Where is God when it hurts?

Those questions are a little harder to answer. And yet it can’t be that only two or three of us are having a hard time. So let me put the question differently:

How many of you have a situation in your life involving your or someone you care about that is making you sad? Heavy-hearted? Burdened?

If that describes you, then you are suffering. Let’s not do the whole, “it could be worse” thing. Of course it could be worse. No one is saying no one has it worse than you do.

But when you say that, you’re diminishing your own pain. True, others might be going through things that are harder and tougher and more painful, but that doesn’t make yours any easier. God cares about you right now where you are just as you are, and that pain and heavy-heartedness and burden you’re carrying - God cares about that just as much as He cares about you. He wants to meet you in the pain that you’re going through and heal it. After all, it’s hard for the doctor to heal you if you won’t even admit that you’re sick.

I want to put some biblical tools in your hand. I want to give you three insights from the Bible about God and suffering. The things I’m going to say this morning may not seem very practical right now. I’m not giving you five things you can do in the midst of your suffering to help you cope. There are plenty of books out there that try to do that. What I want to do is, I think, better than that – I want to arm you with the truth from God’s word that will equip you to face suffering, and to face suffering well. There are three truths I want to share with you this morning from God’s word.

Insight #1: When it hurts, God understands

God knows what it is like to suffer. When we suffer, when we hurt, our God comes to us as the God who knows what we’re going through; and He comes to us as the God who is present with us.

Why is this important? This is important because it means that we do not serve a God who is detached, disinterested.

Have you ever met someone like this? Someone who’s detached? They’re just kinda cold, they don’t really engage much, they definitely don’t ask how you’re doing.

Yesterday we took the kids to Carolina Raptor Center in Huntersville. We saw all kinds of unique birds. It was really fascinating. And what was funny, though, were the owls. Each different kind of owl had a different personality, it seemed. Each owl had its own facial expression. We had way too much fun with that, really. Some seemed standoffish or angry. There were a couple of owls that seemed like they were judging us. But one owl was just cold. Every time we would try to talk to him, he would immediately turn his head 180 degrees. “I can’t even look at you right now”, he seemed to be saying.

They remind me of my fourth grade teacher. She was tall, skinny, always wore skirts down to her feet, always wore a blouse buttoned all the way up to her chin, hair tied up in a bun, strict as she could be, struggled to have any compassion. She ran a tight ship. She could command your attention but only because she was intimidating, not because she actually cared about you. (I think she did care about us, but had a hard time showing it).

That’s not the God of the Bible. That’s not the Christian God. God is able to identify with our sufferings.

How do I know Jesus understands my pain?

He took on a human body/human nature capable of pain

He endured the worst pain that humans can inflict

He bore the full weight of humanity’s sin to the cross

At the cross, He absorbed the wrath of God we deserved

How do we know that? We know that because He came down here Himself, and took on a human nature and a human body capable of suffering, capable of death. He endured the very worst this world can give. Not only that, He took on Himself the enormous weight of the sin of humanity, along with all of the guilt and shame that goes along with that.

Not only that, as if that were not enough, He endured the wrath of God evoked by all of that sin. “My God, My God,” Jesus cried out from the cross, “why have you forsaken me?” Those words expressed a spiritual agony, deep emotional and mental anguish so intense and unbearable that the pain of the crucifixion itself didn’t even come close.

None of the suffering God will ever call us to endure can even begin to compare with the sheer terror and anguish the Son of God endured on the cross for us.

I read a story Friday about a young family who had their 12-month-old daughter and the rest of their children removed their home by Child Protective Services. They had done nothing wrong. Their baby girl, Jane, had leaned back in her chair and shifted the center of gravity so that the chair fell back and baby Jane slammed her head on the hardwood floor.

A trip to the ER showed there was no brain damage — only a small skull fracture. The doctors said she would be fine. They left the hospital. A few days later, DSS showed up at their door. Police officers were with them. Turns out that a doctor at the hospital saw the skull x-ray — nothing more — and reported the parents. Because Jane was under 12 months old, it was classified as a crime. They were accused of “severe child abuse” and all three of their children were removed and placed in foster care for nine months.

