Biblical Evangelism Conference Talk 2

Preaching That Speaks to Suffering and Evil

November 2005

I want to confess to you that I come to this address with real reluctance.

Several months ago I felt that it would be glorifying to God to speak abut preaching in the most extreme situations. A week after taking that decision the General Secretary of the IFES movement in Poland took me to Auschwitz. I saw large numbers of suitcases and toys of young children, the execution wall where thousands of perfectly ordinary innocent people were liquidated, and canisters of zyklon B that was used in the gas chambers. There were camp photos of victims all the way down the walls fo the cell blocks, floor to ceiling, some with flowers pinned to them by relatives. And you just knew looking at them that every single one knew what was going to happen to them. The thing that struck me most was the perfect, bureaucratic paper work, in neat script by ordinary clerks, just as if they had been running any other efficient business. It was ordinary, boring evil on a massive scale and it made me think that when it comes to suffering and evil I know very little.

Three weeks after that I was talking to a staffworker from a country where Christianity is banned. A disaffected staffworker had two weeks previously written down the names of all staff and Christian student leaders and given it to the secret police. A few got out of the country in time but most were rounded up and subjected to sustained dreadful treatment with electric cattle prods and had their finger nails pulled out with pliers. That is six weeks ago. All of us would have been rounded up in that country for attending a conference like this.

I asked for an hour of his time just to listen to him on the subject of suffering and evil. He smiled and told me that he really didn’t know enough to speak with any authority on the matter. However, not only had his staff been tortured but his brother and sister had died of AIDS in the last term and his family had been held up at gun point and he had been told to count to three at which point his wife would be shot in the head. He made me think that when it comes to suffering and evil I know very little.

I returned from those two experiences having decided not to speak on this subject until I have had time for a lot more processing. I told a friend that I couldn’t because I know so little. He replied that I must but that I need to tell you that I know almost nothing and that this is very much work in progress. The reason he said that is because we don’t have to know very much about a subject in order to speak on it for the Lord, but not knowing very much have a strong influence on how we speak.

To put it another way I’ve been asking two questions since those two experiences:

I intend to answer the first question very briefly and then spend the remainder of our time reflecting on the second.

Do we have a gospel that is deep and searching enough to deal with horror?

The answer is “yes, resoundingly, a thousand times yes.” But the issues force us to think about deep things of God and not remain in the shallows. My aim for this talk is to encourage us in our preaching and Bible handling to be deep. There are obvious slightly trite questions that the existence of evil poses to the gospel like “if God is a God of love and is all powerful then how come suffering and evil exist?” That is a logical apologetic question that is worth you thinking about. But then there is a whole category of more meaningful theological questions such as:

And then there is another category of questions still when evil and suffering come personally near home. Questions like:

Now I want to tell you that there are answers to all those questions. Maybe we struggle to have complete answers, but the Bible addresses all these with an honesty that does not shirk the pain of living in a fallen world and without offering solutions that are merely nicely wrapped up theory but that don’t have any practical help. The Bible doesn’t turn its eyes from horror and yet insists that God is a God of love.

It holds those two things together by an astonishing event of ultimate horror: the cross. Because all suffering - the kind caused by people, but also natural disasters, the kind experienced for being Christian and the kind that is just experienced by living in a fallen world - is finally the result of moral evil in the sin of our first parents, and our subsequently being tainted with their guilt. The cross of Jesus is horror that speaks to human and natural horrors and says “ultimately I am going to wipe away tears from the eyes of all who belong to Christ because of this event where sin is decisively dealt with and the guilt of sin forgiven.”

A Hard Answer 

Now that is real, true, eternally wonderful but it is HARD. I believe it is hard for two main reasons:

1. Because we are not in the realm of theoretical problems here. We need real answers to real need that is sometimes deeply personal. If you haven’t experience deep personal suffering yet you only have to live long enough and you will. You will be bereaved and one day you yourself will die. But more than real answers to suffering and evil we find ourselves in need of real consolation, real comfort, real submission. Often our need is not so much an answer, as our God. Encountering him and knowing him in the middle of it. And most of us are not well trained to see the lines of connection between that historical event and the very real, pressing issues of suffering in today’s world.

