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[Music] A Theology for Times of Trouble by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman [Music] Let us continue in worship by hearing these words from the fifth chapter of the book of Job.

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I begin the reading at the verse numbered six. "For affliction does not come from the dust, nor does trouble sprout from the ground. But man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. As for me, I would seek God, and to God would I commit my cause,

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who does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number. He gives rain upon the earth and sends waters upon the fields. He sets on high those who are lowly, and those who mourn are lifted to safety. He frustrates the devices of the crafty so that their hands achieve no success.

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He takes the wise in their own craftiness, and the schemes of the wily are brought to a quick end. They meet with darkness in the daytime and grope at noonday as in the night. But he saves the fatherless from their mouth, the needy from the hand of the mighty. So the poor have hope, and injustice shuts her mouth.

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Behold, happy is the man whom God reproves. Therefore despise not the chastening of the Almighty, for he wounds, but he binds up. He smites, but his hands heal. He will deliver you from six troubles; in seven there shall no evil touch you.

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And may the same God who by his Spirit uttered these words incline our hearts to their understanding. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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I wonder if you have ever heard Murphy's Law. Murphy's Law is as follows. If anything can go wrong, it probably will. Now there are some laws that come and then go.

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For generations we, for example, have understood the nature of the universe in terms of the laws laid down for us by Sir Isaac Newton. Newtonian physics has been our understanding of the nature of things, but these laws are now passing away.

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The tide of scientific research is pushing them aside. So laws come and laws go, but Murphy's Law seems always to hang in there. If anything can go wrong, it probably will. I wonder if you've also heard O'Toole's comment on Murphy's Law.

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O'Toole's comment is, "Murphy was an optimist." I think we can identify with that. We've all had the experience of saying to ourselves in so many words, "If anything can go wrong, it almost inevitably will."

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And there have been times in each of our experiences when we have felt that the theme song for our life might just as well be, "Nobody knows the troubles I've seen." Job echoes the thought when he says to us that man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. So we are troubled people living, as always, in a troubled time.

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But we are Christians, and in our Christian faith we find that faith alone which confronts the reality of trouble. Buddhism does not confront the reality of trouble. It loses itself in a selfish oblivion. Hinduism does not confront the reality of trouble.

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It loses itself in dubious totems and charms. Islam does not confront the reality of trouble. It loses itself in a rigid and unbending fatalism. But Christianity, our most holy faith, has at its very center a suffering servant.

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And it speaks to us of a wounded healer. And it confronts head-on the reality of death and the promise of resurrection. Simone Weil, in her book Gravity and Grace, has perhaps summed our faith's approach to trouble most succinctly. She writes, "The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural cure for trouble.

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It seeks instead a supernatural use for it." Our faith understands trouble, you see, as that which promotes the growth of the soul. As long ago as the second century, Eroneous, one of the church fathers, announced that troubles make our souls. Keats says in one of his poems, "We live in the veil of soul-making."

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And the apostle Paul, commenting on the ministry of trouble in our lives, says, "We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that they produce endurance. And endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts."

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Our Christian faith understands trouble not as a soul-breaker, but as a soul-maker. So Murphy can be declared to be right. If anything can go wrong, it probably will. And O'Toole's comment can be accepted, if you will, that Murphy was an optimist. Job announced the truth when he said that man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.

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But Job does not finish with that comment. He goes on to say this, "In your troubles seek God, and he will do great and unsearchable things, marvelous things, beyond your numbering." Our faith, you see, offers us a theology for times of trouble. Now the first strand, or the first thought in that theology is this,

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that God often allows trouble into our lives as a kind of self-punishment. Now understand that I am not suggesting that God allows trouble into our lives to punish us. I am not suggesting that God inflicts punishment upon us in the course of our days. There are those, you know, who assume that every time something good happens to them,

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this is a specific blessing of God, and every time something unfortunate happens to them, this is a specific punishment of God. Every plus experience is seen as God's caress. Every minus experience is seen as God's curse. These people regularly ride a kind of spiritual yo-yo.

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But the Scriptures speak against this. They say that God does not enter into our lives to inflict punishment upon us. Do you remember when the disciples came to Jesus? They reported that a tower had fallen in Siloam and some men were killed.

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"Were they killed?" the disciples asked because of their sin. Jesus replies, "I tell you, no." Pilate sent out his cutthroats and killed 18 Galileans. The disciples said to Jesus, "Were these men killed because of their sin?"

