"Where Are You, God?" | Theocast

Exhausted, beat up, suffering. Where are you, God? Why is this happening? Why can't I hear you? And why can't I feel your presence? Well, for those who have that feeling, and you're exhausted and you just need a glimmer of hope, well, that's what Justin and I have for you today.

Pietism Versus Confessionalism in the Christian Life

We wanna point you to Christ and his gospel and a Father who knows you and hears you. Stay tuned. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism. You ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy?

That you wake up worrying about how well you're gonna perform instead of thinking about what Christ has done for you? It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what Christ has done, but what they're doing.

And we have a little book for you.

It's free.

We want you to download it. And we're gonna explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism. Reform theology, really. How it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like?

You can download it on our website. Just go to theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. Conversations about the Christian life from a reformed pastoral and confessional perspective.

And Justin, that is exactly what we are today. We are weary pilgrims who are trusting in the theology that's been handed down to us to find the sufficiency in Christ. So your hosts today are John Moffitt.

I'm John Moffitt, pastor of Graceful Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and my dear brother in Christ, Pastor Justin Perdue of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. And Justin, it's been a sweet morning.

We've had opportunities to catch up about your conference that you just had with Chad Byrd. I'm sure that audio will be available soon, right, on your website?

It will.

Yeah, we'll make it available to Theocast as soon as it's available out there. And I heard you guys had a sweet time.

Yeah, it was a good time. Really, really good time with Chad. We had, I'd say 40 of the people who attended were our church members, and then we had a number of folks come in from out of town. And everybody seemed to really enjoy themselves.

The content was very encouraging. And we had a sweet Sunday service on the tail end of the weekend, and some of the conference attendees stayed for that. So got to meet some of you who made the trip to North Carolina.

That was enjoyable. And yeah, a lot of Christ, a lot of grace and mercy, and the Lord's love for us. That was, I think, the theme that kept ringing.

Amen.

And so I was encouraged, and I know others were too.

So thankful for it.

Yeah, and I get to see Chad next weekend,.

Going to Bentonville.

By the time this comes out, it's passed already. So get to go to Bentonville, Arkansas. I'm excited about that.

Never been to Bentonville.

When I get a bike, a mountain bike,.

And go mountain biking.

It's mountain biking capital of the world, apparently. All right, Justin, not that people don't care about our lives, they do. You know, we're going to have to do an episode soon. I've had a lot of requests lately about kind of our testimonies of how we came to where we're at today.

So maybe we'll do an episode on that one day for the five of you that want to listen to it.

That's right.

Justin, today is probably, I'm going to throw it over to you, but today is probably one of these ones where we're going to be speaking from our own soul and our own experience. And so talk to us about the title of this episode.

It's probably intriguing to some who are definitely finding their place in this place.

Yeah, we haven't nailed down the title for sure, but it'll be something like, you know, God, where are you? I'm suffering. Or maybe something as simple as God knows our plight. So I think many of the people listening to this today would agree with us and would agree with me in what I'm about to say, that it's a remarkable thing that God sanctifies our affliction and sanctifies our suffering in such a way that it actually produces good things in us.

For those who love God and are called according to his purpose, the evils of affliction produce a lot of good. That's remarkable. I mean, and we could outline a lot of those good things. It's really another podcast for another day, but I mean, it helps us to know ourselves, right?

It's something about affliction and suffering that shows us our weakness and even the corruption that exists in our own hearts. There's a sense in which the foolishness of our sin is obvious in the midst of suffering and affliction.

It's like, man, the things that I so often get mired in, gosh, that's so absurd. Why would I ever give myself to this thing or that thing? Suffering loosens our grip on this world. We don't hold so tightly to it.

We learn viscerally. We feel it in our souls that there has to be life beyond the grave. We feel that more pointedly in the midst of pain. We are aware that we're being prepared for a homeland that isn't this one.

