Tough Questions: Part 3

Tough Questions: Part 3 - Why Didn’t God Answer My Prayer?

John 14:13-14, Mark 11:24-25, Matt. 5:23-24, 1 Peter 3:7

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Sermon Transcript

We are continuing in our series, Tough Questions. And so far, it's been tough question after tough question. And I'm really enjoying it because we say this every week. But these are questions that I really do think we have all wrestled with, struggled with. Maybe still we have this question lingering in the back of our minds. And so I love that we are creating time in our service, in our church life, to cover these things together. And so I want to ask you this morning a tough question. Have you ever felt like you have had a prayer go unanswered? Have you ever felt like in your life, however long you've been walking with Jesus, and however long you've been talking with him, have you ever felt like you've had a prayer go unanswered? This part of our faith can be confusing at times. Praying and not getting an answer. It can be a place of doubt, of insecurity. It can be confusing because we read in the Bible stories where God answers prayer. We read stories like Joshua in Joshua 10, who's battling the enemies that God has called him to battle, and it's not going well, but Joshua knows, hey, if I just get a little bit more daytime, I can finish this battle. And so God, he prays to God, and God holds the sun still for hours, letting them continue to battle so that they can get the victory. And we read that. We're like, okay, God, you do miraculous things. You have done insane. You've answered prayer in amazing ways. And then we pray for good weather on a trip, and it just rains the whole time. We're like, all right, God, you did it then.

How come you didn't do it for me? We read stories like 1 Kings 18, where Elijah prays to God and asks for fire to come down to an altar that he's built when he's going up against the false prophets of Baal. And their altar, nothing happens, but God sends fire down. And he answers this prayer, again, in amazing ways. And so we know that God does that. But when we pray, maybe for finances and a promotion, because we're struggling with paying our bills, nothing comes. The promotion doesn't happen. and month after month, bills are starting to pile up. Or maybe we pray for that friend of ours and their marriage because we know it's a bit rocky. And we're praying for them. We're praying, God, can you keep them together? But in the end, they actually get divorced, and it's very sad. And we're like, God, how come you didn't answer that prayer? We read stories in the Bible like Daniel facing the lion's den and being thrown into the pit with lions, starving lions, who would have devoured anything, but by a miracle in Daniel's prayer, he survives, he spends a whole night in there without being touched by any of the lions. So we know that God answers that. There's power in praying. But when we pray, maybe for someone that we know, for healing, for a miracle, the cancer is still there and takes that person away from us. The medical intervention wasn't enough. And we're left wondering, God, why didn't you answer my prayer? Why didn't God answer my prayer?

That's our tough question this morning. We know, again, that prayer is an important part of our relationship with God. We know that prayer is powerful, but it can also be confusing at times. Maybe you've prayed out. Maybe you've been praying for days, weeks, years, the same prayer request over and over to God. I think we've all been in that situation. And I find it comforting to know that I'm not alone in feeling that. I find it even more comforting to know that the very one who God called a man after my own heart, David, felt similar things. David was a king in the Old Testament, wrote some very important scripture. And so if you want to turn in your Bibles to Psalm 13, we're going to be there this morning. We had our family movie night last month, and we watched the movie, David. and I loved, I hadn't seen it before. I love the tension. It's an animated movie. I recommend it to all of you. It's great. But there's some tension when David is anointed king by Samuel, but Saul is still king. And so David knows, okay, God wants me to be king, but I'm not the king yet. And he, David goes and serves Saul. And so there's this tension there. And Saul knows that David is favored by God and Saul becomes paranoid. Doesn't like that there's this king. He can tell from God has moved from him to David, and David has to run from Saul because Saul wants to kill David. And there's a time in David's life where he's running for his life, Saul and his army out to kill him. And there's a point where David is hiding in a cave, desperate, alone, frustrated, trying to make sense of everything that's happening. Because what is happening doesn't seem to line up with what God told him. And in that pain and isolation, maybe fighting a sense of betrayal, David writes. He writes Psalms. And I love that through his words, he's able to articulate so many of the feelings that we still have today when it comes to our desires and what God has in store.

So let's go ahead and read Psalm 13. It says this, “How long, Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart. How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me, God. Answer, Lord, my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death. And my enemy will say, I have overcome him, and my foes will rejoice when I fall.” We'll pause right there. Maybe you've prayed something similar to God in your time. Verses one and two, David prays over and over again, how long, oh Lord? Nowhere in the Old Testament is this question asked with such emotion and urgency than right here. Repetition is huge in the Old Testament. So when you see things repeated, it's trying, the author's trying to say, hey, I'm getting your attention right now. This is important. And David asked four times in a row. How long? How long? You can almost read it with the energy and the more frustration that he's getting along the way. How long, God? And then in verses three through four, David is begging God to answer him, asking for deliverance from death, from his enemies, asking God to do anything. I brought this, I brought us to this passage this morning, and it doesn't answer our question yet, but I think it gives validation and credit to our feelings that we may have at times in life when we're praying over and over again, and we feel like God hasn't answered us. And if you felt that, again, you are not alone. I think many of us in this room have felt that, and David has felt that. All right, this is the part of our series where we're creating and allowing space to ask hard questions, to voice our doubts and struggles. There's that misnomer that if you have faith, you cannot ask questions or feel any frustration towards God. Well, this psalm shows that you can, and it's good to let God know how you feel. And as Pastor Lauren and Pastor Chris have said, our doubts and struggles can actually draw us closer to God. And for David, it did. It brought him closer to God in his darkest, most challenging moments. So again, I'll say prayer is powerful, and it can also be confusing. We know that it's powerful because Jesus says in John 14:13-14, says, “I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” So from Jesus, pretty straightforward. He's saying, hey, just ask me, and I will answer you. I will do it. so what happens when we ask God and what we prayed for doesn't happen what's going on is is God not listening. Is God mad at me? Does God not care? Is He busy somewhere? Else why didn't god answer my prayer?

Well in order to answer that question we need to understand two things. First is the nature of God and then is the purpose of prayer in regards to the nature of God. Let me take a moment to just give a gentle but firm reminder to all of us in the room. You guys ready for this reminder? You are not the main character of the story. Some of us need to hear it. Some of us know that, but some of us need to hear it. You are not the main character of the story. That would be God. And God doesn't exist to serve us. We exist to serve him. We have to understand that as we pray and that affects our prayers, the nature of God. God doesn't exist to serve us. We exist to serve him. And so with that understanding of the nature of God, then comes the purpose of prayer. And Pastor Craig Groeschel puts it this way. And I completely, I just love how he says it. So I'll just quote it. It says, “The purpose of prayer isn't to get God to do our will. The purpose of prayer is to know God so that we can do his will.” I'll read that again. “The purpose of prayer isn't to get God to do our will. The purpose of prayer is to know God so that we can do His will.” God isn't a spiritual Santa Claus. If we're just a good boy or a good girl, and then at the end we'll just get what we want. And he's going to check the list and be like, oh, you've been good enough. I'll answer your prayers. Oh, but you swore a couple times and you lied, so nope, not answering your prayers. Not how it works. Not how Jesus, it's not how he does things. He isn't a drive-through either. We can just go through life and pull up and say, hey, I'd like this, this, and this. And then we drive through and God gives us what we want and we just go on with our lives. Not how God works. God is not a button to be pushed. He's a relationship to be pursued.