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Jesus said, "I tell you, no." They brought to Jesus a blind man and they said, "Is this man blind because of his sin or the sin of his parents?" Jesus replied, "I tell you, no." I say to you tonight, with no less authority than the authority of the only begotten Son of God,

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that if you look upon every trouble in your life as some inflicted punishment of God, you ought not to do so. No! Now this is not to say that we do not know punishment through the troubles in our lives, but that punishment is not given to us by God as much as it is something which we bring upon ourselves.

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You see, we sometimes lead very ugly, very brutal, very cruel lives. We do thoughtless and selfish things. And the result of this kind of living inevitably brings upon us suffering and trouble and hurt. These things are the bitter fruit of our way of living, not some punishment that God inflicts,

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but rather the inevitable result of the mistakes and the errors and the sins with which we clutter our lives. Now God allows us to reap in accordance with what we have sown. For the simple fact is that if he protected us so that as the result of our sinning nothing would happen, so that as the result of our mistakes and errors and blunders and cruelties and selfishness nothing at all would occur,

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then we would continue doing as we have done. We would not learn from our errors and our sin. But God understands, as we do, that experience is the best teacher. But for experience to be the best teacher, we must receive to ourselves the results of that experience.

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Therefore, God allows us to suffer and to know trouble in accordance with how we have lived. It is not inflicted, it is permitted. We might think of life as a kind of hockey game. And sometimes the game becomes very brutal and very rough.

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And the more brutal and rough we are, the more brutal and rough the game becomes. And God permits that, that we might know the cost of our kind of living. But in all of the game, God assures us that if we are his, we are on the winning team, so that all things in the game work together for good to those who love God.

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Trouble, then, can be an expression of that which God allows us to endure to correct our way of living. Job puts it this way. He says, "God can use these things. They are unsearchable and marvelous things that are beyond our numbering." But we must add to this strand of our theology for times of trouble immediately a second thought,

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and that is this, that God often allows trouble into our lives in order to prod us. About 40 years ago, there was a brilliant young German theologian by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was put to death by the Nazis. And in the few writings which we have from the hands of this outstanding young Christian,

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there is a phrase which appears quite often. It was basic to his thinking. The phrase is, "The world come of age." Now, by that phrase, Bonhoeffer meant that we, because of our scientific advance and progress, have become satisfied with ourselves, convinced that we are quite able to deal with the problems we confront in life

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through the application of our own skills and talents. The world, Bonhoeffer suggests, claims a maturity it really does not have, and acting on the basis of that maturity, it does not turn to God, but turns always and only to itself. Bonhoeffer's point is that it is in times of trouble that we most immediately go to God.

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And so it is that God sometimes allows trouble into our lives to prod us to return to him. I heard a story about a man who was elected the president of a college, and when he came to take over his job, his predecessor was leaving, and the predecessor had not been very successful, but he still asked of the man before him,

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"Do you have any suggestions that I might take into account as I begin my presidency?" And the man said, "Well, what I will do for you is what my predecessor did for me. I will give you three envelopes, and each time you get into a difficulty, simply open one of these envelopes." So the man began his career as president, and it wasn't too long until he got into trouble.

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So he took the first envelope and he opened it, and inside was a note which said, "Blame your staff." So he did so, and he got away with it. But it wasn't too long until he encountered another trouble, and when that happened, he opened the second envelope, and inside of it was a note which said, "Blame the board."

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So he did so, and again he got away with it. But it wasn't too long until he encountered a third and more serious trouble. He opened the third envelope and picked out a note which read, "Prepare three envelopes." [laughter]

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Now, what Bonhoeffer is saying to us, and what I'm seeking to echo tonight, is this. The times we are most likely to go to God is when we get to the third envelope. That's exactly what happened to Jonah, for example. He turned his back on God and went off in a false maturity to lead life as he wanted to lead it.

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So God prods him with trouble, and according to the old sea yarn, a great fish is prepared, and it swallows Jonah. And what is the first line in the story after the occasion on which Jonah is swallowed? The scriptures read, "And Jonah cried out to God from the belly of the whale." Prodded, you see, to turn back toward God again.

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Sometimes we must understand as we contemplate the trouble in our lives that this trouble is an expression of God's love. Love, you know, is always stronger than kindness. For example, this last summer I was driving up near Greenville,

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and as I was passing along the highway, I noticed in front of me, right in the middle of the highway, a much older woman, and she was walking right down the middle of the highway with traffic going past her both ways. So I pulled up beside her and I leaned out and I said, "Well, how are you today?"

