July 10, 1999 Preached August 2, 1992, morning service at the First Baptist Church, Garrett, Indiana
The hour is very late. Visiting hours are over. Intensive care waiting room is quiet now, though 3 people still remain behind, sleeping, keeping vigil, waiting for the latest report on their loved one. All day long, families have huddled in the corners, exchanging stories on how their loved ones are doing, expressing hope or expressing grief. But now it's late.
The busy-ness is over. You know the doctor or nurse will not be peeking around the corner for some time now, and so you settle back, and your mind begins to wander: Why God? Why this pain for my loved one? and for me? Why does she have to die this way? And what about that little girl in the bed next to him? It's such a nice family. Why does she have to suffer so? God, if you could only tell me why, I could live with all of this!
There are thousands of those kinds of waiting rooms. And they are only one situation of thousands of situations in which people ask the question, "Why?" "If only I could personally see God and ask Him! Then I could accept this situation and go on. Give me a reason and I'll be content!"
That was the reasoning Job used as he tried to understand his suffering. The sufferer of all sufferers. Job lost all his property and servants and children, and lost the support of his wife and friends, and finally lost even his health. His question was simple: "Why God?" And God came to him, and to us all, with His reply.
If you think about it, God could have said many things to Job. He could have laid His hand on Job's shoulder and told him how much he would grow thru all of this. He could have told him of His deal with Satan, and reminded Job of how important it was that he remain faithful in his devotion to God. Or He could have given some disturbing consolation and told him how lucky he was that he didn't have leukemia.
But God took a different approach, quite difficult to understand at first. He simply fires questions at Job, questions from the natural world:
"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? (Job 38:4-5)
""Have you entered the treasury of snow, Or have you seen the treasury of hail," (Job 38:22)
"Can you guide the stars season by season and direct the Big and the Little Dipper?" (v.32 TEV)
The question that's implied in all these other questions is, "Job, are you powerful enough to duplicate these feats of nature? Are you smart enough to run the world?" He even uses some sarcasm in verse 21, "I am sure you can, because you're so old and were there when the world was made!" (TEV)
In chapter 40 verse 7 God finally makes His point: He says, "Stand up like a man and answer Me: are you going to question My wisdom and My power, My judgment, and My design? Are YOU, the creature, in a position to ask ME, the Creator of this world, 'WHY?' Do you really expect to be able to understand the mysterious and deep ways of God? Don't you think that's a little bit presumptuous?"
We would all admit that it's presumptuous to think that you or I, with no training at all in the intricacies of the human brain, could perform brain surgery, or any other equally complex task. Yet we expect to understand the plan and the wisdom of God and the dept of the human situation, as viewed from the vantage point of God?
To that God says, "OH MAN, WHO ART THOU?"
Don't misunderstand -- God understands why we ask the question.
God realizes that we want to know, for usually loving reasons, why things happen to us.
We're usually motivated by love and by positive reasons when we ask the question "why"? But He says to Job and to us, "You expect too much of yourself to look for complete, satisfactory answers to those questions. You forget who you are and who I am. You forget that you are the creature and I am the creator when you assume that you can understand all the rhyme and reason and mystery of life!"
Not long ago I talked to a person who was in Job's shoes. His father was dying, and he couldn't understand why. "Why is this happening? What could God possibly have in mind by making him hang on this way? Why can't he just die in peace?"
Less than a month later, I saw this person again, and he had totally changed. None of the questions. Suddenly he began telling me all the things that had happened between him and his father, and between him and his brothers and sisters. And it was obvious to him that the father's prolonged illness had been the stimulus to things happening in these relationships that should have happened years ago.
Yet, God couldn't have possibly given a written, logical answer to this person's question "Why?" Words would never have helped. he had to experience the answer. Only time and pain could begin to shape the answer to his haunting question!
But this person was fortunate. Many of us live for years or a lifetime not seeing why this or that had to happen. Some of us this morning stand in the middle of our questions, not at the end with some answers; and we don't know where the end is or whether we will ever know the answers.
And to those of us who stand this morning in the middle of our pain and of our questions, and to all of us who live in a pain-filled world and will at one time or another stand in the middle of such pain and questions, the reply of God -- "O MAN, WHO ART THOU?" -- can lead us to react in one of 2 ways.
We can react in despair and cynicism. We throw up our hands, "We'll never know! And if we can't know, then this world doesn't make sense and we give up!" That is a common attitude of people today, and the by-product of that is profound skepticism about all of life -- its meaning, its value, its direction. "Why can't we understand all things? WE are on the throne of the universe. There ought to be a rational explanation for this."
