Handling pain in the plan of God

II Thessalonians 1

Introduction: Anna Mary Robertson Moses became a painter at the age of seventy-seven. By the time “Grandma Moses” died at the age of 101, she had been honored by Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. She had also become a pen pal with an amateur painter of some note in England by the name of Winston Churchill.
Do you know what launched Anna Moses into the fame and honor she knew as the painter, Grandma Moses? The pain of rheumatism. As she had grown older, the rheumatism she had acquired earlier only seemed to worsen. Her housework and her farm chores had become harder to accomplish. The only cure her doctor could suggest was that she find something to do that would keep her hands flexible. The pain of rheumatism might be eased if Anna Mary picked up a paint brush and followed her interest in the art of painting. The rest of her story is history.
America’s best known folk-art painter, pursuing her own course of physical therapy, celebrated in her paintings the virtues of family, church, and community life. We as Americans are richer because of her experience of pain.
Let’s move from America to Germany. In 1871, the ancient city of Troy was unearthed by the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann. He found the famous city underneath nine other cities superimposed on his excavation site. Skeptics and critics had long thought that the city of Troy was just a name in the magnificent stories of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”. But Schliemann had read and studied Homer’s classic works in the original Greek as both poetry and history, and he set out to validate his ideas by finding the actual ancient city. He hit pay-dirt in August of 1871.
So where did Heinrich Schliemann get the wealth, education, and determination to become a successful archaeologist? These elements of his life grew out of the pain of his youth. His mother died when he was just 9 years old. Added to that pain and grief, his father, a pastor, was discovered in an affair with a servant girl and was dismissed from his position when accused of embezzlement. Because of his personal feelings of shame, young Schliemann dropped out of school.
One way the future archaeologist continued his education was to attend two services every Sunday at the English church in Amsterdam. (How did he get to Holland? In 1841, he booked passage for the New World, hoping to make his fortune there. But his ship sank in a gale off of Holland, and he was one of only a few survivors to make it to shore.) To better grasp English and to improve his accent, he would repeat, under his breath, the entire sermon, word by word. He soon became proficient, not only in English, but also in French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian. When he began digging for Troy in Hissarlik, Turkey, he was quite able to communicate in whatever language he needed.
Heinrich Schliemann made our world a more fascinating place because of his experiences of pain and personal loss.
Pain and suffering --- universal, equal-opportunity, 800-pound gorillas that we would all just as soon avoid as often as we can. Whether it is rheumatism like Grandma Moses’ or grief and shame like Heinrich Schliemann’s, none of us prefer discomfort; not one of us would choose suffering if we had a choice in the matter. But sometimes there is no choice, and then we find ourselves in the same kind of predicament that the Thessalonian believers were in. What are we to do? How do we handle affliction? What do we do when the doctor mentions the dread “C” word? How do we deal with emotional and psychological pain? How do we endure when the suffering goes on and on?
Let’s read the six verses of 2 Thess 1:5-10 and let me suggest some paths we might take. Let’s consider the Thessalonians’ predicament, see how they responded, and profit from their experiences.
2 Thess 1:5-10 “This (endurance in suffering, from verse 4) is a plain indication of God's righteous judgment so that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which indeed you are suffering. For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted and to us as well when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power, when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed -- for our testimony to you was believed.”
First, let’s look at pain and suffering through a different prism or a special matrix. Instead of seeing affliction (whether it be joblessness, persecution, cancer, or some other horror) as an 800 pound opponent, let’s view it as a mentor, trainer, or teacher.
This is the approach Paul took with these precious believers. He describes their afflictions in verse 5 as an agent of God’s, getting them fit for the kingdom of heaven. Like a personal trainer, or in another context, a drill instructor, this suffering is preparing them to be worthy citizens of God’s kingdom. Only after the recruit has been through all the muscle building physical training and developed emotional and mental stamina is he entitled to wear the uniform.
In the same way a skilled trainer of mountain climbers must build endurance and strength into his students, so these hard times are working to make them suitable candidates for living and serving in God’s realm. Their fitness for God’s kingdom is something God has made a judgment about. His righteous judgment, that they are fit for His kingdom, is indicated by these hard experiences.
Pain is God’s equipper. Suffering is God’s soul builder. Affliction is God at work conforming us to the image of His dear Son. It doesn’t matter that the persecution comes from the enemies of God. It doesn’t matter that sickness comes to frail bodies in a fallen world. What does matter is that God is at work outfitting us for His kingdom!
