Dr. Ron Sumners
May 16, 2010
There are times when life just doesn’t go the way we think it should. We put forth our best effort only to find failure, we do what we believe would honor God but God seems to be unconcerned with the outcome.
You may recall some years ago when the Exxon Valdez ran aground, creating a costly oil spill in Alaska. The coast was polluted and wildlife was poisoned. People flocked to the area to put in time and money to care for the geese and seals contaminated by the oil. The average cost of rehabilitating a seal was $80,000. At a special ceremony, two of the most expensively saved animals were released back into the wild amid cheers and applause from onlookers. A minute later they were both eaten by a killer whale.
Sometimes it seems like it’s not worth trying.
A woman came home to find her husband in the kitchen, shaking frantically with what looked like a wire running from his waist toward the electric skillet. Intending to jolt him away from the current that was electrocuting him, she whacked him with a baseball bat, breaking his arm. Until that moment he had been happily making pancakes, listening to his “walk-man” and dancing.
What happens when you try to do good, but do more harm than good?
Two members of PETA (People for the ethical treatment of animals) were protesting the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughter house. Suddenly the pigs, all two thousand of them, escaped through a fence and stampeded, trampling the two helpless protesters to death. There are times when those you try to help run all over you.
Iraqi terrorist, Khay Rahnajet, didn’t pay enough postage on a letter bomb. It came back with “return to sender” on it. Forgetting that it was a bomb, he opened it and was blown to bits. Ok, sometime we do smile when the bad guys get it themselves!
The problem of suffering is a conundrum for the believer more than the non-believer. What philosophers call theodicy, trying to reconcile the presence of evil in God’s world, is only a problem for those who believe in God and His goodness. It is a problem for those who believe, first, that God is good and second, that God is in control. The problem of evil, injustice, and suffering is an acute problem for Christians.
If you are outside of faith, if you don’t believe that God is good, then you can’t talk about the problem of evil. If someone does not believe in God, then we must agree with the Marquis de Sade who said, “Whatever is must be right.” If there is no God, then evil is just a matter of opinion; this world is all there is. What is wrong with the strong destroying the weak? That is just the way things are. But if we believe that God has established objective moral values, we know there is a standard of good and evil outside the world by which we can judge good and evil. It is then that we are confronted with the question: “Why would God allow evil to exist?” Why does God allow such awful things? Why did my loved one die? Why did my marriage fall apart? Why did I lose my job? These are hard questions. The questions only become more difficult when we see those who have made sacrifices for the gospel. They have given and sacrificed for the cause of Christ. Then we see them suffering for the Gospel. Why does God allow this to happen, hampering the Gospel that he called these people to advance!
Elizabeth Elliot wrote a novel, No Graven Images, in which a lady goes and devotes her life to a remote tribe to teach them the Gospel. Then she accidentally kills the only person who knows Spanish, English and the native language. Everything in her life is destroyed. All she had sacrificed for came to an end. Christians who read this were in an uproar. God would never allow such a thing to happen, they said. But Elliot said the novel was based on a true story.
We need to see what the Philippians came to see; that not only does God allow evil to happen, but God allows evil to happen to what appears to be the most strategic situation in His kingdom! We have to accept the reality of evil and suffering!
Paul has solved the problem of suffering for himself. It was through suffering that Paul came to see it in a different light. Paul sees his suffering for what it is, as something that is unpleasant, but is still used by God for reasons we may see or we may never see. God is still at work.
Suffering may mean the end of what we love.
Paul’s chains were a constant reminder that his suffering was very real. It meant the end of his work as an apostle, church planter and preacher. Paul was in a demeaning, demoralizing, dehumanizing situation. His life was to serve God, but he is now languishing in jail. He was chained to a Roman guard awaiting a trial and possible execution. It certainly appeared as if Paul’s career was over. However, he does not seem discouraged or in despair. His letter to the church at Philippi is filled with joy. Paul does not whitewash the troubles he has. He is very honest in this scripture; God may free him or require his life. God may allow him to live and return to his work or God may end it all now. Paul joyfully leaves the final decision up to God for “To live is Christ and to die is gain!”
Suffering may mean that people mistreat us.
Not only does it seem that Paul’s ministry is over, there are those who delight in Paul’s circumstance. Some have stepped into the gap left by Paul and found greater grit to “speak the word of God more courageously and fearlessly.” There is a motivation in the midst of suffering by some to step forward and do what needs to be done.
But some are already dancing on his grave. In verse 15 we read, “some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry” and in verse 17, “the former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains.”
Our instinctive reaction to verses 15-18 is that no true Christian would ever dream of behaving in such a way! How could a person preach Christ out of selfish ambition? Unfortunately, Paul doesn’t give us much to go on here. It seems to me that Paul may be referring to those who sought to usurp Paul’s authority and gain influence in the churches during Paul’s absence. I recall that I spent an extended time out of the church and out of the pulpit in 2007-2008. A group with a deviant theology used my absence to try to gain a foothold of influence. I, in no way, compare myself to Paul; but I do understand what he may have been feeling!
During Paul’s life, as today, there was the idea that God would never allow those who live rightly to suffer greatly. Since Paul was suffering, some concluded that his message must be misguided, his faith flawed, his life displeasing to God.
