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May 13, 2001 Mother’s Day |
Bethlehem Baptist Church John Piper, Pastor |
To Be A
Mother
Is a Call
to Suffer
I apologize for announcing one text and title for
this message and putting all that off until next week and going in a different
direction. Everything in me in the last few days has been moving in another
direction. Almost all my thinking and all my emotional energy has been spent
pondering and holding fast to the great reality of God’s sovereign goodness in
the bitter providences of our lives.
There are at least five things that have conspired to
crystallize what I believe God wants to say to all of us this morning, but
especially to mothers. First, Mother’s Day every year brings up the memory of
my mother’s death on December 16, 1974. It was a bus collision in Israel, and a
very strange thing that my father sitting next to her lived. He was exactly my
age when she died.
Second, I have had to think and pray a lot about the
reality of $6.5 million instead of $9 million for our new educational building.
And I thank God for every dream and every sacrifice in your hearts.
Third, Wednesday night’s vote did not go the way I
hoped it would, and I have been steadying my heart with God’s sovereign
goodness ever since.
Fourth, Christianity
Today arrived in my mailbox on Friday, and the cover story is about the
debate over “openness of God.” The introduction says, “A few theologians are
now teaching that God doesn’t know the future precisely because the future does
not yet exist. Thus, while God is very good at calculating the odds, he still
takes risks – especially in dealing with his free creatures.” It is a great
sadness to many of us that the leaders of our college and seminary do not see
this unorthodox view of God as serious enough to exclude from what will be
promoted as evangelical by at least of one of our faculty. And what makes the
matter relevant this morning is that Christianity
Today is exactly right to say, “These theological debates have enormous
implications for piety and pastoral care – especially for how we respond to the
tragedies that invade our lives” (Christianity
Today, vol. 45, no. 7, May 21, 2001, pp. 39-40).
Finally, what put me over the edge in planning for
today was reading the cynical Washington
Post article in the StarTribune
yesterday (Saturday, May 12, 2001, Faith & Values Section) about another
mother who was killed, with her baby, while sitting with her husband in a
single-engine Cessna 185 floatplane over the jungles of Peru about four weeks
ago. The Peruvian Air Force mistook the missionary plane for a drug plane and
opened fire. Missionary Veronica Bowers, age 35, was holding her
seven-month-old daughter Charity in her lap behind MAF pilot Kevin Donaldson.
With them were Veronica’s husband Jim and six-year-old son Cory. The pilot’s
legs were shot and he put the plane into an emergency dive and amazingly landed
it on a river where it sank just after they all got out. One bullet had passed
by Jim’s head and made a hole in the windshield. Another bullet passed through
Veronica’s back and stopped inside her baby, killing them both.
So the question is:
How do you handle the setbacks, the disappointments, the abuses, the
heartaches, the calamities, the bitter providences of your life? And I ask it
specifically to mothers, because to be a mother is a call to suffer. When Jesus
looked for an analogy of suffering followed by joy, he said (in John 16:21),
“Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when
she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish because of
the joy that a child has been born into the world.”
To be a mother is a
call to suffer. Not just at the beginning of life, but also at the end. Simeon
said to Mary, Jesus’ mother, “Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and
rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be
opposed – and a sword will pierce even your own soul" (Luke 2:34-35).
Mothers suffer when their children are born. Mothers suffer when children leave
them and go to the mission field. Mothers suffer when their children die.
Mothers suffer when their children are foolish. “A wise son makes a father
glad, but a foolish son is a grief to his mother” (Proverbs 10:1). To be a mother
is a call to suffer. Oh yes, it’s more. But it’s not less.
So what do we do? Do
we go the way of openness theology to handle the disappointments and heartaches
and calamities of life, and say with one popular writer, “When an individual
inflicts pain on another individual, [one should not] go looking for ‘the
purpose of God’ in the event . . . Christians frequently speak of ‘the purpose
of God’ in the midst of tragedy caused by someone else. . . . But this I regard
to simply be a piously confused way of thinking.”[1]
In other words, God had no particular purpose for taking Roni and Charity
Bowers and leaving Jim and Cory. Were all the words of Elisabeth Elliot and
Steve Saint and Jim Bowers at Roni’s memorial service a “piously confused way
of thinking,” and no true ground for comfort and strength?
I’ll tell you what
they said in a moment. But first let me lay a Biblical foundation, because in
the end it is not the testimony of man that settles us, but the testimony of
God in his Word, through Jesus Christ.
Consider two passages
of Scripture, one from the Psalms, and one from the Gospel according to
Matthew.
In Psalm 105 we have
an inspired interpretation of an inspired Old Testament story, the story of
Israel going down to Egypt preceded by Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his
brothers. We learn two crucial things from verses 16-17, “And [God] called for
a famine upon the land; He broke the whole staff of bread. He sent a man before
them, Joseph, who was sold as a
slave.” Notice two things: the governance of God over natural calamities, and
the governance of God over the sinful actions of men. It says “God called for a
famine” – that is a natural calamity that came on the world. And it says, God
“sent a man before them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave.”
That was sinful of
his brothers to do, and in that sinful act God had a purpose – so much so that
the psalmist called their sinning God’s sending – just like it says in
Genesis 50:20 (Joseph to his brothers), “As for you, you meant evil against me,
but God meant it for good in order to
bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.” When it says,
“God meant it,” it says more than, “God used it.” This is the exact opposite of
what openness theology teaches. God does have good purposes (good intentions,
good meanings) in the hurts that others inflict on us. And we may and should
take great comfort in this sovereign goodness in the setbacks and disappoints
and heartaches calamities and bitter providences of our lives.
