Regional Synod of Canada - Reformed Church in America

Pioneer Christian Monthly

Date - Oct/69

Contributor - T. Hogerwaard

Title - The sorrow of God - A sequel to God's Comfort

Topic - Comfort

To read first:

a. O.T. Isaiah 1 - .

b. N.T. Luke 20: 1-19 -

c. N.T. John 10:34-36 -

A son honours his father, and a servant is master. If then I am a Father, where is My honour? And if I am a Master, where is My fear? Malachi I: 6

Last month we gave attention to the fact that in the many fold troubles and heartbreaks in life the Lord God stands ready to comfort us, to strengthen us, to come to our aid. "As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you," says the Lord, "you shall be comforted in Jerusalem". And the N.T. counterpart: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God Whose consolation never fails us ! He comforts us in all our troubles, so that we in turn may be able to comfort others in any trouble of theirs and share with them the consolation we ourselves receive from God". We need to be comforted and we are by One Who is both willing and able to do so.

Yes, but have you ever given attention to the fact that there is also another side to it ? A child is comforted by its mother, sometimes by its father; the daughter, the son receive, the father, the mother give. In most cases it takes a long time in life before it begins to dawn Upon the children that it may also happen that the mother, the father are in need of comfort and who is then willing and able to give it to them ? Whose eyes are sufficiently sharpened by love and by the experience of sorrow to see that there is need for comfort, for consolation ?

Sixteen years ago we were in Holland for the last time; my father was approaching the age of 70, he was in bad health, so we all knew that it was not very probable that we would ever see each other again here on earth. One day when we visited my parents, my mother and my wife went shopping; my father and I were left alone. He then opened his heart and told me what troubled him and I tried to comfort him to the best of my ability. That is one of the most moving and tender things in life that you have an opportunity, that you are granted the opportunity, to comfort your own father or your own mother, the very ones who comforted you when you were young or even when you were no longer young. (1)

It is almost certain that later on, when our Lord Christ had gone back to heaven, the three disciples Peter, John and James till their death remembered with deepest sorrow and regret that night in Gethsemane, the one and only time that they, were given an opportunity to do something for the Lord, for Him, Who had always supported them and comforted them. Then, only then. was there an opportunity to comfort Him, to strengthen Him. They let that unique opportunity in the whole history of God with men slip without availing themselves of it. They slept.

And in contrast we can understand so well how it gladdened Christ's heart when Mary of Bethany, completely forgetting herself, unstintingly sacrificed a large sum of money to anoint the Lord's feet with the best that could be bought in the market. There was a Scottish minister, later professor, who on account of his great knowledge of Hebrew was called "Rabbi Duncan". He said that the one and only character he would have liked to be, had he been given the choice, was: to have been that angel who was sent by the Father to comfort Jesus Christ in His agony and misery in the Garden of Gethsemane. The three disciples were given the chance by God; they did not make use of it, then God sent an angel instead, an eternal honour for him in all eternity among the legions of God's angels: to have been elected to comfort God's Own Son,

Jesus Christ! We know by experience that our life and that of others is full of hardships, tears and pain; we need consolation and the Lord God provides it. Yes, but now a seemingly very strange question. Do you think that God Himself has sorrow too, that He, the eternal Father is also in need of comfort, of consolation, in need of the expression of that special form of love we call comfort? Strange as it may seem, the answer is: Yes!

Many Christians, without knowing it, have been strongly influenced by the Greek thinkers. They taught that God is all sufficient in Himself, that He does not need anything or anybody. But those are pagan ideas; according to Scripture this is all wrong. Why? Because God loves and everyone who loves is vulnerable, can be hurt, deeply hurt. How many times has God been hurt by people, often those who are His children. When you love a person, you expect love in return; if that is not given it means suffering for the one who loves. Only the proud man, the Stoic, is not vulnerable - anyway he maintains and thinks that he is not ! - but that is because he does not love; the same applies to a corpse, you cannot hurt that either! But one who lives, who loves, is vulnerable, can be hurt, can suffer.

The Old Testament is full of the sufferings of God caused by those whom He had elected. The strangest part of it is this. When we suffer injustice we have a strong desire to talk it over wit someone who understands: that helps ! The Lord God does exactly the same. When the sins of the men of Sodom and Gomorrah were crying to high heaven, He decided to put an end to it, but first He discussed what He planned to do with His human friend Abraham. Now when the Creator of heaven and earth, the Almighty God, lets a sinful man, a heap of dust, know what He plans to do, then the only thing you expect is that the human partner listens reverently. But it was not so! Abraham pleaded with God, even took the liberty to remind Him that He was the Judge of heaven and earth. "Would the Judge of the whole earth not do justice ?" God listened to him, considered his arguments valid and granted Abraham's prayer! Again and again Abraham spoke, risking his intimate fellowship with God. But finally - after he had reduced the number of righteous men to ten, on behalf of whom Sodom and Gomorrah would have been spared, had those ten men be found - Abraham did not speak anymore.

