Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Long Sorrows Set the Stage

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Long Sorrows Set the Stage · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Speaker 1: Today in the Navigator's Bible reading Plan, we read Mark
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  Speaker 1: chapter five, verses twenty four to thirty four, and we
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  Speaker 1: meet there a woman with a twelve year illness, twelve
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  Speaker 1: years diseased, twelve years bleeding, twelve years embarrassed, twelve years anemic,
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  Speaker 1: twelve years from doctor to doctor to doctor, twelve years
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  Speaker 1: of false cures, twelve years that depleted her entire life savings.
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  Speaker 1: And then after twelve years, Jesus walks by within arm's reach.
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  Speaker 1: Imagine for a moment you were in control of everything,
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  Speaker 1: if you were in sovereign control over this world, over
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  Speaker 1: every disease, every pain, every war, how long would it
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  Speaker 1: take you to fix her and fix every other broken
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  Speaker 1: thing in this world? A couple days a week at most.
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  Speaker 1: So we often wonder why does the sovereign God take
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  Speaker 1: twelve years to heal a suffering woman or hundreds of
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  Speaker 1: years to fix greater problems? As we read in the
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  Speaker 1: long Story of the Old Testament, watching centuries of rulers
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  Speaker 1: and judges and king, some good, some of them rotten,
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  Speaker 1: and then the long exile and the enduring, long disappointments
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  Speaker 1: for God's people. Today, on asked Pastor John Long sorrows
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  Speaker 1: set the stage. We get therefrom reading the Book of
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  Speaker 1: Judges together and in Julia's question, who lives just outside
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  Speaker 1: of Philadelphia? Pastor John, in reading the Book of Judges
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  Speaker 1: and in rereading your book Providence, I noticed that you
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  Speaker 1: wrote this powerful insight quote, Reading the Book of Judges
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  Speaker 1: is like having the insanity of sin rubbed in your
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  Speaker 1: face while God returns again and again with mercy, which
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  Speaker 1: was repeatedly forgotten. End quote. Wow, that text is starred
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  Speaker 1: and underlined and highlighted in my book. But I've been
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  Speaker 1: thinking specifically of Judges too, Verses eleven to twenty three,
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  Speaker 1: where we see the tragic consequences of Israel's repeated cycle
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  Speaker 1: of disobedience and idolatry and compromise with sin. The people
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  Speaker 1: of Israel continually sin, which led to oppression by surrounding nations.
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  Speaker 1: Why do you think God allows such long cycles of
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  Speaker 1: sorrow to occur when as people compromise with sin. How
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  Speaker 1: should this long pattern challenge us to pursue holiness and
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  Speaker 1: avoid spiritual complacency in our own relationship with God today?
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  Speaker 2: This is a difficult question. In fact, I think it's
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  Speaker 2: probably an impossible question to answer. Namely, why did God
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  Speaker 2: take as long as he took to do what he
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  Speaker 2: did in any given period of history, not just the judges.
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  Speaker 2: And the reason it's difficult, if not impossible, is because
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  Speaker 2: there's no clear correlation in human behavior between quantity of
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  Speaker 2: time and the effect of that time on people. For example,
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  Speaker 2: if you want to discipline your child by making him
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  Speaker 2: stay in his room as a consequence of speaking harshly
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  Speaker 2: with his sister, how long should he stay in the room?
