Bible Verse: 2 Corinthians 4:7-18
Full Sermon Transcript
WELCOME
Pastor Chris Paavola: Hey everybody, good morning. My name is Chris Paavola. I’m the senior pastor here at St. Mark. It’s great to be with you guys. We are in the middle of a series called The Reason For God, where we are talking about, I mean, the reason for God, and having just an honest conversation about faith and doubt. And I can feel the congregation leaning in during this series, man. I mean, just based on the emails I’m getting or just conversations afterwards or even just looking at the number of online views or people downloading podcasts, it’s obviously we’re hitting on something that’s important to you. So thank you guys for being here. Thank you guys for tuning in online and watching as well. But yeah, so each week we’re taking on one of these big questions of faith. And since there’s a lot of them, we’re really stretching this series out, but it just feels like every week is a completely different thought process.
REVIEW THE SERIES
And so week one we talked about just generally faith and doubt itself. And we talked about how can I still be a Christian if I have doubts? And then week two we talked about how can there only be one true religion? And both of those were great questions. Way more to say about them than I could possibly summarize without causing confusion or making more questions. So if you have a question about those or you want to catch those a little bit later on, just go to our website, go to our YouTube page or our podcasts and dig in.
PREVIEW THIS WEEK
But today, because today we’re going to push onto a third question, and this is a big one, how could a good God allow suffering? This is what every Lion’s fan was asking last night.
So easy. I’m so sorry it was so easy. But yes, how could a good God allow suffering? Honestly? And we joke about football and just waiting decades for the lines to win a playoff game, but honestly, this is real, right? This is the question we ask when we see wildfires or wars on CNN, and we’re just like, are you kidding me? Really? And honestly where we ask this question the most is when it’s not suffering on the TV screen, it’s suffering that we feel personally that we go when we lose a job, when we lose a loved one, when we lose some part of our health and we go, are you God? Really? How could this be happening right now? And it’s kind of CS Lewis’s words come to life. All of a sudden, author CS Lewis said, God whispers in our pleasure, he speaks in our conscience, but he shouts in our pain.
Pain is God’s megaphone that he uses to rouse a deaf world. And it’s true. It is something about pain because there’s something suddenly out of our control that makes us look to heaven and go, how could you allow this to happen?
DISCLAMER ON SUFFERING
And we need to talk about this, but before we do, I got to give a couple disclaimers because otherwise I’ll unnecessarily leave somebody behind and forge too far ahead. First disclaimer I got to make is that this question is not why am I suffering? The question is how could a good God allow suffering? Not why am I suffering? And those are two different questions. We’re dealing with the question of God’s existence that’s different than the question of God’s will or wisdom or his plan. Why am I suffering? Is trying to look into the will of God in a circumstance. And even if you told me all the details of your tragedies, I am not sure that I could give you a reason why God is going to do something that’s called the hiddenness of God. That’s his will, that’s to be revealed. We believe that God works all things for the good of those who love him for his good and his glory. Absolutely we believe those things, but we find those things out in time.
We could talk about that someday, but that’s different. The question of why your suffering is different than how could a good God allow suffering, but I’m not copying. This is not like a cop out. This is not skirting the issue. Actually, I think when we answer the question of how, it puts a little bit of context to the question of why, and it helps us answer that question a little bit more. And so today is still really important, but we’re just to be clear, we’re going to be talking about the existence of God because of this thing called suffering. How could a good God allow suffering? Second disclaimer I need to make before we dig in is that if I come across as insensitive or dismissive of your pain, that is not my intent. And so please, please give me grace when we’re taking a scalpel to this and we make these incisions, some of them will cut deep and I will touch on real hurt in your life, real tragedy that you have gone through.
LOGIC
And I know it’s just like I’m poking at a wound. That’s not my intent. And the reason I have to say that is in logic, if you’re doing philosophy or debate, there’s a thing called logical fallacies, and it’s just a list of logical fallacies that when you hear it, you’re like, wait, wait, wait. That has no bearing on the truth of an argument. And one of the logical fallacies is called appeal to emotion. So if somebody is making an argument and then they appeal to emotion, what they’re doing is they’re pulling on your heartstrings. But that emotion has nothing to do, no bearing on whether or not something is true. You hear politicians do this all the time where they talk about, I was talking to a single mom at a grocery store in Pennsylvania and she had tears in her eyes, and that’s sad, and it’s, it’s tragic.
