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Our brother Joshua in Alaska shared an email last night about a situation where one of God’s saints was recently diagnosed with cancer. A family member could not believe the fact she had gotten cancer because she was such a godly woman.

This is a great dilemma in the Christian church today. Christians have forgotten that being in the Christian (the true) faith involves suffering in many different ways. It was Paul who said we are considered as “sheep to the slaughter.” Paul is speaking of the suffering that comes from knowing and living for Messiah. But, as it went for Job, a biblical example of what can happen to one who trusts in the living God, could very well be the way it goes for us. Anything outside of Hell is amazing grace! It is important to remember that we are all on a scheduled on a date with death. Death however, is not to be looked at as a dark day for the child of God. Death is the very portal that leads us into the glorious day when we shall see Messiah face to face! We know that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord! Believers should be ready for that day, it can come suddenly or it may be a process, as our sister with cancer.

The plan should be a meeting place at the “death bed.” When we get the call from the Lord that it is time to depart the planet, we should plan to gather our family together and declare the great faithfulness of God through trials and tribulations! The greatest act we can do is to declare the glorious gospel until our last breath! I recall my wife’s aunt on her death bed about 2 years ago now, she had come from Cuba and was on vacation. Well the Lord called her to go home while here. She never got to go back to Cuba. She spoke Spanish. I will never forget as we sang “How Firm a Foundation” she had the most beautiful smile on her face. Shortly after the Lord took her home. I see death as a checkpoint for us who are left behind. Either we take God at His word or we don’t. But these times of death could be the most trying. The Christian’s character is revealed not in the best of circumstances, but deep in the valley of trial! What comes out when we are squeezed by the trials of life, is a gauge that determines our spiritual condition in Christ. These are difficult things to face, but by grace we’ll stand together as the saints. You are in our prayers Josh, along with the family in this circumstance! May the Lord use you. I will leave with this passage from A. W. Pink on the sovereignty of God:

“It affords a sense of absolute security.

God is infinite in power, and therefore it is impossible to withstand His will or resist the outworking of His decrees. Such a statement as that is well calculated to fill the sinner with alarm, but from the saint it evokes naught but praise. Let us add a word and see what a difference it makes:-My God is infinite in power! then “I will not fear what man can do unto me.” My God is infinite in power, then “what time I am afraid I will trust in Him.” My God is infinite in power, then “I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for Thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety” (Ps. 4:8). Right down the ages this has been the source of the saints’ confidence. Was not this the assurance of Moses when, in his parting words to Israel, he said-”There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun (Israel), who rideth upon the heaven in Thy help, and in His excellency on the sky. The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms“ (Deut. 33:26, 27)? Was it not this sense of security that caused the Psalmist, moved by the Holy Spirit, to write-”He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God: in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler: Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High thy Habitation; There shall no evil befall thee (instead, all things will work together for good), neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling” (Ps. 91)?

“Death and plagues around me fly,
Till He hid, I cannot die;
Not a single shaft can hit,
Till the God of love sees fit.”

O the preciousness of this truth! Here am I, a poor, helpless, senseless “sheep,” yet am I secure in the hand of Christ. And why am I secure there? None can pluck me thence because the hand that holds me is that of the Son of God, and all power in heaven and earth is His! Again; I have no strength of my own: the world, the flesh, and the Devil, are arrayed against me, so I commit myself into the care and keeping of the Lord and say with the apostle, “I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day” (2 Tim. 1:12). And what is the ground of my confidence? How do I know that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him? I know it because God is almighty, the King of kings and Lord of lords.

It supplies comfort in sorrow.

The doctrine of God’s sovereignty is one that is full of consolation and imparts great peace to the Christian. The sovereignty of God is a foundation that nothing can shake and is more firm than the heavens and earth. How blessed to know there is no corner of the universe that is out of His reach! As said the Psalmist, “Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me. If I say surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from Thee: but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to Thee” (Ps. 139:7-12). How blessed it is to know that God’s strong hand is upon every one and every thing! How blessed to know that not a sparrow falleth to the ground without His notice! How blessed to know that our very afflictions come not by chance, nor from the Devil, but are ordained and ordered by God:- “That no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves know that we are appointed thereunto” (1 Thess. 3:3)!

But our God is not only infinite in power, He is infinite in wisdom and goodness too. And herein is the preciousness of this truth. God wills only that which is good and His will is irreversible and irresistible! God is too wise to err and too loving to cause His child a needless tear. Therefore if God be perfect wisdom and perfect goodness how blessed is the assurance that everything is in His hand, and moulded by His will according to His eternal purpose! “Behold, He taketh away, who can hinder Him? who will say unto Him what doest Thou?” (Job 9:12). Yet, how comforting to learn that it is “He”, and not the Devil, who “taketh away” our loved ones! Ah! what peace for our poor frail hearts to be told that the number of our days is with Him (Job 7:1; 14:5); that disease and death are His messengers, and always march under His orders; that it is the Lord who gives and the Lord who takes away!

It begets a spirit of sweet resignation.

To bow before the sovereign will of God is one of the great secrets of peace and happiness. There can be no real submission with contentment until we are broken in spirit, that is, until we are willing and glad for the Lord to have His way with us. Not that we are insisting upon a spirit of fatalistic acquiescence; far from it. The saints are exhorted to “prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God“ (Rom. 12:2).

We touched upon this subject of resignation to God’s will in the chapter upon our Attitude towards God’s Sovereignty, and there, in addition to the supreme Pattern, we cited the examples of Eli and Job: we would now supplement their cases with further examples. What a word is that in Leviticus 10:3-”And Aaron held his peace.” Look at the circumstances: “And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which He commanded them not. And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. . . . . And Aaron held his peace.“ Two of the high priests’ sons were slain, slain by a visitation of Divine judgment, and they were probably intoxicated at the time; moreover, this trial came upon Aaron suddenly, without anything to prepare him for it; yet, he “held his peace.” Precious exemplification of the power of God’s all-sufficient grace!

Consider now an utterance which fell from the lips of David: “And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark of God into the city: if I shall find favor in the eyes of the Lord, He will bring me again, and shew me both it, and His habitation. But if He thus say, I have no delight in thee; behold, here am I, let Him do to me as seemeth good unto Him” (2 Sam. 15:25, 26). Here, too, the circumstances which confronted the speaker were exceedingly trying to the human heart. David was sore pressed with sorrow. His own son was driving him from the throne, and seeking his very life. Whether he would ever see Jerusalem and the Tabernacle again he knew not. But he was so yielded up to God, he was so fully assured that His will was best, that even though it meant the loss of the throne and the loss of his life he was content for Him to have His way-”let Him do to me as seemeth Him good.”

There is no need to multiply examples, but a reflection upon the last case will be in place. If amid the shadows of the Old Testament dispensation, David was content for the Lord to have His way, now that the heart of God has been fully revealed at the Cross, how much more ought we to delight in the execution of His will! Surely we shall have no hesitation in saying-

“Ill that He blesses is our good,
And unblest good is ill,
And all is right that seems most wrong,
If it he His sweet will.”