We realize this life can't satisfy, right? I mean, these are good things. I mean, we pray more in the midst of suffering. We pray differently. We cast ourselves upon the Lord. We're shown how needy we are.

I mean, I think we're driven more to Jesus J .C. Ryle wrote something really profound about this, how we don't naturally see how much we need Christ and how we kind of in secret, we imagine that the things that we do, our prayers, our disciplines is what will save our souls.

But then when the flesh begins to fail, the need of a redeemer and a mediator stands out before men's eyes like a fire, right? I mean, so that's really good. There's nothing quite like affliction to show us how much we need Christ and we're being prepared for glory.

So having said that, I think most people listening to this podcast would agree. Sometimes we feel that all of that stuff is really good. Sometimes we feel like, Lord, you are, you're with me and you're accomplishing good and holy purposes and you're preparing me to be with you forever in the new heavens and the new earth.

Sometimes we feel that, but then let's be honest. There are other times where in the midst of suffering and when we're anxious, when we feel lonely and afflicted, we do not feel that God is near. We're happy to intellectualize and we're happy to give assent to the fact that he's doing good things in and through me.

But I'm not sure, Lord, that you really see. I am not sure, Father, that you are really sympathetic. I'm not sure, Lord, that your heart is really moved by my plight and what I'm going through. That's the reality.

You're sitting in the doctor's office. You're in the hospital room. You're at the graveside. You're overwhelmed by grief again. Or maybe it's just the mundane circumstances of life keep getting more insane and they are just grinding you down to powder.

Lord, do you see? Do you love me? Do you care? I think we all feel that sometimes. We need to be reminded from the Lord's own words how he feels about us and how he sees, how he knows, and what his heart is toward us, what his posture is.

That's effectively our conversation. Maybe for the next 25 minutes or so, we're going to talk about that a little bit. What has the Lord said about his love for us and about his seeing us and hearing us and that our cries reach him and that he is not just brushing aside the fact that we suffer?

I think sometimes it's easier to do podcasts when you can speak from it from a personal standpoint. Justin, I know you and I both, we have the right theology. We've got good training. We even said right things.

Often, I know personally, I will say the right thing, but in my own heart, I'm like, man, I wish I believed everything. I wish I believed more everything I'm saying right now. I wish it was real for me.

That is the struggle of our faith in that we know often what the Word of God says. There might be some listening here that you don't know, and so we're going to have the joy of sharing that with you. Lord, I believe what you're saying.

Help my own belief, because I know there's a flicker, there's a wick, there's a bruised reed here. The promise of the Lord is that in these moments of suffering, in these moments of struggle, it's ironic.

I didn't even think about this, Justin, but sitting in my front seat of my car is a book I just pulled out of the mailbox yesterday from Mike Ebendroth, and the title of it is Cancer is Not My Shepherd.

Speaking of what suffering can end up guiding and consuming our thoughts and everything that's about us, I remember when I was about to turn 21, my dad was just a few days away from passing away from pancreatic cancer.

I was in the desert working at a summer camp and had got up real early one morning and went to the top of a mountain. In California, they really do have mountains, so it was a long climb. I remember just sitting there up there by myself and I think it might have been the hardest intensity of prayer I've ever had in my life that I can remember, just pleading with the Lord, crying out to Him to save my dad.

Then the Lord, in His sovereignty and wisdom, took him home. I can remember that feeling of, where are you? Just where are you at? I don't understand what you're doing. I don't feel like you're here. I don't feel like you're near.

It was at that moment, a few weeks later, I was back at that camp and a really special, precious moment happened where I decided to go up to that. It was really early at five o 'clock in the morning, so I go back up there and just complain to the Lord.

I just wanted to complain. I don't like any of the situation that I'm in or what has happened. A dear friend and brother of mine, I could see him walking up the trail and he got up to where I was at. There was a little bench I was sitting on and he just sat next to me and put his arm around me and said nothing.

