The Works of God

What are we like?  We are entirely covered in our own sin, like a body covered with the sores of leprosy.

Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity,
offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly!
They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel,
they are utterly estranged.

Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel?
The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.

From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it,
but bruises and sores and raw wounds; they are not pressed out or bound up or softened with oil.  Isaiah 1:4-6

What is Jesus like?  He takes away every sin making us entirely clean by his own power, like he healed a man covered from head to toe with leprosy.

While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately the leprosy left him. Luke 5:12-13

Thank you to Pastor Mark Driscoll who helped me see this when he preached on Luke 5 in February.  I’m only half-way through that sermon and looking forward to the rest!

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Pastor John answered two possible objections in his sermon, Born Blind for the Glory of God.  Here is the first:

Someone might say, “But this blind man got his eyes and was able to benefit himself from the work of God. My child stayed blind.”

Pastor John’s answer can be found in the sermon link above.

How do I know this objection isn’t hypothetical, or that Pastor John wasn’t just looking for a neat rhetorical device to make a point?

Because a version of that objection was asked in 1996, and Pastor John answered it in his sermon, Sustained by Sovereign Grace – Forever:

He said to me recently: it would be easier if Jesus hadn’t healed (the man born blind) but instead had given grace to endure the absence of healing.

One of the things I said to him was this: That’s exactly what Jesus did do—and for that very reason—in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10. God’s grace ordains that Paul have a thorn in the flesh for the sake of his humility and then will not remove it in answer to prayer.  But he says,

My [sustaining] grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.

To which Paul responds,

Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

And that God-centered, Bible-saturated answer made all the difference in the world.

Pastors (and everybody else, but especially pastors) should be ready to respond to real questions with real Bible.  We have a hope and we have a future because God is sovereign over all things, including when he heals and when he doesn’t heal.  He shows us what that sovereignty looks like in his word.

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If have any doubts about God’s goodness and sovereignty in disability, please watch, listen or read this past Sunday’s sermon from Pastor John.

Born Blind for the Glory of God – Sermon by John Piper, January 24, 2010

Here’s an excerpt:

So when Jesus said in verse 3 (of John 9), “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him,” this is the work of God—that the man see natural light and that the man see spiritual light. That the man be given natural eyes, and that he be given spiritual eyes. That he see the glory of this world, and the glory of its Maker, Jesus Christ. And worship him.

From this I conclude that in every disability, whether genetically from the womb, or circumstantially from an accident, or infectiously from a disease, God has a design, a purpose, for his own glory, and for the good of his people who love him and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28). Therefore, it is wrong to think that such children in the womb are unimportant, or without a unique, God-given worth in this world. And it is wrong to abort them—to kill them.

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From a sermon Pastor John gave in 1991, He Saw the Grace of God and Was Glad:

If anything is clear from the Bible it is this: the grace of God does not spare his people suffering in this age, but rather uses suffering to bring people to himself. The Son of God himself suffered to save people from condemnation. And now he turns suffering again and again for our good both in this age and in the age to come.

Two years ago I saw Joni Eareckson Tada, who is almost totally paralyzed from a swimming accident, lift her arms as high as she could in her braces and shout, “This is the prison where God set me free.” What she meant was that the pain and limitation and frustration brought on by her disability threw her back on God in such a way that she discovered what true freedom in life is all about—and it is not about arms and legs and skiing and jogging. It’s about forgiveness and hope and love and meaning and eternal life. It’s about knowing that God is for you and not against you even in suffering. That’s how grace becomes visible.

Amen!

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If that headline doesn’t make sense, go to Desiring God and listen to this week’s sermon, “Help the Children Love the Different People.”

Here is what Pastor John had to say about disability in the context of this sermon:

So I am going to explicitly apply what I say to racial differences, and trust those of you for whom disability is a more immediate issue to listen between the lines and make the applications wherever they are appropriate.

You can also hear his remarks on this topic, from about minute 22 to 23, on the video at the link above.

I was already doing that, Pastor John, when you got to it on the video!  Noel gave you very good advice.  And you are right, your points are appropriate for those of us dealing with disability.

Tomorrow, a lesson I had to learn about staring, from how my daughter reacted to people staring at her brother.

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