But what politician in that moment’s trying to do is pull on your heartstrings to get your vote for something or whatever it might be. And the emotion has nothing to do with the truth of a situation. Facts are different than feelings. And so when I’m talking today and I seem at all detached from emotion, it’s because I’m trying to deal with this issue. It’s not because I’m trying to be insensitive and I’m trying to deal with this on a logical level. So please give me grace if I offend.
SUFFERING
And speaking of logic, then we can kind of get into this because now it’s how could a good God allow suffering? So there’s kind of baked into this premise. Well, if they’re suffering, God is either not good or not powerful or not real.
If they’re suffering, God is not good, not powerful or not real, but there is suffering. There is. So he wouldn’t, he couldn’t or he isn’t. That’s kind of how the logic proceeds. And I need to press pause right away on all that because suffering, my friends suffering does not call into question God’s existence. It calls into question his goodness. Suffering does not call into question God’s existence. It calls into question his goodness. And here’s what I mean by that. And unless there’s a God, how can you complain about suffering without God? There is no moral absolutes over everything. In other words, you can’t say something is bad unless there’s a definition of what is good. You can’t say something is wrong. And unless there’s a definition of what’s right, you can’t say something is unjust unless there’s a definition of what is just and where does that come from? Unless there’s a moral arbiter over it all, a moral authority over all things dictating that this is good, right? Just you don’t get that by observing the universe. You don’t observe nature and just use science to observe that suffering is bad. And the time that I’ve been talking to you this morning, tens of thousands of animals on this planet have been hunted and killed by predators. You can’t observe natural order and conclude that suffering is bad if nature is natural.
And any honest atheist has to make this conclusion. Like Richard Dawkins, a famous atheist writes a lot of books. This is his quote from a book called A Darwinian View of Life. ‘Nature is not cruel, it’s only pitilessly indifferent.” That’s a hard word to say. Indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We struggle to admit that things are neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous, indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose. And what he’s saying is if there is no God, if there is no moral absolute, then we have no place to complain about suffering at all. We can’t.
In the end, atheism does nothing to remove our suffering. It only removes our hope. And so a suffering is does not call into question God’s existence. Actually, it’s evidence of God’s existence because there’s something in us that says, hold on, that’s not right. Suffering calls into question God’s goodness. And when we see suffering in the world, when we hear stories of children in sweatshops making our tennis shoes and iPhones, when we hear stories of gas chambers at Auschwitz or childhood cancer or just go down the list, if we look at that and say, that’s wrong, that’s not good. There’s something about that.
JUSTICE
There’s a lot of Nazis in Germany who thought they were doing right, but there’s something over them. It’s not just majority rule something over them has to say that that’s wrong. That’s not okay. Natural selection is not all there is. It’s not a strong ruling. The weak, there’s got to be more to this. When we object to suffering, calling for justice, that’s what we’re calling for, it’s justice. So suffering leads us to think about justice. We want things to be made right, and we all like justice. We like racial justice, gender justice, social justice of different kinds. We like the civil rights movement. We like things like special. These things are just and good. We like this, and that’s a response to suffering of some kind.
JUDGEMENT
But the problem with justice is that the Justice League has to fight against a villain. There has to be a bad guy. Justice requires another word judgment. It does. It’s two sides of the same coin. You can’t have justice unless there’s a judge sitting on a seat pronouncing judgment and upholding the law. You need judgment if you’re going to have justice. And we like a God who’s just and defending the cause of the helpless and the needy and the orphan and the widow, and we like a God who is exacting justice, but we run for the hills when we think about God’s judgments. We don’t like a God who judges, but we can’t have both ways. If we want God’s justice, then God has to judge what God judges is a word that scripture would call sin.
SIN
Sin. The source of all our suffering is sin. And because our God is just, he must pronounce judgment on our sin, sin is our condition. It has cursed everything. Sin has cursed everything. The reason we have tsunamis, the reason we have cancer and the reason we have theft and murder is because of sin. Sin is the source of all suffering. And that puts God in a really difficult spot. It does. It puts God in a really difficult spot, the solutions God, because he’s just must pronounce judgment on sin.
SOLUTIONS
So, he has a few choices. One, he could eliminate all the sin that causes suffering. So his option is eliminate it, eliminate sin. But that also means that he would eliminate sinners like you and me because not only have you suffered by the sins of others, but you have caused suffering. You sinners. So have I. Every time you gossip to somebody about somebody else and they have no ability to do anything about the situation, that’s sin. Every time you slandered somebody is sin. Every hateful thought you ever had, every time you cheated, you caused suffering. And so if God is going to eliminate the source of suffering, God has to eliminate you and me. It’d be the flood 2.0.
