Welcome to a year of reading Richard Sibbes together! The reading plan for the entire year can be accessed here. I encourage you to stick with us, allow yourself time to read, and soak in the riches of this gifted and prolific Puritan preacher. You will be edified and encouraged.
If you have trouble with how Sibbes used words, check out the Lexicons of Early Modern English for definitions from the period.
Summary/Engagement
Finally! All the money needed for travel to Ethiopia for this adoption had arrived. It took sacrifice, gracious donations, tax returns, and selling one of the cars, but it was there. My son played happily in the background. Tension seemed to have eased from my wife’s shoulders. Tension had certainly eased from my own. One last check of the email before we pack up and leave the restaurant.
Shock runs over me like jumping in ice cold water. I can still remember it to this day. I can still taste it. Amy turned to me, “What’s wrong?” She could see it plain as day on my face. “Our adoption agency just sent an email that they declared bankruptcy. Everything is gone. The money is gone.”
——————————-
Suffering and affliction are close friends to many of us. I remember the incident above vividly. So much hope and longing built up in us, we thought we had everything needed and were mere months away from a referral, and then the carpet was pulled out from underneath us. I certainly can echo the first two verses of Psalm 130. Many of us can. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy!” (Psalm 130:1-2)
There have been many days since then I have cried out to God in distress and grief over this situation, and many others. Christian, have you asked God why he has ordained you to suffer in a certain way? I think we can all echo the question of “Why, God?” that has rattled around in our head. However, it is not required of him to tell us. Take care how you respond to suffering, lest you make yourself bitter.
“It [suffering] should teach us in all extremities how to carry ourselves. We should take heed of the stream of grief, striving against it, as we desire a note of our good estate; take heed how we think that God forsakes us. It is an imputation unbefitting him that never forsakes his. Take heed of judging ourselves by sense. Is meat sour because one that is sick doth not relish it? No. The fault is in his indisposition. So in such desertions, be sure thou retainest thy anchor of hope, though contrary to hope.“
Application / Further Discussion
Mike said in his book, Torn to Heal, “When something has gone wrong with us, we know that sometimes the only possible path to greater joy is the path of suffering….This suffering is not “something strange” (1 Peter 4:12), but normal and necessary.” (Page 37) Something has indeed gone wrong with us. We shouldn’t think it odd that we suffer, but we do. Part of this is the lie of American culture that we deserve comfort and riches and health all the days of our life.
Beyond this sinful expectation there is in each of us the realization that this isn’t how it should be. Echoes of the Garden of Eden bounce in our souls that suffering and death are not what God created man originally to experience. The result of sin and the Curse are lives full of suffering.
But, why?
Our senses have been damaged and dulled by sin. We know God is there, inherently, yet we have trouble seeing him. The veil is between us, in a sense, obscuring what Adam and Eve once beheld openly. That veil has been torn. On the darkest day in history, the crucifixion of the very Son of God, the veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom to signify that there is one mediator between God and man, the God-man Jesus Christ. The remedy, the means and glory of our salvation, is the suffering of God himself on the cross for the sins of all who would believe.
If God subjected himself to suffering, should we have any expectation to escape it? No. He uses it for our good and his glory. Through suffering we “may know what Christ suffered for us by our own experience, without which we should but lightly esteem of our redemption, not knowing how to value Christ’s sufferings sufficiently, which is a horrible sin.” Indeed, how terrible would it be if we had no shared experience by which we appreciate Christ’s suffering in our place.
God uses suffering to draw us to himself. To “make us more desirous of heaven.” I can sympathize with a longing for Heaven. I understand more with each passing year Paul’s statement, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Phil 1:21)
What if God uses suffering to put various sins to death in us? In suffering we more fully cling to the promises of God. When afflictions come and illusions of comfort are removed, we have nothing left but to cling to God. Is this not the best and most tender use of suffering there is? The only thing you need, ever, in all eternity, is God. If God uses suffering to awaken you to this need or revive your passion for him, is it not the most loving thing he can do?
Think on the following quote from Dr. Sibbes. Do you agree? If not, what sin is there in your heart that would choose rebellion against God over whatever God would give you, be it affliction or ease.
“Know that the afflictions of the children of God are far better than the pleasures of sin.”
–
Last week, we read Yea and Amen.
Next week, is a catch-up week. Read something you missed, or if caught up, rest, or read ahead.
One Comment
Comments are closed.