He just sat there and just held me. I just cried like a baby because it was that moment of the presence of the Spirit that was in him and his love for Christ was there with me. There was a moment of comfort that was really hard for me to explain.

The Lord sent this dear brother to me to say, John, I'm here, son. I can see you and I'm going to send one of my children over to love on you and care for you. That moment really had an impact in my life for a very long time.

It helped remind me that, yes, God sees and knows everything. There's nothing that he is not aware of. And his word, I had my Bible on my lap. It was with me, but I didn't want to read it. And there's something powerful, and this is just a great reminder to all of us that suffer.

If you're around someone you know who is suffering, sometimes just being there and loving them as one who has the Spirit inside them, being next to and being compassionate. Consider how to build one another up, carry each other's burdens, love one another.

And often, what do we do? We weep with those who weep, right? Which means you don't say a word. You just weep. You weep with them. And this is what this friend of mine did, sat down and just weeped with me.

And it meant a lot to me. And there was a comforting of from the Lord in that moment where I've kind of carried that through my life, realizing that sometimes we ask, where are you, God? And the Lord's presence, the way in which he brings us comfort is by using other broken and frail people.

That's what he's chose to do. He could come and do it a thousand other different ways, but in his sovereignty and in his gracious kindness, he's using us to care for each other.

The fellowship of the saints in suffering is a sweet thing when you're able to sit, to hold, to just look other brothers and sisters in the eyes, and you both know or you all know that Christ is for us, that he loves us, that he gave his life for us, that he's coming back.

We're all going to be with him. And there's going to come a day when, like that meal that we take in our services, Jesus is going to eat and drink that with us. And this is what awaits us. And we're going to get into more of how the Lord comforts us with what he is doing, but then what he's going to do.

But there is something that's hard to describe about sitting with or being held by or looking into the eyes of another saint who is trusting the same Christ, who is sympathetic toward your condition and your plight, who loves you and has also, like you, been rescued by the Savior.

That's a really sweet kindness of the Lord.

I agree.

And even for me, some of the personal things that I'm going through just in my own life, some suffering that I'm enduring in a season where I feel afflicted, I am so encouraged and comforted by certainly my wife, but then the brothers and sisters at the church are wonderful in the way that they... the things that you just described.

And sometimes it's just a look. Sometimes it's a hug. Sometimes it's a tear-filled, glassy-eyed conversation where we are thankful for each other and thankful for the mercy of God in Christ and for how he loves us, and that does a lot.

The Sympathy and Humanity of Christ

I think moving towards what the Lord has said in his word, like when we're suffering... Let's talk a little bit about Jesus for a minute. There's so many things that could be said about him. He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

That's meaningful that the God of the universe, who quite literally spoke it all into existence and upholds the universe by the word of his power even now, took on flesh and became a human being and walked upon the earth that he'd made and was born under the law that he had given and was willing to suffer his whole life.

I mean, this is the language of not only Isaiah and Isaiah 53, but then in Hebrews chapter 2, Hebrews chapter 4 and 5, it's very plain that Jesus suffered and he knows what it's like. He knows our frame.

That's Psalm 103. He knows that we're dust and he knows what it's like to suffer unjustly. He knows what it's like to be afflicted, and that's something that should never be lost on us. It's not as though God is distant from pain it's not as though God can't identify with affliction or weakness or being mistreated or even being afraid.

I mean, Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane is warped out of his frame over what he knows he's about to face, and he's in agony as a human being. Father, if there's any other way, could it be that this could be done?

Please take this cup from me. He knows what that's like. He knows what it's like to stare down the barrel of stuff. I mean, something that we will never have to face, the wrath of God, being forsaken of God so that we might never be, right?

I mean, so those things about Jesus are significant, and I'll turn it back over to you in a second here, John. I mean, I think even that is remarkable, but then think about his love and compassion towards his own.

