and I told him this great news and he said, why do you think the Lord put me through that? I said, put you through that?
You didn't even know what was going on. He put me through that. Whew, well, he probably knew more than he said and while we embraced there and rejoiced in the Lord, you know, I realized why the Lord put me through that because it drove me to Him and it taught me how intimately God is involved in answering my prayers.
There's nothing more wonderful than that. This is an amazing impact on your prayer life, doesn't it? You just...not only your prayer life but your praise life because now all of a sudden you realize what heaven means to you.
But going to the brink is great for your spiritual life, isn't it? And I think that's what God wants Paul to discover. What happens to Paul in the midst of this? He goes to the Lord and isn't that where you ought to be?
You can't find a human counselor who can fix it. He went to the Lord. When you go through the sufferings of life, God has a purpose. His purpose is to manifest the character of your spiritual life to everybody around you and to you as well. His purpose is to humble you because of His multitude of blessings poured out upon you and His purpose is to draw you into the intimacy of His glorious presence. We'll save the rest for next time.
Let's pray. Father, it is with a great amount of joy and gratitude that we have looked into this passage, how instructive it is for our lives, how blessed it is to know that you have a purpose in our pain, in our difficulty that could never be achieved any other way. And thus, we can agree with James who said, count it all joy when you fall into various trials. We should joyfully embrace the suffering because it has such great spiritual impact.
It puts your true saving work on display. It breaks our pride. It drives us into your presence. What great benedictions those are. And we pray now that you'll confirm these great truths to our heart and may we live them out to your honor and glory in our Savior's name.
Amen. And with that, John MacArthur wraps up today's look at making sense out of suffering. That's the title of his current study here on Grace to You.
Now, you know, John, as you spoke today about the bleak prognosis doctors gave your son Mark some years ago, that may have surprised a number of listeners. People might assume that because you study the Bible and teach so much, you'd be impervious to the times of testing that other Christians face. Oh, I live in the same world everybody lives in, and I'm a fallen person and all the people around me are fallen, and so all that goes wrong in the world goes wrong also in my world and in my life. But I have an anchor. I literally live on the rock, and for me that anchor and that rock is what I know to be true about God. I have spent so many years studying the Word of God and coming to the fullest knowledge of God that I don't question God. I don't question His wisdom. I don't question His power. I don't question His purpose.
I don't question His love or His affection for me, the people in my world. The only question I ever ask is, God, what is your purpose in this? What is your will? I don't deserve anything other than suffering. None of us deserves anything other than suffering. I just want to know the purpose.
I just want to know the reason. And when Mark was diagnosed with a brain tumor and the doctor told me this could kill him, my immediate thought was, what are you doing, Lord? What's your purpose?
What are you trying to accomplish? I know he loves you. I know he serves you.
I know he wants to live his life for you. Show me your purpose. And I went from there to, Lord, it's normal and natural for me to pray for his physical well-being, to pray that you would spare his life so that he could serve you.
And those were the things on my mind. God was gracious. God spared his life.
The tumor was not terminal. And to this day, he continues to serve the Lord. But the questions in my mind were, Lord, what is your purpose, and would you be gracious? I pled in my prayers to spare his life if it would be for your glory. I think those are the things that you can pray for when you stand on the rock of confidence in God's purpose and God's power.
Right. And, friend, it's the kind of trust that John just described, trust that grows as you mature in Christ, that allows you to make sense out of suffering. With that said, to encourage you in the trials you face, John's study on Making Sense Out of Suffering is available on two MP3s or two CDs.
Get your copy when you contact us today. You can download this series at GTY.org, and in fact, all of John's sermons, about 3,500 of them, are available free of charge to download at GTY.org. And if you'd like Making Sense Out of Suffering on CD, perhaps a gift to someone who's hurting, order the two-CD album at GTY.org, or you can order by calling 800-55-GRACE.
That's our toll-free number, 800-55-GRACE. Also know that we would love to hear how John's verse-by-verse teaching has encouraged you. Maybe today's lesson was timely encouragement for a trial you're dealing with, or perhaps a recent message helped you apply biblical truth that you never really understood before. If God has used these broadcasts in your life, let us know when writing to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412, or you can email us at letters at GTY.org.
That's letters at GTY.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Be here tomorrow when John looks at the incredible grace that God gives to believers so that we can deal with trials. Join us for another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
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