Dennis Stickfort

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Tom Bentley

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Printable Scale Model of Noah's Ark

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 Here's the Difference

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Jim Sluiter

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Andrew Musch

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Why does God allow his children to suffer trials?

The question of personal suffering is relevant to all of us.  Either we are experiencing pain right now, have just emerged from a trial or we are about to enter one.  Suffering is universal.  Our reactions to suffering, however, are varied.  The first question that usually occurs to a victim of pain is “What is God doing to me?”  

The following answer to this question assumes that you are believer in Christ – that you are already saved – and that God has sent you a personal problem.  Another relevant question you may have is “Why does God allow pain and suffering to exist?

Job, the patient sufferer, tells us a few insights to answer the question of trials in the life of a believer.  

Job 23:10" TARGET="_blank">Job 23:10 “He knows the way that I take, and when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold”

Each of the words of this verse gives us insight into how God uses trials to work in our lives:

1. God knows

“He knows” – with those two words Job answers the unexplainable.  Without knowing the why or the where to source of his trials, Job knew that God was in control of the world and therefore in control of life’s trials. 

He knows you and the circumstances of your trial.  He sees your checkbook. He hears how your children talk to your. He knows how your husband drinks. He knows how your heart aches. He knows your confusion. He sees you when you lie awake at night. He sees all of the parts of your trial. You may feel abandoned and forgotten, but God knows what is happening. He is aware.  He knows.  Can you be comforted in your trial by simply knowing that God is not ignorant of your plight?

Job was content to wait for God to show him the outcome at some future point in time.  But for the meantime, he was satisfied to say “God knows”

2. He knows my way

God can see where I am going even if I can’t.  There is a destination to the way that I take.  I don’t know where this trial will end, but God does.  Can you take strength from the fact that when he is done, you will be better off spiritually than you were before.?

Job 23:14" TARGET="_blank">Job 23:14  For he will complete what he appoints for me, and many such things are in his mind.

3. When

There is usually a time limit to the duration of the trial.  It won’t last forever.  God’s work in you may take some time, but there will be and end.  He will put you on your knees. He will make you feel the weakness and frailty of your humanity.  Changing a person’s outlook through trials is a slow process.  So you ask, when will the trial end? Answer: When He has tried me.

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peacable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Hebrews 12:11" TARGET="_blank">Hebrews 12:11

4. He has tried me

Why does God have to try me?  Can’t he just leave me alone?  I haven’t sinned, so why is he trying me?  

Notice that Job uses the word “tried” instead of “punished”.  If you are trying to find a connection between your actions and your suffering, perhaps you are simply being tried.  Trials are different than consequences.

The following verse tells us of suffering because of a cause:

“But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. 1 Peter 4" TARGET="_blank">1 Peter 4

If you are in jail for your crimes, or divorced because of your drug addition, your suffering cannot be called a trial.  The people you hurt as a result of your actions are suffering trials.  But what you are suffering is called a consequence.  It is a result directly related to your bad decisions.  It is a consequence.  The solution for this kind of suffering is for you is to repent of your sin, ask forgiveness to those you have harmed, make restitution and pursue a different path.  

If however, you are suffering a trial, like Job, you are probably on your face before God searching in vain for why this has happened. 

Job’s cry – “I have done nothing wrong, but yet God is bringing me suffering.  He is TRYING me.”

Job 23:7" TARGET="_blank">Job 23:7  There an upright man could argue with him, and I would be acquitted forever by my judge.

To try something is to test it.  Trying a bridge by putting weight on it is not to cause it to collapse, but to prove that the bridge is capable of holding what the engineer intended.

Instead of asking yourself “why caused God to do this to me?” you should ask “what is God trying to show through me?”

God is the teacher and you are the student. This test is not so much about God finding out how much you can bear.  He already knows you better than you know yourself.  The test is about you finding out about you. When he is done, you will know more about the endurance of your faith, your weak points and what you can do for God in the future.

5. I shall come forth as gold

Job knew that he was being tested by God. Job received an “A” on his faith test.  Job learned at least three imporant concepts on his test.

1.    One thing he learned by trial is that God is good even if we experience things we think are bad.

“Naked I came into the world, and naked I will leave. God gave and God took away, blessed be the name of the Lord”

“Shall we not receive both good and evil from the Lord?”

Early on the story of Job, his wife came to a very different conclusion about these questions.

“Do you still retain your integrity? Curse God and die!”

