YOU ASKED FOR IT
IF GOD IS SO GOOD, WHY DO I FEEL SO BAD?
Sunday April 30, 2006
Scripture Reference: 1 Peter 4:12-19
Intro.
A. Today we are beginning a new sermon series called “You Asked For It.” These are sermons on subjects that you have requested. I am very excited about sharing this series with you for a few reasons. One is that I have thought about doing a series like this for several years but just never felt that God’s timing was in it, but now that I feel His leading to do this I am excited about what is in store for all of us. Secondly I am excited because as I have been preparing for these sermons for over a month now I think that God is going help us get a handle on some of the issues that could well be holding some of us back from having a deeper more meaningful relationship with God.
B. We are going to start this series with what many surveys tell us is the number one topic of concern for Christians not only today but for all of human history, the subject of suffering. The greatest problem for most Christians and even for many non-Christians is “Why does God allow awful things to happen?” If God is so good and so powerful then why do things like 9-11 happen? Why are innocent children abducted off the street and then raped and killed? Why does a tornado touch down on one house killing everyone inside and then leave the house right next door unscathed? These are just some of the things that for most of us make no sense whatsoever. Why do people we love who are so young and have so much of life ahead of them develop cancer and die, some times a very slow agonizing death? Where in the world is God in the midst of all this suffering?
1. You have asked these questions yourself, right? If you are a normal person, Christian or not you have asked questions like this. I am not going to pretend today that I have all the answers to these questions. [] I am not going to be like the preacher in an English movie called “Whistle IN The Wind”. In this movie a brother and sister had experienced the death of a pet kitten. They had both prayed fervently for the cat to be healed but instead it died. They could not understand why so they decided to go see their local pastor to ask him why. The pastor really did not want to be bothered by these seemingly trite questions but he decided to try and help them. The pastor entered into a long, complex, theological response as to why their kitten had died. The children stood silent and attentive to the pastor as he spoke and when he finished the children walked away bewildered by what he had said. The little boy, holding his older sister’s hand as they left looked up at her and said, “He doesn’t know either does he?”
2. I will not have all the answers to every question but I do know that the bible does tell us some things that can greatly help us as we face the great mystery of suffering in this life. I discovered in my research that there are many more scriptures that deal with the issue of suffering than I had ever realized before. In fact it would be quite simple to do an entire series on this one topic alone but since I have five other topics to share with you I cannot spend five or six weeks on this topic, but what I will do is spend two Sundays on this issue. I had planned to do just one week but after doing my research and preparation there was just no way I could confine what I need to share with you in just one Sunday. So I will come back this subject on May 14th after I share my annual report with you next Sunday.
3. One thing I want to make very clear to you today is this. If you are hoping to go away from this message with the answer as to “WHY” Christians suffer you are going to be disappointed. I just want you to know up front that I cannot answer that question because I am convinced that this side of heaven the answer does not exist. The only answer I found that comes close to being satisfactory I found in a quote by C.S. Lewis who when asked, “Why do the righteous suffer? Why Not?” he replied. “They’re the only ones who can take it.” That’s a pretty good answer but it still leaves a lot of blanks unfilled. Another reason I don’t feel we can ever have the “WHY” question answered in this life is because of incident with Jesus in John chapter 9. You may remember that this was in incident where Jesus confronts a man who was born blind and the first question his disciples asked was, “Who sinned that caused this man to be born blind?” I cannot spend time reading this story to you but if you will go back and look it up for yourself you will discover that Jesus never answered their “Why” question. If Jesus felt it was important for us to know the “Whys” don’t you think he would have told them and us? Since the “why” is not critical about suffering then what is? That is what I hope to offer to you today in the remaining minutes I have to speak.
Trans. First off all I see here that the Bible tells me:
I. DON’T BE SURPRISED THAT YOU EXPERIENCE SUFFERING.
When it comes to suffering the number one reason that we are surprised and upset about our suffering is because we live under a false understanding of suffering.
A. Many Christians Live Under A False Premise About Suffering.
1. I will not ask you to raise your hands but how many times have you said at least to yourself, “I should not have to suffer.” “I am a good Christian, I go to church often, I read my bible, I pray, I give time and money to the church.” “Why in the world am I experienced trouble?” “Shouldn’t problems and troubles like these be reserved for those who ignore God or refuse to believe in Him?” Does any of this sound familiar? It probably does but where does this understanding of suffering and trouble come from? Does the bible really teach us that suffering and trouble are to be reserved for only those to refuse to put their trust in God? Right here in V.12 we are very directly asked why it is that we are surprised when trouble comes our way.
2. A false premise many Christians live under is that if I do suffer then my suffering should be short lived. In other words I can accept the fact that I will have some trouble in this life just as long as it is temporary, just as long as it doesn’t last more than a day or two. Have you ever had the occasion to say to God, “OK I get the point, enough is enough.”? “I have learned my lesson so can we move on now?”
3. Another false premise we have about suffering is that all suffering is a result of some sin or failure in our lives. In the story I related a few minutes ago from John 9 listen to what the disciples said to Jesus. "Teacher," his disciples asked him, "why was this man born blind? Was it a result of his own sins or those of his parents?" John 9:2 NLT They directly related the blindness of this man to something he or his parents did wrong. I hope I can help you understand just how damaging this attitude towards suffering is to our spiritual lives. You see if we go back to that earlier false premise that God intends for all of us to healthy, wealthy, and wise, but we find that our lives are experiencing trouble and hardship then we can only assume from there that we have made God mad and we are being punished. Now what happens to you and I if we look over our lives and we can’t find any sin or any area where we are denying or rejecting God? Now how do we respond to this suffering? The only thing we can conclude is that God is not fair, that God is not loving or good as we were led to believe because if He was and we were doing everything we were supposed to be doing then none of these bad things should be happening to me.
