The View from the Caildron / Genesis 3

When Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” opens, it begins in a dark cave, in the middle of which is a boiling caldron and there’s a clap of thunder.  Three witches enter and the play begins with each witch speaking one line and then together they say, “Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.” 

Does that seem to be the story of your life, a caldron of toil and trouble?  No sooner is one problem solved than another takes its place or they come in bunches.  It doesn’t seem that way; it is that way.  Problems come in all sizes, big, small, and medium.  They come in different time frames—short, long, longer, longest.  They’re fall into categories: fixable, modifiable, “allieviateable,” adjustable.  If you’re a Christian, are some genuinely unfixable, or with your Bible can all problems be fixed? 

First things first.  There is this four-thousand year-old myth: “If I really love God and serve Him, my life will be free from problems, or at least major ones.”  Or sometimes the myth says it this way, “Bad things don’t happen to good people who are living right, and if they do, then that shows they aren’t living right.” 

First things first: God took care of the biggest problem you’ll ever have, your sin problem.  The issue about your problem was never, “What are you going to do about it because you couldn’t do anything about it. (Jn. 8)  Yet we keep hearing, “What are you going to do about you’re sin?”  We keep hearing things to do: “Be baptized and wash away your sin.”  We hear, “Feel sorry for your sins.”  We hear, “Abandon your sins,” and all of those things are things we’re told to do to solve the problem.  But the issue has always been, what is God going to do about it, if anything? 

He did something about the problem—He completely solved it at Calvary by sending His Son to die for all your sins as your Substitute.  What His Son did was so finished and so complete there’s nothing to do except to believe that’s what He did for you.  Anything you would try to do is an insult because it’s a filthy rag offering.  (Is. 53) 

False fixes to real problems is what some people promote.  Bernie Madoff sold people a false fix to their money financial problems and we all heard about the “Ponzi scheme.”  It was a scam.  False fixes are scams. 

I heard about a person on the “inside” of a Ponzi scheme in the religious world, a Ponzi scheme that promises a fix for your financial problems.  He said it’s a scam.  He said that inside his denomination there are those (Osteen, Copeland, et al.) who say that they have the way to fix your financial problems—send them your money and that’ll fix it. 

He, from the inside, said, “The only way you’ll see your money again is if you catch a glimpse of one of their private planes taking off the runway on the way to the Bahamas.  He said that he sees it in the eyes of the ones they’ve scammed, the ones who believe that God wants them rich and he sees their growing despair year by year when it doesn’t come true and they’re worse off.  He wrote, “I watch as their despair grows as they hear the preacher tell them to drop what little they have in the offering plate and they watch their pennies dwindle.” 

He pointed out a study that was done of their denomination and said that the Pew Study found that, per capita that denomination is the poorest of them all, yet their celebrity leaders promise them wealth.  He said that should tell them something right there.   

He said it would be like promising people that they would grow a third arm with which they could better serve the Lord if they would just give their money.  After a while when nobody had a third arm, that should destroy the idea.  The idea that God wants you to be rich is a false fix to a lack of money problem.  But he pointed out, no one in his denomination says anything, no one says, “Like the emperor, the televangelist has no clothes on.” 

It’s as wrong as the myth, “If I really love God and serve Him, my life will be free from problems.” 

So now, we come to a new study, problems and what causes them and should we have them if we’re serving the Lord?

We begin with one of Jesus’ promises: “In this world you will have tribulation . . .” Jn. 16:33.  There it is.  These disciples will so love Him and will so serve Him that they’ll die for Him, yet that love and that service to the point of martyrdom will not stop problems from coming.  That love and that service and that martyrdom will not keep poverty away.  Remember what Peter said about his finances, “Silver and gold have I none. . .” 

Let’s get back to our question which we’re going to ask during this series of studies—where do our problems come from and what can we do about them?  This is often talked about along the lines of “Why do we, the good guys, suffer and what can we do about it?” 

To start us off, we go to Gen. 3, just after the fall of man: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your “face” you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”

And to Rom. 8:20: “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope.”  Rom. 8:22: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  I Peter 1:24: “"All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall.” 