For there is and remains a limit here. The most intimate relationship between God and man never sets aside the fact that He is Almighty God, we His creatures; we are His children, He is the Father; His and His alone is the final authority! Moses too was granted the most . intimate relationship with God. God told His friend: "Go down and see what the people have done!" God suggested to Moses to destroy the entire ungrateful people and let Moses' descendants be the people of God, but Moses pleaded with God to spare them and the unbelievable thing happened: God listened and did what the man of dust asked Him.

It is customary that father and mother take care of the children year after year, with unrelenting care, love and labour, one of the greatest examples of faithfulness to be found on earth. So, in normal circumstances, the father is loved and honoured by his children for that. God as the Father of His people, expected the same. Was God loved, was He honoured? Far from it! God had to complain: "A son honours his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a Father, where is My honour ? And if I am a Master, where is My fear ?"

That is the way the Lord has been treated by the humans with scandalous ingratitude. When we are badly treated by people for whom we did so much, we are struck by the fact that love and care given to animals are often more appreciated and returned by them than by our fellow human beings. That too the Lord God has experienced and expressed. He ordered the prophet Isaiah to say to the people of Israel in His Name: "Sons I have reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against Me. The ox. knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib, but Israel does not know, My people does not understand.

In every family it is a great joy when the first-born learns to walk. Father and mother do what they can to persuade the one year old to take the first few faltering steps and when the child does it, that means joy for the parents. And later on, when it is the fourth child who learns to walk, all the other children rejoice in that. And this is not a small matter in God's eyes, it is for Him more important than all those things which make the headlines in the papers. And even after many years, if one of the children has gone the wrong way, the parents think back with sorrow of the time that things were so different, when the child was still small and everyone in the family rejoiced in the fact that it took its first steps ! God said the same thing when He complained about the ingratitude of His people. He said: "It was I Who taught Ephraim to walk!"

Finally, in the fullness of time God sent His own Son: "The Image of the invisible God," as Paul called Him, "In Him the complete Being of God, by God's own choice, came to dwell" (Colossians I : 1320 NF-B). How was He received and treated? People contemptuously referred to Him as "the carpenter's son" or even, with vicious insinuation: "Mary's son". They called Him a glutton and a winebibber. His claim to be what He was, they considered to be blasphemy. Jesus answered: "Is it not written in your own law: "I said: "You are gods?"." Those are called gods to whom the Word of God was delivered - and Scripture cannot be set aside. Then why do you charge Me with blasphemy, because I, consecrated and sent into the world by the Father, said: "I am God's Son?"

Yes, so it was with the Jews, God's chosen people! Is it any better with the Christians? Luther said: "The Words of Jesus Christ are taken as if they were the words of some shoemaker instead of those of the Supreme Majesty." And Kierkegaard, that sharp observer of Christendom, wrote: "The coming of the Christ has made the Christians insolent." Even a nonChristian, as Heinrich Heine was in those days, noticed: "In Germany the theologians are the ones who do away with God: one is never betrayed but by one's own!" In our days it is worse than it ever was before. It is spine-chilling to realize what people nowadays dare to say and write about God (2). That is the way God has been treated, before and after the Incarnation by those whose interests He looked after, whom He loved with a love too great for us to understand.

And yet, if a person loves God he becomes in God's eyes more valuable than anyone or anything else! We are so worldly in our thinking, we attach so much value to degrees, to big salaries, to power and honour. But Dr. James Denney told his students of theology: "If you are called to the smallest fishing village in Scotland, remember that even there you will meet people who, by their intimate communion with God, are so valuable in His eyes, that you are not even worthy to untie their shoes!" (3) In the book "The history of the Jeromins" an old Jew tells Jons about his father: "Honour him, my son, for he is more valuable in the eyes of the Lord of hosts than this whole village!" And so it is. The relationship to God decides - solely and exclusively - what a man is, what he is worth; nothing else counts.

One final word. There have always been people - and in our days their number is greater than ever before - who say that eternal punishment for sinners is not in accordance with God's character, for "God is love". There is no greater misunderstanding! In the first place, it is our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the Only One Who can speak with perfect knowledge and absolute authority on these matters, Who has clearly spoken about eternal punishment: the sending of unrepentant sinners to that place which originally was intended only "for the devil and his angels". Professor Gunning, one of the mildest men who ever lived said: "Exactly because God is love the sinners will go to the place of eternal punishment." Terrible sins are committed daily on an enormous scale; God is willing to forgive, but if a person rejects God's grace, the expression of His love, what else can God do than to let those people have their way and be separated from Him for ever? If you do not want to believe what our Lord and Saviour, Who died to redeem us, said about eternal punishment for those who reject Him, why do you think you can accept what He said about heaven? The two cannot be separated. That a native of the jungle of Brasil cannot believe that snow and ice exist, because he never saw them, does not prove that snow and ice do not exist! In the same way: that we with our distorted ideas about love" are unwilling to accept what our Lord said, does not prove that the Word of God is a lie, does it? Not what we, think or prefer is the yardstick, but what God says, that alone!

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