The purpose of prayer isn't to get God to do our will. The purpose of prayer is to know God so we can do his will. But Pastor Andrei, Jesus says in John, You may ask me for anything in my name and I will do it. So why can't I just ask for stuff, maybe good stuff even, and expect God to give me what I want? Well, here's my second reminder, right? So you're not the main character. Love you guys. You're not the main character. Second reminder, it can be dangerous to just pluck a verse out of Scripture and just come to a theological conclusion that that is exactly how it works all the time. We need to use Scripture to understand Scripture. So there's other Scriptures in here that we're going to cover right now that explain a bit of how the relationship with prayer and our relationship with God works. Four possible reasons why God didn't answer my prayer. The first one is maybe you have a broken relationship in life. Maybe you have a broken relationship in life. Mark 11, this is where Jesus is talking to the disciples to have faith in God. He says, if you have enough faith, you can throw a mountain into the sea if you have enough faith. And then he says in chapter 11:24-25, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.” And then this part, "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” So Jesus seems to be saying that our relationships with other people matter. And this makes sense, right? If you're a parent, you've got kids, and your kids are being mean to each other. They're hitting each other. They're just being terrible to each other, right? And then later that night, they ask you, hey, can I go over to that friend's house? Can I stay up late to watch that movie? Well, you're going to say, no. Look at who you've been today. Look at you. Your sister's mad. They're hurt by you. Your brother, that broken relationship matters, right, into what they want. And so likewise, our relationship with others impacts our relationship with God.

Matthew 5:23-24 says, “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar to God, and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them. Then come and offer your gift to God.” Again, our relationships with others impact our relationship with God. And God may be wanting you to do something about a relationship that isn't where it should be in life. 1 Peter 3:7 says, "Husbands, in the same way, be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner.” I'll get to that in a second. And as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers. Talking about strength there, okay? Just the general, that men are usually stronger than the women. That's a separate sermon, but that's what he's talking about. But the author of 1 Peter is saying, practice love and consideration, else your relationship with God, if it's not good between your spouse, your relationship with God isn't going to be where it should be either. So the first reason that if you're praying and you felt like God hasn't answered your prayer, maybe the first filter to think through is maybe you have a broken relationship in life and God is trying to get your attention, wanting you to restore, to reconcile, to forgive. Secondly, maybe you have the wrong motives.

Matthew 6:5, Jesus is instructing people on how to pray. He says, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full." He's talking about the Pharisees there, and they had this habit of making a scene and a spectacle out of their prayer times. They'd be out in public, they'd say these long, elaborate prayers just so that people would think they're so holy. And she's just saying, look, the motive in praying has got nothing to do with my will and aligning their hearts with what I'm doing. They just want all this attention, that selfishness that they have to be seen in a certain way. Similarly, today, maybe we have prayers that are selfish. We just want God. We treat them like that button, that drive-through. We're like, God, come on, I just need some stuff in life. We can pray, God, I have this business or whatever I'm doing. I pray that you would make me successful. Bring me more of that financial stability. But maybe we're not even tithing. We're not honoring him and have a relationship with him and obeying him in a way that we're called to. We want glory. We want attention. We want money. We're treating God like that, but not pursuing him like the relationship that he wants to have with us. So maybe you've got a broken relationship. Maybe you have wrong motives.

Thirdly, maybe you don't believe that God will do it. Let's take a look at Mark 9. Mark 9 is the story of a father who brings his son to Jesus, and his son has been demon-possessed. And just an absolute tragic story of a boy who's grown up with this demon, and this demon has tried to kill him multiple times by throwing him into fire, throwing him into water. And the father had brought the boy to the disciples. The disciples couldn't cast out the demon. It's a separate question of where their faith was at. But we get this conversation in Mark 9:22. “And Jesus asked the boy's father, how long has he been like this? From childhood, he answered. It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” And note this from Jesus, if you can. Some gentle rebuke right there from Jesus. “Everything is possible for one who believes. Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, I do believe. Help me overcome my unbelief.” The more I read this this week, the more I related with that father. And not in a good way necessarily, but in a very human way. I think when we read this story, we're quick to go to that end sentence that the Father has. But help me in my unbelief, which is a good prayer. We want to have that. But we forget that first part where he says, if you can, Jesus. Doubting Jesus and who he is. Can Jesus really do it is what he's saying to Jesus. I don't know if you can. If you can. And I'm sure we can relate to this father who's desperate at this point in life, right? Having this boy who's been tormented, but his faith comes into question. And Jesus is redirecting the conversation from the question of his ability to the need for faith, right? And we believe in God, not just because of what he does, but because of who he is. So this line from this dad is real. It's an admittance of lack of faith and a genuine desire for more.

I spent this summer I spent a summer, not this past summer this was many years ago, I spent a summer in the Philippines for missions work and I was brought to this place called Smoky Mountain and it's just outside Manila Manila is the main city there and Smoky Mountain for 50 years was the city's main dump and it's all the trash and it houses 30,000 people that live in this dump and I cannot tell you how, I cannot emphasize enough just how poverty stricken world this place is. And it's called Smoky Mountain because of all the trash that's been dumped there. There's random fires that are just always going off, all the waste and the materials there. And also the main way for those people to make money is to sell charcoal. So they're always burning stuff, bagging it up, trying to sell it. Well, when I was with the church that I was interning for, they took me for a day to take a tour of Smoky Mountain to kind of show the humanitarian work that was being done. And it was shocking. Like it was absolutely shocking the filth that these little kids were just living in, walking around in every day. And this guy took me up to a boy who couldn't walk. And he said, hey, could you pray for him? Could you heal? Maybe God will heal him if you pray for him. And immediately I had doubts. And there's a part of me that's a shame to admit this, but I didn't believe that my prayer was going to make a difference in this boy's life. I prayed, the man translated, nothing happened. Day just continued. Said God bless and just kept on with the tour. I don't know what God's will was in that moment. I don't think it was completely up to me and my faith because I believe that God can do anything. If God wants that boy to be healed and walk again, he'll make that happen, whether with my time there or with someone else. but I do know that I didn't believe I had a huge lack of faith in that moment and I felt guilt even as I was praying I could hear my inner voice saying this isn't going to do anything and when I said amen and I looked up that inner voice also said see see you knew the whole time and it's this mixture of insecurity on my part and self-doubt and but ultimately I was just doubting God. And I did not believe in that moment. I had a serious lack of faith. But like I said, it's not just on me. I don't necessarily mean that faith guarantees answered prayer. If I had just had more faith, God would have healed. I don't know.

But what scripture does tell us is that faith matters in our prayers. Matthew 9:22 is the woman who was bleeding for 12 years and touches the hem of Jesus' garment. And he turns to her and says, your faith has healed you. Luke 7:50 is the immoral woman. And Jesus says, your faith has saved you. And there's an interaction with two blind men. And Jesus said, do you believe? And they said, yes. And Jesus says, according to your faith, let it be done to you. And their sight was restored. It's in Matthew 9. So your faith matters. I'm not talking about the prosperity gospel here where you name it and claim it. This isn't saying that however much faith you have equals how much you're going to be healed or how much your prayers are answered. It's not some kind of equation that I can give you. But what I can say is that your faith matters when you pray. We need to believe that God can do what we're asking him to do. And we can even expect God, please do this. I would love for you to do this. Understanding that if it's his will, he'll do it. But we can't determine what God's will is for him. And this is key. If he does it, if he answers our prayers, we worship him. And we say, God, thank you. You deserve all the praise. That was all you. And if he doesn't answer our prayer, we worship him. We say, God, you are good. And I love you. And I need you. so this is a reminder for us to look in our hearts and to ask do we actually believe that god can do what we're asking him to do now you may be sitting there and saying okay my relationships are good my motives are right and i have faith god still hasn't answered my prayer for the fourth is this maybe god has something different this is kind of a catch-all right this is everything else that we put into this category of God's timing, God's will, how he's going to answer our prayer.

