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“Why Do Things Seem So Bad If God Really Cares?” 4rh in the series:“Tell Me Why? Answering Life’s Biggest Questions;”Selected verses from Romans 8; 11/15/09
(Adapted in part from a sermon series by Pastor Jud Wilhite)
Scripture Introduction: Of all the questions we are answering in this series, “Tell Me Why? Answering Life’s Biggest Questions,”today’s question, “Why Do Things Seem So Bad if God Really Cares,” is the deepest one we are considering. So often, when we ask the question, “Why,” we are asking it from our gut. We are asking from somewhere deep inside us. Phillip Yancey says that every time we ask the question, “Why,” we are really asking three questions. We are asking, “God, are you there?” “Do you care?” “Can you do anything about it?” It’s a very important question for us to consider.
So, let’s turn to the Bible, which we found to be trustworthy last week, to begin to look for some insight this morning. As you are able, please, stand for the reading of the scripture, selected verses from Romans 8:
“28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. (NRSV)
29 God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. 30 After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun. (Msg)
31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?
35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (NRSV)
Let us pray: Lord, open our hearts and minds as we search your word to find you in the midst of our suffering this morning. Amen.
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Introduction: I think I might have shared with you before that part of my morning routine involves doing the two crosswords puzzles in The Enquirer. I time myself and try to do both in less time than they give you to do the basic crossword. My best time so far for a week was to be 33 minutes quicker than the time allotted. That according to my children makes me an official old fogy.
One thing I do not do is the sudoku puzzle…I can not make sense of the patterns…it just doesn’t come together for me. In the same way, there are some times in life when it all doesn’t make sense for us and we are left fractured and shaken. It could be the phone call that every parent dreads that comes in the middle of the night about something that’s happened to one of your children. It could be a spouse who sits down with you and says, “I’m done. The relationship is over. I’m leaving.” It could be when you find yourself on the phone with your doctor and you hear the word, “cancer”. It could be any number of things. Our world gets all shaken up. Sometimes in life we can make some sense out of our world, but other times, no matter how hard we look, we can’t understand what is going on. We look, and we look and say, “God what are you up to?”
C.S. Lewis was a profound Christian thinker and writer the first half of the 1900’s in England. He was a Cambridge Professor of Literature, known for such classics as The Chronicles of Narnia and Mere Christianity. He also wrote a book that’s become a classic called The Problem of Pain. This book deals with all the different issues related to pain. He deals with questions like, “How can God be all-powerful and loving, and yet suffering still exist in the world.” It unpacks all of these issues.
After he wrote that book, C.S. Lewis met and fell in love with a young American woman named, Joy Davidson. He actually took her hand officially in marriage in a hospital room as she lay on a hospital bed potentially within weeks of dying of cancer. Amazingly after they were wed, hercancer went into remission. For several years their love blossomed and grew. Then the cancer came back and ferociously. C.S. Lewis begged God not to let his wife die. He begged Joy not to leave him, yet she passed away from cancer.
He was devastated. He journaled his thoughts in a book called A Grief Observed, which was later made into the play and the movie, Shadowlands. The book is so raw that he was afraid to publish it in his own name. It tells of his grief and his pain as he poured it out day in and day out trying to deal with his loss. He writes that there were some mornings when he woke up without the motivation to shave much less get out of bed. He just wanted to die. He writes about other times as he cries out to God, and God doesn’t seem to be there. At one point he says, “Where is God in all this? Go to him when your need is desperate and all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face and the sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that; silence.”
Now, Lewis would go on to find hope in God. Yet at this particular phase in his life, in the middle of his grief, all the things he had written about the problem of pain didn’t matter. We can rationalize and theologize about pain all day long. But, it’s all different when it’s my pain, my spouse’s, my child’s; when it’s my marriage, my health – everything goes to a whole new level. And so, as we come to this question this morning, I want to be the first to tell you that I certainly don’t have all the answers. When a seemingly senseless tragedy strikes someone I love, my immediate reaction is the same as yours, “Why did this happen?”
