Blessing the Name of the LORD: When He Gives & then Takes Away
Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. 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.”
The people of God have always had their laments. The Psalms are filled with a whole host of intense emotions and expressions towards God. So many of them were birthed in times of suffering and struggle. Psalm 3 was written as King David fled for his life from his own son Absalom. Psalm 56 was inspired when the Philistines seized him in Gath. In Psalm 57 he’s on the run again, this time from King Saul, and wrote the song whilst hiding in a cave. These are songs formed in the fire of affliction. They are the desperate cries of a worshipper on the road marked with suffering. In fact, Eugene Peterson estimates that around 70% of content in the Psalms is lament-based.
Blessed be Your name:
In the land that is plentiful, where Your streams of abundance flow;
When I’m found in the desert place, though I walk through the wilderness.
When the sun’s shining down on me, when the world’s ‘all as it should be’;
On the road marked with suffering, though there’s pain in the offering.Every blessing You pour out, I’ll turn back to praise.
When the darkness closes in, Lord, still I will say:
blessed be Your glorious name.
Clearly therefore, songs of lament are a very biblical thing to sing in worship. Yet they are also a relevant thing to sing, for we live in a world full of anguish and heartache. As Christians, yes we live in victory, but in paradox we also exist as strangers in a foreign land, aching for home, and knowing deep within us that the world we see before is not as it should be. So the question is this: if songs of lament are firstly thoroughly biblical, and secondly extremely relevant, then why on earth are there not more songs to help us voice these heart-cries? As Frederich W. Schmidt Jr. writes, these Psalms do three things:
They give us permission to ask our own questions about suffering. They model the capacity to ask questions we might otherwise suppress, but can never escape. And they model how those questions might be asked without fear of compromising our relationship with God or with other people.
--Matt Redman
Why God Doesn’t Fully Explain Pain
Here's John Piper on "Why God Doesn't Fully Explain Pain":
One of the reasons God rarely gives micro reasons for his painful providences, but regularly gives magnificent macro reasons, is that there are too many micro reasons for us to manage, namely, millions and millions and millions and millions and millions.
God says things like:
- These bad things happened to you because I intend to work it together for your good (Romans 8).
- These happened so that you would rely more on God who raises the dead (2 Corinthians 1).
- This happened so that the gold and silver of your faith would be refined (1 Peter 1).
- This thorn is so that the power of Christ would be magnified in your weakness (2 Corinthians 12).
But we can always object that there are other easier ways for God to accomplish those things. We want to know more specifics: Why now? Why this much? Why this often? Why this way? Why these people?
The problem is, we would have to be God to grasp all that God is doing in our problems. In fact, pushing too hard for more detailed explanations from God is a kind of demand that we be God.
Think of this, you are a blacksmith making horseshoes. You are hammering on a white hot shoe and it ricochets off and hits you in the leg and burns you. In your haste to tend to your leg you let the shoe alone unfinished. You wonder why God let this happen. You were singing a hymn and doing his will.
Your helper, not knowing the horseshoe was unfinished gathered it up and put it with the others.
Later there was an invasion of your country by a hostile army with a powerful cavalry. They came through your town and demanded that you supply them with food and with shoes for their horses. You comply.
Their commander has his horse shoed by his own smith using the stolen horseshoes, and the unfinished shoe with the thin weak spot is put on the commander’s horse.
In the decisive battle against the loyal troops defending your homeland the enemy commander is leading the final charge. The weak shoe snaps and catches on a root and causes his horse to fall. He crashes to the ground and his own soldiers, galloping at full speed, trample him to death.
This causes such a confusion that the defenders are able to rout the enemy and the country is saved.
Now you might say, well, it would sure help me trust God if he informed me of these events so that I would know why the horseshoe ricocheted and burned my leg. Well maybe it would help you. Maybe not.
God cannot make plain all he is doing, because there are millions and millions and millions and millions of effects of every event in your life, the good and the bad. God guides them all. They all have micro purposes and macro purposes. He cannot tell you all of them because your brain can’t hold all of them.
Trust does not demand more than God has told us. And he has given us immeasurably precious promises that he is in control of all things and only does good to his children. And he has given us a very thick book where we can read story after story after story about how he rules for the good of his people.
Let’s trust him and not ask for what our brains cannot contain.
The Macro Purposes of God in Our Sufferings
The macro purposes of God in our sufferings include:
Repentance
Suffering is a call for us and others to turn from treasuring anything on earth above God.
Luke 13:4-5 - Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.
Reliance
Suffering is a call to trust God not the life-sustaining props of the world.
2 Corinthians 1:8-9 - For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.
Righteousness
Suffering is the discipline of our loving heavenly Father so that we come to share his holiness.
Hebrews 12:6, 10-11 - The Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives…. He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Reward
Suffering is working for us a great reward in heaven that will make up for every loss here a thousand-fold.
2 Corinthians 4:17 - This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.
Matthew 5:11-12 - Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.
Reminder
Suffering reminds us that God sent his Son into the world to suffer so that our suffering would not be God’s condemnation but his purification.
Philippians 3:10 - …that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings.
Mark 10:45 - The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Source: John Piper
How Fitting it is That Christ Should Suffer
This morning, Dr. Jim Orrick spoke at Immanuel Baptist Church on Hebrews 2:10-18 in a message that was a very timely and appropriate one for what the church is currently going through. There are a couple pastors of Immanuel & their families who are going through serious medical crises, and would covet your prayers. (For privacy’s sake, please contact Immanuel directly for details on this)
Dr. Orrick spoke about how it was fitting for Jesus to be our Messiah because He suffered as human being, and so, we thus fit together with Christ, because He who suffered and was tempted was indeed just like us — human in every way and yet Divine also. Orrick’s main exposition focused on 3 points explaining why it was fitting for God to accomplish our redemption through Christ Jesus:
- Christ came to be head of a suffering family
- Christ came to be the Savior of dying human beings
- Christ came to be High Priest of a sinful people
I wish I could share with you the mp3 to this powerful sermon, but take a look at Hebrews 2 yourself and consider for yourself have fitting and amazing God’s love towards us truly is!
Please pray for Immanuel in this time of pain and suffering. I am seeking the Lord’s guidance in attending Immanuel regularly and hopefully seek membership soon, so please pray for the Lord’s guidance in this. As well, out of a servant heart to help out at Immanuel, I’ve talked to their leadership about helping to redesign their website (which is currently down); pray for a humble servant attitude as a look into this area to serve in.
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.