Maybe he's saying, no, all of that can just fall under this. Maybe God has something different. 1 John 5 says, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us whatever we ask, we know that we have what we asked of him.” Maybe he has something different for us. Maybe his plans and the way in which he'll meet our needs is just different than how we drew it up in our minds. And it's that line, according to his will. Either way, whether it's how we did it or maybe it's a different way that he's addressing it, we can be assured of his involvement in our lives, that he hears us. He hears our prayers. Paul knew this and lived according to this. So Apostle Paul, he writes, references a couple times in his epistles, a thorn in my side, a thorn in my flesh, this thing that bothered him over and over again in life that he asked God to remove. He said, God, can you just take this away? Some theologians have guessed at what that was. Maybe it was an eye problem. Maybe you couldn't see really well. Some have said it was malaria or migraines, epilepsy, speech disability. He said that he was not the smoothest order. Or maybe it was just another person in life that was a situation that was toxic. He says he pleaded with God for three seasons, three times. He preached the gospel for 30 years in major cities around the Mediterranean. He was shipwrecked, beaten, stoned, imprisoned. He wrote a third of the New Testament. And he prayed three different times, God, can you take this away from me? And I don't think it was just like there was a Tuesday back in that year that I prayed once and then two years later. I think it was like seasons of prayer of something on his heart, and he's just over and over again laying it before God, and then maybe coming to a place of contentment, and then another season of his life, he's like, no, God, please, can you take this away? And Paul, God doesn't take it away. But Paul realized that God's grace is sufficient, and God's power is perfect in our moments of weakness. That's what he says in response to God not answering his prayer. So we pray God help us get that house. Help me get that job. Help me find a partner for life and when they don't happen it may feel like we're not getting what we want. But over time I think we often see that God actually just had something different in store. And we can praise God for that we can thank him maybe it's a relationship that you were really wanting it to work out. But over the years you're thankful it didn't because maybe it led to you meeting your spouse. And you're like you know what God I did pray for that a long time ago thank God you did not answer that prayer. Now I found the person i'm supposed to be with and it's wonderful. Maybe it's a job and you're like God I really want this job and you don't get the job. And you get a different job and come to find out that job would have sucked and it was like God, thank you for sparing me something I thought i wanted. But you knew better. Maybe God's got something different and you just have to trust him and ask for a holy patience in the waiting.

Now sometimes this leads to us asking, why why bother praying if God's got his own plans? Why why pray why do I need to pray at all? Well let me remind you again the purpose of prayer isn't to get God to do our will. The purpose of prayer so we know God so we can doHis will. I want to come back to that Psalm of David if you're still in psalm 13. If not it'll be on the screen. This is how David right he said how long he's pleading with God. He's got all that frustration and then verses five and six. “But I trust in your unfailing love my heart rejoices in your salvation I will sing the Lord's praise for He has been good to me.” I love that! I love David's heart that he can have both emotions, right? He's holding this frustration and this, God, why aren't you doing anything? And the next verse says, but I trust you, God. I trust in your unfailing love. My heart rejoices in your salvation. He hasn't been saved yet. He's still asking God, but he knows that God will do it. In whatever way, in whatever timing, David knows that God will answer that prayer. No matter what happens, we should be able to pray and praise God. You are good and you are deserving of my praise.

Another prayer that teaches us this is the Lord's Prayer. This is how I want to close this morning as the band comes up. I just want to cover, maybe you are familiar with the Lord's Prayer. Maybe it's been a while since you've prayed it. And I think we have it on the screen. And this is it. It says, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. That's just like holy be your, all the reverence to you, God. And this is the line. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That is our prayer. That's the whole idea of us getting on board with God's will. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven is a place where God's will is carried out perfectly, where God is acknowledged as God by everyone, where he has completely His sovereign will is being carried out. And that's what Jesus is saying. We're praying that that would happen here on earth. And we are a part of that happening. So God, help me understand your will. And help me to carry out your will here on earth. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

If you guys have a program, I want you to pull it out right now. And there's a part on there. There's an action step that says, I'm committing to praying the Lord's Prayer every day this week. And I'd love for you to join me, and I'm going to pray that every day this week. I'm going to do it. You guys are welcome to join me. Because if you're struggling with this question, if you're wondering, God, God hasn't answered my prayer, I think instead of leaning away from God, I think it's time to lean into him. And to pray just as he taught us, to ask those questions, to run through those filters. Maybe, God, is there a relationship that's broken? God, are my motives in the right spot? God, do I have faith? Is there something else? Are you going to do something else? And in the midst of it, to trust God in the waiting. So if you would mark that and drop it in the bucket, we would love to know if you're praying that with us and connect with you this week, if you're going to pray the Lord's Prayer every week.

Tough Questions: Part 2

Tough Questions: Part 2 - A Voice From Hell

Luke 16:19-31; 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9; Romans 5:8-9; 2 Peter 3:9

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well, there's an unwritten rule in churches that if you want your church to be happy, to enjoy Sunday, to come back, and to be with us next week, you don't talk about hell, you don't talk about politics, and you don't talk about money. Well, some good news for you this morning. We're going to save politics and money for another Sunday, but we're going to be talking about hell today. Whoo. Sorry, I got some bad news. There is, I would say, kind of a cultural awkwardness around hell, especially this word. Growing up, I wasn't allowed to say that word. I would get in trouble, the old soap in the mouth kind of a thing. I was raised a little old school, but I wasn't allowed to say the word hell, so we replaced it with H-E, double hockey sticks. Anybody else? Yeah? H-E, double hockey sticks. And maybe to date me a little bit, we had physical calculators in school. And if you wanted to, you could type out 7734, flip the calculator upside down, and it would say, hell. We thought we were so cool as kids. Look at that. There were also other words you could type out with numbers and flip it upside down, but we'll save that for another sermon. The word hell gets thrown around a lot today, right? There's some common casual uses of this word. One might be something you could probably say to something. It'd be one of the meanest things to say to them, but you could tell them, you, you could go to hell. Maybe you would hear our society and world to say, ah, this world's just going to hell in a hand-basket, right? Or maybe you're out here driving on 65 or 80. You're trying to go through the past the malls, the worst traffic in Northern California right there. And you get cut off and then you do the WTH finger hands. You're like, what's going on, man? Why are you doing that? Or maybe if you've ever spent any time in the South, you might've heard from time to time, “Ah hell no!”

It's easy to laugh about hell because the topic is weighty it's complicated it's scary and as a child growing up i grew up in the church and uh i had a little bit of a fear of hell i don't remember the church really talking about hell on the regular but i knew it was a bad place It was for bad people. It was hot and I did not want to go there. Absolutely not. And this would come up from time to time when I might have an anxious prayer of God, please don't send me to hell. Please. And it would come up quite often as I would get in trouble. Shocker, I'd get in trouble as a kid, okay? I would pray, God, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to do that. Please don't send me to hell. And we're in a series today called Tough Questions. Pastor Lauren kicked us off last week. And we're going to wrestle with some of these questions today, and one specifically around hell. And I want to give you some scripture and kind of some understanding to help us kind of unpack this topic a little bit. But the big question comes up, and I get asked this a lot as a pastor, and maybe you do as a believer or a Christ follower, that why would a loving God send people to hell? Why would a loving God send people to hell? Because there's some tension here, right? We talk about how God is great, how he's loving. We sing about that this morning. Won't forget all your mercies and your love. Your love is unfailing. Lord, I'm grateful. You're amazing. So we see that, and yet hell involves an eternal fire, this weeping and gnashing of teeth, and it gets stuck because it's like, I hear that, but then we talk about loving. There's just one of these things is not like the other, right? These aren't lining up.

