Innocent Suffering

1. Insights from the place of innocent suffering

Don Carson: Now we’re going to focus on the book of Job. In one sense, of course, from what we’ve already said, there is no such thing as innocent suffering in an absolute sense. Otherwise, you can’t make sense of the first pillar. Yet there is lots of reflection in Scripture on innocent suffering in some lesser sense, and no book reflects on it more probingly than the drama of Job. It’s cast as an epic. I’m sure that Job was a real historical figure, but it’s cast as a drama, an epic, that forces us to think through the principles that are involved.

I’m sure that many in this room have read the book of Job and thought it through at some level or another, but let me recast it for you. It’s important to think through what is and is not said in the book of Job. The book begins in chapter 1 with an introduction to the man. We’re told he is a righteous man. The Hebrew word is tam, often used for perfect. Oh, it doesn’t mean that he’s sinlessly perfect. That’s not the point. He is just as good as they get.

When you find out more about him as you read on in the book, he is a remarkable man. He prays preemptively for his 10 children. That is, he doesn’t wait until they sin and then say, “Oh dear. Lord, forgive them.” He’s praying preemptively for them, lest they should ever sin in their hearts in any respect. Later on you discover, for example, that he’s made a covenant with his eyes that he will never lust after a young woman. This is an astonishing man.

If there were any that were poor in his neighborhood, he made sure that he provided for them. On every arena that you can think about, this was a good man. He was filthy rich and all of that, but generous with it. He was the richest man in the East. How big a turf that covered, we have no way of knowing, but just read the accounts of his cattle, his sheep, his donkeys, and so forth, at a time when money was measured by animals.

Unbeknownst to Job, however, there comes a time when Satan actually comes before God and offers God, as it were, a wager. That’s the way the drama is set up. God says, “Satan, have you considered my servant Job? If you want to see what a righteous human being looks like, this is as good as it gets. Have you considered him?”

Satan says, “Yeah, yeah. You protect him. You give him money and lots of wealth. He’s protected all around by your sovereignty. I can’t even get at him and destroy him. No wonder he thanks you. He knows what side his bread is buttered on.” God says, “Go ahead. Take it all away. Let’s see what happens then. Just don’t touch the man.”

So in an array of accidents, marauding Chaldeans, and marauding Sabeans, all of his herds are stripped away. Then a horrible storm comes up. The house where his 10 children are partying collapses, and they’re all crushed to death. Job says, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

I was at a church on the West Coast three or four years ago. The Sunday that I was there was the Sunday after the 18-year-old son of one of the elders had committed suicide. The congregation stood and sang that well-known Matt Redman piece, “You give and take away. You give and take away. My heart will choose to say, ‘Lord, blessed be your name.’ ”

In this, we’re told, Job did not sin or curse God foolishly. That’s what we’re told. Then Satan comes back, and he says, “Yeah, yeah, but anybody can still be pious if they have their health, at least. Take away their health. You take that away, God, and Job will turn around and curse you to your face.” God says, “Go ahead. Afflict him, but spare his life.” Job breaks out with sores and scabs. He sits on an ash pit, in the detritus of his life, and takes a piece of broken pottery to scratch himself.

Then his three friends arrive, acquaintances from former years. They fly in, see the wretched man, and do one wise thing: they sit with him and say nothing for a whole week. Then the theological debate that constitutes the drama of Job begins. “Job, do you believe that God is good?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe that God is sovereign?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe that God is just?”

“Yes.”

“Then, if you’re suffering like this, must it not be because you’re being punished for something?”

“Whoa,” Job says, “wait a minute. Human beings are born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward. I know that God is good, and I know that God is sovereign. I’m not doubting that, but, quite frankly, I don’t deserve this.”

“Wait a minute, Job. Are you challenging the fairness of God? If God is sovereign and God is good, then you can’t be suffering like this unless, in some sense, you deserve it! Or else, you’re impugning the justice of God! Don’t you think that what you ought to do is admit your sinfulness?”

Job says, “I know that God is sovereign. I know that God is good, but quite frankly, what’s happening to me is not fair. I know that too. I can’t put all this together, but what’s happening to me is not right. It’s not fair. In fact, if you push me hard enough, what I really wish is for God to come down so that I could ask him a few questions! I don’t want to deny that God is good, but boy, do I have some questions to ask him!”

