GOD KNOWS PAIN TOO!
By: Frank Tunstall, D. Min.
Someone needs this article. I had another prepared but felt motivated by the Lord to go back to my desk and prepare this one. It’s a new article for me. Oh! That I will never do anything that will grieve the heart of God and quench the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 63:10-11; 1 Thessalonians 5:19) The article is based on five Biblical stories. Many others could be cited.
- Think about the delight God felt when He walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day (see Genesis 3:1-16). But the time came Adam and his new wife hid when God came walking.
“Where are you?” God called to Adam.
“I heard you in the garden,” Adam answered God, “and I was afraid because I was naked. So, I hid.”
“Who told you that you were naked?” God responded. “Have you eaten from the tree I commanded you not to eat?”
“ The man said, ‘The woman You put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’” Adam’s defense was to say to God, “The fault, God, is between my wife and You; I’m innocent.”
“What is this you have done?” God asked Eve.
“The serpent beguiled me, and I ate,” Eve answered.
Dear reader, if I could have been there listening to that dialog, I think my first response would have been to study God’s expressions. His pain would have been obvious.
Adam’s and Eve’s close fellowship with God – gone.
A wonderful life for Adam and Eve – gone.
Sinless living, gone.
Paradise living, gone.
God has feelings too, and the fall of man clearly hurt God (Genesis 6:6-8).
Greed had won the day, or so it seemed. God had given to Adam all that was in the garden except one thing. They could not eat of the tree of life and live forever (Genesis 3:21-24).
The old serpent, the devil, was surely celebrating.
But did Satan win?
God cast Adam and Eve out of Eden’s paradise.
Dear reader, I know there have been times when I hurt the heart of God. I’ve also discovered a person has never felt punishment until the Holy Spirit takes you to the woodshed!
God had a plan and never stopped loving His creation – not then, and not to this day.
Ah! Messiah came, birthed by a virgin girl who was a daughter in the direct lineage of Abraham and King David.
Because of “[Jesus’] great love wherewith He loved us,” Jesus the Messiah has overcome death, hell, and the grave” (Ephesians 2:4-6).
Jesus is God’s plan. He won the struggle at Calvary and blesses all His followers with the gift of eternal life.
It is finished, the battle is over.
It is finished, there’ll be no more wars.
It is , the end of the conflict,
It is finished, and Jesus is Lord.
Lyrics by Garrett Vandenburg.
- “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and His heart was filled with pain. So, the Lord said, ‘I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth…. I am grieved that I have made them’” (Genesis 6:8).
The Hebrew suggests God’s pain went deep. Crushed with sorrow also fits. Yes, the heart of God was broken (see Genesis 6:6). “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. He was a righteous and blameless man among the people of his time, and he walked with God” (Genesis 6:8-9). Noah was a pleasure to the Lord.
Dear reader, please consider that God has feelings too and our wrong choices can break His heart.
Noah’s faith in God stayed strong the whole time the ark was under construction – at least 75 years, maybe more. To Noah’s credit, he also brought his family with him into the ark. His sons did not adopt the wickedness that was so prevalent in his generation.
What a compliment to Noah’s Godly parenting!
- King David took Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife, in a one-night stand and conceived a baby in wicked adultery. David was in Jerusalem and the army was in Ammon, fighting the king’s war on the east side of the Jordan. Uriah was a Hittite and one of David’s most trusted soldiers. To try to cover up his callous sin, David had Uriah killed and he brought Bathsheba into the palace as his own wife.
David crushed the heart of God.
We know this is true because the tone of the parable God gave to Nathan to deliver to David described how God felt. How easy to overlook who was speaking in this sordid story. The Lord sent the prophet Nathan to David and told him exactly what to say.
“Nathan said to David, ‘You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel says: I anointed you king over Israel and delivered you from the hand of Saul…. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah…. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in [God’s] eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own.’”
Please consider, dear reader, two wars were being fought in this story. Joab led the fighting with the sword in Ammon, and David was in a spiritual battle with the demons of Ammon who had come to Jerusalem to fight a war for David’s soul. Joab won in Ammon, but King David lost decisively in Jerusalem.
These same demons inspired the worship of a god named Chemosh. The Ammonites practiced child sacrifices, including burning them in the fire. It was an ancient practice akin to modern abortion.
No doubt about it – God was grieved (1 Kings 11:1-13).
Bathsheba’s baby lived seven days.
David’s family was never the same. For one example, Absalom, one of David’s sons led a rebellion against his own father, intending to kill him and take his throne.
God’s grief did not end there.
The demons of Ammon could not destroy Israel with the sword, but they certainly did with immorality and child sacrifices. Solomon succeeded his Father, David, as king and in his later years the many women he brought into his haram changed his heart – 300 wives and 700 concubines.
Solomon drifted far from the Ten Commandments. He gave the women he married a hill east of Jerusalem to worship their gods that included child sacrifices. Solomon even built shrines for their idol worship. His reasoning must have gone like this: “Let those women have that hill over there east of Jerusalem; we’re a great nation. It’s OK; we can handle it.”
And, would you believe it, Solomon was succeeded by his son, Rehoboam, whose mother was an Ammonite. The demons of Ammon were freely walking in the temple of God in Jerusalem. Solomon planted the seed that continued to grow in the multiple decades ahead until the nation was destroyed.
Can you imagine God’s pain?
We don’t know how many babies and children were killed in Ammonite worship. But we do have a dependable number for the babies who have died in America since Roe v. Wade was adopted – at least 62 million.
So, I ask you, dear reader, can you feel the pain God felt?
But God’s love continued to endure even when Israel had been reduced to only a remnant.
- “Jesus wept” (John 11:35).
“When Jesus saw Mary weeping and the Jews who had come along with her weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. Where have you laid him,” Jesus asked.
“Come and see,” they replied.
“Jesus wept.” Can you picture Jesus with His eyes red with His hot tears?
“See how He loved him [Lazarus],” the Jewish mourners said.
The Greek shows Jesus was groaning as He shed tears on the way to Lazarus’ tomb. The Apostle John also recorded Jesus was groaning when He arrived at the tomb.
The Lord cried out with a loud shout, “Lazarus, come forth.”
Lazarus climbed the stairs unaided out of his tomb, although he had been dead four days. It’s one of the greatest miracles in the Bible.
Who can doubt Jesus weeps with us in our sorrow and knows all about our cries when we are in deep pain?
Oh, what a Savior!
5. What should have been a happy day when Jesus made His triumphal entry into Jerusalem turned out to be loaded with heartbreak. “As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it and said, ‘If only you had known on this day what would bring peace! But now it is hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will barricade you and surround you and hem you in on every side.…’” (Luke 19:41-42).
Jesus felt the rejection deeply. He wanted to save Jerusalem from the destruction He knew was ahead. In fact, the Greek suggests Jesus was sobbing loudly as he prayed. Israel had about forty more years before the legions of Rome destroyed the city.
So many in the USA have rejected our Savior too and are living out a modern version of idol worship that includes killing infants in the womb. How many more years does America have? The Bible does not give the answer, but He did promise this:
“If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).