This is what the mother says about her first night:

“I will never forget the first night away from our daughters. I was raging, crying out to God, screaming in agony. Then something powerful happened. A calmness and warmth spread through me. I was suddenly aware that God was right there, holding me, raging with me at the injustice, weeping with us, His children. In that moment, I had never felt more protected in all my life.”

The mother said, “I certainly did not remain one hundred percent trusting or peaceful over the following nine months. Every second felt like evil persecution. Our children were suffering. I was being false accused of “severely abusing” Jane. I was also being personally and professionally attacked on many levels.

Their children were eventually returned and the parents were exonerated, all charges dropped. But the parents said that was not the true miracle.

“I learned that God didn’t mind how strong or weak I was on any given day. He was the same. This was the true miracle — that my family lived and survived in the fiery furnace with God’s provision, not that God ultimately rescued us from it.” [Keller, pp125-26]

Does God know how hard it is? YES!

Does God understand what I’m going through? YES!

And so this means that the answer to the question “Does God understand what I’m going through?” “Does He know how hard it is?” is a resounding and joyful yes. He does! He knows! The fact that God Himself has suffered for us in Christ on the cross means that He now suffers with us.

[PAUSE]

God does not take your suffering lightly!

He was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Is 53:3)

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness.”

“Sympathize” = “to suffer with someone”

Church, this is one of those things you can know for sure: God does not take your suffering lightly. He knows exactly what He is asking of you, and He knows it not merely in the way we might say God knows everything else, but He knows it by experience.[5]Isaiah 53:3 says Jesus is “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” This is why Hebrews 4:14 says “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.” The word “sympathize” literally means “to suffer with [another].” Which is why the KJV there reads that Jesus was “touched with a feeling of our infirmities” – note that it says touched with a feeling of our infirmities, and not merely the knowledge of our infirmities.

When it hurts, God understands.

Insight #2: When it hurts, God is sovereign

When I say that God is sovereign over our suffering, here is exactly what I mean: God either allows or causes everything that happens. God either allows or causes everything that happens.

Let me give you a couple of examples. You remember the suffering of Job? Yes, it was Satan that inflicted that suffering on Job, but did you know that it was God suggested this to Satan? Job 2:8. “And the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?”

Satan basically said, “Yeah, God, of course Job is a good guy, but he’s such a good guy precisely because you’ve blessed him tremendously.” “But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face” (Job 2:12). “Take all that away from him,” Satan speculates, “and he’ll disown you.” So the Lord says, “Go for it.”

So it’s Satan who does this, but it’s God who gives Him the power to do it, and the permission to do it (Satan can do nothing without God’s permission).

But here’s the thing: everything that happens to Job, the author of Job and even Job himself says that it came from God.

So for example: When Job suffers his first great loss, verse 21 tells us:

Job 1:21 ESV

And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

In other words, when Job loses everything he has, he attributes his loss to the Lord. He says, “The Lord did it. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And the author of Job insists that Job was not wrong to say this. Verse 22 says:

Job 1:22 ESV

In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.

“In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.”

I’m not saying that God actively causes everything. But it is clear that God does not only allow bad things to happen. Sometimes, if Scripture is to be our guide, it seems that God is more active than that. Isaiah 45:7 says, “I [the Lord] form light and darkness, I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.”

Now how do you feel about that statement? “I [the Lord] form light and darkness, I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things.”

I get that or some of you this challenges the way you have become used to thinking of God. It’s more comfortable sometimes for us to imagine God standing by watching as we suffer than to imagine that for reasons known only to Him, He caused our suffering.

I understand that, completely. But there’s actually great comfort in that. There is great comfort in knowing that. Bear with me and let me try to explain how. This is an imperfect illustration, but maybe it will help.

When I was in second grade, I got my first school paddling. That was in 1987 when schools still paddled kids. My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Queen, made these apples out of construction paper and taped them to the wall. Every student had one of these apples. Then she made these green and brown worms out of pipe cleaners. The goal, of course, was to avoid getting worms placed in the paper pouch of your apple. If you got four worms, it was automatically a trip to the principal’s office. To this day, I don’t remember what I did to get sent to the principal’s office, but nevertheless I found myself there.

I was sitting outside his office with two of my buddies. He called each of us in one by one. I went last. As I was waiting, I remember hearing nothing for the longest time when each of them went in. I wanted to know what happened to them, because what happened to them would probably also be what would happen to me when I went in there. Eventually I heard a smack and then a cry of anguish from each of my other friends.

