Here's an email question. "Pastor John, in moments of public tragedy, how do you reconcile your own compassion for those who suffer and also hold firmly to God's sovereignty, knowing that what has happened was ultimately governed by God? It seems this is a huge tension theologically when the suffering happens.

Just personally speaking, how far do you affirm in your own heart the determining will of God when you see the tragedy unfold in the news?" My understanding of the question now is not so much what I'm saying in public, but what I'm feeling in my heart and how I'm relating compassion to a conviction.

So here's my thought. I think the question, the way it's put, if I understand it, is based on some assumptions that I may not share. Let me try to state those, and then the person who asked the question can see if we're on the same page. It sounds to me like one of the assumptions is that if one feels and speaks in his own heart about a building collapsing in Bangladesh with several hundred people crushed, or even as I'm talking today, a mental health facility in Russia burning and 38 mentally ill people being killed, or we may remember the fertilizer plant exploding and dozens dead, or the Boston...

I mean, it just seems like right now in our nation, event after event of calamity is happening. So the question for me, that they're asking me, is when I see that and speak to my own heart or think about it and believe that God is totally in control, or say to myself instinctively, "God controlled that, God ruled that, God either in a planning way permitted that or ordained that," then this is in conflict with my compassion.

It's going to be in tension with my compassion. Feeling compassion and feeling the sovereignty of God in its fullest sense are at odds. That seems to be an assumption. And my question would be, now why would that be? Why would a person feel that? And here's this, I think, a second assumption, that God's being the ultimate cause would somehow exclude our feeling hurt, or our weeping, or our helping, or our outrage at the sin involved.

God's sovereignty implicitly in their minds is excluding that or pushing that aside. Now I don't share either of those assumptions. They're not part of my way of thinking. The second one, I think part of God's will in permitting or ordaining a calamity is that we weep with those who weep.

That's part of the plan. Once you realize that God brings to pass all things, I mean all things, there are no maverick molecules, R.C. Sproul said, and that's right, or Spurgeon said, every dust moat that flies in the air, or the spray, every little globule of spray in every harbor in the wake of every boat in the world is guided on its path through the air by God.

Once you get to the point of believing the providence and sovereignty of God to that extent, then you see that God intends for weeping, the abhorrence of evil, the rescue of the perishing, the healing of the brokenhearted, to be a part of his plan, even as he may plan the collapse of a building, or the explosion of a building, or an earthquake, or a flood.

When Jesus met the man who was born blind, people said, "Okay, who sinned? This man or his parents?" And Jesus answered, "It's neither. This man was born blind for the glory of God." Now what's that mean? It means that when God ordained that this man endure dozens probably--I don't know how old he was, let's say he was 30--30 years of blindness, he was also willing that there be some responses to it of a certain kind.

And the shepherds who were caring for him in the synagogue had the wrong kind, because when he got healed, he didn't even rejoice! They had hearts that were terrible! And Jesus wanted people to rejoice, and to see God, and to glorify God. And I don't doubt that Jesus wanted 30 years worth of kind and faithful parenting from his parents.

Like many parents today have disabled children, and what is God's purpose? Well, one of his purposes is that beautiful demonstrations of compassion be shown from these parents. So the point is this. If you see a calamity and you know God could have stopped it, which he always could, and he didn't stop it, so he must have a purpose in it, don't draw the irrational, unbiblical conclusion, "Well, therefore God wants me to feel no outrage over the sin of the bombers in Boston.

He doesn't want me to feel any compassion for the victims of the building, since he brought the building down, and he doesn't want me to get engaged in any relief project, because he brought--he caused the earthquake." That's just irrational! That's crazy! That's a person who has gotten halfway into the Bible, and they're starting to draw human conclusions rather than biblical conclusions.

God wills for the beautiful virtues of outrage at sin and compassion for victims and efforts of relief to be manifested in the midst of the calamities that he himself is in charge of. And maybe I'll just close with one of the most practical illustrations. It says in Acts 427 that God predestined what Herod and Pontius Pilate and the Gentiles and the Jews brought to pass when Jesus was crucified.

In other words, the worst sinning that has ever happened in the history of the world was planned and predestined by God for the death of his son that we might be saved. The murder of the Son of God is the worst act in human history, and it was planned by God according to Acts 427.

Now, God wills that evil for the sake of thousands of good responses. He wants us to be saved by it. He wants us to trust this Jesus. He wanted Mary to come to the tomb with compassion in her heart, to put herbs, or he wanted to bless--he wanted to show that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were men of courage and godliness, because they were willing to take the body and put it in their own tomb.

God had all millions and millions of good and holy purposes in willing that this happen, so the same would be true of everything he wills in this world. So we should determine how we respond, not by any false human logical deduction that we're drawing from the sovereignty of God.

We should determine it from what the Bible says should be our response, namely compassion and outrage at sin and efforts to be involved in helping bring about relief. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. At DesiringGod.org you'll find thousands of other free resources online from John Piper.

I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening. Thanks for watching.