Some of you may be here and you may be in a painful situation. You may be hurting emotionally, physically or psychologically. I really wish I could bottle up all of your pain and take it away. Then we could all go home. But, I can’t do that. You can’t do that. What I want to look at this morning is how we can survive in a seemingly senseless messed up world, realizing that even though we may change through our encounter with God and God’s word this morning, we are going right back out those doors into a messed up world. How do we survive in this messed up world?
I. Paul in Romans 8 gives us a survivor’s, no a victor’s model, for hanging on with God in a messed up world.
A. Believe that God is not finished: Paul first challenges us to believe that God is not finished. In Romans 8:28he says, “And 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 comes out and says, “You know what? In all things God is working for the good. Not just for everyone, not for just any situation, but for those who love him and for those who have been called according to his purpose.” If you love God, you’ve been called according to his purpose. You have this promise that God works in all things for good. Great. That settles it. But, wait …I’mthinking and you’re probably thinking of saints from this very congregation who were deeply in love with God, but who suffered horrible things. Where is the good in that?
Sometimes we look at Romans 8:28, “God works in all things for good,” and we wonder, “Gosh, does that verse need a side effects label to go along with it?” You know like on the TV ads, “Take two tablets every hour for joint pain. Here are the side effects: This drug may cause joint pain…nausea, leg cramps, headaches or shortness of breath. You may also experience muscle aches, rapid heartbeat, impotence, and ringing in the ears. If trips to the bathroom become greater than twelve per hour consult your doctor...”
Brothers and Sisters, it’s not so much that God needs a side-effect label, but sin needs a side-effects label. The account in Genesis of Adam and Eve reminds us that though we are created in God’s image, we choose at times to go against what God knows is best for us. Sin enters the world on such occasions and it is rampant. And, once sin enters into the world it gains momentum to become the forces of evil we hopefully strive against on a daily basis. We look around at our world, and we see the effects of it every night on the news. We see shootings and carjacking; we see wars and rumors of wars. We see all this, but it is not God’s doing –wedo that to ourselves, right? God didn’t invent whips and chains, electric chairs, guns and atomic weapons. We did that. We cause a lot of the heartache and pain that we see going on in our world. And yet, there are still things that if I’m honest with you I just don’t understand. I can attribute sickness and health and a lot of these things to the fact that we live in a fallen world. I can attribute a lot of things that go on in our world to what people do to other people. I can attribute it to the gathering forces of darkness or evil. But then you see something like this fall’s tsunamis and I don’t know who else to attribute it to. We are left going, “Okay God, how does this fit together?”
In the totality of Romans 8, Paul makes no bones about the fact that we live in a world that is filled with suffering and pain. Then right in the middle of all that we come to Chapter 8:28 “In all this God works for the good for those who love him.” In all what? In suffering, in bondage, in decay, in frustration, in pain; in all of this God will take it and work it for good? Now, listen carefully…notice, it doesn’t say that, “It’s all good.” Clearly some things that happen in our world are not good. But, God can take a very evil, difficult, and painful situation and bring good out of it. (Last falls hurricane remnant/St.PUMC—two teams to Katrina—risk-taking mission and service).
What Paul is telling us in Romans 8:28 is this; God is not finished. No matter what we are going through. No matter how painful it is. No matter how hard it is to navigate through, God is not yet finished. The story isn’t over. The concluding chapter is yet to be written. He’s still at work. You may say,
- “I feel so tired,” butGod isn’t finished.
- “I feel so worn out,” butGod isn’t finished.
- “I feel so hopeless,” but God isn’t finished.
- “I can’t see a future,”but God isn’t finished.
- “I’m overwhelmed with the issues before me,” but God isn’t finished.
- “There is a light at the end of the tunnel—it’s an oncoming train,” but God isn’t finished.
He’s not done with you. He’s not done with this life. Even though sin has entered in, Jesus has defeated it to make us one with God, so that in the biblical telling of the end of the story in Revelation,we see that we will walk with God in a whole new way. There will be no crying, no pain, and all of it will be taken away, because, “God isn’t finished.”