Paul is an incurable optimist. There are those when confronted with good will see ill will. Some will find the worst in every situation and be blind to the good or the opportunity involved. Some will see the good even in the most desperate situations.
A family had twin boys. Bill was the eternal optimist. No matter how dark the situation; he found good. Bob was a hopeless pessimist. There was a cloud behind every silver lining!
The mom took them both to see a psychiatrist. Christmas was coming so she was told to buy the little pessimist everything he mentioned he wanted for Christmas. For the little optimist: get him nothing he wanted and, not only that, give him a horrible present. This might shock them back to reality.
Christmas morning came. Bob, the pessimist, surveyed his array of gifts. Here was a BB gun. His response, “I’ll probably shoot my eye out.” To the new bicycle he responded, “I just know I’ll fall off and get a broken arm.” To the new laptop computer, “I can already feel the carpel tunnel syndrome.”
Bill, the optimist, opened a gift box and found it filled with horse manure. He shouted with glee and immediately ran through the house and out into the yard. The parents followed him, “Bill, what are you doing?” Bill responded excitedly, “I know I got a pony, I just can’t find him!”
Suffering can reveal God’s hand.
Paul neither denied the reality of his suffering nor did he try to explain its way. He understood that God was bigger than his career and life. Rather than seeing prison as a disruption of God’s plan; he understood that what was happening to him was a strategy to advance the gospel by bringing it to people who otherwise would never hear it. The soldiers, who had to deal with him daily, surely heard the gospel from the lips of Paul.
When the people of Philippi heard verse 12, I’m sure a smile broke out on the faces of one family. Paul’s certainty that his imprisonment was a way to advance the gospel was seen earlier by a jailer in Philippi. Now a member of the church, he was saved by the activity of Paul and Silas in his jail. God works in prisons; He works in the midst of suffering and hardship. When you place your life at the disposal of the Lord, no circumstance can ever prove to be a fatal barrier to the advance of the gospel.
Paul sees God at work. He comes to the situation, sees suffering for what it is: painful, upsetting and frustrating. But he knows that God will be at work in the situation.
Paul goes on in verse 19. He knows that he will be delivered. What does he mean? Does he expect to be set free? He, of course, is hopeful of this outcome. The word, in verse 19, used as “deliverance” is also the word used as “salvation.” Paul sees the big picture through all of this. Even in such horrible circumstances, God will work it to no other end than the greatest end – his eternal salvation.
Does this mean that people who go through suffering are tempered and made sweet through the experience? I know Christians who have gone through suffering and it soured them. It did not make them soft and pliable – it made then hard. It did not make them warm – it froze them. This may have happened to some of you.
I believe that your response to suffering depends a great deal on your vision of God before you go through the difficulty! Is God an indifferent creator for you? Is God your savior through a personal relationship? Does God care or not?
When we see the reality of suffering, when we work through past the immediate pain; we can begin to see the hand of God at work. We can see that circumstances can go poorly, but it is not these present circumstances by which we define our life! We define our lives; we understand our suffering by seeing the One who suffered for us. When we see Jesus Christ, the Son of God who suffered for our sins so that we might be adopted as His sons and daughters, when we see Christ as the means by which we will define our life; then life is worth living regardless of whatever else happens to us!
Paul said, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” It is the ultimate statement of who he is.
What about you? How would you finish the statement: “For to live is…”
For me to live is to have fun and pleasure. Do you work just so you can have some of the pleasures of life? Is that all life is to you? If you take that away; do you have a life?
For me to live is to be in control. How many of us are control freaks? As long as we hold the cards, as long as we are the one calling the shots; we are just fine. Everyone else around us may be in misery; but that is seldom our concern! But when things get out of control, and they always will if we are completely in charge, when our lives take a nose dive, suffering is all we see.
For me to live is to be good! As long as I keep my nose clean and others think that I am good, all is well. What I am living for is really the illusion that I am better than others. My favorite pastime is looking down my nose at those who are less virtuous. Yet, when the reality of my dark heart is revealed, I run in terror!
For me to live is my family. The goal may appear more noble than the others, less self-serving, but equally dangerous. If your life is your spouse or children, if you define who you are by that alone, when tragedy strikes, you will either collapse or be forced to change your definition of life. If your live is your family, what happens if the marriage fails? What happens if your children rebel and no longer listen to you? Your problem is not your circumstances, but your definition of life!
Tragedy and troubles come to us and take away from us and make our lives not worth living sometimes. Unless you change your definition of life, you’ll collapse.
Paul says there is one thing that will stand up to that stress: “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain,”
Paul’s career is over, but his career is not his life, so he says, “I may live or die, but this circumstance has not touched my life!” If your career is collapsing and your whole world is falling apart, the problem is not the circumstances of your life; it is your definition of life!
How can Paul say this? He is no super-saint, untouched by the problems of life that you and I face every day? Not at all, rather, Paul understood the exchange that took place on Calvary when Jesus was nailed to the cross.
For Paul, to live is Christ and to die is gain, for the simple reason that his life is centered on the suffering Savior who died so that Paul might live. His life is defined by the Lord who rose from the dead, and now Paul is risen as well. He said in Galatians 2:20, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
What does suffering mean to you? It can be seen as mindless and purposeless or it can be seen as an opportunity to see the Savior who suffered for you. When faced with suffering, look to the Suffering One who has taken your eternal suffering away!
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