Why do we sometimes experience dark days? Or “How do we make sense of what is happening in our lives when we don’t understand what God is doing in our lives?
A sixteenth-century Spanish mystic and Catholic poet, St. John of the Cross coined the phrase, “A Dark Night of the Soul,” to describe an experience of many Christians where God seems distant and we wonder what He is doing. I am not persuaded that we should follow everything St. John of the Cross as a Catholic mystic has written, but I sense that many of us can identify with the experience that God sometimes seems distant and far away, in what he has poetically described as “the Dark Night of the Soul.”
Certainly, unbelievers can and should feel distant from God, and properly so. But what St. John of the Cross has described here is an experience of believers. God seems to hide His face from us, so to speak. We can even go so far as to say that the more we believe in the sovereignty of God, the more puzzled we can feel when God allows difficult circumstances into our lives. How are we to respond when God allows difficult things in our lives that we don’t understand?
What does God have to say to us when we find ourselves in difficult circumstances?
Certainly, there are many—almost countless, verses of Scripture we could look at with profit.
But first let me say something else. God tells us in Scripture in Ecclesiastes 4:12 that “a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” There is a special safety when we are together with others, especially fellow believers.
But I want to take this imagery of a threefold cord in a different way. Consider the imagery of a single strand of rope. If we take this single strand of rope and braid several stands together into what the Bible describes here as “a threefold cord,” it is that much stronger.
Conceivably today I could have chosen a single passage of Scripture, like most preachers do most of the time to share with you. There is no surprise that there is power in God’s Word. After all, God tells us in Isaiah. 55:11, “my word … that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” There always power in God’s Word.
We are never the same after reading or hearing God’s Word, God will either use His Word in a positive way in our lives to change us, or if we resist what God is telling us, His Word will harden our hearts and increase our guilt before God.
There are any number of passages in Scripture that call us to trust God.
I have previously shared with many of you in another context the well-known verse Proverbs 3:5, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” And this verse includes those many times when we don’t understand with our own minds what God is doing in our lives. God still calls us to trust Him. Sometimes God calls us to trust Him when we don’t know or understand what He is doing.
We can find another encouragement when Jesus was in the upper room with His disciples on the night before He died on the cross. On that occasion, Jesus told them, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world,” as it is recorded for us in John 16:33.
Or we could consider the theme of God’s call for us to rejoice in all circumstances in Philippians 3:1, “Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you.” Paul repeats this theme of our need to rejoice later on in Philippians 4:4 repeats this same lesson, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.”
Yet rejoicing is often difficult. The people in Philippi were struggling with trusting God based on everything we see in that Epistle. After all their leader Paul was in prison and there were a number of other problems present there in that church. There is no surprise that rejoicing in God, takes special faith when we don’t understand what He is doing in our lives.
Then we also read of Paul’s own experience in Philippians 4:11-13, “Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
Again, there are any number of other passages of Scripture we could have chosen to help us focus on trusting God in difficult times.
Perhaps Romans 8:28 is one of the best-known passages of Scripture we can reflect on when God is doing things in our lives we don’t understand. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Now we need to notice that this verse doesn’t promise that all things will necessarily be easy or comfortable, or what we might have prayed for or desired, but it does promise that God is sovereignly in control, and working all the details of our lives together for His own eternal purposes and for our good.
This morning I want us to take a quick look at three different passages of Scripture that illustrate our theme of trusting God during hard times. Perhaps, we can consider this message as three mini-messages, each on a different passage of Scripture. These three passages are:
- Psalm 119:65-77, especially three verses, verse 67, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word;” verse 71, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes;” and verse 75, “I know, O LORD, that your rules are righteous, and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.”
- Lamentations 3:22-23, “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
- 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
Today I want us to focus briefly on these three different passages of Scripture. Each passage of Scripture has its own lesson for us.
1. The first lesson is that God Himself is the One who sometimes allows afflictions to come into our lives.
Here I want us to look at three verses from Psalm 119. Here there are 3 specific verses we can focus on.