“Oh, this is shocking. You are going to stand in judgment of God? He’s sovereign. He’s righteous. If you have the attitude that you’re going to ask him questions, then you really are impugning his goodness or his greatness or his sovereignty somewhere, aren’t you?” “I don’t know about that,” Job says, “but I do know that there are times when I wish I had a lawyer.”

That’s what he says. “I wish I had a mediator, somebody to go between. I can’t go up to heaven and have a wee chat with him. He’s not coming back down here. He’s hiding his face from me. I don’t have the answers to all of this, but I sure wish I had a lawyer, some sort of mediator to go between God and me. At one level, though he slay me, yet will I trust him. On another level, I wish I had him to hold to account, because what’s happening to me is not fair.”

“Job, you’re blaspheming! You’re right on the edge of the most horrible language. To talk about God being unfair? Don’t you understand that our sins are such slippery things? They hide in such dark little corners. Believe me, God’s knowledge of your sin is so absolute. He remembers sins that you have committed that you can’t even remember with your brain.

Even if you don’t know that there are sins, even if you can’t think of specific sins that you’ve committed, what you really ought to do is just sort of confess them in general terms, because at least that would acknowledge that God is right and you’re not. If you say that you believe that God is sovereign and God is good, and you’re being punished like this, then it must be because of sin in your life.

So just get down on your knees right now. We’ll kneel with you and have a little prayer time. You can confess all your sins before God: all the sins that you don’t remember and all the sins that you might have done and all the sins that he knows about that you can’t quite recall. Just confess them before the Lord, and the Lord will restore to you all the blessings that would then be yours.”

Job says, “How can I possibly confess things that I don’t know about? If I do that, then I’m treating God as if he’s just some sort of blessing dispenser. I just want the blessings, so I’ll just confess sins. I’ll say anything so long as I can get more blessings. How can I do that? I would be dishonest. I am not aware of a whole lot of sins that I should really confess. How can I do that without being dishonest before God?” He goes on for chapters justifying himself.

Then there’s a fourth party that gets involved in the whole debate. I won’t go into all the fine points. Then eventually, God speaks. For two chapters, chapters 38 and 39, God speaks. He asks rhetorical questions: “Job, have you ever designed a snowflake?” “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Were you around when I cast the constellation Orion into the heavens? Hmm? Have you ever designed a hippopotamus, Job? Hmm? Did you make this planet and suspend it in space? Did you draw the boundaries where the sea is and where the land is, Job? Have you done that?” God asks question after question of this sort.

So at the beginning of chapter 40, Job says, “I obviously spoke too soon. Obviously, there are all kinds of things I don’t know. I’d like to back off. I’m sorry I’ve spoken like that.” God says, “Stand up on your feet like a man. I’m not finished yet! I have some more questions.” He asks another chapter and a half of these rhetorical questions. “What about the storehouses of the hail, Job? Do you know how that all comes about? Hmm? Did you put the moon to rotate as it does? Hmm? Did you do that?” Another chapter and a half.

Until, at the very end, what does Job say after God is finished talking? Does he say, “Ah, now I understand”? Nope. He says, “I repent.” Now you need to understand what he’s repenting of. He is not following the advice of the so-called friends, the miserable comforters. He is not repenting of some putative evil that he can’t remember, in order to swing God’s favor back to him. What he’s repenting of is the attitude that he has had toward God, as if knows enough to judge God.

What God says is, “Job, basically, you did say the right things about me, and your friends did not. Your friends, who thought that they were defending me, who thought that they were protecting my goodness and my sovereignty? In fact, I am very angry with them. I’m very angry about the way they treated suffering, for the way they treated you. They are such miserable wretches because, in the name of this theology, where they had all of the little propositions right, they didn’t actually get compassion right. They didn’t get the truth of the whole right.

They didn’t get any mystery of God right. They thought they had God tapped. They thought they understood everything about me. In fact, they stand under my wrath, unless you, Job, intercede for them now in prayer. I want you to pray for them. Because, basically, Job, you did get it right. You recognized there’s a mystery here. You didn’t work out the entailments very well. Yeah, you do need to repent in some sense.

Basically, however, you defended me while still preserving your integrity, whereas their defense of me was so neat and boxy. It was all cubbyholed. It was all nicely shaped, but there was no mystery anywhere. There was no worship, no compassion. They just had all the propositions formally correct, turned the crank, and out popped the right answer. At the end of the day, they reduced me. You pray for them, Job.”

