GROANINGS IN SCRIPTURE

Exo. 2:24

Morning Meditation 9/6/17

"And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob."

THE GROANS OF THOSE IN BONDAGE

Sometimes we wonder if God is really in sympathy with what is going on with us in this world.. I have seen Christians suffer and have so many things happen to them that I wondered as a pastor, why God did not answer prayer and deliver them. I wondered why so many things had to happen to them. Now when I say this, I am telling you that I love the Lord and I do not believe it's possible for God to do wrong or make a mistake. But I love people and I hate to see them suffer. I am not just talking about normal suffering. I am talking about people that wrote Murphy's Law. It just seemed that these people just had so many different things happen to them. And it seemed that prayer just did not avail.

It was like that with the nation of Israel. They had been in Egypt about 400 years. This was according to prophesy: Genesis 15:13, "And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;"

I'm sure that the Children of Israel prayed for deliverance long before it came. They probably thought that God had forgotten about them. But our text tells us otherwise. It says, "And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob." God did remember. He heard their groanings. So it would be wrong to say that God had forgotten them.. The truth of the matter is that God never takes His eyes off His children.. However, He does have a plan, and that plan includes suffering in the process of working it out at times.

Job suffered and Job was right with God. We have the book of Job and the record of his sufferings and the debate he had with his miserable friends who came to see him in his sickness. They thought he was being punished for some secret sin in his life. He disagreed with them. Incidentally if you intend to visit a sick person, please go in, if it is the hospital, and encourage him, please don't add to his suffering. I have a family member who had to have gallbladder surgery. He was very tense over the idea of being cut open for that surgery. A preacher friend came to seen him. He stayed way too long (hospital visits need to be short). Before he left the preacher told him of a person in his church who had the same surgery. He said when they sent him home, he had to be sent back to the hospital, and they had to open him back up and he like to have died. Well it frightened my family member to the point that he considered getting out of the hospital bed and going home. I thing the preacher should have been shot in sitting down place AS HE LEFT . . . . .with rubber bullets!!!

Exodus 6:5, "And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant." God had made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that included their preservation. God does not break His covenants. They are carried out to the letter.

Acts 7:34, "I have seen, I have seen the affliction of my people which is in Egypt, and I have heard their groaning, and am come down to deliver them. And now come, I will send thee into Egypt." God did not only hear the groans of His people but He also saw how the Egyptians were mistreating them. They were exercising a hard cruel and unreasonable work schedule for the Jews. The Egyptians had reduced the Jews to slavery. They recognized their growth and it became obvious to them that if this growth continued they would have the numbers to successfully rebel against Egypt. So they started killing all the male children. It sounds like our country where the killing of the unborn is not only tolerated but encouraged by financial assistance. We need to pray for our country and our new president that this will be changed.

An unsaved man is in bondage to sin and there is no escape for him apart from repentance for sin and believing in Christ as a personal Saviour. This is the day in which God is extending mercy and grace in order that those in bondage can escape. There are so many who refuse God's way of escape for them. We must expend all our God enabled gifts to get the message out that multitudes might be saved.

Next we see,

THE GROANING OF JESUS ON THE CROSS

Psalms 38:9-10, "Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee. My heart panteth, my strength faileth me: as for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me." This psalm prophecies the words of Jesus as He prays to His Father in His great passion as the final hours of His suffering have intensified to an unbearable state. I believe that Jesus suffered the equivalent of the God forsaken sinner which he will experience forever in the place the Bible calls the lake of fire. You say, "preacher, you are just trying to scare people into being saved."

I must confess to you that I was baptized into a state of extreme fear when I called upon the name of the Lord for salvation. It is a legitimate means of motivation for one to be saved. Some disagree and I partly agree with some of the reasoning. Some say, "Love should be the reason for turning from sin to the Saviour." I agree with that statement. But it is not the ONLY Biblical motive taught in the Scripture.