Thank goodness. God doesn’t choose that option. So then there’s the other option of, well, he could ignore our suffering, just turn a blind eye to it. But that doesn’t get us very far. He’s a just God. He’s not very just if he’s going to ignore our sin, because if he’s ignoring the gossip that you did last Tuesday, he’s also got to ignore human trafficking, which is he going to? Where’s he going to draw the line? Anecdotally, I don’t think God ignores suffering. I see God answer prayers in my life a hundred percent. I think many of you would agree with me. It’s Dr. King’s quote. The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
I think he’s right. You can observe the world around you, and we are a more just society than we were a hundred years ago and we’re more just a hundred years ago than we were a thousand years ago. So I don’t think you can make an argument that God is ignoring our sin, and at the very least, I don’t think you can ignore it because of Jesus, which kind of leads to the third option. God doesn’t eliminate our sin and all the sinners, he doesn’t ignore our sin. He chooses a third option, and it’s a strange one. God’s answer to our suffering is to enter it.
GOD IN OUR SUFFERING
He enters our suffering. It boggles the mind that our God and our faith, our God becomes man, takes on our sinful flesh and was tempted in every way as we are. Scripture says, but he never sinned to think that God who needs nothing suddenly can hunger. God can get tired. The God who never sleeps can now get tired. The perfect God can now get pimples and the flu. It just boggles the mind. And it’s a strange answer, and it doesn’t make much sense as you watch his life, that God’s answer for our suffering is to enter it with us until you watch his life all the way to its end across, it’s the ultimate of human suffering. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought of the cross like this, but the cross is God’s judgment on all our suffering and all of our sin. The cross is where he is a judge.
His wrath is poured out on all of our suffering and your sins are paid for and we want justice. But now this word, this unique word comes out of this moment of the cross. We are, it shares the same root word. We are justified before God because of a cross where his son bore the punishment of our sin and suffering. Look at the words of Isaiah 53, A prophet who wrote about the crucifixion. He said, surely he took up our pain and bore our theft, our brain tumors our bigotry. “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering.” The Lord Laid on the sins of us all… Isaiah 26
Isaiah uses the word suffering several times in this chapter, and the “Lord has laid on him the sins of us all.” Notice the connection again between sin and suffering, and it’s all there on the cross. It’s the end of our suffering. And after the cross is what we believe, the resurrection where Jesus ascends into heaven and prepares a place for us, he goes into a sinless paradise. And now sinners like you and me can enter because our sins are paid for, and we can enter into this place where there’s no more sin, which means there’s no more suffering. Like Revelation 21 verse four, these are incredible words. When we arrive there, he will wipe from our eyes.
He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the order of things has passed away. Revelation 21
There will be “no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things.” Our suffering “has passed away.” I know this is heavy. I can feel it in the room. You can’t talk about this topic without feeling like this. So I understand we started today with a question. How could a good God allow suffering? It’s a question we ask when we experience pain, when we experience heartache, when we experience the worst that life has to throw at us, how could a good God allow this suffering? But the cross of Jesus poses a different question. If we will look at it long enough, if we lift our eyes from our suffering and look at his suffering, the cross of Jesus poses a brand new question for us. Not how could a good God allow suffering, but when we look at the cross, we ask, how good is a God willing to end our suffering? How good must he be? How much must God love you that he’s willing to go to a cross for you? How good is the God who suffers in your place?
Tim Keller in this book, the Reason for God that we’ve named our series after, and you can still grab some copies out in the hub out there, he writes this, “when we look at the cross of Jesus, we still do not know what the answer to our suffering is. However, we now know what the answer isn’t. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us. It can’t be that he’s indifferent or detached from our condition. God takes our misery and suffering so seriously that he was willing to take it on himself.” Lemme pray for us.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, we love you and we’re sorry that our suffering makes us question your love for us. We’re just being honest.
I pray for anyone in the room or anyone who can hear the sound of my voice, that whatever suffering they’re going through right now, that you right now in this moment would convince them of your love, that the cross of Jesus would remind them that they’re not alone. You are not ignoring their suffering. You’re right there with them. At the end of their suffering is sure because of the work of Jesus. And we pray now the prayer that Jesus, our suffering servants taught us to pray when he said, our Father who arts in heaven, Hollywood, be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Th thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen
QUESTIONS
So, every week during this series, we’re giving you guys an opportunity to text in your questions. You can also text in if you’re watching online right now, just go ahead and text your questions to 269-448-4747. So what is your question about suffering that I didn’t answer or I misspoke or I made too big of a logical jump and there’s a gap missing there that I need to fill in? I’d love to talk with you guys about that. So go ahead and text me your questions and then Luke, you can just stay on that number there. I’ll run through the quick announcements that we’ve got. First of all, we have intercessory prayer available after our service, formal line against the wall. We’d be happy to pray with you about that matter. I’m going to ask my friend Zach to pray because I think Pastor Jack is setting up for our next thing, our next announcement, we have our congregational meeting at 12:15 pm today.