What the Bible is stating is a universal law, so observable and so universal that over 100 years ago it was formalized as a scientific law by Carnot: “All systems, if left to themselves, tend to become degraded and disordered.”  All things are being unmade, becoming disorganized.  All things, living and nonliving, are wearing out. 

This is the view from the cauldron; this is the planet on which we live.  Problems come because of the curse placed on a rebellious planet.  As God announced in Gen. 3, from the cauldron, we see sorrow and disappointment.  We see pain and suffering, the “thorns” which hinder us and hurt us.  From the cauldron we sweat and shed tears as we struggle against our problems. 

Every time, every time without exception when I go visit a nursing home I see people who are so feeble of mind or body or both that they can’t walk, they can’t stand up, and some can’t seem to wake up.  And I never fail to think, “These people were once strong, robust, and energetic.  They weren’t always this way—they went swimming with their kids, the fathers played baseball with their sons and the mothers ran with their sons and daughters through fields, climbed over mountains, and threw snowballs at each other.  They were not always as I see them today.  But they’re wearing out and some have worn out. 

When problems come, the pain and the suffering, it’s part of the law instituted in Gen. 3.  Since the believer lives in the cauldron too, God doesn’t repeal the law for his sake.  We are caught in the cauldron, a cauldron in which problems and suffering are unavoidable and we should not be surprised when some “fiery trial” comes our way in the cauldron.  The myths are wrong.

Yet, one day, for us, the law will be repealed: Rev. 21:4; 22:3: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."  “No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve Him.” 

But what about in the meantime?  How is the disciple to live in the cauldron?  Because Christ was made a curse for us, because He was the Man of Sorrows, because He wore the thorns, because He sweat as it were great drops of blood, because He cried out with tears, because He died, then we can have joy in sorrow and endure thorns in the flesh in His strength, and we can find rest (Matt. 11:28). 

But there’s more. Don’t we have a tendency, when the cauldron fires up suddenly with white-hot heat out of the blue, to get really upset, really angry, and don’t we still find the “myth” rooted down deep in us that this isn’t supposed to happen to me because I’m so good and love the Lord so much?   We lose our focus, it knocks us off balance, and if we believe the myth, we can get angry at God. 

First off, we need to realize that we can’t “fix” the curse of Gen. 3.  It’s going to be there until Christ comes back.  Getting angry isn’t going to fix it.  Railing at it isn’t going to change that law and fix the cauldron.  This isn’t what people want to hear, but it’s the truth and the believer, because he is a believer, isn’t exempt from it. 

People want to hear that Congress or the President can fix the cauldron or getting educated can fix it.  Those listening to a televangelist want to hear that “claiming a promise can fix it.” 

Not a single one of us can fix the curse of Gen. 3.  This gives us a principle: sometimes, we will encounter problems for which there is no “fix” in this life.  But  we can fix something in the cauldron—our thinking: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”  (Phil 4:8)

In the cauldron, we can “fix” our thinking.  We can’t change the problem, but we can change our thinking.  You need to know this because you’re never going to run out of problems.  Nobody else is in this life.

So here’s the supernatural life-challenge: a problem may be unfixable, but your thinking never is.  What’s so “noble, right, pure, and lovely” about the cauldron?  If we can find that, we change our thinking and we change our lives.

1.      The cauldron forces us to focus on the seriousness of sin.  It shows us just how much God hates sin and how holy He is and that He would be unholy if He didn’t punish sin.

2.      The cauldron forces us to face our helplessness and that’s a good thing.  Just we can’t reverse the curse, so we can’t save ourselves from the curse of sin. 

3.      The cauldron forces us to focus on the fact that Satan is a liar and the father of lies because he promised there would be no caldron if Eve would eat of the fruit.

4.      The cauldron forces us to long for a Savior who will one day demolish the caldron.

5.      The cauldron reminds us that this world is temporary for us; there is a better place.

I would challenge you today, whatever your cauldron—find something in it that is lovely, pure, noble and think on those things and by so doing, God has changed you through His Word.

TRUTH TO TAKE HOME: When we fix our thinking, we find rest and peace, even in the cauldron. 

* = Free Grace Teacher or Ministry