The Problem and Purpose of Pain: Purposes of Pain, Part 1

Okay, part two, the purpose of pain. After Joshua's death, one thing I did, and if I have anything to contribute today, it may be having done this, though none of these ideas will be original because they came from another source. But one thing I wanted to do was to try to understand how God uses pain in our lives. So I read my Bible from cover to cover. And every time I saw an instance where God was using pain, I would say, well, what was the purpose?

And so what I've cataloged here and what we're going to look at over the next few minutes are 12 purposes of pain. And I think all of these purposes we see in Scripture. I don't say this is necessarily an exhaustive list of purposes. But I think these 12 purposes that we're going to talk about will capture most of the reasons why we experience pain. You got your hand out there?

Let's take them one by one. Purpose number one. God calling us. This is pain as God's megaphone.

You know that phrase is not original with me if you've read C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis said this about pain in his book, The Problem of Pain. He says, God whispers to us in our pleasures, but shouts in our pains.

It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

I don't know when I first read those words after Joshua's death, but when I first read them, it was the first time that the light started to shine through the dark clouds just a little bit. You see, up until Joshua's death, it was my life. Now, God was a part of it, but he was kind of like the dog on the leash. I kept him in the corner and called him over when I wanted to pet him and talk to him. And then I sent him back to the corner.

It was my purpose, my plans, my career.

But then God took Joshua. He was shouting to me to awaken me from my spiritual deafness. this hard-headed lawyer who didn't listen to the things of God, and God was shouting through the death of Joshua. For most adults, I'm not saying it always has to be true, but I think for most adults, the way God gets us to grow spiritually is through painful circumstances. Because as adults, we get kind of set in our ways.

We think we've got things figured out. We think we're in control. And then God upsets the apple cart, and he's doing that saying, David, listen to me. I've got something bigger and better and more important than you ever imagined, yet you haven't been listening. And so he has to get our attention.

And the way he gets our attention is through painful circumstances. Again, I wish it weren't so. And I'm not saying it invariably is so, but most of the time, and I've lived enough years now to have seen a lot of people live life, it takes some painful circumstances to change us. The second purpose is God shaping us. This is pain that develops our character.

pain that develops our character.

This is how James said it.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking anything. Or as the Apostle Paul said, not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope.

Romans 8, 28 to 30. We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, his purpose. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Those he predestined he called, those he called he justified, those he justified he glorified. The text says here for those who love him all things work together for good. So even painful circumstances are going to work for our good. But the main good I think in view here is that we will be conformed to the likeness of his son so God is chipping off the rough edges and shaping us and molding us but he does it by breaking us and then reforming us through difficult and painful circumstances or as I love this quote this is Barbara Johnson who's called the geranium lady because she likes to wear hats and sticks geraniums in them She lost a son in Vietnam.

Another son was killed by a drunk driver. A third son was caught up in a destructive homosexual lifestyle. She's been through a lot of pain.

But she says, sometimes God lets us walk through the dark valleys because that's where the fertilizer is. Isn't that a great quote? Or as Helen Keller said, As most of you know, she was both blind, couldn't hear, couldn't speak. She developed speaking capabilities through a long process. But she says, character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.

Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened.

Thomas Akempis, one of my favorite little books, wrote a book called The Imitation of Christ. and Thomas Akimpas has this prayer in the imitation of Christ where he prays to God you know what is needful for my progress and how to make use of trials to remove from me the rust of sin.

So if you're going through painful circumstances at least one of the purposes may be that God is trying to shape us and mold our characters. Let me make a point here. You know, James says, count it all joy when you experience various trials. Because you know what it's going to produce. So I think James is saying to us not to be so much joyful in the trial itself as in what the trial produces.

So the joy is in the end result, not necessarily the means to get there.

So if your right arm gets cut off, you don't have to sit there and say, I am so happy my right arm got cut off. But you can have joy in what God can bring out of that ultimately. It's the result that we're joyful about.

Everybody got this one? Okay, let's go to number three. God correcting us. This is pain that disciplines us. And understand, in our own lives, these purposes can overlap.

There may be multiple purposes going on through the pain. But one pain I think we see in Scripture clearly is that God uses pain to discipline us. Hebrews says this, My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when He rebukes you. God disciplines us for our good that we may share in His holiness.

You know, God is not mocked. We who follow Him particularly should not be surprised if we're stepping outside His boundaries of how He would want us to live that He as a good Father would do something to bring us back. Like any good parent, God will not forever tolerate intolerable conduct. He disciplines us because He loves us. We've got to remember He is our Heavenly Father, not our Heavenly Grandfather.

C.S. Lewis uses that phraseology in the problem of pain. and it is such an insightful viewpoint. Now I have a couple of my grandparents, now I've got several of my grandparents here, so I'm going to talk about grandparents a minute and I mean this in the most loving way because I'm going to be just like this hopefully one day. We used to send Caleb and Kate for the weekend to the grandparents and they loved it.

They didn't want to come home. Who wouldn't love it? was not in the vocabulary. You can do whatever you want. Have a great time, etc.

But then they came home and we had three weeks later getting them back into our routine. And that's what I'm going to do to my grandchildren. But listen to how C.S. Lewis says this. He says, you know, we want in fact not so much a father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven. A senile as they say, like to see young people enjoying themselves and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, a good time was had by all.