So right after this service, it’s going to be at 12:15 pm though. And we are going to be talking about our plan for the capital campaign, the use of funds, the expansion, the renovation, all that stuff. And we need your permission to proceed and just have full transparency so that we’ll be at 12:15 pm. And then next week we’re continuing our series, the Reason for God, we’re going to be talking about what about all the bad things Christians have done. We’re supposed to be changed people. And it is kind of evidence, isn’t it? Evidence that God isn’t real because you guys are so awful and all the bad things Christians have done and all the atrocities committed to the name of Jesus. What do you got? How can you guys just ignore all that? So we’re going to answer that question. It’s a good one, it’s a fair one.
And so we’re going to talk about that next week. I hope you guys continue to be a part of this series and lean in. These are the questions either you have or the people in your life have. So speaking of your questions, then let’s get to what you guys want to know about suffering.
Is it a sin to make poor choices for our health? I believe God wants us to leave behind addictions to minimize our suffering. That’s a great question. There’s this, I don’t think all of our suffering is the result of our decisions, but definitely man, if you smoke, you are doing something to harm your body that’s going to cause suffering. If you drink excessively, if you eat Doritos excessively and don’t exercise, you are deliciously harming your body. And scripture calls it our bodies, the temple of the Lord, and we’re supposed to honor and respect our bodies. And so yeah, you can cause suffering by the choices that you make. Absolutely. Does that mean that you’re sinning? I think you could say that there is a point where it tips over into excess. Scripture says, and this is probably where I would draw the line of sin, excess is when it masters you. God doesn’t want you to be mastered by anything. He doesn’t want anything to have mastery over you. So, if you’re addicted to something or it is becoming compulsion or you’re gluttonous in that thing and it just overindulging in it, that’s where I would draw the line at sin on those kind of behaviors without getting into too much more on the nuances that let’s keep on going.
Does God feel mad when we judge him for our suffering? He, he’s a big boy. He can handle it. I don’t mean that to be trite and flippant about God. He’s holy and we should be reverent of that. But yeah, I think God welcomes our anger. I think God would rather talk to us when we’re angry than not. Yesterday my son, they lost their hockey game and I wanted to talk to him about it and he didn’t want to talk, but I would rather him talk about it in your anger. So I think God would rather us go to him when we’re angry, go to him with our frustration or complaints, open the Psalms and just read how many of the Psalms are complaints to God? How long, oh Lord, will you allow this? Why have you put us off? Why have you are letting the wicked prosper? So yeah, I don’t think, don’t feel guilty about it. Go to God with your anger. It’s actually an act of faith. So a long way of me figuring out my answer on that, no.
Okay. Ooh, that is a ringer. If Jesus took all our pain and suffering, why do we keep on suffering? That’s a great question, right? Didn’t you just say Pastor Chris, that the cross is the end of all of our suffering? It is. It’s a now, but not yet in scripture. It’s the here, but there kind of answer. There is a place where there will be no more suffering that we can enter because Jesus has died on the cross. If Jesus takes us out of our suffering, then that means he’s bringing us to heaven. This is what Paul, the apostle Paul was talking about when he says, for me it is better by far for me to depart and be with the Lord. I think it’s in Corinthians. Anyone. Check Corinthians is where he says, for me to depart is better by far. Maybe is that kind of where he says it anyway?
He says, for me to depart is better by far, but the Lord has left me here. And so I have no choice while I’m here, but to advance the gospel basically. And so it’s better to be with the Lord, to live his Christ, to die his gain. And so it’s better for me to be with Jesus where there is no suffering, but I’m here to help others leave the suffering as well. That’s why we’re here. So that as many as possible can receive salvation in Jesus’s name. He talks about elsewhere in two Corinthians 11 for sure. That one two Corinthians one where he talks about our suffering. Sometimes it’s the God of all comfort and sometimes he comforts us in our suffering so we can comfort others with the same comfort that we’ve received from God. And so there’s also this idea of there’s a purpose behind our suffering. So has God ended all suffering on the cross? Yes. Do you still suffer? Yes. Both things can be true. I hope that was clear.