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And she said, "I'm fine." And I said, "Where are you going?" "Oh," she said, "I'm going over to my daughter's for the afternoon." I said, "Where does your daughter live?" She said, "She lives in Pittsburgh," which was about a hundred miles away and in the opposite direction from the direction in which she was walking.

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"Well," I said, "that's a very long way. Why don't you get in the car and I'll make it easier for you?" She said, "All right, I'll do that." So she got in the car and we kept on driving and I brought the conversation around to the place where I could say naturally, "Well, where do you live?"

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"Oh," she said, "I live in the senior citizens' residence back there in Greenville." So with a few disguised turns, I brought the car around till we arrived in front of that senior citizens' home. And as we pulled up, she looked out and then she looked at me and said, "Oh my, I thought you were going to be a help and you've just turned out to be another trouble."

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Well, the fact of the matter is, of course, that my ministry to her was a ministry of love. But she looked upon it from her limited perspective as just another trouble. Many times God brings troubles into our lives to lead us homeward again, to lead us to think of him. Job sounds that in this word, "Happy is the man whom God reproves.

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Despise not the chastenings of the Almighty." But here's another thought to add to your theology of trouble. Remember that in trouble, God often protects us. Now, we are so busy carrying out the events of our lives that we usually resent interruptions.

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We don't like it when something derails us from our track, our plans, our purposes. But interruptions can be richly blessed things. I think tonight of a young man who many decades ago was traveling in Europe and he became very homesick. And there was no way to communicate with the United States in those days except by letter, and that was going to take a whole month.

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And as he contemplated this great ocean to span before he could have any communication with his loved ones, he remembered a sentence which he had learned while studying physics at Yale University. And the sentence was this, "If a current of electricity be interrupted, the electricity will become visible. And when it passes, it will leave an impression on any intermediate body."

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Now, as he contemplated that truth, that if a current of electricity is interrupted, it will cause a spark, he thought to himself, "Why couldn't those sparks be used to represent letters or numbers or words? Why, in fact, couldn't the spaces between the sparks, when the electricity current continues, could they not come to represent words and numbers and letters?"

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Out of these ideas, he developed the code which came to be known by his name. His name, of course, was Samuel Morse. Now, I have seen people communicate with the Morse code when they were so near death that they could no longer speak. I've seen people communicate with that code by blinking their eyes.

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I've seen them do it by tapping their feet. I've read of prisoners who have communicated that way in tapping on pipes, and of loved ones who have sent their fondnesses by the Morse code. The Morse code has come to be the telegraphic language of the world.

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And what it is, is a series of interruptions. Interruptions, you see, can be richly good things. Look at Joseph, for example. Joseph had his young life and dreams all before him, and then, interruption.

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His brothers took him and sold him into slavery. And you know the story of how he was in jail and gradually rose to a position of being second only to Pharaoh. And a famine came in his homeland, and thousands died. Joseph himself might have died had he been there.

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His family comes down into Egypt looking for aid and assistance, and they come to him, though they do not recognize him. He knows them; they do not know him. And finally, when he reveals himself to them, what does he say? "What you meant to me to be evil, God meant to me for good."

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He understood, you see, that the interruption, the trouble visited upon him, in fact protected him. Now, I'm not trying to be casual or clever about this. I realize that when you talk about trouble, you're talking about a desperately serious thing. And I would not bring to this sacred desk or to the Word of God, which I'm called to preach,

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something which I understand to be frivolous and of no account. I'm saying to you with the utmost seriousness that the troubles that God allows to occur in our lives can oft times be the very agents of his protecting grace. The best biography that I read in 1980 was a new biography entitled "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" by Edmund Morris.

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In this book, Morris tells of how when Roosevelt was running for mayor of New York in 1886, he was defeated, and defeated terribly. In order to recuperate, he left New York and went to the wilds of North Dakota and lived there for an extended length of time.

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Writing about his experience there, Roosevelt later commented that he'd broken horses with Hashknife Simpson, that he'd sung along with others to the tunes of Fiddle and Joe and his violin, that he'd discussed methods of homicide with Bat Masterson, that he had shared greasy blankets with Modesty Carter, and that he had told hell-roaring Bill Jones to shut his foul mouth.