But Lewis says, no, that's not the way God is. He intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want. So God disciplines us. read the whole of scripture you will see that God's discipline can take many forms. For example here's one example. If you go to the book of Haggai. Haggai says this. This is what the Lord Almighty says. Give careful thoughts to your ways. You have planted much but have harvested little.

You eat but never have enough. You drink but never have your fill. You put on clothes but are not warm. You earn wages only to put them in a purse with holes in it. So I think sometimes the discipline can be sort of an economic discipline.

That we seem to be working harder and harder and we don't have enough money and things are not the way we would like them, economically and financially speaking. And sometimes God is trying to wake us up and discipline us through the financial difficulty we're facing.

To turn back to Him. To trust Him. To quit going our own way. To quit doing what we want to do and instead begin to do what He wants us to do. If you read the whole Bible, discipline comes in many, many forms.

Sometimes it was war and defeat in war.

Sometimes disease. A lot of things. Now you've got to be careful again. This is why you've got to be careful. Somebody, you know, David lost a son.

Well, he deserved it. I mean, you know, that guy, can you believe him? Got to be careful that we don't begin to say we understand for sure why people are going through it and say, well, it's because God's disciplining that person. That's a very good, if you have that viewpoint, you better watch out. God's about to do a little disciplining himself of you.

Okay, purpose number four. This is my least favorite, but it's clearly there in Scripture. Pain that punishes us. Purpose number four, God judging us.

Typically, typically, when God sends punishing pain, pain to judge, Typically, I think it is when the person being punished has been engaged in what is open and obvious sin. And typically has been engaged in it in an unrepentant way despite opportunities to repent. Typically. Not always the case, but typically. God is very gracious and long-suffering.

so usually there's been a long history of conduct before we get to punishing pain but it's there sometimes the punishment comes directly from God for example Sodom and Gomorrah Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of the heavens apparently because of rampant sexual immorality apparently homosexual immorality that was ongoing and long term

you remember Abraham bargained with God if I can just find ten righteous people will you spare the city God says you bet if you can find ten I'll spare the city be my guest I've looked they're not there

or another example Korah, Dathan and Abiram rebel against Moses they come and basically challenge Moses leadership Of the children of Israel. Even though God has appointed and anointed Moses as the leader. And Moses says, okay, let's meet tomorrow morning and let's find out. Who God wants to lead the people.

And they met. And the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them with their households and all Korah's men and all their possessions. This is not disciplining pain. This is not pain to shake character. This is pain to judge and punish.

And God, because He's God, gets to do that. And His judgments are always, always just.

Jeremiah said, Because you have burned incense and have sinned against the Lord and have not obeyed Him or followed His law or His decrees or His stipulations, this disaster has come upon you as you now see.

God sometimes judges indirectly. So there's a direct sort of judgment that we just talked about, but then there's the idea of indirect judgment. I think you see this in Romans. If you read Romans chapter 1, you will see that people were in rebellion against God, doing with their bodies whatever they wanted to do, men having unnatural relations with other men and women with other women. And the text says that God just gave them over to their simple desires.

You know, God usually lets us do whatever we want to do. God says, okay, you want to do that? Be my guest. but then God can remove his protective hand and we can reap the judgment of our own actions. So if we engage in promiscuous sexual conduct over time, God can just remove his protective hand and we can face disease and other problems.

We can do all sorts of things where we want to go our own way indirect judgment of God. If we want to smoke cigarettes fine, but over time we run a real risk because of the natural order of things and the way God has done it of having lung cancer. And that would be an indirect judgment. Okay, number five, God humbling us.

Pain that makes us rely on God and His grace.

American Christians need this one.

You know, in America, and we have a hard time overcoming our heritage and what we were taught growing up,

is we're supposed to be self-reliant,

Proud, strong. We really don't need anybody because my name is John Wayne and by myself I can storm the sands of Iwo Jima and take over.

And we laugh at that a little bit, but it is deep in us that we are independent people and that we're strong. And I think this is a particular problem for people in the United States of America. Our history of the frontier and conquering the frontier and so forth. We think we can do it. Well, listen to what Paul says.

Paul had a great revelation about eternity, about heaven. to keep me from being conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, but He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness

Or as he said in 2 Corinthians 1, 8-9, We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. You know, there's nothing that brings us to our knees like a painful circumstance.

There's nothing like that that makes us turn to God and rely on Him. Jonathan Edwards, who's probably the greatest theologian that lived on the North American continent, said, the principle that is many times demonstrated in Scripture is this, God will bring people into distress in order to make them see their own utter helplessness and absolute dependence upon His power and grace. If you've been by the bedside of someone you love who's dying, what utter helplessness do you sense? When Joshua was dying, here I am, I've got all this education, I'm a lawyer, I've got the best doctors in the state working, but not any of them, none of us had any power to change what was happening. We were utterly, utterly, utterly helpless.

And you know sometimes we need to be reminded of that. Hannah Whitehall Smith who wrote The Christian Secret of a Happy Life said, God is often obliged to destroy all our own earthly chariots before He can bring us to the point of mounting into His. Let us be thankful then, she says, for every trial that will help to destroy our earthly chariots and that will compel us to take refuge in the chariot of God which stands ready and waiting beside us in every event and circumstance of life.

I imagine if we went around the room of stories about folks who were in circumstances that were just totally beyond their control, where our need for God became so apparent. And that was when we finally, finally did what we should have been doing all of life, turned to Him.