Now at this point, most contemporary critics still think the book of Job is pretty cool. It’s a nice book, full of moral ambiguity and hard questions, you know? There are not a lot of easy answers. There is mystery hiding all over the place. Then you get to chapter 42, and what God does is give Job twice as many sheep, twice as many cattle, and twice as many asses as he had before, as well as the same number of kids as he had before, all over again.

If you think that’s not possible, I grew up in French Canada, where in many parts of the country at the time, the average family had eight kids. (Now it’s very different. It’s very secular and has the highest abortion rate in North America.) I myself knew a family up the street who had 21 kids! I knew them. This is not hearsay. I knew some of their kids. They had 21 of them. She quit at the age of 42. She’d been pregnant half her life. No multiple births. Twenty-one kids. She even beat Job’s wife!

So now Job has his family back. He’s twice as wealthy as he was. The critics come along today and say, “This is so bad.” In a book full of mystery and ambiguity and moral indignation, now you come to the end of the book, and it’s sort of like cowboy movies in the Eisenhower years. You know? White hats and black hats. The guys with white hats are very, very good, and the black hats are very, very bad. You know who is going to be good and who is going to be bad by the color of their hats, and it all has a happy ending.

It’s a bit like Rambo movies or something like that today. They never win any wonderful awards, but the bad guys have to be bad so you have targets to shoot! That’s what happens in a Rambo movie. The kind of movie that actually gets the awards, however, is something like Crash. Did you see Crash? Or is this a church where nobody goes to movies? Let me tell you about it.

Crash is one of those movies.… There are four couples, four pairs. At the beginning of the movie, there’s an apparently good person and an apparently bad person in each pair, but by the end of the movie they’re all reversed. The critics love it! Yes, absolutely, because there’s moral ambiguity there. Then you have a book like the book of Job, and for 41 chapters, there’s moral ambiguity. It’s a wonderful book.

Then at the end, it’s the Eisenhower years all over again! It’s clearly not written by the same author. Clearly, that’s been written by some later redactor, some later editor who put a happy ending on the whole thing, with lots of sheep and babies around! It’s a happy ending and they all go off into the sunset together with “Happy trails to you …” being sung. That’s what you get at the very end of it! It seems sloppy. It’s like some dumb, idiotic, uninformed, morally black-and-white moralizer wrote it.

No, that’s not quite right either. For the truth of the matter is that, in the Bible, there are chunks of the Bible, parts of the Bible, texts of the Bible, literary genres or forms of the Bible, that do emphasize absolutes. There are other forms that emphasize ambiguity. Thus, for example, in Wisdom Literature in the Bible, you’re either following Lady Wisdom or you’re following Dame Folly. You’re following one of those two women. You’re not following both; you’re following one or the other.

The first psalm, which is often called a wisdom psalm, gives you the polarity very clearly: “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, does not stand in the way of sinners, does not sit in the seat of mockers. No, his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water whose leaf does not wither and his fruit comes along in due season. Whatever he does prospers.” It’s all very happy.

The other side? “Not so the wicked! Not so! They are like the chaff that the wind blows away. The wicked shall not stand in the way of the congregation of the righteous,” and so on. Then the final summarizing contrast: “For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” Absolute contrast. Where do you fit? Do you fit in the way of the righteous or the way of the wicked? Most of us want to say, “Well, sometimes in one, sometimes in the other.” Wisdom Literature doesn’t allow that, however. You’re either following one or the other.

Jesus, often, is a great wisdom preacher. Jesus preaches in many different kinds of genres, but at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, you hear this wisdom polarity. You’re going to build a house. Are you going to build it on rock, so it can withstand all the storms? Or are you going to build it on sand, so it’s going to be wiped away like everything in Galveston?

You think, “No, no, I’d like to build on sort of hardpan clay. I don’t want to build really stupidly on sand, right next to the tidal waves, but maybe up only 50 feet, on hardpan clay? I mean, rock that’s 300 feet up is a bit much, you know? I want to be where the action is. Hardpan clay.” Yet Jesus doesn’t offer that. It’s one or the other.

Jesus says, “Blessed is the man who goes in at the narrow gate, on the straight path. Not many go in that way, but there’s life at the end of it. Cursed is the one, in effect, who goes in at the broad gate, the very broad way. Many be that go in there, but that is the way to destruction.” You think, “Well, I don’t want either of them. I mean, that’s really lascivious and dirty over there, and that’s a bit narrow and fundamentalist over here. I’d like a sort of medium-size gate.” Jesus doesn’t offer that, either.