Then consider the
words of Jesus on why missionary candidates should not fear to go to the hard
and dangerous places, and why mothers should not fear to let their sons and
daughters go – or even take them. In Matthew 10:28-31 Jesus says to his disciples
to get them ready for suffering:
Do not fear those who
kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able
to destroy both soul and body in hell. (29). Are not two sparrows sold for a
cent? And yet not one of them will fall
to the ground apart from your Father. (30) But the very hairs of your head are
all numbered. (31) So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.
Notice three things.
First, Jesus knows that people will kill the bodies of his missionaries. This
is going to happen. But, he says, don’t fear those who can only kill the body,
and can’t kill the soul (verse 28). Second, he says that we don’t need to fear
this hostility because no sparrow falls to the ground apart from God. And you,
his disciples, are more valuable than many sparrows. So how much less will you
be shot out of the sky apart from God! God governs the flight of a sparrow, and
God governs the flight of arrows and bullets. This is the basis of every Bible
story about the victory of God. “The horse is made ready for battle but victory
belongs to the Lord” (Proverbs 21:31). Because bird flight and arrow flight and
bullet flight belong to the Lord. This is the solid ground of our comfort in
calamity: God’s sovereign goodness to all who trust him.
Now listen to the
testimony of Roni Bowers’ husband at his wife’s memorial service – and words of
Steve Saint and Elisabeth Elliot. These testimonies don’t increase the
authority of the Bible. But they do show the power of the Bible to sustain in a
way radically different from the way openness theology tries to comfort.
Two weeks ago (April
27) Jim Bowers stood in front of twelve hundred people in Calvary Church of
Fruitport, Michigan and said, “Most of all I want to thank my God. He’s a
sovereign God. I’m finding that out more now. . . . Could this really be God’s
plan for Roni and Charity; God’s plan for Cory and me and our family? I’d like
to tell you why I believe so, why I‘m coming to believe so.”
And then he gives a
long list of unlikely events in and after the shooting, and alludes to God’s
sending his Son to the cross. Here are some of the key sentences that only
those who trust in God’s sovereign care for his own will truly understand. He
said, “Roni and Charity were instantly killed by the same bullet. (Would you
say that’s a stray bullet?) And it didn’t reach Kevin [the pilot] who was right
in front of Charity; it stayed in Charity. That was a sovereign bullet. . . .”
He speaks of his
forgiveness to those who shot at the plane. “How could I not,” he says, when
God has forgiven me so?” Then he adds, “Those people who did that, simply were
used by God. Whether you want to believe it or not, I believe it. They were
used by Him, by God, to accomplish His purpose in this, maybe similar to the
Roman soldiers whom God used to put Christ on the cross.”
Steve Saint was at
the memorial service. In 1956, when Steve was a boy, his father was speared to
death by the Auca Indians of Ecuador. Steve came to the microphone and looked
down at Cory, the six-year-old boy whose mother and sister had been killed.
Cory, my name is
Steve. You know what? A long time ago when I was just about your size, I was in
a meeting just like this. I was sitting down there and I really didn’t know
completely what was going on. . . . But you know, now I understand it better. A
lot of adults used a word then that I didn’t understand. They used a word
that’s called tragedy. . . But you know, now I’m kind of an old guy, and now when
people come to me and they say, “Oh I remember when that tragedy happened so
long ago.” I know, Cory, that they were wrong.
You see, my dad, who was a pilot like the man you
probably call Uncle Kevin, and four of his really good friends had just been buried
out in the jungles, and my mom told me that my dad was never coming home
again. My mom wasn’t really sad. So, I asked her, “Where did my dad go?”
And she said, “He went to live with Jesus.” And you know, that’s where my mom
and dad had told me that we all wanted to go and live. Well, I thought, isn’t
that great that Daddy got to go sooner than the rest of us? And you know what?
Now when people say, “That was a tragedy,” I know they were wrong.
Then Steve Saint
looked up at these twelve hundred people and told them the difference between
the unbelieving world and the followers of Jesus. He said, “For them, the pain
is fundamental and the joy is superficial because it won’t last. For us, the pain is superficial and the joy
is fundamental.”
Finally, I mention
what Elisabeth Elliot said to the family.
You wonder what God
is doing, and of course, we know that God never makes mistakes. He knows
exactly what He is doing, and suffering is never for nothing. . . .
He has given to you, Jim, the cup of suffering, and you can share that
with the Lord Jesus who said, “The cup the Father has given to me, I have
received.”
She ended with a poem by Martha Snell Nicholson (a
“mendicant” is a beggar):
I stood a mendicant of God before His royal throne
And begged him for one priceless gift, which I could
call my own.
I took the gift from out His hand, but as I
would depart
I cried, “But Lord this is a thorn and it has
pierced my heart.
This is a strange, a hurtful gift, which Thou hast
given me.”
He said, “My child, I give good gifts and gave My
best to thee.”
I took it home and though at first the cruel thorn
hurt sore,
As long years passed I learned at last to love it
more and more.
I learned He never gives a thorn without this added grace,
He takes the thorn to pin aside the veil which hides His
face.[2]
That’s where we have
been in Romans 7. It isn’t law-keeping that justifies us before God. It isn’t
first law-keeping that sanctifies us. It is the lifting of the veil so that we
see Jesus for who he is, dying in our place and rising again so that we receive
him as the treasure of our lives.
And
if it takes a thorn to pin aside the veil – if it takes disappointment and loss
and heartache and calamity and bitter providences – then, for Christ’s sake,
and for the sake of our eternal joy seeing and savoring him, let it come. Amen.
Copyright
2001 John Piper
Desiring God
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[1] Greg Boyd, Letters
from a Skeptic (Colorado Springs: Chariot Victor Publishing, 1994), pp.
46-47.