Then it was my turn. I went in. Mr. Melton sat me down in front of his desk and talked with me for a while about what I had done. I don’t remember 99% of what he said, but I do remember very well when he looked at me, sighed, and said, “Dustin, I’ve decided to paddle you.” My heart sank. He came around from behind his desk, turned me around so that it was facing away from him, told me to bend over and put my hands on the back of the chair, and then he took this paddle – a wooden paddle, the kind with the holes in it to keep it from slowing down, tailor-made for torturing children. Then he delivered two of the worst blows I have ever received on my backside, and sent me back to class.

Now I was super afraid going into his office, and even more afraid once I was bent over with my hands on the back of the chair in front of me. I would have been afraid if it were my dad or mom paddling me, but here’s the thing: I was much more afraid of him. Not because it would hurt worse or because he was tougher on me than my parents were. No. Why? Because I didn’t know him. I didn’t know what kind of guy he was. I didn’t have a relationship with him.

In other words, there was no trust. When it’s your mom or dad paddling you, yeah it’s gonna hurt, but if you have good parents like I did, you know it comes from a place of love. You know it comes from someone who ultimately desires your good. But I didn’t know Mr. Melton. I was afraid of Mr. Melton. I didn’t trust him. If I had to get paddled, I would much rather it come from one of my parents, for the simple fact that they loved me, and that I knew it.

Let’s apply this to our suffering.

If you have to suffer, if you had to lose a loved one, or if you have to get a cancer diagnosis, wouldn’t you rather it come from the hands of the One who loves you? The One who ultimately desires your good?

Now look, I know that many of you out there this morning have really suffered. You might be saying, “Yeah, this guy doesn’t even begin to understand what I’ve been through.” And you would be right - I don’t understand what you’ve been through. The last thing I want to do today or ever is make you feel like I am trivializing your pain. May God forgive me and pardon me if I come across that way.

But ask yourself this question:

If suffering has to come into our lives, if there is no choice in the matter, who would you rather it come from? Your heavenly Father who loves you dearly and desires your eternal good? Or would you rather it come from Satan, whose purpose is most definitely to destroy you?

I would rather get paddled by my Father. Because, friends, here’s the thing: If it’s not coming from God, who is it coming from? No, God is not merely standing by helplessly as wicked human beings exercise their free will, as some would have us believe. He is fully in control.

But somebody will say, “Pastor Dustin, if God is in control of everything, if He is sovereign over everything that happens, if He is either allowing or actually causing everything that comes to pass, how does that not make Him responsible for sin?”

That is a really good question. It’s a question that philosophers and theologians have written tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of pages on. In fact, the first guy who articulated this was a guy named David Hume, way over across the pond in Scotland, way back in the 1700s. He was an atheistic philosopher. This is what he said about God and evil.

“Is [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent [powerless]. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent [evil]. Is he both able and willing: whence then is evil?”

In other words, if God is all-powerful, then He can prevent evil, and yet He doesn’t always do that. If God is all-good, then He presumably would want to prevent evil, and yet He doesn’t. Philosophers and theologians call this the problem of evil. Regular people like you and I don’t really have a fancy name for it, but we’ve all experienced it. The title of this sermon sums it up for normal people like me and you: “Where is God in my suffering?”

We could talk about the difference between efficient causes and secondary causes. We could say, “Well, you know, God normally uses the free choices of human beings to bring about his purposes.” So the Lord knew that Judas Iscariot would betray Him. It was ordained in eternity past. But God is able to order things in Judas’ life and in ours that bring about a totally free choice on his part. Judas freely chose to betray Jesus, just as surely as God knew and ordained that it would be Judas who did it.

What I can tell you is this: just as the Bible is insistent that God is in control of everything that happens, the Bible is just as insistent that God is not responsible for the evil that results. In no way and in no sense is God morally responsible for the sin. How is that possible? I don’t know that anybody has ever answered the question satisfactorily. Sometimes the Bible presents us with things that seem to be contradictory. The Bible says God is sovereign over everything that happens, but the Bible also says that it is sinners who are morally responsible for sin, not God.