So the last night that he's on earth before he's killed, John's gospel records more of that than any other gospel does. The upper room discourses, it's sometimes called. So this is John chapter 13 through 16.

This is all taking place there. And at the beginning of John 13, the first verse is remarkable. Now, before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of the world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

What a Savior, right? And then he washes their feet. He makes it plain that he's the one who has to cleanse them and redeem them. But then he begins to talk to them and comfort them, tells them not to be afraid, tells them to believe in him and to believe also in God, and that he's going to prepare a place for them, and that he's going to come and get them so that they'll be with him where he is.

And then he tells them that he's sending a comforter. He's sending a helper. And he says, right before he prays for them and he prays for us, John 17, he says, I've said these things to you so that in me you may have peace.

In the world, you will have tribulation. With which he was well-acquainted. And he says, but take heart. I have overcome the world. He is so concerned that his followers, that we, his people, would trust him and know that he understands our pain and our affliction and that in the world, we're going to suffer.

He tells us what's coming, but he says, don't be afraid. Because of me.

Yeah. Amen.

Suffering, Double Affliction, and the Hope of Resurrection

Hey guys, real quick. Some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions. So where do you go? How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources?

We have started something called the Theocast Community and we're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like-minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there and you can share it and ask questions.

You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. I was talking with the men last night. We had a combined men's group in my backyard around the fire and they had this moment of clarity when listening to a lot of the men just talk about circumstances that are happening in their life.

A couple of guys going through some really, really tough stuff right now. Kind of what was on my mind when we started thinking about this subject. And as Christians, not that we're looking for sympathy from the Lord, or sorry, from the world, but we don't suffer like the world does.

We suffer very different in that. We actually have double suffering in that we suffered the same plight as anyone else in this world because it's a broken world under a curse and death is destroying everything around us.

And then we suffer for our faith on top of that.

Justin Perdue. And we're assaulted by the evil one.

Justin Perdue. That's what I meant.

Justin Perdue Yeah. Justin Perdue Yeah.

So we're assaulted by our faith by humans and by the evil one, right? There are times a couple of weeks ago I was getting ready to preach and it was the weirdest experience I'd have in a long time where it just felt dark in the school.

It was just extremely dark. And I just mentioned it to the people. I'm like, I know that there's a lot of suffering. We had just found out there's a couple in our church that's battling some cancer. And it was just found a couple of parents had died.

It was just a really dark day. But on top of that, it was just, there was a spiritual darkness that was there. And it was really hard to preach. But what was interesting is that a lot of people came up to me afterwards and just said, man, that was a powerful gospel message.

And I think it was one of those moments of like, I don't, the best way for me to describe it is like, when you're really hungry, the food doesn't have to be that good.

You know what I mean?

And so there was something refreshing about all of that. So when we're thinking about suffering, our Father, there's so many verses that warn us about this, that this is going to be a part of our experience.

And the fact that our God wrote that to us should be a comfort in Him saying, I'm not this, I don't want you to be surprised by the experience of your life. I'm going to go ahead and like, there's, I use this illustration recently where if you know you're going to be without power for 10 days, like, and you find out the moment the power goes off versus I give you a week to prepare for it, which one would you rather have?

Right?

It's like, you're going to endure those 10 days a lot better if you knew it was coming because you had time to prepare for it. And this is what our God is doing. He's saying, I'm preparing you for your trials.

I'm preparing you for your suffering. I know they're there. I use them. It's not in vain. Your suffering is not in vain. It is not without purpose. There is purpose behind all that is here. And that can be really hard to see depending on what the suffering is.

There's a lot of pain and sorrow. I mentioned this verse in a sermon recently. I just want to read it. It's 1 Corinthians 15, 53 and following it says, for this perishable body must put on the imperishable and this mortal body must put on immortality.

When the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on the immortal, then shall come to pass the saying that it is written. So it's like, this is the day we're looking forward to. It's like the day we are taking off this body that suffers and we put on a body that never suffers, right?

Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

I think he's talking about the sting that we feel in the suffering of our flesh. And it could be the result of sin. It could just be the result of the fall. It doesn't matter. It's all the same. And then I love this.

He says, therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable in what? Be steadfast, immovable in the faith of Christ, right? Always, and then there's this, always abounding in the work of the Lord.

So we are staying true to our faith. We're not gonna remove ourselves from Christ and we're gonna keep working. And I love this. He says, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord, your labor is not in vain.

It's not worthless. It's not gonna return void.

You know, we, this past weekend at the conference, we were reflecting on various things and, you know, Chad made some comments and then we ended up talking about this a little bit that, you know, Adam and Eve were born into a world without caskets.

But that we are born into a world where sometimes the caskets are three feet long, right? And that's part of that. When I hear first Corinthians fifth, like the sting of death, I mean, that's part of what we're talking about is that.

I wanna kick off some of my comments here with the very end of Exodus chapter two. These words are pretty, pretty remarkable. For the context here is that, you know, the people of Israel are in Egypt.

Joseph has died. That whole generation has died. There's a new Pharaoh in the land and he feels threatened by how numerous the people of Israel are. And so he's gonna, he comes up with several plans to try to effectively stomp them out.

And the more they're persecuted, the more they prosper. God's gonna raise up a deliverer, right? He's raising up Moses. And that's what's going on in the first couple of chapters. But during the 40 years that Moses lives in Midian, these three verses are pretty gripping.

So this is Exodus two, 23 to 25. During those many days, the king of Egypt died and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God and God heard their groaning.

And God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel and God knew. Those are remarkable. That their cry comes up to him. He hears their groanings. He remembers his covenant.

And I mean, for us, we can talk about how the Lord has remembered his covenant of redemption, the plan he's made to save us. He's remembered his covenant of grace where he's gonna give us all of the merits of the Savior by faith.

And so because God has remembered his covenant, Jesus went to the cross. I mean, we could talk about all of that and rejoice over that. Yeah, man, because God has remembered us all as well. When God remembers, it's not that he's calling something to mind that he forgot or it's like, hey, I wasn't really thinking about this and now I'm thinking about it.

It's that he's gonna act to bring his promises to fruition. And so because God remembers us all as well, but then let's not miss this other part where God saw and God knew, right? So in thinking about even the way Jesus comforts his disciples and thereby comforts us, like that last night that he's on earth, the words of comfort are fantastic.

And lest we ever think that he's apathetic, there are other words in the scriptures to help us. Psalm 56 verse eight. If you don't know this one, write it down. These are the words of David where he says, you have kept count of my tossings.

You have put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book? The Lord knows. Dear Saint, listening to this podcast, the Lord knows when you are tossing and turning in your bed and you can't go to sleep because you're afraid or because you feel alone or because dread has gripped your soul or because your body is in pain.

The Lord knows and he's aware and he sees and he knows every tear that we cry and he's logged them in his book. He cares that much about us. And the thing about our tears too, not only does he keep track of them and put them in his bottle and logs them in his book, one day he's going to wipe them all away.

Think about these things. Two different times at the end of it all in the book of Revelation, those exact words are used. Once in chapter seven and once in chapter 21. In chapter seven, it's the great scene around the throne of God where there's the multitude that nobody can count.

John sees this and they've got white robes on and palm branches in their hands. John asks one of the elders who these people are and the elder says, these are those who have come out of the great tribulation, which is this life, by the way.

The great tribulation is this life under the sun and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb. Then he says these words, those who are in those white robes are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.

They'll hunger no more, neither thirst anymore. The sun shall not strike them nor any scorching heat for the lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd and he will guide them to springs of living water and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Then Revelation 21, John says, I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth has passed away. I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There that is again and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away and he who was seated on the throne said, behold, I'm making all things new and also he said, write this down for these words are trustworthy and true.