So there are lots of passages in the Bible that offer these absolute polarities. On the other hand, there are many passages in the Bible, especially narrative passages, that tell you about the moral ambiguity. So Abraham is a great man, but he’s a flawed great man. Peter, who speaks on Pentecost, is also the man who swears with oaths that he never knew Jesus. David is the man after God’s own heart, but he’s sleeping around. The Bible speaks of moral ambiguity in the narrative passages of Scripture too.

If you have only the narrative passages that speak to the moral ambiguity, then you might draw the wrong inference. You might say, “Well, if David did it, it’s not too surprising if I do it, after all.” If you had only the passages that speak of moral absolutes, then either you start preening yourself that you can live above it all or you feel absolutely desperate because you’re never quite good enough.

In fact, the Bible gives us both. It gives us passages full of moral ambiguity and it gives us passages that speak of absolutes. The difference, however, between the passages that speak with moral ambiguity and the contemporary world today that likes moral ambiguity is this: In our world, moral ambiguity is an intrinsically good thing. Moral ambiguity is the apex of sophistication. Moral ambiguity is something to be praised.

Whereas in the Bible, moral ambiguity is always to be regretted. It’s not the last word. The last word is on the last day, where not only will justice be done, but it will be seen to be done. Every mouth will be stopped and every tongue shut, and everyone will confess that God’s ways are right and that Jesus is Lord.

So the moral ambiguity is acknowledged. It’s where we live. It’s where we move. It reflects all of our own duplicity, our own double standards. Even those of us who know the Lord and have been forgiven, God help us, still sometimes live according to the flesh. God help us! Yet it’s not the last word. The moral ambiguity is not something to be cherished. It’s something to be regretted as we wait for the final display of a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness, when we will be transformed, and there will be no more sin.

Job 42 functions, in the book of Job, the way the book of Revelation functions in the New Testament. Job 42 is not a mistake. Job 42 is saying that despite all the moral ambiguity … despite the fact that human beings, even good human beings like Job, may not have all the answers and still have to acknowledge that God is so much greater than they … on the last day, God will be vindicated.

Not only will justice be done, but it will be seen to be done. Chapter 42 is not a mistake. It’s the vindication of God. We have already seen this built right into the whole Bible structure when we remember the second pillar. There is a heaven to be gained and a hell to be shunned. So what do we learn from the book of Job?

Yes, there is innocent suffering. You watch the bloated bellies of little children starve to death. You go to many of the countries in Central Africa, where the parents have been wiped out by AIDS, and in many villages, the only ones left are kids under the age of 11 or 12 and adults over the age of 55 or 60. The whole intervening generation wiped out. What about those kids who are born infected with AIDS? Did they do something to deserve that at some sort of personal level?

There is such a thing as innocent suffering. It’s in a relevant sense, but it’s still there, isn’t it? Or else, what do you do with the book of Job? There may come a time in our lives when we don’t see the immediate justice of it all. We still have to acknowledge, first, that we don’t understand very much. We never designed a snowflake. We did not set out this universe.

At some point, we have to say the right thing … as Job said the right thing, even in the midst of his suffering, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him” … in the sure and certain confidence that Job 42 is coming. Justice will be done and will be seen to be done on the last day. In other words, no thoughtful Christian will ever adopt the stance that says, “Yeah, yeah, if you have problems with suffering, let me give you all the answers.”

Rather, at the end of the day, will still recognize there is mystery and hurt and a God who is still bigger. There’s more to be said about this God, and we don’t know enough to stand in judgment of him. There’s still much more to be said. I still haven’t even introduced Christ yet. There’s still much more to be said, but this much, we must get from the book of Job.

2. Insights from the mystery of providence

This phrase, mystery of providence, is borrowed from the Puritans. I’m not going to finish this one now. I’m going to introduce it now. Then later, we’ll come back and finish this one, and then we’ll talk about insights from Christ and his death and resurrection, as well as insights from us taking up our cross and following Jesus. That’s where we’re headed, but I want to introduce this one now and get it going.

I want to begin with two propositions, both of which, I insist, are taught everywhere in the Bible. You can’t be an informed Christian without believing these two things. It’s just not possible. Now these are the hardest two to wrap your head around, but I want to teach you what they are and show you how they’re taught in Scripture, how important they are. Then I want to start teasing out what they mean for our lives. The two propositions are these:

A) God is absolutely and utterly sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions to reduce human responsibility.

In other words, just because God is sovereign, it doesn’t mean that we become non-responsible entities, just tools that have no responsibility. We’re not fatalists, even while we confess God’s sovereignty. That’s the first proposition.