4. Here is another false premise of suffering. If I suffer, if my life is not prosperous, if I am not health or healed from my illness then it is because I lack faith. How many times have you dealt with this issue? How many times have well meaning Christians told you that if you had the faith these things could all change? The problem is that these attitudes are not supported by the bible. In fact I will encourage you to read on your own because we do not have time today but read Hebrews 11. These we all people of great faith, in fact we even call this passage The Hall Of Faith but these people did not find that their faith helped them escape the trials but their faith helped them endure the trials and see that there was something more than what this present life offers, which we will talk about later in this message.
Trans. I think that the most important truth I can give to you today as we struggle with the issue of suffering in our lives is this.
B. God Did Not Create Suffering.
1. You will not find the idea that God created suffering any where in the bible. If we go back to Genesis one what we find is that God created the world he told us that it was all good. The only thing that wasn’t good was that man was alone so what did God do in response to that? He fixed it by creating woman and making man complete. Now what we do learn from the Garden of Eden is that God gave man a choice. A choice to obey Him and experience eternal enjoyment or disobey Him and reap the consequences. So what did man do? He chose to disobey God and live the way he wanted. The result was evil. The result was that pain and suffering entered our world. God didn’t create this or cause this, this is not God’s fault the fault lies entirely with man. Now this decision made by man has left us with two kinds of evil in the world, natural evil and moral evil. Let’s look at both of these because they are very important in our understanding of suffering in this life.
2. Two Kinds of Evil.
a) Natural Evil.
1) Listen to how one author stated the reason for natural evil in our world. “When we humans told God to shove off, He partially honored our request. Nature began to revolt. The earth was cursed. Genetic breakdown and disease began. Pain and death became a part of the human experience.” Listen to what the scripture tells us in Genesis 3:17-19 NIV To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ’You must not eat of it,’ "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, Now look at what the Apostle Paul said in Romans 8:20-23 NLT “Against its will, everything on earth was subjected to God’s curse. 21 All creation anticipates the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. 22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering.
2) Remember that God created the perfect environment when He created the Garden of Eden. It was mans choice that released the turmoil that we all now experience. Earthquakes, Tornados, floods, hurricanes, droughts, and illnesses like cancer and the Bird flu and the list goes on. This was not the world God created but the world that God allowed because he gave mankind the freedom to choose what he wanted. All of us today are suffering the consequences of the choice our first parents made. This world is never going to be the perfect place to live that it once was. The Bible speaks to us about a new earth that will be made for God’s children after the second coming of Christ which we will be talking about in one of these messages a little later.
Trans. Now there is a second type of evil. It is Moral evil.
b) Moral Evil.
1) The natural evil we just looked at is something over which we have very little control. Despite those who wanted to blame president Bush for directing hurricane Katrina into the city of New Orleans he really does not have that kind of power. Who would want to serve a God that moves hurricanes around so that they will level certain cities and leave others untouched? Moral evil on the other hand is very different.
2) Moral evil is the result of direct choices that people continue to make today. [] For instance, you may have had someone ask you why a drunk driver killed someone they loved. I remember a pastor sharing an experience like this before. This lady angry with God and had walked away from her faith because she couldn’t understand why God allowed a drunk driver to run head on into her daughters car and kill her. Friends, GOD DID NOT CASUE THAT TO HAPPEN! That happened as a direct result of that mans choice to drink and drive. Some have estimated that 95% of the worlds suffering today is the result of our sin or the sin of others. [] Do me a favor look at your hands. Go ahead, hold them in front of you and look at them. There is incredible power in those two hands you are looking at. You can use those hands to hold a gun and kill someone or you can use those hands to feed hungry people or care for the wounds of someone who is injured. You see the choice is OURS! We can’t blame God when gang members choose to hold a gun and shoot innocent people. Yes the person shot may be innocent but their death was the result of a moral choice the other person made.
3) Now allow me to address a very important question that often arises here. “Couldn’t God have foreseen that all this was going to happen and stopped it?” The answer to that question is “Yes” God did foresee it but he also knew that with the potential to make both good and bad choices He hoped that man whom He created would make the right choices. [] Consider this: When you who are parents decided to have children couldn’t you foresee that these children to whom you would give birth had the potential to end up as criminals, or drug addicts, or that they would be rebellious and turn away from everything you tried to teach them? Sure you could but you still choose to have children because you also foresaw the potential good things that could happen in their lives. You said by your decision to have children that you believed the potential for great things in the lives of these children was greater than the potential for evil. God said the same thing about you!
LIFE APPLICATION:
A. On Sunday May 14th we will conclude our look at suffering by talking about the purpose behind our suffering and we will also look at the outcome we can expect as the result of suffering. I hope that you will plan to be with us that Sunday for the completion of this message.
B. Let me leave you with this thought. Yours and my ability to stand up under the pressure of suffering in this life will be the direct result of the foundation upon which we stand. Where is your foundation today? Listen to what Paul said as he looked at the end of his life, 2 Timothy 1:12 MSG “It’s also the cause of all this trouble I’m in. But I have no regrets. I couldn’t be more sure of my ground—the One I’ve trusted in can take care of what he’s trusted me to do right to the end.” You may be suffering through some things right now that seem totally unfair to you, and you might be right. The question you have to answer today is are you certain of the foundation on which you stand? Is your trust and faith in Christ alone or is it in the circumstance and situations that your life seems to find itself in right now? The hymn writer had it right when he said, “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”
