Does Medicine Impede God’s Plan for My Suffering?
00:00:00.000 | A listener named Leland writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, today I listened to your TGC
00:00:09.600 | podcast panel discussion that you moderated.
00:00:12.280 | You, David Platt, and Matt Chandler discussed the comfort of knowing that our good and sovereign
00:00:16.280 | God has ordained the suffering that people experience.
00:00:19.560 | Matt Chandler spoke movingly about how his view of God's sovereignty in ordaining his
00:00:23.320 | cancer helped him through the awful side effects of chemotherapy.
00:00:28.360 | Here's my question though, if our sovereign God ordains cancer for his glory and a Christian
00:00:33.600 | person's good, Romans 8 28, why isn't the appropriate Christian response either to hope
00:00:38.880 | in God to glorify himself by healing the person miraculously or to rejoice in the glory of
00:00:44.080 | God in a life ended by cancer?
00:00:47.520 | Why is it not a sin to use chemotherapy and other modern medicine to interfere with the
00:00:53.000 | natural progression of a disease God ordains for his glory and for a person's good?
00:00:59.520 | The answer is that it may be sin to pursue chemotherapy and it may be sin not to pursue
00:01:09.440 | chemotherapy.
00:01:11.480 | It isn't the use of human science or ingenuity in relationship to the creation that makes
00:01:19.080 | an action sin or not.
00:01:21.160 | It's the way we think about it and the way it relates to God and the way it relates to
00:01:25.360 | faith and the way it relates to love.
00:01:28.600 | Perhaps it will make this a little more clear if I point out that the problem Leland sees
00:01:34.960 | in relation to chemotherapy also applies to prayer and supernatural healing.
00:01:41.920 | In other words, if God ordains that I get prostate cancer, which I believe he did, then
00:01:49.200 | I could ask in relation to prayer and supernatural healing the same thing that Leland asks in
00:01:56.600 | regard to chemotherapy.
00:01:58.480 | Why interfere by prayer?
00:02:00.560 | Why interfere by prayer with the natural progression of a disease that God ordains for his glory?
00:02:07.960 | So it isn't just chemotherapy that creates the issue, but any kind of intervention on
00:02:13.240 | our part, including prayer.
00:02:15.880 | Prayer for healing would be a human intrusion, and the use of medicine would be a human intrusion.
00:02:22.860 | So I think what would be most helpful for me to do here is to suggest five passages
00:02:30.460 | of Scripture that give us guidance in both of these kinds of intrusions, prayer and chemotherapy,
00:02:38.640 | which sometimes may be right and sometimes may be wrong.
00:02:42.840 | And prayer may become eventually wrong.
00:02:45.840 | So first, here's five quick texts.
00:02:49.320 | Second Corinthians 12, 7-9.
00:02:51.520 | So to keep me from being conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations,
00:02:56.920 | a thorn was given to me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from becoming
00:03:03.920 | conceited.
00:03:05.600 | Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me, but he said
00:03:10.680 | to me, "My grace is sufficient for you.
00:03:13.320 | My power is made perfect in weakness.
00:03:16.080 | Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ
00:03:21.080 | may rest upon me."
00:03:22.540 | This text points out the obvious, that God has ordained for us to pray about our needs
00:03:31.440 | because we don't know at the outset whether our circumstances are intended to last or
00:03:37.680 | be temporary.
00:03:39.320 | God bids us to pray and says in James 4, "We have not because we ask not," often.
00:03:46.200 | He doesn't treat prayer as an intrusion upon his sovereignty.
00:03:49.840 | He invites it as part of his sovereignty.
00:03:53.160 | It's part of his sovereign plan for ruling the world.
00:03:56.960 | In some cases, he will make it plain that he does not intend to take away the thorn
00:04:02.240 | in the flesh.
00:04:04.120 | And we should say, even though it's a messenger of Satan, God is the one overruling it because
00:04:09.120 | he's talking about the sanctification of Paul through it.
00:04:13.080 | Instead, he intends to glorify his sustaining grace through suffering rather than his healing
00:04:20.120 | grace in that case.
00:04:21.520 | And we don't know whether that's the case ahead of time, so we're invited to pray and
00:04:27.240 | to be a part of the causality of what God's sovereign will is.
00:04:32.040 | Second, 2 Corinthians 16, 12, "In the thirty-ninth year of his reign, Asa, the king, was diseased
00:04:41.000 | in his feet, and his disease became severe.
00:04:45.680 | Yet even in his disease he did not seek the Lord, but sought help from physicians."
00:04:53.960 | Now, in that case, God intended Asa's foot disease to lead him back to God so that he
00:05:02.640 | would seek him, seek help from God.
00:05:05.660 | But Asa proved to be so indifferent to his relation to God and so saturated with a this-worldly
00:05:13.080 | mindset and all of the resources of the world that it didn't even seem important to him
00:05:17.560 | at all to seek God's help, and he went straight to doctors without consulting God at all,
00:05:23.320 | and he was clearly wrong to do it.
00:05:27.440 | So therefore, I think we are sometimes wrong by failing to pray for healing before we take
00:05:35.240 | an aspirin or go to the doctor.
00:05:38.680 | That's why I said at the beginning that sometimes the pursuit of chemotherapy may be wrong,
00:05:46.800 | may not be wrong, may be wrong.
00:05:49.360 | It doesn't follow that it's right or wrong just that you are doing or can do it.
00:05:55.100 | It may be wrong, especially if it betrays you have no interest in seeking God's help
00:05:59.920 | whatsoever and you're not going to rely on him at all and you don't love him and trust
00:06:04.300 | him at all.
00:06:05.300 | Well, then, whatever you do is going to be wrong.