B) Human beings are morally responsible creatures, but human responsibility never functions to reduce God’s sovereignty.

By that, I mean we believe and disbelieve, obey and disobey. We choose, and we do all kinds of things of that sort. All of those things are morally responsible choices. The Bible speaks of all of them. However, human responsibility never functions to reduce God’s sovereignty.

Now, if you ask me how you put those two propositions together.… Whoa, that’s a tough one. Before we even think about how to put them together, I want you to see how common they are in the Bible. Let me pick three passages. The first is Genesis 50:19–20. There are literally scores of passages we could have focused on here, plus many themes elsewhere, but for the sake of time, let’s restrict ourselves to three passages. Genesis 50, toward the end of the chapter.

Now at this point, the old man Jacob, the father of Joseph, has died. The brothers who sold Joseph into slavery are afraid that now that the old man has died, Joseph, who is functioning now as prime minister of Egypt, will take revenge. So they come at him with what is probably a cock-and-bull story about how the old man had said Joseph was to behave himself after the old man had died, and so on. Who knows?

In any case, when Joseph hears all of this, he says to the brothers, “Yes, yes, you did sell me into slavery. I know that. You intended it for evil, but God intended it for good.” That’s what the text says. Did you notice that in verses 19 and 20? “You intended it for evil, but God intended it for good.” That’s exactly what the original says. The two are put in parallel. It’s very blunt. You intended it for evil, but God intended it for good. That’s what the original says.

Now think through what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say, “My original intention was to have you driven down to Egypt in an air-conditioned limousine, but unfortunately, those guys came along and mucked up my plans, so you ended up there as a slave instead.” It doesn’t say that. It doesn’t say, either, “Those chaps sold you into slavery while I was having a snooze one day. I wasn’t really paying a lot of attention. So you ended up in slavery, but I came along at the last moment, riding on my white charger, and rescued you at the end.” It doesn’t say that.

It says, rather, that in one and the same event, “You intended it for evil, but God intended it for good.” In other words, God was sovereign over the whole thing, with only good intentions. They were responsible for what they did, in this whole thing, and it really was evil.

Now let’s turn to another passage before we think this one through a little further. This one is found in Isaiah, chapter 10, beginning at verse 5. God is speaking through Isaiah to the Assyrians. The Assyrians were the regional superpower at the time, and they were a barbaric bunch. We know them from archaeology and other records. They were a barbaric bunch. At this point, they had already destroyed the northern tribes (or were in the process of destroying them even further), and they were threatening Jerusalem.

God says to them, through Isaiah, in Isaiah 10:5 “Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath! I send him against a godless nation …” Now you need to understand that in the context, God is saying, “I send these Assyrians, this brutal, pagan hoard, against the godless nation. That is, the Israelites themselves.” God is using the Assyrians to punish his own covenant people for their sins. That’s what’s going on. However, he is also saying, “Woe to the Assyrians who I am using in this way.”

Verse 6: “I send him against a godless nation …” That is, the Jews. “… I dispatch him against a people who anger me, to seize loot and snatch plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets.” That’s what God says he is sending the Assyrians to do to his own covenant people. Verse 7: “But this is not what he intends …” That is, what the Assyrians think they’re doing. “… this is not what he has in mind; his purpose is to destroy, to put an end to many nations. ‘Are not my commanders all kings?’ he says.”

That is, the Assyrian king is saying, “Even my military commanders are really minor royal figures. My military is so great and so strong, that even my commanders themselves are royal figures.” Verse 9: “Has not Calno fared like Carchemish?” That is, cities that the Assyrians have already destroyed. “Is not Hamath like Arpad, and Samaria like Damascus?” That is, “They are all cities that I’ve destroyed or am about to destroy. They are all cities that I can handle.”

“As my hand seized the kingdoms of the idols, kingdoms whose images excelled those of Jerusalem and Samaria, shall I not deal with Jerusalem and her images as I dealt with Samaria and her idols?” Now they don’t understand, too much, that Jerusalem’s God doesn’t have a whole lot of images. They’re pagans trying to think in pagan terms, but what they’re really saying is, “Listen, if I bumped off Damascus, if I can take Samaria, then I can certainly domesticate Jerusalem too.” That’s what they’re thinking.

“When the Lord has finished all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem …” That is, when he has finished using the Assyrians to punish Jerusalem. “… he will say, ‘I will punish the king of Assyria for the willful pride of his heart and the haughty look in his eyes. For he says: “By the strength of my hand I have done this, and by my wisdom, because I have understanding.