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And Roosevelt went on to say that it was during that experience there that he took on the physical strength and the skills of leadership which later typified his life. Those men there in the wilds of North Dakota came to see in Theodore Roosevelt a superior man who never made them feel inferior, and they promised to follow him to the death,

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and many of them later did at San Juan Hill. They became the core of the constituency that he put together to win the presidency of the United States. And shortly after he had won that presidency, Theodore Roosevelt wrote, "I would never have become President of the United States had I not spent that time in North Dakota."

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He understood that in that defeat for the Merelty election in New York City, he had been protected by God from being sucked into the endless doldrums of New York politics and had been projected by God to the very seat of the President. This is what God sometimes does for us through our troubles, and Job announces this to us when he writes,

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"Seek God. Commit your cause to him. He does great things. He will deliver you from six troubles, even from seven. No evil will touch you." [ding] Please turn your cassette to the other side.

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But quickly now, let me insert another truth into our theology for times of trouble, and that's this, that God often allows troubles in our lives in order to prove us. You remember, for example, in the New Testament, how Jesus and the disciples were one time confronted with a crowd of well over 5,000 people. And Jesus turns to Philip and he says, "Feed all these people."

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And Philip is amazed. How in the world could we do it? It would take so much money. Now, John, in recording this story, says that when Jesus instructed Philip to feed the crowds, he did it, John says, in order to test him. And the whole message of the book of Job is that here is a righteous man who is tested and proved by troubles that are allowed into his life by God.

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Just so, when God allows troubles to come into our experience, it is many times to test us. Have you ever paused to think of the fact that you can see much farther in the darkness than you can in the light? That's quite true, you know. In the daylight, you can only see the world about you. But at night, in the darkness, you can see two other worlds.

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You can see stars and planets and other heavenly bodies. You can see much farther in the darkness than you can in the light. Well, God oft times allows the troubles of life to come to us as a kind of darkness, understanding that in that darkness we will be tested so that we will see ourselves more clearly than we have ever seen ourselves before,

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and so that we will see him more clearly than we have ever seen him before. We are called to our uttermost independence and in discovery. Sir Edwin Lancier was one of the great artists of British history. And there's an inn in Scotland, in the town of Perth, where the chief claim to fame is a mural by Sir Edwin Lancier which is painted on one of the walls.

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Now, on the night in which that mural was dedicated, Lancier was there for the party, and a bottle of soda exploded. And the soda water went up onto the picture and caused some of the paint to run, an ugly brown stain. Everyone was, of course, very upset by what had happened. Later in the night, when everyone had retired, Lancier went to the room, locked the door behind him, adjusted the lights,

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opened his bag, took out his paintbrushes and his paints, and set to work. He transformed the brown smear and stain into a rock. About the base of the rock are pine trees, cypress, and evergreens, and a rushing mountain stream. And standing on the rock is a great mountain goat with great curled horns.

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And he retitled the picture "The Mountain Stag." It's been reproduced thousands and thousands of times, and it has become one of his best-known paintings. Now, what happened here? He painted a good picture.

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Everyone acknowledged it to be so. But then a trouble came, a stain came, a hard time, an instance came. Out of this, he was tested and brought forth something far better than that which he had produced before. The obstacle became a kind of opportunity.

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These obstacles that are transformed into opportunities, I think they're one of the richest blessings that God gives to us. And I, for one, desperately need them. From time to time, I'm called to do something on television, and I never like to do it. It seems to me I've been doing more of that kind of thing this year than ever before, and I really resent it.

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I've got another telecast this week, and one the week after that, and two the week after that. And they drive me crazy because you sit there, and all that's in front of you is a steel camera with a great glass eye that looks at you that turns bloodshot when the camera comes on. A kind of mechanical cyclops.

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Now, I know that behind that camera are thousands and thousands and thousands of eyes looking at their television sets. But somehow I get no vision of that when this steel monster moves over in front of me and peers at me. In December, I was doing a telecast in Chicago, and just as the music was coming up and the lights were coming, I forced myself to think. Now, this picture is being transmitted from the top of the Sears Tower, which is the tallest building in the world,

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and it's going out to over 12 million homes. Keep thinking about those 12 million homes. But I couldn't do it. Every time I'd look up, I'd see that steel cyclops peering at me and nothing more.

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Now, I'll confess to you that many times in the living out of my own life, there are times when God seems very much to be absent, when I am not aware of his presence or his nearness, and all that is in front of me seems to be cold and steel and without life or vitality or meaning. It is, in those moments, a distressing time for me. But one of the ways in which God evidences to me the fact that he's there,

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that behind that cold steel and those icy circumstances, there's a loving Father, even though I may not see him and be always aware of him, one of the ways in which he points out that reality of his presence to me is by this, by throwing a trouble, a stain, a smear onto the painting of the life I'm trying to do, by challenging me, calling me, testing me, proving me.