We can say that’s not fair, but remember, God doesn’t have to bend to our idea of fairness. Our idea of fairness needs to bend to Him. So here’s the approach we need to take here. When Jonathan Edwards died, his wife Sarah Edwards wrote a short letter to her daughter Esther. Listen to what she writes.

“My very dear child! What shall I say? A holy and good God has covered us with a dark cloud. O that we may kiss the rod, and lay our hands on our mouths. The Lord has done it. He has made adore his goodness, that we had him so long. But my God lives, and he has my heart. O what a legacy my husband, and your father, has left us! We are all given to God, and there I am, and love to be. Your affectionate mother, Sarah Edwards.”[4]

When it hurts, God understands. When it hurts, God is in control. Lastly, when it hurts, God hurts for us.

Insight #3: When it hurts, God hurts for us

When it hurts, God hurts for us. When I say God hurts for us, I don’t mean that He hurts with us; He does, but we’ve already covered that. What I mean is this: He gave Himself up and subjected Himself to hurt and pain and suffering unimaginable to us and He did so for us, meaning for some good in our lives. God has suffered for us and in our place, so that we might be saved and forgiven and reconciled to Him.

God Himself has suffered for you, and because of that you can know that He now suffers with you.

And what makes God’s suffering so astonishing and so comforting is that He didn’t have to. It was totally voluntary. Nothing obligated Jesus to go to the cross. He was under no compulsion. No one pressured Him into it. If God were He went totally on His own, out of love for the Father and love for us.

One day all our pain will be a distant memory, for those of us who have trusted in Christ. Dear friends, your pain and suffering feel like they will last forever. But don’t believe the lie: they won’t. By God’s grace we will outlive our suffering. Our suffering has an expiration date. Our souls do not. One day when all that is over, we will be in the new creation with God. He will wipe every tear from our eyes. The reason this is our future is that Jesus suffered and died in order to give us that future. Jesus was hurt disastrously for us, so that one day our hurts might be completely healed and all tears wiped away.

And because God has suffered this, that equips us to suffer well. This is certainly in part why the apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians that he was “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” Knowing that God has suffered and is suffering with us makes it possible for sorrow and joy to go together.

This means several things for us practically.[7]

What this means for us:

We can cry out to God and pour out our grief before Him

We can do this without becoming bitter or resentful, because He is with us and for us.

We can know our suffering has meaning even if we can’t see it right now.

We can trust him.

Conclusion and call for response

I don’t know where you are today. I don’t know all the pain and hurt that you’ve brought in here with you today. But I do know there are most likely at least three different groups of people here this morning.

1. Some of you are hurting today but you do now want to admit it. Much less do you want anybody else to know about it. You pride yourself on being the strong one. You have to, right? Everybody else depends on you. You go and you go and you go and you go. You don’t stop and sit because if you did, you’d have to face your heart so you distract yourself by serving and working and giving.

You, my friend, need to remember this morning that you are not God. You are nobody’s Savior. Serve and work, yes, but take yourself down off the pedestal you’ve put yourself on before God has to knock it out from under you to get your attention and show you that it is okay to hurt, it is okay to need to be the one who is cared for for a while rather than the one who only cares for others. For people like you, Jesus said this: Matt 11:28-30

Matthew 11:28–30 ESV

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

2. Some of you who are hurting today don’t have that challenge. Your challenge is taking your suffering to God. You’re afraid to. You refuse to. Friends, you can do two things with your pain: you can allow it drive you toward God to find refuge in Him, or you can allow it to pull you away from Him. And as it pulls you away from Him, you get pulled into self-absorption and self-pity, bitterness, resentment. Your heart eventually becomes hardened and calloused; you’re not longer able to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit. God’s promises mean nothing to you.

Friend, change that this morning. Don’t leave here today until you have gotten on your knees before God in prayer and repented of keeping your sorrow to yourself; pour out your pain to Him and receive His kindness and His healing. For people like you, the word of God says this: Psalm 34:17-18

Psalm 34:17–18 ESV

When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

3. Maybe one or two of you today are here and you’ve never trusted in Jesus as your Savior. Maybe you made a profession of faith in the past but you don’t really have a relationship with Jesus now. Oh how you’re missing out! Jesus is a more faithful friend than anyone you have ever known. But we can only come to know Him through a relationship with Him, and you can only have a relationship with Him as you submit your life to Him and trust Him as Savior. Won’t you do that today?

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