I removed the boundaries of nations, I plundered their treasures; like a mighty one I subdued their kings. As one reaches into a nest, so my hand reached for the wealth of the nations; as men gather abandoned eggs, so I gathered all the countries; not one flapped a wing, or opened its mouth to chirp.” ‘ “

Then God says, “Does the ax raise itself above him who swings it, or the saw boast against him who uses it?” Do you hear that? God, at one level, views the mighty Assyrian nation as nothing more than a tool, and what right does a tool have to boast against the one who uses it? God used it, so why do they have the right to boast as if they did this on their own? “As if a rod were to wield him who lifts it up, or a club brandish him who is not wood! Therefore, the Lord, the Lord Almighty, will send a wasting disease upon his sturdy warriors,” and so on.

Now isn’t that a remarkable passage? There are a couple of score passages like that in the Prophets, where clearly, God is presented as sovereign over the nations, including the pagan nations whom he may use to chasten other nations. Yet that sovereignty does not mitigate the responsibility of the nations themselves. The nations themselves are viewed as responsible for what they’re doing, but that responsibility does not mean that God is asleep, not sovereign, or taking time off.

If your brain hurts at this one, it ought to. It has generated, across the centuries of the church, a lot of reflection about how to think about this. What this means is that God is so sovereign that he stands behind both good and evil, but he stands behind good and evil asymmetrically. That is, he doesn’t stand behind good and evil in exactly the same way.

He stands behind good in such a way that the good is always traceable to him. He is to be praised for it. He stands behind evil in such a way that it never escapes the outermost boundaries of his sovereignty, but the evil is never chargeable to him. The evil is chargeable to the secondary causalities, to the secondary causes (in this case, to the Assyrians). If you think, “Boy, that’s pretty convenient for God,” I would say, “Yes, but that’s the way it is.”

If you think of any other model, you have even worse problems. If you say God is only behind the good, and his sovereignty doesn’t play out over this bad stuff over here, then what’s going on over here? Is there another God? A Satan? A secondary person? Something a bit like “the force” in Star Wars? There’s a good side and a bad side, and which side wins depends on which side you give strength to?

That’s not what the Bible says. As long as you think that is the way things work in the universe, you can never, ever be sure which side is going to win. It’s called dualism. As long as you hold to this kind of dualism, you can’t ever be sure who is going to win. I mean, if God lost that one, then he could lose another one. Who knows, maybe he’ll even lose at the end?

No, the Bible insists that God is so sovereign that all the good and the evil that takes place never escapes the bounds of his sovereignty, but the goodness is always creditable to him, and the evil is not. It’s always creditable to secondary causes, in this case, the Assyrians. In one sense, as difficult as it is to get your head around that kind of stuff, once you see it, it comes as a vast relief.

Because even the rotten stuff that happens, God, in dealing with this fallen world, because he is good, can use it for good and for his own glory. In this case, it brings punishment to the people. It brings repentance, ultimately. It brings a return to God in reformation. For God, that’s far more important than whether everybody lives a comfortable life.

Do you know the passage where this is most important? There are a number of passages like this in the New Testament, but perhaps nowhere more clear than Acts 4:27–28. Now we’re coming up, more and more, to Christ himself. Let me remind you of the context. Peter and John are facing their first whiff of open attack, of persecution, from the local authorities.

They are released and, we’re told in verse 23, after they’ve been threatened and so forth, that they go back to their own people. That is, not simply to the Jews. At this point, it’s the Jews that are giving them trouble. They are Jews themselves. It’s Jews attacking Jews. Rather, they go to their own people, that is, the fledgling Christian community. They go back to their own community, who are all or mostly Christians themselves, and they give the report of what had gone on.

Verse 24: “When these Christians heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. ‘Sovereign Lord …’ ” Do you notice that when persecution breaks out in the New Testament, very frequently the first thing that is confessed by the believers is God’s sovereignty? That’s true across church history. You put Christians under persecution, and I’ll tell you what happens again and again: they confess God’s sovereignty. We’ll come back to that one this afternoon.

“Sovereign Lord, you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.” That is, “You’re still in charge. This is your universe, even as we’re facing opposition.” Verse 25: “You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: ‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One, against his Messiah.’ ”

They quote Scripture to demonstrate that these kinds of ugly outbreaks against Christ and his people are to be expected. Scripture itself says so. This is not a neutral universe. It’s already a fallen universe, a broken universe, and of course there will be opposition against God and his people.