God's reply to Job strikes at the pride of the modern person who thinks that because we can send men into space and can design electronic masterpieces, we ought to be able to understand all things. And we're conditioned by that pride and by that presumption, the extent to which we are offended that God should say to us this morning, "Oh man, who art thou?"
But there's another way to react to God's reply to us, "O man, who art thou?" It can be the occasion for understanding in a new way, and maybe for the first time, what FAITH is, namely believing even when we cannot understand "why", believing beyond what we can understand!
Hebrews says, "Faith is the conviction of things not seen." Faith for the Christian is believing even when we cannot understand. Put the other way, if we could understand everything in our world, we wouldn't even need faith. Faith is the trust that goes beyond human understanding and says, "God, I don't have a rational explanation for this, but I believe that You in Your infinite wisdom know exactly what You're doing!"
What makes people like Corrie Ten Boom such a modern example of faith is not that she UNDERSTOOD what God was doing to her and her loved ones in the concentration camps of World War II, but that she BELIEVED; not that she "saw", but that she held convictions about God and life even when she couldn't see; "FAITH IS THE CONVICTION OF THINGS NOT SEEN."
And moreover, the comfort for us as Christians is not that we're so small, but that God is so big and infinitely wise and all-knowing and trust-worthy. That's the crux of Job's final response to God in chapter 42. Job says, "Now I know, Lord, that You are all-powerful, that You can do everything you want...I talked about things I did not understand, about marvels too great for me to know. You told me to listen while You spoke and to try to answer You questions. Then I knew only what others had told me, but now I have seen You with my own eyes. So I am ashamed of all I have said and repent in dust and ashes."
Job's peace does not come from getting an answer to his question "WHY?" It comes from NOT NEEDING AN ANSWER. It comes from being able to leave with the God of all heaven and earth our unanswered questions, from being able to believe instead of understand, from being able to rest in the conviction that God is all-wise, all-knowing, and yes, all-loving too.
The world call that foolishness. But Paul calls that our wisdom. Our wisdom, says Paul, is our willingness to be foolish, by the world's standards, our willingness to replace human wisdom and human understanding with faith, faith in what Paul calls "the secret and hidden wisdom of God." The wisest man, Paul says, is the man who realizes he's not very wise, the man who had the humility to lay all of his questions on the bridge of faith, who is willing to walk on that bride, trusting in its strength, its ability to hold him up; and who believes that one day, we will get to the other end of the bridge, and we will be able to look back and see and understand.
For 3 weeks now, we have asked questions about the cause of pain and suffering, and Scripture has sidestepped our questions. Last week we asked, can we explain our suffering as a punishment by God for our sin? And Scripture said, "No, you can't reason back from your suffering; that's not a satisfactory explanation." This week we asked the question directly, "Then why do we suffer?" And God said, "Oh man, who art thou, that you ask such questions beyond your ability to answer?"
Last week, we learned about human sin and the power of Grace. This week, we learn about our finiteness and the necessity of faith. And in one sense that's enough to live on -- to realize that we live in grace and live by faith. That's what kept Job alive. That was enough for him to end his life praising God. But Scripture even gives us more help in dealing with our pain and suffering. And next week we will move from what I call the wrong question, the one we asked this week, -- "why do we suffer?" -- to the right question, one that we can ask and get answers to, relative to our pain and suffering. I hope you can be here next week as we continue this series.
I'd like to end this message today by reading a poem of unknown origin which sums up very well the point of this morning's message: The name of it is "The Plan of the Master Weaver."
My life is but a weaving
Between the Lord and me,
I may not choose the colors,
He knows what they should be:
For He can view the pattern
Upon the upper side
While I can see it only
On this, the under side...
Sometimes He weaveth sorrow,
Which seems so strange to me;
But I will trust His judgment,
And work on faithfully;
'Tis He who fills the shuttle,
And He knows what is best,
So I shall weave in earnest,
Leaving to Him the rest...
Not till the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Shall God unroll the canvas
And explain the reason why --
The dark threads are as needed
In the Weaver's skillful hand
As the threads of God and silver
In the pattern He has planned
Does your peace depend on getting an answer to your "why"? Or can you have peace, NOT NEEDING AN ANSWER. Are you able to leave all the unanswered questions to the God of all heaven and earth? If not, why not come this morning, so that we may pray about it. Maybe you don't know the God of all heaven and earth personally. That can be taken care of today also by coming. Maybe you would like to make this your church home, why not come. Whatever the need, you need to come at we sing the hymn of invitation, #417, Just as I am.
