Suffering: A Divine 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. And yet if I understand what Scripture is teaching about the nature of suffering and about the nature of death, there are times where the call of God upon that person's life is to suffer. God not only allows suffering in our life, but as we look through the pages of the Bible, we see that He calls some of us to a life of suffering, not for suffering's sake, but for His glory.

Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and thank you for joining me today for Renewing Your Mind. Those are hard words, so hard in fact that some have not only rejected that truth, but have rejected God Himself. That was one of the concerns that Dr. Sproul had when he recorded his series Surprised by Suffering. He wanted people in the midst of their suffering to know God's plan and His purpose. How should we as Christians think about suffering?

And he was given the opportunity to record this series at MD Anderson Cancer Center. And today he brings us great encouragement as he introduces us to people in the Bible who were called to a life of suffering. There's a somewhat lesser-known work of Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick and Billy Budd and the 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, 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.

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 in the first segment together, I mention 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. 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 to 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. And yet if I understand what Scripture is teaching about the nature of suffering and about the nature of death, there are times in a person's life where the call of God upon that 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, and so what I'd like to do in the rest of this segment is 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.

Any time we even talk about suffering, usually the first name that comes to mind from biblical history is the name Job. You know the story of Job, how 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 over all of the earth and examining the creation, and 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, and God said, wait a minute, have you considered my servant Job? Satan 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, and then he is afflicted with incurable diseases that are excruciatingly painful. 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.

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 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.

No, no, no, no. You know, God never answered his question. Instead, he started asking Job a lot of questions. He said, Job, do 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? Well, I don't know. Beats me. Come on, Job, speak up. You know, I want you to answer these questions.

I'll be happy to answer yours, but first you answer mine. 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 the heaven? And all this is final examination that Job's getting. All Job can say to God is, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, and it's almost as if God's bullying him, as if God is saying, you can't do those things, Job, but I can. 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. 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, 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. It's 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. 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? He's saying this man was born blind so that the majesty of God would be made plain. 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 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 the power and the magnificence of Christ. Do you think that that man today can rejoice in his blindness?

He'd be happy to come right back to this planet and spend 40, 50, 60 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, but 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 from the 26th chapter of Matthew's Gospel beginning at verse 36 where we read this, then 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. Do you remember His mother Mary when Jesus was just a baby? 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 Nokdomenas, the song, he said, Now let us 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 assigned 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. We don't know at what point in Jesus' developing consciousness He became totally aware of His vocation. We know when He was 12 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. He had a sense of vocation.

But what was that business? It wasn't until He was about 30 years old that He began His public ministry and He sort of kept a low profile, what the theologians called the messianic secret. On one occasion He drew a side with His disciples and He sort of gathered them around with Peter, James, and John, and He said, tell me now, He said, you're out and about with the populace here.

What's the scuttlebutt? What are people saying 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, well, that's fine.

That's interesting to know what they're saying. Who do you think that I am? And 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 hasn't revealed this to you, but My Father has revealed it to you. And it was a wonderful moment. This was Peter's greatest moment, and Jesus renamed him right there. He said, and thou shall be called Petrus, Peter, meaning rock, and on this rock I'm going to build My church. You can just see Peter beginning to swell in pride, you know, from 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, okay, you're the Messiah, Jesus said, okay, I'm the Messiah, blessed are you for understanding. But there's something you must learn, and that is, as the Messiah, I have to suffer many things. 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. And even at that point, Peter was saying, this is unthinkable, our Messiah is the 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. 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. Now, 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. He said, God, if there's any other way, let this cup pass from me. I certainly don't want to volunteer for drinking a cup like that, and I don't want to volunteer for getting some terrible disease.

And those of you who suffer from very difficult diseases, I'm sure didn't volunteer for them. And you've cried out many, many times, even as Christ did, please let this cup pass. Nevertheless, not my will but Yours be done. And God said, no. The Father said, drink the cup.

That's your vocation. Jesus said, okay, if that's what you want, then I'll drink it. He didn't go laughing and dancing to the cross. He went screaming to the cross. But the only way He could endure what He endured was to understand that it wasn't the devil that put Him there, and it wasn't chance that put Him there, and it wasn't the hostility of people that put Him there. All of those things maybe could be mixed up in the nature of things, but ultimately what put Him there was a vocation.

He was sent by the Father. Although we see suffering all around us, we're still so often caught off guard when it comes our way, aren't we? That was R.C. Sproul, and you're listening to Renewing Your Mind. Each day this week you'll hear messages that Dr. Sproul gave at MD Anderson Cancer Center.

It was a series that R.C. wanted to record to help Christians walk through those difficult seasons of life and to equip them to care for and comfort those who may be in the midst of suffering. When you give your gift today at renewingyourmind.org, we'll give you digital access to this series and the study guide, but also send you the companion hardcover book, Surprised by Suffering, the Role of Pain and Death in the Christian Life.

Give your gift by visiting renewingyourmind.org or by calling us at 800-435-4343. You and I don't know when illness or death will come our way, but that's why the Bible is so clear that it's vital that we are reconciled to God and that when we die, we die in faith. So join us tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. Amen. We'll see you next time.