Then in verse 27, they say that the outworking of Psalm 2 has already taken place: “Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed.” That’s why, politically speaking, Jesus went to the cross.

There was a wretched conspiracy, a kangaroo court. The Jewish leaders conspired with Pilate and the Gentile leaders. They condemned Jesus, even though they knew that he was innocent. They wanted him off the map. He was a troublemaker. He was a threat, whether to the religious power or even, maybe, to the secular power. He had far too many followers. He had to be done away with. So there was a conspiracy, and he was killed. It was wicked!

Then in verse 28: “They did what your hand had determined beforehand would be done.” That’s dramatic, isn’t it? So when Herod, Pontius Pilate, and the other authorities crucified Jesus, it was according to the determination of God Almighty. Now unless you believe both verse 27 and verse 28, you will destroy Christianity. You have to have them both.

Supposing you just believed verse 27, but you don’t believe verse 28. You only believe verse 27, that Jesus went to the cross because of this conspiracy. That’s it. God has nothing to do with it. Jesus went to the cross because of the conspiracy. Well, then you have preserved the wickedness of all of these people, haven’t you? You have preserved that.

On the other hand, it now means that Jesus going to the cross (ostensibly to pay for our sin according to the plan of God) is now not according to the plan of God in his sovereignty bringing these things to pass. Now it’s nothing more than an accident of history brought about by the conspiracy of a bunch of idiots who are corrupting justice in order to have a little more political freedom. Is that what you believe?

What do you do, then, with biblical texts in Revelation 13 and 17 that say that, in God’s mind, Christ is the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the earth? It’s God’s plan. What do you do with all of those images in the Old Testament of the Passover lamb, Yom Kippur, and all the promises? What do you do with Isaiah 53, a picture of a suffering servant who is wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities? What do you do with all of this that predicts that God is in charge and bringing all of these things to pass?

If it’s all just an accident of history … if God hadn’t foreseen anything, hadn’t planned anything, and hadn’t done anything, but rather it just happened … then how can you possibly believe that the gift of Christ on the cross was a gift to us because there he bore our sins in his own body on the tree?

On the other hand, supposing you believe verse 28 and don’t believe verse 27. Just wipe verse 27 out. Forget the conspiracy bit. Now Jesus goes to the cross because God arranged to bring Jesus to the cross. God arranged for him to die in our place. It was all God’s plan in the first place. Don’t blame dear old Pilate. Yes, he has to wash his hands and all that, but it was all ordained.

Herod was corrupt in all of this and didn’t care about justice, but that was all ordained. All the chief priests that were involved in all of this were jealous of Jesus authority, were afraid that his popularity would actually foment a rebellion, and they corroded justice. That was all ordained because, obviously, God had to get Jesus on that cross!

However, if God’s sovereignty means that the people who crucified Jesus are innocent, then God’s sovereignty surely means that everyone is innocent. We’re just pawns. We’re just tools. That’s it. Yet if we’re all innocent because God is sovereign, we don’t need a redeemer. There’s nothing to redeem us from. How can we be guilty? We’re all innocent. We’re just pawns. That’s it. We don’t need Jesus to die on the cross. If God just does what he does and moves the pieces around, then I’m innocent and don’t need a redeemer.

You see, for the whole of the Bible to make sense, you have to believe those two propositions with which I began: God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions to mitigate human guilt. Human beings are morally responsible creatures, but our moral responsibility never means that God is asleep at the switch. He still remains sovereign; he still remains in control.

I don’t claim to know exactly how to understand those two propositions side by side. For those of you who are interested in such things, the view that both of them are true (which I think is taught everywhere in the Bible) is sometimes called compatibilism. That is to say, the two propositions are mutually compatible. You can sensibly believe both of them.

If I had enough time, I would tease out the ways you can show that they are not incompatible. You can make sense of them. There are mysteries bound up in all of this, partly because I don’t know what it means to say, though the Bible says it, that God inhabits eternity. I don’t know how the God who inhabits eternity does things in space and time.

I think I know something about space and time. I, too, studied the new physics and Einstein’s relativity theory. My background was in nuclear chemistry and that sort of thing. I, too, took quantum physics. I think I understand a little bit about time, as understood from an Einsteinian perspective, but don’t ask me to explain eternity! Is that like more time going both ways? Or is it another dimension? What does it mean that God inhabits eternity? Does that mean God lives a long, long, long time … endlessly, in both directions? Is that all it means?

