Today in the Navigator's Bible Reading Plan, we read Mark Chapter 5, verses 24 to 34, and we meet there a woman with a 12-year illness, 12 years diseased, 12 years bleeding, 12 years embarrassed, 12 years anemic, 12 years from doctor to doctor to doctor,

12 years of false cures, 12 years that depleted her entire life savings. And then,

after 12 years, Jesus walks by within arms reach.

Imagine for a moment you were in control of everything.

If you were in sovereign control over this world, over every disease, every pain, every war,

how long would it take you to fix her and fix every other broken thing in this world?

A couple days, a week at most.

So we often wonder, why does the sovereign God take 12 years to heal a suffering woman?

Or hundreds of years to fix greater problems as we read in the long story of the Old Testament,

watching centuries of rulers and judges and kings,

some good, some of them rotten, and then the long exile and the enduring long disappointments

for God's people.

Today on Ask Pastor John, Long Sorrows set the stage.

We get there from reading the Book of judges together and in Julius Question, who lives just outside of Philadelphia,

Pastor John, in reading the book of Judges and in rereading your book Providence,

I noticed that you wrote this powerful insight, quote,

reading the book of judges is like having the insanity of sin

rubbed in your face while God returns again and again with mercy, which was repeatedly

forgotten, end quote. Wow. That text is starred and underlined and highlighted in my book, but I've been thinking specifically of Judges 2,

verses 11 to 23, where we see the tragic consequences of Israel's repeated cycle of disobedience and

idolatry and compromise with sin. The people of Israel continually sinned, which led to oppression

by surrounding nations.

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