The Sovereign and Suffering God - Linda Bailey

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, good morning, everyone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Great to be with you on this fresh winter's morning.

[SPEAKER_00]: My name's Linda Bailey, and part of the team here at one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's great to be here together.

[SPEAKER_00]: Please continue your conversations after the service stick around.

[SPEAKER_00]: Over the last couple of weeks those who have been around and as David said we've had our mission month happening and thank you so much to those who have given to the mission appeal.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're nearly there.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're nearly at our target a couple more days until the end of financial year.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you do want some tax deductibility, there's an option there but we're really keen to hit our target for all our mission partners.

[SPEAKER_00]: Before mission month, we were in a series on Acts, and we were looking at the first seven chapters of Acts, and as we looked at the birth of the early church, Jesus ascended into heaven, and the Holy Spirit came down and filled the disciples.

[SPEAKER_00]: and incredible things happened.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead was the same Holy Spirit who filled the early believers and the disciples and did incredible things and moved in incredible ways to birth the early church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's the same Holy Spirit that we believe is in us moving in us today.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're gonna jump back into our Axe series for a couple of weeks over these school holidays.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as we do, we're gonna pick up from Axe chapter eight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now for some context for you to know the previous two chapters we've looked at Stephen.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Stephen was actually the first Christian martyr.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was killed because of his preaching about Jesus, the new message of Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: and he was killed and from that point we pick up from Acts chapter 8.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_00]: So why don't you stand with me as I read just the first eight verses of Acts chapter 8?

Acts 8 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_00]: And Paul approved Paul, who then became Paul later down the track, approved of their killing Stephen.

[SPEAKER_00]: On that day a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria, godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him, but Saul began to destroy the church, going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those who had been scutted, preached the word, wherever they went.

[SPEAKER_00]: Philip went down to the city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah there.

[SPEAKER_00]: When the crowds heard Philip and saw the signs he performed, they all paid close attention to what he said.

[SPEAKER_00]: For his tricks in pure spirits came out of many, and many who were paralyzed or lame were healed.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there was great joy in that city.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why don't you grab your seats?

[SPEAKER_00]: When I read this passage, particularly the first couple of verses, where it talks about Stephen being killed, persecution, breaking out, people mourning for Stephen.

[SPEAKER_00]: My first question is, why would you allow this to happen?

[SPEAKER_00]: Why would you, the church was so young, like it was still a baby, the Christian church.

[SPEAKER_00]: This was God's mission, it was God's message, it was God's way of showing the world who he was and how he wanted them to connect with him and worship him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet,

[SPEAKER_00]: They were still in nappies that eyes hardly open and bang they hit with persecution, death, mourning, why would God allow this to happen to his church so early on?

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this idea of why does God allow suffering to happen is not a new one.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've been asking it for generations and generations.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, we've just finished the Alpha Course, this incredible opportunity for people together who are exploring

[SPEAKER_00]: You know who is God?

[SPEAKER_00]: Exploring faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean for my life?

[SPEAKER_00]: Who is this character of Jesus?

[SPEAKER_00]: And the most commonly asked question as they come into a safe place to ask any question they want, the most commonly asked question is, why does God allow suffering?

[SPEAKER_00]: If you talk about this God who is all powerful and all loving, why would he allow suffering?

[SPEAKER_00]: And this question, I don't know if it's come up for you, it certainly comes up for me quite often, because it is a great equalizer, this question.

[SPEAKER_00]: Every single person experiences suffering.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are people in this room, maybe watching online, maybe listening to this message during the week who are experiencing suffering right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing is, if that's not you, if you at this point are not experienced suffering, you still ask the question because it's very likely that you have experienced suffering in the past.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if not, the world shows us that we are going to experience suffering in our future.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is the great equaliser.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when we come to a time of suffering or pain or challenge, we are forever changed.

[SPEAKER_00]: You never go back to being the same.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when you hit that time of suffering, it can either make you a better person,

[SPEAKER_00]: Or it can actually make you a bitter person.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm not just saying the same word, but with a New Zealand accent for our friends across the ditch, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: A better or bitter person, too completely different things, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: It can make us better by helping us to clarify who we are, what is important to us, how we lean into God when things like this happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it can actually make us a better person as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: It can help us look inward and think, well, people don't understand what it's like to be me.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can't understand because what I'm going through is so different.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why would this happen?

[SPEAKER_00]: What have I done?

[SPEAKER_00]: Why should this happen to me?

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus told the story in Matthew chapter 7, he said out from verse 24, therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

[SPEAKER_00]: The rain came down, the streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock.

[SPEAKER_00]: But everyone who hears these words of mine, this is the sermon on the Mount that Jesus has just preached, and does not put them into practice.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

[SPEAKER_00]: The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.

[SPEAKER_00]: As I read this story, I see that the suffering was the same for both the men.

[SPEAKER_00]: The rain came down, the stream's rose, the winds blew, it was the same.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, they're response.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their preparation in dealing with the suffering was vastly different, and it had a greatly different outcome for them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we hear this all the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: People say to me, all the time, from all different walks of life, this happened to me, and so I have left the church, because how could I believe in a God who allowed that to happen?