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It's one of God's good gifts. And Job reminds us of this when he says, "He frustrates the devices of the crafty, and the schemes of the wily are brought to an end. But for those who seek God, there are great and unsearchable things, marvelous things without number." Now, let's add one last thought to our theology for troubled times, and we're done.

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And that thought is this. Sometimes God allows trouble into our lives to promote us. The book of Hebrews says, "All trouble, discipline, and chastisement seems unpleasant at the moment, but in the end, it gives sweet fruit." I'm deeply convinced out of my own experience that the troubles God allows to insinuate themselves into our lives,

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well, those falling blossoms are not signs of death, but of the coming of fruit. That phrase came to me when I was ministering to a man a number of years ago. His name was Bill, and he was in his declining years. In his earlier life, he had been a singer of songs, but the years had taken their toll, and he could sing beautifully no longer.

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And as the ability to sing disappeared from his life, so did much of the happiness. He believed in and loved Jesus Christ, but some of the exhilaration and excitement and rapture and joy of his earlier believing had disappeared. And he found himself now surrounded by troubles, and he is always focusing upon them. We sat on his back porch one day when in the backyard there were apple trees just covered with blossoms.

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And I tried to reason with him about how out of trouble God could bring goodness and how God could prove us and prod us and promote us with these things, but I had no success. Two weeks later, I came to visit him again, and we sat on the same back porch. And as we sat there, he, looking out at the trees, which two weeks before had been covered with blossoms and now all the blossoms were gone, said, "Look, all the flowers have fallen, and all of the flowers have fallen in my life."

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And it was then I was led to say to him, "Bill, falling blossoms are not the sign of death, but the sign of coming fruit." And so it is. At the very moment when we know the deepest troubles, this is oft times God's clear indication to us that he is about to bring into our experience a richer, sweeter fruit. than we have ever known before. Dr. Marie Ray, who is one of America's noted psychologists, entered into a long study over the relationship between suffering and success.

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And at the end of that study, she announced that she had discovered that those people who had grown most significantly and successfully in life were those who had been called upon to defeat great troubles. Their success came out of their struggle. The trouble promoted them. As nothing else could do. Now that's strong medicine for a society like our own.

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That we are always looking for ways to avoid trouble. But it's a precise echo of what the Apostle Paul wrote a long time ago. He wrote, "We are troubled, we are distressed, we are perplexed, but we are not in despair." He understood, you see, that out of these things could come great gain.

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These then are the five thoughts of a theology for troubled times. Sometimes God allows trouble to punish us. Not an inflicted punishment, but our experiencing of the results of the way in which we live. Our reaping what we have sown in order to learn from that.

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Sometimes he allows trouble to prod us toward him and our heavenly home. Sometimes he allows trouble to protect us and to project us into new experiences of life we have not to that moment anticipated. Sometimes he allows trouble to prove us, to test us, to call out of us better than anything we have ever done before. And sometimes he allows trouble into our lives to promote us, to elevate us to a dimension of service which until that time we've never begun to imagine.

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So Job is right. Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. But if we seek God in our troubles, we will find him and he will deliver us from six troubles and from seven. He will turn obstacles into opportunities. He does great and unsearchable things, marvelous things without number. And when we confront the last trouble, which is death, and are promoted by it to the very kingdom of heaven,

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then our theology for a time of trouble will be fulfilled. And we will hear someone ask, "Who are these clothed in white robes and whence have they come?" And we will hear choirs of angels answer as they answered in the revelation of St. John. These are those who have come out of the great tribulation, out of the time of trouble.

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They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. They are before the throne of God and he who sits upon that throne shelters them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more. The sun shall not strike them, nor the scorching heat.

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For the Lamb of God will be their shepherd and he will guide them to springs of living water. And God, God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes. And may God bless to you in your time of trouble this simple witness and his word. Let us pray.

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O God, in the moments of deepest darkness, when the shadows gather round, call us to see in the shadows, by hovering nearness. Surround us, challenge us and correct us, convict us and convert us. Call us to that which is beyond us at this time.

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Minister to us, we beseech thee. Make our souls through the gift of troubles. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. And the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.

00:40:30.000 - 00:41:00.000

The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give to you and to all those whom you love and to all those whom nobody loves, his peace. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]