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  Speaker 2: And there simply is no clear answer anywhere among humans
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  Speaker 2: to the question what amount of time correlates with a
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  Speaker 2: particular degree of guilt or a change of behavior. It's
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  Speaker 2: just of the nature of things that the elapse of time,
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  Speaker 2: whether we're talking about centuries or hours, never has a clear,
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  Speaker 2: definite correlation in our minds. Our minds are human minds
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  Speaker 2: between the quantity of time and the nature of the
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  Speaker 2: effect of the time going by. And if it's difficult
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  Speaker 2: to know about the correlation between time and effect at
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  Speaker 2: the human level, how much more difficult would it be
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  Speaker 2: for us to make judgments about God's decisions to take
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  Speaker 2: a century or one thousand years to do something when
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  Speaker 2: we might have done it in ten years, how should
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  Speaker 2: we make that judgment. So that's my disclaimer at the
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  Speaker 2: beginning here for why I don't think it's possible to
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  Speaker 2: give a very definite answer to the question why God
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  Speaker 2: would decrease such long cycles of sin and judgment, say
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  Speaker 2: in the period of the Judges. But let me say
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  Speaker 2: two or three things that might shed some light on
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  Speaker 2: the length of redemptive history in his various phases. Let's
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  Speaker 2: focus on God's dealing with Israel. From the time that
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  Speaker 2: God chose Abraham or Abram to the time of the
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  Speaker 2: coming of Jesus was about two thousand years.
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  Speaker 1: That's a long time.
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  Speaker 2: That included two hundred years of the patriarchal era. Rounding
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  Speaker 2: off these numbers, about four hundred years of sojourning in Egypt,
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  Speaker 2: forty years in the Wilderness, four hundred years with the Judges,
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  Speaker 2: one hundred years of united kingdom under Saul and David
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  Speaker 2: and Solomon, about four hundred years of divided kingdom, seventy
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  Speaker 2: years in exile in Babylon, and then another four hundred
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  Speaker 2: years or so after the Old Testament closes until Jesus.
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  Speaker 2: At every point we could ask why that amount of time,
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  Speaker 2: And I've already said why. I don't think that question
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  Speaker 2: can be answered with any precision, but I think we
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  Speaker 2: can say at least three things to get at the issue. One.
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  Speaker 2: In second Beater three eighth, it says with the Lord
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  Speaker 2: one day is as a thousand years, and one thousand
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  Speaker 2: years as one day. So we should never am God
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  Speaker 2: passing through time as slowly as we do. His judgments
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  Speaker 2: therefore about how long things should be done are being
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  Speaker 2: made from a very unique standpoint. The second observation is
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  Speaker 2: that it's clear, for example, in the Book of Judges,
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  Speaker 2: that the main point is that when there's no righteous
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  Speaker 2: king in the land, people do what's right in their
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  Speaker 2: own eyes, and that winds up with a prevalence of
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  Speaker 2: great wickedness in the land. So the point of the
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  Speaker 2: Book of Judges is that human beings are incurably sinful
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  Speaker 2: and need a savior, and that life on earth becomes
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  Speaker 2: unlivable where there are no restraints on sin. And God
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  Speaker 2: has chosen two ways to make that clear during the
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  Speaker 2: period of Judges. One is to describe the depth and
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  Speaker 2: horror of the evil that comes out of people's hearts,
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  Speaker 2: like chopping a concubine in pieces, and the other is
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  Speaker 2: to describe how long this goes on through Auseneil, Ehud, Shamgar, Debraah, Gideon,
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  Speaker 2: Abimelek Toola, Jair, jeff the Ibzon, Ilon Abdun Samson four centuries.
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  Speaker 2: In other words, the measure of sin's horror and the
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  Speaker 2: measure of sins duration combine to underline the terrible condition
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  Speaker 2: of the human heart. We may not know why God
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  Speaker 2: chose four hundred years as opposed to three hundred or
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  Speaker 2: five hundred or whatever, but we can know that it
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  Speaker 2: was both the horror of it and the length of
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  Speaker 2: it that made the point. Human beings are inveterately sinful
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  Speaker 2: and need a savior. No passage of time is going
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  Speaker 2: to make them better. We need a savior, a savior
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  Speaker 2: that is far better than any of the judges. And
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  Speaker 2: the third thing we can say with regard to the
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  Speaker 2: two thousand years of Israel's history is that Israel was
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  Speaker 2: becoming a lesson book for how to understand the nature
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  Speaker 2: of God, the nature of redemption, the way that the
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  Speaker 2: Messiah Jesus would in fact come and be that redemption,
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  Speaker 2: the way the history of Israel unfolds introduces the reality
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  Speaker 2: of the covenant, the reality of law, the reality of
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  Speaker 2: God's revealed will in that law, the reality of substitution
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  Speaker 2: in a blood sacrifice, the reality of a priesthood, a kingship,
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  Speaker 2: the crucial role of prophecy, and the word of God.