The people of Israel thought that they were forsaken by God in Babylon. In Isaiah 40 they complain “my way is hidden from the Lord, my cause disregarded by my God.” And they sunk into the depths of misery. God’s chief response is a picture of how amazing he is, how powerful, how loving, how quick to act for them in the middle of their distress. They needed a dose of Psalm 23:

even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and staff they comfort me

Or Psalm 34:

the eyes of the Lord are towards the righteous and his ears hear their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil to cut off the memory of them from the Earth. When the righteous cry for help the Lord hears them and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit

which was written by David during a dreadful time of defeat, despair and heartbreak. My guess is that it was hard for them to see the connection between their suffering and a picture of the greatness of God. They might well have complained further “I don’t want a picture of your greatness, I want you to get me out of this dreadful place.”

But the thing is that sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn’t. There is an awful lot of Christianity around at the moment that amounts to easy-believism. “Come to Jesus and it will all be alright.” Which is eternally true but in this life can be anything but. For many Christians the decision to follow Jesus means that suffering gets ratcheted up, not down. The real answer is the picture of God, and the encounter with that God, because in it he invites confidence and trust that lead to hope, and faith that says “you know all my ways, you are in control of my life. I can’t see why this is happening but you are with me and you are good.”

2. The second reason it is hard to get to grips with the fact that the gospel really answers suffering and evil is that in our society we almost all start with a wrong framework for comprehending suffering when it comes. In this country our almost universal expectation is that normality = comfort. That is just our framework. Every social institution is designed to make us feel that ease is our right. And therefore when suffering and evil come our way our instinctive reaction is to assume that something is wrong, something is abnormal, and therefore to question God who has suddenly let our normality get disrupted. Too often this means that when our world gets shaken our faith also gets shaken because we constructed in on flawed foundations that will not bear the weight of what the world is actually like.

In other parts of the world they start with a different framework. Namely that this world is fallen and sinful and that suffering and evil are therefore the biblical, expected normality. And that framework means that when they come the foundations aren’t shaken, indeed they were constructed in the expectation that anything other than suffering and evil are a blessing. My friend with the tortured staff and student leaders said to me “Marcus when suffering comes to westerners you talk about God, complain about God and then you often dismiss God because you think he is uncaring, impotent or does not exist. All because of your framework. But we, we talk to God, complain to God and then we worship in the face of suffering and evil. All because of our framework. And we are much more biblical than you.”

He went on “have you never read how in Job 42:5, when Job meets God he says “previously I had just heard about you but now my eyes have seen you, therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.” “Our answer when we suffer,” he said “is that we have seen him. Our answer is not a theoretical answer to a practical problem. It is an encounter with God himself.”

I left that conversation profoundly moved, deeply challenged to trust Christ and to realise that the gospel is the answer to suffering and evil not because it satisfies my intellectual, apologetic cravings for neat resolutions but because I have a saviour who rescues my life from the pit and who has decisively conquered sin and death and hell and who will throw the devil and his angels into the fiery lake one day. My answer is a person, my Lord who came from glory to endure horror to eternally destroy horror. He laid down his life in the face of the Father’s judgement on the evils of people in order to give us a kingdom that cannot be shaken in place of this world that is shaken all the time.

Do we have preaching that is deep and searching enough to deal with horror?

I said that I would like to devote more time to whether we have preaching that is deep and searching enough to deal with horror. My fear in this country is that often we don’t. For several reasons.

1. Because we don’t personally know very much about the worst the world can do we don’t think about it very much. We see it on the TV but we don’t experience it. Now in many ways that should be a cause of thankfulness. We don’t have to personally experience evil before we can reflect on it. But it should make us reflect on it carefully and deeply

2. Because we are used to comfort we don’t want to think about

3. Because our society has muted the idea of sin. Therefore the prevailing thought is that if there is evil, especially institutional evil, it happens somewhere else in the bad places. Our systems are built to insulate us

These things and many others leave us with an inability to even conceptually think about these things and therefore a preaching which is often appallingly shallow. The gospel is the real answer. Our preaching can be anything but.

There are several main dangers for us:

1. That because we don’t know how to address issues such as these we avoid them altogether or provide knee-jerk shallow responses

2. Because our knowledge of them is largely theoretical we therefore are tempted to offer solutions that may be theoretically or apologetically correct but that are pastorally disastrous. We can try to explain suffering but without offering help, or the flip side which is to offer love but no gospel because we don’t see how it relates

3. Because our framework is wrong we fail to have a Hebrews 11 perspective that normality is not comfort, but having faith in God in the middle of trouble. That is worship. That is the end to which our preaching should aspire

Bringing the Bible to Bear 

I want to say 4 things about bringing the Bible to bear on these kinds of issues and then conclude with a brief look at Romans 8. The question we have to try to answer, even when facing the fire of suffering is how to bring grace and build faith. How do we honour Christ and minister to people for their good?