And so I want to talk and kind of address hell today, if that's okay with you guys. Hell is indeed a real place. But if I wasn't sure if hell was a real place, and maybe if I was the devil himself, wow, that sounded really strange there. But if I was the devil and hell is a place, I would try to convince people of this. This would be my strategy. I would try to convince people that hell is not real and doesn't need to be taken seriously. Because if I ended up being successful in that, we could live and you have the mindset that I can live however I want. I can justify all my sin. I can reject Christ with no fear of God. I can live a self-centered life. I can crave comfort. I can reject sacrifice. I can avoid persecution. And I can love this temporary world. sadly this kind of describes culture to a bit right so we're going to talk about hell today and hell is actually a subject that is as very profound and found all throughout scripture and in fact it's interesting that Jesus was the one who who talked the most about hell than anybody else and it's surprising because when we see the life of Jesus we see how loving and caring and compassionate of a person he was. And so a thought for you, I want a key insight, is that when Jesus talked about hell, he never used it as a scare tactic to frighten unbelievers into heaven. If you look at the scripture, what he actually does is he uses hell to motivate believers or the spiritual people of that day to live more holy and obedient lives. I want you to hear anything about hell this morning. This is what I want you to hear, okay? Listen to me right here. Jesus doesn't want anybody to go to hell. He doesn't. Jesus deeply, deeply, deeply does not want anybody to go to hell. And Jesus even has a radical teaching on hell. We read in Matthew chapter five, it says, Jesus says this, if your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. Oh, you say, what? It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. This is an extreme metaphor, guys, okay? Like, could you imagine us following this? Like next week we show up and everybody's wearing an eye patch. Like, oh, you too? Yeah, me too? Okay, cool. Stop the page. Like, this is crazy. But that's how much he doesn't want people to go to hell. Jesus said, get rid of part of your body. Jesus here, he's actually talking about lust of the eyes. He's like, if your eyes are stumbling, Just get rid of it so that you can't even see, so you don't even struggle with that. He wants to remove anything in your life that keeps you from serving God. That's his heart. He wants people to avoid hell at all costs.

Jesus uses a very particular word here for hell in the Greek, or Aramaic when he was speaking to the people, here in this chapter in Matthew chapter 5. he reversed to the word meaning Gehenna. And this is actually an actual place. It's actually the valley of, let me get this right, Ben Hinnom. And it's in the southwest region of Jerusalem. We got a picture I want to show us. And this place has an incredibly dark history. This place was actually a place that began to have its origination centuries before Jesus. So this is a new thing Jesus is talking. He's talking centuries earlier. And what happened in this place is that the evil king Ahaz, sacrificed children to a false god, Molech, by burning them in this place. Can you imagine? We read this in Jeremiah 7:31. They said, “They have built the high places of Topheth in the valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in fire.” You can't believe this. Today, this is actually still a real place and you won't find any homes or businesses or anything in this valley because it is believed to be solely cursed. a place to be completely avoided at all costs, a place cut off from God. Later in life, they had to find a place to put their garbage, and so they chose this location. And they began to fill this valley with their garbage, their human waste, dead animals, sewage, even bodies of executed criminals. And it had a horrendous smell, as you could probably imagine. And there was a smoldering fire in this place that never ceased to burn. A place that gained the nickname, "The land of no more.” No more beauty, no more laughter, peace, friendship, joy, hope, chances. And Jesus' picture of hell here, not just as a basement dungeon in heaven where the bad people go, but a place completely cut off from everything good, cut off from God's presence. And this is our core definition today. So what is heaven? Heaven is defined as the presence of God. And so in turn, hell is defined as the absence of the presence of God. It's a horrible place. the land of no more. So why hell? Why would God even begin to create a place like this? Why does hell exist? Something we have to wrestle with.

And I think there's two reasons, the first of which I think you guys will be on board with, and that is that hell exists for God to righteously punish Satan. Hell exists for God to righteously punish Satan. Satan is the embodiment of all that is evil. Not just a harmless cartoon we might think about, right? Red suit, pitchfork, something that would be very, very not so harsh, right? Maybe we see cartoons or something funny with it. But that's not the reality. The reality is that behind every addiction is Satan. Behind every abuse is Satan. Behind every fear is Satan. Behind pain and shame is the evil one himself. He has titles he used in scripture all throughout the Bible of destroyer, deceiver, dark angel, accuser, tempter, wicked one, thief, father of lies. And his mission is simply this. To steal, to kill, and to destroy. That's all he's about. To steal, to kill, and to destroy. to steal your faith, to kill your joy, to destroy your health or your finances, to steal your marriage, to kill your friendships. This is the father of lies. And hell is a place to punish the embodiment of that evil. It says this in Revelation 20:10, “And the devil who deceived them was thrown in the lake of burning sulfur where the beast and the false prophets had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” In the end, Revelation tells us the end, that Satan is defeated and thrown into this place forever and is tormented day and night. And this punishment sounds just and fair, right? As you would probably agree that this is where the devil should go. For everything that he has done since the beginning of time, this is fair.

The other one is a little bit harder to walk through and this next verse i want to share with you is is really hard because it's really not what we like we don't want to hear this and especially in our culture today we don't like about it when someone talks about something called sin i don't want to talk about it but this word sin is actually a greek word “hamartia” which means missing the mark. It's actually an archery term. That means that you do not get a bullseye. Anything outside of a bullseye is not God's will. It's not God's best. And doing something that is not God's will, his best plan, wrong in the eyes of him, is sin. And our culture doesn't like that word. Culture prefers to have maybe a view of God that would kind of turn a blind eye to something, right? Be like, okay, I know you're doing that, but I just don't, just don't let me see it. As long as you're not hurting anybody, like, that's fine. Or a view of God that was just like, hey, I saw that. Wink, wink. Hey, don't do that again. Don't do it. But as long as we're not hurting anybody, right? Sin's not that big of a deal, right? It's okay. You do you. You do you. I'm going to do me. We'll not talk about it. Just let it be. But the truth of the matter is that Scripture says that there is a standard to life. And that's holiness. And when we don't hit the mark, it's called sin. The truth is God is a holy, perfect God. Therefore, he must be just. and wickedness and evil must be punished. And you feel and understand this when someone does something wrong to you. You think and say, that needs to be punished. There should be a consequence for their action. And you agree with this.

And so for reason one, hell exists for God to righteously punish Satan, but hell also exists for God to righteously punish evil. And for those who have sinned without Christ, this is the destiny. Paul tells us this very clear, but there is hope in the gospel, okay? Don't go downer on me, just stay with me here. It says this, 2 Thessalonians chapter one, says, “He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut up from the presence of the Lord and from the glories of his might.” So what is hell? Hell is being shut out from the presence of God and his glory. Man, Chris, that sounds harsh. Yeah. It is. It's painful. It's not fun. I don't like to talk about this. You know me. I've never preached a sermon on hell. This is the first time in my ministry career I've ever preached a sermon directly on hell. I don't like to talk about it. There's no joy in it. But if we don't accept the reality of hell, we will never appreciate the depth of God's goodness and grace. Because he is good. God is good.

I want to tell you guys a story. Jesus told this story first. and it's about two guys. And this is the title of today. If you're taking notes, I think it's on your program. But the title is of the story is A Voice from Hell. And Jesus says this in Luke chapter 16. He says, “There is a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every single day.” So here's character number one in the story. This rich man. This rich man, based upon this description we just had in this short verse, was most likely royalty. He was the rich of the rich. And how do we know that? We know that when he says he was dressed in purple. Purple was the most expensive dye in the first century. And only the richest of the richest of the richest could even afford to purchase the dye to have their clothes stained that color. And when they would walk around, you would immediately recognize, that guy's loaded. But you would also know and see that it talks about he was dressed in fine linen. Linen was the creme de la creme of fabric in that time. And that it was said that a single outfit of linen would equal the wages to feed a person for an entire year. So not only is this guy rich, he's wearing the linen, He's also loaded because he stained it purple and he's living in luxury every single day. This is how rich this dude was. We're probably talking equivalent billions dollars equivalent, okay? Jesus continues on, verse 20. “At his gate, the rich man's gate, there was a beggar named Lazarus.” Now this isn't the same Lazarus that Jesus raised from the dead. He's a different bro, but Lazarus. "He was covered in sores, longing to eat from what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.”

