The difficult reality of unmerited suffering, exploring why innocent people sometimes endure immense hardship. Using Psalm 44 as a central text, it contrasts God's past faithfulness to His people with their present suffering, highlighting the psalmist's confusion and questioning of God's absence. The core lesson is that while we may not understand the reasons for suffering, especially when it seems undeserved, it can occur because we belong to God and are part of His spiritual battle, a concept further developed in the New Testament where believers are called 'more than conquerors.' The message concludes by emphasizing that even in mystery and pain, we can remain confident in God's ultimate mercy and love, which will see us through, and that one day these mysteries will be fully understood.
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We all have friends who complain. They're always complaining. They complain about the weather, they complain about politics, and they complain about the church. Well, this week we have thought about a man from the Old Testament who did complain and apparently had reason to complain, but he complained in the presence of God. He took us complaint right to God. So we make the suggestion again this morning that when things do go wrong in our lives, the best place to go with your complaint, not to your brother or your sister, but to God and share with him openly the feelings of your heart.
Because the psalmist did that and then he began to pray and before he knew it, he was worshiping and praising God. and he found himself compelled to say, still surrounded by the same circumstances, he found himself compelled to say, Lord, you have dealt bountifully with me. Now, I almost hesitate this morning on Good Friday to bring up this subject of unmerited sufferings, the sufferings of the innocent. I know that in Latin America today, in all major cities, there will be great processions They will follow images that depict the sufferings of Christ.
And there will be people who will openly and honestly weep today as they follow these statues and remember the sufferings of Jesus. And they will say within themselves something like this, he didn't merit that. He did nothing to bring that type of suffering upon him. He was a good man. and they treated him badly. Now that may be a very shallow concept of his death, but in part it is true. The Lord Jesus suffered for things he did not do. They were unmerited sufferings. But I would like to talk to you today about those sufferings that come into our lives sometimes or into the lives of those that surround us.
And we look on And we can see no reason for this. And we wonder why. My father spent his working life in the city of Vancouver in the BC sugar refinery. And when he was sixty-five years of age, he retired. My father was very well and had a very active life in the ministry of God's Word. As an elder in one of the assemblies in Vancouver, as a conference speaker from time to time, And I think he looked forward to retirement. He'd have more time to read, more time to study, more time to do pastoral work. And that's how it worked out.
My father lived for twenty years after his retirement, went twice to the old country. Scotland came down to the Dominican Republic and spent six months with us. And he was very active right till his old age. And then one day when he was eighty-five years of age, He sat down and he was gone in the presence of the Lord. But he had a very close friend who also worked in the BC Sugar Refinery, who was the same type of person. He studied, he ran, he ministered, he visited the sick, and he retired about six months after my father.
And he had the same plans, more time for the work of God, and about seven months later, He suffered a series of strokes. And then he lived for eight years, and he wasn't able to speak. He couldn't talk, couldn't walk. I remember once when I was home on furlough, my father said to me, Mr. Morrison, that was the name of his friend. It's his birthday today. And I would like you to drive me over to see him. And I was happy to do that. And his wife, Mrs. Morrison, prepared a lovely lunch. She had a small birthday cake, and the four of us sat around the table.
Mrs. Morrison at one end, I was at the other end, and the two old men were on the sides, and they looked at each other, and they went. Mr. Morrison couldn't talk. We didn't even know how much he understood, but he knew my father was there, and he went. Now, if you think about that, you might say, well, Maybe Mr. Cochran Sr. was a very good man, and maybe Mr. Morrison had done something wrong. But I happen to know both men, and I loved and esteemed my father, and I loved and esteemed Mr. Morrison, and you cannot rationalize this.
There is some mystery in there that we don't really understand. There were two young men in the city of Nagwa in the Dominican Republic, far east of Puerto Platon. And they went out one night, as they often did, for a meeting in a rural area, the two of them on a motorbike. They drove carefully and slowly, had a great meeting. As a matter of fact, the drunkard in the community was converted that night. And then they got on their bike, to go back home again. They were going slowly along the highway. They were not rushing.