1. Be sensitive to when to not preach

In the middle of a passage on terrific suffering in which Paul urges the Roman Christians to not repay evil for evil and to love their enemies and bless their persecuters he pauses and says “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.” When people are weeping then weep, don’t preach. Because at that stage they need our comfort and not just our answers.

Job had three friends and when he lost everything he had they brought him answer after theological answer. And they brought them in love. They came and sat with him in his grief and loss, but they should have just sat with him. In fact the only time they did any good was when they sat for three days in silence. Some of their answers were theologically correct but devastatingly inappropriate because they thought that robust comprehension is the answer to grief. It isn’t.

Some of you are bringing apologetic talks on suffering in your groups this weekend. I think that is great and very important that you learn how to do it because suffering and evil are the most important and difficult apologetic questions today. But take a care that you distinguish between apologetic situations and pastoral situations. One requires apologetic answers and the other needs something quite different. When someone asks you “how can God allow suffering?” you very first response should be “why do you ask?” If the reason is intellectual then give them some strong meat to chew on, but if the reason is that their mother has just died then show them your love and sympathy.

If you wish to later share the joy of the gospel with them then share their present pain. Let passages like Jesus showing compassion to the outcasts or weeping over Jerusalem govern how you pray and what you say. Don’t be frightened about not having all the answers, indeed don’t dream of implying that we do this side of Heaven. And don’t assume that you understand how people feel, because you don’t. But do remember that some people will be asking inside “does God still love me, or did I trust someone who in the end turned out to be an ogre?” and the way you treat them for the sake of the Lord will go a long way to answering that question for them one way or the other.

At this point our work is to help people suffer and grieve but like people of faith and not like unbelievers. To suffer and grieve in the presence of God

2. Work hard through bringing the Bible into situations to establish the right framework for comprehension

God does reveal his glory and bring strengthening comfort through grasping biblical reality. And for us we can be way out of sync with biblical reality in our culture. Here are several areas:

Auschwitz is not abnormal. It is terrible but it is not the aberration we desperately wish to think it is. Rather it is the great symbol of all evil and suffering that happen every day to the flouting of God’s glory. It might be the most extreme example, but that is all it is, an example of rebellion against God that goes in every heart, every day. Auschwitz is simply where atheism leads and shows what we are all really like when God withdraws his mercy. It is sin writ large, but while it is different in scale to what goes on in our hearts, it is not different in nature.

Therefore when we look at large scale evil, the genocide or societal corruption that we see in a Rwanda or a Zimbabwe, the right response is not “that is abnormal” but “that is exactly what I am like but by the grace of God. And that is exactly what I deserve, but by the grace of God.” Comfort is not normal in a fallen world.

We don’t really think we are sinful, or if we are about how bad that is. We know that God has acted to save us from sin, we all therefore do have some handle on how to speak to suffering and evil. The issue may be that we cannot do so well because we haven’t really grasped the depths of evil and condemnation that he has rescued us from personally. A friend of mine says that if you want a view on how huge grace is then you should pray that God will show you just how holy he is and just how sinful we are. Comfort is not normal in a fallen world.

We don’t fear God rightly. Either we don’t fear him at all or we fear him as a monster God who brings suffering on the innocent. The Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I think that is not just because of his power and character but because the Bible also says that Christ is the wisdom of God and our righteousness from God. And we should fear treating him as anything less because then we get neither wisdom nor righteousness. And if there is one thing we need to help us in the fire it is the wisdom and righteousness of God.

Fearing him in this way leads to confidence. It says “I fear my circumstances but I fear you more, and in fearing you I find perspective on the most dreadful things. And more than perspective, I find help and grace and strength through the Holy Spirit. I am in anguish and you are my all-sufficient God.” That is worship. Our deep desire is to help people worship in the middle of the fire because they know their Christ and because their confidence in him is stronger than death. John Piper says “let our preaching combine heart-wrenching weeping with unbreakable confidence in the sovereignty of God.” You will never speak this way if you believe that comfort is normal in a fallen world.

We don’t know how to lament. Did you know that there is a whole Bible book to teach us to weep and grieve in the face of horror, but without it destroying faith? Two in fact – Job and Lamentations. When did you last hear a sermon on either? It is easy for us to fall into a conspiracy of silence that quietly airbrushes out the fact that the Bible has a LOT to say about suffering and evil, and instead to only concentrate on the nice, comfortable bits. But in failing to preach like Job or Lamentations preaches we fail to teach people how to express grief and take from the opportunity to talk to God and to seek God rather than talk about God and complain about him. We don’t do a good job at helping them lament. We reinforce that comfort should be normal.

