There is a very dangerous idea creeping into the Christian church today known as “open theism”, basically the idea that history is partly open-ended. Or, to put it a different way, that God is making things up as He goes. Perhaps this allows that He foreknew events that were and are to happen, but at any rate He did not plan them. The God who created atoms and chemical combinations and osmosis and stars and the planets and light can not control history, but He’s doing His best to shape it how He wants it.
This is a blatant lie and it completely obliterates God’s sovereignty. Does it really sound like the God who created time doesn’t control the events that happen within it? And on top of that He's not a machine who can simply predict all possible outcomes. God is not a computer that can simply calculate all the different possible events of history from which He chooses the best one, no, God is God and in complete control.
I think this theology is coming about as an easy response to the question of “Why does God allow bad things to happen?” At first this response is comforting: “Okay, God didn’t plan for that to happen, it’s not His fault, He’s trying to deal with it like me.” This comfort grows thing when we realize that in order to accept this we lose the person of God! How can you have a perfect Being with perfect power who can’t control the future? And if God can’t stop bad things from happening, who can?
When suffering and pain happens to us it is much more comforting to know that God is sovereign, God is in control, and He will see me through this. It may be harder to swallow at first (“Why would God allow this to happen to me?”) but in the end we have more hope and a firm foundation if we acknowledge our God is in complete control.
But somehow for us, just like Israel in Deuteronomy 2, its hard to know what God’s up to and its hard to know why He would allow us to face such trials. Here in Deuteronomy 2 the nation of Israel has been turned away from the Promised Land and forced to wander around for many years in the wilderness. This is a trial, and a hard one.
But once again, this is a trial that God is in complete control of – not as a bully who’s simply trying to see who can last or survive, or who can “pass the test”, but as a loving God who wants people with obedient and loving hearts.
When you think about it, if you look to your life or other’s lives you find that we often grow the most in trials, in the most difficult moments of life. We find strength or character we didn’t know we had; if you believe in God you come out the other side of trial with a fuller faith and a stronger conviction in God’s saving hand.
In the New Testament, after Jesus had rose again and the good news was spreading and people were becoming Christians daily, the Apostle Peter wrote a letter to believers who were being hunted and murdered for their faith. The Roman Empire was a little different than the United States and to say you believed in Jesus often meant death. This was largely because Caesar was God and to say Jesus was God was treason. But as Christians, we’re not really allowed to say anything else. So many Christians faced severe trials where they had the choice of leaving the faith or dying, often painfully These Christians were so changed and so convinced that Jesus had died for them and Jesus was God that they chose death over life.
Peter wrote to address such suffering. Imagine Peter, a church leader, a pastor, overseeing churches and seeing people’s lives change, and as his church grows people start getting murdered. Imagine being a pastor and not knowing who would make it to church next Sunday because your people were being hunted and killed – imagine officiating as many funerals as weddings.
Yet Peter does not write about the persecution of the church as a horrible misfortune that is out of God’s hands, but rather, he place their situation right in it. In fact, read how Peter begins his letter:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood:
May grace and peace be multiplied to you. (1 Peter 1:1-2)
Look at his language! He doesn’t just call them “exiles”, he calls them “elect exiles”, as in, they had been chosen to be exiles, and Peter emphasizes “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.” God appoints where we live and when we live there, and He is in complete control over the location of every one of these exiles. And with the benefit of hindsight we can now see that the gospel would not have spread nearly as quickly as it did if it hadn’t been persecuted and dispersed. So what was a horrible time where it seemed like God had no control, God had complete control.
The letter continues:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!
Look at what joy and faith Peter had in God even in the midst of persecution!
According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith – more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire – may be found to result in praise, and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:3-8)
For a letter written to a dying people this is unexpectedly joy-filled. This is not a depressing war-time speech to “Give it all you got” and “Hold on to the end”, no, the persecuted believers are heading towards Christ and His victory, through which they have gained everything! The future is unimaginably glorious and bright for those who believe in God. In comparison to such joy present sufferings are endurable and they will pass. As the writer of Hebrews puts it:
…let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. (Hebrews 12:1-3)
Christianity is one of the only religions that can offer an answer to suffering because it will pass. As it says in Revelation:
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. (Rev. 21:4)
Ever since Jesus rose from the dead and promised to return we have been in a situation much like Israel wandering around in the wilderness. They were longing to settle in the Promised Land, we long to be with Jesus. They faced daily trials in the wilderness and so did the Christians Peter wrote to and so do we.
But this period of waiting is not in vain: Jesus is perfecting our faith and growing us to be in His kingdom, just like He was growing and perfecting Israel’s faith before entering the Promised Land. During this trying time Moses is told by God to tell Israel:
For the LORD your God has blessed you in all the work of your hands. He knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the LORD your God has been with you. You have lacked nothing. (Deut. 2:7)
God knows every struggle we go through and He will see us through it. Through struggle and trial we learn things we never could without struggle and trial, such as the beautiful truth that God is always with us, and He is all we need. Come what may tomorrow, should I lose my family, a place to live, food to eat, friends, everything I live by, I still have Jesus; and that can never be taken away from me:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all
the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be
slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, no r height nor depth, no anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35-39)
Jesus is true comfort when pain and suffering strike, not only because He loves us but because He knows exactly what we are feeling, and He gave up His own life in obedience to God:
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. (Hebrews 5:7-8)
And:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16)
God cares deeply about Israel’s suffering in the wilderness and about our trials today, and He will see us through everything because He Himself has suffered everything for us. In order to stay obedient to God the Father God the Son became flesh and took on all of our weaknesses and allowed Himself to suffer and be murdered in place of us for our sins. It is because of Jesus we have hope and confidence in what is to come, now that we have been made clean and pure by His death. Now we can press into God and long for the Promised Land – that is, to be in God’s presence, with Jesus – and know that any amount of suffering and waiting will be worth it. But even now we are not alone, and I’ll close with Jesus last words in Matthew:
“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)
No comments:
Post a Comment