So it's like we can take comfort that the Lord has remembered us, that he has saved us, that he sees us, that he loves us, that he's with us, and we can trust him.

The Covenant of Grace, Tears in God's Bottle, and the New Creation

I think that what's so refreshing about what you're talking about, Justin, is that we're to taste and see that the Lord is good and to put our hope in something beyond our circumstances. It's so hard to do because we want God to change.

Yeah, we want God to change our circumstances and often we forget that God is going to make all things new, but the moment he does that, he has to remove sin and that means he has to remove the sinners from his world and that means that they're done.

And so what does Paul say? Is that he holds back his wrath and he brings forth his patience, his mercy upon us as while we wait for his return. And so our suffering is not in vain because we're suffering for the sake of the gospel, not only in our faith, but in our cancer, in the death of a loved one.

We're still here doing the work of the King because the King is still saving people. And at times we want the new heavens.

And the new earth.

And we're not really being patient for it because we're not listening to his promises and how much he loves us. I'll just close with this one illustration. When my daughter was really little, she wanted a dog and we were going to get one and it just weren't in a right house to get it.

We're in a rental and we didn't really want to do a dog in a rental. She's convinced, so we were walking through the Target one day and she saw this little robotic dog and she was convinced that this thing would make her happy.

Like she was like, dad, this would be my dog. And she convinced her mom of it and I was like, all right, fine. You know, in my mind, I'm like, this is, this'll be a great illustration. So she, we got it for Christmas, Christmas morning, it broke.

It didn't even work. And it was just a reminder for my daughter and say, hey, listen to your father, be patient and wait. I love you and I want you to have these things, but this is a reminder that this, what is fake cannot replace the joy of what is real.

And, you know, she's had a dog now for nine years. It's been great. But the illustration being is that often our father says, don't put your hope in this world and in this body because it's going to break.

But when it does break, it's not that I don't care. It's not that I'm not there and I'm not, God's not saying, see, I told you. He says, nothing will separate you from my love. And I have you, and I'm going to put you in the midst of a family that has my letter.

And they're going to, you're going to use it to refresh and renew yourself, reminding yourself that you aren't just enduring for the sake of enduring, that's in vain, but you're suffering for the sake of something that's far more significant than the suffering itself.

It's for the salvation of souls of others.

Yeah.

And there is a kind of fellowship that we have with the Lord Jesus Christ in suffering too, man. We share in his suffering. That's Romans 8. I think this is part of what he means when he says that not only in this life will there be tribulation, but even when he makes it plain that he's going to endure the cross and that those who come after him will effectively do the same.

I mean, that's a statement of reality. And I think a great comfort to me, this is maybe where I want, this is my last comment, a comfort to those out there because a lot of times in the midst of suffering, the eyes of our faith, if I can use that term, the eyes of our faith are often dim.

We don't see really clearly with our eyes of faith in the midst of suffering sometimes. And this is where the doctrine, the truth, and the objective realities of Christ and the gospel are so comforting.

You know, I'm borrowing from Charles Spurgeon here, but he says that, I mean, he's meditating on the fact that our eyes of faith are often dim, but he says that the eyes of the Lord never change and that we are covered in the blood of Christ and we're protected by the blood of Christ.

And when the Lord sees the blood, he is delighted to pass over us and save us. And the fact that the Lord's vision never changes is a great comfort to us, even when the eyes of our faith are quite dim.

This is why we say that we look outside of ourselves to Christ always, because regardless of my circumstances, regardless of my pain, regardless of how weak my faith might feel, I am eternally secure because God has remembered me and God has remembered his covenant that he's made to us in Christ Jesus.

And he will most certainly deliver on every promise that he's ever made. And so we can rest assured that we will be amongst that great multitude one day because we've washed our robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb and that all will be well.

And so we live with that perspective in the midst of the suffering and the pain and the weakness and the affliction. And may the Lord have mercy on us all.