CATM Sermon - “Why Does God Allow Suffering?” September 12, 2004
Sometimes it’s too easy to find illustrations to a sermon. Sometimes as a preacher you search and struggle to find stories from the community and stories from other places that help to make what
you’re trying to say clearer.
But sometimes, it’s too easy. Today we’re looking at the question, “Why Does God Allow Suffering?” And we don’t need to look hard at all to see stories of suffering. In the past few years many youth have been shot and killed in our community. That has brought terrible suffering to families. We have friends who suffer with illness, many of us have known people who are suffering or were suffering from AIDS.
Breslen. A community in Russia, full of people just like ourselves, close to a state wanting
independence from Russia. A school full of children on their first day back to classes after a long
summer. Excitement, anticipation, reunions with old friends. A new year ahead.
And then, the terrorists, the captive-takers. The children and their parents all of the sudden become hostages to a desperate and depraved gang of militants and fanatics. Negotiations happen. A bomb drops. All hell breaks loose. Moments later, 335 Dead. Half of them children. A community destroyed. A people in torment. The worst nightmare of a parent coming true for a community of parents. Could there be a worse case of suffering anywhere in the world?
Why did this happen? Why does suffering closer to home happen? Did it have to happen? What led to it? Where was God when this nightmare was being planned and the bombs and guns were being stashed beneath floorboards as the school was being constructed in the summer? Where was God? Why did He let that happen? Was it His will? If it was His will, doesn’t that say something pretty scarey about a God who would want this kind of nightmare to take place? What
kind of God wills that suffering happen, if indeed He does will such a thing?
To put it really bluntly: There is great suffering in this world. A loving God with the power to stop it and who does not stop it has to answer for this.
Where does Suffering Come From?
First of all, I think it’s important to state the obvious. Suffering is real. There are some ways of
thinking that would deny this, that would say that suffering occurs in our minds only. And we need only to look to the cross of Christ, the reality of His suffering for you and for me. Suffering was so real that our Lord Himself came to live in it, experience the full depth of it, conquer it, and redeem it. His suffering was real. So it ours.
We need to say that God’s Word makes it super clear that there is a lot of suffering in this world and that it is not an illusion. Way back in Exodus 3:7-8 “The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians...”
Suffering came into the world because of man’s fall
The world God created was perfect and the life God created for humanity was perfect. Part of that perfection, I would suggest, is that God did not create people to be robots. Instead, He gave us wills to use so we’d make choices ourselves and so that we would truly live free. God is free, and He made us in His image likewise to be free.
But history makes it painfully clear that we have chosen to use our freedom in ways that bring pain to others. We have chosen to exercise our freedom to live selfishly...so nations have warred against other nations, always, always with innocent civilians taking the worst hits as kings duked it out for more land or more wealth or power. So death, pain, grief, loneliness, and all other types of suffering were not part of God’s original world (Genesis 1:31; 3:17-19; 5:29; Romans 5:12,14,18; 8:20-22; 1 Corinthians 15:21-22; Revelation 21:3-4).
And then there’s Adam. The first man. And Eve, the first Better Half, the first woman. They chose to use their freedom in order to sin, to assert themselves over God. The Bible states that this is when suffering entered into the world.
Rom 5:12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this
way death came to all men, because all sinned-
Rom 5:14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who
did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.
Rom 5:18 Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the
result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.
This first decision to live selfishly was the father of all future decisions to live selfishly. Selfish
living causes suffering, period. So we can understand that suffering came into the world, not because of God, but because of human sin, human rebellion. That is what we find in the Holy Bible.
We see in Holy Scripture that even natural catastrophes such as hurricane Ivan are linked to the
human equation:
Rom 8:19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.
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 8:21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the
glorious freedom of the children of God.
Rom 8:22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to
the present time.
Ivan groaned and acted out and inflicted serious damage as He inflicted on the Islands his terrible
wrath.
OK, but that doesn’t really answer the question, why does God allow it? Why doesn’t he prevent it from occurring? Does he ever intervene in human affairs and if he does, why doesn’t He do it more often. We could use a little less suffering, thank you very much.
Well, it’s said that coincidences are God’s way of staying anonymous, of not forcing the knowledge of his presence and activity upon us. It’s fair to say then that...and this is my honest conviction...God does intervene, frequently, probably constantly in both the natural order and in human affairs.
I believe His grace drives Him to do this. But of course, because He intervenes and because His
intervention results in catastrophes averted and, basically, terrible things not getting a chance to
happen, we remain ignorant, this side of heaven as to God’s constant sustaining and saving work in the world. “Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail” [Lamentations 3:22].
But we still may ask, Why Does God allow it? Does he allow it? We learn from God’s Word that He is sovereign. That means He is in control. But that does not mean that everything that happens He specifically desires to happen. You see, we can speak of God having two different types of wills. God has a direct will, and a permissive will. God’s direct will results in things happening to us and to our loved ones that He wants, specifically intends to happen, and these are for our good.
Jer 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to
harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Our God is good God. We sing it, we testify to it, we read about it in the Holy Bible. He has plans for you, and they are not for you to suffer. They are for you to live a deep and rich and loving life.
John 10:10b I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. That is God’s specific, good and perfect will.