Here's character number two, Lazarus. Poor dude's had a rough life. He's had it handed to him. We don't know the history or the story, the background, or anything more than behind this. But he's just outside just trying to survive. He's just trying to make it, not even day to day, he's just trying to make it hour by hour. The guy's got some sort of disease that's got sores on his body. He's sleeping on the streets. He's outside this beggar's house, just hoping that something would get thrown out to him. And in that culture and time, people would eat with their hands. And so after a meal, their hands would be great, messy and nasty. And so they would take bread and actually clean their hands with the bread. And then they would gather up the bread that had fallen on the table and on the floor. The servants of the house would then just go outside and throw it outside the gate. And the dogs, the ravaging dogs of the city would run around cleaning up that food. And so Lazarus is out front of this rich man's gate trying to compete with dogs for scraps of bread that had been wiped on the rich man's hands. Let's just say Lazarus probably had some better days in life than when he is right here now. He's starving. He's living among the dogs. And the dog's even to a point licking his source.

Jesus continues on, verse 22. “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried.” So both of the bros die. Don't know the context, but they're both dead. Lazarus, the beggar, he's carried by angels to Abraham's side, which we understand as heaven or a place of comfort finally for him. But the rich man, he dies and he goes to Hades. Scripture says this in verse 23. “In Hades, where he was, the rich man was in torment. He looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.” He recognizes the beggar. So he called to him, The rich man goes to Hades. Hades was known as this place of the dead, a place of punishment. And he's in torment. You can read here. He's in agony. And he cries out, hurting, asking for just a little tiny bit of relief. I don't know about you, if you've ever been just thirsty as all get out, a little drip, you might as well have not given me anything. But that's how desperate this rich man is, just for something. And he's begging for a drop of water. He continues on. Jesus, He says, the rich man says this, “Then I beg you, father, the rich man, send Lazarus to my family for I have five brothers. Let him warn them so that they do not also come to this place of torment.” The rich man is begging Abraham to send Lazarus back to his family, to his brothers, to warn them so they don't end up in the same place as he did. And this is the story. This is what Jesus teaches us.

I see four different kind of thoughts or images I want to pull out from that scripture for us this morning. The first of which is that the rich man was fully conscious and aware. This is scary. He had memory. he remembered the rich man. He remembered his family. He felt pain. He was in agony. He was hurting. And he was full of regrets for his life. Number two, his eternity was irrevocably fixed. It was too late for him. He knew it. There was no more chances, no more do-overs, no more, oh, wow, this is scary, God. Let me try life again. The land of no more. forevermore. Three, he knew his suffering was just. How do we know that, Chris? Well, we knew his suffering was just because he complained about the pain, but never about the injustice. You catch that? He said, this place is horrible. Please help me. But he never said, this is unfair. Send me back. I deserve to be in heaven. He never says that. and finally he begged and pleaded for someone to help his brothers come to know Jesus he begged he pleaded for someone to go tell his brothers about Jesus so that would be saved so that they wouldn't all end up in the same place someone go tell them he's crying out tell them about god's grace his goodness his forgiveness his mercy Jesus doesn't want anybody to suffer like this he doesn't so if i were the deceiver the destroyer the prince of darkness the evil one i would try everything that i could to convince every single person that hell is not that big of a deal don't take it seriously these are fairy tales it's not a real place so that you could then live your life any way that you wanted justify your sinfulness reject christ live a life of no fear live a life ridiculously self-centered reject sacrifice avoid persecution love this world all there is it it's like so many people today but when Jesus talked about hell. It wasn't to scare people to heaven. It was used to motivate people to act like the believers that they are.

And a lot of people will still say, hey, it's not fair that good people go to hell. Pastor Lauren talked about this last week. We need to talk about it again right now, Okay? It's not fair. It's not fair to send good people to hell. Here's the reality. In your purest essence as a person, none of us, including me, are perfectly good. It says in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned.” How many is all? All. “And fall short of the glory of God.” Nah, pastor. Mm-mm, mm-mm. Not falling for your tricks. I know my heart. My heart's good. All right? I'll ask you some questions. A little back and forth interaction, okay?

I want you to raise your hand. I'll be the first person to raise my hand. Have you ever lied? Raise your hand if you've ever lied. I've lied. Okay? I've lied. If you're sitting next to somebody right now who doesn't have their hand up. Uh-huh. Yeah. Hey. Liar, liar. Pants on fire. hang on a telephone wire 7734, upside down okay, okay, okay, okay raise your hand I will raise my hand again first if you have ever stolen anything pastor's stolen before? yes, he has story for another day, it's actually really funny I'll tell you someday, okay I was a kid, I didn't know about it no, no, just kidding, but I still stole, okay okay, so I got one more for you do not raise your hand, okay keep your hand down on this one but uh raise your eyebrows at me okay okay all right have you ever lusted have you ever yeah don't look at the person next to you i'm not starting anything in church right now okay save it for the ride home i'm just kidding okay so we think about that but here's You think, oh, I've never done it. Jesus and his teaching equates, if you have lusted, it's as if you've committed adultery in your heart. Whoa. So, we all are lying, thieving adulterers in the eyes of God. Yikes! Welcome to Spring Valley Church. We're so glad that you're here with us. We want to be a loving, welcoming church with no judgment. We want you to be here encouraged today.

You are not good. So you can't say, why would God send good people to hell? We're not good. It's the reality. We're not. But God is. God is good. God is holy. God is just. And so because of that, he must punish sin. I'll say it again. God is holy and just. He must punish sin. But here's the good news. Good news. You guys held on to good news. I love this. God is not only just, but he is also love. God is love. It's not just what he does. God just doesn't have an action of love. It's actually a character of who he is at his core. It says this in Romans 5:8, “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” Still sinners. Continue John verse nine, and since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God's condemnation. For all of us, we are not saved by our own works, our own righteousness. We don't have any. We are saved by the grace of Jesus and the blood of Christ. And that, therefore, there is no condemnation. Guys, this is something to be excited about. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And because of the death of Jesus, he paid the full price for our sins. He satisfied the requirement of God's justice. He displayed his grace. He shows his unquenchable love. That is who Jesus is. That's who Jesus is. He doesn't want anybody to perish or go to hell. Who did Jesus come for? Jesus came for sinners, not the righteous. He came for the sick, not the healthy. He came for to give us and present to us a brokenness to be redeemed from, to be freed from our lies and our lust and our cheating and our envy to bring death to our sins and to give life to our now.

2 Peter talks about this. I love this. This is such a great scripture. 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient. I love that Patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” He's patient Maybe you're here and you're like, I don't know why I'm here I don't know why this God thing, this Jesus He's waiting on you He's drawing you to him You being here this Sunday, this moment right now In that seat, ain't no accident or coincidence He wants you to know this He's drawing you to him He's sending people your way. God is patient, not wanting anybody to perish, but everyone to come to repentance in him.

A loving God doesn't want to send us to hell. In fact, he sent Jesus to save us from hell. This is the mission of Jesus. The enemy mission, kill, steal, destroy, end you, put you down, pull out anything good from your life. Jesus, the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, the Lamb, the Lion, the Judah, the Alpha, Omega, the Beginning and the King of Kings, everything he is, he came to give us life, to give us joy, to give us peace, to give us hope, to give us mercy. This is who Jesus is. This is why he came. And I want you to know everything within me wants you to know him. That's what I want. I want you to know him. He's amazing. And believe it or not, there was a time when I didn't know Jesus. I thought all pastors were born perfect. No. No. there was time in life where I had to choose Jesus. And I would put him on like a mask and I'd wear him around church and I'd go to school and I'd be around friends and I would take the mask off. Depending on where I was, there was a different mask that I was putting on and it was getting exhausting. It was so hard. And the harder I tried to be like God wanted me to be, the worse I got. And it was exhausting. He smacked me across the face one day in his loving grace that he is. He said, Chris, what are you gonna do? bro, you in or you out? And I said, well, I said, I like when I'm in church. I'm around good people. I like that. I don't like this other Chris. I'm hiding it and I'm playing this game and it just, it's exhausting. Jesus came to me in that moment. in my lies and in my hiding and in my sin and my gunk and my in life.