When all of a sudden out from a side road came another motorcycle, a man was being chased by the police, apparently involved in drug traffic, and he came out like a bolt of lightning onto the highway and hit those two young men. And in one moment they were with the Lord. There was no suffering on their part. It was absent from the body present with the Lord. But one of them left a wife and three little children. And we have no social programs in the Dominican Republic. That's where the suffering was. And then the other young man, he was engaged to be married. And the date had been set. And the bride was left without a husband and without a wedding.
That's where the suffering was. And you wonder why. Not merited. These are the innocent. and they suffer. I know that there are sufferings that come into our lives because we do things we ought not to do. And the Bible says you will reap what you sow. So if we have done something wrong and we suffer for it, we understand that because we did something wrong. Peter tells us we ought not to suffer as a murderer or a thief or things of that nature. But if people do those things, they will suffer.
I know that sometimes there are sufferings for Jesus' sake. Paul is a great example. They stoned him and they whipped him and they put him in jail, and it was all because he was in the work of God. We can understand that. What we have difficulty with are those sufferings for which we see no reason, and it appears that the innocent suffer. I'm going to take you this morning, in the few moments we have together, to Psalm forty-four. I think it's one of the most difficult Psalms in the book of Psalms. Psalm forty-four. It's one of those Psalms that probably we don't read very often, but we're going to look at it this morning.
And while you're looking for it, Some of you may be lovers of the literature of Shakespeare. Maybe you've read Romeo and Juliet. Maybe you remember that Shakespeare put into the mouth of Juliet these words, is there no pity sitting in the clouds that sees into the bosom of my grief? Let me quote it once more. Is there no pity sitting in the heavens that sees into the bosom of my grief. Well, Juliet thought no one understood, not even God, the sorrows that she was going through.
Let's read the opening verses of this Psalm, and as we begin, you won't sense any suffering here. It's a very beautiful beginning. We have heard with our ears, O God. Our fathers have told us what deeds you did in their days, in the days of old, how you drove out the nations with your hand. But them you planted. He planted the people of God. How you afflicted the peoples, the nations that occupied that land, and they were cast out. For they did not, the people of God, for they did not gain possession of the land by their own sword.
nor did their own arms save them. But it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your countenance because you favored them. I'm reading the new English, pardon me, the new King James Version. And that last phrase simply means because you loved them. God acted on the part of his people. And the psalmist, I'm not sure. Who wrote the psalm? I don't know what age he was. I don't even know the circumstances he found himself in. But let's take for granted that he is a man in his thirties or forties, and he remembers all that his father told him about the olden days, about what God did in the past.
He was brought up on all of these stories. I can identify with that. because I've shared with you already that my own father would come into my bedroom each night and sit on the bed, and he would tell me the great stories of the God of history, some from the Bible and some from church history. And I heard the great things that God had done in the past. They were fascinating stories, beautiful stories, stories of triumph. And it was God who acted... on the part of his people. I not only heard, but in our own family, my grandmother, when she was probably in her fifties, took seriously ill.
I was only a boy, but I loved my grandmother. Everyone in the family loved grandmother, and I remember there were no healing meetings that I knew about. All I remember is that in our family we prayed for our grandmother. not even at meals when we gave thanks for the food. Did we forget the condition of our grandmother? And she was prayed for lovingly and faithfully. The doctor said to us, there's no hope, but we prayed, and our grandmother was restored to health. She lived well on into her eighties and then went to be with the Lord.
I saw that in my own family. That was part of my background, not just what the Bible says, not just what happened in church history, but I actually saw it in my family. These were all the stories that I heard when I was a boy. Now when you come down to verse nine, pardon me, verse four of Psalm forty-four, you read these words, You are my king, O God. Command victories for Jacob. though through you we will push down our enemies through your name we will trample those who rise up against us for I will not trust in my bull nor shall my sword save me but you have saved us from our enemies and have put to shame those who hated us in God we boast all day long and praise your name forever now that happened to me in a little Sunday school class in Burnaby in Canada many years ago.