- Verse 67 tells us, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.”
- Verse 71 tells us, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.”
- And verse 75, “I know, O LORD, that your rules are righteous, and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.”
Affliction is never easy for any of us.
Yet, as we all know, we often seem to experience afflictions and trials is our daily lives on a regular basis. And the more that we believe in the sovereignty of God, the more we often wrestle with God’s sovereignty as we try to make sense of the trials and difficulties we experience in our daily lives. If God is really sovereign, why do some of the things take place that happen to us and to others around us? And God rarely tells us why He allowed this or that event to take place in our lives.
Did you notice the last of these three verses I read to you a moment ago from Psalm 119, namely the second half of verse 75? “In faithfulness you have afflicted me.” We shouldn’t be surprised that God is a sovereign God and that whatever takes place, takes place because He has allowed It or permitted it. Hopefully we have already learned this lesson from the book of Job, where Satan could only bring whatever trials and difficulties he did in Job’s life because God had first permitted it.
Perhaps the place to begin is to try to understand the biblical concept of what constitutes an affliction. Afflictions can range in intensity all the way from minor irritations to major, life-changing events. So, we are talking in terms of general principles here.
Afflictions are also different from God’s judgments on sin that He exercises on people as the result of their disobedience to His laws. As believers, the ultimate penalty for our sins has already been paid for by Jesus’ death on the cross where He paid the penalty for our sins.
But even as believers, we can still experience the temporal earthly penalty for wrong things we do. If I am careless when swinging a hammer, I can easily hit my other hand and hurt myself. This is not necessarily a sin for me to be careless when I am working, but there is often a direct cause and effect of reaping the consequences for our own mistakes or errors in judgment in what we do.
But what the Bible speaks about as afflictions are usually different from God’s judgment on sin or the consequences of our own carelessness. We usually think of afflictions as trials or difficulties that seem to come out of nowhere for no apparent reason on our part and create major or minor problems for us.
God tells us in His word that the afflictions He sends us come from His goodness toward us. We can even say that God sometimes teaches us by sending us afflictions. Some of you have probably heard of the so-called prosperity gospel—this is the faulty view of assuming that God will prosper us if we only believe in Him hard enough. Yet what we actually find in Scripture, including these verses in Psalm 119 is actually what we could call an adversity gospel. Here the idea is that God often brings uses trials and adversities to bring good things into our lives.
Psalm 119:67 tells us, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.”
Afflictions, according to this verse, can help keep us on track spiritually, but notice the previous two verses of Psalm 119 and how they point us to the goodness of God in verses 65 and 66:
65 “You have dealt well with your servant, O LORD, according to your word.” God can often be dealing with us in in the midst of afflictions. “You have dealt well with your servant, O LORD, according to your word.”
66 “Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.” Here we are asking God specifically to teach us.
It is in this context that we find verse 67, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.”
But then the theme of God’s goodness continues on and becomes even clearer in verse 68, “You are good and do good; teach me your statutes.”
Then jump down with me to verse 71 and notice how this theme of God’s goodness continues on, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.” Notice how verse 71 reminds us that God is the one who does good in our lives even when we are afflicted.
Verse 73 continues the theme of God’s sovereignty in this area of afflictions: “Your hands have made and fashioned me; give me understanding that I may learn your commandments.”
The next verse I want us to focus on for a moment in Psalm 119 is verse 75, “I know, O LORD, that your rules are righteous, and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.”
But also notice the next two verses, verse 76 and 77 and how they continue the theme of God’s goodness, “Let your steadfast love comfort me according to your promise to your servant. Let your mercy come to me, that I may live; for your law is my delight.” God’s love comforts us and His Word delights us.
Here I think the original languages of the Bible can help us. In the original Hebrew of the Old Testament and in the early Greek translation of the Old Testament that was done before New Testament times, both the original Hebrew and the early translated Greek use words that point us to how this idea of being afflicted, carries with it the idea of our being humbled. There is often a connection between the afflictions of God and how He humbles us.