Let's look at the meaning of the word groaning. The word "groaning" translates the Hebrew word "anachah" and means, "sighing, groaning (expression of grief or physical distress)." Jesus was suffering unbearable physical pain on the cross as well as suffering in soul and in spirit. It is important for us to see this. Because what Jesus suffered on the cross was as our substitute. We get at least a small understanding of what the lake of fire will be to the unsaved. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:11, "Knowing therefore THE TERROR OF THE LORD, we persuade men; but we are made manifest unto God; and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences."

Then we need to learn from Jesus the lesson of Matthew 18:8-9, "Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire." Did Jesus teach that the future for the unsaved was in an eternal flame? It would be much better to be motivated into calling on the Lord for salvation than it would be to deny the existence of hell and wind up in that awful place with no chance of ever escaping. The escape is being offered today. It will not be offered to those who die unsaved. There will be no offer of salvation for the man or woman who rejects God's offer of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ and dies in that condition. Did what Jesus say in these two verses have the effect of fear as a motive for turning from sin and coming to Him for salvation? I will assure you that it did.

Your reasoning might be, "I just don't believe that a God of love would send a man to a place like this." The fact is that Adam made that decision for you when he sinned against God's command in the Garden of Eden. The God of love became a man in the incarnation to suffer as our substitute on the cross to give us an opportunity to be saved. If you reject Jesus as your Saviour, you are choosing hell by rejecting God's efforts to save you. God loves all sinners and wants to save them. God has made that choice and made it possible for all men to be saved. Don't blame the God of love for rejecting you. Blame yourself for rejecting His offer of salvation. May the Lord help you to see that He really does love you. The problem is on your side. You are God's by creation. Since Adam's sin affected you, and the penalty of his sin is past on to you, and God Himself has made the sacrifice to save and restore you to His eternal purpose in creation, take this opportunity and come to Him for Salvation. Paul says in Acts 20:20-21, "And how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have shewed you, and have taught you publickly, and from house to house, Testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ."

THE GROANING OF A SYMPATHIZING SAVIOUR

John tells of the event of Lazarus death and the miracle of raising him from the dead in John 11:33-35, "When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept."

Jesus wept over what sin had done to the human race. God loves the whole world. He loves it so much He came from the ivory palaces of heaven to a world of sin and death to make a difference in the destiny of mankind. Here one of Jesus' friends had died. His sisters were grieving over his death. Jesus joined them and shed compassionate tears because He was facing the death of one whom He loved. He knew that He could raise Lazarus from the death. He also knew that Lazarus would eventually die again. This is how the biography of the greatest men who have ever lived goes. The biography, if it is of a Christian, always tells how and when he became a Christian. It tells of his life of accomplishments as a Christian. But it always ends with the words, "And he died." Jesus was the Creator of man. He was the creator of all things. But Satan was allowed to try man, he did try man, and man failed the test. And as a result death invaded the whole human race. God's diagnosis is in Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." This is "all" without exception.

We are told in Romans 5:12, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:" This grieved the Lord as He drew the family of Lazarus to Him on this occasion and wept with them. The ultimate picture of separation is death. We are separated when our loved one's die. It breaks the heart to lose some loved one. This is what sin caused. Not just a particular sin that a person has committed but the sin of Adam that passed to us with the consequences being death. Jesus came to overcome death for those who will receive Him. But as Jesus stared at death and shared with grief, He knew there would be multitudes who would not take advantage of the opportunity of salvation through Him. For those He wept. They would die and spend eternity with Satan and his angels and all the wicked men who have ever lived on earth. Jesus groaned in spirit as He faced the reality of death. He knew those around Him knew very little. But He knew completely. This groan of Jesus was the groan of the wholly committed compassionate Saviour who came to die a substitutionary death for the human race. He was committed to the death that He might by His death destroy him who had the power of death (Heb. 2:14-15). This was the groaning of a sympathizing Saviour.

May the Lord bless these words to our hearts.

In Christ

Bro. White