00:06:08.400 | But it may not be wrong.
00:06:09.900 | If you fly to chemotherapy with no reference to God, no love for God, no dependence on
00:06:16.480 | God, no prayer to God, you're in the same situation as Asa was in.
00:06:22.120 | Third, Colossians 4.14, "Luke, the beloved physician, greets you as does Demas."
00:06:31.720 | Now evidently Paul was quite happy to have an attendant physician traveling with him.
00:06:37.840 | He didn't have to draw attention to the fact that Luke was a physician when he wrote Colossians.
00:06:42.320 | He could have dropped that with a kind of embarrassment.
00:06:44.520 | "Oh dear, I don't want to give the impression that I'm not relying on the Lord," and by
00:06:49.000 | referring to my good friend Luke as a physician as though people will think that I need a
00:06:53.880 | physician, he didn't drop the name.
00:06:58.080 | He called him a beloved physician.
00:07:00.520 | But he wasn't embarrassed about it.
00:07:03.100 | He didn't seem to think that the work of a physician was intruding upon the sovereign
00:07:09.280 | plan of God for his health.
00:07:11.320 | Rather, it seems as though he regarded Luke's skill as a physician as a gift from God.
00:07:17.520 | Fourth, 1 Timothy 5.23, Paul says to Timothy, "No longer drink only water, but use a little
00:07:24.640 | wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments."
00:07:28.680 | So it seems that Paul not only valued the work of his physician, Luke, but also he valued
00:07:35.580 | some of the therapies that he had learned along the way from whomever, namely that in
00:07:41.800 | Timothy's case, his chronic stomach problems found relief not just through prayer, but
00:07:47.920 | through a wise use of wine.
00:07:50.540 | And if someone objects that there's a huge difference between wine and chemotherapy,
00:07:56.100 | my response is, "Well, actually there's not.
00:07:59.920 | The line between natural remedies and less natural remedies is not all that clear."
00:08:06.860 | And when you think about it, those lines become very blurry.
00:08:12.520 | But perhaps even more important is the next passage, the last one I'm going to refer
00:08:18.380 | to because this text says it doesn't really make any difference what the lines are between
00:08:24.720 | the natural and the human invented.
00:08:28.560 | So here I am at Genesis 1, verse 28, "God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Adam
00:08:34.560 | and Eve, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion
00:08:42.040 | over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and the heavens and every living thing
00:08:46.700 | that moves.'"
00:08:47.700 | Now, what does Moses mean when he writes, "Subdue the earth"?
00:08:53.720 | Subdue the earth.
00:08:54.880 | It's a remarkable statement because it's given before the fall when everything in the
00:09:00.160 | earth and the world was perfect.
00:09:02.200 | Perfect.
00:09:03.200 | Well, what in the world does he mean by subduing what's perfect?
00:09:06.920 | Shouldn't you just leave it alone?
00:09:08.840 | No, you shouldn't just leave it alone.
00:09:11.920 | It means many things, Adam and Eve, as you find them in nature, are not yet perfectly
00:09:20.000 | suited for your maximal use.
00:09:23.400 | They are perfectly suited for your change.
00:09:28.160 | They're perfectly suited as raw materials.
00:09:30.580 | So you need to take them as you find them, give thanks, and then by means of your craft
00:09:38.360 | and your art and your labor, change them, change them into a form where they are maximally
00:09:47.120 | beneficial to you.
00:09:49.200 | So you might cut down a tree, cut it into boards, and build a house to keep the sun
00:09:56.120 | off and the rain off.
00:09:59.040 | Or you might pick grapes and crush them under your feet and store them in a cool place and
00:10:04.960 | make wine out of them, which in some cases would be called medicine.
00:10:11.000 | Or you might take the flight of electrons around the nucleus and so alter them that
00:10:18.480 | you create a beam which kills cancer cells on the other side of the fall.
00:10:25.360 | So the upshot of these five passages of Scripture, it seems to me, is that God has provided an
00:10:34.020 | endless array of strategies for subduing this world and making it serve our maximal usefulness
00:10:42.220 | and fruitfulness to his glory.
00:10:45.040 | And the key is, are we seeking the Lord?
00:10:49.240 | Are we depending on the Lord, trusting the Lord, praying to the Lord, loving the Lord
00:10:54.000 | in all of this?
00:10:55.000 | Are we praying, trusting, loving, seeking to submit ourselves deeply to his sovereign
00:11:01.400 | will?
00:11:02.400 | For there's no doubt, his sovereign will will in fact be done.
00:11:08.400 | It will be done through prayer and through miracles and through medical intervention.
00:11:15.000 | And what God is looking for is not the least intrusive strategy of dealing with disease.
00:11:22.520 | He's looking for the deepest, most joyful submission to his sovereign will, however
00:11:28.680 | we deal with our suffering.
00:11:32.120 | That's a really fascinating biblical theology of medicine of faith.
00:11:35.600 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:37.000 | We have a bunch of episodes on suffering in the podcast archive.
00:11:40.200 | If that's where you find yourself or if you have a follow-up question about what we talked
00:11:43.600 | about today, check out our past episodes in the Ask Pastor John archive.
00:11:48.320 | You can find that in the app for Apple and Android devices or at our web home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:11:57.280 | Well tomorrow we're going to talk about the end times, at least the urgency of the end
00:12:01.680 | times and our anticipation of Christ's soon return to earth.
00:12:06.440 | How then shall we live now?
00:12:08.520 | That's the question tomorrow on the table on the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime
00:12:12.540 | pastor and author John Piper.
00:12:14.400 | I'm your host Tony Reinke, we'll see you then.
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