But God also has a permissive will. He permits things to happen, things that are definitely outside his plans, and He permits them to happen, frankly, as a very clear way of honouring the fact that He has created another will other than His own in the universe. It is the human will. God gave you your will, your ability to think for yourself, to make up your own mind, to choose good over evil, or, as we too often do, to choose the selfish over the good.
So he permits us to screw up. Very often these are in small ways that for believers help us to grow and learn to follow Jesus more closely. But also in big ways. The Hitlers and Stalins and Bin Ladens and Saddams and Bushes of this world also get to use their wills freely.
When people have that kind of power, though, death and destruction often follow the free exercise of human will. And yes, God does permit this to happen. But again, not without intervening very often to prevent terrible things from happening. Notice we survived the Cold War, we survived the invention of that bomb that kills people but makes sure their property is still there to be pillaged. The neutron bomb. That was a nice idea.
We’ve learned that even in something as recent as 9/11, the terrorists planned to hijack 10 planes
and cause far worse devastation than was experienced. We still survive the existence in the world of enough chemical and nuclear weapons to kill us all 1,000 times over. Why is that? Because we’re smart? Do you think our leaders are smart? Think again.
If there must be suffering what meaning might it have?
What can we say to the parents of children killed in Breslan, Russia very recently. What can we say to anyone who has suffered the devastating loss of loved ones at the hands of murderers? How can we understand the suffering in our own lives?
I know that many of us, those who are part of this body of believers have suffered terribly - the loss of those dearest to us. Physical and emotional pain that no matter the deep healing God is doing and has done in us, remains at least a reminder of the brokenness of our lives?
So, when we say to a person who is really struggling and suffering, it is God’s will that you suffer, and you just need to accept His will, we need to be really careful because to a hurting person, that can sound an awful like God wants them to suffer, and means them to suffer.
Here’s the problem: Nothing could be further from the truth. God may be permitting them to suffer, but it’s simply not His desire that they suffer. That’s a big ol’ difference and...you know what? How we understand God is really, really important.
And not only does God not want us to suffer, He has done what no human could have ever imagined. Many people view God as distant, unapproachable. There are many religions in the world that understand holiness as a kind of aloofness from the world, being untouched by pain.
John Stott, a great British pastor said this: “In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world.
But each time, after a while I have had to look away. And in imagination I have turned instead to the lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain.
He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of His. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering."
How do we then live as people of God?
We can live in the knowledge that we serve a good and gracious God who loves us truly with an everlasting love. We serve a God who does not want bad things to happen. God’s way of exercising his sovereign control is in giving us a will and a responsibility. Your will is yours to do with what you choose.
We can have a lot to say about what the suffering does to us. We can determine what sort of people we
become because of it. Pain makes some people bitter and envious. It makes others sensitive and
compassionate. It is the end result, not the cause, of pain that makes some experiences of pain meaningful and others empty and destructive. It is left up to us and our relationship with our God.
If you are not a follower of Jesus Christ today and you want real, serious help in gaining some sanity back into your life, I would ask you to say yes to Jesus, to receive Him as your King, your Lord and Saviour. Know that He died for you, to make a way for you to experience life its fulness.
If you are a Christian, we need to remember and walk in the reality that God calls us and equips us in Jesus Christ to do the good over the bad, the right thing over the wrong thing, the loving thing over the selfish thing.
Resolve to love God who loves us enough to let us create and get into messes. Suffering is not God’s direct will. It results more often than not from us abusing the gift of free will. Such a God does not deserve our judgement, caution or our dismissal. Such a God, entering in as he does into our suffering in Christ, deserves our whole-hearted acceptance and embrace. Our worship.
And resolve to love a God who suffers: Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a very important leader in the church in Nazi Germany. He was imprisoned and tortured because he held to his convictions and would not agree with Hitler or teach those under his care to do so.
He died at the end of the second world war, but before he died, as he languished and suffered in
prison, he wrote this to his twin sister, Sabine:
“It is good to learn early enough that suffering and God are not a contradiction but rather a unity, for the idea that God himself is suffering is one that has always been one of the most convincing teachings of Christianity. I think God is nearer to suffering than to happiness, and to find God in this way gives peace and rest and a strong and courageous heart”
Resolve to live responsibly: Our actions and attitudes bring either blessing or a burden to others
and to ourselves. Do I take responsibility for the way I use my free will, or do I blame my actions
and attitudes on another.
We must resolve to live in a relationship with God where we keep grow in our willingness to rely on Him, and where we choose to live responsibly. No one else, before God, will take responsibility for our lives. That’s a sobering thought. But He gives us power by he Holy Spirit to live in communion with Him, to have Him by our side, in us, actually. And the Holy Spirit of God leads us in right paths and gives us the power to live for God and not for ourselves.
Sometimes it’s too easy to find illustrations to a sermon. Suffering is every where. However, we are not alone in our suffering. Jesus Christ has entered into our suffering, into our situation, into our pain.
In Jesus, God has proven that He redeems suffering, that He works to bring good into every situation. Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God”.
Let’s pray. Thank you God, that you entered the world of flesh and blood and tears and death. And thank you that your suffering for our sins on the cross of shame somehow does make sense, or at least put into some perspective, the suffering that goes on here. God, will you cause us to reflect on your goodness?
Will you deepen our appreciation for all that you have done in Christ Jesus for our sakes? And will you give us power to live lives that reflect your goodness and love, that we might always, always be a blessing to those near us. In Jesus name we pray. Amen