And he loved me. And he loves you just the way you are. There's no prerequisite. We just read a scripture that said, while we were still sinners, he died for us. He's already paid it. He has life for you. so so Jesus coming and dying on the cross is way more than just for us to avoid hell Jesus dying on the cross isn't fire insurance it isn't a get out of jail free card he wants to give us an eternal life he wants to give us abundant life now here in this moment to bring the presence of God into your life. He wants you to experience that, to give you a peace that scripture says passes all understanding, that people around you aren't gonna know. Like, what? That doesn't make any sense. You're like, yeah, I know. Doesn't either for me. A grace that covers our repeated failing and screw-ups time and time again in our sin. Because those are who in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation, friends. There's none. There's no levels to heaven. While you lived a Christian for these many years, you get this mansion. But, oh, you're a latecomer? you got the apartment down around the corner on the bottom floor oh you accepted him on your deathbed yeah you're a four-story walk-up no love what it says that Jesus tells the story of of of a farmer who hires people throughout the day to work and some show up at sunrise and work all day some show up at noon some show up in the afternoon and some show up just at the and help the guys put the bushels into the cart. You know what? Every single one of them was paid a full days wage. You know, the ones who had the most stink about it were the ones that were there at dawn. And Jesus is like, that's just how my love works.

So when you start taking heaven, the presence of God, and hell, the absence of God seriously, it changes how we live our lives today. You no longer live for the temporary world. You live for God in heaven forever. You live for his glory because the devil wants to take everything from you, to kill, to destroy, to steal, everything in your life. But Jesus wants to give you not just your life back, but an abundant life. That is greater than anything we could dream or imagine. But it takes a full surrender. It takes full trust for Jesus to come in and bring the freedom and to remove the worry about eternity. And he strengthens us up for this life. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Father, we thank you for your word. God, as we come before you right now in prayer, God, I thank you for this sermon. That is a hard thing to pray. God, but I thank you for the opportunity today for us to be reminded, or maybe here for the first time, about a God who loves us. Not a God that we think we know that would send good people to hell, God, but a good God who sent Jesus to save us from hell.

And so God, right now, I don't wanna be scaring people. I mean, this is the reality of where we're at, but I think I would be remiss, God, if I didn't give an opportunity for people to choose you and say yes to you for the very first time today, Jesus. And so God, as you stir hearts, as you pull people to you, as you draw people to you right now in this moment, maybe you would say, yeah, Chris, you know, I want this Jesus. I want this life. I want this hope. I want this grace, this joy. I need this. You said something about a peace. That doesn't make any sense. God, I need some peace in my life right now. And so maybe for the first time, you would say, yeah, Chris, I want Jesus for the very first time. I want him in my life. If that's you, just look up at me. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Jesus. And so I would encourage you, I'm going to put a prayer on screen. It's really simple. There's nothing magic about this prayer. It's just a prayer that reminds us of who Jesus is and you calling out to him for forgiveness and safety and life. And so if you would, if you're one, they want to pray that prayer, I'm going to read it out loud. You just pray it in your heart and accept Jesus and accept this grace and this mercy today. It says, it says, Father in heaven, I know that I've lived for myself instead of you. I've sinned against you. But I believe that Jesus died for my sin. So I confess my sin and I ask you to forgive me. I bow to you as Lord and leader of my life. Help me to live from this day forward. In Jesus' name.

As we continue to pray, God, I want to also think of those who have maybe made this decision sometime in their life ago. Maybe it was recent, maybe it was a long time ago, but you've been wrestling with some stuff. Maybe God's been calling you out throughout the sermon or recently of some things in your life that just aren't the way that God wants them to be. You're missing the mark in life. You're sinning. And so I just want to give the opportunity, I'd love this week to intentionally pray for you. And so if that's you, if you would say, hey, pastor, I just need some prayer. I'm fighting some stuff right now. I know I'm not going to hell. I have Jesus, but this life right now, it's just a fight. If that's you, just look up at me. I want to be praying for you this week. Thank you. I need your prayers. I'm fighting. I'm going through it. So Jesus, I thank you for this day. God, I thank you for hard sermons to preach through. But God, I see these as necessary. And so do you. You didn't shy away from this topic of hell when you were here on earth teaching and healing and drawing people to you without ultimately the reason you came, Jesus. And so God, we thank you for this day. We thank you for another Sunday to worship you, to give you praise and glory. And everybody said, Amen.

Tough Questions: Part 1

Tough Questions: Part 1 - Why Did God Let It Happen?

Psalm 73:11-26; Philippians 2:6-8; Deuteronomy 38:8; JOHN 3:16

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Welcome. Happy to be worshiping with you all this morning. I'm excited. We are kicking off a new series, as Pastor Andre said, tough questions, honest answers. And we are going to hit some pretty tough questions. I know the questions that are coming, and I know what we're talking about today, and we're going to hit some hard ones. But I'm excited for it because I think that dealing with these questions will actually help our faith grow deeper. I think a lot of times we approach these questions with some fear or some worry that maybe we don't know how to answer these questions. We don't know where to get the answers. Maybe we just, ignorance is bliss. We would just rather not know the answer and just kind of go along with life. Maybe we've tried to find answers, and in the past we have talked to leadership in churches or fellow believers and we haven't gotten really good answers. They haven't satisfied the question. Or maybe they haven't, you just knew that something wasn't right. They weren't biblically sound. They weren't theologically sound. Perhaps you even maybe avoided the questions because you're afraid of the answer. Maybe you just aren't really sure that you want to know the answer to this question because it could impact the way you live. It could impact the decisions that you make. It could challenge some of beliefs. And so it's just easier to not address the questions. Maybe you're like me. I was perfectly, just to be honest, I was a little nervous when I saw that we were doing this series. I'm like, wait, we have to answer these questions? Like that's what we're doing? Because I, for those of you that don't know, I'm not great at confrontation. I get nervous. I don't love that. I can think of a really great response in about three to five business days. But in the moment, I'm not great at it. I just, part of it too is I think that I feel like the confrontation is threatening our relationship. And so I get nervous.

And what I realized in preparing for this is that some of these questions feel like they are threatening our faith. That if we are like, well, if I don't have these answers or if I'm not sure what these answers are, If I'm asking these questions and I don't know, then maybe it's threatening my faith. And I'm telling you, it is not. Pastor Chris set us up great last week with our Easter service and talking about doubt and how Thomas doubted and how doubt was not the problem. It's what we do with the doubt. It's taking those questions to Jesus. It's asking him for help. It's being like the father who had the demon-possessed son that said, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. That's what we do with these questions and with this doubt. So some of the questions we're going to hit on, does God love me? Why didn't God answer my prayers? And the one we're going to focus on today is why did God let it happen? There's an old church tradition where I say God is good and you say all the time. And then I say all the time and you say God is good. So we're going to try, okay? Right? God is good all the time. Okay. It was fine. It was all right. But we're going to do it again, okay? God is good all the time. There you go. Much better. All right.