You see, I had heard from my parents and my Sunday school teacher and from the preachers about the God of history. And one day in a Sunday school class, I made a commitment to the same God. To borrow the words of the psalmist, I said, You are my King, O Lord. And that was a personal commitment to the God I had been told about. I received the Lord Jesus into my life as my Savior and my Lord, and I felt now I was part of that tradition. When I had heard about, I would see in my own life the same God who acted in the past would now act in my life.
But I also had learned from the past as the psalmist did, that when they told him about ancient history, they were not talking about a race of superhuman beings. They were not talking about strong, valiant men who with their own strength and their own sword went out and conquered. In both opening sections of the psalm, it is emphasized it was God who acted in the past And when the psalmist makes his commitment to God, he says very clearly, I'm not going to trust in my bow or my arrow or my sword. We will boast in God.
As he acted in the past, he will act now in our lives, and he will help us day by day. Now, you have done that. I don't know when you were converted. I don't know when you made your commitment, but I'm sure your story is similar to mine. And together our stories are similar to the stories of the psalmist. May I summarize? We heard. Then we believed. And we anticipated that we would see the same action in our lives. Now when you come to verse nine, there will be some of you here this morning that will identify with this.
This is a drastic break. And the psalmist says in verse nine, But you have cast us off and put us to shame. And you do not go out with our armies. You make us turn back from the enemy. And those who hate us have taken spoil for themselves. You have given us for food. Pardon me, you have given us up like sheep intended for food and have scattered us among the nations. Now I think you can understand what has happened in the life of the psalmist.
He heard and he believed and he made a commitment. But then in his own life he did not see the things he had heard about in his youth. Instead, there was defeat, and it appeared that God was not acting on behalf of his people. Instead of victories, you have exile, and you have massacres, and you have slavery, and humiliation, and defeat. And I think the psalmist is really asking the question, has the God of history changed?
And why? Why should we hear these stories of the past and then not see in our own lives a manifestation of the same power? I went through something like this. I remember when I was in the Dominican Republic, I hadn't been there more than two or three years when news came that my grandmother, whom I've mentioned, was dying. And one of my brothers, Bill, he went to the hospital with a little tape recorder And he sat beside my grandmother's bed, and she spoke out a little word for Jim, who was the way down in the Dominican Republic. And my brother recorded it, and he sent it to me.
And these were almost the last words of my grandmother. It comes from one of the Psalms, and I'm sure you know them by memory. This poor man cried out, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. Well, it happened to my grandmother. But my brother Bill, who recorded the words and sent them to me shortly afterwards when he was only thirty-nine years of age, he took seriously ill. I went home to see him, and from the day he took sick, my brother Bill went down and down. There was never a sign of improvement, and ten months later he died.
and left a young widow and five young children. And I wondered what had happened, because we had seen, we had heard, and we had seen in our grandmother, and here was the case, and we prayed as earnestly in this case as we had in the former case. But my brother died and went to be with the Lord. Now the psalmist says, you cast us off. You're not with us the way you were in times gone by, and we don't understand the reasons for these things that have happened. I don't know exactly the background of this Psalm.
It's much like Psalm thirteen, and again, I think it's the sovereignty of God. God, on purpose, does not fill in the details, because you can read the Psalm and read your own story right into the Psalm. Some have wondered when it was. Could it have been in the times of Nebuchadnezzar when he came up to Jerusalem with the Babylonians and he took that city, took away all the treasures and all the noble families and the royal families down to Babylon? Well, I don't know. It might have been then when Judah was finally overcome by the enemies. You may remember that not all of those who were taken into captivity were responsible for the captivity.
Remember Daniel. Remember his friends. I'm sure they were not the only people who loved God and obeyed God. And when Jerusalem fell, the impossible happened. They never thought the city of Jerusalem would be taken by the enemy. They knew there were things that were wrong with the nation. but within the nation there was a remnant who loved God and who served him and who obeyed him and they could not understand that might have been when it happened I don't really know I know that down through the years there are many who have wondered both in a Jewish community and in the Christian community where is God for instance After Pentecost, when three thousand were converted, shortly after, five thousand mole were converted, five thousand men.