She wanted to curse God.  Anger, hate and resentment were spilling out of her mouth.  She wanted it to end. Die. Get it over with now. She wanted to throw away all spiritual integrity. What is the point of faithfulness if this is what God does? She failed the test.

It’s the last thing we hear her say. She disappears from the story. Perhaps like some today, she left her husband for a variety of reasons: a bankruptcy, an illness, the loss of a child. In Job’s case, the scene closes with Job sitting in ashes, covered in sores and worst of all, alone.  She walked out.

Trials show how much control we give to the Holy Spirit. Perhaps Mrs. Job wasn’t even a believer.  Maybe her church taught her that being a believer would make her wealthy.  Perhaps she believed that God’s will for her was her happiness.  Believers shouldn’t get sick.  When “claiming” God’s promises for her failed.  

In Christ’s parable of the good seed and the four soils, one of the false believers pictured there was the shallow ground. The seed sown on the shallow ground sprouted.  It looked like it would take hold.  There was an initial interest, but it turned out to be false.  When persecutions arise, the plants wither and die.  No life and hence, no fruit.

However, Job shows the gold inside. He passed the test. He was real.

2.    A second lesson Job learned from his test is that we can’t see the future.  We must wait to see God’s hand even if there is complete darkness.

Job 23:17" TARGET="_blank">Job 23:17  yet I am not silenced because of the darkness, nor because thick darkness covers my face.

“I shall come forth” means that God is in control.  There is and end not only in regards to time but also in purpose.  God is working on us.

God showed the gold in Job.  In fact, Job’s life reflects God better after being refined.  The gold in his life was bright in chapter 1. He is a man of integrity. He prays daily for his children. He has respect from his peers for his sterling character. He honors God with his sacrifice.  In the end, he shows the same consistency, but with more wisdom and even greater blessing.

God didn’t promise Job any recompense for his suffering during the trial.  But the physical situation of Job was even better after the trial.  We may not come out of a trial as a rich man, but the lessons we learn from hard experiences are invaluable.  Although we wouldn’t want to repeat the trial, we wouldn’t want to have missed the experience.

3.    A third lesson Job learned is that God always has something to teach us no matter what our spiritual state is.

Job learned more about God in the trial than he knew before.  Job was a great man of God before the trial.  Even God says “there is no one like my servant Job.” In the closing chapters of the book, however, we see Job learning that he is “vile”. Why? Was God wrong in His assessment of Job?  No.  In comparison with all other men on the planet, Job was the highest example of godliness. But in comparison with the holiness of God in heaven, Job saw his true nature – sinful.  When he learns more about God and His holiness, Job comes out of the story looking better than ever.

Conclusion

Keep in mind the words from Job’s brilliant statement about trials:

“He knows the way that I take, and when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold”

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Some assert that if a woman dies in child-birth she goes to heaven, basing this on 1 Timothy 2:15." TARGET="_blank">1 Timothy 2:15. What does that passage really teach?

The most certain thing about the passage named is that it does not teach what is suggested. God has but one way of saving sinners from hell and fitting them for heaven, and that way is through faith in His beloved Son. As to what it does teach, various commentators have given various replies, several of which, though differing, do not necessarily exclude one another. For it is quite probable that more thoughts than one were in the apostle’s mind as he penned the words, “She shall be saved through the childbearing, if they continue in faith, and love, and sanctification, with sobriety” (R.V.).

To understand them we must take into consideration the entire paragraph, from verse 8 onwards, in which Paul teaches that men have a place of public testimony to fill, from which women are definitely debarred. For this prohibition he assigns two reasons: (x) that the man was first in creation, v. 13, and (z) that the woman was first in transgression, v. 14.. That verse 15 is closely connected with verse i, the “Notwithstanding” with which it begins makes quite evident, and there can therefore be no doubt that when using the expression, “through the childbearing,” the apostle has in mind the sentence pronounced by the Lord on the woman in Genesis  3:6. In that sentence there were two parts: (i) that she was to have sorrow in childbearing, and (a) that she was to be subjected to the man. The latter of these is in keeping with the principle upon which Paul has been just before insisting; while as to the former he has, in this 15th verse, something to add, in which warning and encouragement are combined. For, just as the curse pronounced on the woman was associated with her childbearing, so also, in the words addressed to the Serpent in the preceding verse, was the provision for her salvation in the promised “Seed.” Therefore the right path for her, the path in which “she shall be saved” (chiefly in the present sense of that word, so common in the epistles), is the very opposite of that public and prominent one forbidden her in verses 11 and 12. It is the path of home life and subjection; by keeping in which the very curse of Gen. 3" TARGET="_blank">Gen. 3 is turned into blessing. Compare those other words of the apostle in chap. 5. 13-15, where the dangers besetting young women who have no home cares are vividly depicted, and the way to be saved therefrom is the same as here. In fact he even uses there the verbal form of this word “childbearing,” of which neither noun nor verb is found anywhere else in the New Testament. Observe also, by way of contrast, how the young man1  Timothy 4:16, is to be “saved” by going on diligently with his public ministry of the Word.