From this day on, we ought to look at pain in a different way. In our grief, we ought to ask, “Lord, what are you wanting me to learn?” In our praying, we ought to ask that His grace will be found to be sufficient in our time of need. We know from the Word that it IS sufficient. We just need to know it in our experience.
There is a second lesson the Thessalonians shout out to us from our text. It is this: Pain makes us hugely influential. Said another way, pain gives us a platform to powerfully affect the lives of others for good. We see this lesson in verse 10 where Paul states, “…when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed -- for our testimony to you was believed.” Perhaps at first glance it seems hard to make a connection between this verse and the lesson as I’ve stated it.
But look: on the day the Lord Jesus returns, what we know as the Second Coming, the Lord will be both glorified in His saints and marveled at among all the believers. He will be admired by His followers and celebrated by every believer. He will be exalted and glorified by all those who have placed their trust in Him. So, who are these admirers, and who are these marvelers? Who are these exalters and these worshipers?
They are those who have become believers! They are those who have come face to face with the claims of the Gospel, and they have made a decision that has transferred them out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. They are those who have been born again and will live for all eternity in the presence and the glory of the power of God. They are those that Paul says ‘believed his testimony to them.’
And remember how his testimony came to them? We have accounts in Acts 17 and I Thessalonians 1 that portray the Gospel coming to these believers in pain, affliction, persecution, and hardship. For example, consider 1 Thess 1:5-8:
“…for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place your faith toward God has gone forth, so that we have no need to say anything.”
If there were ever two people who suffered as Gospel messengers, they were the Lord Jesus and the apostle Paul. Out of their pain came the power of the Gospel that infected the lives of thousands, including the Thessalonians. And out of the Thessalonians’ experience of tribulation and suffering, being imitators of Paul and the Lord, came a message so powerful that pagans became believers throughout Macedonia and Achaia.
Pain makes us hugely influential. Pain gives us a platform to powerfully affect the lives of others for good. How you and I deal with our cancer, how we face our joblessness, how we respond to persecution, how we react to the pressures and afflictions of life has a profound impact on the lives of unbelievers who are watching us from nearby.
I talked this week with a gentle lady who knows the Lord and who has faced hatred on her job from some of her peers. She loves them, she prays for them, she refuses to respond in kind to them. Though it may not appear to be true on the surface, it is a fact that she will have influence in their lives in the course of time. It is already evident to these who hate that her response of non-retaliation and kindness is most unusual, like nothing they have ever experienced.
Pain is not only a mentor/teacher, it gives us a powerful platform to influence others for eternity.
There is a final lesson here, Lesson Three, Pain has an end. The bulk of our text, from verse 6 to verse 9, deals with Paul’s understanding of what takes place when the Lord Jesus is given the command to return to earth. At the Lord’s return, there will be relief for all His afflicted followers. When the Lord Jesus returns, pain will cease for those who have trusted Him. There will be no more suffering, no more persecution, no more distress, no more agony, no more anguish, no more confusion, no more uncertainty.
Paul’s primary consolation to these being afflicted, and to us who are suffering, is that a day is coming when relief will abound. Part of that relief is the assurance that persecutors will be given a dose of their own medicine. God will repay affliction to those who afflict; God will deal out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who have not obeyed the Gospel. Those who have been cruel toward the followers of Christ will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and away from the glory of His power.
Perhaps someone may ask, “Is it OK for me as a follower of Christ to want to see justice dispensed upon the wicked?” That doesn’t sound very forgiving or turn-the-other-cheek, does it? The Scriptures say it is OK to want to see justice done. Look what saints in heaven say in Revelation 6:9-10. These have come out of the persecutions of the great tribulation.
“When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained; and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”
Friends, the day is coming when pain will be no more. There will be relief, there will be release. What a day that will be for us who have a personal relationship with the Lord of Glory!
Conclusion: So is it now clear how we ought to look at our experiences of pain? Pain is not an enemy to be feared, it is a teacher/mentor to be listened to. Pain is not something to be simply endured, it is a platform from which we exert great influence upon others, especially those who do not yet know Christ. Pain is not a superior force that runs freely throughout life, it has an end from which it can no longer have any impact upon us.
Well did the artist sing at the Gaither Homecoming in Indianapolis, “…there is too much to gain to lose.” When we don’t react to pain as God wants us to, we lose. What a shame when there is so much to gain!!! What a blessing God has in store for us through the difficulties of life when our response is one of trust in Him.

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