We don't know how many women and children. Then reference is made to a great multitude, converted in Jerusalem. Then a great number of priests who turned to God. And you have all of these terms. If you begin to add them all up, you come with a great number of Christians in Jerusalem, in the early months of the Christian era. Then the problem started, and you remember that eventually you have the capture of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was taken and spoiled in all of Judea. Have you ever wondered what happened to all the Christians? I'm sure that some of those Christians were also taken as slaves and ended up in Rome, building the Great Colosseum, where hundreds, if not thousands of them, died.
It was built between the year seventy and eighty, and it was inaugurated by Titus in the year eighty. Many Jews died in the building of the Colosseum, and probably many Christian Jews, and they must have wondered why. Where is the God who came and helped in the past, and they felt abandoned? Maybe you remember the story of Masada, you've gone to Palestine. You wouldn't have walked up the hill at your age. You would take the lift up to the top of Masada. And then maybe you have done what I've done on two occasions. You look around at the beautiful remains of the great palace that Herod made.
You see the lovely tiles? That was to be his last refuge if there was ever a major problem. He never had to use it like that. But after Jerusalem was destroyed, The Jews that survived, they made their way up to Masada. That would be their last refuge. And when the Romans came, they brought Jewish slaves. And the Jewish slaves, they built the road from the valley right to the top of Masada. So that the Jews on the top looking down saw their brothers building the road. And the brothers who built the road looked up and saw their brothers on the top. When finally the Romans got there and moved in, you know the story, they all committed mass suicide.
They would not fall into the hands of the Romans as slaves. Some of them must have wondered, where is the God of history? In Pompeii in Italy, archaeologists found on one occasion two words scrawled on the side of a building. They'd excavated the building, and the words were, Gamora, probably written by a Jewish slave, who when he saw the society of that city, he remembered the story of the Bible and he wrote Sadama Gamora, but he was there and he probably also died when that volcano erupted.
Many have wondered why. Christians have wondered why sometimes in their afflictions and in their sorrows And those of us who are here today this morning probably have experiences in our lives and we've wondered why. Now notice as you go down the psalm that in verse twelve you have I think one of the most awkward verses in the Bible. Some of us wouldn't dare ever speak like this in the presence of God. But we've already mentioned the boldness of Moses, the boldness of David. Here's the psalmist. And he's talking to God.
He's not talking to his brother or his sister. He's talking directly to God. And in verse twelve he says, you sell your people for nothing and are not enriched by their price. You sold a home maybe before you came to Park of the Palms and you intended and hoped for a profit on the sale of your home. You may have had a garage sale, as they do in Canada, and you bring all the old things from your home, and you put them out on tables, and you're going to sell them, and you hope there'll be a profit off of that. The psalmist is saying, Lord, if we could understand why this has happened, if we could see that this is added to your glory, that your name is greater, we could understand.
But you've sold us for nothing. And what has happened as far as we can see, it has not enriched your name. Your name is not greater for all that has happened to us. Then in the following verse, you have the inward look. In that previous section, the psalmist looked out the enemies, what they have done, all these events that have come in round about them. But now in verse thirteen he looks in, you make us a reproach to our neighbors. a scorn and a derision to those all around us. You make us a byword among the nations, a shaking of the head among the peoples.
My dishonor is continually before me, and the shame of my face has covered me because of the voice of him who reproaches and reviles because of the enemy and the avenger. In the previous section you have the psalmist defeated In the words I've just read, you have the psalmist demoralized. He does not understand the purposes of God. Now, it compounds the message of this psalm because in verse seventeen, listen carefully as I read this verse, all this has come upon us, but we have not forgotten you.
nor have we dealt falsely with your covenant. Our heart has not turned back, nor have our steps departed from your way. But you have severely broken us in the place of jackals and covered us with the shadow of death. Now some people have suggested, well, that's just a vain boast. What the psalmist is trying to do is to cover up the reality of the case, and he's just giving a profession. We never failed, but I can't accept that. I think we are dealing with a very honest man. And when he says, we have not forgotten you, and we have kept the covenant, and we have not gone after strange gods, he is telling the truth.