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  Speaker 2: All those realities that we meet and learn about over
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  Speaker 2: time in the history of Israel are essential in the
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  Speaker 2: New Testament for understanding the nature and work of Jesus Christ.
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  Speaker 2: We may not know why God took the precise amount
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  Speaker 2: of time he took, but we can see what he
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  Speaker 2: was doing in redemptive history in the Old Testament to
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  Speaker 2: prepare for the fullest understanding of the nature and the
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  Speaker 2: work of Christ in the New Testament. Because it's all
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  Speaker 2: understood in the light of what the history of Israel
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  Speaker 2: was revealing and teaching about God and his plan for salvation.
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  Speaker 2: And I think one lesson at least that God intends
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  Speaker 2: for us to see in this history of redemption is
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  Speaker 2: the depth and the ugliness of sin, the seriousness of
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  Speaker 2: God's judgment, the amazing grace that turns up again and
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  Speaker 2: again and again. Oh my goodness, my wife and I
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  Speaker 2: are reading Joseiah right now, and we just read up
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  Speaker 2: to two last night. I mean, the horrors of Hordom
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  Speaker 2: prostitution against God, and he just says, I'm gonna.
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  Speaker 1: Woo you back.
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  Speaker 2: You just you just almost want to cry at the
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  Speaker 2: kindness of God revealed in the Book of Joseiah. And
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  Speaker 2: it's all pointing to Galatians four to four. When the
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  Speaker 2: fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son,
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  Speaker 2: born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those
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  Speaker 2: who are under the law, so that we might receive
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  Speaker 2: adoption as sons. That's it, that's where it's all going.
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  Speaker 1: Reading the Book of Judges is like having the insanity
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  Speaker 1: of sin rubbed in your face while God returns again
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  Speaker 1: and again with mercy. What a great line from the
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  Speaker 1: Providence Book, page one, twenty six. Great book, by the way,
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  Speaker 1: You should read it. If you haven't, you can download
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  Speaker 1: it for free at Desiring God Forward slash Books right now.
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  Speaker 1: Thank Pestor John for this reminder that a long timeline,
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  Speaker 1: a long story of mercy, patiently building out the vocabulary
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  Speaker 1: that we need about temples and priests and blood sacrifices,
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  Speaker 1: all to set the stage that we would be ready
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  Speaker 1: for when the fullness of time had come, to behold
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  Speaker 1: our Savior in all of his glory, A long narrative
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  Speaker 1: of sorrow set the stage for him. Those are beautiful
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  Speaker 1: reflections here, Pasture John. Thank you from a not very
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  Speaker 1: beautiful book. As we read Judges together in the second
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  Speaker 1: half of April. Pretty tough going to read that book
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  Speaker 1: if you're struggling through the Bible and you struggle to
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  Speaker 1: see the relevance of it as we plug away in
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  Speaker 1: our reading. See the Espectal John book on that very question.
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  Speaker 1: Isn't the Bible old and irrelevant? That's really one of
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  Speaker 1: the core questions that we all have as Bible readers
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  Speaker 1: at some point. See pages nineteen to twenty in the
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  Speaker 1: Especial John book for more from Pestra John on that
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  Speaker 1: from the Old Testament to AI, quite a shift next
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  Speaker 1: time where artificial intelligence fails. I'm Tony Ranky, See you
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  Speaker 1: on Thursday.