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At one time or another, every one of us goes through issues in life—things that are sometimes sharp, things that injure us. It might be financial hardship. It might be a serious health issue. It might be family problems. There are nails in all of our lives. In these situations and events, we become concerned about the nails we face rather than the things that are most important to us.
In the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, we read: "For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for peace and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope."
Have you ever thought to yourself: if God is really in charge, why do bad things happen? This question troubles many of us. We know why bad things happen to bad people—because they're bad. But what about the innocent? What about the ignorant? What about the simple people in the world? And for us, why would anything happen to us? We're God's people. He is our God. And yet we read that He has a plan of peace for us.
What about the world and all the bad things that happen out there? Sickness, natural disasters, wars. Why doesn't God protect the world from these things? When we hear of such tragedies, some people question whether God really exists and loves us. The problem is that we try to put this harsh, unforgiving world together with a loving, powerful God. I just don't think the human mind is smart enough to understand the mind of God.
In Isaiah, the Lord declares: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways... For as high as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts."
Humans suffer and we point to the God who loves us, yet something just doesn't quite fit. But maybe we need to think about the events in our life and in this world differently.
Once upon a time there was a poor farmer who didn't have a tractor to plow. He used his old horse. One day his horse died, and the people in the town said, "Isn't that a shame?" The farmer said, "We'll see."
The next day, the rich man in the town gave the poor farmer a horse. The people said, "Isn't that great?" The farmer said, "We'll see."
The next day, the farmer's son was riding the horse. He fell off and broke his leg. The people said, "Isn't that a shame?" The farmer said, "We'll see."
The next day the army came looking for young men to go to war. They looked at the farmer's son with a broken leg and did not take him. The people said, "Isn't that great?" The farmer said, "We'll see."
You see, for the child of God, what we should do is not focus on the event as much as we have to focus on God's purpose, not our wishes. That's not as easy as it sounds, is it?
The natural reaction for the average man or woman when we see something bad, when we hear about a tragedy, when we see an injustice—we automatically think: how does that affect me? No rain this winter means I have to ration water. There's an accident at the petroleum processing plant, so my gas will cost me more. We look at all the events in this world and in our lives and ask: why is it happening to me?
What would happen to us if we didn't think that way? What if we said something crazy—like, "I wonder what God is doing there"—and then patiently waited for Him to show us? Our outlook should determine the way we react to the things in this world, no matter how good or bad they may look at first.
There's a great example in the 37th chapter of Genesis. There's a young man named Joseph. He had a dream that one day he would rule over his older brothers. Joseph knew that nothing was going to get in his way of what God had promised him. So Joseph told his older brothers that one day he was going to rule over them.
The older brothers reacted like every older brother would. They beat him up. They threw him in a pit and they sold him as a slave. But that wasn't the end of it. In the home of his new master, the master's wife made unwanted advances toward Joseph and accused him of inappropriate things. Joseph went to prison.
How could that be? God promised Joseph that he would rule over his brothers. They sold him into slavery. And when he did the right thing before God, he ended up in prison. How would we react to circumstances like that?
I think we have a tendency to look at the events that happen around us and then judge God by the event and how it affected us, rather than by God's plan coming to completion. But Joseph trusted God more than he was worried about his circumstances. Joseph had set his eyes on God's promise and God's purpose, not the events around him.
So my question for us today is: what are our eyes focused on? Our wishes or God's purpose? And do we realize that we have a very wise, very competent, very creative God? Just because we can't figure out what He's doing doesn't mean that He's doing it wrong.
According to God's perfect purpose, Joseph met the Pharaoh. He was made the second highest ruler in Egypt. He saved nations from a famine. And when his brothers came to get food, that's when he ruled over them, just as God had planned all along.
Joseph's brothers were afraid that he was going to take revenge on them. In Genesis 50, Joseph said: "Do not be afraid. Am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about the present result to preserve many people alive."
Just because we cannot understand what God is doing, we need to remember the words of Joseph: "Am I in the place of God?" Joseph was faithful to God's purpose, even though it did not always line up with the events in his life. Wouldn't that be nice if we could do that? We can, but baby, it won't be easy.
We judge God by the events in our lives and how they affect us at the moment. There are things in this world that are good—love, joy, and peace. And there are things in this world that are not good—envy, anger, jealousy. We think that the bad can never be good. And there are events in our daily lives that are neither good nor bad. But we are the ones who determine if the events in our life are good or bad. We choose.
We may be poor, but we don't have to live poorly. Are we in bad health? Have we lost our savings? Have we suffered the death of a loved one? Maybe, just maybe, God is doing something according to His bigger picture than just you.
We are troubled too much because we don't understand what God is doing. We assign negative thoughts to something that isn't good or isn't bad. Nobody likes to sit at a red light. But my prayer has been, over the couple of years: "Lord, let me celebrate the red lights with as much enthusiasm as I celebrate the green lights." Don't you hate it when you sit at one, two, three, four red lights in a row? We kick and spit and whine and cry and complain about it. But God is protecting us from something in the future, keeping us where we need to be to be safe. We assign a negative thought to something that isn't good or bad.