Well, we say this. We say God is good all the time. But do we actually believe it? Do we actually believe that God is good all the time? Or maybe a more specific question is, do we believe God is good to me? I think a lot of us can think God is good. He's good to other people, but he's not always good to me. So the question that we got to look at is, do we believe that God is good? And if he is still good, why does he let bad things happen? Do we believe that he is still good when we lose the job? When a loved one dies? When we have financial stress, relationship issues, children struggling, do we still believe that he's good? What about bigger than that, like nationwide issues or global problems, wars, famine, children starving, political turmoil? Do we still believe that God is good? And is he good? If he is good, why does he allow suffering? Why does he allow bad things to happen? This is an important question that I think we really need to wrestle with. 300 years before Jesus was even born, there was a Greek philosopher named Epicurus, and he was asking some of these questions, and he came to a few conclusions. He said, if God is not able to prevent evil, then he's not all-powerful. If God is not willing to prevent evil, then he's not all good. If God is both willing and able to prevent evil, then why does evil exist? So today we're talking about the problem of evil and suffering, but really it comes down to what we believe about God. The problem of evil and suffering is not new. I mean, Epicurus lived 300 years before Jesus, and we can go even further back, back to the garden. When sin entered the world, the problem of suffering and evil existed. And many have tried to reason with it, figure it out, understand it, reconcile it with who God is. And it's a tough thing to wrap our mind around. But ultimately, it comes down to what we believe about God and his character. See, I think a lot of times we struggle with that. we struggle with God's character and suffering because we think it's contrary. But evil and suffering is not contrary to the story of the Bible. Evil and suffering is actually central to the story. Once sin entered the world, the overarching story of creation or of redemption involves suffering, involves evil. We would have nothing to be redeemed from if there wasn't evil and suffering in the world.

So Christianity, our faith, actually makes sense of, gives meaning to, and offers a solution for the evil and suffering we experience. I'll say that again. Christianity makes sense of, gives meaning to, and offers a solution for the evil and suffering we experience. The Bible doesn't avoid the topic of pain and suffering, so we shouldn't either. It actually addresses it in a variety of ways. We can look at many different examples. You think of Jeremiah, who was known as the weeping prophet. And he cried out to God, questioning why there was so much suffering. But it was because of the unrepentant hearts of the Israelites. You have King David. He was a king. He was loved. He was known as a man after God's own heart. And he wrote many of the Psalms, much of which were prayers crying out to God, asking, why? Where are you? Be my refuge. Be my strength, be my shelter. But why is this happening? We look in the New Testament. We just celebrated Easter that we talked about with Holy Week. Jesus is suffering. He understood suffering. He died for us. Paul, who wrote much of the New Testament, experienced immense suffering throughout his ministry. Both suffering at the hands of Romans and at the hands of Jewish leaders. but he also talks about a thorn in his flesh that he asked the Lord to take away from him, and the Lord said no. We don't know specifically what that is, but we know it caused him to suffer, and yet these people time and time again, person after person, experience after experience, suffered, and yet they stayed true to who God was. They followed him. They continued to trust him. Why is that? Why were they able to do that? Well, we see another instance of a person who was struggling with these questions.

We're going to be in Psalm 73 today. If you want to go ahead and turn there, it'll be on the screen, so you can look there in your Bible as well. We're going to be talking about Asaph. Asaph was a poet. He was a worship leader in the tabernacle for the Israelites. And he and his sons wrote many of the Psalms, including Psalm 73. In this passage, Asaph is talking about the arrogant, the arrogant people, the wicked people. And he says that he even envied them. Earlier in the passage, he said that he envied them because of their lives, that they could just kind of live however they want, do whatever they want, and yet they didn't have the consequences that he was dealing with. They didn't suffer the way he did. So we're going to pick up in verse 11, Psalm 73, 11. It says, “They, the wicked, say, How would God know? Does the Most High know anything? This is what the wicked are like, always free of care. They go on amassing wealth. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been afflicted and every morning brings new punishments.” Our buddy Asaph here is having a little bit of a pity party, but I don't really blame him because we've all been there too. Right? In his defense, we've felt these feelings as well. We've questioned why is this happening? Why does their life seem fine, but all this bad stuff keeps happening to me? Why, God? Why is this happening? Maybe we're even trying to live rightly. We're trying to do what's right, follow the word, go to church, do the right things, and yet bad things still happen. Maybe it's the diagnosis that we weren't expecting. Kids making poor choices. A fight with our spouse, another bill coming through. It just feels like it doesn't stop. But if we're honest, I think many of us are asking, why does God allow bad things to happen to a good person like me? I think we're really, that's what we want to know. And we're going to come back to that question, so hold on to that. But first we have to answer the other question. If God is loving, why would he allow suffering? If we say God is good all the time and we believe that he is loving, he is good, why would he allow suffering? Well, it was out of his love for us that he gave us a choice. He gave us the choice to love him in return or to reject him.

But here's the thing. If love is a choice, suffering is a possibility. We can look at this issue of suffering and evil from a variety of different angles. We can look at it theologically. We can look at it emotionally. But God also gave us a brain. So we're going to look at it logically. Because there is a logical explanation here for this. Logically speaking, the only way to truly love someone is to have the choice to do it. If someone locked you in a basement and said, I will only give you food and water if you love me, what are you going to do? You're going to say I love you. Do you actually love that person? Absolutely not. But you want your food and water. You don't have a choice, so it's not actual love. God wanted a relationship with his creation. He wanted a relationship with his people. And so he had to give us the choice. He didn't want robots. He didn't want a pet rock collection. He wanted people to be in relationship with him. So he gave us the choice. It's called free will. He gave us the free will to choose love, to choose to love him, or to reject him. But in giving us this choice, it made loving God possible, but it also made choosing evil possible as well. so in order to have the freedom to choose we also had to be given the freedom to reject him to choose evil and honestly there are times when we will we will sin we will make poor choices and it will always lead to suffering so if we say we want God to remove all suffering and evil we if we say if you're good you would get rid of it all, well then he would have to remove our choice. He would have to take away our free will. And to be sure, he is powerful enough to do that. We believe he is all powerful, so he could. But he wants a relationship with us and he wants us to be able to choose him, so he's not going to remove that free will from us. Because the only two options to get rid of sin and suffering is to remove our free will or to wipe us out completely. Neither of those options seem great to me. We have the choice to love him, but that just, it comes at the risk of suffering. It comes knowing that we could cause suffering because we have the choice. We also often think that suffering is a lack of God's love. We think, okay, if God is loving, why is there suffering? But we just associate that with a lack of love, that he couldn't possibly be loving if we suffer. But we see this played out daily in our lives.

See, suffering isn't evidence of a lack of love. It actually can be proof of it. It's not evidence that he is not a loving God if we suffer. As parents, we discipline our children, not because we want to cause them suffering, but because we want to correct the behavior. We don't enjoy seeing them hurt or suffering the consequences of their actions. But if we love Jesus and we want to disciple them towards Jesus, we're going to allow those consequences to play out. We're going to help point them to Jesus. We're going to allow that suffering to happen because we love them. A couple of years ago, I got a piece of glass stuck in my foot. And I was very hopeful that it was going to work itself out. It did not. And after a couple months, I finally was able to get surgery scheduled in order to get this glass out of my foot. And about a week before surgery, it actually got infected. And I was very grateful that I had surgery scheduled because it was so painful. I could not walk on it. I couldn't touch it. It was just excruciating pain. And so I go and I go to have my surgery. But the reality of surgery is the doctor has to cut you open. He has to create a wound in order to bring healing. now that might feel a little backwards but that's the only way to go through it you have to suffer a little bit in order for the healing to come well after surgery he came up to me and he said you know I was not very confident I was going to be able to find this piece of glass because it was very tiny he said but the infection had created a pocket around it and I was able to see exactly where the glass was and pull the whole thing out. So my pain, my suffering for that week leading up to surgery where I could not even walk on my foot, I got to see the good of it. I got to see the purpose in that pain, that it actually made my healing more successful.