Perhaps we can almost translate these verses in Psalm 119 on afflictions as things that humble us. I have heard it said that things that humble us can never really hurt us. Let me repeat this thought: the things that humble us can never really hurt us
How does God usually humble us? Often by allowing trials and difficulties in our lives.
Each of us have a natural tendency to want to go our own way. We can call it pride. And the Bible often labels it specifically as sin. And God will often do almost anything He can in our lives to help us overcome our natural human pride. He will allow us to experience all kinds of different frustrations and even disasters in our lives to show us that we are not as smart or as self-sufficient as we might have thought. Instead, we discover that we are more dependent on God and His grace than we ever thought.
We shouldn’t’ be surprised at God’s chastening infliction of adversities in our lives. After all, God tells us about His chastening in Hebrews 12:5-11:
5 And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.
6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”
7 It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
8 If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
9 Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?
10 For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.
11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Humility is always a part of God’s plan for each of us. God tells us in 1 Peter 5:6-7, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”
Afflictions in life are often a part of God’s plan to help us grow spiritually.
2. The second lesson is that regardless of how difficult things might be for us, God is still present with us right in the midst of whatever afflictions we might experience.
My text for this lesson is Lamentations 3:22-23.
“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
The idea of steadfast love, or covenant faithfulness, as it could also be translated, reminds us that God enters into a covenant with His people. He doesn’t do this with everyone who has ever lived, but He does do this with all those who are born again and become one of His children. He enters into a covenant or a personal relationship with them.
Human marriage is another example of s covenant that may help us understand what a covenant with God looks like. Most of us know what marriage is all about and how it functions. Marriage is a commitment between a man and a woman who commit themselves to each other , just like being born again and becoming a child of God involve entering into a covenant relationship with God.
We can also ask ourselves, what do these 2 verses tell us about the character of God? Here are two of God’s attributes or character qualities:
- His mercies or His compassions. Verse 22: “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end.” God is a loving and gracious God. We can see this in all kinds of different verses of Scripture, including such well-known verses as John 3:16. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
- His faithfulness. God is someone we can always depend upon. Verse 23, “they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Even when others may fail us and let us down, He is always faithful and consequently, we can always depend upon Him.
God also promises us in verse 23 that His blessings will be “new every morning.” Here we need to remind ourselves that God is not bound by time the way we are. This idea of “new every morning” reminds us that this passage of Scripture is written from our perspective. It will seem to us that every day we wake us facing all the various ups and downs of life, we can still count on the presence of God and the assurance of His “steadfast love [and how it] never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
What is most surprising about these verses is not the power and freshness of God’s love and mercies are for us, but the context of these verses.
These verses are found in the Old Testament book of Lamentations. What is the meaning of the word lamentations? The word Lamentations is literally a passionate expression of grief or sorrow; it often describes a time when we are weeping and grieving. Laments are a natural response to the tragedies of life. Here we can think of the more severe kinds of afflictions. The biblical Book of Lamentations describes the destruction and devastation of Jerusalem at the time of the Babylonian conquest in 586 BC. It is hard to imagine a harder or more difficult time in the history of God’s Old Testament people. Not only had countless family and friends either lost their lives or been taken away into captivity hundreds of miles away in Babylon probably for the rest of their lives, but the city itself had been almost totally destroyed. And worst of all, the Old Testament Temple that Solomon had originally built hundreds of years earlier as a symbol of God’s abiding presence among His people was now also destroyed and reduced to nothing.
I have no idea of whatever trials and struggles you may be in today or in the days ahead, But I do know that God is present with us, especially those of us who are believers in Christ.
And God wants us to bring our struggles, our mourning, and our sorrow to God. After all, Scripture instructs us to “pour out [our] hearts before Him,” as Psalm 62:8 tells us. In fact, over a third of the psalms are songs of sorrow and lament. Psalm 42:4 offers us another example of a lament, “These things I remember, and I pour out my soul within me.” If there is any book of the Bible that can help us find words to share with God about our struggles, it is the Book of Psalms.