W.R.

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In light of Matthew 22:30" TARGET="_blank">Matthew 22:30 and 1 Corinthians 15:50-54," TARGET="_blank">1 Corinthians 15:50-54, shall we know one another in heaven?

This is an oft-raised question and one that shews how diverse are men’s minds. To many the very possibility of non-recognition seems unthinkable. If we are to know as we are known, does not that bespeak a deeper and wider knowledge than before, not a feebler and narrower, “when the mists have rolled away”?

Abraham knew Lazarus and the “rich man,” and all about their past; and the “rich man” knew Abraham and Lazarus, and can we suppose that Lazarus, did not know on whose bosom he was pillowing his head? See Luke 16:23, 25." TARGET="_blank">Luke 16:23, 25.

This speaks, no doubt, of the intermediate state, but the principle is the same. The apostles knew Moses and Elias on the Holy Mount. What point would there be in making to ourselves friends with our money, that they may receive us into everlasting habitations? (See Luke 16:9)," TARGET="_blank">Luke 16:9), for how could these “friends” do so, if they could not recognise their benefactors?

I think the true conclusion is that we shall know those whom we have known and all others of the redeemed besides. This does not mean that earthly relations which are of a temporary character, will continue, and this is I think all that Matthew 22:30" TARGET="_blank">Matthew 22:30 teaches, but nothing is hinted as to a change of personality or a loss of identity. As for 1 Corinthians 15:50-54," TARGET="_blank">1 Corinthians 15:50-54, surely no changes wrought in the saint by the putting on of immortality or incorruptibility, will exceed the wonderful change wrought in Christ by His glorification, and yet “He is the same” and is recognisable through it all, as John experienced (see Revelation 1:1-10)." TARGET="_blank">Revelation 1:1-10).

William Hoste

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In Isaiah 53:12," TARGET="_blank">Isaiah 53:12, who are the “great” and the “strong”, and in what way does God “divide” to the Messiah a portion with them?

Is it not probable that we place overmuch emphasis on these three words, and that we seek to get more out of them than perhaps they are meant to convey? “Divide” seems to suggest to our minds a cutting up into so many definite shares, of which Christ gets His, and certain others get theirs. But what if we use the word “assign” as is done in Darby’s Translation, or render the clause, “I will allot to Him a portion among the mighty”, as Gesenius does in his Lexicon! Either of these is quite correct as a rendering, and at the same time does not tie up our thoughts to an actual division of something into two or more parts. This should make it clear to us that the meaning may be no more than as follows: “I will assign to Him such a spoil as is usually that obtained by the great and the strong; and I will do so in recompense for (“Therefore”) His having suffered in littleness and weakness (as pictured in v. 7, etc.), and for (“because”) His having poured out His soul unto death (middle of v. 12).
Viewed in this way, the words “great” and “strong”, which are both plurals, need not refer to any particular individuals, but to the great and strong in general. Compare how the same two words are coupled together in such passages as Isaiah 8:7;" TARGET="_blank">Isaiah 8:7; Joel 2:2" TARGET="_blank">Joel 2:2 and Zecheriah 8:22; the word “many” in the first and last of these being the same Hebrew word as “great” in our verse.
The translators of the Septuagint, when turning the passage into Greek, rendered the second clause. “He shall divide the spoils OF the mighty”, and left out the “with” of the first clause also; thus suggesting the meaning to be a complete triumph over all His foes, however “many” or “mighty” they were. Various commentators agree with this view of the passage. But whether we take it thus, and think of the great and mighty ones as His enemies, amongst whom He stands out pre-eminent; the basic idea in the statement is much the same—that the One who stooped so low and who suffered so much, has been given a place and an honour beyond all others.

W.R.

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