Yet this God who inhabits eternity does things in space-time history where I live, and I don’t know how he does all of that. I don’t know. All I know is that the Bible is unambiguous about both of those propositions being true. The only way I can maintain both of them and not drive myself insane thinking about them is by being very careful to let both of those propositions function in my life the way they function in the Bible.

Let me repeat that, as it’s very important. It’s important not only to believe both of those propositions but also to let them function in my life the way they function in the Bible. For example, what does the Bible infer from the fact that God is sovereign? How is God’s sovereignty used in the Bible?

Is it ever used to say, “Well, God is sovereign, so we believe in fatalism. Que ser·, ser·. What will be, will be. I can do anything I jolly well please because God is sovereign. You know, if I eat Cheerios today, it’s because God ordained that I eat Cheerios. If I’m an Arminian, it’s because God ordained me to be an Arminian. If I sleep around, God ordained it. What will be, will be. God is sovereign; you can’t escape that. No sweat”? Does the Bible ever use God’s sovereignty that way? I don’t think so.

The Bible does use God’s sovereignty, instead, to establish the mystery of providence, to establish a Job saying, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” It uses God’s sovereignty to draw out Romans 8:28. We still can believe that “all things do work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

If you start by saying human beings are responsible, what is inferred from that? The Bible never uses human responsibility to drive you to the conclusion, “Well, because we’re responsible, God has just decided to back off and let us make our own choices without any influence or any sovereign sweep anywhere. Even he himself, poor chap, doesn’t quite see the consequences of all that we do, but he wants us to have our perfect freedom, and our responsibility is grounded in the perfect capacity to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ ”

The Bible never reasons that way. Lots of preachers reason that way, but that’s not the way the Bible reasons. The Bible reasons that we’re held accountable because we do what we want to do. We’re held responsible for it. We are a morally responsible people. We’re held accountable. Yet God is never outfoxed, outmaneuvered, or outplayed. He still remains in charge. So if we learn to let the Bible use these two truths in our lives the way these truths function in the Bible, we will find it immensely stabilizing for all that we say and do.

I want to take just a couple of minutes to give you one example of this so that it’s not just theoretical but practical, and then in the next session I’ll give you a whole lot more. God, then, uses some of these horrible things in our lives in a variety of ways, and sometimes we can see how this mystery of providence is working out for good. Sometimes we don’t see it right away, but sometimes we see it.

First, suffering as a preparation for believers to help others. For example, in 2 Corinthians especially, the apostle Paul speaks of the sufferings that he has endured, such that he has learned to be able to give comfort to others with the comfort that he himself has been comforted with. In other words, God has prepared him to help others by going through really rocky times.

Those of you who have been around a little longer and who have suffered, if you’ve learned to trust Christ at all in sovereignty, isn’t that one of the things you’ve learned? You’ve learned that you can bring comfort to others if you’re not just so focused in on yourself. You start becoming a channel of God’s blessing in this broken world to other people.

My wife has always been a pretty compassionate soul, but since she’s had a double mastectomy and been on death’s door, she has become a positive angel toward any number of other women who have come down with similar cancers. She knows what they’re going through. She knows what the doctors don’t always tell them. She has seen the worst elements of almost all the treatments.

She’s written up pages that she sometimes gives to them: which Christian books are useful and which are not, how to provide support when they’re so weak and going for yet one more round of radiation, when your hair will fall out, and why you need to buy a head covering or a wig before it happens.

I tell you, she never would have been an angel, or a help, like that if she hadn’t gone through it. Now I’m not saying going through it was a good thing. This is part of living in a damned world. Cancer is still the result of the fall. It’s not an intrinsically good thing, but God is sovereign and uses even such awful things to bring about a surprising array of good things.

You lose a parent. You lose a child. You wonder if you’ll ever get out of it. In the mercy of God, if you’re a serious Christian at all, a year or two or three years down the road, you are exactly God’s appointed person to bring comfort to others with the comfort with which you yourself have been comforted.

You’ve learned, in all of this, something of how Christ does come by his Spirit and bring counsel and hope. You’ve received help from other Christians. You’ve received help from reading certain parts of the Bible. You’ve discovered what biblical truths and promises from God have been of great benefit to you. You’ve made notes on them yourself, and now you pass them onto the next person.

You start seeing how the mystery of providence works out in ways you never would have foreseen and certainly wouldn’t have asked for, both to bring glory to the Son and to strengthen and help another generation of his people.