B. Know that you are not alone: Another thing we can remember when it comes to living in a messed up world is this, “Know that you are not alone.” When we are suffering and struggling sometimes we feel so isolated and alone. Sometimes you come into church and you are sitting in that seat and you feel like there is no one else around you that understands what you are carrying,
- the burdens that you are facing,
- the issues that you are up against,
- the loneliness that you feel.
You are there and you are holding it all. You just feel isolated. The good news for us this morning is that the Bible promises us that no matter what we go through we are not alone.
Paul looks at it this way in Romans 8 beginning in verse 31 where he says, “What, then shall we say in response to this? If God is for us…” That assurance blows me away. God—the God that created everything—the sky, the trees, the landscapes, the clouds, that God, the one who the Bible says has the expanse of the universe in the palm of his hand—is for us. For us!
You read, “God is for us,” that is amazing. Then you read on and Paul says, “If God is for us then who could be against us?” But, you know what? A lot of people can be against you if you really think about it. How many of you can say that there is someone out there who is against you?
- “It may be your teacher. I think he’s against me.”
- “It may be your employer. I think she’s against me.” I
- It may be an enemy from the past, a former work associate, a family member
What’s going on? Remember though, Paul isn’tsaying that, if God is for us we’ll have no problems or never have to face difficulties. He’s saying that if God is for us, no matter what comes into our life, no matter what difficulty, pain or hardship, God will ultimately pull us through. God will ultimately work for our good. Who can be against us?
Paul says,“If God is for us then who can be against us?” Then he says, “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all; how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?” He’s saying, “Look if God gave His Son for us than that’s our security. That’s our promise that God will provide all thingsfor us.” You may have heard of Joni(Johnny) Erickson Tada, who as a young woman, dived into a swimming pool that she thought had water. There was no water in that pool. She’s lived for the last several decades as a quadriplegic. That’s somebody who knows what suffering is about. She wrote these words, “God does not give advice. He does not give reasons or answers. He gives one better. He gives himself. God wrote a book on suffering and called it Jesus. This is why God is good. He is good because he gives Himself.”
The truth is beloved that what I’ve begun to realize is that it’s not a Bible passage that people hold on to when they are suffering and hurting. Sometimes we can do a lot of damage when we go up to someone who is in the middle of major grief and say something like, “Hey, remember, Dick did that message. God works in all things for good.” That person who is hurting and grieving may just land a hay maker on you for that. Their sense in the midst of that pain is, “I don’t want that right now. Do you know what I want? I just want a friend who will walk with me through the valley.” In the midst of pain, just know that you are not alone. God is with you. (And, prayerfully present in God’s people…)
C. Rest in God’s Love:A final thing we can do in the midst of a messed up world is this; “Rest in God’s love.” There are times when you are hurting and depressed, and you don’t feel like doing anything. You don’t want to go to church. You don’t want to be encouraged. You don’t want to talk to friends. You don’t even want to open the blinds. In the midst of those moments when we can do nothing else God is right there. We can rest in His love.
I’ve talked to people when they are suffering and hurting or going through frustrations in life. They often think that God is getting back at them. They’ll come in and say, “There was this one time five years ago when I just let God have it. I told him the way things were going to be, and I laid it all out for him. I kind of think he’s bringing it all back down on me now. Like for five years God’s been biding his time, getting ready and now he’s unleashing the fury.
They are thinking that somehow in the midst of their pain that God no longer loves them. It can happen to any of us when we are hurting. It can happen because of simple things. You get three flat tires in a couple weeks and you start going, “Okay, wait a minute. God, what is going on?” To that thought process, look at what Paul says in Romans 8:35, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble, or hardship, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?” Again, understand this, right off the bat; Paul is assuming that we will face trouble and hardship, and nakedness and danger, and sword and famine that all of these things are part of the life journey. “But knowin all of these things we are more than conquerors!” How?—”Throughhim who loved us.” That’s Jesus. Verse 38, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present not the future, nor any powers, neither height no depth, nor anything else in all creations, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”