Here is a man who has followed God faithfully. He has loved the Lord. He has worshipped the Lord. He has not gone after strange gods. And yet, all of these calamities have come into his life. The following section, he's even braver. Maybe braver than most of us could be here this morning, because what he does He opens His heart and He says to God, come right in and look right into my heart. And so we read these words in verse twenty. If we had forgotten the name of our God or stretched out our hands to a foreign God, would not God search this out?
For He knows the secrets of the heart. So this man does not hide anything. He is fully exposed to God. And He is saying to God, God, you know what we are like. You know of our faithfulness and our love. And yet in spite of all of this, these calamities have come down upon us. Now, if you've ever felt like that, if you've ever been surrounded by problems that you cannot understand, There is often the thought, maybe I did something wrong. I have a Dominican friend who has matured down the years.
He used to think often that when things came into his life, God was punishing him. That every time something adverse came into his life, it was a sign of God's displeasure. That is not true. And I think in the case of the psalmist, you do not have God's displeasure. How can God be displeased with a man who loves God, who has not forsaken the covenant, who's not gone after strange gods? No, this is not the discipline of God. I'm going to suggest to you now that in verse twenty-two, you have, pardon me, verse twenty-two, yes, you have the beginning of an answer, and I do not have this morning a full answer, but here is the beginning of an answer.
Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Now you know those words in Romans eight, but let's stay in Psalm forty four for a moment. This was long before Paul and the epistle to the Romans. The psalmist is saying to God, This has happened to us because we belong to you. For your sake, we are counted like sheep for the slaughter. We are killed all the day long. Now let's go back to verse nine.
And as I read these verses to you, you may be reading the King James Version with the thy. This version has the you. But notice, the pronoun all the way down. Verse nine, but you have cast us off. The second part, you do not go out with our armies. Verse ten, you make us turn back from the enemy. Verse eleven, you have given us up like sheep intended for food. Verse twelve, you sell your people for not. Verse thirteen, you make us a reproach to our neighbors. And verse fourteen, you make us a byword among the nations. The psalmist When he goes down that long list, each time he goes back to God, and he realizes that in the unpleasant, tragic circumstances that have come into his life, God is behind it.
He doesn't understand why. He doesn't know what God is doing. But when you get down to verse twenty-two, it's a little clear it's for your sake. that all of this has happened. It's happened to us because we belong to you. Now that may seem to make this mystery even greater to you this morning, but I think as we remember in the Bible, the story, for instance, of Job, all that Job went through, we know the whole story, but Job didn't. When Job went through that story, he did not know what was going on in heaven.
He did not hear the conversation between Satan and God. Job was down here in the world, and he went through all of these experiences without knowing that he went through them because he belonged to God. He was the instrument chosen by Satan to make some very severe tests, and God gave him permission, but all that Job went through was for God's sake because he belonged to God. For instance, when he lost all of his possessions, it was not because of a crash on Wall Street. It wasn't because of a general economic depression.
That's not why he lost all that he had. He lost what he had because Satan came in and touched him in a very special way. All the things that he experienced in his health and in his body was not because of natural genes. It was not because of hereditary. It was because God gave Satan permission, and he touched him in a special way. In other words, Job suffered for God's sake, but he did not understand it when he went through that experience, but it was for God's sake that he was like a sheep led out to the slaughter.
It was God's, for God's sake, that he was led or he was killed all the day long. When you come to the New Testament, you find these same words. You find them in Romans chapter eight. But there is a difference. We must notice the difference this morning. Here in the Psalm, it is somewhat depressing. There is confidence in God, but you don't sense any buoyancy, any spontaneity. any real sense of victory. But when you come to Romans eight, you find these same words, we are led as sheep to the slaughter, we are killed all the day long, and then all adds, but nevertheless we are more than conquerors in Christ who loved us.