Now, we don't always have the good and the luxury of getting to see that play out like that, but I had to experience this pain in order to get to the healing. You see this in things like physical therapy. You know, you got to regain your strength and your movement. You see it in setting broken bones. If you don't set a broken bone, it will not heal properly and you will have many more issues down the road. Maybe even things like reprimands at work. Those are never fun, usually pretty awkward, but it helps you push you in the right direction, gets you going where you need to go. Maybe even like going through therapy or counseling, oh, those conversations can hurt. Bringing up old trauma, old wounds. But when we do it, it allows us to process through it to bring healing. All of these things, all of this suffering and pain is actually necessary. And in fact, it would be unloving to not address those issues. It would have been unloving for my surgeon to look at me and say, you know what, I'm to have to cause a wound to get the glass out, so we're just going to leave it there. That would be a bit unloving. It would be unloving as a parent to not correct my children's behavior. Because like a parent or a physical therapist or surgeon, God knows that good can come from our suffering. He loves us enough to allow the suffering to exist and then bring good from it.

Romans 8:28 says, “We know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” He is so good to use our suffering for our good and for his glory. So we understand why God allows suffering in general, because it has to be allowed if we're going to have free will. But back to our other question. Why do bad things happen to good people? Because that's really what we want to know, right? That's what Asaph was asking. In Psalm 73, we want to know why does God allow good things to happen or bad things to happen to good people like me? The answer here is pretty simple. We're not good. None of us are good.

Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” All have sinned. How many is all? How many is all? All of them. Every single one of us. All have sinned. None of us have met the standard. We've all missed the mark. Pastor and theologian R.C. Sproul Jr. said, “Why do bad things happen to good people? That only happened to one person and he volunteered.” Jesus was the only one who lived a perfect life. He was the only good person who didn't deserve to suffer and yet he suffered for us on our behalf. Philippians 2 talks about Jesus' suffering. It says, “Who, being in very nature of God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.”

So not only did Jesus willingly give up the glory of heaven for a time, That was suffering already. But then he came in human likeness and had to put up with all this humanness, more suffering. But then he died the most excruciating, gruesome death on our behalf. If the God of the universe in human form, who was perfect and good, suffered, why do we think we're exempt? He was misunderstood. He was hated, betrayed, beaten, tortured, hung on a cross for us. He suffered. He literally cried out to God, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He gets it. He gets our suffering. But he's the only one who was truly good. So why do bad things happen to good people? They don't. they only happen to broken people. Not since Jesus. They only happen to sinners and broken people like us. So then we go back to our original question. Why does God allow suffering? Unfortunately, there is some mystery to this question. And I can't answer this question for every individual situation. We don't know. We don't always get to know why we suffer specific things or certain circumstances.

But I do know this. God allows suffering, but not because he doesn't love you. John 3:16. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” He loves you so much he literally sent his son to suffer and die for you. I also know that he doesn't or he allows suffering but not because he's abandoned you Deuteronomy 38 8 the Lord himself goes before you and will be with you he will never leave you nor forsake you do not be afraid do not be discouraged so why was he willing to allow his son to come and suffer why is he able to promise that he will never leave us or forsake us, it's because he knows something better is coming. Even though we suffer here on this earth, he knows that something better is coming. I've heard it said before, I think I've even said it up here, if it's not good, God's not done. If some circumstances your life is not good, God's not done. Now here's the thing, that could just literally mean heaven, that it's not good until we get to heaven. There are going to be times when issues are resolved and things, suffering ends, those seasons end, and there is goodness here and now. But we also know heaven is coming. The Bible says we will suffer. Jesus says it himself. I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world. We know the end of the story. We know what's coming. There will be a day when those of us who have chosen to use our free will to love Jesus will get to meet him face to face in eternity. That we will be in eternal glory with him. And we get to live with that hope of heaven right now. Revelation 21:4 says, “He will wipe away 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.”

Something better is coming. No more pain or abuse or trauma or tragedy or addiction. Something better is coming. Unfortunately, we're not there yet. at any given moment we could enter another season of suffering something could happen we don't live in fear because of it but we we just know that that is just part of being human it doesn't seem fair it doesn't seem right we don't always have the luxury of of of hindsight and knowing why they're what the purpose of our pain is or why something happened I still have plenty of questions for the Lord. But we know that in all of it, God is still good.

Back to our friend Asaph in Psalm 73. He struggled through these tough ideas. He asked, am I keeping my heart pure for nothing? Is this all for naught? Am I trying to be good for no reason? Because everybody out there who's just living their own life, doing whatever they want, doesn't seem to be suffering. But then we get to verse 16. When I tried to understand all this, it troubled me deeply till I entered the sanctuary of God. Then I understood their final destiny. Jumping down to verse 25. Whom have I in heaven but you? and earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Asaph didn't understand until he entered the sanctuary of God. When he entered the presence of God, that's when he got clarity. Friends, in the presence of God, there is peace. Even in the midst of our suffering, he was able to understand what truly happens to the wicked god made that clear to him that in the end there will they will have suffering too but more than that he was able to understand who god is that he is his Asaph’s strength he is Asaph’s portion and he is that for us too nothing in this world no amount of good things and no lack of suffering could satisfy us like God can. Nothing can satisfy us like God can. And when we go into his presence, when we seek him, when we read his word, when we pray, we find peace. Even in the middle of our trials, even in the middle of our suffering. Our flesh and our hearts, they will fail. They will because we're human and we often choose the evil thing. We choose sin. We choose the wrong way. We will suffer either at our own hands or the hands of others. But God is our portion. In his presence, there is peace.

I encourage you to memorize verse 26 this week. I'll read it again. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. We actually have a little option on the program on the Connect card to check that you're going to memorize it this week. We'll just all memorize it together because I think it's really important, especially when we're going through suffering, to be able to recall God's faithfulness, to remember how he has been faithful in the past, how he has brought us through our suffering. So if you would memorize this with us this week, check that box and you can drop it in the back with the ushers on your way out so we can pray for you as you're doing that. But when you are experiencing suffering, it allows you to call this scripture to mind in order to walk in that faith. It deepens your faith so that you know that he is with you. He is your portion and your strength, even during your suffering.

So again, these are big questions. The problem of sin and suffering of evil in the world, it's a hard one. But it's not contrary to the Bible or even to God's character. It doesn't count him out. It is central to the Bible and the story of redemption that he has written for us. Our faith in Jesus, our Christianity, it gives meaning to the suffering. It brings purpose to the pain, and it actually offers us a solution as we walk through suffering that we will face. He is a good God who loves us. And so if you are hurting right now, if you are experiencing suffering in some way, physical, mental, emotional, relational, whatever that may look like, Maybe you are just one of us living in a broken world, wondering where God is in all of this. I want you to know this. I need you to know that God is still good and he loves you. He is right there with you and he will never leave you. He understands because he suffered too. And in his presence there is peace. As Christians, we are living in the now and not yet. We have Jesus now. We have been saved. We have been redeemed. We have the hope of eternity, but we're not there yet. Something better is coming.

Let's pray. God, we just thank you for who you are. We thank you that you are good, that you are good on your promises, that despite our suffering, you don't change. You stay the same. We praise you that you are always with us, even in our suffering, in our struggles, in our trials. God, help us to remember how you have been faithful in the past and trust you that you will continue to be faithful going forward. Give us strength when things don't make sense. Help us not to be afraid of these tough questions, but bring them to you, bring them to your word. Seek out answers so that we can grow our roots deeper in you. That we can walk more confidently in our faith and in who you are. We love you, God. We praise you and thank you. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Jonah - Part 5

Jonah - Part 4

Jonah - Part 3

Jonah - Part 2

Jonah - Part 1