[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'll talk to someone else who's had nearly exactly the same thing happen to them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they say to me, how do people do this without God?

[SPEAKER_00]: He has been such a rock and a fortress for me during this time.

[SPEAKER_00]: The same thing and yet people respond differently, which shows me that we are not passive in our suffering.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, there are things that happen to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We live in a fallen broken world.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are not in control of everything that happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: And things are done to us that we do not control things done to us that we do not approve of and that we did not want.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we are not passive in our response.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have an opportunity to respond in such a way when that happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the culture that we live in certainly tries to inform us of how we are to respond.

[SPEAKER_00]: We live in a Western culture that tells us that suffering is terrible.

[SPEAKER_00]: Suffering is to be avoided at all costs.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is nothing with that comes out of suffering.

[SPEAKER_00]: You need to control your life in such a way that you can avoid suffering at any walk of life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do your best, prepare yourself so that you don't have to in your pain or suffering or grief or anything in your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: This secular world view tells us that this is the best there is.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is the ultimate happiness.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're not happy now, then you're never going to be happy.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you need to create your life in such a way that you get ultimate happiness here and now.

[SPEAKER_00]: So avoid suffering at all costs.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not the only message we have in our world.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, our Eastern cultures have a totally different view on suffering.

[SPEAKER_00]: Pico Ayahu is a speaker and a writer has lived a standard period of time in Western culture as well as an extended period of time in countries in Eastern cultures.

[SPEAKER_00]: and that he wrote an essay for the New York Times.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the summation of his idea of Eastern culture says you accept suffering as the way of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: You completely embrace it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You never complain about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: It humbles you.

[SPEAKER_00]: It strengthens you.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the way of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: You should actually get your heart ready for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: He goes on to tell a story.

[SPEAKER_00]: I once met a Zen trained painter in Japan in his 90s, who told me that suffering is such a privilege.

[SPEAKER_00]: It moves us toward thinking about essential things.

[SPEAKER_00]: It shakes us out of short-sighted complacency.

[SPEAKER_00]: When he was a boy, he said it was believed that suffering proves such a hidden blessing that you should be willing to pay for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I read that and I go, I was definitely brought up in the Western culture, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: That is so foreign to me that you would want to embrace it because it's a blessing.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, when I think about certain times in my life, I remember getting a phone call and being told that my father was gravely ill.

[SPEAKER_00]: I lived three hours away.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had a family, I had a busy job.

[SPEAKER_00]: Life was busy, life was full.

[SPEAKER_00]: But as soon as I got that phone call, I cleared the calendar and went straight down to be with him.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: I do not remember what I missed out on work during that time, but I never regretted going and being with him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because the suffering that we were experiencing helped me clarify what was important and what my actions could do to show the importance of what and what my priorities

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet our Western culture tells us that no avoid it, do everything you can to stay away from suffering.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tim Keller has written an incredible book on suffering and in looking at the difference of the Western and Eastern cultures.

[SPEAKER_00]: of the Western culture, he says, a number of cultural anthropologists say, empirically, that the secular Western culture is the worst culture in the history of the world at helping people face suffering.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because in our context, in a secular view, suffering has no meaning.

[SPEAKER_00]: It cannot help you get to your goal.

[SPEAKER_00]: It can just destroy your goals.

[SPEAKER_00]: It cannot be a meaningful chapter in your life story.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just an interruption of your life story or it's the end of your life story.

[SPEAKER_00]: And therefore, we are the worst of all the cultures because this life is all there is.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yay for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the thing is, is you are sitting here on a Sunday morning, aware of the Western culture we live in, maybe even aware of the Eastern cultures in our world as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you're here because you want a Christian perspective, because our perspective brings something new to even both of these.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we can see already in the short verses that we read in Acts chapter eight, that suffering is real for us in the Christian perspective as well.

[SPEAKER_00]: Acts 8 verse 1 on that day, a great persecution broke out against the church.

Acts 8:1

[SPEAKER_00]: Godly men about buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Stephen, who had been thought to be a convicted criminal, it was a law that you weren't allowed to mourn for, for someone who was killed in such a way, but the overflow of their grief and their loss, they mourned deeply for him.

[SPEAKER_00]: As Christians, we are not exempt from suffering.

[SPEAKER_00]: We live in this fallen broken world, and we still experience it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, our perspective is different.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was at a party a couple of weeks ago, and I was chatting to a group of people, most of them that I didn't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one person in the group who did know me, outed me as a Christian minister.

[SPEAKER_00]: So of course, then the conversation turned to religion and we were talking.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was a gentleman in that group who educated intelligent man, he was high up in his area of business, and he says to me, well, I actually think all religions are the same.

[SPEAKER_00]: You all worship the same God, you just call him different things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you're all heading towards the same heavenly place.

[SPEAKER_00]: You just call it something different.

[SPEAKER_00]: The only difference in all the religions is how you pray and worship while you're here on earth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And fortunately, that week, Tim had recommended that I listened to a podcast by John Lennox, who is this incredible gentleman of his a maths professor at Oxford University, and he really seen his aides.

