http://www.pastorjohnshouse.blogspot.com/2009/08/all-things.html
The PastorJohnsHouse.com Blog on All Things is a beautiful massage. i understand it. I just want to know how to respond to a question my niece made to me few years ago, “why does God allows all the sufferings and hungers on kids dying of hunger in Africa and others countries”?
if you could answer, that will be great. thank you
Manny
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There have been many who asked that question, and the answer is found in the holiness of God. David understood this and wrote that God “has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities” (Ps. 103:10). Sin is far worse than people realize because God is far holier than people realize. If He were perfectly just, instead of being perfectly just AND very merciful, we would all be in hell now. Thank God that there is more to Him than justice!
When God destroyed the earth with the cataclysmic event called “the Flood”, there were, no doubt, many infants, toddlers, and elderly folk who choked helplessly in the waters. God graciously spared a few in the ark with Noah, but think of all the ones who died! Was this right? Of course it was because God is right in everything. We have to adjust our opinions according to the works of God if we want to understand righteousness. If “God is known by the judgments that He executes”, then in order to know Him, we must see and submit to whatever he does. Paul speaks of this in some detail in Romans 9.
An elderly Jewish man who as a boy survived the Holocaust wrote a famous book about it not long ago. The book was required reading at the High School which my children attended. When I read it, I could hardly believe the arrogance against God that was in the book. The biggest lesson the book taught, as far as I could tell, was that human beings are incapable of doing anything deserving of such suffering as the Jews suffered and that there is no adequate explanation for such cruelty as the Nazis imposed upon the Jews. But that is false, and it was very harmful to the young people who read that book to see God condemned that way.
The Jews’ cruel rejection of the sweet Son of God when he came made them deserving of even worse punishment than they have received. This is true because of how good the Son was and how much his heavenly Father loved him. The Father loves His Son so much that if we love His Son, too, then the Father will take some of His eternal life out of His own bosom and share it with us so that we will live forever. But if we reject the meek and innocent Son of God who came to earth and died for us, then we are deserving of the greatest of punishments, and we will certainly receive it. There is, as your niece has observed, great suffering of all sorts in every culture around the world, but whatever suffering exists on earth is less than we humans deserve for the world’s incredibly hateful response to God’s harmless, holy Son when he came.
Whether or not men understand or believe what I am saying about this makes absolutely no difference to God whatsoever. Life on this cursed planet is what it is, and God has made it that way because of our sin.
But there are two sides to the Father’s feelings about His Son. The Father has promised to bring those who love His dear Son into His very presence, and He has prepared for them a place where no suffering of any sort or degree will ever be known again. That is as great a blessing as we could ever imagine – just for loving and following Jesus! So, how much the Father loves His Son is indicated on the one hand by how very much He will bless those who honor His Son, and on the other hand by how much He will curse those who dishonor him.
Pastor John
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Pastor John,
Your reply to Manny is so good!! It means so much more to me now after learning all the things we did about the father and the son recently. I had a testimony years ago about being an example for others. We either are going to be a good example to the body of Christ or if we reject the Son we are going to be a bad example to the body of Christ. Either way, we are going to be an example, and God is just and holy and right with whatever he does about it.
Stuart
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John…this is just simply…brilliant. I am grateful you answered Manny’s familiar question so thoroughly, articulately, with such understanding and respect for God’s holiness. This is a great reply to an oft asked question.
I love you so much.
Brother Brad