God was judging His Old Testament people in the events described in the Book of Lamentations because Judah and Jerusalem repeatedly violated their covenant with Him through idolatry, disobedience, injustice, and rejecting His prophets.
But here in the midst of a time when it seems that the worst that could ever take place had already taken place, we find these marvelous words in Lamentations 3:22-23, “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
So I often pray these verses from Lamentations 3 as I remind myself that whatever situation I might be in or conceivably be in later that day, the one thing I can be certain of is that Lamentations 3:22-23 will always be true, “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”
So regardless of whatever situations you are in or might be in, know that God promises to be with you and that His “steadfast love never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” God wants us to remember that He is always present with us—even in the midst of the most difficult and discouraging situations in life.
God reminds us in Psalm 22:24, “For he [God] has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him.” God knows our afflictions and promises to be with us in the midst of them.
3. The third lesson is that God Himself is at work comforting us and giving us hope in the midst of whatever afflictions He may allow in our lives.
This theme of comfort is found in many passages of Scripture. Here is an example from Psalm 119:50, “This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.”
But right now I want us to focus on our third passage of Scripture in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
Affliction was no stranger to Paul. There are a number of times when he reminds his readers of some of the sufferings he has experienced in sharing the gospel.
We can see one list in 2 Corinthians 11:23-28: Paul tells us how he has experienced:
23 … far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.
24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one.
25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned.
Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.
28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.
Yet this same Paul began his epistle to 2 Corinthians this way in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
Paul looks for God’s comfort and encouragement right in the midst of all the afflictions he has experienced. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
So, to sum up and review this message, there were three basic lessons in this message
1. The first lesson is that God Himself is the One who sometimes allows afflictions to come into our lives.
2. The second lesson is that regardless of how difficult things might be for us, God is still present with us right in the midst of whatever afflictions we might experience.
3. The third lesson is that God Himself is at work comforting us and giving us hope in the midst of our afflictions.
One final question is how can we apply this message from these three passages of Scripture?
1. God calls us to trust Him. After all, the Christian life is a life of faith. We shouldn’t be surprised that God often allows us to experience dark and dry times in our walk with God when God seems distant and far away to encourage us to put all our faith and trust in Him alone, and not in ourselves and what we can do with our own human energy. God never promises us that life will be easy. But God does promise us that trusting Him is always worth it. Afflictions are always a time to renew our hope in God.
2. God calls us to persevere. We shouldn’t be surprised at trials or difficulties. Never doubt in dark what God has shown us in the light when we could see more the promises of God more clearly. God is at work in each of our lives, and He is often at work in bigger and different ways that we might expect or understand. And if we are a child of God, He is at work in our lives in far better ways that we often understand. This is why God promises us in Romans 8:28, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
We can also remember that our afflictions are temporary at best. 2 Corinthians 4:17-18 reminds us, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
3. God gives us encouragement based on what He has done in the past. We need to learn from others who have stood firm in the faith: Here we can find encouragement not only in the lives of the heroes of the faith recorded in Scripture, but also in the lives of heroes of the faith down throughout history and even those living in our own day. This is where Christian fellowship can come in. Many times, we can encourage one another as we seek to trust God in our own lives, especially as we share with others what God has been doing for us in our own lives.
4 Jesus is always our best example of Someone who stood firm in the faith during times of great affliction. : Isaiah 53:4 reminds us how Christ was afflicted for us: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” Hebrews 12 points us to the encouragement that we can find only in Christ:
1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.
We need Christ’s example to encourage us, but even more than His example, we also need His power. And His power only comes through a vital, being-born-again relationship with Him where He becomes our God and we become His people.
Scripture even tells us that even right now Jesus is praying for us. Hebrews 7:25 tells us, “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”
If we have Jesus, we have everything we need.
The problem comes in when we either don’t have Jesus of we have forgotten about Him.
So, we need to rely specifically on the Lord Jesus Christ for hope and encouragement, regardless of whatever else may be happening in our lives.