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God Delivers from the Suffering He Ordains · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Good Monday morning. We've been talking about God's sovereignty recently. Does his sovereignty
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  and salvation make him unfair? That was Apga twenty twenty eight. And then
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  should his all sovereignty make us less prayerful since we can just resign all things
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  to him? That was Apga twenty twenty nine. And today we talk about
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  God's sovereignty over our suffering. That's because Pastor John today and our Navigator's Bible
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  reading plan, we read Psalm seventy one together, and listeners who have already
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  completed their reading this morning will have already come across the verse the bridget wants
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  to stop and reflect on more deeply. Here's your email, Pastor John,
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  Hello to you from New Zealand. For many years, I've thought, like
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  many Christians do, that God would stop pain from getting into the lives of
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  his children if he could. But he can't really stop at all, or
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  he simply allows some of it to pass. So, either because he is
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  helpless or passive, we suffer. So we ask for his deliverance and he
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  will eventually help us out. But when I read a verse like Psalm seventy
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  one twenty I am struck that it seems to say that the same God who
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  caused that suffering is the same God the psalmist has confidence to pray to for
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  deliverance from that suffering. Here's the full verse, You who have made me
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  see many troubles and calamities, will revive me again from the depths of the
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  earth. You will bring me up again. Can you explain this verse and
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  how important it is for us to see God's sovereignty over our suffering as the
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  ground for our confidence that He is powerful enough to deliver us too. This
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  seems profoundly important and so counterintuitive to how I and many other Christians naturally speak
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  of suffering. But I see it there in the Bible. Thank you.
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  Yes, it is profoundly important. As I have read my Bible over the
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  years, and as I have dealt with suffering people, the conclusion that I
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  come to has been the same in both cases, namely, that the sovereignty
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  of God over suffering is better news than either his supposed inability to remove it
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  or his supposed cruelty in not removing it. In other words, what I
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  have found is that not only does the Bible teach that God governs all things,
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  including our sufferings, but also that those who trust His goodness and his
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  wisdom in that sovereignty find the greatest strength and even joy through the hardest seasons
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  of life. So let me say a word from scripture about the sovereignty of
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  God over our sufferings, and then try to make that connection with why that
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  is encouraging, Why that's good news to those who trust His goodness and wisdom
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  through their sorrows. God declares in Isaiah forty six, I am God,
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  and there is no other. I'm God, and there's none like me,
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  saying my counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose. So
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  none of his purposes is thwarted. He's God. Paul put it like this.
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  God works all things according to the counsel of his will Ephesians one eleven.
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  Not a sparrow, Jesus said, not a single tiny bird anywhere in
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  the world falls to the ground apart from our Father's will Matthew ten twenty nine.
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  The dice are thrown on the table, the proverb says, the lot
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  is cast in the lap. Just translated, the dice are thrown on the
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  table, and every decision is from the Lord. Every time my wife and
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  I reach our hand into the bag of letters playing scrabble. God appoints which
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  letters we pull out. That's how detailed his sovereignty is. According to the
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  Bible, Lamentations three thirty seven asks who has spoken and it came to pass?
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  Unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of
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  the Most High that good and bad come? That is, prosperity and calamity,
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  They're all from God. James says, don't boast as if you know
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  tomorrow. Instead you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will
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  live and do this or that. Staying alive doing this or that will be
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  ultimately decided by the Lord, not us, and not Satan Hebrews twelve.
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  The Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son who he receives.
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  For the moment, all discipline seems painful, but later it yields the peaceful
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  fruit of righteousness. Psalm sixty, verse three. You have made your people
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  see hard things. You have given us wine to drink, and made us
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  stagger Psalm sixty six y ten. You, oh God, have tested us.
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  You have tried us as silver is tried. You laid a crushing burden
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  on our backs. And it was God who gave Paul his thorn in the
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  flesh to protect him from being proud. So there's a reason, there's a
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  reason why my book on Providence has seven hundred pages, because that's how long
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  it takes to even come close to laying out the vastness of the Biblical foundation
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  of the all pervasive, all governing, all wise, never meaningless, never
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  whimsical, never random, never unjust, always purposeful, always good, sovereignty
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  of God. And here's the wonderful truth that Bridget is drawing out of Psalm
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  seventy one rightly, namely that the very sovereignty that brings our sufferings is the
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  same sovereignty that enables us to be confident that God can save us in them
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  from them according to His wise and loving purposes. The Psalm says, you
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  who have made me see many troubles and calamities, will revive me again from
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  the depths of the earth. You will bring me up again. In other
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  words, since it was not ultimately me, or natural forces, or satanic
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  opposition, or the evils of human adversaries that made me see many sore troubles
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  and calamities, but rather it was you, Oh God, my Father,
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  my all wise, all loving, all powerful Father. Therefore I have every
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  reason to be confident that this same power and love and wisdom will bring me
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  up out of those troubles according to your promise. So I think we should
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  think this way. If God does not have the power or the wisdom,
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  or the right or the love to restrain deadly natural forces or hostile human forces,
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  or destructive satanic forces, if he doesn't have the wherewithal to restrain them
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  from hurting you, on what basis are you going to count on Him to
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  give you endurance in the sufferings, or to give you relief from the suffering
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  in this life, or to give you final happiness in the age to come.
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  If you are hoping for a pain free eternity with God, which I
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  am, then at some point you are hoping that God will play the sovereignty
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  card and say to natural forces and human forces and satanic forces, no more,
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  no more. So. What the Bible teaches is that sovereignty is not
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  a card. It's not a card that he plays at the end, is
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  not a card at all. It is a right and authority and power that
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  belongs to his very Godness and is always there, all ways active. This
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  is why thousands of people have found that the sovereignty of God over their suffering
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  is a precious reality, because it means none of our suffering is meaningless.
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  None of it is owing to the weakness of God, or the folly of
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  God, or the cruelty of God. But all of it is owing to
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  wise and loving and holy purposes of God for those who trust in His goodness
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  in the midst of it. And the very power and wisdom and love that
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  governs our sorrows now is the same power that will deliver us in God's all
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  wise timing. So let me close with Lamentations three thirty one. I love
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  the way Jeremiah puts it. The Lord will not cast off forever, but
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  though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his
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  steadfast love. So it's the same sovereignty in causing grief and in showing compassion.
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  Thanks Pastor John. And this episode reminds me of a question we took
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  up about seven years ago. Now does God control all things all the time?
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  It's a great question, phenomenal episode you don't want to miss. If
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  you did miss it when it came out in twenty seventeen. Don't miss it
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  now. See APJA ten ninety four in the archive. Just go to askpastor
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  John dot com and type in the episode number ten and ninety four. Does
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  God control all things all the time? Well, how do I forget my
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  sinful past and move past those feelings of guilt for the dumb things I did
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  years ago? That question is up next time, I'm Tony Ranky. See
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  you on Thursday.