For here's a man who understands that in spite of all the things that go on in our life, we are linked to one, Jesus Christ, and in Him we will have the eventual victory. There is one thing that I leave with you in the psalm this morning, and it's right down in the last verse. You'll notice that beginning in verse twenty-three, there's a prayer to God, awake. Why do you sleep, O Lord, arise? Do not cast us off forever. Why do you hide your face and forget our affliction? But when you come right down to the end, the end of verse twenty-six, He says, and redeem us for your mercy's sake.
That word mercy is the word she said. We spoke about it, I think, yesterday. Here you have the psalmist. There are two thoughts in the psalmist experience in his calamity. There is still confidence in God, and there is still confidence in the mercy or the love of God. You find it much more developed in the writings of Paul. We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. It is the love of God that has come to us in Christ that will see us through all these problems that sometimes come into our lives and we find no reason, no explanation for them.
My closing comments this morning, I'm going to suggest to you that some of these sufferings can be best described as battle scars. Not because you did something. Not even because you might be serving the Lord in a special way like Paul did. But just simply because you belong to God, there are experiences that come into our lives and they leave their scars, their battle scars. It's for his sake. It's because you belong to him. Paul says we don't war against flesh and blood. but against principalities and power. And if there's a war, there will be casualties.
Those casualties are those who carry scars in their lives of experiences they've gone through simply because they belong to God. In conclusion, let me remind you again of some words of Shakespeare. Some of you have read Shakespeare. He once wrote these words, it is the worst crudity to patch grief with Proverbs. I'll read it once more. It is the worst crudity to patch grief with Proverbs. What do you do when you see a friend who seems to be innocent, who goes through unmerited sufferings?
Please don't go to that person with pat answers. In the Bibles, the story of Ezekiel in the times when the Israelites were taken into captivity. They were taken to a place called Tel Abib. Archaeologists don't really know where that place was, but it was on the river Chebar. And in the spirit, Ezekiel was taken to that place. And when he saw the condition of Judah in exile, the Bible says that he sat with them where they sat. and he was astonished for seven days.
When he saw them in their misery and in their affliction, he sat with them where they were. He was astonished for seven days. There were no sermons, no pat answers. He simply shared in their grief. I read once about a gentleman and he went through very deep waters and yet a very close friend. They lived in what we call the old country. They didn't belong to our church circles because they both smoked, but they were Christians. And the man who was the friend of the person who'd gone through the trial would come around eight o'clock at night.
He'd knock at the door. His friend would open the door and they would come in, and the two of them would sit before the fireplace. and they would smoke their pipe and they might sit together for two or three hours. There wasn't even any conversation. The friend came just to sit with his friend in his sorrow. When the experience passed, the man who'd gone through the trials wrote and he said, No one will ever know the comfort and the joy that my friend brought when he came with me and sat with me in those our reef. That's what Ezekiel did when he went and he saw the misery of the people of Israel.
There are mysteries in life and we have no answers. But there are two things we glean from the psalmist. We find them enlarged in the Apostle Paul. We remain confident in God. You are behind this. And then we link that to the mercy of God. God will redeem us. That is, He will see us through it in His love. We are more than conquerors in the one who loved us. And we know that someday the mysteries we do not understand now, we will more fully understand in His presence.
Please take your hymn book. We'll just sing a verse or two this morning. I've gone two or three minutes over time, but hymn number six hundred and one, Be still, my soul, the Lord is on thy side. Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain. Leave to thy God to order and provide. In every change, he faithful will remain. Be still, my soul, thy best, thy heavenly friend, through thorny ways, leads to a joyful end. We'll remain seated and we'll sing only the last two verses of hymn number six hundred and one.
Verse three, kernel is not his heart.
Oh, come to lose my sorrow and my fear. Be there, my soul, by ye that can That is the glory of the King of Way. is the Lord.
When his abundance and dreams and fears are gone, sorrows are gone, love pure and joy to restore. These will I show And now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, To him be glory in the church, by Christ Jesus our Lord, throughout all ages, world without end.