Is suffering commensurate with a sin? That’s good. Not always. I mean, I don’t think every suffering is a result of sin. I think sometimes house fires just happen. And that’s not an indictment on everyone who lived in that house. There’s one time Jesus was walking and it talked about that people were asking him about this tower that fell on all these people and I killed them. And Jesus said, don’t presume, basically don’t presume that those who were in the tower are worse sinners than you are. And people would bring a blind man to Jesus and they would say, who sinned? This man or his parents that he’s suffering in this way? IE God is causing this man to suffer because of sin. And Jesus is like, neither. This is so the glory of God might be revealed, but sometimes suffering just happens. And then Jesus forgives us sins, which is kind of a neat connection to suffering and sin. But no suffering is not always equal to God’s punishment or discipline would be my answer to that. You guys want to hear a couple more? Yes or no? Anyone going to really say no? I guess not. Guess not. I thought that was funny.
Yeah. Here’s another one. I must have misspoke too much. Here’s another one that hasn’t. If Jesus died for our suffering, why do we still suffer? So hopefully that answer was good.
Here’s a question about parenting that’s kind of off topic and I answered one about politics and it was at the nine 30 and I was like, this is not suffering. Why am I doing this? Okay, this is kind of getting into a little bit of what are the options God had? Remember I was talking about ignore suffering, eliminate suffering or enter our suffering. This one is what about when listing options for dealing with suffering? Why didn’t God just remove the sinful nature from people? This is one. Can I borrow a bulletin real quick? I want to see the front cover of the bulletin coming up in week February 2nd.
We’re going to talk about why would God make mankind capable of sinning, which, so I’m going to table this answer a little bit on that one because you’re ultimately asking a question of why would God make us like this, right? Why would God make us with the capacity to sin? My short answer is that we have capacity for great love and great sin. That’s the problem with this will and love is great. And so God could have removed that will and made us robots. But that doesn’t sound like a very fun existence and so way more to say about that. But basically, God, it’s a risk he was willing to take to make you with the capacity for great love. Interesting. Alright, one more.
Yeah. So really there’s three questions in a row here. One about suicide, one about children suffering in the hands of sinners. We all know what that’s kind of alluding to. And then just a couple other examples of suffering. Why would God do this? Why would God do this? It’s hard, isn’t it? Right, because the question of how could God allow suffering quickly leads into why God would allow suffering. I mentioned earlier talking about how the God of all comfort comforts us in our sorrows, that we may comfort others with the same comfort we ourselves received. God works all things for the good and the glory of those who love him.
There are people I have met who their greatest pain was the thing that brought them closest to God. And there are people that I’ve met that their greatest pain is the thing that drove them furthest away. And there’s no rhyme or reason for it, but you can’t take away what somebody that God used to bring them close or God was glorified and say, it’s all bad. When you see God do such good with it, you hear stories about somebody like Joni, Eric, Tata, I think I’m saying her name, Yani Ericson, I think I’m saying her name right? She was paralyzed all her life, but she could use her mouth and she learned to draw with a pencil. And her story is so inspiring to millions of people. And so obviously God did something incredible with that. And I think the same is true in your story, your suffering, whatever you’re going through, you have no idea how God can use that, how you can inspire others, how you can save someone else, because you can say the magic words.
I have been there too. And so it’s three questions in a row about why of suicide, child trafficking, all that, why that’s getting into the hiddenness of God. And that’s why I was saying that’s an entirely different sermon and we can talk about it sometime and I think by all means we will. But the question of why at the end of the day, we’re trying to peer into a wisdom that is impossible to understand at times. And that’s where we have to have faith and trust with the God, the God who we’re wrestling with this question of why is the same God who went to a cross for us. And I would say, I’ve used this phrase before because I think it’s memorable, but you can trust a God willing to die for you.
So as you’re going through this horrific thing right now, you can trust a God willing to die for you. And that changes how you proceed into the future with that question. Why? Because at least you’re asking it in the context of I can trust him. I can trust him. Alright, there’s more questions here. The 11 o’clock’ers, you guys rock. We got to teach other services to text. I’m going to invite you guys to stand up and give you a blessing and then we’ll get on with our day here and get on with our congregational meeting as well.
BLESSING
Receive now the blessing of the Lord. The Lord bless you and to keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord look upon you with his favor and give you his peace. Amen and amen. Thank you guys so much for being here. We will see you soon.