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Suffering for the Sake of the Body

The great aim of Satan is to prevent and weaken and, if possible, destroy faith.Satan uses pleasure and pain to do it. Pleasure: to make us doubt God’s satisfying greatness. Pain: to make us doubt God’s sovereign goodness. To triumph over Satan (in pleasure and pain) we need to know the Word of Truth that teaches God’s sovereignty over Satan.

 

Number of lessons: 4
Total length: 4 hours and 27 minutes
format: Audio
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The great aim of Satan is to prevent and weaken and, if possible, destroy faith.Satan uses pleasure and pain to do it. Pleasure: to make us doubt God’s satisfying greatness. Pain: to make us doubt God’s sovereign goodness. To triumph over Satan (in pleasure and pain) we need to know the Word of Truth that teaches God’s sovereignty over Satan.

What follows are the texts that form the skeleton of discussion when I teach the seminar on suffering as part of The Bethlehem Institute at Bethlehem Baptist Church. This is not a book on suffering. It is a collection of Biblical passages with some occasional comments. I hope that these passages from God's Word will help you forge your own strong convictions concerning God's wise and gracious sovereignty in our suffering. I pray that...

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About the Professor

John Piper

“The ministry of preaching is the central labor of my life. My prayer is that through that ministry and everything else I do the great glory of our God and Savior Jesus Christ would be magnified as more and more people come to live out the obedience of faith more and more deeply.”
John Piper

Lessons

  • 1. God's Sovereignty Over Suffering (Part 1)

    Ten aspects of God's sovereignty over suffering, and Satan's role in it. 

  • 2. God's Sovereignty Over Suffering (Part 2)

    Even though Satan has the power to inflict suffering in the world, God is sovereign.

  • 3. Global Suffering and Christian Suffering

    In part, the meaning of global suffering is God's judgment on the world for its sinfulness and the portrayal in the physical world of the moral and spiritual horror of God-belittling sin. It is also God's message of warning and awakening that the world should take seriously their desperate moral condition. Satan is not obliterated but permitted to torment the world because it is God's purpose to glorify the power and beauty of sacrificial, sin-forgiving grace through defeating Satan progressively through the death of Christ and through its application by the Spirit in Christians' lives. Followers of Jesus will suffer because he did. Perseverance is essential. 

  • 4. The Nature of Christian Suffering

    The suffering of sickness and persecution are intended by Satan for the destruction of our faith. and governed by God for the purifying of our faith. Suffering from sickness and persecution are often indistinguishable.

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