Sovereign Over Suffering

"Then the LORD struck the child that Uriah's widow bore to David, so that he was very sick." 2 Samuel 12:15

Something of great import has been going on for the past hundred or so years in the church. I say it is of great import not because it is a positive or good thing. I say it because it has so shaped the spiritual landscape of the church as to become perhaps the dominant view today. It is a highly dangerous, and highly irrational idea that most now accept it without thinking twice.

It is the unbiblical idea that God never does anything that we would call "unfair." God, they would say, loves us and so never would make us sick or cause a hurricane to hit our city or cause a terrorist attack to end lives. In short, God would never take or "negatively" affect the lives of "innocent" people. This idea is where we get the idea of infant salvation, it is where we get the idea of "free will" theology, and it is where we get the ideas of universalism, open theology, and health and wealth doctrine.

Brothers and sisters, I wish to say to you that this idea is abhorrent to Scriptures! Search the Scriptures and you will find over and over that God is the one who does as He pleases with His creation, and it is not within our rights to object or question God! This verse, to those who propose the "feel good" God, would be doubly offensive. First, God is causing an illness to befall someone, which God, in their theology, simply does not do. Secondly, and this is perhaps more offensive, God is causing the death of an innocent baby!

What I want to point out today, and I plead with you that you believe this, is that God is absolutely FREE to do with ANYONE as He chooses. To the first offense, that of God causing illness, I say that God does refer to Himself in Scripture as the one who creates light and darkness, who raises up and destroys, who causes good to fall and causes devastation and catastrophe to fall. He does say in Deuteronomy that He will delight in doing us good, but that if we stray from Him, He will delight in bringing us to ruin.

And please do not take this to mean that He only does this when we sin. New Orleans may not have been wiped out because it was a sinful city! If that were the reason, then He should have destroyed Tampa and New York and San Francisco and Brooksville and yes, even Hollis! (heheh) The point is this: God does things not for the reasons we expect, but for His own, totally free reasons. He is sovereign, let's let Him be sovereign without trying to make excuses for Him.

Secondly, as to the point about babies being innocent, that is just plain old hogwash. I love children, and every time I see a toddler I have to confess I get very soft-hearted...but I am under no illusions that babies or toddlers or infants are in any way, shape, or form innocent. David says in his psalm that even in the WOMB he was sinful! Folks, the startling reality of it is that all people, from womb to tomb are desperately depraved. God owes nobody anything.

And so I urge you to not fall into the trap of thinking that God only wants to bless you and that it is Satan that makes you ill and takes your money and sends the bad ol' storms. As John Piper said in one of his sermons, "Satan is the lackey of ALMIGHTY God!" Satan has only the power that God allows Him and ordains for Him. God bless.