3. Work hard at application that is real and deep in order to produce faith rising in people’s hearts.

Application is the single biggest struggle for most of us when we are writing talks. That is because it is easier to work at the text than it is to get our talks under people’s skin. And therefore we tend to give our prep time to comprehension but not to applying. But without application there may be understanding but there won’t be worship. They will see but not savour, they won’t exult in him in their hearts. And therefore their hearts will not be bastioned in the face of trial and evil because there will be a disconnect between the truth they have given mental assent to and their hearts. Application is drawing the lines of connection to the hearts to produce faith and worship. Application leads from accuracy to adoration. Our aim is that God is honoured and adored, not that he is merely understood

In the area of suffering and evil it is especially important because we are handling things that are shocking and terrifying and bringing the God who is wonderful and glorious to bear on them. I really don’t know all the answers, but I believe in this area we have to work extremely hard at application that helps us:

A. Realise that non-safety is the norm, but so is glorious eternal hope

B. Grasp that God’s truth will bear the weight of our need even in the times of deepest suffering and even if it feels like it won’t

C. Flee to the Lord knowing that he understands even when we don’t

D. Flee from retreating into intellectualism. It is the greatest danger and a quick way to destroy confidence in God. It doesn’t sustain in the face of suffering and evil. Knowledge alone is not enough. We need God. We need to know him and see him and savour him and be confronted with him. I say this carefully because not everyone here believes the same things about the work of the Holy Spirit but in this issue more than almost any other our existential need of encounters with God through the Spirit burn very brightly. Our clever brains are no substitute for experiencing the presence and power of God

 
4. Pray and preach for sustaining grace

Pray for sustaining grace and preach in such a way as brings sustaining grace and unshakeable confidence when everything is being shaken.

Psalm 34 says that the Lord is near the broken hearted. God wants us to be agents of this with our words. What words bring sustaining grace? Only ones that confront with the unshakeable and eternal realities of God, no matter whether they seem unpalatable to the modern mind.

As you are given the chance, sensitively reflect that all calamities are in the Lord’s hand, not as a source of questioning him but of putting faith in him because the one who controls our path is one who loves us and is powerful to save

As you get the chance help people to not despise suffering and therefore despair in their circumstances but to take the opportunity to be shaped as an instrument for glorifying God. Romans 5:3 says we rejoice in God, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God and we also rejoice in our sufferings. We do so because suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character and character hope, and hope doesn’t disappoint us because he has poured his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. When we suffer and it makes us hope then God is forming the likeness of Jesus in us. From one degree of glory to another. And that can be true for the non-Christian in their suffering too. You can preach it to them – they only have to stop being a non-Christian and trust Jesus.

As you get the chance encourage them to receive God’s grace. How do they do that? They just pray and ask for it. Romans 5:17 says that just as the sin of one man meant that death reigned – there is a phrase for suffering and evil, the reign of death – how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through Jesus. How do we receive the abundance of grace? By asking for it. That’s all. We reign in life through him. Regardless of the previous reign of death. Regardless of our circumstances. God’s grace just overpowers in its mighty sustenance.

As you get the chance encourage them to comprehend evil as a demonstration of hell and of our need for God’s love. It shines brighter in the face of evil, because evil shows that we really do need to be saved. Being saved isn’t just mystical religious theory but the practical and necessary escape from evil being eternally visited on us. Encourage them to fear the Lord so that they will have saving knowledge of him in the evil day

As you get the chance show the love and compassion of God to the suffering, touching, healing, comforting, consoling because Jesus wants you to. Pray for all you are worth.

Romans 8 says that that creation is subjected to futility and is groaning as it waits for freedom from bondage. And it says that we are groaning inwardly as we wait for the fullness of our adoption at the return of Christ.

The world is in pain and we are in pain, sometimes of the most severe kind. I was chatting to a young Lebanese woman a month ago who was debating when to tell her family of her faith in Christ, certain in the knowledge that she would be killed the same day. What do you say? I don't know whether she is still alive, but I do know that whether by life or by death Christ has been glorified in her

Read Romans 8:31-39

Dear friends preach God’s all-sufficiency with all your hearts to a suffering, dying world for his glory and your people’s help.