If we have a Christian worldview, we can trust that the events are neither good nor bad, but are just there to accomplish God's perfect purpose. If we put our wishes on hold and wait for God's plan to be accomplished, we're going to have less stress, less trouble, and more peace in our lives. But this is a conscious decision that we have to make.
If you think that it's not possible to have a Christian perspective when things are going wrong—unless you're an apostle from the New Testament or an Old Testament superhero—let me share another example.
The followers of Jesus Christ were troubled over His death on the cross. They were concerned about how it affected them. And there were two thieves on crosses with Jesus. One thief saw the cross as a horrible, awful, evil, torturing device. But the other thief saw things differently. In Luke 23, he was saying: "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." And Jesus said to him: "Truly I say to you, today you shall be with me in paradise."
Think about that for just a second. This dying thief literally had nails in his hands and his feet. He was seeing the event in his life with a clarity that no one else saw. He understood what had to happen to accomplish God's purpose. It was the simple faith of a dying man that let him see above the events of the day. He didn't care about that moment. His trust was in his future that God had promised.
Imagine this: in the moments just before death, you understand what no one else sees, and you wonder why no one else sees that. The people looking up at the cross were troubled. They were upset. They were sad. And this man with very few breaths left in him was the only one who was allowed to see God's perfect purpose and forget about the nails.
When Jesus said, "Today you shall be with me in paradise," that was God's perfect plan. At that time, the followers of Jesus could not understand God's purpose. It was not the event that was bad. It was the point of view of the people that determined how they reacted. They could not see anything beyond the fact that Jesus's death affected them.
In this world, if we see death as only a bad thing, we are unable to see the good things that come from the gospel of the Bible. The gospel is simply this: God has created you and God loves you. There's this thing in this world called sin, and this sin separates us from God.
Yet we go back to the beginning: God loves you. He loves you so much. He found a way to fix that. So He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to take all your sin and put it on His cross. When we believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, Romans 10:13 is true: "He who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved."
It was Jesus who died on the cross. It was Jesus who was buried in the tomb. But God raised Him from the dead. In the same way, He will raise us up when we show our faith in Jesus Christ.
The gospel tells the story of the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When the Christian looks at the cross, we understand that God's perfect purpose to save mankind was accomplished through death. Even though death can be sad, look around, man. Learn to look at life through the eyes of a child of God. Realize that God's perfect purpose is going to be fulfilled in this life. And then, and only then, we might grow in our relationship. We might grow in our understanding of God. And that can't be a bad thing.
Do not think that just because you're a child of God, just because you're a Christian—that we look at things a little bit different than the rest of the world—that we're not going to suffer. We will suffer. We will suffer like the apostles suffered. Christians die at exactly the same rate as unbelievers, 100%. And the apostles felt the nails, the sting of the nails in their persecution, in their prison, in their beatings. I'm sure crucifixion stung a little bit.
And today we struggle with money problems, health problems, family problems every single day. The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians: "We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed. Perplexed but not despairing, persecuted but not abandoned. We are struck down but not destroyed."
We may suffer every day, but we will not be harmed. If we are suffering in this world, that's normal. But more importantly, we have to be aware of God's purpose.
Far too often we miss God working in our lives because we're so busy reacting to the events in our life. We're unable to wait for God's unveiling plan. And when we cannot wait and react to the events in our lives and in the world, we are a child of God who acts childish.
Wisdom to see the purpose of God does not happen at the time of the event. So we need to start planning today about the events that are going to happen tomorrow because God has a plan. We need to acknowledge that God has things in control. We have to be prepared beforehand. We have to take time to develop the character of the Christian.
Let the world crumble around us. We have a God who creates worlds. Our wallet might be thin, but it is our God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills. We want to know what God is up to. But just because we do not understand, we cannot lose faith. Because without faith, we're trusting in ourselves. We're not trusting in God.
In the book of Deuteronomy, the Lord says: "Yet to this day, the Lord has not given you a heart to know, nor eyes to see, nor ears to hear." And Deuteronomy 29 says: "The secret things belong to the Lord our God. But the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, so that we may follow all of the words of the law."
I could take the next 15 or 20 minutes and show you scriptures from the Bible that tell us we're not supposed to be anxious, that God has a plan. But if we have not prepared our heart for the events that are coming, how can these scriptures mean anything to us? We need to understand that His knowledge is too great for our minds. Why would we need to be troubled in the affairs of God?
Do you think that God is so concerned about our comfort that He will sacrifice His plans just to make us cozy? We may suffer, but we won't be harmed.
We boomerang back to where we started the service. "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for peace and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope."
After all is said and done, remember: God has a plan for us. While the rest of the world outside these walls are concerned about the events in their lives—family situations, financial situations, health situations—when the rest of the world sees a national tragedy or wars, the world naturally says, "What a shame." But it is the mature Christian that says, "We'll see."
May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up the light of His countenance and give to you all the peace and joy and hope that comes from forgetting about the nails. God be praised.