[SPEAKER_00]: He has said that throughout his whole life, he believes he's an ambassador for the gospel.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so he has been living his whole life explaining who God is and the meaning of the gospel in maths and science and in these worlds and he says it so humbly and beautifully.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm in this conversation at this party and this gentleman says this to me and so a channel my inner John Lennox.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said to him, that's a, that's a really interesting perspective.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can, I can see how that does make sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: I can see the similarities in the religions and we even have similar stories to help us explain who God is and who He is to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: I said, well, clearly, I've committed to the Christian perspective.

[SPEAKER_00]: I said, would you be happy if I shared my thoughts on that perspective?

[SPEAKER_00]: And he said, yeah, sure, go ahead.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, I guess the difference that I see

[SPEAKER_00]: Is that in many other religions, it is that prayer and that worship that people do in order to seek that heavenly place from their God.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the difference for me with the Christian God is that there is nothing that we can do in order to seek that place, but it's actually that God has done it for us, and he came

[SPEAKER_00]: John Lennie says it this way, a Christian then is not a person who has solved the problem of suffering, but one who has come to love and trust the God who has suffered for them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the difference in our Christian perspective, is that we worship a God who has suffered for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: He has suffered in such an incredible way that when we come to a time of suffering, he understands, he comes alongside, and he wants to us to know that he is empathetic towards what we are going through.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tim Keller says this, one of the most amazing things about Christian teaching about suffering is this, that our God is both sovereign and suffering.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's sovereign.

[SPEAKER_00]: It says in Romans 828, all things work together for good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose.

[SPEAKER_00]: Meaning that God has a plan for things, even if we can't see it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now that's not all it's said.

[SPEAKER_00]: If that's all that was said, I couldn't handle it.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's too powerful to remote.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's like He's a puppet master.

[SPEAKER_00]: but he's also a suffering god.

[SPEAKER_00]: He went to the cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: He suffered.

[SPEAKER_00]: He knows pain.

[SPEAKER_00]: He knows rejection.

[SPEAKER_00]: He knows betrayal.

[SPEAKER_00]: He knows torture.

[SPEAKER_00]: He knows hunger.

[SPEAKER_00]: He knows first.

[SPEAKER_00]: He knows death.

[SPEAKER_00]: He did that in order to die for our sins, to take our punishment.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you know what that means.

[SPEAKER_00]: It means that when you suffer two things, if you believe in Him, you are not being punished for your sins because Jesus was punished for your sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: And secondly, he understands what you're going through personally, and that means his with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is sovereign because he has a plan and he is powerful and majestic and we don't always know what that plan is and I think sometimes we don't even understand that plan and till we are in the next world.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't always understand it but we trust.

[SPEAKER_00]: He is powerful and majestic and almighty.

[SPEAKER_00]: He has authority over heaven and earth so that we can trust him.

[SPEAKER_00]: but he is also suffering so that he understands what we are going through and what it is like for us to live in this world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the incredible thing is when we lean into that sovereign and suffering God, things beyond even our comprehension can happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: In Acts 8, the chapter starts off with persecution

[SPEAKER_00]: And within eight verses, verse eight is so there was great joy in that city.

[SPEAKER_00]: in such a short period of time as we follow someone who trusts in God, who is experiencing suffering, but still steps out into the calling that God has for them, who relies on the Holy Spirit in their life to not stay silent, but make active choices in connecting with God, engaging with Him, continuing to do what God had called Him to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: and there was great joy in that city.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is not our power.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is the power of God through His Holy Spirit, living in us that such change can happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it doesn't always happen quickly, even for us as Christians, even for the most faithful.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is a process.

[SPEAKER_00]: Suffering is real.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is not to be laughed at or looked down upon.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is real and we need to process those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: God is with us.

[SPEAKER_00]: He has a plan, and He understands what we're going through.

[SPEAKER_00]: Can I invite you to stand?

[SPEAKER_00]: As we finish, I would like to pray for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: I would like to pray that this sovereign and suffering God would meet us exactly where we're at.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we close your eyes as I finish in prayer.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you are comfortable too, if you are going through a time of suffering, can I invite you just to put forward your hands as a physical way of opening ourselves up to receive God's Holy Spirit?

[SPEAKER_00]: to receive what he knows we need to endure these times of suffering.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sovereign and suffering God.

[SPEAKER_00]: We come to you, maybe with a need in our hearts, grief, a pain, a suffering that we are carrying.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we come to you because you are powerful, you are majestic, you are the creator of the whole world, and you are the rock on which we can stand.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we thank you Jesus Christ for being willing to suffer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not just for our sins to be forgiven.

[SPEAKER_00]: But so that when we look to you, we know you are a God who understands, who cares, and who comes along side us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Holy Spirit, we pray that you will fill us with such the Spirit of God that you will give us exactly what we need in this moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: Give us your grace, your peace, your patience, your wisdom, your healing hand.

[SPEAKER_00]: And help us help us as we step through every day.

[SPEAKER_00]: To live our life here on earth, according to your will,

[SPEAKER_00]: so that all will be able to see that you as the sovereign and suffering God are the one that we can trust and rely on.

[SPEAKER_00]: We pray this in your mighty name.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.