Daily Devotional – April 17, 2020

Deliverance From, Out of, and Through Suffering

Point in these days of you know pretty much just staying at home where the days are kind of just running together. Have you had the experience where you get up in the morning and you're asking yourself the question, what day is this again?

You had to stop and think about it a little bit. Well, one dad got really, really tired of that so he issued this edict to his family. He said, until further notice, the days of the week are now called this day, that day, other day, someday, yesterday, today, and next day.

Well, just like that. Problem solved. People really are getting kind of desperate to have this lockdown be over, aren't they? I saw some guy the other day. He's obviously a pretty superstitious fellow hoping for all of this to end very, very soon.

He had a wheelbarrow full of horseshoes, four-leaf clovers, and rabbit's feet. I'd say he's probably pushing his luck a little bit. Okay, well, enough of that. So the last few days we've been looking at the question of, does God deliver believers, his people, does God deliver his children from these kinds of diseases and disasters and hardships that we're in the middle of in this pandemic?

We countered the idea that some seem to have, that if you just have enough faith, you won't experience any of it. God will just deliver you from it altogether. Well, we did point out the fact that the scripture shows us plenty of examples that God does indeed deliver us from things like this sometimes.

Sometimes we know that he does. The problem or the disease or the disaster is all around you, but you're not touched by it. He delivers you from it. I think most of the time in this case, we're not even necessarily aware of the danger and God delivers us from it.

But then we also pointed out that sometimes God delivers us out of this unpleasant experience. In other words, we're experiencing the pain, the suffering, the sickness, or whatever, and just like suddenly, almost immediately, or very, very quickly, unexpectedly quickly, we recover or we're delivered out of the trial, out of that affliction.

But then we considered that what's probably the most noticed experience on our part is that God will sometimes graciously deliver us through the experience. We enter into that valley of the shadow of death and we go all the way through the experience of the pain and the suffering, the difficulty, the hardship, or whatever, but God brings us through, brings us through onto the other side.

What If God Does Not Deliver?

Now, in this discussion about God delivering, delivers from, delivers out of, delivers through, we do have to consider an uncomfortable question, don't we? And that is, what if God doesn't deliver? What if he doesn't deliver?

I know of a pastor's family that has had firsthand experience with COVID -19. The pastor got a pretty mild case of it and he recovered pretty quickly, almost as if God delivered him out of it. His wife and sister-in-law, though, also came down with COVID -19 and they endured the full brunt of that disease and it hit them hard.

In fact, it hit them so hard that they ended up in the hospital from it. And yet, God delivered them through it. They have had a gradual recovery. They've been released from the hospital and home in quarantine and recovering from the disease.

So God delivered out of, God delivered through, but then the pastor's mother-in-law, she also contracted the and in her case, it quickly became serious. She ended up in the ICU on a ventilator and ultimately she died.

And so here you have a family, four different individuals with the same disease. God delivers one out of it. He delivers two of them through it and one of them, he seemingly doesn't deliver at all. She dies.

So what do we make of God's deliverance in such cases? What about when he doesn't deliver? Well, obviously in the brief time that we have this afternoon, I'm not going to be able to cover the question exhaustively, but just a couple of thoughts.

Delivering a Wayward Christian Over to Death

One of them is that there is the unpopular and uncomfortable truth that sometimes God is, if you will, delivering a wayward Christian over to death. He's delivering over. Now we don't like to talk about this much, but it is a biblical truth.

You know, when Paul was writing to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 11 and talking about the abuse of the Lord's table, he says in verses 28 to 30, let a person examine himself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. Then he says this, this is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died. And in 1 John 5, 16, John writes, there is sin that leads to death.

Does this happen? Well, yeah, apparently it does. Now, honestly, I've been in pastoral ministry for about 40 years and I can't say for sure that I have ever seen a case like this. There were some where, you know, very, very, very, very few, maybe a couple in those years where I kind of wondered, but I can't think of a case where I could confidently say God's delivered that person over death because of, you know, unrepentant sin in their lives.

Nevertheless, biblical integrity demands that we consider this possibility. But then there's a more likely case, and this is the soul comforting truth, that when a Christian, a follower of Christ succumbs to a death, be it from a virus or cancer or an accident or war or persecution or any kind of tragedy, whatever the manner of that tragic death, this becomes a special form of God's delivering his loved one through the tragedy.

Delivered Into the Presence of Christ

Talk about God delivering through something. And this is the, this is a special form of that deliverance through. He's delivering his loved one through that tragedy. It's just that the landing place of that person coming through the tragedy isn't a return to a healthy earthbound life, but to a completely disease and pain-free and heartache-free eternal life.

I find great comfort in that, great encouragement in that. It is, if you will, being delivered into the presence of Christ. The Apostle Paul, in 2 Corinthians 5, he said that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.

God delivers his own, his children, through the tragedy into the presence of Christ. And God actually gives us his perspective on all of this. We read in Psalm 116, verse 15, that precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.

So sometimes God's deliverance is to deliver his children, his loved ones, his saints, through the tragic experience, bringing them to the door of death, if you will, so that they land on the other side.

He brings them through that door. Well, clearly I can't take time to unpack the significance of that statement that precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints. I can't do that this afternoon, but suffice it to say that what may seem to us to be the worst-case scenario is actually something that's very, very precious to our Heavenly Father.

He has delivered one of his own through the veil of tears to the place where there are no more tears. I think that is an incredibly comforting and encouraging thought in a time of pandemic. Well, I trust the Lord will bless these thoughts to your heart and our consideration this week of God's deliverance in a time of pandemic, a time of crisis, time of disease, and possible death.

A Prayer for Confidence in God's Best for His Children

So Heavenly Father, I pray for your people today that are facing the challenges that go with this pandemic and the uncertainty with it all as well. And may we be confident that you, our God, always do what is best for your children.

Thank you that sometimes you deliver us from these things. Other times you deliver us out of them. And we can be confident that you will deliver us through them in one way or another. And Father, I pray that we would so guard our lives, that we would be walking with you.

We wouldn't be living in rebellion and undealt with sin and defiance, but that we would be endeavoring to live for Christ our Savior, that even when we come to that point of death, our death would be precious in your sight.

And so this we pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, Lord bless you. And if nothing else, be thankful today that if you got all this snow, you don't have to shovel any of it. Isn't that great? We got a bunch of snow and the streets.